No Darker Place

He manacled her forearm and stroked the pad of his thumb over the scarred underside of her wrist. “Take my advice, Detective—don’t try to do this alone.”

She tugged at his hold, and he released her. “Go!”

He reached for the door, grasping the knob with long fingers. “One more thing—try not to get anyone else killed.”

A full minute lapsed after he’d gone before she managed to lock the door, her hands shaking. Fury warring with the other emotions he’d resurrected, she marched to the bathroom. She hung a towel over the shower curtain bar and turned on the water. She withdrew the stun gun from her sports bra and placed it on the counter next to the sink, and then the five-inch blade and sheath from her waistband at the small of her back. The fact that he had so easily spotted all three alternately outraged and frustrated her. She ripped the holster holding the .22 from her ankle and placed it next to the other weapons. By the time she’d peeled off her running clothes and socks, steam had started to fill the room, and tears rolled in rivers down her cheeks.

She stood in front of the full-length mirror a previous tenant or maybe the owner had hung on the wall. Her right calf was marred with scars from the surgery. Little distinct bumps where the hardware was positioned still showed. Jagged scars marked her arms, her breasts, her thighs and belly from the torture she had endured. If she leaned closer to the mirror, she could see the thin, barely noticeable line where the Storyteller had kept a nylon rope fastened around her neck. Plastic surgery had taken care of the worst of the scarring there. Vanity had nothing to do with her decision to have that particular elective surgery. Erasing that hideous scar had prevented the inevitable shocked looks and sympathetic questions from anyone she encountered.

She turned to face the mirror over the sink so she could see her back...and the story he had begun on her flesh. Flowing strokes of black ink tattooed the words describing her agony onto her skin.

Over and over she cursed herself for the path she chose to take...

She squeezed her eyes shut against the memories, and yet those memories were the very reason she refused to allow the words to be removed. She didn’t deserve to have them removed...to be free of what they meant.

Who the hell did Nick Shade think he was? Damn it, she had every right to want vengeance. She climbed into the shower and let the hot water blast over her. Hard as she tried she could not clear her mind of the voices...the images...the pain.

She slid down the wall and wrapped her arms around her knees. For the first time in months she sobbed. She sobbed so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. She never cried for herself. It was pointless. A waste of energy. She cried for all the victims and their families. She cried for her son—her sweet, sweet little boy—and her husband. She cried because she had failed to keep them safe.

Shade was right...she wanted to get that bastard. She wanted to make him pay... She wanted to watch him scream in agony for hours on end. And then she wanted to watch his body bleed and seize and twitch until he took his last breath.

She turned her palms up and stared at her scarred wrists.

But Nick Shade didn’t know everything.

She couldn’t have what she really wanted just yet.

What she really wanted was to stop waking up in the morning to face another day without her baby...without the man she had loved with her entire being...without the life that had been stolen from her. What she wanted was to never again dream of what might have been.

What she wanted above all else...was to die.

But Gaylon Perry had to die first.

Three

“I know what you must be asking yourself right about now,” Gaylon said, a smile stretching across his lips as he tightened the noose he’d made around her slender neck. He draped the short remaining length of nylon rope along her chest. “Did I spend all those grueling hours at the gym for this?”

Registered Nurse Gwen Adams shivered, her soft green eyes going wider and her nipples peaking into hard points as his gaze raked over her body. Despite the relentless heat, fear caused her body to shake as if she were stretched out spread eagle on a bed of snow rather than the piss-stained mattress he’d picked up on the street in one of Montgomery’s derelict neighborhoods.

His personal taste leaned toward those who hadn’t spoiled their bodies with tanning beds and pointless body art. No annoying tan lines or wasted ink to disrupt the satiny, white skin stretched smoothly over toned muscles and interrupted only by rosy nipples and a neatly manicured triangle of silky hair. A perfect canvas. The lovely perfection would make any man want to burrow between her creamy thighs and plow into her pussy right this instant.

