CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Hemp fibers bit into Bill’s skin, rough and unforgiving, as he stood on tiptoe with a hood covering his head. His hands, bound tightly behind his back, had long since gone numb. He knew that if he relaxed his legs now and went flat-footed, the noose around his neck would tighten and take his life.
For a short time, he’d been standing on a footstool that had kept the rope slack, but then he’d heard Leo chuckle and that support had been yanked away.
“She chose her daughter,” Leo’s voice floated through the darkness. “Just as I knew she would.”
Bill’s calves cramped violently as he struggled to maintain his precarious position. How long could he keep this up? Minutes? Seconds? His body, already battered and exhausted, trembled with the effort of postponing the inevitable.
How had it come to this? He remembered driving to the abandoned parking lot behind the old school building, just as Leo had instructed. No backup, no wire, no tracker. The price for disobedience was Jilly’s life.
He’d parked and stepped out into the chill night air, his service weapon holstered at his side—a hollow comfort. The parking lot had seemed empty, shadowy beneath the single functioning light.
“I’m here,” he’d called out, his voice echoing across the empty space.
If Bill hadn’t been so exhausted, Leo would never have been able to ambush him so easily.
He’d barely had time to hear the footsteps rushing toward him.
He’d spun, drawing his weapon, but the taser had already struck.
His body had convulsed as electricity tore through him, his gun clattering to the pavement.
He’d been tasered again, at a setting high enough to put him down hard, then dragged. By the time the pain receded and his mind cleared a bit, he was plopped in a chair in a classroom, disoriented and in pain. Off to one side, Jilly was tied in another chair, still gagged, watching in horror.
Leo was standing there, smiling an infuriating smile, holding Bill’s own gun on him and explaining the rules of his sick game.
So Bill had gotten up onto the stool as he’d been told, accepted the hood over his head, and waited for it all to play out.
And now the stool was gone. His calf muscle seized again.
His foot slipped, and for a terrifying moment the rope took his full weight.
Panic surged through him as his airway closed completely.
Desperately, he regained his footing, but the reprieve wouldn’t last. The burn in his lungs intensified, and black spots danced before his covered eyes.
A strange, detached part of his mind recognized the futility of his efforts to stay alive. He wasn’t going to last much longer. Why was he even trying? Yet his body still fought, refusing to surrender.
But he’d heard Riley’s voice as she chose Jilly’s life over his. And he knew she made the right choice. Jilly would live. That knowledge brought a strange peace as his strength finally gave out and his legs buckled beneath him.
As the rope took his full weight, cutting off his final breath, Bill’s last conscious thoughts were of what he wished he could tell Riley: That she’d done the right thing. That he didn’t blame her. That he’d loved her—had loved the life they’d begun to build together.
*
The empty streets gave Riley free rein to push well beyond the speed limit as her car ate up the distance to Westridge Elementary School.
ShadowCipher’s revelations about Leo’s location had been a gift, but she knew that Bill’s time was running out.
Every second counted now—seconds that might determine whether he lived or died at the end of Leo’s noose.
“You need to wait for backup, Paige.” Hogue’s voice crackled through the phone’s speaker with barely contained urgency. “We can have SWAT there in fifteen minutes.”
“Bill doesn’t have fifteen minutes,” Riley countered, swerving around a corner so sharply her tires squealed in protest. “If Leo has removed that stool, Bill could be strangling to death right now.”
“You’re walking into a trap. You know that, right?”
“Probably.” Riley’s jaw clenched as she caught sight of the abandoned school building looming ahead, its dark silhouette stark against the night sky. “But ShadowCipher confirmed the location. And Leo doesn’t know I’m coming.”
“Riley, I’ve dispatched every available unit to that location. First responders should be there within five minutes.”
Riley pulled up to the curb with a screech of brakes. “I’m going in now.” She ended the call, dropping the phone onto the passenger seat as she reached for her service weapon.
The school building’s windows were dark and vacant, brick walls marred with years of neglect and graffiti. As Riley stepped from the car, the dimly lit parking lot felt oppressive, charged with menace.
Movement caught her eye—the front door of the school swinging open. A slim figure stumbled out, unsteady on her feet.
Jilly.
For a moment Riley stood frozen, unable to believe what she was seeing—her daughter, alive, walking toward her with halting steps. Then her body caught up with her mind and she was running, holstering her weapon as she closed the distance between them.
“Mom?” Jilly’s voice was small, uncertain, as if she couldn’t quite trust her own senses.
“I’m here, baby.” Riley reached her, gathering her into her arms with trembling hands. “I’m here.”
