Fear the Dark

Which is why I immediately launch myself backwards while I hold on to her, squeezing. I pull her out of the kitchen and into the hall, where I press my back against the wall. Now she has no way to free herself. She’s trapped, thrashing against my chest, using her elbows to deliver sharp blows against my ribs. But my ribs are fine; I lied to get her to help me up so I could easily grab her.

Six seconds later, her vision fails.

In eight seconds her frontal cortex shuts down.

Nine seconds in, and she slumps in my arms, completely unconscious. I could keep squeezing and kill her right now and be done with it all; or I could take advantage of this tremendous blessing.

I release my grip and carry her into the living-room. Not wanting to cause any further trauma to her face, I lay her down against the couch. Her face will heal in time, and then she’ll look as radiant and beautiful as the day when she stepped inside the entryway of the Downes home. God willing, we’ll have plenty of adventures together, she and I.

But I have to act quickly.

I push her hands behind her back and secure her wrists with the steel handcuffs from my belt. Sally Kelly has a pair of decorative Christmas dish-rags hanging from the stove handle. I retrieve them and stuff one in Darby’s mouth. The other I use as a makeshift blindfold.

Then I notice Teddy Lancaster is watching me. His eyes are open, blinking; he either can’t or won’t move. A deep, gurgling sound escapes his bloody lips as I pick up his silenced Glock. He tries to raise a hand, about to speak, when I park a round into his brainpan, the gunshot as loud as a balloon popping. I toss the nine on the floor and my head throbs in what feels like hundreds of different places. It’s difficult to concentrate, and the floor doesn’t feel stable underneath my boots.

The burner is still tucked inside my jacket pocket. I take it out and call Sarah as I step into the bathroom off the hall. The window facing me is dark; night has fallen. Another blessing.

‘I was getting worried,’ she says.

‘You still parked down the street?’ I’ve asked Sarah to shadow me, to stick close by, in case we need to run together.

‘I’m still there, like you asked,’ Sarah says. ‘What’s wrong with your voice?’

I yank down a pink bath towel hanging on a rack. ‘Teddy hit me in the face with a billy club and split my lips open.’

‘Teddy who?’

‘I’ll explain later,’ I say, and march back towards the living-room. ‘I need you to come here. Now.’

‘There’s a police car parked in the driveway. I’m looking at it through the binoculars.’

‘They’re all dead. Hurry – and bring my kit. Make sure no one sees you.’

I hang up, not knowing why I said that last part, as Kelly, like everyone else who lives in Red Hill, doesn’t have any nearby neighbours. The advantage of hunting in a town like this instead of a city is that you don’t have to worry as much about potential witnesses.

But I’ve never hunted in Red Hill or in any of the other nearby towns. I’ve always abducted my women either from out of state or from someplace very far away from Red Hill, which is how I’ve managed to hunt all these years without getting caught. When the Red Hill Ripper started killing here, though, I saw it as an opportunity to take women closer to home – women like Tricia Lamont – and blame it on the Red Hill Ripper.

Is there time to take Tricia today? I’ve never had two women at once. The possibilities are … No. No, I’m being greedy. The McCormick bitch is my prize.

Darby moans as I use the towel to tie her ankles together. The knot won’t hold for long, but it will prevent her from kicking. I sit next to her and use my weight to pin her face and chest against the back of the couch. I pat down her pockets but I don’t find her satellite phone. Did she leave it out in the patrol car? No, there it is, lying on the bloodied carpet.

Darby has come back to life; I can feel the muscles in her back tensing just as Sarah’s SUV pulls into the driveway. Seconds later, the front door opens. Sarah no longer flinches or pales at the sight of the blood and carnage; she’s seen it before, many, many times. The small black leather case is gripped in her gloved hand.

‘Don’t come inside,’ I say. I don’t want her footprints to be discovered inside the house. ‘Just toss me the kit.’

Sarah is staring at Lancaster’s body.

‘That’s Teddy,’ I say. ‘Teddy Lancaster. He’s the Red Hill Ripper.’

‘So he’s the one who recorded you inside the bed-room?’

I nod. ‘The video was on Savran’s MacBook, along with all the others. The laptop is now at the bottom of the river. Now toss –’

‘What if he made copies?’

‘One thing at a time, Sarah. Now hurry up and toss me the kit.’

She does. I use my teeth to unzip it, then take out a preloaded syringe. Sarah watches me with a strange mixture of anger, fear and, I think, jealousy, as I sink the needle into Darby’s neck and inject her with Etorphine. The opioid is several thousand times more potent than morphine, and I need only a small amount to send her off into the valley of sweet dreams.

‘You said this wasn’t about her.’

‘It isn’t,’ I say. ‘It just worked out this way. You got the latex gloves in your pocket, like I asked?’

Sarah nods. Looks disappointed. Hurt.

‘I need this. The next few weeks, I’m going to be under a lot of stress. You know what happens when I get stressed.’

‘I can satisfy you,’ Sarah says, blinking back tears. ‘I know how to satisfy you.’

‘Is there anyone outside?’

Sarah looks, begrudgingly.

‘No,’ she says. ‘No one’s coming.’

‘Keep watching – and put on those gloves.’

The drug has taken effect; Darby has gone limp, sliding into unconsciousness. Head pounding, I move off the couch and crawl towards Lancaster. I find his key fob inside his jacket pocket and toss it to Sarah. Then I get to my feet, collect Darby’s satellite phone and the Glock, and hand them to Sarah.

In my present physical condition, it takes what feels like an hour to pick up Darby and sling her over my shoulder. Sarah holds the door open for me as I carry her outside and lay her gently across the SUV’s backseat.

As we return to the house, I tell Sarah what she needs to do next. She listens and doesn’t ask any questions.

‘I’ve got to shut off my phone,’ I tell her. ‘I won’t be able to call you for a while.’

‘Are we safe?’

‘As long as you do what I said. We’ll have to lay low for a bit – the FBI will have all sorts of questions about Nicky Hubbard, but –’

‘They know about her?’ Her face is bloodless.

I gently cup her face in my hands. ‘The FBI found one of her fingerprints in the bedroom – that’s all they know and that’s all they’ll ever know.’ I step inside the house. ‘Slip out of your boots. Follow me – and watch where you step.’

‘What about Sherrilyn O’Neil?’ she asks, referring to the woman I had accidentally killed before the arrival of the FBI. She lasted a good eight months before the fight left her. Darby, I’m sure, will last longer – a year, maybe even two.

‘They don’t know about Sherrilyn,’ I say, ‘or about any of the other ones.’ I pick up the severed bindings from the floor and stuff them in her jacket pocket. Sarah looks panicked. ‘Sarah, there’s nothing to link Nicky to the other girls.’

‘What about Teddy Lancaster? He recorded you, so he knows about Nicky –’

‘He doesn’t,’ I say, but I have no way of knowing that for sure. Teddy never mentioned Hubbard while he had me tied down to the chair. Sure, he knew something had happened inside the Downes bedroom – he had recorded a video of me on my hands and knees scrubbing away, trying to destroy any trace of Nicky’s blood. But I refused to tell Teddy what I was doing, or why I was doing it. He thought he could beat the truth out of me, but he was wrong. He had finally given up when Darby McCormick rang the doorbell. He said he would find out. The truth would come out, and, whatever it was, he said, he would expose me.