evening breeze had somehow managed to squeeze in through the cracks, causing the plastic that hung everywhere to move just the slightest bit.
She didn’t see it. She heard it.
Her pulse sped up.
Instantly, her eyes went to the man who was at the center of it all. There was no way he could move and disturb the plastic that had been draped all around him, the plastic that was literally covering every square inch of the space. She’d seen to that.
Even so, she had to reassure herself that he wouldn’t suddenly rise up and overpower her.
There was enough ketamine in her would-be lover to put down an oversize water buffalo, but still she watched him, watched his chest to see if it would rise and fall, signaling a man who was coming to.
It didn’t.
The injection had done its trick.
She had done her trick, she thought with a small, tight smile.
“And now it’s time for you to do your part,” she whispered to the inert form.
With the precision of a surgeon, imitating the movements that Joel had shown her when the poor fool had tried to impress her all those years ago, she drove the thin boning knife in at just the right angle, just the right spot to end the life of this latest contributor to her thriving and ever expanding lifestyle.
Taking their money was only part of it. Avenging herself was far more important to her.
Blood spurted from the incision she had made onto the plastic that surrounded the man. She waited until it pooled around him, heralding the fact that his life had officially, and without fanfare, slipped away.
When she was satisfied that he was dead, she turned toward her knapsack where she kept the rest of her tools. It was time to separate John Kurtz from the parts of him that would facilitate his identification.
She had always liked tools, even as a child. They fascinated her. They could be used for so many things. People liked to build things with tools.
She liked to dismantle them.
Taking out the battery-powered saw, she switched it on. For a moment, she just listened to the high-pitched sound the saw made. The quiet, reassuring sound that promised to do its job and not fail her.
So many things had failed her. But the saw wouldn’t.
She could feel the vibrations going through her arms.
She watched, almost mesmerized, as the gleaming, freshly polished blade sliced through the air like the sharp teeth of a tiger, straining to devour its prey. She always took care of her tools.
A person’s work was only as good as the tools she used, she thought with a cynical smile.
Feeling almost giddy, she hummed a little song under her breath, a song from her childhood before horror had swallowed her up. It was a tune that kept haunting her.
She slowly lowered the saw blade and began to work.
One more down.
And tomorrow, tomorrow the hunt for a new, unwitting victim would begin all over again. Because this feeling, this satisfaction, lasted for only so long before it vanished.
Like her innocence.
But for now, she savored this part of her quest, savored it because she was victorious.
And that was all that counted.
“Hey, Cavanaugh,” a deep male voice called out. “There’s somebody here asking to see you.”
Detective MacKenzie Cavanaugh, currently assigned to the Missing Persons Division of the Aurora Police Department, looked up from her computer. She raised her intense blue eyes in time to see Detective Kyle Choi pointing toward her for the benefit of a distraught-looking older woman.
It took Kenzie a full minute to realize that the woman she was looking at wasn’t really old, just incredibly beaten down and worn-out looking, like someone who had spent a great deal of time crying.
She actually recognized the dark-haired woman heading her way.
Kenzie rose from her chair, still trying to reconcile the woman coming toward her with the person she had once known.
Connie Kurtz.
She’d gone to college with Connie not all that many years ago. Ten to be precise. Something had obviously happened to the once upbeat young woman. Something that had stolen the light from her eyes. Connie looked as if she had aged drastically since the last time Kenzie had seen her. Connie had never been heavyset, but her face now had a sunken in appearance, like someone who hadn’t slept or eaten in a while.
The Connie Kenzie remembered had the kind of figure that turned heads while the woman approaching her had lost a significant amount of weight. The clothes she wore hung on her body like they couldn’t find a place for themselves.
“Connie?” Kenzie asked uncertainly, wanting to make sure that this wasn’t ultimately a case of mistaken identity.
Connie offered a spasmodic smile of acknowledgment when she heard her name spoken, but the smile faded away before it had a chance to register.
The woman blew out a long, shaky breath. “When I asked the policeman downstairs for Detective Cavanaugh, he started to laugh and then he asked me, ‘Which one?’” Connie appeared somewhat dazed and bewildered as she repeated the incident. “How many of your family members are there on the police force?”
“A lot,” Kenzie answered, thinking it might be simpler just to leave it that. “Sit down, Connie. Please,” she added when the other woman seemed disoriented.
Rather than taking her seat slowly, Connie dropped into the chair facing Kenzie as if the air had suddenly been let out of her.
Thinking to break the ice, Kenzie asked the haunted-looking young woman, “How long has it been?”
“A long time,” Connie replied. She ran her tongue along her dry lips, as if they were stuck together, preventing her from saying anything further. It was as if she was afraid that if she did, something terrible would become a reality.
Silence hung between them.
Kenzie tried again. “Is there something I can do for you, Connie?” she asked.
She was unable to think of a single reason why someone she’d known from three classes when she was a college senior would deliberately seek her out now—unless it was for professional reasons.
“I hope so.” The words came out slowly, like bullets fired cautiously and one at a time.
Since she’d begun working in the Missing Persons Division, Kenzie had become accustomed to talking to distraught family members, spouses and/or girlfriends and boyfriends. Getting any sort of viable information at times required a great deal of patience. Kenzie prided herself on being up to the job.
There were other times when interrogation was called for, and she was just as good at that as she was at displays of patience and employing kid-glove treatment with fragile people. It seemed to her that this situation called for use of the latter.
“Why don’t you tell me why you’re here, Connie,” Kenzie coaxed, then told her, “Take your time.”
Connie swallowed nervously. “You know, I’m probably just being paranoid,” she said.
It was obvious that she was trying to talk herself into believing that. Kenzie could see that the woman was twisting her fingers together so hard, they looked as if they could just snap off at any moment.
Kenzie put her hand protectively over the other woman’s hands with just enough pressure to make Connie stop twisting