Left To Die

But the trick didn’t work this time.

Adrenaline met terror and did a number on her mind, sending her into a vortex of worry and fear. A physical clot of anxiety pulsed in her chest. Her dad. The killer was going after her dad.

She thought of her norther. Ribbons of red extending from the once beautiful woman, staining the clover leaves and blades of grass, spilling into the sodden ground in the park. A tapestry of swirling scars up and down her body.

“Fuck!” Adele shouted as she ripped from the curb and nearly hit a park bench. “Dammit!” She tore up the street, ignoring a vehicle half-pulled out of the driveway. The driver leaned on his horn in protest, but Adele ignored that too and floored the gas pedal, tearing through a stop sign and roaring up the street.

She’d just been at her father’s place. Had she missed him? Would she be too late?

No. No, she couldn’t think like that. She couldn’t be too late. Not this time. Please, God, not this time…

“John!” she repeated, slapping at the radio. “Where are you?”

A buzz, some static. Then, “Sharp? What is it?” Some of the joviality had faded from John’s voice.  “Adele, are you okay?”

Tears were now streaming down her face. For a moment, Adele felt twenty again. Little more than a child, weeping at the news of her mother.

No. Not this time. Not her father too.

Still, she sobbed, trying to maintain professionalism, trying to suppress the emotions like she always did and always could. Emotions caused weakness. Emotions were distractions for an investigator.

But she couldn’t push back the kaleidoscope of horrible images now playing themselves across her brain, suggesting all the coulds and what-ifs of the immediate future. Each thought brought a new wave of emotion and a new surge of speed as Adele ripped through traffic, receiving more than one blare from a horn. At last, she remembered to flip on her lights and siren—the BKA had been kind enough to at least supply that.

Siren wailing now, blue and red flashing across the glinting windshield and hood of her car, she zipped beneath a red light, surging back onto the highway, heading in the direction of her father’s house.

“No,” she said. “John—John he’s going after my dad. It’s Porter. He’s going after my father!”

A pause. Then, a serious voice. “You’re sure?”

Her voice cracked. “ Yes, John, please—”

“Where does your father live?” he rattled off, his voice becoming colder, more calculated. The voice of a military man in the middle of a high-stakes operation.

Adele recited her father’s address from memory, her eyes glued to the road as she wove in and out of traffic.

There was a staticky buzz, then John, sounding out of breath now as if he were running, said, “I’m on my way. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“John, it’s my dad.”

“Damn it, Adele, I know.” The distant slamming sound of a car door interrupted through the static. “Just wait for me. Okay? Promise me you’ll wait.”

Adele didn’t reply. She gripped the steering wheel, no longer attempting to suppress her emotions, but stewing in them as she sped through the city, racing toward her father’s house and into the waiting arms of a killer.

CHAPTER THIRTY

She tore into the driveway, heralded by the yipping sound of the neighbor’s dogs. She flung open the car door, not bothering to close it, only pausing for a second as she remembered to grab her gun from the passenger’s seat.

She sprinted up the steps and reached the house, pausing only to glance through the windows, searching the interior of the house. But most the windows were shuttered.

Her dad was the type to shoot first and ask questions later, but Adele wasn’t worried about being on the wrong end of a hair-trigger. Had she beat the killer here? She needed to enter the house.

Porter Schmidt. Such a German name. Nothing in that name suggested he’d killed six people, and yet, though she still had yet to meet him, Adele could practically smell the murderer, like a bloodhound with a sixth sense. She knew he was the killer as surely as she knew her father’s life was in danger.

Her gun tapped gently against the window as she peered through a slat in one of the shutters—an old trick she’d adopted as a child when she’d returned home from school to make sure her parents weren’t shouting at each other before entering the house.

Many afternoons had been spent sitting on the front porch for hours, reading schoolbooks or sketching in a journal, waiting for the shouting to stop.

Now, curling up her spine with tooth and claw, came a desperate, cloying, frigid sensation that set her teeth on edge more than the yelling ever had. Briefly, she thought fondly of the shouting, wishing that some noise would echo from the quiet, darkened house.

But no sound arose.