But not Gaylon. His ability to restrain his baser desires was far more sophisticated than that of the average male. Besides, it wasn’t time to give her what she deserved just yet. Preparations had to be made first. He sighed. All good things come to those who wait. His loving mother had ensured that adage was deeply ingrained in him during his formative years, and Gaylon had learned his lessons well.

He’d allowed his baser needs to lead him once, and look at what it had cost him.

Exiling the memory, he reviewed the essential steps he had taken. He’d placed the mattress on the floor well away from the only window that wasn’t boarded up. A table and a chair, both of which he would need in the coming days, were picked up at a thrift store. In the corner was a five-gallon bucket he’d purchased at the hardware store for waste. If his guest relieved herself anywhere but in the bucket at the appropriately scheduled piss breaks she would clean it up with her hands and mouth. The unpleasant mistake was rarely repeated. His guests were generally quite obedient.

This morning he’d brought the tools required to finish his work inside and stored them in the other room. The two-room board-and-batten shack had no electricity, and the rusty tin roof leaked. “Off the grid” was an apt description. More important, there were no neighbors. The closest occupied house was more than three miles away. Though ideally he selected a location deeper in the woods to do his work, this abandoned hovel would do quite well.

He tapped his lips with his fingers, suppressing a knowing smile. A remote location was part of his modus operandi, or so those who profiled him said. His MO and signature were carefully detailed in their haughty reports. What a spectacular waste of human resources.

All these years those who attempted to dissect and analyze him had gotten so very much wrong. The chances of the FBI catching him with their fancy profiles had been somewhere in the vicinity of zero before he made his one ruinous error. Anger flared inside him. Prior to seven months ago, no one had known his identity. Not one of his victims had survived to tell. Not one body had revealed the first significant clue about the Storyteller. He’d been far too careful...until he allowed a mere impulse—sheer lust—to best him. The relentless need had grown too insistent and too urgent to deny. He’d acted on that irresistible impulse, and it had swallowed him completely, sucking him into an uncontrollable frenzy. He’d become lost to anything but the blinding need until reality had spit him out onto the floor of that desolate cabin, bleeding like a stuck pig and gasping for air like a fish out of water.

Now his face was plastered all over the internet and in every post office in the country. The anger spread through him like a raging wildfire. Not to worry, that costly error would be rectified as soon as he was finished here. Then he would disappear. A nice tropical island with no extradition treaty. Perhaps he would create a new MO, develop a more intriguing signature, and this time there would be no lapses in judgment...no distractions.

All good things come to those who wait.

Gaylon moved to the side of the mattress. He sat down, and his lovely nurse struggled to draw away, but her restraints prevented her from doing so. “I’m going to remove the gag. If you scream, I’ll hurt you like you’ve never been hurt before. Do you understand?”

She nodded, a fresh wave of tears trickling from her eyes. Pathetic creature.

He tugged her panties from her mouth. “There. Now, I want you to tell me the story again.”

Moving her head up and down like a shaken bobblehead doll, she swallowed and then cleared her throat. “Can I have a drink of water?”

“After the story.” Irritation furrowed his brow. Every time he removed the gag she wanted something. She’d been here barely twenty-four hours. He hadn’t even started preparing her, and all she could do was make requests. She should be pleading for her life—not that pleas for mercy would help. Gwen Adams was going to die.

As aware of her improbable odds of survival as she might be, it was human nature to cling to hope. The foolish instinct made his work far more interesting and vastly more entertaining.

“Where...” The word croaked out of her dry throat. She cleared it some more. “Where would you like me to start?”

“At the beginning. From the moment you saw Detective Gentry in the ER.”

“It was just over two weeks after she escaped.” Her lips trembled, and she averted her eyes as if she feared her words would anger him. “January 31.”

He smiled. “She was in very poor condition.”

The nurse nodded, the movement stiff and uncoordinated. “She had spent two weeks in the hospital in Meridian, Mississippi.”

