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“Sure,” Faith said. “Have fun officers. Thank you for trying. Keep your boys looking. Maybe we’ll find something at one of the other shops.”
“Yeah,” Travis said dismissively. “All right, kid. Let’s go put him away.”
The two officers left to continue the robbery angle while Michael and Faith left to head back to the hotel.
“Well, you never know,” Michael said, “maybe we’ll find something in one of the other shops.”
“Yeah,” Faith said, “maybe.”
They spent the rest of the drive in silence. Faith tried to recapture the good mood she had earlier, but the high she felt talking to David was gone. In its place was the now-familiar irritability and frustration.
For the first time in her career, she found herself wishing she wasn’t working on a case.
Turk once more sensed the change in her mood and laid his head on her lap, but his presence wasn’t enough to calm her this time.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Brenda woke with a start. Her head hurt. She groaned and tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t move. She tried to lift a hand to her throbbing head, but her hand wouldn’t move either. She tried to turn her head only to find that it, too, was immobile.
She blinked to clear her vision, and when she could see where she was, her confusion turned instantly to panic.
“Oh God,” she whispered. “Oh God! Oh God, oh God, oh God!”
She was strapped to a high-backed wooden chair in the middle of the school gymnasium. The children were on Thanksgiving break, and there wouldn’t be anyone here but the janitors.
The janitors!
“Help!” she screamed. “Help! Someone help me!”
Images from the news flashed through her mind of people tied to chairs just as she was, their faces mutilated, their tendons severed. She felt panic grip her heart and twist, and a thin, keening cry escaped her mouth.
This can’t be happening here. Those people, they were all killed in the woods, in that … that cabin or that barn in Avondale, not here in the Philadelphia suburbs. The copycat wasn’t supposed to be here. They were supposed to be safe here!
“Help!” she shrieked again before bursting into tears. “Help me! Someone please!”
She collapsed into choking sobs, desperate to wake up and find out this was just a dream. “Oh God,” she moaned. “Oh God.”
“God?” a strange voice said. It was soft and cultured and pleasant, almost soothing.
“Oh God!” she cried out. “I’m in here! Help me!”
“Well, of course you’re here,” the voice said.
It was coming from somewhere behind her. She strained to turn and see him, but her bonds held tightly. “Can you help me?” she said. “Please?”
“Well,” the voice said, “I’m not sure thatyou’dconsider it help.”
There was a strange quality to the stranger’s voice, and Brenda’s brow furrowed. Then she finally realized. “Oh God,” she said. “Oh God,no! Please!”
“God again,” the stranger said.
He stepped around her, and Brenda shrieked when she saw the long, wicked-looking knife in his hand. She screamed and struggled fruitlessly against her bonds, her eyes wide and lolling with terror.
The stranger turned and smiled at her. His eyes seemed to gleam with unnatural light as he turned to face her and slowly approached, running his fingers lovingly along the blade of his knife. “There is no God, Brenda. There’s no Heaven, no Hell, no Purgatory. There’s this,” he gestured around him, “and then there’s nothing.”
The janitors had finished their work early that day, and the school was empty save for Brenda and the stranger. No one heard her screams for the next fifteen minutes, and no one heard when those screams fell silent.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
