Her Dying Breath (19 page)

“Nick—”

“Don’t say anything,” Nick murmured. “Just cover up.”

Thank God for tinted windows.

Brenda’s hands trembled as she finished buttoning her blouse. He fastened his own shirt, not daring to look at her.

“Nick—”

“Please, Brenda, don’t talk.”

She gripped his arms and shook him. “Why not? Because you wish that hadn’t happened?”

His gaze met hers. There was wildness about her eyes, a flare of passion. Desire. Raw hunger.

All the same emotions and need consuming him.

“Because I’m not sorry,” Brenda said. “Not at all.”

Car doors slammed nearby, and a prison bus returned from a work detail, a line of inmates descending the bus stairs.

“You sure as hell should be. Look where we are,” Nick said. “Look who I am.”

“I know who you are, and I want you,” Brenda said. “I—”

Nick threw up a hand. “Stop.”

“Why?” Brenda said. “Because you’re afraid I might care about you? That you might care about me?”

Nick refused to answer that question. Because she’d hit the nail on the head.

Instead, he started the car and drove toward the gate and guards’ station. Things had spiraled out of control because he’d been furious with his father. Because his father had baited him.

But, hell, the truth was that he
did
want Brenda.

He’d wanted her half his life. Since back in high school, when Jake had dated her.

After graduation, Jake had left for the military, and Nick had seen Brenda around town and fantasized about having her.

And then again, the first time he saw her when he returned to Slaughter Creek.

But he’d played right into his father’s hands and tried to kill him for touching her.

He couldn’t lose control again.

Brenda wanted to scream in frustration. Nick had completely shut down. Any intimacy or trace of closeness had completely vanished.

Nick thought that she didn’t know who he was. The Commander had taunted Nick, saying that he was just like him.

Did Nick believe that?

He couldn’t. Nick was courageous and strong, a man who risked his life to save strangers. He would never have used those children in a diabolical experiment, as the Commander had.

But he obviously didn’t want to discuss a personal relationship now, so she remained silent as they stopped for a late meal, then turned to study the mountains as they drove back to Slaughter Creek. Farms, chicken houses, and rotting shanties clung to the sides of the ridges. Some homesteads were well kept up, while others looked deserted and run-down. But the tranquility of the rural setting drew outsiders on vacation; it made families feel as if they were retreating to a simpler, more wholesome life.

She was surprised Agnes and William, who seemed to thrive on being in the limelight, had settled here instead of in a big city. All her life she’d felt as if she didn’t belong with them. That she was different, a misfit, because she didn’t care about climbing the social ladder.

When she’d learned she was adopted, she’d finally understood the reason for these unsettling feelings.

If she met her birth mother, would she see similarities between them? Is that where she’d gotten her eyes, or her hair, or her stubborn insistence on digging for the truth?

When she was a child, some of the kids at school had talked about camping and hiking in the woods. Sleeping outdoors beneath the stars and chasing away bears that sneaked into their campsites looking for food. She’d wanted those kinds of adventures.

But Agnes and William Banks had never been campers.

Vacations for them meant cruises and traveling to Europe, sometimes taking her, sometimes leaving her with the nanny. The popular girls in high school had envied her. But most of those trips had been filled with boring museums, formal dinners where she endured countless lessons on being a lady, and endless adult parties, where she ended up in a corner or a hotel with a nanny wishing she was home.

Wishing her parents loved her for the way she was, not for the perfect daughter that she could never be.

Her cell phone buzzed, and she checked the number. Ron Stowe again.

“Who keeps calling you?” Nick asked.

Brenda cleared her throat. “The senator’s son. I met him the other night at my parents’ dinner party.” Good grief, why had she volunteered that information?

Nick’s jaw hardened. “You aren’t going to answer?”

“I’ll call him back later.”

Nick turned his focus back to his driving, and she silently chided herself. Why couldn’t she be attracted to Ron instead of Nick?

Her phone dinged that she had a text, and she quickly checked it.

Seven is my number

Seven is my name

Now it’s time for us

To play a little game

You’ll find the next body

At Blindman’s Curve

Don’t feel too sorry for him

We all get what we deserve.

Brenda’s palms began to sweat. “Nick, it’s from her. There’s another body at Blindman’s Curve.”

Nick scrubbed a hand down his chin, punched the gas, and flew along the curvy mountain road.

