Cut & Run (55 page)

“Work,” he repeated as if testing the word. He swallowed painfully Cut & Run | 335

and then cleared his throat. The odd scraping noise stopped for a moment.

“Well, yes. You get to hang there and rest while I’m working.

Doesn’t seem very fair, does it? But I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t cooperate otherwise. Which is why you’re tied up.”

Ty let his head rest against the cold surface behind him again. It was rough, like brick or hewn rock. He had thought his limbs were just too heavy to move, but he tugged at the restraints on his arms with the sinking realization that he was restrained. A sound like a chain clanking met his ears, and he frowned in confusion. He was chained to a wall? Seriously? He realized, after hearing the man’s words, that there was a rope of some sort wound under his arms and around his chest, holding him upright even as he slumped, and there were shackles around his ankles as well, keeping him pinned to the wall.

He squinted back out into the flickering darkness. The man seemed to be working by candlelight as well. Ty glanced down at the candle sitting in a pool of melted wax at his feet. Staring at it, he remembered tidbits from his childhood that had never really surfaced in his adult life. The old miners in his hometown in West Virginia had always told stories about the candles they carried with them underground, as well as flashlights. When the light died, you had to hustle your ass out of there because the oxygen was either going or gone and you were next. It was cheaper than a canary.

“We’re underground,” he stated stupidly.

“Very good!” the distorted voice said sarcastically. “You must be shaking it off quicker than I expected. Luckily, I planned for that.”

Ty frowned harder and turned his head to the side, groaning as the motion caused his head to swim. “Did you kill the kid?” he asked the man with a tinge of anguish he was ashamed to let creep into his voice.

The man responded with a short laugh. “You’ll find he’s just fine,” he answered drolly, then paused as if in thought. “Actually, no, you won’t. But someone else will. Perhaps your partner.”

Ty closed his eyes at the lance of pain that went through him at that thought.
Zane
. His mind was foggy, and he tried desperately to rally.

“Garrett’s not gonna be amused by this,” he told the man, trying in vain to squeeze his hands through the antique shackles. They were far too tight, though, and the rough metal cut at him as he tugged. “You picked the wrong one to play with.”

“I don’t think so,” the man answered, his voice bouncing off the 336 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

subterranean walls. “You’re much more dangerous than your partner, you see.

He’s an addict and an alcoholic, and you were the only thing keeping him from fucking himself into the ground. You and I both know it.” The voice sounded oddly pleased.

Ty felt himself go cold as he listened. The man knew them well, almost as if he had been with them through their personal struggles. And Ty knew this man had no intention of leaving Zane alive, either. Ty had just been picked off first because Zane was hurt.

“Did you see my welcome back present?” the voice asked abruptly.

The question made him sound almost hopeful, like he was trying to please.

Ty was silent, listening to the odd scraping sound as a violent shiver went through him. “I did,” he finally answered softly, sensing that talking about Zane would get him nowhere. “I especially liked the confetti.”

Another soft laugh greeted his words. “That took a lot of planning. I wanted you to know how much I appreciate people who paid attention.” There was a thoughtful pause while the scraping “work” continued. “Shame. If you hadn’t found my file so quickly, you would have been able to keep going.”

“Your file?” Ty asked hoarsely.

The man hummed in response. “I’m in that little stack you have; Baltimore ’01,” he answered regretfully. “I understand you’re the one who caught on to Poe, as well. Bravo, Ty, I must say. I expected Zane to get it first, him being the brains of your operation and all.”

Ty frowned. If he knew about both the files and the fact that Ty, and not Henninger, had been the one to figure out Poe, then he had to have taps.

Probably all over the Bureau.

“You’re still trying to solve it, aren’t you, Grady?” the distorted voice asked in amusement. “You were enjoying yourself, weren’t you? Maybe not your partner, but
you
were loving this case,” he said with confidence. “Where did you stash Special Agent Garrett, by the way?” he asked slyly, as if he might have already known the answer. “I do hope he’s safe.”

