When the world righted itself again, Olivia opened her eyes. She was cold. Her hips were numb. Pitch surrounded her. Thunder rushed through her temples and lingered as a throbbing pain behind her eyelids. Her shoulders ached as if someone had tried to jerk her arms out of their sockets. She realized she was bound to a hard folding chair, her arms tied behind her.
As the black shadows sharpened into gray shapes, she had a sense of a wide open space. A breeze slid over her bare arms and legs with ghostly fingers. She tried to rub her forehead, but her arms pulled against the restraints. She shuffled her feet. They were free.
The light weight of her bedtime clothing reminded her that she'd gone to her back door to answer a knock she'd thought was Jack's. She'd flung open the door without checking. A bright light had flashed in her eyes right before the crushing blow to the side of her head.
Stupid, stupid. How could she have been so careless?
Tears stung her eyes. Stop that, she scolded silently. Stay calm. Think.
Where was she? Who had taken her? Why?
Her mind raced to the meeting with Councilman Vargas, and she remembered the hot fury in his eyes and the cold disregard of his henchman Santos. She shuddered.
A ray of light suddenly gleamed through a slit that opened to her right. She bit down on her lip and fought against the urge to scream.
"Good. You're awake."
The realization of whose voice spoke through the dark momentarily calmed her. Bill! She almost felt relieved that it was her quick-tempered ex-husband. He had never hurt her – never hit her before. Verbal abuse was his forte.
What did he want? Did he actually think he could get away with kidnapping? Her heart beat double time in her chest. Bill always claimed he loved her, but beneath his ardor was a possessive desperation that unnerved her.
She realized no one knew where she was. Jack was gone and she wouldn't be missed at school until late morning at the earliest, possibly longer. Terror bubbled up inside her, choking her. She tapped it down hard, fighting the urge to struggle against her bindings. Bill would smell her fear and enjoy it. She knew instinctively that it would arouse him. Lifting her eyes to the light, she squinted and stared toward the sound of his voice.
"Always so calm, so in control," Bill taunted. "But not in charge right now, huh, babe?"
She heard the quiet tread of his steps moving closer and finally saw the shadowy outline of his bulk in the doorway's light. In his hand he held an object that glinted as he swung it idly back and forth. A knife, for God's sake?
The trembling started in her jaw, worked its way downward to her shoulders, and ended in her bare knees which knocked gently against one another. She told herself it was the chill of the vast, unheated room, but she knew better. Her heart sped around inside her chest like the rapid beating of a new-born infant.
What was he going to do with the knife?
"Nothing to say, Olivia?" Bill knelt in front of her and placed one hand on the inside of her knee.
His mouth twisted into the semblance of a smile and his lips were slack with lust. She clenched her jaw and willed her thighs to stop trembling. She reminded herself that Bill would feed on her fear. His eyes were round dark holes in a fleshy face. She smelled the liquor heavy on his breath. Glaring at him through the darkness, she summoned up anger, imagined her thumbs grinding into those empty pits.
His fingers inched up her leg. "You should have been nicer to me when we were married, Olivia." His voice hardened and he pinched the tender flesh of her inner thigh.
She bit her lip to hold back a cry of pain.
Without warning, he stood and walked around to the back of the chair. He rested his hand on her shoulder and toyed with her hair, tangling his fingers in her curls. Not seeing him made her feel more vulnerable.
She inhaled the astringent odor of the cheap cologne that he'd always saturated himself with. His hot breath was at her ear, his lips moist. "You act so coy, so frigid, so virginal. But you're a whore." He grabbed her hair with a vicious tug and pulled her head back. "A slut!" he spat and released her with a jerk.
Unexpectedly, the door banged open and a wider slash of light streamed into the room. The knife pressed into her neck. "Make a sound and I'll slit your throat," Bill growled close to her ear.
A series of noises, shuffling feet and the sound of boxes or crates being shoved around. No one appeared to see Bill and her, and she realized they were hidden in the shadows.
"You're mine, Olivia," Bill whispered. "You'll always be mine. If you're screwing that man who left your house tonight, I'll kill you both."
Olivia knew with certainty that Bill had it in him to hurt her. Viciously. A beating? Rape? His grip on her hair squeezed involuntary tears from the corners of her eyes, and twisted her neck back. He ground his lips into hers. She tasted blood from the jab of his teeth, felt the ugly thrust of his tongue inside her mouth.
He lifted his lips from hers and stared over her head, panting with arousal. "You're mine," he said again, "and if I can't have you, no one can." He gripped her jaw in one hand and squeezed viciously. "This isn't over yet."
