Chapter 20
It was midnight. The moon had shifted in the sky and only a faint, eerie glow permeated the warehouse. Near-total silence—no
traffic, no voices, no music, not even a dog barking. The only sound was the faintest hum of the generator somewhere on the
bottom floor and a couple crickets that echoed from far below.
After Kara’s borderline panic attack, they’d stretched their limbs, then cleared a space in the corner and sat there, leaning
against the wall and each other, exhausted, thirsty, weak. There was nothing else they could do.
They fell asleep. Or passed out. Until Kara startled awake, her heart racing.
“Kara,” Matt murmured.
She listened. It took a minute for her to tamp down on her fear and actually hear anything other than her ringing ears.
Matt shifted, then winced.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. The stretches earlier helped.”
“What time is it?”
He pressed his watch. The dim light was comforting.
“12:02 a.m.”
They’d slept for less than two hours.
Kara had thought a lot about what the team was doing to find them, starting with interrogating Garrett Reid. Would he talk?
What could they offer to a killer? Life instead of the death penalty? They certainly wouldn’t offer him freedom.
Would he even care? He could feign ignorance. Laugh in their face. Taunt them.
Or use the fact that Matt and Kara were missing—or dead—as proof that he had nothing to do with six murders.
She hadn’t wanted to wait to try the catwalks, but Matt was right, it had been too dangerous earlier, when it was nearly dark.
“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” she said as she put her head on his shoulder.
He put his arm around her, rested his head against hers. “No apologies, from either of us. We’re tired, hungry, angry—I get
it.”
“You were right. It would have been a suicide mission to try and cross the beams when it was getting dark.”
“Not just that,” he said, “but this place is filled with traps. The elevator, the staircase, the door—it would make sense
that they might create a trap on the catwalks. It’s more than a two-story fall—you might survive it, but—”
Kara jerked up. The fall. Booby traps. “Matt, the fall—one of the male victims, he had injuries consistent with a fall.”
“Kevin Blair, I think. The second victim.”
She nodded, even though he couldn’t see her.
“He could have fallen down the staircase. Or the catwalk,” she conceded. “Dammit. They were all here, weren’t they? I saw
blood—what I thought was blood—in the bathroom.”
“Either Reid has skills we don’t know about, or his partner is an engineer.”
“Reid worked in Maintenance. He could fix anything, remember? When we looked at the short list, we noted that Brian Valdez said Reid was their go-to guy for mechanical repairs.”
“The elevator was set to fall with you in it,” Matt said, his voice catching. “They couldn’t do that multiple times.”
“Why not?”
“I think the damage to the shaft would be too great. It hit hard.”
“Maybe they set up different . . . oh, I don’t know, traps? Like . . . an escape room. But this is an escape building. There
has to be a way out, because there was a way in.”
“Promise me that any exit we find, we don’t rush through it,” Matt said. “We investigate first, think through every possibility,
no matter what.”
“Agreed.”
She tried to relax again. She wanted to sleep. The idea of staying awake for the next six hours, thinking through everything
they’d done over the last week, made her dull headache worse.
“We’ll get out of here,” he said with more confidence than she felt.
“Yeah,” she said.
“We will,” he insisted. “There has to be a road directly here, a way for Reid’s partner to bring us in.”
“You’re right,” she said, leaned back into Matt. “Why not just kill us?”
“Ransom, most likely.”
“They’d better not let that bastard out,” Kara muttered.
“They might play along, but they’ll have a plan. Our team is the best,” Matt reminded her.
“I know.”
“You don’t sound like you believe it.”
“I do, I’m just—tired.”
“Sleep some more.”
“I’ll try.”
She closed her eyes and breathed in Matt. He smelled awful, but so did she. Sweat, dirt, mold. She was glad she wasn’t alone.
“I love you, Kara.”
“Don’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you sound like this is the last time you’re going to say it.”
“I love you. See, not the last time.”
She grunted a small laugh. “I love you, too.”
“We’re getting out of here. I promise. We, you and me, are in a good place, and nothing is going to screw with that.”
“We are in a good place, aren’t we?” she said thoughtfully.
They’d met on a case fifteen months ago in Liberty Lake, Washington, when Kara had found a dead body and ended up assisting
Matt and his newly formed Mobile Response Team in tracking down a serial killer. At first, it was mutual lust. Then . . .
over many months . . . she realized that she loved this man. Matt knew it first, but then again, Matt was supremely confident
in everything he did and felt. It took her a bit longer, but she knew the moment when it was real for her.
Last October, they’d been on the roof of her old condo in Santa Monica. Her entire world had fallen apart, and she learned
that the people she had trusted the most had betrayed her. Except Matt. Matt was there for her and whatever decision she made.
It wasn’t a switch flipping when she realized she loved him. It was a dam breaking. There was no putting the water back in
the lake or the genie back in the bottle or whatever cliché she could think of; it was out and she felt a peace she had never
felt before.
It couldn’t end like this. Locked in an abandoned building by a pair of serial killers.
“We should get married,” Matt said.
