The instant his movement allowed her space, her hand shot up to claw at his gloved hands. Her short nails raked his right wrist. Cursing, he squeezed harder. He didn’t want to kill her yet, only to make her pass out. A delicate maneuver.
When her thrashing ceased seconds later, he jumped up and hobbled toward the street through the far side of the alley. Uniformed police were converging from every direction. He waved to get their attention and pointed down the alley where Nina was no doubt sputtering and coughing by now.
“Man with gun,” he said, laying it on thick with the Mexican accent and making sure he sounded hysterical. “He shoot lady.”
The cops thundered past him in the direction he had indicated, guns drawn. They were not looking for a dark-skinned Latino Public Works employee. They were looking for a blue-eyed white man. Nina had seen his eyes and the skin around them all those years ago. She was supposed to take that information to the grave but had no doubt shared it with police, giving them a rough idea of his appearance. Today, he had found a way to turn what had been a setback to his advantage.
Gradually recovering his range of movement, he loped around a corner, prepared to disappear. Once he cleared the immediate area, fresh pain registered. He glanced down at the blood on his wrist. Panic bloomed within him.
Chapter 21
Nina blinked several times in rapid succession, bringing the red-haired giant looming over her into focus.
“She’s coming around,” Delaney said to the others.
Still lying on the pavement, she looked up to see a cadre of plainclothes and uniformed Boston PD officers gazing down at her. The cobwebs cleared. “It was him,” she said, her voice ragged and raw. “In disguise.” She gave a brief description of the unsub in his Public Works garb.
“Pretty damn good cover,” Delaney said. “We’ll put out a BOLO.”
“Another thing,” she said, remembering. “I scratched his wrist.” She sat up. “I got his DNA.”
“You say he looks like a Latino male now?” one of the uniforms asked. “I ran right past that guy. I remember the yellow vest. The sonofabitch pointed me in your direction.” He mashed the transmitter on his radio to broadcast the updated lookout for the suspect she had provided, then signaled to the others, who joined the search.
She patted her waist. “Oh shit, where’s my gun?” The idea that the Cipher had taken her service weapon made her head spin all over again.
Delaney slid her Glock from the back of his waistband and handed it to her, butt first. “Only one round fired.”
Relief flooded through her. “Thanks. I’m sure Ballistics will want to have a look.”
“Did you hit him?”
“I did. Center mass. He went down too.” She scrubbed her face with her hand. “Must have been wearing Kevlar, because he got the drop on me as soon as I got close enough to check his vitals.” She turned to the officer with the radio, who had remained with them. “Add that info to the lookout.”
He nodded and picked up the transmitter again.
“Speaking of gunshots, what took you guys so long?” she asked Delaney. “Did ShotSpotter pick it up?”
The briefing at the Emergency Operations Center before they took positions along the Trail had included details about Boston’s gunshot detection system, which sends out an alert in real time and rotates surveillance cameras in the direction of the sound of gunfire within the covered area.
“EOC got the notification about the weapon discharge, but everyone was heading in the opposite direction at the time. Apparently, while you and I were reading the note from the trash can, a girl’s body turned up.”
She scrambled to her feet. “Where? What happened?”
“A seafood restaurant on Salem Street near the Old North Church,” he said. “They found one of those big ice chests by their rear service door earlier this morning. One of the prep cooks assumed someone must have forgotten to take it inside after signing for it. They get deliveries of fresh fish every day, so he didn’t think anything of it.”
Disturbing images formed in her mind, fueling her anger.
“He hauled the chest into the kitchen,” Delaney went on. “They opened it to get out the fish and found a deceased teenage girl inside, tucked in a fetal position.”
Nina wanted to hit something. “Any idea who she is?”
“No ID. Naked like the others. We’re circulating a photo now to see if any of our officers have seen her around. We can’t put the picture out to the media. She looks pretty bad.”
Nina paced, dragging a hand through her short-cropped hair. “What else did I miss?”
Delaney pulled at his beard. “Media’s going nuts. One of the servers at the restaurant tweeted about the body. We’ve got the place cordoned off now, but the whole street is crammed with news crews and lookie-loos.”
The chaos had served its purpose. “I’m sure that’s what he wanted.”
“The paramedics are here,” Delaney said. “They’ll check you out.”
She took a step back. “I don’t want anyone to touch my hand until we get a forensic tech out here to take a scraping from my nails.”
Delaney gave her a curt nod. “Already on the way.”
“That’s a fairly decent contusion,” one of the medics said, eyeing her temple. “Let’s check your pupils.”
She stood still while he held each of her eyelids up in turn, flicking a small flashlight across them. Apparently satisfied, he pressed two fingers along her wrist.
While the EMT went about his business, she continued her conversation with Delaney. “I almost had him.” She tilted her head to each side as instructed. “Dammit, I should have realized something was up when I spoke to him in Spanish and he answered me in English.”
“Go easy on yourself,” Delaney said. “I didn’t think about that either. We were both kind of busy with that envelope.”
The Public Works employee disguise she had just seen looked nothing like the monster who had tormented her years ago. “I was expecting an Anglo. I must have automatically discounted him because I was so damned focused on saving whatever poor girl he might have his sights on.”
“He certainly didn’t match the description we had,” Delaney said. “Guess he put on dark makeup or something.”
She had already moved on to another thought that nagged at her. “After I blacked out, he could have easily snapped my neck. Why didn’t he kill me?”
Delaney shrugged, palms up. “Did he say anything to you?”
She recalled the feeling of his large frame crushing down on her, his lips close to hers. “Not yet, little Warrior Girl, but soon. Very soon.” Her pulse quickened as she remembered his hands tightening around her throat, the feel of his hot breath fanning her face as he whispered his parting words. “You will be mine again.”
He had made her a promise. A threat.
His words would reveal nothing about the investigation, create no new leads, offer no new insight. But they might very well get her thrown off the case if they went public. She would become the object of even more gossip and speculation, hindering her ability to work and the team’s ability to focus on leads. She would confide them to her team once they were alone, but no one else.