The sound of voices grew louder. Olivia realized this was her last chance and opened her mouth to scream. Without warning, Bill's hand slashed through the air, and the night curtained around her brain again.
She roused long enough to remember being carried and dumped in the back seat of a car. When she woke, perhaps some minutes later, she was blindfolded again, her wrists tied in front of her this time. She felt the smooth pursuit of the tires on pavement. He was taking her somewhere else. Was he going to kill her and dump her body in some god-forsaken place? Bill was vicious, but pragmatic. Wouldn't her death create an investigation that pointed toward him, the ex-husband?
After some time, the car slammed unexpectedly to a halt. Olivia lurched forward against the seat. The back door opened and he dragged her from the car, flung her to the ground where rough cement scraped her bare knees. She balanced herself on one elbow while silence reigned for several long moments.
This was it then. He was going to kill her.
Seconds before she heard the growl at her ear, she smelled his hot breath. "You can go now, you little whore," he taunted, "but I'll be back. You remember that I'm just as far away as your next nightmare."
A few moments later, she heard the slamming of the car door and the soft whirring of an electric window. Olivia didn't move for long minutes, certain he'd return and finish what he threatened. When her wrists lost feeling and her shins burned, she stumbled to her feet. Working the blindfold with her bound hands, she gradually loosened the fabric until it dangled around her neck. When she glanced down at her flimsy clothes and bare feet, she burst into frustrated tears.
At last the weeping segued into deep breaths and then subsided into hiccups. When she gained control of her emotions, she glanced around to get her bearings.
Bill had driven her to the dark underbelly of the freeway, where concrete roads and supporting beams criss-crossed above her. She could hear the roar of traffic above her head. So close, but so far from where she stood in the muddied tangle of debris hidden beneath the overpass. She tugged at her wrist bindings for some minutes, but finally realized they only tightened with the struggle. With determination, she turned toward the freeway and awkwardly climbed up the incline toward the freeway. Her feet made slippery purchase on the moist dirt, and with her hands tied, she lost her balance and slid to the bottom.
The rushing of vehicles thundered at warp speed all around her.
"Hold still, sweetheart," Ted Burrows said, even though he knew the pretty blonde coed was too far gone to hear him.
He slipped behind the armoire and adjusted the camera. Then he lighted the red tapers and placed them around the room. The candles weren't necessary in the daylight, but he thought they enhanced the seduction scene. "A few more minutes. We want everything to be just right."
He smiled down at the petite blonde. She wasn't nearly as attractive as the redhead who was the star of his film escapade last night, but Buffy's surgical augmentation made up the difference. What kind of mother saddled her daughter with a name like Buffy, anyway? He grinned. Two women in less than twenty-four hours was a spectacular record.
The woman lay partially clothed on the bed, her legs artfully arranged for maximum sensuality. Her bikini panties wrapped around one ankle, and her bra pushed up to reveal the fake fleshy breasts with their dainty areolas. Her head rolled to one side, her mouth open unbecomingly.
Ted frowned, walked around the bed, and pushed the slack jaw shut. "There, that's better." He smirked and readjusted the angle of the camera. His erection bulged against his pants. "Much, much better."
When he was satisfied with the artistry of his production, he returned to the bed and gazed down at the semi-conscious girl. "What was it you said, Buffy? Oh, right, you wanted to have a good time. I think you said, 'A night to remember.' The night's long gone, but I find a little afternoon delight just as memorable."
He unbuttoned his shirt. "Did you know the phrase 'a night to remember' was the title of a book? About the sinking of the Titanic? No, probably not."
He tossed the shirt on the floor. "It's the story of an unsinkable ocean liner that hit an iceberg and plummeted to the bottom of the ocean." He looked down at himself and laughed. "I'm quite unsinkable, too, don't you think?" He unsnapped his jeans and chuckled quietly. "I don't know how much you'll remember, but this delight will be an unforgettable experience for me."
He smiled and trailed his hand up her thigh.
Removing the last of his clothing, he knelt between the girl's outstretched legs, positioning himself comfortably between her thighs. He brushed the tangled hair from her face. "You're going to really enjoy this, sweetheart. Even if you don't remember a thing."
Fully aroused, he began a frenzied suckling of her breast, his engorged erection pressed against her bare flesh.
Suddenly a thunderous crash resounded from below, and he heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps tromping up the stairs.
Oh, fuck!
Jack's visions were careening out of control.
