Chapter 19
Nineteen
“Georgia, you waking up finally?”
Carter groaned and rolled onto his back—or rather, tried to.
His cuffed hands dug against his spine, preventing him from lying flat, forcing him back onto his sore hip.
“How long—” He winced, his voice too loud and too rough, like sandpaper scraping over a megaphone.
He cleared his throat, licked his lips, and started again. “How long have I been out?”
Lingering aromas of coffee and flour floated closer. “Try again, Georgia,” Barry said. “Can’t hear you.”
Apparently, volume was just a problem in his own pounding head. He braced for the pain and raised his voice. “How long have I been out?”
“Guessin’ about twelve hours. Was dark when he moved us in here. Ain’t now.”
No, it sure as fuck wasn’t. Sunlight burned through Carter’s eyelids, an anvil right to the brain. He turned his face into his shoulder, trying and failing to hide from it. “Where the fuck are we?”
“You don’t sound like you’re from Georgia,” Trudy said.
Because with his head splitting in two, it took too much effort to mask his accent. “I’m not. This is what I really sound like.”
“You ain’t who you pretended to be,” Barry said.
“You’d figured that out already.”
“Barry,” Trudy said, volume blessedly lower. “Don’t interrogate the poor boy. He’s clearly in pain.”
“He’s ex-army and some sort of cop,” Barry correctly surmised. “He’s probably had his bell rung before.”
“I have.” He was a combat vet. He’d had his bell rung multiple times over. Didn’t make this particular ringing any less painful. “And I am.”
“DEA?” Barry guessed. “You here about the meth heads?”
“FBI. Special Agent Carter Warren.” Eyes still closed, Carter rolled onto his other side, still trying to escape the sun. “And I’m here about the serial killer that’s been hiding in Apex for twenty-five years.”
“Dr. Fear, right? That’s who Ryan is?”
“Yeah.” The sun was still chasing him. “Why haven’t you busted the window yet? Tried to escape?”
“One, because we’re tied up too. And two, because it’s a skylight.”
“Fuck.” He rolled onto his belly, dug his forehead into the floor, and used his abs to draw his knees up under him. He sat back on his bound feet and rested there, head hung, catching his breath and waiting for the world to stop spinning, for the pain and dizziness to subside.
Sedative plus concussion. The former was entered into willingly; the latter was an accident.
He hadn’t meant to hit his head on the kitchen island as he’d passed out.
Up until then, it had all proceeded according to plan.
The one Carter had devised the moment he’d opened the door to Chancellor Ryan McCullough and realized that he’d been one party removed from the real Dr. Fear when he’d confronted Lawrence Petticoat.
Carter had made a decision in that instant: to let Ryan into the house.
And then he’d kept making them: letting Ryan brew the coffee, drinking it, and continuing to chat about how much he’d already come to love Apex, all while the blackness at the edges of his vision encroached.
And when only a pinpoint of focus remained, he’d struck a deal with a killer, all with the intention of ending up right here.
He lifted his head and eked open his eyes one at a time, moderating the onslaught of light-inflicted pain.
Once it subsided, he slowly took in the big building.
A-frame roof with skylights, open space from end to end, stables at the far end of the space but no sounds or smells of horses.
Just some old farm equipment shoved up against one wall.
Otherwise, the space was empty, save for the man and woman tied to the poles across from him. “We’re in a barn,” Carter said.
“Which is a fucking relief. Moved us up from the basement under here last night when he brought you in.”
“Whose property is this?”
“Belonged to the Johnsons,” Trudy said. “We all played here when we were kids.”
“Old man Johnson died in October,” Barry continued. “Kids sold the property. Pretty penny as it’s on the lake. The new owner is some science professor, but he doesn’t get here until summer.”
“Let me guess, crystallography?”
“That sounds right.”
Ryan hadn’t ordered all that equipment to woo a professor. The professor had already signed; it had been ready and waiting. And if Ryan had been watching over that . . . “Who’s watching this place until the new owner gets here?”
Barry laughed, unamused. “I’ll give you one guess.”
“Chancellor McCullough.”
Trudy shivered and Barry strained at his ropes, desperate to comfort his wife. “Just hang on, baby.”
Pain sliced through Carter. Not his head, but his heart. Imagining what the past twelve hours must have been like for Lincoln. Regretting the blowup at the library. Hoping like hell Lincoln would forgive him for all this, assuming they survived it.
“At least we’re out of the basement,” Barry said. “Better than it’s been the past two days.”
