Bodyguard/Husband (24 page)

“There are several possibilities, but the most common use is for chalk. Gymnast’s chalk.”

The gym.
Jack thanked the lab tech as he jumped out of the car at Winger’s house. Winger had been in the gym that night, right before the car nearly ran them down.

Jack banged on the door. When Mrs. Winger answered, he didn’t take the time to be polite.

“FBI,” he growled, flashing his badge and his gun. “Where’s your son?”

Mrs. Winger squeaked as he pushed past her. He checked the house, his gun at the ready, until he came to the last bedroom.

He banged on the door. “Winger! FBI!”

After a few seconds the door opened. “What the—?”

Jack grabbed Bob Winger and flipped him, his forearm mashing the back of the smaller man’s neck into the wall, his gun against Winger’s cheek as his gaze briefly swept the small room. No indication of another person.

“Where is she?”

“Wha—?”

He pressed the gun’s barrel into Winger’s pasty skin. “Where—is—my—wife?” he ground out between clenched teeth, spooked more than he’d ever been in his life. He’d had some close calls with victims, but never had he felt so helpless, so defeated.

He’d failed Holly. She’d depended on him to keep her safe, and he hadn’t.

And God help him if he was too late, because he didn’t think he could live without her.

Bob whimpered, and Jack knew instinctively that he wasn’t Holly’s stalker. Frustrated and disgusted, he let Bob go, so fast the man crumpled to the floor.

“Get up.” He resisted the urge to kick him. “Get up and tell me what happened.”

Bob sat back flat on the floor and looked up at Jack with bloodshot, teary eyes. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten angry. I try so hard not to get angry anymore. I’m working on it.”

Jack leveled his weapon at him. “Get—up.”

Bob stared up the barrel of the gun and whimpered again, then scrambled to get his feet under him.

“What are you doing to Bobby?” Bob’s mother squealed. “I’m going to call the police.”

“Good,” Jack snapped. “I’m going to need them.”

As soon as Bob was standing, Jack backed him up against the wall. “Talk to me.”

Bob’s face was bright red and smeared with tears. “I yelled at her. Really scared her. She turned all pale.” He started sobbing. “I can’t blame her. I shouldn’t—”

Jack jabbed him with his gun. “Facts.”

Bob swallowed audibly. “Stanley Hanks came by. He made me leave.”

Hanks. The maintenance man from the university. The guy who’d been in prison for five years…and who worked every day at the gym.

Jack shoved Winger aside and ran out of the house. He holstered his weapon and pulled out his cell phone as he jumped into Holly’s car. He dialed Virgil’s number, but when he talked to Debi, she hadn’t seen or heard anything from Holly.

He sped toward Hanks’ apartment, dialing Decker. “Decker. Hanks is the killer. Get the locals down here. I’m on my way to his house.”

“They’re on their way and so am I. Jack, hang back and wait.”

“Right.” Jack disconnected. No way was he leaving Holly alone with that madman any longer than he had to. He had a horrific vision in his brain. Hanks had taken things from Holly’s house. He’d built a love nest, a shrine to her purity. He’d waited for her to come to him.

Jack’s presence had fueled Hanks’ obsession, whipped it to a fever pitch, until his psychosis hadn’t allowed him to wait any longer. If Jack didn’t find her soon—

He stopped in front of Hanks’ apartment. The maintenance man’s car was nowhere in sight, but that didn’t
stop Jack. He banged on the door, calling out to Hanks that he was a federal agent and to open up.

There was no response.

Jack kicked the door in. With his weapon gripped in both hands, he entered the apartment. Carefully he searched each room, examined each door, but the only thing out of the ordinary about Hanks’ apartment was its very ordinariness. There were no dirty dishes, no magazines, no shirts or socks carelessly tossed aside. It was almost as if no one lived there.

Where were they? Where had Hanks taken all the things he’d stolen from Holly? Where had he furnished his love nest?

The gym.
Of course.

Jumping back into his car and roaring away, Jack cursed the time he’d wasted at Hanks’ apartment. The gym was Hanks’ life. That’s where he had watched and waited for Holly. Of course that’s where he would build his secret love nest. There was certainly a secret storage space or subbasement that Hanks would know all about.