Usually his visions channeled through the eyes of the man he hunted, but sometimes the victim or a third person provided the conduit. Whose head had he been inside in this latest vision? The killer? His victim? Or someone watching the killer?
He didn't know if his overloaded brain circuits or the transposed sensory images caused the confusion. But he was certain of one thing – he'd seen a red-haired girl, not a brunette, with her attacker. The killer?
Last night, he believed, not this afternoon, but he couldn't be sure. Not Olivia, he thought, not with the hideous hair color. His pulse raced with dread that he might be wrong. Pray God, not Olivia.
While Jack waited for the reverse address information to come on his laptop, Slater knocked on the guest house door. Jack waved him into the kitchen, eyed him thoughtfully, and thought it was time to come clean with the man who'd once been like a brother to him.
Slater was a man driven by reason rather than instinct. A man of rational thought would have a hard time believing someone could change physically like Jack had in such a short time. Even with the explanation of the special designer drugs pumped into his body, Slater would scoff at the idea.
"I need to talk to you about… about what happened when I left," Jack began. By the time he finished fifteen minutes later, Slater was pacing the living room, looking agitated and horrified. "Damn it, Jack! We all thought you were dead. I heard your foster parents got a death certificate from Texas."
He threw himself into a kitchen chair. "I can't… I don't understand it."
"You were meant to think I was out of your life. Permanently. They didn't want anyone to come looking for me."
"Shit," Slater said, jumped up and began his pacing. "Shit, shit."
"Invictus held me in isolation three months, used me as their own private guinea pig, told me I was unique."
Jack remembered the white-walled, clinical cell and the endless questions and interviews, the blood draws, the x-rays, and the recently developed Magnetic Resonance Imaging, the MRI. The incessant psychological and endurance tests.
"When they finished with me, I understood who I was, what I had to do, where my future lay. I couldn't go back."
A pregnant pause dominated the kitchen for long moments.
Finally Slater said, "That story's too damn bizarre to be made up."
Jack felt dizzy with relief. Olivia had believed him. Slater believed him now.
He took a few minutes to explain his unexpected "lead" and offered the name that'd just come through from the reverse directory. A man named Theodore Burrows had just jumped to the top of the suspect list.
Slater frowned. "You want to explain how you came up with this lead?"
"Nope," Jack said calmly. "You probably don't want to know."
"Figures."
As they walked to his truck, Slater glanced across the top of the truck and spoke without inflection. "Jack, if you hurt her again, I'll kill you."
Jack didn't answer. What would he say to that? After a moment he spoke quietly. "I'd like you to have a deputy check at her house. Can you do that?"
"I guess you're not explaining that either."
"Just a gut feeling. I'm probably wrong."
Slater used his shoulder mike to order Waylon Harris to drive to Olivia's house.
They arrived at the Sacramento address of Burrows thirty minutes after the call to Harris. Slater had a judge who owed him a favor and agreed to a no-knock wire warrant. Jack wouldn't have followed protocol even without the warrant. Not when he couldn't be sure Olivia was safe.
"On three," Jack said, taking the lead as they hovered at the front door of 2776 Mitchell, their weapons drawn. He gestured for Slater to take the backup position behind him. On three, Jack turned the door knob. It was locked. He waited fifteen seconds, kicked in the door, and let Slater go in low, while Jack wrapped himself around the entryway. Left, then right.
"Clear."
"Upstairs." Slater indicated with his head toward the staircase.
Jack raced up the staircase two steps at a time, reaching the landing seconds before Slater. He nodded toward a room at the far end of the hallway where a reddish glow emanated from the partially-open door. He pointed with his left hand, keeping his gun hand firmly wrapped around the handle.
If Burrows was in the house, he would have heard them by now, but they crept carefully forward anyway. Slater nudged the door open with the barrel of his gun, placing his body to the right of the door frame. Jack slowly pushed the door open wider.
He saw the woman first. Confusion froze him for a second. Not a redhead, but a blonde. This girl was a new conquest, and that meant Burrows had been with another woman last night, a redhead. Not Olivia.
The blonde appeared unconscious or dead as she lay on the bed, her legs and arms spread in a grotesque caricature of obscenity. The man sprawled between the girl's legs sprang off the bed, stumbling onto the carpet in a comical parody of the cheating husband. Jack would've laughed if the situation hadn't been so revolting.
Slater checked the woman's vitals and called the EMTs. Jack kept his weapon carefully trained on the man he presumed was Theodore Burrows. "Got a strong pulse," Slater said.