Gaylon had held Detective Gentry in an abandoned cabin about twelve miles outside Meridian. Even now, his body hardened at the memory of fucking her...of tasting her blood. He’d never had a cop before. She had been his most challenging and most satisfying prey. If only he’d been able to finish her story. “They had to do surgery while she was in Mississippi,” he prompted, not wanting a single detail left out.

“Yes.” Adams licked her lips. “The femur was fractured, but the worst was the fibula. It had to be reassembled and stabilized with screws and a rod.”

His heart raced as his mind replayed him standing over Gentry and crushing those bones in a fit of rage. He rolled his hand so the woman staring at him with such sheer terror in her eyes would continue the story.

“She had three fractured ribs and one toe that had to be partially removed from the frostbite.”

He squeezed his toes together inside his sneakers. His own injuries had been life threatening. Running through those woods, blood leaking from his chest and his ability to draw in air compromised, had been terrifyingly exhilarating. It was only by utter force of will that he survived long enough to reach help. His mother had always called him determined. Ah, but determination was merely one of his tenacious traits.

“Numerous lacerations were infected and required attention,” Adams continued, her voice growing faint with understanding that those very words described the fate awaiting her. “One spot on her left breast required removal. The tissue loss was repaired with a small amount of fat and skin from her buttocks.”

She fell silent, her body trembling.

“Then the doctors in Mississippi sent her home,” he said, urging her beyond the more mundane details. Why was it that no one knew how to tell a good story anymore? His students had been utter morons. True storytellers were a nearly extinct breed. Such a pity.

“She was released, yes.” Adams executed another of those awkward nods. “She was back home in Montgomery for barely a day when her partner found her near death.”

“Found her where?” Gaylon demanded. She knew better than to leave out the best parts. Her lips trembled with renewed fear. How utterly tedious. “I’m waiting, Nurse Adams.”

“In her little boy’s bedroom.” Adams drew in a halting breath. “Later, when I was taking care of her, Bobbie told me about that day. She was supposed to go directly into rehab, but she’d insisted on spending one night at home first. She said as soon as she was at home alone she’d gone straight to her baby’s room and slit her wrists. She wanted to die. She didn’t want to go on without her family.”

Gaylon savored the words for a moment before he prompted, “So she lost a lot of blood before she was found.”

“It was a miracle she was alive. She’d lost more than enough blood for her heart to simply stop beating.” Her mouth worked for a moment before more words came out. “She was in a coma for five days.”

“A coma? Why?” He knew the answer already, but he wanted to hear her repeat the splendid details. He couldn’t have written a more compelling story himself. Perhaps since it was his work that inspired her actions he could be considered the director.

“She’d given up.” Her voice sounded distant now, as if she was remembering the day a grief-stricken patient had shared her most painful thoughts with a trusted medical professional. “She didn’t want to wake up. But for some reason, on the fifth day, she opened her eyes and started trying to live again.”

“Bravo!” Gaylon clapped enthusiastically, making her jump. “Detective Gentry survived.” Providing a second chance for her as well as for him. He hesitated, pondering the last part. He’d been so excited when he read the medical files and listened to Adams tell the story the first time that he hadn’t thought to ask a very important question. “Why do you suppose she changed her mind? Did her family sway her decision?”

Gaylon knew better. Bobbie Gentry didn’t have any family. There were her in-laws who blamed her for their son’s and grandson’s deaths. She had the chief of police, who was a lifelong friend of her father, and she had her partner. Such a sad little detective. She hardly had anyone to care about her since she’d pushed all her friends away. He couldn’t wait to dismantle her mentally and physically all over again. Piece by piece, and this time he would destroy her completely. He would watch the life drain from her body as he finished her story.

“Either Chief Peterson or Detective Newton had been with her day and night.” The nurse blinked, licked her lips again. “Maybe one of them said something that finally got through to her. I don’t know.”

“No priest visited her? Maybe it was all those people praying for her,” he mocked. He recalled the many requests for prayers in the local news for poor, poor Detective Gentry.

“She never mentioned church while I was working with her.” Adams’s body was trembling harder now. Fear that her unreliable memory would anger him was no doubt coursing through her veins. “I can’t be sure.”

