Heart of the Witch (22 page)

"Hello?" she called.

The door on the right opened, and Nick stepped out. "Come on in." He stood to the side and let her walk past.

His office was almost as barren as the front room, with a few baseball photos on the wall, a phone and a computer on the battered desk along with an empty ashtray.

He pointed at a black chair with cracks in the vinyl. "Have a seat."

She did, and he propped a hip on the edge of his desk and crossed his arms. "The sketch artist will be here in a few minutes. He's a buddy of mine from the police force. He's doing this in a nonofficial capacity. In the meantime, we need a game plan."

"I need to visit the crime scene. The place where he held me."

Nick raked a hand through his hair, then gripped the edges of the desk on either side of him. "I'm still not sure this is a good idea."

"I am. We have to stop him."

Before Nick could reply, the door opened and a thin, frizzy-haired man stepped in. "Oops, sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt." His almost-opaque brown eyes clung to Ravyn as he added to Nick, "I just wondered if you've checked out this VPO."

Nick sighed. "No, Marvin. I'll take care of it soon, though."

"I could check it out for you. Maybe go talk to the guy."

"No. Don't do that. I'll handle it." Nick scowled, his agitation clear from his tone of voice and posture.

"Can I go with you when you talk to him?"

"We'll see," Nick replied. "Right now, I'm in the middle of something else."

The guy acted as if he wanted to say more, and lingered at the door. Finally, he nodded. "Okay, cool. Just let me know what you need me to do next." His eyes slid back to Ravyn. "Sorry to interrupt, miss."

"It's okay," she responded, but she didn't introduce herself. Nick hadn't introduced them, and she didn't want this guy to know who she was, just in case he'd heard what happened.

Not long after Marvin left, there was a knock on the door, and a man entered who looked to be in his early thirties. He wore round glasses with frames the same shade as his reddish hair.

Nick straightened from the desk. "Jeff." He stuck out a hand, and the younger man took it. "This is Ravyn Skyler. Ravyn, Jeff Goddard."

The man gave her a sympathetic look before offering a brief handshake. "Nice to meet you. Should we begin?"

Ravyn nodded. Nick stood in the corner while the sketch artist took a seat at his desk.

Gently, Jeff said, "First of all, tell me about that night. Tell me exactly what happened."

Ravyn's eyes flew to Nick. "I thought I was just going to describe what he looks like."

Nick nodded. "You will. But first he needs the whole picture of that night. Details come out as you talk about the event." He walked over and knelt beside her chair. "I'll be right here. Just tell him everything you remember."

"Okay," she said quietly. Nick's warm fingers closed over hers, and she began to speak. She didn't look at Jeff. Instead, she stared down to where Nick's hand rested on hers.

"Good," Jeff said, after she'd been talking for nearly half an hour. "Now, describe his features."

Ravyn took a deep breath. "Brown hair, neatly combed to the side. His eyes… I couldn't see their color, but they were… hard, slitted." She shivered. "He was average looking, not handsome, not ugly."

Jeffs fingers worked busily over the sketch pad as she gave more details. Without looking up, he asked, "The nose? Pug? Large? Crooked? Straight?"

"Straight. Sort of long."

After a few more seconds of activity, Jeff flipped the sketch pad over so Ravyn could see what he'd drawn. Her heart hammered in her rib cage, and she sucked in a breath. The sketch was her kidnapper. Minus the beard, but him. More of a likeness than the one the artist at the station had drawn. Jeff had even captured the eyes.

Ravyn wanted to look away but couldn't. She felt Nick's fingers tighten on hers, so she slowly nodded. "That's him."

Jeff tore the paper off the pad and handed it to Nick. Nick rose and walked with him to the door. Ravyn was barely aware of the artist leaving, but she could hear the muted voices of the men as they said good-bye.

Nick returned to her side, not speaking. She looked up at him, seeing the promise in his eyes. They would find this man. Together, they would stop him. Even if it was too late for her sister.

The next morning, Nick answered a knock and found Ravyn at his door a few minutes ahead of schedule. Her skin was so pale it was almost translucent, and a faint tinge of blue beneath her eyes bore witness to the toll the past few days had taken.

Nick invited her in, and she followed him into the living room. Ravyn walked immediately to the coffee table and bent over, picking up a photo of Annie. "She was beautiful."

Nick nodded, swallowing a lump in his throat. "Yeah."

Ravyn looked at a wedding photo still on the table and then raised her gaze. "You've lost weight."

He shrugged. "That was ten years ago. The past five, I haven't taken very good care of myself."

She placed the picture carefully back down on the table. "Smoking and drinking."

He nodded. "Yes. But I haven't had a drink or a cigarette in several days. I need to stay sharp. Can't make any mistakes until this bastard's caught. After that…"

"After that?" she prompted.

"I plan to go on a marathon binge."

"You know that drinking doesn't cure the pain. It only numbs it for a little while," she remarked.

Nick shrugged. "Yeah, well, that's okay. Being numb for a little while is better than feeling all the time."

