bit back the rage she wanted to hurl at him. Alyssa Powell had been his last victim. The one he’d brought from Georgia and dumped in the Montgomery Police Department’s jurisdiction.
“We’re going to have so much fun together.”
Look at him, Bobbie! Commit his features to memory. Brown hair and eyes. Soft jaw, narrow nose. Five-ten or—eleven. One-seventy or—eighty pounds. Late thirties. No noticeable facial scars or moles.
“We should go,” the bastard said. “That kid of yours has probably alerted the neighbors, who will no doubt call the police. They’ll surround your lovely home and make our escape problematic. Can’t have that.”
This was it. He was taking her.
Wait...where was James? Her heart threatened to burst. Please, please don’t let him be dead.
“Be a good girl now.”
The blade moved a fraction of an inch from her throat and she snapped into action, ramming her knee upward. He pivoted. She nailed his hip instead of his groin. Damn it! She clawed at his eyes. The blade slid across her forearm, slicing through the sweatshirt and her skin. She screamed and punched him in the face with all her might.
He grabbed a handful of her hair before she could twist away and slammed her head against the island’s unforgiving granite countertop. Pain split her skull. Her muscles went lax. The warmth of urine spread down her thighs.
She was falling...falling. Her body crumpled to the tile. She blinked, her vision narrowing.
Suddenly she was moving again. He was dragging her by her arm...moving toward the side exit to the garage.
Leaving.
James...where was James?
Her lids drooped lower, almost closing, but not before she saw her husband on the floor...his beautiful gray eyes wide open, frozen in fear...his mouth slack.
The tile around him was no longer white. It was the blackest crimson.
Saturday, December 25
Pain.
Bobbie’s eyelids tried to flutter open, but she couldn’t bear the pain of opening her eyes.
Where was she?
Think! It was snowing. Her lips tried to smile. A hot sting tore at her mouth. Her tongue darted out. Busted lip.
What was wrong with her?
Was it Christmas yet?
Jamie.
A frown furrowed her brow, making her head throb and sparking little pinpoints of light behind her lids. What was wrong with her head?
Had James put out the presents from Santa yet?
Jagged images of white tile and black, flowing crimson flashed in her head. Unblinking gray eyes staring at her.
Desolate screams echoed in her ears, burned her throat.
Bobbie snapped her eyes open and listened. She was the one screaming.
James was dead.
Sobs thickened in her throat. Her husband was dead. The bastard had killed him. She tried to move. Couldn’t. Where the hell was she?
The memory of her body sliding on the cold tile floor, her head hanging like the last pearl on a broken strand, and her arm feeling as if it was being pulled from its socket bobbed to the surface of her confusion.
The Storyteller.
Bobbie yanked at her restraints. More of those screams that welled up from deep, deep inside her reverberated in the air. This couldn’t be happening. Nooooo! Agonizing sobs shuddered through her for long minutes. When she could cry no more, she struggled to pull herself together.
Think! She licked her dry and damaged lips.
What about her baby? A wail rose up from the farthest recesses of her heart. Was her baby okay? Hot tears slid down her face. She had sent him to the neighbor’s house for help. That kid of yours has probably alerted the neighbors, who will no doubt call the police.
Focus, Bobbie. She had to get out of here. Her baby needed her.
Carefully, she moved each limb, tugging and pulling in all directions. She was tied to a flat surface that was not completely rigid. She rocked her body as best she could. The squeak of metal against metal accompanied her movements and the cold, crisscross pattern of it dug into her skin. A minute was required for her sluggish brain to analyze and determine that her restraints confined her to a narrow, probably portable bed, like a cot.
Look around the room and get your bearings. Dim lights. Wait. No. There was no light fixture on the ceiling. There was no ceiling, really, just wood beams and boards. Log walls, too. Rustic. Cobwebs hung here and there as if no one had lived here for a very long time. There was one window. Small. Feeble light filtered through the grimy panes. A hunting cabin, she decided. Deep in the woods probably. Met the criteria of the Storyteller’s MO. She squeezed her eyes shut and thought of all the briefings she had attended, all the crime scene reports, the medical examiner files.
Not one of the Storyteller’s fourteen known victims had survived.
She was going to die.
Her body started to shake. Who would take care of her baby? James was dead. Another sob quaked through her trembling body. Her parents were gone. She had no siblings. James was an only child as well. He’d been adopted at five by an older couple who were retired and spent the better part of the year in a senior community in Arizona.
Jamie needed her. There was no one else.
She could not die.
Renewed determination expanded inside her. She knew this bastard’s MO frontward and backward. He would spend the next three to four weeks torturing her. Images of the other women—battered, raped and mutilated—flashed before her eyes. She squeezed them shut. No looking back. Near the end of his ritual, he would begin what he referred to as his victim’s story. He tattooed their responses to his torture and their pleas for mercy on their backs before strangling them to death.
The nylon rope around her neck abruptly filtered into Bobbie’s consciousness. Like the others, she would wear it like a too-tight, braided necklace until he was ready to finish her off. And then, in order to preserve his prized masterpiece for all to see, he would dump her body in a public place where she would be found quickly.
Except Bobbie wasn’t going to die. She would not allow him to win. Fury simmered low in her belly. She closed her eyes and shut out all stimuli. Ignore the pain and the fear, Bobbie. Just listen.
Something—a branch, maybe—rubbed at the cabin. Definitely in the woods, she decided. The wind whistled softly, building to a weak howl now and again. The cabin wasn’t insulated, allowing the wind to whip through any cracks. Quiet splats told her snow was still falling. The meteorologist had warned
