gun in his pocket burned as if lit with the fires of hell. His thin latex gloves wrapped around his hands like alien skin.
At this time of night he hoped his victim was sound asleep. He hoped he didn’t awaken to see Nick before he fired the gun. Nick didn’t want to see that kind of terror in anyone’s eyes. But if anyone deserved to be terrorized and killed, it was Brian McDowell.
Nick slowed his pace when he was less than a block away from Brian’s home. He tried to control the beat of his heart by taking in slow, measured breaths and releasing them equally slowly. Sweat tickled down the center of his back and wept down the sides of his face.
The night air was thick...oppressive, but it was dangerous to go in frantic. Frantic made mistakes and the last thing Nick wanted was to wind up in prison. A dog barked in the distance and he jumped closer to a stand of bushes.
At just after midnight on a Sunday this neighborhood had been quiet. There had been no traffic to hide from as he’d made his way the three blocks from where he’d parked his car.
Get in, get it done and get out. He pulled the ski mask from his pocket. He had his instructions and if he accomplished this kill, another man would murder Steven Winthrop...the person who had destroyed Nick’s life.
For just a moment a wild, unbridled grief stabbed through him. Debbie... Debbie. His dead wife’s name screamed in his head as visions of the last time he’d seen her flashed in his brain. Bloody...broken and gasping her last breaths. He mentally shook himself and just that quickly the grief transformed into a dark rage so great it nearly took him to the edge of madness.
He yanked on the ski mask and then withdrew the gun from his pocket. Justice. It was what he and five other men were looking for. Justice that had been denied. The six of them had forged an unholy alliance to make sure justice was finally served.
With the sickness and rage of loss still burning in his soul and ringing in his ears, he walked faster toward Brian’s house.
The instructions he’d received along with the gun had indicated that Brian had to die between the hours of midnight and one, and that his house wasn’t air-conditioned so entry could be easily made through an open window.
When he reached the red-brick ranch house, he skirted around the side. If he was going to change his mind about this, now was the time.
It wasn’t too late for him to run back to his car and drive home without the bloodstains of another human being on his hands. But Brian McDowell wasn’t just any other man. He was a thief and a murderer. He’d beaten an old woman to death during a home invasion.
The cops had done their jobs. Brian had been arrested and charged with the murder when items belonging to Margaret Harrison had been found in his home. He’d been charged with the crimes and a year ago he’d stood trial. He’d been found not guilty when the evidence had mysteriously disappeared from the police department.
More important than anything Brian had done was the knowledge that if Nick killed Brian tonight, then somebody else would murder the man who had raped and killed Nick’s wife.
With full conviction, Nick stepped around the side of the house and immediately saw the shattered glass of the sliding back door. A large red pottery planter lay smashed next to the door. What in the hell?
He approached closer, tension tightening his chest to the point of pain. He fumbled in his pocket for the flashlight. He clicked on the light and gasped.
Brian McDowell was just inside the door...on his back...with his throat slashed and what appeared to be a V carved into his forehead. The blood was bright red, obscene vivid splashes of death on the white T-shirt the man wore. The coppery scent of blood hung in the air, half choking Nick.
He stumbled backward, bile rising up in the back of his throat. He swallowed several times against it as he turned first to the left then to the right to make sure he was still all alone in the dark. With trembling fingers, he yanked off the ski mask.
Run. The internal command held a frantic urgency and he immediately complied. He turned, ran back around the house and headed down the sidewalk in the direction he had come. His brain reeled with questions.
How? Who was responsible? Granted, Brian McDowell was a creep who any number of people might want dead. But what were the odds that somebody would kill him on this particular night, during this particular hour?
Who had gotten to Brian just a short time before him?
He couldn’t help the edge of relief that fluttered through him. The man was dead and Nick hadn’t had to pull the trigger. He wasn’t even sure he would have been able to shoot him. Still, he needed to tell somebody, but the men had all agreed there would be no phone calls between them, nothing that could be easily traced.
He’d see them in a week’s time when they all attended a meeting of the Northland Survivors Club. The place where they had all met a little over nine months ago.
Nick was two blocks from where he’d parked when a car without headlights came careering down the street. He froze and stared in horror as it crashed head-on into a large tree.
The car stopped running. The hiss of steam coming from the broken radiator was the only sound in the night. Run, that internal voice screamed. The last place he needed to be was down the street from a murder in the middle of the night with no reason to be there.
Run, that voice urged again. But he couldn’t just walk away from the scene of the accident. Nobody had gotten out of the car yet, which meant somebody was probably hurt.
The airbag that had shot out with the crash depleted enough that one person was evident—a woman slumped over the steering wheel.
Even knowing he was putting himself in danger, there was no way Nick could just walk away. He yanked off his gloves and stuffed them into his pocket, and then hurried to the passenger door and pulled it open.
“Hello?” Her long dark hair hid her face. He knew better than to attempt to move her in any way.
Dear God, was she dead? He scooted onto the seat and picked up one of her lifeless hands. He quickly felt for a pulse. There...her pulse beat erratic and faint.
Crap, he didn’t even have his cell phone to call for help and she needed medical attention as soon as possible. Noticing her purse on the seat between them, he quickly opened it and pulled out her cell phone.
He called 9-1-1, reported the address of the accident and that medical aid was needed. It was only after he disconnected from the call that a new panic set in.
If he hung around for help to arrive, then how was he going to explain his presence there? He’d done his duty, he’d made the call. Surely he could sneak off now.
He had one leg out of the car when she moaned. The pitiful mewling tugged at his heart and pulled him back into the car. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. “I’ve called for help.”
She didn’t move, nor did she moan again. Still he remained sitting next to her, bound to her by a whimper as he faced his own ruin.
He fumbled in her purse, withdrew her wallet and looked at her identification. Julie Peterson. She was thirty-one years old and lived less than a block away. An emergency contact listed her parents’ phone number.
He stared at her driver’s license picture for a long moment. Julie was a very attractive woman. He glanced at her left hand. No wedding ring. As the swirl of red and blue lights approached, a desperate plan formulated in his mind.
Although he wished her no ill-will, if she would just stay unconscious until they got her to the hospital, then Nick could establish an alibi. It was risky, but this whole night had been something out of a nightmare.
The next few minutes flew by as both a cop car and an ambulance arrived. The first order of business was getting the unconscious Julie Peterson out of the car and onto a stretcher.
Once the ambulance pulled away, Officer Tim Brown faced Nick. “You want to tell me what happened here tonight?”