Breathing a sigh of relief, Sarah grasped Emily’s shirt and urged her up. Emily stumbled to her feet awkwardly, her eyes glued to Sarah as Randi got to her feet.
“Go,” Sarah mouthed silently at Emily, who was momentarily blocking John’s view of her.
John waved the gun at them. “Get the hell out.”
Sarah’s expression remained blank as she watched Emily and Randi slowly walk to the door, both of them glancing back at Sarah with terror in their eyes. She’d be damned if she’d break now. Emily and Randi were almost out of the room.
She watched her friends, silently urging them to move faster, eager to see them exit the room.
Finally, Randi opened the door slowly and slipped out with a final distressed look at Sarah. Emily followed, her expression a silent apology as she met Sarah’s eyes. Sarah looked away as Emily hesitated, wanting her friend out the door. Emily had nothing to be sorry about; it was Sarah who had brought this filthy murderer to their town.
A moment later, the door clicked shut, the ominous sound actually a comfort to Sarah.
They’re safe. They’re out of danger.
Her body relaxed as she accepted the inevitable for herself. She’d fight to the death now that Emily and Randi were safe, but even if she was fighting to stay alive for Dante, she wasn’t sure it would be enough. John Thompson was a madman, crazier than anyone had ever imagined.
Think, Sarah, think. What good is being a damn genius if you can’t save yourself now?
She turned back to John and started talking.
CHAPTER 16
The two women came out the door hesitantly, Emily spotting Grady almost immediately and throwing herself into his arms. Randi was caught up by a uniformed police officer and comforted as he spirited her away from the door.
Joe Landon stood next to Dante. He wiped his sweaty brow as he said, “Thank God. Two of them are safe. Hostage negotiators and the SWAT team are en route now. It’s going to take another fifteen minutes or so. There’s nobody local. I can act as the negotiator, but the bastard doesn’t seem to want anything other than for us to back off. He’s not making any demands.”
Emily pulled herself from Grady’s fierce embrace and grasped Dante’s arm, still panicked. “She doesn’t have fifteen minutes. He’s going to rape her and then kill her with a huge knife. He’s not who you think. There’s some Windy City Carver who raped and killed women in Chicago, and then he killed more women while he was on the run. He’s not an enraged father or husband like we thought. He’s a psychotic rapist and murderer. He’s angry because Sarah blew his cover when he tried to kill her after his son died. He isn’t just holding her hostage. He wants her to die.”
The Windy City Carver? Impossible.
Hell, there wasn’t a police officer in the country who didn’t know about the Carver. Still an unsolved mystery in Chicago, the bastard had been responsible for the rape and murder of over a dozen women in the past decade. “Are you sure?” Dante asked Emily urgently, not wanting to believe that Sarah was the prisoner of an insane sociopath like the Carver. But strangely, gut instinct was screaming at him that Emily was speaking the truth. There hadn’t been a Carver victim in Chicago for quite some time, and the intervals between killings were usually pretty much the same. Once he’d stopped killing for much longer than he usually did, many had assumed that he’d died or fled.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Emily sobbed. “When Sarah confronted him, he admitted it. Dante, she set herself up as bait, telling John Thompson he could rape and kill her easier if we were let go. She knows she’ll never get out of there alive. We have to do something. She said to tell you that she’d keep him talking as long as possible. But he’s not going to wait very long. He’s too nervous.”
“We have to wait for backup,” Joe said firmly.
Wait for backup. Wait for backup. Wait for backup.
In a perfect scenario, waiting for backup was protocol. But this wasn’t really a hostage situation, and Sarah had no time. Waiting for backup was exactly what Dante and Patrick had been doing when his best friend had been killed, and waiting for backup hadn’t worked out well for his partner. Dante had been trying to formulate a plan, but Joe had told him that they had to wait for SWAT to arrive. Granted, they had heavier armor, but it wasn’t going to do Sarah any good if she was already dead. Thompson was the goddamn Carver, and unstable as hell. If Emily said they were out of time, she meant it.
Fuck that! I’ll go it alone. Sarah’s not dying because we’re waiting for backup.
He shook off Emily’s hold and walked out the main entrance without looking back. There was no way he was waiting another goddamn minute. If Joe felt he needed to wait for backup, then Dante was on his own.
The Windy City Carver.
A cold chill flooded Dante’s body as he moved around to the side of the building. The Carver was one sick bastard and left his victims in nothing but pieces. Dante couldn’t stand the thought of anyone touching Sarah, much less her being in the same room as that sick, twisted bastard.
A cloud of red was starting to form over his vision, but he pushed it back. Right now he needed to be as cold and calculating as the killer inside the building with Sarah.
He and Joe had assumed that John had been lying in wait somewhere, but Dante had checked the room before he brought Sarah in. Granted, maybe somehow he could have missed some small hiding place, but his gut instinct was telling him something different, that there was a point of access they didn’t know about. He’d checked every damn inch of that area.