“I know you will,” she said.
It felt as if they were the only two people moving and talking in the entire place, their voices and footsteps echoing off the hallway walls. Beckard rarely worked the skeleton shift, but it was a cemetery in here despite all the excitement just a few hours ago.
“Oh yeah?” he said.
“I’ve studied you,” Allie said. Her voice was calm, measured.
She’s got ice in her veins, this one.
“Have you now?” he said.
“Yes.”
“And what did you find out?”
“Besides the fact you’re a sadistic sonofabitch with, in all likelihood, a small dick?”
He chuckled. “Besides that.”
“You’re going to lose.”
“To you?”
“Yes.”
“Keep dreaming.”
“You want to know why?”
“Sure, why not.”
“Because you won’t be able to help yourself. It’s in your nature. You’re a loser.”
She’s baiting you. Don’t fall for it.
“Keep moving,” he said.
It took a lot of effort not to bash in the back of her head with the Glock. He didn’t do it because he wanted to enjoy her later; that, and he was afraid moving that quickly might send him collapsing to the floor from pure exhaustion. Because every inch of his body was on fire at this very moment.
He took out the bottle of painkillers and shook out two, then swallowed them in one gulp. Beckard kept the gun in front of him so that if anyone saw him from behind, they wouldn’t see he had the weapon out. Of course, if anyone caught him in the hallway with her, he was dead in the water anyway.
They turned another corner and finally reached the side door.
“Outside,” Beckard said.
She pushed the door open and stepped out into the chilly night. It was still pitch-black outside except for a floodlight above the side door that lit up the both of them. Her hands were still handcuffed, so Beckard hurried in front of her, making sure she could see the Glock in his hand the entire time. An aimed weapon, he had found from past escapades, was a stronger deterrent than vocal threats.
He opened the back door of Jones’s police cruiser. “Inside.”
She stared into the backseat and frowned. “Is he dead?”
“Shut up and get inside,” he hissed.
She climbed in and he slammed the door behind her. The rear doors didn’t have levers on the interior to open with and the windows didn’t roll down (that was the point of stashing prisoners back there, after all). He knew he had her imprisoned as he circled the front hood, holstered the handgun, and slipped into the driver’s seat.
Beckard started the car and pulled away from the building, heading toward the back where there were fewer lights and chances of people. The last thing he needed now was to stumble across a couple of troopers smoking out front.
He picked up the familiar back trail and turned left toward the highway just as a semi blasted up the road, bright headlights spilling across them for a brief second. The Crown Vic slid back onto the smooth highway as he turned right.
He glanced up at the rearview mirror, at Allie in the semidarkness behind the partition. She was looking down at something on the floor. That “something” would be Jones. Dead, with a bullet hole in the back of his head.
“Ignore the body,” Beckard said. “Where we’re going, it’s going to be the least of your worries.”
She met his eyes in the mirror. He expected to see fear, but instead there was a resoluteness, a grim determination that bothered him. Beckard didn’t let her see it, though — or at least, he didn’t think he had — and grinned back at her instead. It took quick thinking, but he (probably) succeeded.
“Allie Krycek,” he said, letting her name roll off his tongue. Yes, he liked the sound of it. “You came all the way out here just for me, huh? Ever since I took your sister what, ten years ago? I’m flattered. Really. Tell me, how much of your life did you spend just thinking about me?”
“Ten years,” she said.
Her voice was calm. Again, that bothered him, but Beckard played it off.
“Ten years,” he repeated. “Like I said, I’m flattered. Tell me something: Was this how you thought it would go down?”
“No.”
“You thought it’d be easier, didn’t you? Admit it.”
She didn’t respond.
“I liked your sister,” he said. “She was sweet.”
There. He saw a reaction. The hardness gave way to vulnerability, if just for a split second.
The sister’s the Achilles heel. I can work with that.
“She was soft,” he continued. “I like them soft. She cried a lot, but then, they all did, so she wasn’t special in that respect. Do you want me to show you where I played with her? Before I gave her back to the highway?”
She didn’t say a word, but her face gave it all away. He could see it in the way she was looking at him — trying to figure out how to get to him the way he had gotten to her. He knew exactly what she was thinking.
“We’re going to have a lot of fun,” he smiled. “Hell, when we’re done, you might not want to ever leave. Wouldn’t that be something?”
More silence, but her eyes continued to dart left and right. They were just the barest of movements, searching, but she couldn’t hide it from him.
“You’ll open up,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time. I usually don’t spend more than twenty-four hours with my friends, but you…I think I might make an exception for you, Allie Krycek.”
He had it all planned out. The location. The timing. He had even carved out an extra day or two in a best-case scenario, in case her name didn’t show up on the wires as a missing person right away. If he was lucky, no one would be expecting her. After all, not every traveler was a planner. Some of the girls he’d taken in the past weren’t identified for months afterward because, simply, no one knew they had taken off on a cross-country trip.
Of course, Allie Krycek wasn’t your ordinary traveler. She wasn’t a traveler at all.
Come into my web, said the spider to the fly…
He could tell just by sneaking a look at her in the backseat of the cruiser, using the rearview mirror, that she was preparing herself for what was coming. As if she had any clue. He had evolved since the last time he met a Krycek.
Her face was partially lit by moonlight, and she didn’t say a word as he turned off the highway and drove into an unmarked part of the woods. The ground under them immediately became uneven, and he grunted a couple of times when the jostling sent some stabbing pains through his side.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea…
It was still pitch-black outside, and the combination of night and densely packed trees all around them made for dangerous traveling companions. Fortunately, the Crown Vic had a strong pair of headlights that allowed him to see where he was going. Even so, he drove slowly. This was a part of the country he was familiar with, but he’d never been here at night before.
A part of him knew this was a bad idea. There were going to be police cars all over the highway by morning and even more by afternoon. He knew Harper had been talking to her, and the sergeant might even have believed some of it. Not that it mattered; sooner or later, they would find out that Jones was missing. Even if they couldn’t find the body, Harper would be able to put two and two together easily enough.
Once they realized he had taken Allie too, they would mobilize everyone to look for him. All the shifts. They might even call in the feds again, though not so early on. Hell, depending on how much Allie had told Harper, they probably already knew he was the Roadside Killer. All of it led to the same thing: A manhunt.