Adele abandoned her position by the slat in the window—all she’d managed to spot was darkness. She hurried to the door, reached out, and gripped the handle.

It twisted. The door remained locked.

For the faintest moment, she thought she heard a muffled groaning sound from within the house. Was someone in pain? She eyed the door up and down, her head movements frantic. She couldn’t kick this door down, no matter how hard she tried. Her father had reinforced the front and the back door following a slew of robberies the town over.

With a snarl, Adele cast about, and her eyes settled on the porch furniture. Holstering her weapon, she hurried over, grabbed one of the hefty wooden chairs, and slammed it into the nearest slatted window. Glass shattered and spilled like fragments of starlight, twinkling as the pieces of glass scattered the porch and tumbled into the living room. She slammed the chair a second time, breaking the wooden shutters.

She would apologize later. Now, all she needed was to enter the house.

She used the chair to clear the worst of the jutting pieces of glass left in the sill. The silent alarm would have been tripped now—a call was already reaching the police station from the security system. Her father was nothing if not safety conscious. But they wouldn’t reach her in time.

It was up to her. A foreign agent in a foreign country. At stake: the only family she had left.

She scraped the last of the glass away and shouted into the house, “Dad, it’s me! Are you okay?”

This time, she was certain she heard a muffled groaning sound. She’d heard torture victims on a recording once that sounded like that.

She flung the chair aside and pushed through the window, ignoring the glass scraping at her side and against her forearm as she delicately tried to maneuver through the awkward opening.

With less grace than she would have liked, Adele tumbled into her father’s living room, avoiding most the glass and splinters of wood. Still, she could feel a trickle of warmth down her arm and a sharp, pulsing throb in her right side along her ribs.

Injuries would have to wait.

Gun met sweaty palm; iron sights surveyed darkness.

Adele, foot over foot, in a shooter’s crouch, stepped through the living room. Her feet made small crunching sounds against a few pieces of glass that had made it further along the carpet. For a moment, all she could think was where her father kept the vacuum. She needed to clean up before he saw it, or he’d let her have it for a week.

She gritted her teeth, staving off the thoughts brought on by the influence of the Sergeant’s house. The crunching sound of her footsteps gave way to quiet padding as boots met carpet. The sharp pain in her ribs still pulsed, but ignoring it, Adele stepped from the living room, swinging her gun into the kitchen.

Nothing.

Except.

The water was running.

Adele frowned at the faucet. She reached out with a trembling hand, turning the knob, shutting off the stream of hot water, which had now gone cold.

Her father would never have left a faucet running.

She struggled, desperately wondering if she should call out again. For all her father knew, someone had just broken into his house, and he was now crouched with a shotgun upstairs waiting to blow her head off the moment she popped into view.

Or, someone else was in the house.

Someone else waiting for her to make a noise, lying in wait, preparing to jab her with a needle.

If she called out in the first case, it might save her life, and save her father the trauma of blasting his only daughter in two. In the second case, though, any noise might alert the predator to her presence.

Adele maintained her quiet, moving along the cupboards, her body turned, presenting as small a target as possible toward the doorway, just as they’d been trained to do. This was her least favorite part of an investigation, but she’d drilled with weapons the same as everyone else.

She checked the safety, then slid through the door, crouched low, hoping to throw off the aim of anyone expecting someone of normal height. She kept her gun close to her chest, careful not to lead with her weapon too far in front, lest she give away her position before she had eyes on.

Again, she wished John had come with her. Some of her anxiety around weapons, around making an arrest, had been eased while with him. Back in the hotel in France, she hadn’t felt the usual anxiety. Here in Germany, with the chemist, he’d known what to do.

Coffee and a donut. She shook her head in disbelief at the radio call, trying desperately to contain her emotions in the moment, to regain her composure.

She turned up the stairs.

No one.

The steps creaked as she stepped up the stairwell. Instead of facing forward, though, she backed up slowly, one at a time, gun raised toward the banisters above, keeping track toward the top of the stairs where someone might have been watching.

Again, nothing.

The carpeted hall was dark. Pictures framed the wall on either side in neat rows. Pictures of Adele and her mother. Pictures of a life long since lost. Yet pictures kept in positions of high esteem. The air smelled of detergent and lavender.