Ty swallowed heavily and licked his dry lips. As their conversation continued, the man still sounded completely sane. That was possibly more frightening than even his situation. It would have been easier to deal with him if he had been delusional or something.

“He’s safer than you are,” Ty murmured, cursing his earlier stupidity.

If he’d been thinking clearly he would have told the man Zane was dead or severely injured from the wreck. Now, he had practically sealed Zane’s death Cut & Run | 337

sentence as well.

The scraping stopped, and the voice that responded was one of pure sympathy. “He’s hurt, isn’t he? He’s hurt, and you left him behind to go work on the case, didn’t you, Grady?” He tutted in disapproval. “You just couldn’t let it go, that need for revenge. Oh, don’t be surprised. I knew about you and Sanchez. He found the Baltimore connection, too. He even put a call into his old Recon buddy Ty Grady down in Maryland to ask him about it, but you never answered your phone, did you, Ty? You’ve been wondering what that call was about since you got here, haven’t you? You weren’t there for Sanchez, and you won’t be there for Garrett.”

Ty closed his eyes and lowered his head, pain lancing through his chest at the killer’s accusations.

“Ah. You did leave him, didn’t you? Embarrassed, are you? That’s no way to treat a partner. You
should
be ashamed of yourself. What will he think when you don’t come back? He’ll think you abandoned him; left him because he was worthless.”

Ty licked his lips and opened his mouth to speak, but no words came.

He swallowed with difficulty and then tried again, managing a hoarse, “I’m sure he’ll be relieved to be rid of me.”

“Hmmm. I’m not sure I believe you, Grady. Who else will he work with? Who else would work with him? He’s a loose cannon.” There was a soft chuckle. “But then, so are you. At least you’re firing real ammunition. He’ll be even easier to take care of without you around.”

Again, Ty was silent, and the odd sounds started up again. It was a slow, squishing sound, like a shoe stuck in the mud, and then a long scrape followed by several shorter ones. Ty couldn’t quite identify it, but as he listened, he accepted with a sinking sensation that he was going to die.

SEARS brought Zane another glass of juice while he sat and flipped through the pages of the leather Poe anthology Ross had found. Ross sat with a pen and paper, making notes as Zane searched for similarities between the cases and the stories he read.

“
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
,” he said softly.

“The ME,” Sears provided with a wince.

“Right. In the story, one woman’s head is practically cut off. The 338 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

other was stuffed into the chimney.” Frowning, Zane shook his head.

“The location is what’s important there, right?” Ross asked as he made a note.

Zane nodded and moved onto the next. “
Ligeia
,” he announced. “First thing, the wife in the story dies,” he said woodenly. He grimaced and kept reading. “The man in the story remarries, but he’s convinced that his new wife is the old one, reincarnated or something, and he slowly poisons the second wife, who then dies as well. The second wife was described as raven-haired.

The first wife was blonde,” he stated in clipped tones.

“The dye-job roommates,” Ross said with a nod without looking up from his paper. “That wasn’t location; it was body positioning.”

“And the wife thing explains the plastic wedding rings,” Zane supplied tiredly. “Hooked together to symbolize they were really one person, no doubt.”

“Jesus,” Sears murmured with a shake of her head. She was thumbing through the files that sat nearby, making notes. Henninger had pulled only the files of anyone who had lived in or around the Baltimore area in 2001, which included large areas like Washington, DC. The stack was huge.

An odd feeling of dread settled into Zane as he looked at the files. It was like searching for one particular needle in a fucking needle factory. How would they know which file was relevant? Even Ty’s file was in that stack, and Zane’s fingers itched to search for it. Instead, he paged through the book and found another story, one he’d read over and over while in school. “
The
Tell-Tale Heart
,” he announced.

Both agents looked up from their notes. Zane didn’t need to explain that one.

“YOU’VE been a fine conversationalist, but it’s almost time for me to leave.”

The distorted voice was more muffled, and the light had grown very dim.

