Last Breath (32 page)

He waved the LAPD detectives—Walsh and Cellini, and the two others whose names he hadn’t caught—out of their unmarked cars and led them across the asphalt to the chopper. The air crew hailed him when he climbed aboard.

“Hear we’re lookin’ for a bad guy,” the pilot yelled over the thrum of the motor.

Tanner nodded. “Near San Dimas. Got a cell site and that’s all.”

“Cell tower in that part of the county could cover a lot of territory.”

“That’s why we need to be airborne. For the bird’s-eye view.” And for speed, Tanner added silently. There was no faster way to cover the thirty-seven miles from the Westside to San Dimas than by air.

The chopper’s interior had been stripped down for medevac use, and the only seats were benches along the walls. Walsh and the others took their seats, and instantly the Sikorsky was under way, floating upward as the land diminished to a checkerboard of lights. Tanner saw that the Sea King was equipped with a video display screen that showed its current location, tracked via GPS, superimposed over a moving topological map. Heading and distance were displayed on the screen in digital readouts. There would be a FLIR display as well—Forward Looking Infrared, which picked up the heat signatures of vehicles and even persons, showing them on the video screen.

If Adam Nolan was there, they would spot him. And C.J. too—if she was alive.

Tanner shifted restlessly. The Sikorsky was flying fast, but maybe not fast enough.

He thought of the slick blond man in the lobby of the Newton station house, the guy who dressed like a young lawyer and conveyed a lawyer’s phony charm, and he wondered if the fucker was murdering C.J. right now, at this minute.

“Hang on, Killer,” he breathed, talking to her across the miles. “Cavalry’s coming.”

Adam had to admit that he was now seriously ticked off.

He’d thought for sure the exhaust fumes would get her. Instead she was still on the loose, and time was passing. It was already 11:35—much too late. His only consolation was that his cell phone hadn’t buzzed. The police hadn’t tried calling him yet.

His luck couldn’t hold much longer. He had to find her, kill her. Had to win.

“Nobody fucks with me. Nobody makes me their bitch....”

He steered the BMW past the padlocked gate, circling the front of the complex. His car windows were down to let in the cool night air and the sound of a new alarm, if one should ring. When the office park was finished, the security system would be linked to a monitoring station in San Dimas, but either the telephone hookup had never been established or it had been disconnected when the project fell into limbo. Roger Eastman hadn’t been clear on the details when Adam quizzed him over drinks, but he had been lucid enough on the one point that mattered—the alarm would not draw a crowd.

At the time Adam had been worried that he himself might inadvertently trip the system. It hadn’t even occurred to him that C.J. could get loose.

The BMW motored along the south side of the office complex, its high beams searching the night. He stared through the web of fractures in his windshield, looking for any hint of a human figure.

He had underestimated her, he supposed. Probably he should have killed her right away, while she was chloroformed and unconscious. Would have been simpler that way. Nothing would have gone wrong.

But he’d wanted to let the full four hours pass. Wanted to match the Hourglass Killer’s MO.

And there had been more to it, hadn’t there?

He reached the rear of the office park and guided the coupe among a checkerboard of poured foundations. The only building back here was a warehouse occupying the northeast corner.

Yes, there had been more than simple practicality. Even leaving aside the serial killer’s MO, he’d wanted to see her squirm and sweat as long as possible, wanted her to feel the bottomless fear of true helplessness, and most of all, he’d wanted her to be awake and alert when he caressed her neck and the caress became a strangling squeeze....

He still wanted it, all of it. Still wanted to choke off her last breath while staring into her frightened green eyes.

Except somehow that no longer seemed good enough, satisfying enough, did it? She had injured him, humiliated him, outmaneuvered him. She had put him through hell, and now he wanted her to find out what hell felt like.

He cruised past the big front doors and the alley on the side, still looking into every shadow.

The Hourglass Killer didn’t torture his victims. But maybe it was time to risk playing a little fast and loose with the MO. Make her suffer a little more ...

