Krall knelt next to the cot as Carli cringed back against the grungy black iron bars of the headboard. Her eyes were screwed shut and her mouth drawn down in a grimace of fear and disgust. The man fumbled with her belt buckle and unsnapped her jeans, mumbling to her in a low voice. Bill could just make the sound out over the noise of the storm, although he couldn’t tell what the man was saying.
Every fiber of his body was screaming at him, Shoot! Shoot him! Do it now before he turns and sees you! Before he does any more damage to your little girl! Bill raised the Browning Hi-Power and sighted down the barrel, then shook his head in mute frustration. Krall’s body was positioned directly in front of Carli. If he took the shot and Krall moved at the last second, or if Bill missed—his hands were shaking badly, it was a definite possibility—or if he hit Krall, but the round went through his body, it would strike Carli. There was no question about it.
Bill wanted to scream, and would have, if there was any way to do it without alerting Krall to his presence and giving up the advantage of surprise. He moved down another step and then another, somehow remembering in the tension and fear to step over the faulty stair tread. In a few seconds, he had reached the bottom of the stairway. Krall still hadn’t heard a sound.
He took two steps and reached a position immediately behind Krall as the man was unzipping his little girl’s jeans. Bill lifted his gun to blow Martin Krall to Hell and—
CHAPTER 54
May 28, 4:17 p.m.
HE HEARD THE DISTINCTIVE sound of a slide being racked, the heavy, metallic ka-chink that was at once menacing and unmistakable. A split second later, he felt the deadly mass of a handgun barrel pressed into his ear. “Drop it,” commanded a voice so softly that Bill could barely make it out over the shrieking noise of the storm outside.
For a moment, nothing happened. The wind howled and the thunder crashed and the rain pelted the casement window, and Bill Ferguson knew, if he surrendered his weapon, he was condemning himself and his daughter to death. Confusion battled frustration in his head—fear was running a distant third—and Bill tried to imagine how someone had managed to sneak up behind him after he had just finished clearing the entire house.
“I said, drop the gun,” the voice repeated. “You have two seconds before I blow your meager brains all over your little girl.” In front of him, Krall had finally realized something was happening, and he turned slowly. The initial look of concern etched on the face of the I-90 Killer, of barely controlled panic, was replaced by a sly smile as he completed his turn and took in the scene.
Something was wrong here, something more than the fact that Bill had botched his rescue attempt. Something about that disembodied voice behind him sounded chillingly familiar. It was disorienting. He reluctantly held the Browning out to the side with two fingers on the butt of the pistol.
In his peripheral vision, Bill watched as a hand snaked out and grabbed the gun. It was a slender hand, female, and attached to it was an arm covered with a soaking wet blue windbreaker. An FBI windbreaker. Immediately, he placed the voice. It was the same one he had spoken to dozens of times over the last two days. It was Special Agent Angela Canfield.
“This is the guy,” Bill said, turning excitedly, wondering why she didn’t get what was going on here. How stupid could she be? “This is the I-90 Killer! Put the cuffs on him before he has a chance to—”
“Shut up,” Angela Canfield said, pistol-whipping Bill in the forehead with a force that opened a gash and rocked him back on his heels. Blood spurted and dribbled down his forehead in a thick rivulet. “I need a minute to think.”
As she spoke, Krall reached out, carefully plucked Bill’s Browning from Agent Canfield’s hand, and began examining it. “What are you doing here?” he said to her. “I was supposed to have this chick for a whole week. We had the usual agreement.” The I-90 Killer seemed only annoyed by the fact he had come a half-second away from having his slimy head blown right off his shoulders.
Carli moaned. It was the first sound Bill had heard her make since descending the stairs. She looked at Bill with huge eyes filled with desperation and maybe even resignation. He wanted to go to her and comfort her, but before he could do that he had to figure out how to deal with this astounding turn of events.
“Oh my God,” he said. “You’re involved in this, aren’t you?” He looked into Canfield’s face and saw those ice-blue eyes staring unblinkingly back at him, glittering and beautiful and suddenly also cold and calculating. He recalled the frosty gaze she had leveled at him when he sent her away last night. She continued pressing her service weapon insistently into his forehead. He refused to back off and more blood spilled, starting a second track, running into his eyebrows. Soon it would begin to drip into his eyes.
“Duh,” she said mockingly. “Great sleuthing, Sherlock. How else do you think this moron could escape capture for so long?”
“Who are you calling a moron?” Krall protested, but Canfield ignored him.
“It’s the perfect scam,” she continued. “He takes the girls, enjoys them for a week in his own unique way, and then we move them out of the country and along to their new owners.”
Bill was stunned. “But…these girls are people! They’re human beings, and you’re ripping them away from their families, their lives…”
“There’s money to be made.”
“My God,” he said in wonderment. “What is wrong with you? How can you be so cold? This guy here,” Bill indicated Martin Krall with a nod, “has obviously got mental and psychological issues, but you…” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head in utter amazement.