“Which of you is claustrophobic?” Carter asked.
“Me,” Barry replied. “Fell down a mine shaft when I was a kid.”
“Chancellor McCullough know that?”
“Was on his daddy’s property.” Barry leaned his head back against the pole. “Never would have suspected this.”
“Did your brother?”
When Barry kept staring at the ceiling, Trudy replied, “It explains some things. Larry and Ryan were always close growing up. But a while back, things changed. There was more tension between them, not the same easy friendship. It got worse when Ryan was named chancellor, which didn’t make sense.
Ryan had been working hard for that, we had this big party, and those two were in the kitchen fightin’. ”
“Larry thought it would trigger him,” Barry said, righting his gaze. “That’s what y’all call it, right?”
Carter nodded. “He picks his victims at the hospital.”
Trudy gasped.
Barry explained this time. “He has Crohn’s. He’s there once a month for a support group.”
The prescription which he’d taken pictures of, which were on the phone he’d hidden for Lincoln to find. Assuming he had, Lincoln was brilliant enough to put all this together.
“He picks victims who are passing through,” Carter continued. “Follows them on to DC, where he escapes for a week as Dr. Fear.”
“Larry moving into the mansion is what did it this time, wasn’t it?”
“That would make sense,” Carter said. “The pressure to escape was too much with Larry there looking after him, which he can’t do every moment as chief.”
Barry coughed, a distinctly waterlogged sound. “Aw, Christ, Larry.”
“Ryan was his best friend, Bartholomew,” Trudy said, now trying to comfort him. “He was just trying to help. And after he’d lost so much the past few years, he didn’t want to lose—”
Her words died as tires crunched over gravel, a car rumbling to a stop outside the barn doors. Time was running out.
“Listen,” Carter said, scooting closer to Barry and Trudy and lowering his voice. “I made a deal with him last night. Me and Lincoln first.”
“First?” Trudy said.
“We know who he is,” Barry said, mournful eyes turned to his wife. “He wasn’t gonna let us go.” He shifted those same sad eyes to Carter. “You think you can stop him?”
“I think Lincoln can.”
“He smart enough to figure all this out?”
He’d figured out part of it already. That Larry wasn’t Dr. Fear. He just had to make the connection to Ryan. He’d get there, Carter was sure of it. “He’s the smartest person I know.”
Metal clanked against metal. Someone outside was rattling a lock. Loosening a chain.
“Why you doin’ this, Georgia?”
“I’m an FBI agent.” He pushed up on his knees, shook off the last of the fog, and angled toward the door—in front of Barry and Trudy, between them and the killer just outside. “This is what I do.”
“He fucks with you,” Barry said. “Tries to get in your head.”
“He’s Dr. Fear. It’s what he’s known for.”
The barn doors swung open.
“You can’t let him. You have to stay strong, son.”
Carter swayed, the impact of those words hitting him in the chest and gut.
Not the same swooping sensation Lincoln caused, but the same sense of rightness.
Of belonging. He glanced over his shoulder.
He owed these people the truth, his gratitude.
“It’s not just my job. I like it here. I feel like I could belong. ”
“You’d be welcome,” Trudy said, smiling through her tears.
Unhinged laughter drew their attention the opposite direction, to the man standing in front of Carter holding a baseball bat. The man with dark hair and gray stubble dusting his cheeks. Carter forced himself to still despite the terror coursing through him.
“You’re wrong,” Chancellor McCullough sneered. “This one doesn’t belong anywhere.” The whoosh of aluminum cutting through air, the crush of bone, silenced any retort.
Silenced Carter.
Voices nearby. One pleading, one angry.
The argument drew Carter out of the darkness, beyond the searing pain in his head and arm, and toward consciousness.
The warmth on his face and side—sun, he thought, more directly than before, was he outside?
—cautioned against opening his eyes, the threat of more splintering pain on the horizon.
So he remained still, eyes closed, listening to the voices and the soft lapping of water from the other direction—the lake, outside, yes—and fighting the urge to curl over his broken arm, though something he couldn’t quite piece together yet told him he couldn’t.
“It’s over, Ryan.” The pleading one.
Carter knew that voice. His brain churned around and through the pain.
The chief. Larry.
“The feds know it’s you,” Larry said. “They’ll be here any minute.”
A flash of clarity—stark and bright. Lincoln was coming for him.
“Because you told them!” Ryan, the chancellor, the angry one.
The sneer. The truth. The bat.