Hunter/Prey

Chapter 18

The state police had its own stretch of land just off the main highway, with the closest town more than ten miles further down the road. The unremarkable one-floor building housed fifty or so troopers that worked the three shifts and would have been easily missed if not for the brightly-lit parking lot and spotlights along the outer walls.

Beckard knew the building intimately, including where to enter without being seen and how to leave in the same manner. He also knew that Allie was being kept inside the interrogation room in the back of the hallway, though he was surprised by the lack of a guard outside her door. Alarms went off inside his head and Beckard fully expected some kind of trap to be sprung. He stood in the narrow passageway for a good two, maybe three minutes with the Glock in his hand, listening and waiting for his fellow troopers to converge on him.

But they never did.

Finally, he decided there was no trap and went to collect Allie.

He marched her at gunpoint to the same side door he had used to enter unnoticed. The door was accessible by an access panel that he, of course, knew the code to. As she moved quietly in front of him, Beckard could picture her eyes shifting, looking for a way out — something, anything—even if he could only see the back of her head. Maybe a few hours weren’t enough to know a person, but Beckard felt as if he knew this woman intimately.

She’s just my type, too.

“Faster,” he grunted. “Remember. If I don’t get out of here, you don’t get out of here. If you think I won’t shoot you purely out of spite, you’re dead wrong.”

“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.

So be it. I’ve had a good run.

“Revenge,” he said, looking at the rearview mirror.

Her face dipped in and out of patches of darkness, depending on how thick and tall the walls of trees around them were. There was just enough occasional light for him to see her staring back at him silently.

“I’ve been wondering why Wade and Rachel haven’t called 911 yet. You told them not to, didn’t you? Convinced them somehow. Well, it probably wasn’t too hard after what I did to Donnie and Sabrina.”

He searched for the telltale signs that he was right — or at least close — but saw nothing on her face to confirm it.

“I don’t blame them. I don’t blame you, either. You spent ten years looking for me. Studying me. You’re obsessed. I know a little bit about that, too. How long have you been setting this whole thing up? How long were you out there, driving back and forth, waiting for me to notice you? A week? Two weeks? Months? It must have been months.”

The only response was her body swaying slightly from side to side in tune with the car’s motions.

“And that fancy driving you did back there, that’s some pro stuff. Someone taught you tactical driving, didn’t they?”

Did she just blink, or was that his imagination?

“Spent a lot of money, too, I bet. A lot of time and effort went into this, I can tell. You didn’t even go to the cops with what you knew. Or thought you knew. I’m guessing you didn’t have anything concrete, but you had a lot of guesses. A lot of maybes. Then, of course, there was that shotgun in the trunk.”

She might have smirked. Or was that just the movement of the car again?

“But your biggest mistake so far? You should have let the college kids call 911. Instead, you dropped the ball. Call it overconfidence. Either way, it’s going to cost you.”

“You think so?” she said.

Finally.

He smiled. “Who’s the one sitting in the backseat of a police cruiser?”

“We’ll see.”

“You got a plan? I know you have a plan.”

She clammed up again.

“Of course you do. It better be a good one, cause this might just be the last time you get to breathe fresh air.”

He slowed down before easing off the dirt road and onto a narrow hiking lane. Overgrown grass slapped at the sides and brush scraped against the undercarriage of the cruiser. He dropped the speed to ten miles per hour until he was moving almost at a crawl. It couldn’t be helped; this part of the wood, even more so than the previous stretch, was potentially treacherous.

“I admire your persistence,” he said. “Ten years. Of course, you could say I’ve been doing this for just as long. So we have that in common.”

He expected (wanted) the back-and-forth to continue, but she apparently decided not to respond to his latest volley.

“Except I’ve been far more successful,” he grinned.

Nothing.

“What did you do while you were preparing for this? Secretary? Lawyer? You look like a lawyer. You definitely worked in an office, I know that for a fact.”

She was looking out the window at the passing trees.

“Fine. Be boring.”

He drove on in silence for a few more minutes before making a final turn and coming to a complete stop in the middle of a rough clearing. He put the Crown Vic into park and turned around in his seat.

She was staring back at him.

“Is it everything you thought it would be?” he asked.

She looked past him for a moment. “What am I looking at? Your invisible lair?”

“Look closer.”

“I am.”

“Closer.”

“You’re delusional,” she said. “There’s nothing there.”

“Oh, but there is,” he said, beaming now. “Home sweet home. The best part? They’ll never find you out here, and I’ll be able to play with you for as long as I want, however I want. Won’t that be nice? Well, for one of us, anyway…”