Jilly collapsed against her, her body suddenly boneless with relief. Riley cradled her daughter’s head against her shoulder. Jilly was alive. She was here, solid and real in Riley’s arms.
“You chose me,” Jilly whispered, her voice breaking. “I heard you. He made you choose, and you picked me.”
The guilt in her daughter’s voice cut Riley to the quick. She pulled back slightly, framing Jilly’s tear-streaked face between her palms. “Listen to me. Bill’s still in there, and I’m going to get him out. But I need you to be safe.”
Riley glanced over her shoulder to see the flash of blue and red lights of a police car rounding a corner just a block away.
“The police are coming,” she told Jilly, gently steering her toward the street. “Go to them. Tell them exactly where to find Bill—which room he’s in, where Leo is positioned, everything you know.”
“It’s a classroom at the end of the main hall,” Jilly said, her voice steadier now. “Leo has some kind of green screen set up, and Bill is—” Her voice caught. “He’s hanging, Mom. Leo had him standing on a stool, but he took it away after your call.”
Riley’s heart lurched painfully against her ribs. “Go, now.”
Jilly clutched at her arm. “You can’t go in there alone!”
“I have to.” Riley pressed a kiss to her daughter’s forehead. “Go to the police. Stay safe.”
Riley turned and sprinted toward the school entrance, drawing her weapon once more. The ancient door creaked as she slipped inside, the sound unnervingly loud in the silent hallway. Emergency lights cast a sickly glow over peeling paint and littered floors.
The main hallway was lined with closed doors whose small windows revealed nothing but darkness beyond.
At the far end, however, a thin glow spilled from one of those windows.
Riley moved swiftly but cautiously, with her weapon raised.
Behind that door, Bill was fighting for his life—if he wasn’t already gone.
The thought sent a surge of raw fury through her.
Not Bill. Not after everything they’d been through.
She reached the door and peeked through the window.
The scene before her unfolded with nightmarish clarity: There was the chair where Jilly had been bound until moments ago.
And there was Bill, suspended from a rope secured to an exposed pipe in the ceiling, his body slumped and still.
Leo was standing beside him, watching with clinical detachment.
With a swift, decisive motion, Riley kicked the door open and swept into the room, her gun trained ahead of her.
“FBI! Don’t move!”
Leo’s head snapped toward her, genuine surprise registering on his handsome features. She saw his eyes flick to one side, to a gun lying on a table.
Bill’s gun, she thought, as she snapped at Leo, “Don’t.” She kept her weapon trained on his chest, her finger resting lightly against the trigger. “Cut Bill down. Now.”
He spread his hands in a gesture of resignation. “This feels familiar, doesn’t it? You’re faced with a choice—let me walk away while you save him, or watch him die while you try to capture me.”
“You’re wrong.” Riley’s voice was deadly quiet. “This time is different.”
“How so?”
“This time, I will shoot you first.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Don’t try me.”
Leo’s expression flickered, uncertainty creeping into his eyes.
“Cut. Him. Down,” Riley repeated, each word like a bullet.
Slowly, he reached for a knife on a nearby desk and approached Bill’s suspended form.
“Don’t try anything,” Riley warned, following his every movement with her gun.
Leo sliced through the rope above the noose, and Bill collapsed to the floor in a graceless heap. Knife still in one hand, he began to edge back toward the gun on that table.
The sound of approaching footsteps reached them. “I didn’t come alone,” Riley said. “There’s nowhere for you to run this time, Leo.”
She lunged forward, keeping her weapon trained on Leo with one hand while checking Bill’s pulse with the other.
“Hands where we can see them!” Officers swarmed into the room, weapons drawn, converging on Leo who stood with his hands raised, the knife clattering to the floor.
Riley barely registered them taking Leo into custody. Her entire focus narrowed to the man before her. She tore the hood from Bill’s head, removed the gag from his mouth, and loosened the noose around his neck with trembling fingers.
“Bill,” she whispered, cradling his face between her hands. “Bill, can you hear me?”
For a terrifying moment, there was nothing—no response, no movement. Then a shuddering breath rattled through him. His eyelids fluttered, and he coughed weakly, a rasping, painful sound that was nonetheless the most beautiful thing Riley had ever heard.
“Riley?” His voice was barely audible, abraded by the rope’s assault on his throat.
Relief cascaded through her, so powerful it left her lightheaded. “I’m here,” she said, her thumbs gently stroking his cheekbones. “I’m right here.”
His eyes, bloodshot and disoriented, focused on her face. A faint smile touched his lips. “You found me.”
“Always,” Riley whispered, her heart swelling. Behind her, the officers were reading Leo his rights, but all that mattered was the steady strengthening of Bill’s pulse—the tangible proof that she hadn’t lost him after all.