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Michael sighed. “All right.”
“Top location is a theater,” Hilary said, “Like a stage theater, not a movie theater. The Walter Calloway Theater on Baker and Mulberry.”
“Text me the address,” Faith said, rushing from the bullpen with Turk at her side.
Her heart pounded. She could hear West’s taunting laughter in her head.
“You fear that he’ll beat you, that he’ll complete the Magnum Opus and leave you with nothing more than the chance to clean up his mess.”
“Go to Hell, West,” she said through gritted teeth.
“I’ll only show up again with a new face and a new name.”
“Well,thisname is going to be stopped before he kills that girl.”
Faith and Turk jumped into the cruiser. Faith started the car and put the address into the navigation software. The theater was nine minutes away. Faith switched on the lights and siren and peeled out of the parking lot. She’d make the theater in five.
Her mind echoed with Trammell’s lilting tenor, West’s taunting laughter, Kenneth Langeveldt’s crazed grin. The rage and sickness of dozens of killers ran through her mind, but each taunt only fueled her determination.
She would rescue that woman before the Magnum Opus was complete.
Or she would die trying.
***
Lana stirred. Her head felt thick, and her tongue moved furrily in her mouth. She moaned and tried to open her eyes, but she couldn’t. Or maybe she could, and the swirling lights were all she could see.
Was she blind now? She'd heard that if you hit the back of your head hard enough, you could be blinded temporarily or even permanently. Something to do with how the nerves in your eyes connected to the back of your brain.
A voice cut through the swirling lights. “Not now. Not now. Notnow, damn it!”
This was followed by the sound of something smacking something else. It sounded like a fist hitting flesh. Was he hitting her? Was he saying not now, as in don't wake up now?
No, she couldn’t feel anything. Even if she didn’t feel pain, she would feel the impact.
What did she feel?
She concentrated on that sense. She felt something soft underneath the right side of her body, like a cushion. She could feel movement too when the cushion tilted slightly.
A car seat? That would make sense. She had been knocked out and dragged from the building.
So she was in someone’s car, and he was taking her away for…
Nothing good. She was an adult. She knew what men did when they kidnapped attractive young women.
Then she remembered the murders. They were all over the news. Girls stripped naked and posed in weird shapes with powder sprinkled over their bodies.
That brought her all the way to wakefulness. She opened her eyes and realized that she was indeed in a car. She was belted into her seat, but she wasn’t bound.
She looked ahead and saw her kidnapper. He looked to be about fifteen to twenty years older than her, with receding gray hair and liver spots on the exposed scalp. He was slamming his right hand into his chest—that was the noise she heard—and weeping. Through his tears, he was saying, "Not now. Not now."
If she was careful and slow, she could get to him before he saw her. She could fight him and crash the car. Then…
Then he would be seat belted, and she would be thrown through the window.
He spun around, and any secrecy she might have had was a non-issue. His eyes flew open, and he pointed at her. “You stay still! You move, and I’ll fucking kill you!”
His voice cracked with desperation. Lana’s mind raced. He was going to kill her. That was obvious.
