Left To Die

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?”