He’d picked up some ideas from those S & M Web sites he’d visited. He might put some of them into practice—

There.

In the alley. Movement.

He spun the wheel, the BMW’s high beams cutting through the shadows, and yes, there she was, retreating at a run down the strip of grass between the warehouse and the fence.

She’d taken cover there. Wrong move, C.J.

He gunned the motor. The tires kicked up a spray of dirt as the coupe accelerated, barreling into the alley, closing in on his prey. C.J.’s lithe figure came into focus in the halogen glare, blond hair bobbing on her shoulders, arms and legs pumping. She still had a nice tight ass, he noticed, with a distant memory of cupping his hands over her buttocks and feeling their lean muscular strength.

He stamped harder on the gas pedal, and then C.J. sprinted to her right and picked up something that looked like a paint can, flinging it with both hands.

He hit the brakes, expecting the can to shatter the windshield.

But it wasn’t aimed at the car. It flew through the side window of the warehouse, setting off a new alarm. C.J. scrambled through the window frame and disappeared into the darkness within.

Adam parked the BMW near the window. He left the lights on, engine idling, as he prepared for the endgame.

She was finished now. The warehouse, as he’d noted on his reconnaissance missions to the office park, had only this one window. Its remaining means of access were two huge doors and two smaller ones, all securely padlocked.

C.J. was cornered. He could track her down and then do whatever he liked with her and make it last a good long time.

With a smile he removed a flashlight from the glove compartment, then pushed open the car door and limped down the alley, his shoes crunching on dry leaves.

With the flashlight to guide him, finding her shouldn’t be hard. The warehouse was big—sixty thousand square feet, by his estimate—but it would be empty. No hiding places, no crawl space, only an open floor penned in by metal walls under a high metal roof.

As a kid, he used to pick up bugs and put them in a tin can for safekeeping, and that was what C.J. was now—a bug in a tin can.

He reached the window and drew his gun. He would go in cautiously. It was possible she’d be crouching just inside, wielding a makeshift weapon. He would take no chances now, not with the contest nearly won....

Wait.

He smelled something acrid, tangy.

Smoke.

He glanced around the alley, and in the glare of the high beams he saw a dim mist, which was not mist, rising from beneath his car.

The engine was still idling. And the leaves, the dry leaves—the heat of the catalytic converter must have set them smoldering.

No big deal, but he’d better shut off the engine.

He was limping back to the car when a new scent reached him, unfamiliar and vaguely threatening.

For the first time he considered his situation. Narrow alleyway, fence on one side, metal wall on the other, little room to maneuver.

C.J. wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t allow herself to be trapped so easily.

Unless it was a way of trapping
him
.

The leaves, smoldering ...

That other smell.

Oil.

God damn it. It was
oil
.

Adam knew what was going to happen, and his body reacted with an instinctive pivot and then a desperate leap toward the window, and behind him—

A whoosh of combustion. A rush of heat.

***

“What the fuck is
that
?”

The shout came from the Sikorsky’s copilot, who’d been watching the FLIR data on the video display screen and had seen the screen nearly white out with a bloom of incandescence.

But it didn’t take an infrared sensor to detect the red splash of light wavering northeast of the chopper, in the desolate hills.

Tanner glanced at Walsh, peering over his shoulder. “It’s gotta be her,” Tanner said.

Walsh turned to the pilot. “Set us down over there!”

Behind them, there was movement—Deputy Pardon, his scout, his two assaulters, his rearguard, and an attached sniper team of shooter and spotter, all checking their utility belts, goggles, and firearms.

They’d sat stiffly patient since boarding the chopper in downtown LA, but now they were coming to life.

Tanner knew the feeling.

Show time.

Brightness at his back. White heat in a solid wall.

It singed Adam Nolan’s neck, his ears, and for a split second he thought he was on fire, actually ablaze like a corpse on a funeral pyre, and then the momentum of his leap carried him through the broken window and he landed on a concrete floor, his injured knee crying out.

