After dumping the useless napkins into the trash, they hurried back across the street to the precinct parking lot. Shane jumped into Ellie’s Explorer while they climbed into Clay’s SUV. A minute later, they headed out.
From the passenger seat, Ellie connected her phone to Bluetooth and dialed Carl. “Ellie again, you ready for me?”
“Yup. The phone’s up in North Charleston, just off Oak Drive.”
The farther north they traveled, the smaller and less expensive the neighborhoods. As they closed in on Oak Drive, the houses turned older and more modest, showing signs of aging in the old shingle roofs and overdue paint jobs, without falling into slums.
Depending on the particular house, the front yards were either tidy and neatly mown or full of dying grass mixed with dirt. Chain-link fences were more common than white pickets, and the cars and trucks that lined cracked driveways and curbs were late models, many featuring prominent dents or missing hubcaps. An ancient pop-up camper took up space along the left side of the road. A few houses down on the right, the SUV’s headlights revealed colorful chalk drawings stretching along the asphalt.
Clay turned down another residential street, craning his neck to scan the houses on either side. “Why here?”
Ellie bounced her leg on the seat, her skin tingling. “I think Kingsley may have grown up here.”
Clay tapped the brakes in the middle of the road, lurching Ellie toward the windshield. She grabbed the ceiling handle and turned toward him. “What?”
“I don’t like this. It feels like we’re heading straight into a trap.”
Arms crossed, a man in a dark t-shirt and a pair of stained jeans emerged from his garage and stood in the driveway, fixing Clay with a suspicious stare. Clay eased his foot off the brake, and the SUV rolled forward at a snail’s pace.
Ellie rubbed her arms and suppressed a shiver. “I don’t like it either, but we don’t have much choice. Unless you have a better idea?”
Clay’s knuckles blanched as he squeezed the steering wheel. With a muffled curse, he pushed harder on the gas, and the SUV gained speed.
“The final address appears to be 1303 Oak Drive,” Carl said. “The phone went inside and hasn’t come out.”
With the next turn, they left the residential area and found themselves on a road leading back into a wooded area. Clay stopped and pointed at something glimmering ahead. The sticker on a mailbox reflecting the light.
“Twenty bucks says that’s 1303.”
Ellie squinted but couldn’t quite see the number. “The road circles around, so keep going and don’t stop.”
Clay and Ellie inspected what they could see of the house as they cruised past, Shane a few hundred yards behind them. Clay continued driving until he reached the end of the street, made a U-turn, and then headed back. A quarter of a mile away, he pulled the SUV off the road around a curve.
“What now?”
They both stared at the house. 1303 Oak Drive was an unassuming single-story dwelling. Like the neighboring residences, the home emitting the LoJack signal was small and modest, with blue paint faded to almost white and a little patch of grass out front shadowed by a giant tree. A few shingles were missing from the roof, and the front window appeared boarded up, but other than that, there was nothing special about the house one way or another. Nothing to suggest a serial killer had spent his boyhood years behind those walls.
“Let’s get closer.”
With few functioning streetlamps, the area relied on the moon to ease the darkness. The overall effect was dim and eerie, like the calm before the storm. Down the block, a dog barked before abruptly silencing.
The hairs along the nape of Ellie’s neck bristled. She stroked the gun in her holster for reassurance before lunging for the door handle. She stopped short of opening it, though, pressing her forehead to the cool glass and inhaling through her nose.
Don’t just act. Think.
Her impulses screamed to leap from the vehicle and charge inside. Logic dictated restraint. They were flying blind. No blueprints, no intel of any kind, no idea at all of what awaited them on the other side of that door.
But what if Kingsley was in the middle of a new round of Die, Bitch! Die? Except instead of Ellie and the short, dark-haired woman, the current contestants were Bethany and her mom?
The memory of Ellie’s own scream ricocheted through her head. Die, Bitch! Die!
What if he’d already played his game and vanished, leaving her mom’s bloody, tortured body strewn across the floor for Ellie to discover? Hacked up like the dark-haired woman, her arms bloody stumps where her hands used to be.
The terrible image seared her lungs shut, and she gasped, squeezing the door handle. She had to stop him. For good.
The leather seat creaked. “Are you okay?”
Clay’s steady calm acted like a bucket of ice water, shocking Ellie free of terror’s grip.
Stop. You’re not a vulnerable, foolish teenager anymore. You’re a grown woman. A trained detective with the Charleston PD. Start acting like one.
Ellie straightened from the window. Calmed her breathing. She could do this. She had to do this.
“Ellie? What do you want to do?”
She held up a hand while she considered the options. There weren’t many.
Option one: she, Clay, and Shane charged inside, guns blazing, and hoped like hell they didn’t walk into a trap or turn a bad situation worse.
Option two: call in and wait for backup.
Neither option was ideal, but only one was motivated by deep-seated fury and a desire to punish.
Ellie rubbed her hands up and down her pants, concentrating on the sensation of the fabric against her palms to center herself. “If we go in now, I’m scared of how I’ll react if he’s hurt either of them.” Ellie met Clay’s eyes. “I don’t want to give him the chance to play me like that, to make me forget who I am, what I stand for. I don’t want one of his games to trigger me to do something I’ll
