Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(73)

“I appreciate your anger, Charley. You—”

“Oh, don’t patronize me. You don’t—”

“Then stop talking about your damn feelings and start talking about the facts. I spend my weekends reading about this guy. For starters, they don’t know if he is just one guy. But he’s on his way to being one of the most proficient, if not the most proficient, serial killer in American history. I mean, do you even know the first thing about him? What this guy does requires months of planning on top of some sort of medical expertise. And he’s managed to abduct both his victims from public places without popping up on a single security camera.”

“That’s not true. They’ve got him in Santa Monica last week.”

“Because he wanted them to. He’s never been caught on camera when he didn’t want to be, Charley. The guy makes the Bannings look like amateurs.”

“The Bannings killed for nine years before a deliveryman recognized me from an age-progression photo. They were not amateurs, Luke.”

“His abductions are not on camera. They haven’t even pinpointed the abduction sites. Do you realize the kind of skill and patience that takes in this day and age?”

“Ten bucks says they’ve got him on tape, and we just don’t know about it because they’re holding it back so they can eliminate false confessions. The cops did the same thing with five different pieces of evidence in the Banning case.”

“Oh my God. Is that what you just sent Bailey to do? Hack LAPD and the FBI?”

“Well, you could ask your brother, but he doesn’t discuss procedure, remember?”

“This is insane,” Luke whispers.

“You’re right, and it’s been insane for forty-eight hours, and I gave you an out, and I didn’t have to tell you about any of it, so screw you for judging how I’m handling it.”

“I’m not judging you. I’m trying to keep you from destroying what life you have left.”

“I made the choice in the middle. Just like you said. And when I’m done, there’s a very good chance the Mask Maker won’t be killing women anymore.”

“You are . . .” Luke begins, shaking his head. But instead of finishing he pulls out his phone. “Nuts,” he says as he starts dialing. “You are completely nuts, Charley. And I wouldn’t be doing right by you if I let you . . . I mean, this just . . . this has to stop right now.”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m calling Mona, and I’m telling her everything. We’ll figure something out. We’ll get you some kind of help. Aerial surveillance technology, my ass. Dylan Psychofuck is probably a lying psychopath who’s following us in a truck with some binoculars. He could be lying about everything.”

“Put the phone away, Luke.”

Instead he turns his back on her and puts several feet of distance between them.

She closes her eyes, grits her teeth, tries once more to turn anger into a trigger event. She won’t crush his face. Just his phone, and then hopefully, by proxy, some of his massive crusader’s ego. But it doesn’t work. Anger’s not enough. Rage is not enough. She needs stark terror.

Should she attack him right now? Make him fight back in a way that will trigger her? But is that worth the risk? If he does go through with this call, she can just deny everything and make Luke look like the crazy one. A betrayal, sure, but isn’t that what he’s doing to her right now?

And then the light changes and the traffic starts streaming past the library, and she sees a giant refrigerator truck with the cheerful logo of some produce company on its side round the distant corner. The driver accelerates when he sees a green light waiting for him a half block ahead.

“Hey, Phil, is Mona on duty?” Luke says into the phone.

Charlotte walks to the edge of the curb.

“Tell her it’s urgent. Is she on her cell? . . . How far? . . . No, I mean how long has it been going to voice mail?”

The truck approaches, engine bellowing, huffing exhaust.

This time it will work. Because this time it’s not a car being driven by a loved one who’s practically family. This time it’s a truck driven by a stranger. A huge truck. And maybe the driver’s late for a delivery or a pickup or a hot date or who knows what else; what she knows is he’s sitting about seven or eight feet off the ground and won’t see her if she steps in front of him at just the right moment.

The truck’s only a few yards away now. And as she studies that grill, visualizes herself stepping in front of it, she feels the tingling in her hands, the slowly accelerating drumbeat of bone music. The onset of terror.

Maybe she’ll need to break a bone. Maybe the truck will have to tear into her before the Zypraxon in her system blooms. But surely an attack from a giant, moving wall of metal will be perceived the same way an attack from a rageful human would.

Why would the terror be any different, any less effective? And maybe she’ll find out what kind of miracles Zypraxon can work on a freshly broken femur.

“Tell her I need to talk to her right away,” Luke says. “She needs to call me on my—”

“Luke!”

He spins, looks her in the eye.

“Watch this!”

She steps off the curb and thrusts one arm out in front of her.