While the alarm shrieked around him, he rolled over and over, trying frantically to smother any flames on his clothes or his hair, but there were no flames. The heat had reached him, seared him, but that was all.

He remembered C.J.

Up in a crouch, the gun still in his hand. He snapped off two rounds into the dark. The shots echoed above the alarm’s ululant siren.

He hadn’t hit her, but he must have convinced her to keep her distance.

Now just switch on the flashlight, hunt her down ...

No flashlight. He had lost it in his dive through the window. The only light in the warehouse was the fireglow from outside, and it did not extend more than a few yards into the interior.

He would have to track her in darkness, with the alarm wailing and his knee pulsing with pain.

God damn, he hated that whore.

In the flickering firelight he saw the can she’d flung inside. The label read, “WOOD STAIN.”

Oil-based. Inflammable.

She must have poured the can’s contents over the leaves, where she had known he would stop. She had counted on him to leave his motor running, counted on the heat of the catalytic converter to ignite the fuel. She’d meant to roast him alive.

“You cunt,” he breathed, then raised his voice to be heard over the alarm. “You fucking
cunt
, C.J.!”

He glimpsed her white sneakers blurring into the darker recesses of the warehouse, and he fired again. Missed her, damn it, and already the light from the window was dimming as the fire died down. The inflammable liquids had vaporized, and there was nothing left to burn but dry grass and leaves.

At least the BMW’s fuel tank hadn’t ruptured; there had been no explosion. Car must be ruined, though. Undrivable. How the hell was he supposed to get home? And even if he did, how would he explain the missing car, the injuries he’d suffered?

Everything was fucked up. His perfect crime, his cover story—all shot to hell.

He forced himself to calm down. Hard to think with that alarm clanging in his skull. And he was tired, worn out. But he had to keep it together. He almost had her. And once she was dead ...

He would steal a car for the drive home. Clean himself up in his shower, and with fresh clothes and a false smile, he wouldn’t look much worse for wear.

As for the BMW—why would the cops even ask to see it if he wasn’t a suspect? He was the grief-stricken ex-husband, remember? He had fooled Detective Walsh before. He could do it again.

Things would still work out. There were complications, sure. Well, when life gives you lemons ...

“Make lemonade,” he said with an odd, lopsided grin that felt strange on his face. He thought he might be laughing. It seemed strange to laugh at a time like this. He might be cracking up.

If he was, it was C.J.’s fault. This whole mess, from start to finish, was her doing. She had walked out on him, ended their marriage. She had wormed her way inside his brain until he could think of no other woman. She had fought him and hurt him and cost him time and pain.

She had done her best to fuck him up.

Now it was time to return the favor.

C.J. reached the wall at the far end of the warehouse and groped for an exit, any kind of exit, a door or a window or a hole to crawl through. There was nothing, just smooth metal that stretched in all directions like a sheet of solid darkness.

Stop. Think.

There was no exit. The window was the only way in or out. The doors were padlocked from the outside. She had seen the heavy locks and chains.

She was stuck in here, and Adam was with her.

She’d been waiting for a flashlight to come on, but he must not have a flash. He would find her anyway. He had all the time he needed, and she had no place to hide.

The worst thing was that she couldn’t tell if he was right behind her or fifty yards away. The screaming alarm covered any sound of footsteps.

Covered her own footsteps too. She ought to be grateful for that, but she was past being grateful for anything.

Her ambush had failed. She had worked it out so carefully, and in the end all she’d accomplished was to get herself trapped in a steel cage with a madman.

Nice going, Killer. Real slick.

She didn’t think he’d even been hurt. When he’d called out to her, she had heard no weakness in his voice, only rage—and an edge of hysteria.

He was out of control. There was no telling what he would do to her, how bad it might be ...

That line of thought would get her nowhere. She needed a strategy.

The window was her only way out. If she could slip past Adam in the dark, then climb through the window unobserved ...