She stared at him for a long moment but didn't reply.

"I'll get my jacket and we'll head out," Nick said.

As they stepped into the yard, Dog came bounding around the side of the house. When he was no more than six feet away from Ravyn, he came to a halt. He stared at her, backing up a few steps, growling low in his throat. His hackles rose, and his ears pricked, then lay back as the growl turned into a whimper.

"What the hell?" Nick muttered. "Dog, what's wrong with you?" He turned to Ravyn. "Sorry. I've never seen him react that way to anyone."

She shook her head. "It's okay. Maybe he detects Arthur's scent on me."

Nick didn't remind her that it had been several days since he'd taken Arthur to his mother's. Or that the dog hadn't reacted that way when Nick came home after handling the cat. "Maybe so," he agreed, but as he opened the door of his Mustang and let Ravyn slide in, apprehension trickled along his spine.

Why the hell had the dog reacted like that? And what was it about this woman that wasn't quite right? Could it be her psychic abilities? Is that what the animal had reacted to? Just another in a long list of unanswered questions. But for now they had a much more important one to answer: where the hell was the murdering bastard called the Tin Man, and did he have another innocent young woman in his clutches at this very moment?

They pulled up in front of the murderer's cabin less than an hour after they left Nick's house. Ravyn sat in the car, staring out the passenger window, not moving.

"Are you okay?" Nick asked.

She nodded but didn't look at him. After a moment, she opened the door and stepped out.

The trees surrounding the cabin had lost most of their leaves, but they still cast parts of the building's interior in shadow. Nick stood just inside the door and watched as Ravyn walked around. She stopped in front of the cabin's fireplace and reached out a hand as if to touch it, but didn't. Her arm dropped to her side.

She turned to where the bed still sat at the center of the room. The police had finished processing the scene and had taken everything they needed for testing, but they'd left the mattress and frame behind. Whoever the owners were, they hadn't bothered returning and cleaning up.

Ravyn stood by the bed for a moment and slowly reached out a hand, just as she had with the fireplace. "Hospital," she said in a low voice.

Nick nodded. "Yes. It's a hospital bed. That's where he held you?"

She turned to him and he saw terror in her eyes. "No. I mean, I see a hospital. I don't know why, but we have to go there. It's a very strong vision." Her tone was that of a person in a trance, yet she visibly trembled. "We have to go there now."

The hair on the back of Nick's neck stood on end, and he spoke in the same low tone Ravyn was using. "What hospital?"

"Grace Specialty Care."

Grace Specialty was one of those modern architectural structures with columns of glass and black triangular shapes set into its design. As they went through the revolving doors, Ravyn stopped abruptly, almost causing Nick to run into her.

Mosaic burgundy and teal carpet matched the wallpaper, and a rose-colored crescent desk sat in the center of the lobby with a sign above it reading information in teal letters. A woman with short, dark hair and large, round glasses sat at the desk, looking down and flipping the pages of a magazine.

"What now?" Nick asked, but Ravyn didn't answer.

Slowly she moved forward past the information desk to the bank of elevators. He followed her inside, not speaking as she punched the button for the fourth floor.

When Nick stepped off the elevator with her, it hit him: that same dizzy, sick feeling he'd had the last time he was in a hospital. With Annie. The smell of antiseptic and the other hospital smell he was never quite able to identify assailed his nostrils, and he tried not to breathe it in. He closed his eyes and rested a hand on the wall to steady himself.

The floor hubbub only made it worse. Nurses' shoes squeaked along the shiny tile, and in the main waiting room was a family with two small children running around a coffee table, squealing, competing with the television that was blaring a news show. The noise seemed to ebb and swell in time with Nick's rising nausea.

Ravyn seemed unaware. She stood with her back to him, peering down the hallway. But when she turned toward Nick after a few moments, she asked, "What's wrong?"

Nick shook his head. "I'm not feeling well. Hospitals do this to me. What are we doing here, anyway?"

"I'm not sure. I…" She put her hand on his shoulder. "Do you need to go outside?"

He nodded, and they stepped back onto the elevator.

Once outside the front doors of the building, he was able to breathe again. She helped him to a bench, where he placed his elbows on his knees and rested his face in his hands, feeling weak and foolish. He needed a drink. All that talk about giving it up was bunk. Already he craved the strong, soothing taste of whiskey. He didn't know how he'd survive without it.

"Stay right here. I'll be back." Ravyn held out a hand. "Give me the sketches."

"Why?"

"I need to ask a few questions. Something brought me here. Maybe someone inside will recognize our man."

Fighting nausea, Nick handed her the folded composites from his jacket pocket. He tried not to think of his shame at his weakness as Ravyn disappeared through the hospital doors, reminded himself that this might simply be a lark. He leaned back against the bench and took deep, full breaths of the crisp October air.

She was back in half an hour, just about the time his nausea abated. She shook her head. "Nothing. No one knew him. With or without the beard." She turned back to look at the hospital doors. "I don't understand. The compulsion was so strong. Something here…"