“Holly, hang on! I’m coming,” he whispered, hoping he wasn’t too late.

His brain refused to consider that possibility. He would find her. He had to find her. He couldn’t live without her.

She was the bravest, kindest person he’d ever known. She’d taken the time to know him, really know him. She’d refused to allow him to lurk behind his wall of ice.

She’d shown him all he’d missed in his lonely life. Friends, family, the joy she derived from helping people. She’d shown him what it meant to love, and be loved.

Even if she couldn’t forgive him for not telling her everything, even if she didn’t love him like he loved her, he was a better person for having known her.

In front of the gym, Jack sat in his car for a precious second, blinking to clear the haze from his eyes. Grimly and deliberately, he forced his feelings back behind the wall. He needed cold logic, unimpaired by emotion, to save her. His love wouldn’t help her. His expertise would.

He quickly assessed the building. There were only three outer doors—the main entrance, a fire door in the back of the gym, and an exit on one side.

Jack went to the main entrance. It was locked. He walked around and tried the other two doors. Both locked. The only windows were high, near the rounded roof. On the back of the gym was a slender metal fire-escape ladder. Holstering his gun, Jack started climbing.

S
TANLEY SAT
at a cheap knockoff of a Victorian writing table, hunched over a notebook. He was dressed in dark pants and a flowing white shirt with ruffled sleeves. He wrote furiously, mumbling to himself.

Holly watched him in horrified fascination from her position on a beautiful lace-draped brass bed as she tried to ease the pain in her arms, which were pulled over her head and tied to the headboard.

She was confused and drowsy. Where were they? What had happened? And why was Stanley dressed like a pirate, or a poet? She tried to remember. She’d reached into the car for the cake and the next thing she knew she was overcome by some chemical, maybe chloroform?

She vaguely remembered Stanley leading her down
here, helping her walk, half carrying her. Jack would be so disappointed. She should have done a better job of defending herself. She should have escaped. But Stanley was so strong. Her arms and shins were bruised and aching from her efforts.

He’d forced her down the metal stairs to a large and well-furnished room. There he’d given her a choice. She could change into what he called her “virginal nightdress” or he would do it for her. She’d complied. Then he’d grabbed her arms and placed that cloth over her nose and mouth again.

The sound of a heavy object hitting the floor above her head had woken her. She’d found herself alone, lying on the bed with her arms tied above her head and her bare feet tied together. But the drug was still in her system and she hadn’t been able to keep her eyes open.

Later—how much later she did not know—Stanley had reappeared in the room.

“Stanley, please talk to me.”

She’d been trying to get him to talk to her, but he’d been engrossed in whatever he was writing, and hadn’t even looked up.

“Stanley, you’re scaring me.” She tugged on the soft cloths that bound her hands. Did she feel something give, or was it just wishful thinking?

She looked around. The room was furnished with odd bits of furniture. Aside from the brass bed with its single, hard mattress and the imitation Victorian desk, there were a couple of metal folding chairs, several plastic exercise steps stacked beside the bed, and an old floor lamp. It must have taken him hours, days even, to get these pieces down here to the secret chamber he’d created.

Love nest.
Jack’s words came back to her with ominous meaning. Stanley had spent years preparing this underground room. Did people even know there was a room down here?

How would Jack ever find them? A horrible thought came to her. She didn’t know how long she’d lain here unconscious. Was Jack all right?

She stared at Stanley, looking for the killer beneath his quiet, bland exterior. She still couldn’t believe it.

“‘Outside are the storms and strangers: we, oh, close, safe, warm sleep I and she—I and she’!” His voice was soft, his face tranquil. He glanced up at her and indicated the leather-bound book. “See? I write to you every morning. It’s my promise to you. The first thing I do when I wake.”

He was talking oddly too, not just his words, but his tone, his inflection. He’d always been plain, hardworking Stanley. Now he had transformed into someone she didn’t know.

He pointed at the bookshelf over the desk, on which sat at least ten books identical to the one he held.

Holly stared dumbstruck at the journals as Stanley continued to talk.

“Each journal represents a year. You will read them all, my dear. They hold our history, everything we have done to be together.”

