Chapter 27 #2
“I was with him…until that last time. He locked me in a closet when he went after Preston.” Pain trembled. Seethed. “Can you believe he did that?”
Uh, yes. Considering that Mitchell Donahue had locked others in coffins.
“He…he’d lock me in there sometimes, when he had things to do. He knew I didn’t like it, but he’d do it.”
A tear leaked from the corner of her eye.
“He’d always let me out again, until that night.”
He couldn’t let you out that night because he’d died.
“Before he left, before he locked that closet door, he told me that he was bringing back my brother. Only he didn’t.
My dad never came back, and when I went to the campsite that he loved so much…
when I finally broke out of that closet and raced to find him because I was sure he’d be at his favorite spot, he was dead.
Head all bashed in. Neck twisted. He was gone, and I had no one.
I was twelve years old! And I had no one!
” The ambulance seemed to race faster. It hit another hard bump on the road.
Her body bounced. “I’m sorry,” Sloane said. She meant those words.
“You will be sorry.” A vow. “You’ll be so sorry when I put you in the ground. You stirred everything up, don’t you see? You went to Mary Jean. She told you too much, I know she did. I worried that she’d told you about me.”
She hadn’t. Mary Jean had never mentioned a second son.
“So I had to give her an injection. Had to make sure she never spoke to you or anyone else again. And then…then you made me curious. My dad talked about my big brother—the big brother who I knew wound up killing him. I’d been watching Preston over the years.
Always keeping my eye on him. But when you entered the picture, when you got all focused on Preston, I decided it was time for me to finally take my vengeance on him. ”
“You came here. That’s why you’re in this town. You came here for Preston.” He’d just wanted his perfect moment to strike.
He knew the final words that the killer spoke to his victims because Adam was there. He heard those words. He’d been there for the final moments of the Last Breath Killer’s victims.
Take a deep breath. Pray that it won’t be your last.
“I’m sorry, Preston.” Noble had offered his apologies again and again. “I should have been watching her. I should have been—”
Preston had his phone at his ear. “She’s in an ambulance.”
“Why is Sloane in an ambulance?” Josie shrieked back at him.
“Because some sonofabitch took her.” He couldn’t question Frankie. Frankie had gone into cardiac arrest when he’d been wheeled into the ER. But Frankie had been trying to say something outside.
“Am…Am…”
And Frankie had pointed his hand toward the ambulances.
“You can talk to the ambulance company,” Noble was saying behind him. “They can track all their vehicles. Here, I’ll go get someone from the hospital admin. They can help us.” He bounded to the right.
“I have help.”
Noble stopped in his tracks.
In his ear, Josie asked, “Are you talking to me or someone else?”
“Ambulances can be tracked.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Okay, you’re talking to me. Got it.”
“I need you to figure out which ambulance left this hospital in the last hour to hour and a half—”
“Needle in a haystack,” she muttered. “Do you get that ambulances are constantly going to and from hospitals? Even in small counties?”
“This one would have headed toward the woods. Not stayed near town. Think mountains. Think secluded.” He rattled off the name of the ambulance company that Bridget worked for.
“I’m already in their system,” Josie told him.
Hell, yes, she was.
“They currently have three ambulances that are on active circulation and one…one is heading away from Cashiers. Winding path, speeding too fast—you know they monitor the speed limits, right? The companies can. The drivers are supposed to only stay within—”
“Give me the location. Give me the exact coordinates.”
She did.
He ran from the hospital. Noble was with him for every step. “Keep talking to me,” he ordered Josie. “Tell me every move that vehicle makes.”
I’m coming for you, Sloane. I am coming.
Preston knew exactly which bastard had taken her from him. A bastard who would be in the ground before the sun set that day.
“Lily is fine, by the way.”
How long had they been driving?
“Just told you that BS about her so I could get you to come willingly with me at the hospital. Not like I wanted to drug you in front of a whole waiting room full of people.”
“Figured that out,” she snapped.
“That rich husband of hers has a big house that he rented in town for her. He’s keeping her tucked inside it. He has a guard—a guy named Desmond. Desmond was shadowing you for a while, but I managed to shake him today.” Mocking laughter. “People underestimate me. They shouldn’t do that.”
“Why did you kill Bridget?” She couldn’t see him. He was still driving the ambulance. She was trapped. Time was running out.
Preston is going to find me.
And if he didn’t…
Then I will just kill this jerk myself. Because she did not intend to get buried alive in a coffin. Been there, done that.
“Why did I kill Bridget? Uh, because you didn’t die? How about that for a reason? If you’d died like you were supposed to, then maybe she’d still be walking around.”
“I didn’t make you kill her. You chose to do that.” Her mind spun. “What happened? Did you think that because she was nice to you at work, that she wanted more? Did you think you’d get more than friendship and she shot you down?”
Silence.
He’d finally stopped talking.
Sloane knew she’d just scored a hit. “She rejected you, and you murdered her. Don’t you think burying a woman because she says no is overkill?”
The ambulance stopped. The engine died. The driver’s side door screeched open.
Oh, no. They’d reached their destination. Wherever that destination was. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere. She had no weapon. She was strapped down. He’d have to remove the straps, though. He’d have to take them off her, and when he did, she’d have a chance.
She’d attack.
She’d get out of the ambulance. She’d escape.
He slammed the driver’s side door.
Her hands curled into fists. She focused on breathing. Nice and slow. Sloane tried to calm her racing heartbeat.
The rear doors of the ambulance flew open. “Nah.” Adam climbed inside. “I don’t think it was overkill.” He unstrapped her. Starting at her calves. Her thighs. “I think it was just the right amount—” He undid the strap at her waist. At her chest. “Of killing.”
She drove both of her fists at him. A vicious throat punch. Both of them, ramming him as hard as she could. He gasped, choked, and fell back on his ass.
Sloane ran. Or, fell. She fell out of the back of the ambulance and hit the ground. Her body didn’t want to cooperate fully—probably because of whatever drug he’d given her—so she crawled forward, digging her hands into the dirt and shoving up to see—
Boots.
Brown pants.
Her head tipped back higher.
A gun. Holster.
A…star. On a brown shirt. A deputy’s shirt. A deputy’s star on his uniform.
“Hi, ma’am,” Deputy Eugene Calvin greeted her. “You think you’re going somewhere?”
“I—”
A guttural roar sounded behind her. It was followed by a hard, brutal grab of her hair.
“You bitch!” Adam snarled.
You bastard.
He slammed her face into the dirt.