“She identified herself as Seven this time,” Brenda said.

“Jesus.” Nick grabbed his phone and pressed Jake’s number.

“How’d it go with our father?” Jake asked immediately.

“He was the same evil bastard he always is,” Nick said, omitting the fact that he’d nearly killed him. “But listen, Jake, there’s been another murder. The body’s at Blindman’s Curve.”

“I’ll call a crime team and meet you there.”

Nick hung up and floored the gas, his mind churning. The first body had been left in a motel room, the victim tied to the bed in a graphic sexual position.

If this was the same unsub, why dump the body in the woods?

What was Seven trying to tell them by her choice of disposal sites?

N
ick parked a few feet from Blindman’s Curve on the shoulder of the road. “Wait in the car—”

“No,” Brenda said. “I can help you search for the body.”

Nick wanted to spare her, but Brenda had proven she was tough.

The sun had set, gray storm clouds obliterating the stars, giving the woods an eerie glow. This curve, one of the worst switchbacks on this side of the creek, had taken more lives than he could count. Sadie and Amelia’s parents had died in this very spot.

Of course, for years everyone’d thought it was an accident.

But now they knew the Commander had been responsible for their deaths. All because Mrs. Nettleton had overheard a conversation between one of the doctors heading up the experiment, and had grown suspicious.

Nick climbed out, opened the trunk, and retrieved two flashlights. Brenda’s hand brushed his when she took one from him. He tried to ignore the heat of her skin, but when their gazes met, her eyes darkened with awareness.

Good God. She was distracting.

They had a body to find. He couldn’t think about how close he’d come to having sex with Brenda in the prison parking lot.

The March breeze stirred leaves and trees, the sound of a coyote somewhere in the distance echoing from the woods. A truck barreled by, going too fast, and Nick pushed Brenda back from the shoulder as the truck crossed the line. Sparks flew as the idiot skimmed the guardrail.

“They should have called this Deadman’s Curve,” Brenda said.

Nick muttered agreement as they hiked over the guardrail into the woods. He shone the light along the ground ahead of them, cautioning Brenda as he nearly stumbled over a clump of branches that had blown off in a recent storm.

He paused, and she ran into him. “Sorry.”

He gestured toward the right with his flashlight. “Look, there are marks, as if someone dragged a body.”

“You’re right.” Brenda followed the trail. “It goes in that direction.”

Nick swung the flashlight around in an arc and noticed a pair of footprints pressed into the dead leaves and mud.

“Don’t step in the tracks,” he said, pointing them out. “I want a plaster cast of that boot print.”

“The prints look small, like a female’s,” Brenda commented.

“Fits with our theory.”

A few feet over, Nick spotted a lump that looked like a body in a pile of weeds and bramble. “Over there.”

Traffic noises from the road rumbled like thunder behind them. As they drew nearer, the stench of death swirled around them.

Brenda pressed a hand to her nose. “Oh, my God.”

Nick handed her his handkerchief. “Stay here. It’s only going to get worse.”

“No, I’m fine,” Brenda said, although she coughed as she moved up behind him.

Nick inched nearer the body, his flashlight landing on the corpse. Flies buzzed around, and ants and other insects swarmed over the naked corpse.

A siren wailed, the sound of cars screeching to a stop echoing from the road. “Go back and meet Jake. Tell him where we are.”

Brenda whirled around and ran back through the weeds, grateful to get away from the stench and the grisly scene.

Nick inched closer, careful not to step on the boot prints and drag marks, then peered through the weeds at the man’s arms. Rope burns marred his wrists and ankles, just as with Logger.

The ligature marks around the dead man’s neck were also similar to the ones on Logger.

But this scene was much more disturbing.

Why had the killer left this body exposed to the elements, instead of in a motel room?

Brenda had seen Logger’s dead body, but nothing had prepared her for the sight of this victim covered in insects. It also looked as if some animal had gnawed at his foot and chewed part of it off.

She leaned against a pine tree and struggled for a breath. She needed the fresh mountain air to cleanse herself from the putrid smells, but the odor swirled around her in a sickening rush.

She closed her eyes, but suddenly a memory assaulted her.

It was the first day her father had forced her go to the hospital. The counselor suggested she needed therapy and drugs for depression.

All she could think about was that she’d found that document. That the two people she’d thought were her parents were not.

That they’d lied to her all her life.