Subject 85 redoubled her struggle for freedom.
James sat on the wicker settee, facing the camera’s viewfinder to wait. A clean-room suit covered his body and hair. His fingerprints were hidden inside the latex gloves he wore. Thick boot covers guaranteed he would not leave a viable footprint. There would be no trace of him when he left this home.
For a few moments, he watched Subject 85, but her struggle was the same struggle he’d witnessed from eighty-four other subjects. The struggle to survive. But tonight he just wasn’t engaged.
“I am feeling very disinterested in this entire process.” He spoke directly to the camera, then turned his attention skyward. The sky was different here in West Texas. No bright city lights muted its brilliance; no sounds distracted him from its dark beauty. Pastel-colored stars flickered like sequins on a dancer’s dress. The night’s version of color was more astounding for its understated glory than the gaudy blue of day.
Subject 85 screamed and screamed and screamed. Until she choked on the blood of her raw vocal cords. A fine mist of red blew from her nostrils.
A coyote answered her, howling from no more than a quarter mile away. Might have smelled blood in the air and come to investigate.
James turned his attention back to the camera. “I don’t need this anymore. I already know enough.”
Until he spoke the words aloud, he hadn’t realized how done he really was. He was bored with killing. But as illogical as it sounded, he was almost afraid to stop. From the moment of his first kill, it was as if he and Death had formed an alliance. He fed Death, and Death fed him. Would his profiler skills still be as sharp without Death?
The only obstacle was Lathaniel Montgomery. Somehow, the special skills consultant had managed to link thirty-eight of James’s experiments and claimed an active serial killer was on the loose. Impossible. Lathaniel couldn’t know. Each experiment was carefully choreographed so nothing would link it to any of the previous ones. There were variations in race, sex, age, body type, hair color, religion, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, geographic location, mode of death, and method of discovery—he’d made sure of that. There was no signature, no modus operandi.
But Lathaniel wouldn’t drop it. He had tried to get to Dr. Jonah to convince him of the presence of a new serial killer. That’s when James started doing his own research. The layers of secrecy surrounding Lathaniel made it difficult to find answers. Why the secrecy? It had taken months of surveillance just to find Lathaniel’s home.
From where he sat, he could smell the warm tang of blood and sweat. A smell he was familiar with, but one he wasn’t particularly fond of. Subject 85’s wrists and ankles were shredded. Blood dripped from her wounds. The thirsty ground soaked up each drop.
The wireless receiver in his ear pinged. Work most likely. They were the only ones who ever called him.
He walked over to Subject 85. “I apologize for the interruption. I’m getting a phone call that I need to take.” He stepped on her throat, cutting off her air and the last of her voice. He tapped the button in his ear. “Hello.”
“Eric here. We caught an interesting one.”
“Yeah?” James held his tone at the mildly interested level.
“I’ll need you and your father at Quantico in the morning to generate the profile.”
“Dad’s not available until early afternoon.” Actually, James wouldn’t be back in the area until late morning, and since father and son were a package deal, always working cases together, Dad was the perfect excuse. Nobody questioned the great Dr. Jonah.
James’s skill was overshadowed by his father’s fame. But he was his father’s equal in every measure and more, so much more. With the way he trained, his knowledge ran deeper, to a more visceral level than any other profiler’s. Someday, when his father chose to retire, James would be the best the world had ever known.
“Want a teaser?” Eric’s tone carried a hint of humor.
“Sure.”
“You familiar with the Janie Carson case?”
Intimately. “Yes.”
“Janie Carson’s eye was found in—”
Tension grabbed James’s neck and squeezed all the muscles in a painful embrace.
Found. They couldn’t have found it. It was hidden in—
“—in Ohio.”
You fool. You have the wrong eye. “Ohio?” He kept his tone at the mildly confused level.
“Yeah. Lathan Montgomery called it in. It’s a bizarre story.”
Lathaniel Montgomery. The name just kept coming up. It couldn’t be simple coincidence that the special skills consultant claimed to have found Janie Carson’s eye. Why would he make such a claim anyway when DNA was going to prove it wasn’t? What did Lathaniel have to gain by such a bizarre assertion?
“Can’t wait to hear the full story,” James said instead of asking for the details. Self-control was his god.
“Later.” Click. Eric was gone.
James tapped the receiver to disconnect from the call.
He stepped back from Subject 85. Shades of purple mottled her face. She snorted in nostrils full of air.
“Six thirty-two.” He bent down and pulled the duct tape from her mouth. “Time to get to work.”
Subject 85 screamed—at least tried to. The best her shredded vocal cords could do was a harsh whisper.
He removed two pairs of snub nose pliers from his gear—one to hold the toe bones, one to snap them—and began.
Chapter 7
The glare from the fluorescent lights in the interrogation room burned Evanee’s eyes. She rubbed them for the millionth time, but didn’t find any relief. It wasn’t the lights. It was the waiting and the worrying. Waiting for Sheriff Rob—a.k.a. the stepdad from hell—to make an appearance. Worrying about what was happening to Lathan.
She probed the cuts on the insides of her lips with her tongue, welcoming the sting of pain.
“Why don’t you tell me what really happened in that room?” Hal asked for what seemed like the millionth time.