Adele stepped past her old room and glanced in.

Her father had lied.

He hadn’t converted it into an office. Rather, her bed was exactly as she remembered it. Pink covers with pillows pressed against the headboards. Her stuffed animals were there; he’d also kept the old desk covered in the trophies she’d won at track meets. She frowned, distracted for the faintest of seconds.

There were other pictures too—pictures of the competitions in France. A shrine to his daughter’s success. But also her stuffed animals.

Adele shook her head; her father was a hard man to read.

She heard a louder, muffled groan. Her attention shifted sharply back to the moment and she pointed her gun toward the large, closed chestnut door at the opposite end of the staircase. Her feet slipped along the thick, perfectly white carpet. It took a confident man to install white carpet. Yet, there had never been a stain in the near decade Adele had lived here.

Licking her dry lips, Adele shifted past the railing, moving past a bathroom and another guest room her mother had stayed in during the last couple years of their marriage.

She paused for a moment, standing in darkness in front of her parents’ old room. Joseph’s room. She’d never been allowed in the Sergeant’s room; he’d hated the idea of a child messing around in his private space.

She felt an inexplicable surge of guilt as she reached down, slowly twisting the doorknob.

It turned.

More groaning, more desperate now.

Her heart skipped a beat, and she pushed the door, sharply, but instead of bursting in, she stepped back and dropped to a knee, allowing herself a good long look at the room before rushing into potential danger.

The door settled with a dull thump against the wall, spread over the white carpet.

In the room, in front of the neatly made bed, her father sat bound to a spindly wooden chair. His hands were tied behind his back; duct tape sealed his mouth. He was bleeding from cuts in his forehead and along his cheek.

Adele could just make out the edge of his fingers, from the way he was positioned facing the door, but turned slightly toward a window. Droplets of blood trickled from his fingertips and tumbled to the pristine carpet, staining the white beneath his chair and joining a larger stain caused by the blood seeping down his pant leg and soaking into the carpet beneath his foot.

“Dad!” Adele said, her hear in her throat.

She pushed off her knee and surged forward, rushing toward her father.

But he began shaking his head wildly, bucking and thrashing, a desperate look in his eyes she’d never seen before. He was staring at her, and kicking as wildly as he could, sending droplets off blood flying around the room, further staining his white carpet in complete disregard.

Adele hesitated for a moment in the doorway, entranced by her desperate desire to obey her father in all things, but also a sheer sense of duty to help those in danger.

Especially her parents. She only had one left.

Adele ignored his thrashing and bullishly entered the room, rushing to her dad’s side and ripping the duct tape from his mouth as quickly as she could, like pulling a Band-Aid.

Her father’s eyes narrowed as he winced, his cheeks bunched, but once the duct tape left his lips, his groaning and mumbling ceased and, in a loud voice, he shouted, “Sharp—no! Run!”

Adele heard the faintest of creaks behind her, from where the bookcase levied against the doorframe. She whirled around, gun raised. Something whistled as she ducked again, like she’d done before, and a heavy, metallic object swished over her head, rushing through her hair.

Her dad shouted incoherently.

There was a loud curse as a hooded shape swung a metal crowbar a second time, trying to crush Adele’s upraised arm. Her gun went off, but she knew she’d missed before she lurched back, avoiding the attack.

At the same time, her father kicked out, trying to trip the assailant, but the man—though not particularly large—was clearly strong.

Adele raised her gun again and squeezed off a shot, blind, still reeling. She finally managed to reset, bracing her back against the window to her father’s room, and she aimed now.

The hooded man cursed and kicked out, scoring a strike against Adele’s wrist. She grunted in pain and her gun went flying. She tried to track it, but lost it as the killer surged at her, trying to overwhelm her. Still, she might not have enjoyed firearms, but she was a trained investigator; she knew how to find things.

And while she hadn’t seen where the gun landed, she heard a quiet tick, suggesting the weapon had brushed the glass window, followed by a dull thunk, suggesting it had ricocheted off the jutting windowsill, followed by nothing further. Which meant, instead of landing on the carpet, it had likely landed on the soft pillow in the empty chair facing the window.