It took a while, but Ty had finally decided that he knew what the sound was. In hindsight, it bothered him that it took him so long to figure it out. He had spent one summer when he was thirteen years old helping his father build a small outbuilding on their property. It had been nothing but cinderblock and beam, but they had still needed mortar and a trowel. He had grown to love the sound of laying the mortar that summer. He was trying to Cut & Run | 339

come to terms with the fact that that sound would be one of the last ones he heard.

The fucker was bricking him in. He recognized
The Cask of
Amontillado
now that his head had cleared and he knew what was happening.

This had been the only Poe story Ty had read and actually enjoyed. Ironic that it would be what killed him.

He turned his head in the darkness. He could see the outline of the man at the top of the wall he was building. When he spoke, his voice echoed off the cavernous walls of the catacomb and came back too distorted to even decipher an accent, much less if it was familiar.

Again, Ty felt the cold dread creep over him. It was his worst nightmare, one he had never actually dreamed; knowing his lover was in danger and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. His wrists and ankles were bloody from his silent struggles with the shackles. He was shivering from the damp and cold. But he hadn’t yet given up. He couldn’t, not while knowing that the killer’s next stop would be Zane.

“He’ll kill you,” he told the man who was in the process of murdering him. “He’ll make it hurt.”

“I’ll be disappointed if he doesn’t try,” the man answered sincerely.

“Well, three bricks left, Special Agent Grady. Time to say goodbye, if you like.”

Ty was silent as the man made some rustling sounds, as if he were crumpling a trash bag. Soon, a handful of white plastic was stuffed through the hole left in the brick wall. It was a plastic suit that had obviously been protecting the man’s clothing from the mud and mortar. It fluttered to the ground and the candle flickered threateningly. As soon as it landed, the plastic caught the flame and flared, bathing the little room in a burst of light. It illuminated the tiny space, making the water dripping down the old brick walls shimmer.

Ty could see the heavy drilled brackets that bound him to the bricks with thick chains, and the solid wall of brick a couple feet in front of him that closed in the tiny alcove. He knew instantly that no one would find him here.

Not in time.

He glanced up at the face in the hole in the brick wall and swallowed past his shock as he finally saw the man’s face.

“Congratulations,” he managed to utter to the face looking down at him.

340 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

“Why, thank you, Ty. That’s very kind of you. By the way, don’t worry about the kid. He needs to be alive enough to pass on the news about you disappearing. But I’m afraid I can’t make the same promise about your partner.”

Three bricks left.

Ty fought back the panic that bubbled up. Even the glimpse of the man’s face didn’t make a dent in the cold curtain of fear that had fallen. What good did it do to finally know who they had been hunting if he was going to die here?

Two bricks.

The candle flickered as the wall was nearly finished. A soft gust of cool, damp air flushed through the small hole remaining. Then there was a thump, a wet plop, a long scrape, and a quiet slide of sticky mortar.

The last brick.

Ty swallowed as the outside world was shut out. He looked down at the candle, the flame unwavering but weak. When it ran out, so would he.

“WE have five more victims to explain,” Ross told Zane as he scribbled quickly.

“
Berenice
,” Zane answered as his entire right side burned with throbbing, incessant pain. “The woman whose teeth were all yanked and she was wrapped up in a shroud and dumped at the cemetery. Then we have
The
Oval Portrait,
the woman who was painted with her own blood and stuck up on a canvas.”

“God, it’s so easy to see now,” Sears groaned.

“A few more and we have them all. All except the agents who got too close.” Zane was shaking as he continued to turn through the book.

“Jesus, it was right there all this time,” Ross whispered.

“You told the Assistant Director about this, right?” Sears asked suddenly.

“Henninger was supposed to relay it,” Zane answered with a sigh.

“Better make sure,” Ross mumbled as he pulled out his cell phone and started punching buttons while Sears took his notepad from him.

Cut & Run | 341

Zane turned to the front of the book to look at the index as Ross swore at the phone and moved to the window. “Let’s see,” he murmured as he scanned over the names of the stories he remembered reading years ago. “
The
Fall of the House of Usher
,” he announced to Sears as she wrote quickly.

“The character is suffering from extreme hypersensitivity. That’s got to be the first guy, the meth overdose.”