The Prettiest One: A Thriller (43 page)

And then,
impossibly
, there he was again at the top of the stairs.

A sense of vertigo nearly toppled Caitlin.

Mike Bookerman, back from the dead, was walking toward her.

But no . . . it wasn’t Mike Bookerman. It nearly was. It looked almost exactly like him. Same thin build and bald head, same sickly white pallor and dark little eyes. This new Bookerman, though, was quite a bit taller than Mike, she now saw, but the family resemblance was astonishing. But for his greater height, he could have easily passed for Mike, who was obviously his brother. And both of them were dead ringers for their father. Darryl’s DNA code might as well have been tattooed on his sons’ skin.

Whichever Bookerman this was smiled as he strode toward Caitlin. She had been too shocked at first to scream, and now, far too late, she tried but managed little more than a grunt as Bookerman threw a punch that caught her on the cheek. Her vision sloshed to the side and the vertigo returned as she fell but didn’t lose consciousness. Bookerman bent down, threw a hand over her mouth, and whispered in her ear, “Make another sound and I snap your neck.”

With his hand still over her mouth, he wrapped his other arm around her waist and hoisted her seemingly without effort and carried her under one arm back toward the stairs and down. He leaned a little to the side as he walked to counterbalance her weight, but he seemed otherwise hardly inconvenienced by the load he carried. Caitlin was groggy but had enough sense to wonder at so much strength in a man who looked so thin.

Chops had been ready and, he had to admit, almost eager to kill the men who had been with Caitlin Sommers. He had run it through in his head a few times before climbing the stairs, and he’d been curious to see whether it played out in real life as it had in his mind. But when he’d topped the stairs and found the woman right there in front of him, alone, he’d seized the moment and grabbed her. And it was a good thing he’d acted so quickly because it was obvious she had been about to scream. He wasn’t worried that he couldn’t have handled the men, but he certainly wouldn’t have wanted curious faces to appear in nearby windows and see what was going on out here. So luck had been on his side tonight, and taking the woman could not have been easier.

Halfway down the stairs, she began to come to her senses. She grunted into his hand and started to struggle. Chops paused and said quietly, “Make another move, another sound, and I’ll break you in half, then go upstairs and cut your boys into tiny pieces.” Chops felt the woman’s body go slack. Then it twitched in a rhythmic pattern that he realized meant she was crying.

He carried her across the parking lot to where his rented sedan waited in the shadows. When they reached the car, he set her on her feet and hugged her tightly against him, her back to him, his hand clamped over her mouth. He fished his car keys from his pocket and handed them to the woman.

“Hold these for a sec, will you?”

She took the keys. Chops raised his knee and slipped a knife out of his boot. He put the knife into the hand that had been over her mouth, then held the knife tight against the soft skin of her throat. He leaned down and whispered in her ear from behind, “Remember what happens if you make a sound?”

She nodded.

“Good girl,” he said.

With his free hand, he took the car keys from her and used the remote to open the trunk. He pushed the blade harder against her throat, hard enough to draw blood.

“Okay, in you go.”

She shook her head but didn’t make a sound.

“Last chance before I get mad,” Chops said.

She hesitated, then nodded and let him guide her into the dark, open trunk, no doubt afraid that Chops would kill her boyfriends or whoever they were if she didn’t—and she was right about that; he would have. She stared up at him from the dark trunk with the wild white eyes of a panicked mare, but she still didn’t make a sound.

“Very good girl,” he said.

She watched him, tears in her eyes. As he started to close the lid, he said, “My father’s gonna be so glad to see you again. He’s been thinking about it for the last twenty years.”

Caitlin’s scream was cut off by the
thunk
of the trunk lid.

Josh sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands.

He’d ruined everything. He had deeply hurt the kindest woman he’d ever known, the only woman he’d ever—

He lifted his head. What was that sound?

It hadn’t been loud and it hadn’t been clear, but there was something about it . . .

He walked to the window and looked out at the parking lot below. Nothing but cars and . . .
there
, in the far corner of the lot . . . a tall, thin man at the trunk of a car. As he walked around toward the driver’s door he looked up . . . and straight at Josh’s window . . . no, straight at
Josh
.

Josh’s heart shot into his throat.

The thin build, pale skin, bald head . . . It could only be a Bookerman. But Mike was dead. Could there be another? There
had
to be. The resemblance was too strong.

