Left To Die

No answer.

A third try—still no answer.

Adele rammed her phone back into her pocket and she darted forward, one arm extended as she grabbed her gun; rapidly, she gave the house a cursory scan, one last time, then broke into a sprint, back out the rear door, hopping the splintered frame and racing back through the rose garden.

“John!” she shouted into her radio, “John—it’s Porter! Porter Schmidt is the killer. He’s going after the Sergea—my dad! John!”

She reached her car, swung open the door, and spilled into the seat, tossing her gun onto the passenger side. It took her three tries with trembling fingers to jam the key into the ignition and another couple of tries, with the engine groaning, for her to realize she still had the vehicle in neutral.

Cursing, Adele put the car in gear and tried to focus on breathing, to calm herself.

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.