Gaylon knew the answer. Bobbie Gentry was like him; she never had time for such trivialities. Her husband, the man who failed to protect his family, had gone to church and taken their child. Bobbie had only attended on special occasions if work didn’t get in the way. Her work was her religion, her weapon her cross.

Gaylon understood every part of her. He had become thoroughly obsessed with her during those weeks when she participated in the joint task force with the FBI to find a heinous serial killer who could not be found. He’d wanted to possess her so badly that he’d thrown caution to the wind and taken her like he’d taken no other victim.

All those witless profilers had been running in circles. He’s deviated from his MO! He’s never taken victims without waiting the usual year. What fools! Admittedly, he had acted impulsively last year. With the loss he’d suffered, he had been undeniably weak. But he was beyond that now. Now he would finish what he’d started.

He reached down and stroked Adams’s lean rib cage. She shuddered deliciously. His cock stirred. Another hardworking, dedicated woman. Despite being a full-time home health nurse, Gwen still picked up every available shift at the hospital. She was saving up to buy a home. Poor thing. He wondered if Chief Peterson had paid her well to take care of Bobbie. Gaylon hoped so; after all, accepting the extra work was going to cost her so very, very much.

“There...there was one other visitor,” she said suddenly.

He drew his hand away, giving her a moment’s reprieve. “What visitor? You never mentioned another visitor.”

“I just remembered. It was on the last day she was in a coma.” Her brow creased in concentration. “Her partner was sitting with her that day. He told me to take a break. When I came back, he was waiting in the corridor outside her room and there was another man inside. I assumed it was a family friend, so I took a few more minutes and went to the bathroom. When I came back, the door was open and this man I’d never seen before was sitting next to her, holding her hand.”

“Holding her hand?” Rage coiled hard and fast. “Who was this man?”

“I don’t know. Detective Newton started talking to me. I guess the man left while we were talking.”

“What did this stranger look like?” Gaylon thought he knew everyone who had come into contact with his detective since he touched her. If there was another man and he got in Gaylon’s way, he would die in the same tragic manner as her husband had. Bobbie Gentry belonged to him. Only he could finish her story.

“He had longish dark hair, maybe down on his collar. He was tall. I only got a glimpse of his face, and then his profile.” She shook her head, instinctively tugged at the restraints binding her hands above her head. “I don’t know. Bobbie’s partner must have known him. I never saw him again.”

Gaylon had watched Bobbie running tonight. He noticed a man he couldn’t place at her door. He’d assumed this was a cop from her department. Perhaps not. “If I bring you a picture, would you recognize him?”

She blinked back a new rush of tears. “I think so. I’ll try.”

He trailed a finger between her nice breasts. “You’re doing very well, Nurse Adams.”

A sob tore from her throat. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“Now, now. You know I’m going to hurt you—the only question is how much.”

The sound of whimpering had her twisting her head around to see where it came from. “What was that?” Her worried gaze collided with his. “Is someone else here?”

“That’s none of your concern.” His cock hardened again as he thought of what he had in the other room and the way it was going to hurt Bobbie. “Now be quiet before I change my mind about how much I need you.”

Gaylon stood and walked to the window. He peered beyond the dirty glass. In the distance he could just distinguish the taller of the buildings that was downtown Montgomery.

In her wildest imagination, Bobbie Gentry could not possibly conceive what was coming.

Four

Economy Inn, West South Boulevard

Saturday, August 27, 1:30 a.m.

Nick Shade taped another photo of Detective Bobbie Gentry on the wall. He stood back and surveyed the new additions to the timeline he had created. The data he’d collected during this hunt were far more extensive than he usually gathered. The instinct he’d recently started to ignore warned again that he had ventured too close on this one.

What the hell had he been thinking going to her house?

He plowed his hands through his hair. He hadn’t been thinking. That was the problem. But had there really been a choice? He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. Gaylon Perry had proven significantly more resourceful than he had anticipated. For such a singularly focused killer, whose carefully choreographed world had been so abruptly turned upside down, Perry had regained his balance and scurried out of reach in the blink of an eye.

