The Naturalist (The Naturalist #1)(94)

“Pretend to be a bear?” Seward is shaking his head. “I’m still not sure I buy your theory.”

“So, do you think an actual grizzly with a machine gun just killed those police officers?”

Glenn cuts me off. “Why do you think he’s coming for you? Revenge?”

“No. I don’t think he feels that the way we do. He said he’d kill Jillian and Gus if I didn’t do as he said. I think he puts a high value on following through on those kinds of threats. But that could be today or ten years from now. As far as I’m concerned, he wants me dead for a very practical reason—once he escapes, he wants to make sure that he can’t be found again.”

“And you’re the only guy that can do that?” Seward says derisively.

I glare at the asshole. “I’m the only guy that knew he existed. Where was the FBI during all this? Where were any of you? I had to literally drag up bodies to drop on your doorstep to prove my point. Even then—”

“Bodies you said you tampered with,” Seward cuts in.

“Jesus Christ. Are you still on that? Look around you! I made that whole thing up so he wouldn’t go after Jillian. I didn’t have a choice.”

“You could have contacted us.”

I groan. “To do what? You think Whitmyer is just playing radio hide-and-seek? The man is dead. I tried to warn him. But no!”

“All right,” says Glenn. “What do we need to know now?”

“Once he gets past the cops, he’ll probably be coming here.”

“Assuming he gets past the backup units,” replies Seward.

“He’s probably already left his house. He shot Whitmyer to draw everyone there.” I motion to the street. “The Hudson Creek cops already took off.”

“And you think he’s coming here?” asks Glenn.

“He’s coming to where he thinks I am. Here or the Hudson Creek police station.”

Seward shakes his head. “He’s not going to attack a police station.”

“How many cops do you think are there right now? One? Two?”

The paramedic steps inside and has a stricken expression on his face. “I just heard on the radio. Five down, possibly dead, including Whitmyer. They went into the house and found Vik’s wife and kids dead, too. Bullets to the head, killed in their bedrooms.”

“He did that before the cops even showed up,” I say, feeling a heaviness at the back of my throat. Guilt. “Vik probably did that the moment he heard my death may have been faked.”

“What about Vik?” Seward asks the paramedic.

“Gone. They’re not sure how. But they say he’s gone.”

“All right, we’re taking my car, the ambulance, and your car to my office,” Glenn says.

“That’s five times as far away as Hudson Creek PD,” says Seward.

“You’re welcome to hang around there when Vik shows up. I’d rather take my chance somewhere we can defend.”

Seward makes a disgusted sound. “He’s just one man.”





CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT


SAFE HOUSE

The ambulance wails ahead of us as we race down the highway toward Filmount County. Glenn drives, Seward is shotgun, and Jillian sits in the back next to me, her hands cupped around my handcuffed fists.

She’s still trying to make sense of things. “So he’s really coming for you?” she asks.

“If he thinks he can get to me, then yes. He would have killed me before, but he thought he had a perfect way to tidy things up and buy time.”

“By asking you to kill yourself?”

“Yes. I think he was expecting me to run to you if I didn’t go to the cops or do as he asked. He may have been near your place waiting.”

“Why doesn’t he just run?” asks Seward. “It’s what I would do.”

“As I said, he’s afraid that I’ll help you catch him. But he overestimates me.”

“So he comes straight at us? I don’t see it.”

“It won’t be straight. We won’t see it coming.”

“I’ll have more manpower in the next two hours than he knows how to deal with. He won’t see it coming.”

“I hope you’re right, but I don’t think he’ll go down easily. He took out the Hudson Creek cops because they underestimated him. When he comes for me, it’ll be indirect.”

“You think you know this guy?” asks Glenn.

“All I know are a bunch of numbers and equations that relate to him. Those bodies I found in the woods aren’t his only kills or type of victim. You said he ran several different businesses? Do you know who has been moving meth around your counties? How many warrants do you have out for dealers that you can’t locate?”

“You’re saying he’s a drug dealer, too?” says Seward.

“Anybody seen the two junkies that helped me find Chelsea Buchorn’s body? You think they could go this long without getting stopped for some minor infraction?”

“He got them?” asks Glenn.

“That’d be my bet. I think killing is both a hobby and a profession for him.”

“Maybe so,” says Seward, “but serial killers run—they don’t try to pull a Terminator.”