She didn’t have time to check this theory, though, as the killer came at her like a bat out of a flooded cave. His hood obscured most his features, but now he had a scalpel in one hand and a crowbar in the other. Adele lurched beneath the swiping blade, but this time couldn’t avoid the crowbar.

It struck her a glancing blow to the side of the head.

Immediately, she tasted iron in her mouth, and her head started spinning. Being struck in the side of the head was a lot harder to track than stories made out. It almost, inevitably, always came with a surge of shock and lost time.

Adele blinked and the killer seemed to have transported, the blow from the crowbar creating a gap in her memory. Still, she had the wherewithal to roll onto the bed as another swipe of the scalpel threatened to open her throat.

She couldn’t move too far, though; if he reached the gun, it was over.

Adele didn’t have time to look. She didn’t have time to shout out a warning. If the gun was on the floor instead of the cushion, she was dead.

But while she struggled with firearms, she could follow clues to their inevitable conclusion. The soft tick, the dull thunk, the lack of any further sound.

The gun was on the cushion. It had to be.

The killer swiped at her again, this time with the crowbar. But instead of surging back, as he’d anticipated, she shoved forward, slamming her head into the hooded man’s chest and sending him reeling into the window. Then, shooting up a desperate prayer to all listeners, she blindly groped toward the chair beneath the window, felt only cushion—horror flooded her—but then, at last, her fingers met metal.

She cried out in alarm and relief as her hand came back with her gun once more. She aimed it again, finger tightening on the trigger.

But the killer’s eyes widened in the moonlight streaming through the window. This time, he didn’t come for her again and instead, he flung himself backward, with impressive speed. Adele’s finger stiffened on the trigger.

“Shoot him!” her father kept screaming. “Do it, Sharp! Kill the bastard!”

But Adele couldn’t. The Sergeant was in the line of fire. She tried to shift, moving toward the door for a better angle, but the killer’s eyes flicked from her, to her father, and then teeth flashed in the shadow of his hood as he grinned.

The scalpel fell, descending toward her father’s neck.

The blade pressed against his throat and the Sergeant fell quiet, suddenly, swallowing.

“Hello, Agent Sharp,” said the killer in perfect German, smiling at her.

He reached up and lowered his hood, revealing his face.

Porter Schmidt had the reddest hair Adele had ever seen. Robert had been right. He also had a nearly perfect nose and sculpted cheeks. He would have been alarmingly handsome, except something about his appearance seemed a little too intentional. Though Adele couldn’t be certain, it seemed to her that Porter had booked appointments with the same sort of doctor who’d restored Robert’s once fading hair.

“Mr. Schmidt?” Adele replied, also in German, breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling in rapid motions. The man frowned briefly, and Adele noted the reaction. “We know everything about you. There are ten officers closing in as we speak. They’re downstairs. If you want to make it out alive at all—”

“Shh,” the man said, quietly, drawing the scalpel across her father’s neck and leaving a thin, red line.

The Sergeant winced and, for a brief five-second window, seemed to insert all the prohibited words he’d suppressed over the course of the year.

“Stop!” Adele said, desperate. “There are snipers just outside, and—”

“Shh,” Schmidt repeated, smiling again. Another tracing of the scalpel, and her father hissed in pain, kicking his feet.

“Stop!” she screamed.

“Lower your gun,” he said, quietly. “Please.”

Adele hesitated.

“Don’t, Sharp—shoot him. Do it now! Do it, or we’re both dead.” Her father’s voice cracked. “Don’t you—don’t you dare. Please. Honey, please. Don’t—I’ll be fine. Don’t—” This time he howled in pain as the scalpel bit deeper, dragging across his chin down to the collarbone, in the same position where John had his burn marks.

Adele dropped her gun like a hot coal. It hit the carpet with a muted thud.

“There are no snipers, no other officers,” said the killer, studying Adele. “Are there? And, please, for daddy’s sake, don’t lie.” He leaned down and kissed her father on top of his head, making a loud, smacking noise with his mouth as he did.

Her father tried to hit the killer with the top of his head, but the man was too quick. He chuckled and pressed the scalpel back to the Sergeant’s neck.

“Well?” he said, quietly. “Tell me the truth.”