“Matt,” she said, a firm warning in her tone.
“Well, we should.”
“We just agreed we were in a good place, and now you want to raise the stakes?”
“Not tomorrow,” he said with a humorous lilt in his voice.
“Oh, goody.”
“I want kids.”
She stiffened. His arms wrapped around her tighter.
“Don’t you?” he added.
“I don’t know,” she said. A year ago she would have said no fucking way was she bringing a baby into this messed-up world.
“I mean, you’d make a great dad.”
“You’d make a great mom.”
She snorted.
“Seriously,” he said, “you would.”
“I am not maternal.”
“I’ve watched you talking to kids, to victims, to witnesses. Winnie and her little niece in St. Augustine. And remember Hazel
in Friday Harbor? You knew exactly how to get information out of a three-year-old.”
“By letting the firefighter talk to her.”
“You always rewrite history to make yourself look less heroic, Kara.”
“I’ll concede that I’m good with kids who have been dealt a bum rap. But kids aren’t babies.”
“They were at one time.”
“Why are we talking about this now?”
“Because we have a future, and we have to find a way out of this so we can enjoy it.”
She considered that. She loved Matt, and if he really wanted to get married and have a kid, she would think about it. But
that sort of commitment—not marriage, which she could probably handle. But a child? The responsibility of bringing a life
into the world, of protecting and providing for a helpless infant? It terrified her.
“Have you ever thought about adoption?” she asked, surprised that she was having this conversation.
“Not really. You don’t want to be pregnant?”
“I don’t care. I mean, being pregnant is temporary. It’s the baby that I’m terrified about. But it’s not really about that.
I guess, well, I haven’t really thought about having my own kids because I always pictured myself adopting older kids. There
are so many out there who have crappy lives, no parents, or their parents are in prison, or . . . well, I don’t know. Abusive
or something.” She paused, thought about the Santana family—she hadn’t thought about them in years.
“What?” Matt said. “What happened, Kara?”
How did he know? How did he always know when she was aching inside?
She took a moment, because even now her feelings were raw. “Back, nearly five years ago? I was undercover. Met these kids,
Ben, Juan, Sienna. She was only six. The boys were ten and eleven. The three of them were abandoned by their parents, left
to fend for themselves in a drug house. Ben, the oldest, was forced to work for a dealer. The building was so run-down—no
heat, no food except what the dealer decided to give them, no one who cared anything about them. The people hanging around
were all part of the crime ring I was investigating. But . . . I couldn’t just walk away.”
“I know you, Kara. You didn’t leave them there.”
She shook her head. “I called Lex, and he got CPS involved. I didn’t want them caught up in the system, but it would be better
than living in the middle of filth and drugs. And I could still keep my cover.
“The next day, CPS came knocking . . . and did shit. Why? Because the asshole drug dealer said there were no kids. CPS walked
through, literally saw toys, but no kids, so there were no kids. They walked out, apologized for bothering him. The kids had been told—I didn’t know this at the time, but learned later—that whenever anyone official came they were to hide and be quiet, or they’d be punished. It was messed up.”
“What happened to them?”
She didn’t say anything for a long minute, trying to get her emotions in check. “It took time, but I got the boys to trust
me. And eventually—even though I shouldn’t have—I told them I was a cop and I was going to find them a good home. I told them
to be ready, and I would take them at the first opportunity it was safe.”
“Oh, God,” Matt said and squeezed her tighter.
“They’re okay,” she said quickly. “But it was close. Too damn fucking close.”
She would never forget the sound of gunfire, Sienna clutching her neck with her skinny arms, Ben shaking, and Juan trying
to shield all of them when he was shorter and skinnier than Kara.
“I wanted them. They were so brave, so smart, so damn young . . . They’d been given crap parents and a crap life. Social services
couldn’t find their parents at first—later I learned their father was in prison for a double homicide and their mother was
dead of a drug overdose. I’d just turned twenty-six, and bringing three kids into my little condo? I wouldn’t be able to work
undercover, and it’s not like I was making the big bucks as a cop.”
“What happened to them?”
“They went into the system. They were separated, and believe me, I fought to keep them together. But there were no foster
homes that could take all three. They had no one. And I wanted to—but—well.” She wiped at a tear. “Anyway. After that, I told
myself I would adopt. Because these kids are here on the planet, they need someone that cares because the adults in their
lives are screwups, drug addicts, killers, worse.”
“Worse than a killer.”
“There are some people who are worse than killers, yes.”
“You know, sweetheart, there’s no law saying we can’t have a baby and adopt.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” she said. But she was pleased that Matt didn’t think she was foolish for wanting to adopt
in the first place. “But not now. I’m not ready, and like you said, we’re in a good place.”
“Not now,” he whispered.
Not in the next year. Hell, she was only thirty-one, she wasn’t ready for kids whether they were newborn or older.
But it didn’t make her squirm thinking about it. Because of Matt.
Matt dozed off again. She wished she could. She was so tired, the adrenaline that had been pumping through earlier was gone,
leaving her physically drained and weary.
And then she, too, finally drifted off.