Nick could only watch and wait for his return.

Fury tightened his jaw. “I knew you’d come eventually.”

Nick studied a photo of the forty-year-old English teacher. His generic brown hair and eyes were less than memorable. His soft jaw and weak chin along with a slim build disguised his physical strength. Classroom videos showed a soft-spoken man who interacted comfortably with his students. Those same students, as well as Perry’s colleagues at the high school, considered him to be kind and compassionate. And yet fourteen murders, not counting Gentry’s husband, had been attributed to him. The community of Lincoln, Nebraska, was still reeling from the news. Parents were sickened at the idea that their impressionable teenagers had been taught by a sadistic serial killer.

According to the statements Gentry had given, Perry had mentioned other murders. A total of twenty-three. Based on his sophisticated signature, Nick felt confident that number was closer to right than the one previously thought. The Storyteller’s first victim, as far as the cops knew, had been dumped in a quiet Louisiana town when Perry was twenty-seven. He had followed that pattern annually until last year. The MO was simplistic, yet it was that very simplicity that had protected Perry for so long. Each year between June 1 and mid-July, he took a victim from one of the southern states, kept her for three to four weeks, torturing her relentlessly before tattooing a sadistic poem on her back and then murdering her. The body was immediately dumped in another state. Each step was carefully planned and executed.

Nick considered the photos of the crime scenes where the bodies were discovered. Perry did more than dump his victims. He posed them in prominent places so they would be found quickly while his poetic masterpieces were still fresh. No one, not the FBI or any other law enforcement agency, had come close to identifying him, much less catching him, until Detective Gentry survived, providing a break in the case.

Even before Nick had known his name, he had understood one thing with complete certainty. As long as he was still breathing, the Storyteller would return to Montgomery for the one that got away.

“What have you been waiting for?” Nick rubbed at the tense muscles in his neck. He’d been in Montgomery watching Gentry for nearly four months—since her release from the rehabilitation center. His gaze narrowed with the only possible conclusion. “You waited for her to go back to work, didn’t you, you sick fuck?”

Perry would see having the damaged hero cop resume duty before he murdered her a more dramatic and poignant chapter in his killing history. Nick’s gaze settled on the photo he’d snapped of Gentry entering the Criminal Investigation Division last month on her first day back. She’d worn a pair of dark trousers and a matching suit jacket. Muted pink blouse. Rubber-soled loafers. No jewelry. No scarves or other accessories. Her stride had exuded strength and confidence. Watching her from afar, no one would have suspected she had spent long, grueling hours in physical therapy day in and day out for months to regain that strength and confidence. Not to mention the hours of psychiatric counseling. Continuing the counseling was a condition of her return to work. Nick had watched her leave the department psychiatrist’s office each week knowing she had played the part everyone wanted to see. She presented the picture of strength and determination except when she thought no one was watching.

Those were the moments he couldn’t get out of his head.

He reached out and traced her face. “Why did the FBI ever let you anywhere near this case?”

She was a perfect example of Perry’s typical victim. She was tall and thin with long, lush brunette hair that sharply contrasted her pale skin. Her facial features were delicate and finely sculpted. Her eyes were an uncommonly pale blue. Perry wasn’t particular when it came to the color of the eyes, but each victim had a uniquely light hue and eyes slightly larger than average.

Gentry’s eyes brought to mind a clear blue sky. Nick blinked away the notion. How long had it been since he’d noticed the sky beyond assessing coming weather conditions? He couldn’t remember. Research and tracking his prey consumed his nights and his days. One case became another, and then another. Home was wherever his work took him—the desert or the mountains, under a city overpass or in an abandoned house deep in the woods.

Nick moved to the map of Montgomery County he’d tacked to the wall. Every minute he didn’t have eyes on Gentry, he was poring over aerials of the area using Google Earth and driving to remote locations similar to those Perry had utilized before. If Nick was lucky, he would find Perry before he made a play for Gentry.