Into the Night(57)

“Why did he go after McKinley?” Bowen demanded. “What could have sent him after the doctor?”

“Maybe we’ll find out soon.” Her voice still had that weary tone. “After all, he likes to call you after his kills, doesn’t he? Update you. Share his story with you.”

Share his story with you. “Because in his mind, I understand.”

“Use that, Bowen. When he calls, use it.”

He heard a voice in the background, and then Macey said, “I have to go. Jonah needs me. Watch your back, got it, Bowen?”

He was still holding the phone far too tightly. “And you watch yours, Macey.” He cleared his throat. “I need you to make sure that Dr. McKinley’s office is swept for listening devices. For video cameras.”

There was a stark pause. “You found them at the cabin.”

Yes. “You were right. He was watching us. And Tucker and I...we think he may have been watching the other victims, too.”

“I’ll check Dr. McKinley’s lab and work space.” Her voice was softer.

The call ended and he stood there a moment. He fucking wanted to be with Macey right then. Wanted to make sure she was all right.

“Let’s get started on the search,” Tucker announced to the team he’d gathered. “Remember, this is a door-to-door trip. We don’t have search warrants. We’re doing a visual hunt. I want to know who is in these cabins. You see something suspicious, you report back immediately.”

The group went to work. Tucker marched toward Bowen. “I can tell by the look on your face that that call was bad.”

Bowen shook his head. “The ME just got his throat sliced.”

“Fuck.”

“He’s alive, but the perp got away.”

Tucker’s eyes glittered. “The guy is ballsy. Going into a lab—”

“Macey thinks he’s going to call me again. If he does, we have to get the bastard.” Each time he’d called, the perp had been dicking around—playing his games and leading them astray when they tried to search him out. “The guy is screwing around with us. He knows tech. He can have his phone signal bouncing from tower to tower. He has us chase our own asses while he lines up his targets.” Frustration boiled in his words.

That same frustration was mirrored in Tucker’s bright blue gaze. “Who will he come after next? I thought he was focusing on you, but—”

“We have to make him come after me,” Bowen said grimly.

Tucker’s face tightened. “I don’t think—”

“I have to push him. I have to get his focus totally on me. The bastard is already calling me. He wants to play some fucking game with me? Then we let him. We get him to come after me, not after anyone else, and when he does—” Bowen exhaled “—that’s when we get him.”

“Playing the hero—that gig can get you dead.”

“I know how to fight back when a killer comes at me.” He’d had plenty of practice. “Dr. McKinley? He didn’t. The next target might not, either. The guy isn’t stopping. He’s getting bolder with his attacks. Macey was right the hell there. He could have gone after her!”

Tucker’s gaze swept over him, lingering on the hands that Bowen had clenched in his rage. “Why do you think he didn’t?”

“Because Macey isn’t guilty of anything in his mind,” Bowen immediately snapped back. “She’s a victim, not a killer.”

Tucker nodded. “By that logic, then Dr. McKinley was a killer.”

Bowen had already thought the same thing. “He survived the attack. We’ll find out what skeletons shake loose in his closet. If there are any. The killer murdered Captain Harwell because the poor bastard didn’t stop Curtis Zale.”

“Maybe there is something that McKinley didn’t do, either.”

Bowen forced his back teeth to unclench. “I’ll get this killer to come after me.”

Tucker threw up his hands. “Why? Because you have a death wish?”

No, because he didn’t want anyone else dying on his watch.

*

“MACEY, ARE YOU all right?”

Jonah. He was back. Macey lowered her phone and glanced back at him. He stood at the end of the hallway, right near the spot that the crime scene techs were marking. The spot where she’d found Dr. McKinley.

Macey lifted her chin. “I’ve been better.” On the days when she didn’t let a killer get away.

He hurried toward her. His worried stare swept over her face, and the overhead light glinted off the lens in his glasses. “I checked the power grid. The guy made it go down—had a timer in place. He gave himself ten minutes without power. Seems there is a generator that feeds directly to the body storage unit, but everything else went down. The guy had his attack timed perfectly.” Jonah almost seemed admiring. A dangerous thing.

“We need to check Dr. McKinley’s office.” Macey turned back toward the lab—and the office in question. “Tucker and Bowen found surveillance devices at our cabin. They think the perp we’re after could be watching his victims.” She made her way back into the lab. A cop in uniform was there, and Macey cast a suspicious glance his way.

Dr. Lang said she saw a cop near Bowen’s vehicle. Was she supposed to start suspecting every cop she saw now? Maybe.