Adele hesitated, then shook her head, staring at the knife. “No. I’m alone.”

“Good. Please, darling, shut the door. I want to talk. How old are you, by the way?”

Adele frowned, but, with slow, morbid movements, she reached for the door and closed it. As she did, though, with her free hand, blocking it from view with her turned shoulders, she reached up and flicked the radio receiver on, while simultaneously muting the device.

When she turned back around, her hands were both back by her side.

Anyone listening would be able to hear, but she wouldn’t be able to hear them.

The killer eyed her up and down, his gaze lingering on her radio for the faintest moment. Then, with a relieved sigh, he said, “Good. Now we’re alone.”

He collapsed into a sitting position on the bed, arm still out, scalpel still glinting in the moonlight in the dark room. The comforter flattened beneath his weight, puffing up around him and pressing against his hips.

He patted the bed next to him. “Come,” he said, “sit next to me. You look so much like her, you know?”

Adele frowned. “Excuse me?” She didn’t move, standing where she was in front of the closed door, still within view of the window.

“Elise Romei,” said the killer, his tongue poking through his lips as if savoring her mother’s name as it left his mouth. “You are the spitting image—believe me. Truly, truly,” he began to giggle, shaking his head incredulously, “this is fate.” He wagged a finger toward something on the bed.

Adele glanced over and felt her heart skip a beat. It was an old framed photo of Elise, the Sergeant, and Adele. Smiling. They hadn’t smiled much together, and Adele couldn’t even remember when the photo had been taken.

“We were meant to meet, Adele Sharp.”

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

“Romei,” he clicked his tongue… “Elise changed her name, otherwise I would have realized sooner.” He chuckled softly.

Adele glared at the man, a prickling horror giving way to a burning fury. This man, of all people, had no right to invoke her mother’s name. “Romei was her maiden name. How do you know my mother?” she demanded.

The killer winked at her, reclining one elbow on her father’s shoulder, using him like a table to prop up a weary arm. “Oh, she was a beautiful woman… I masturbated to pictures of her, you know…” Then he hesitated and frowned, as if realizing he might have said something offensive. “Not when she was alive, of course… I wouldn’t do that to a married woman.” He shook his head wildly from side to side. “Of course not. But afterwards? The pictures that were published in the papers, but repressed—they found their ways online… I have to tell you, I spent many nights—”

“Who the hell are you?” Adele demanded.

But the killer raised a hand, beckoning for her to come closer, smiling again.

With dread in her heart, but few options, she stepped over her gun, where it lay useless enmeshed in the thick carpet—stepping past her one defense—and approached the man with the knife to her father’s throat.

“I don’t understand, Mr. Schmidt,” Adele said, slowly, wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue. “You knew my mother?”

Porter paused, reaching back with the hand not pressed to the Sergeant’s throat and running a hand through his vibrant, red hair. “It’s not what you think,” he said, shaking his head, still smiling like a child discussing their favorite superhero. “I didn’t kill your mother…”

“But you know who did?” Adele’s voice rasped.

The killer frowned. “A gardener,” he said. “They called him the Spade Killer. You should know that. He honored your mother—you owe him a debt of gratitude.”

Adele rolled her fingers, clenching them into fists. She brushed her right foot back, seeking an anchor point with her gun, in case she needed to lunge for it.

The killer noticed this movement though and shook his head. He beckoned with a finger at her. “Come here. Give me your shirt and your radio.”

Adele stared at him, and the Sergeant began thrashing again, indifferent to the blade against his neck.

The killer wiggled his pointer finger, gesturing at her. “I’m serious. Come on—give them, or I open a second smile in daddy dearest.”

Adele stared over her father’s shoulder, refusing to meet his eyes.

The killer rolled his eyes. “Puh-lease,” he said, blowing air from out of a jutting lip and causing his red bangs to lift like dandelion fluff. “I’m not a perv—I just don’t want you making any inappropriate calls, and I need to check you for a wire.” His carefree tone morphed without notice and, with steel, he snapped, “Give me your shirt and your radio, now!”

He began to cut her father again, but Adele quickly ripped her shirt off, which took the shoulder radio and its wires with it. She flung both at Porter.