LITMIR.BIZ

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point besides the messenger, who is fifty yards from the destination.”

      Keri looked at her watch. 11:59 p.m. In the distance she heard the motor of a boat at the far end of the marina’s main channel. Seals, who liked to sunbathe on the docks in the day, were calling out to one another. Other than that, the wind, and the waves, it was silent.

      “Movement along Mindanao Way approaching the park,” came an unfamiliar, agitated voice.

      “Identify your unit,” Hillman barked, “and don’t use proper names.”

      “Sorry, sir. This is Unit Three. There is a vehicle approaching the park along…the street leading up to it. It appears to be a motorcycle.”

      Keri realized who Unit Three was – Officer Roger Gentry. West LA wasn’t the largest division of LAPD and they were short on available manpower at this hour, so Hillman had pulled in every unassigned officer and that included Gentry. He was a rookie, on the job less than a year, about as long as Castillo but far less confident or, apparently, capable.

      “Does anyone else have eyes?” Hillman asked.

      “Can anybody else hear that?” Tim Rainey asked way too loudly, apparently forgetting no one could reply to him. “It sounds like someone’s coming.”

      “This is Unit Two,” Castillo said from her makeshift nook near the community center. “I have eyes. It is a motorcycle. Can’t identify from my location but it’s small, a Honda, I think. Only a driver. It has entered the park and is traveling along the south edge of the service road in the general direction of the destination and the messenger.”

      Keri saw the bike now too, speeding along the service road that skirted the edge of the park near the water. She turned her attention to Tim Rainey, who was standing stiffly in the middle of the bridge, his right hand tightly clutching the bag.

      “This is Unit One,” Hillman announced. “We have rifle on standby, prepared to assist. Does anyone have an updated visual on the vehicle?”

      “This is Unit Four,” Ray said. “We have a visual. Solo rider is traveling about fifty miles per hour along the edge of the service road. Vehicle is turning right, that’s north, in the general direction of the destination.”

      “I think it’s someone on a motorcycle,” Tim Rainey said. “Can anyone tell who it is? Is it the guy? Does he have Jess?”

      “Unit Four, this is Unit One,” Hillman said, ignoring the chatter from Rainey. “Do you see any weapons? Rifle, stand ready.”

      “Rifle ready,” came the voice of the sniper next to Hillman in the second-floor room of the yacht club.

      “This is Unit Four,” Ray replied. “I don’t see any weapons. But my visual is compromised by darkness and the speed of the vehicle.”

      “Rifle on my mark,” Hillman said.

      “On your mark,” the sniper replied calmly.

      Keri watched as the driver of the bike hit the brakes and did a sudden, dramatic wheelie. When the front wheel hit the road again, the driver forced the bike in a tight donut, circling three times before coming out of it and speeding back in the direction from which it came.

      “This is Unit Four,” she said quickly. “Stand down. Repeat, recommend Rifle stand down. I think we’ve got a late-night joyrider on our hands.”

      “Rifle, stand down,” Hillman ordered.

      Sure enough, the bike continued back the way it had come, down the service road and through the metered parking lot. She lost sight of it when it got back on Mindanao.

      “Who has eyes on the messenger?” Hillman asked urgently.

      “This is Unit Four,” Keri continued. “The messenger is shaken but unharmed. He’s standing there, unsure how to proceed.”

      “Frankly, I’m unsure too,” Hillman admitted. “Let’s just keep alert, people. That may have been a decoy.”

      “Is anyone coming to get me?” Rainey asked, as if in response to Hillman. “Should I just stay here? I’m going to assume I should stay here unless I hear different.”

      “God, I wish he’d shut up,” Ray muttered, putting his hand over his mic so only Keri and Butch could hear him. Keri didn’t respond.

      After about ten minutes, Keri saw Rainey, still standing in the middle of the bridge, check his phone.

      “I hope you can hear me,” he said. “I just got a text. It says ‘By involving the authorities, you have betrayed my trust. You have sacrificed the opportunity to redeem the child sinner. I must now determine whether to remove the demon myself or forgive your insubordination and allow you one more chance to purify her soul. Her fate was in your hands. Now it is in mine.’ He knew you were here. All your elaborate planning was for nothing. And now I have no idea whether he’ll even reach out to me again. You might have killed my daughter!”

      He screamed the last line, his voice cracking in fury. Keri could hear his voice across the marina even as it came over the comm. She saw him drop to his knees, let go of the bag, put his hands to his face, and begin weeping. His pain felt intimately familiar.

      It was the anguished cry of a parent who believed his child was lost to him forever. She recognized it because she had wept the same way when her own daughter had been taken and she could do nothing to stop it.

      Keri rushed out of the boat cabin and just made it up on deck in time to vomit over the side into the ocean.

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      Jessica Rainey wriggled her fingers to keep them from falling asleep again. They were tied behind her back, attached to the pipe she sat leaning against. The ground was asphalt, hard and cold. The one fluorescent light that dangled from the ceiling flickered intermittently, making it impossible to fall asleep.

      She wasn’t sure how long she’d been in this place but knew it had been long enough for day to turn into night. She could tell because of tiny cracks in the wall that let in the light from the sun. There was no light now.

      She hadn’t even noticed the cracks initially. When she woke up, all she did was scream and try to yank herself free. She screamed for help. She screamed for her parents. She even screamed for her little brother, Nate, not that he could have helped her.

      And she pulled so hard at the restraints on her wrists that when she looked behind her, she could see the drops of blood where they had dug into her skin and dripped onto the ground.

      It was around that time that she noticed she wasn’t wearing her own clothes. Someone had removed them and replaced them with a sleeveless dress that went to her knees. It was clearly homemade, stitched together unevenly.

      Beyond that, it was rough and scratchy, as if it had been made from several burlap sacks. If she wasn’t so sore, she’d be totally focused on how itchy she was. She refused to think about how she had actually gotten from one outfit into the other.

      After she had worn herself out from screaming and yanking and the adrenaline had faded from her system, she tried to remember what had happened to her. The last thing she could recall was riding her bike up the big hill on Rees Street, when she’d felt a sudden sharp pain in her back. It felt like the electrical shock she sometimes got from touching a metal door handle after walking on a carpet, only a hundred times worse.

      And that was it. The next thing she knew she was in this room that was only lit for about six feet around her before it collapsed into darkness. She no idea of its dimensions but she was pretty sure the walls were made of the same asphalt as the floor. When she yelled, it sounded muffled, as if no sound could escape the room.

      And her back hurt, not in the way all of the rest of her hurt, which was mostly an ache due to being stuck in the same position for so long. There was one particular spot on her back that felt burned.

      In fact, it was the same spot where she’d felt the pain earlier. The more she thought about it, the more Jessica suspected someone had poked her in that spot with something like a cattle prod. She remembered reading about them

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