He was crazy. Ten years of journals. He’d been watching her all that time. At least they would prove that he was the killer, if what he wrote was comprehensible.

Holly had been afraid before, but terror seized her limbs now, sending spasms through them. Even her lungs and heart cramped within her until she could hardly breathe. Stanley, who had worked beside her in
the gym for hours, who had walked her to her car many a night after her aerobics students had left, who had come to Brad’s funeral, and Danny’s.

This quiet man she’d gone to high school with had entered her house and touched her things. He had snuffed out three precious lives in his obsessive madness.

The various items she had misplaced over the years were displayed with eerie care around the room, along with newspaper clippings and photos of her. Her engagement picture. A photo from a charity event she’d organized. But some were candid snapshots taken with an instant camera. He’d followed her, taken pictures of her, in her car, running in the mornings, through the open blinds in her living room. She shuddered in revulsion.

Her wedding dress hung beside the desk. Her stuffed bear from childhood, with Brad’s class ring around its neck, and her makeup kit sat on the desk, along with her mother’s cup. A couple of pillows from her house adorned the bed, and, of course, she wore the white revealing gown that had disappeared from her lingerie drawer.

Jack had been right. His profile of her stalker as a loner, near her age, an underachiever in an undemanding job fit Stanley perfectly.

Oh God, Jack. Where are you?
How long had she been here? Surely by now Jack had gotten back from Jackson and found out that Bob had come to the house.

He’d probably tracked Bob down and found out she’d left with Stanley. Would Jack think to check the gym? She hoped he’d see Stanley’s car, parked near the back entrance.

Stanley put away his pen and closed his notebook.
“Now. I’ve written my daily letter to you, my little Portuguese.” His eyes glittered as his gaze swept over her, from her bound hands all the way to her toes. He picked up an ornate letter opener and toyed with it.

She stared at him. “But I’m here,” she said cautiously, wondering what he was planning to do to her, wondering if there was anything she could say that would appease him.

“You don’t need to write to me. You can talk to me now. Tell me what you want, Stanley.”

“Ah, Holly. I want for nothing now. ‘Thy soul’s mine: and thus, grown perfect. Life will just hold out the proving, Both our powers, alone and blended: And then, come next life quickly! This world’s use will have been ended.’”

Listening to his words, Holly grew chill with fear. He was going to kill her and himself.
‘This world’s use will have been ended.’

“You see what I have done for us. We can finally be together forever, as we promised each other all those years ago.”

Holly frowned.
Promised?
What was he taking about? “Our promise,” she repeated. Maybe if she played along, she could gain some understanding of why he’d targeted her.

“Oh, tell me again.” She hoped he hadn’t heard her voice quaver. “I love to hear you tell it.” She tried to swallow but her mouth was dry with terror.

“We sat together and chose the perfect poems. We must have two, you said, and the teacher agreed. “Love in a Life” and “Life in a Love.” We practiced until we knew the words by heart, those beautiful words Robert Browning wrote for his wife. That’s when it began. We couldn’t reveal our love. Ah, Holly.
‘How sad and bad and mad it was— But then, how it was sweet!’

Holly stared in horrified fascination at the man whom she had known since high school.

English class, senior year.

She had a vague recollection of meeting him a couple of times after school to practice their presentation. The whole class had been paired up for poetry readings.

So that was it. That’s when this all began. Bile rose in her throat, making her nauseated.
Oh God, Jack, please hurry.

“But, Stanley, Brad and I went steady all through high school. You were his friend. He asked you to take me to the senior prom when he couldn’t because of his injured ankle.”

“Yes. Yes.” Stanley’s eyes grew brighter. He set the book aside and touched Holly’s cheek. She tried not to cringe away from him. “You remember. We knew even then that we were meant to be together.”

Her clearest memory was of Stanley backing her against a table at the dance, trying to kiss her. She’d said no, just as one of Brad’s football buddies had come upon them.

“Brad tried to get rid of me by forcing me to go to prison, but our love survived even that.”

Stanley was mad. He’d rewritten history to match his madness. “You went to prison for using your father’s gun to rob a liquor store,” she said.