She splashed a little half-and-half into the cup and set the lid loosely back on top. Then she started for the door. Her heart seemed to pound harder with each step, until she was sure the whole coffee shop could hear its thunk.
Louis walked close behind her. Too close. One slash with the knife...
They reached the door. Diana pushed it open.
Three more steps.
Two.
The door closed behind Louis.
Now.
Diana twisted around. At the same time, she brought the coffee cup up, and threw the hot brew in Louis’s face.
“Fuck!” Louis brought his hands up.
At that second, Diana drilled her knee straight into his unprotected groin.
Bobby
Bobby’s focus was on the police offices across the street when a fight caught his attention on the sidewalk in front of a coffee shop down the block. It took a second for him to realize one of the combatants was Diana. And the other was…
Louis Ingersoll.
“That’s him!” Val yelled. She grabbed the radio and started calling in the address.
In front of them, Perreth switched on lights and sirens.
Traffic slowed. Stopped. Bobby was about to bail out of the car and take the rest on foot when Diana broke away. She dashed inside the coffee shop.
Hunched forward as if hurting, Ingersoll glanced toward them. He stared a second, maybe two, then made a beeline for a white delivery van at the curb.
“He’s making a run for it,” Val said in a surprisingly calm voice. “Southbound.”
The van squealed out into traffic.
Perreth hit the gas and Bobby did the same, weaving between stopped cars.
Hurry, hurry, hurry.
A car jutted into the street ahead of them.
Perreth slammed on the brakes. Bobby swerved to avoid his bumper.
The white van kept going.
It careened around the bend, traveling fast.
Too fast.
Rubber screeched against pavement.
The air shuddered with a screech and the smack of steel on steel.
“That didn’t sound good,” Val said.
“This is ridiculous.” Bobby released his seat belt and threw open the door. He climbed out, but instead of following the street around its curve, he vaulted a row of bushes and set off kitty-corner across a yard, cutting the distance.
He could see the wreck ahead of him. The van sat at an angle, its front fender buried into the side of a parked car. Red and blue flashed over a scurry of officers. The light throbbed like a strobe in the storm-darkened sky, making their movements look jerky and unreal.
Officers surrounded the van, drawing down on the driver’s door. Perreth’s solid form marched toward the vehicle.
Drawing his weapon, Bobby reached the inner perimeter of cars just as the bulldog detective approached the van.
“I got him. I got him.” Perreth yanked open the door.
Movement flashed from inside. A shock of red hair, the dull glint of a rifle barrel.
Stop the threat.
Bobby didn’t think. He didn’t feel. He just closed his finger over the trigger and squeezed.
BANG!
He gave with the Glock’s kick, letting the movement bring his gun back into position for the next tap.
BANG!
Louis Ingersoll’s eyes flared wide. Red bloomed at his throat. He fell to the floor of the van, the rifle clattering out of the van and onto the pavement.
Perreth staggered back and sank to the ground, as if realizing how close to dead he’d just come.
Bobby kept his gun trained on the still form, waiting for some kind of relief to wash over him, waiting for satisfaction to fill his chest.
Neither came.
The Copycat Killer was dead, but this wasn’t over. A woman was still out there. Bound. Frightened. Alone.
A woman only Louis Ingersoll and Ed Dryden knew how to find.
Diana
Diana had never been so happy to see anyone as she was when Bobby walked through the door. After Louis had bolted, she’d scurried back into the coffee shop. From there, she’d seen police cars race by. She’d heard the crunch of steel on steel. The sirens. Police. Ambulances. Gunshots. And then…
Nothing.
If any of the ambulances had made a trip to the hospital, they’d had no need for sirens.
She’d tried to walk down the block to see for herself what had happened, but police had set up barriers to prevent anyone getting through. So she’d returned to the taskforce offices.
To wait.
To hope.
She sprang out of her cubicle and met Bobby in the doorway.
A smile lit his eyes but didn’t lift the lines etching his face. If possible, he looked more tired and pale than he had in the hospital. As if at this moment, life was too heavy to bear.
“What happened?”
He reached out and grasped her hand, holding her fingers tight, as if afraid she’d slip away. “Not here.”
He pulled her across the bustling space and into one of the offices. Shutting the door behind him, he split the blinds with his fingers and peered out between the slats. “I have to make this fast.”
Now he was scaring her. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to fold herself in his arms and know they were both safe. She leaned a hip on the edge of the desk and hugged her arms around her middle. “He wanted me to go with him.”
“I saw you outside the coffee shop.” The corners of his lips lifted for a second. “Guess those self-defense classes paid off.”
“I keep thinking about the way he looked at me. The time we spent alone in my apartment going through news clippings about serial killers. Clippings about Dryden. He said Dryden told him about me. That’s why he moved next door.”
“Ingersoll has been making regular deliveries to the prison for four years. Dryden works in the kitchen on a regular basis, so I’m guessing they passed notes to one another by tucking them into the produce or hiding them somewhere in the walk-in cooler.”
“I heard the crash… and gunshots.”
“He’s dead, Diana.”
“Dead?” She’d cared about Louis once. He’d been her friend, or at least she’d thought so. But she felt only numb now.
“I shot him. My union rep should be here any minute.”
“Oh God, Bobby. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Or I will be. That isn’t what’s bothering me.”
Diana reached out for his hand. He wasn’t a cavalier man. Taking a life, even that of a serial killer, was a traumatic thing, something Bobby would take seriously. So what could possibly be bothering him more than—
“Did you find the woman… the baby’s mother?”
He shook his head.
The obstruction in her throat expanded, making it hard to breathe. She could see the poor woman in her mind’s eye. Tied in an isolated place. Alone. Terrified. And a baby growing up without a mother.
Diana knew what she had to do. “Dryden. I need to see him.”
Bobby shook his head. “Val called the prison. He refuses to talk if police are monitoring.”
“He’ll talk to me.”
“Diana, did you hear what I said? He won’t allow us to monitor. If you walk into that interview room, you’ll have to go in totally alone.”
She willed her knees to hold her upright. “Then that’s what I’ll do. I’ll get down on my knees if need be.”