Where was Caitlin?

And then he knew . . .

The trunk.

The driver’s door closed, the sedan’s engine turned over, and the car screeched across the lot and out of sight around the corner of the building toward Rossdale Boulevard.

Josh threw open the door and screamed for Bix, but Bix had already burst from his room and was heading for the stairs, five steps ahead of Josh. He called over his shoulder, “I know, I heard her, too.
I saw him
. Come on.”

Josh followed Bix down the stairs, which they took two at a time. They flew to the Explorer and leaped inside. Bix gunned the engine and they roared across the lot and around the corner of the motel. At the street, Josh swept his eyes back and forth, looking desperately for Bookerman’s dark sedan. The street was straight and flat and the car was nowhere in sight. Bookerman had plainly done the smartest thing he could do, which was to turn off the main drag at his first opportunity. That left Josh and Bix without the slightest clue which way he’d gone. They had no choice but to pick a direction at random and hope for a miracle.

Chops had lost them before the chase had even begun. He was sure of it. He’d taken his first right turn off of Rossdale, and the men who were certainly in pursuit were stuck having to guess where he’d gone, and they’d plainly guessed incorrectly. There would be no catching him now.

He hated running. It wasn’t something he had done often before, if ever. But to hell with the men. This wasn’t about them. This was about the girl in his trunk.

The one who had killed his brother.

The one who had escaped his father.

The prettiest one.

Caitlin screamed until her throat felt torn.

His
father
?

The man couldn’t possibly be taking her to his father. Darryl Bookerman was in prison. He had ten more years to go on his sentence.

Didn’t he?

But God, the cold look in the man’s eyes when he’d said it . . .

My father’s gonna be so glad to see you again. He’s been thinking about it for the last twenty years.

Caitlin shuddered.

She tried to calm down, which wasn’t easy in the suffocating dark of the trunk. Was it possible that Darryl Bookerman was already out of prison? How could that be? Had he escaped? No, that couldn’t be it. They would have heard about that. And retired detective Bigelson would have mentioned that. And hadn’t Bookerman been sentenced without the possibility of parole? If he were truly out of prison, however it happened, wouldn’t there have been some news story about a monster like him being released early?

Caitlin dared to hope. Was her abductor—Bookerman’s son—lying, just to torment her?

But that look on his face . . .

Calm down, Caitlin.

But she couldn’t. According to the brother of the man Caitlin had recently killed, he was taking her to see his father, the Bogeyman, who had abducted her more than twenty years ago, abused a little girl, and very likely molested and killed another. Also according to Darryl Bookerman’s son, his father had been waiting for twenty years to see her again.

Alone in the dark, Caitlin screamed through her tattered throat and kicked at the walls of her prison.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHOPS WAITED WITH HIS CELL phone at his ear, listening to the ringing on the other end of the line. He let it ring and ring. He knew there was no machine to answer his call. And he knew for a fact that the person he was calling was at home. He had to be. If he wasn’t, his ankle bracelet would alert the authorities that he had left the premises in violation of his release agreement and he’d be back behind bars for the rest of his life inside of two hours.

Finally, the ringing stopped and Chops heard the old man say, “Yeah?”

“It’s me, Dad. George.”

His father cleared his throat. It took several tries. “You here in Massachusetts?”

“Yeah. I’m right in Smithfield.”

“When’d you get in?”

“Little while ago.”

“Your brother still hasn’t answered his phone,” Darryl Bookerman said. “Two days now.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You out looking for him now?”

This was the tough part.

“You want the good news or the bad news, Dad?”

After a pause, “The good news.”

“Come to think of it, I think I’d better start with the bad news.”

“Then why the hell’d you ask me?”

“Mikey’s dead, Dad.”

Maybe there was a better way to break the news, but Chops couldn’t imagine what it would have been. There was just no good way to say something like that. After a few seconds of nothing but labored breathing on the line, his father said, “You sure?”

“I saw him, Dad.”

More breathing, then, “How’d he go?”

“He was shot. In his house.”

Silence now. Not even the breathing. Finally, “You said you had good news?”

“Well, I’m not sure how good it is, not when Mikey’s dead and all, but anyway . . . I’ve got the person who killed him.”

“You got him? What does that mean? You killed him?”

“No. First of all, it’s a her, not a him.”