Burrows' handsome face twisted in protest. "Hey, man, she's not dead. We're just having a little fun. Private fun," he added growing bolder. "You have no right – "
Slater growled, "A warrant's our right, asshole."
Jack picked up a pair of pants from the floor and tossed them to Burrows. "Get dressed. You look pathetic."
Slater lifted one of the woman's eyelids. "She's got a pulse, but I can't rouse her." He reached for a blanket lying next to the bed and covered the woman, then turned toward Burrows who was struggling to get into his jeans. "You drugged her, you bastard."
"No man, no way. She's into this kind of thing. I promise." He gestured toward the unconscious girl. "This is what she wanted."
"Oh, she asked you to drug and rape her?" Jack holstered his gun and jerked Burrows' right arm around his back, twisting harder than necessary. Then he yanked the other arm around and handcuffed him.
"Ow, man, take it easy."
The familiar stripping away of human emotion descended on Jack, the animal preparing to hunt with a deadly, calculated purpose. He batted the feeling away, strained to hold on to his humanity in the face of a punk-ass reprobate like Theodore Burrows.
He shoved the man into a chair next to a large mahogany cabinet.
"Shut up." Jack leaned forward, withdrew his weapon, and dangled it carelessly in front of him, piercing his captive with a hard look. "Where is she?" he asked on a hunch.
"Where is who?"
"The redhead."
"Burrows frowned and began shaking his head. "I don't know what you – "
"Shh." Jack softened his voice. "Here's how this is going to go, Teddy-boy. You're going to tell me where the other girl is." He smiled grimly. "And then I won't bust both your knee caps."
"Hold on, Jack," Slater said. "There's something over there." He walked closer and peered around the back of the cabinet. "It's a red… what the hell?" He examined the unit and retrieved the camera hidden behind the console. "It's still operating." He pointed toward the bed where the unconscious girl lay. "Take a look at where the lens is aimed."
Slater pulled the camera out of the cabinet. "Well, what have we here? Looks like Mr. Burrows is into the whole art photography scene."
"You've been videoing her?" Jack clamped down on the instinct to rip the man's throat out with teeth and claws.
Burrows darted his tongue out to moisten his dry lips. "I haven't done anything illegal."
"Maybe, maybe not." Jack heard the sirens wailing in the distance. Then the subsequent slamming of feet through the downstairs.
"Upstairs," Slater yelled to the paramedics.
Jack turned back to Burrows. "You'd better hope nothing shows up in the girl's bloodstream, Teddy. GHB, Rohypnol, whatever you used to subdue her hasn't passed through her system yet, and toxicology will find it."
"I want a lawyer," Ted demanded, narrowing his eyes.
"Good move," Jack snarled, dragging him from the chair and shoving him towards the bedroom door. "You sure as hell are gonna need one."
Within a short time, the ambulance had stabilized the drugged woman and transported her to Sutter General Hospital in downtown Sacramento. Slater dispatched a squad car to transport Burrows to the county jail.
"I thought he had Olivia," Jack confessed as they watched the ambulance pull away. He slid a glance sideways at Slater who stood on the front steps of Burrows' house.
"She's probably safe at home in bed."
Jack stared at the cloudy sky. "Yeah, she wasn't ever here. I've been running down the wrong lead. Burrows isn't the UNSUB, but it doesn't mean he's innocent."
"Hell, no," Slater rejoined. "I figure we've got any number of charges to bring him up on." He slanted a knowing look at Jack. "And you're not going to tell me about some redhead, are you?"
"Nothing to tell," Jack said.
The raid had been an absolute fiasco as far as the DLK case was concerned. But if not Burrows, then who the hell was the Dead Language Killer? Were Jack's visions failing him?
He thought back to the interview Isabella Torres and Olivia had with Diego Vargas. Torres was convinced Vargas was capable of that kind of violence, but that didn't make him Jack's suspect. No physical or circumstantial evidence tied the Councilman to the DLK, and Jack couldn't rely on an ADA's instincts.
The two-way radio jangled as Slater pushed Burrows into the waiting patrol car. He jabbed the mike key.
"Chief?" Waylon Harris' voice over the radio sounded rattled. "Dr. Gant's not here, sir. The house is empty."
He knew before Slater spoke that something had happened to Olivia.
God, he should've paid attention to the fleeting warning he'd had about her, Jack thought. Panic rippled through him. Where was she?
"We're on our way," Slater said, turning to Jack. "Check the university. She might've left without Waylon seeing her."
But Jack was sure the sharp-eyed Harris wouldn't have made that kind of mistake.