As for Jeff Stevens, Jean Rizzo privately believed that he was probably already dead. Holding a hostage for long periods is a complicated business, fraught with risk. Transporting one across international borders is even more dangerous. In Jean’s experience, killers like Daniel Cooper tended to stick to what they knew. Thirteen murdered women bore witness to the success of the Bible Killer’s MO. Although if anyone could push Cooper to step outside his comfort zone, it would be Tracy Whitney.
Jeff Stevens was right about Daniel Cooper. He’s in love with Tracy. In his own, sick mind, he always has been.
The bus rattled on.
JEFF STEVENS WAS CALLING for his mother again.
Daniel Cooper had heard many others do the same. It was a very common thing to do at the point of death. That primitive bond to the womb that bore us existed in all cultures. It was the love that endured to the end.
I loved my mother too. But she betrayed me.
Blood. That was what Daniel remembered from his mother’s death. Blood pouring from her wrists and neck, blood filling the bathtub and spilling onto the floor, staining the linoleum livid red.
Jeff had bled profusely too, especially when Daniel nailed his hands to the wood.
Infuriatingly, blood had spattered onto Daniel’s clean white shirt. He wanted to look his best when Tracy finally came to him. Tonight was the last night. He could feel her presence already. Her closeness. Like the scent of jasmine on the air.
Tonight.
JEAN RIZZO STEPPED OFF the bus in Plovdiv outside the Intercontinental Hotel.
His watch said five after seven.
Less than two hours. If Tracy’s here, I have less than two hours to find her. Luckily, the team is already in Europe.
He stood in the pretty cobblestone square still busy with tourists, wondering where to go next. Before he’d made a decision, his phone rang.
“Where are you?”
Milton Buck’s voice was as demanding and charmless as ever. It had been months since Jean Rizzo heard from the FBI. They sure knew how to pick their moments.
“I don’t have time for this now,” Jean said brusquely.
“I know you’re in Bulgaria. Have you already reached Plovdiv?”
This gave Jean pause. How the hell does Buck know where I am?
“As a matter of fact, I have. Not that it—”
“Do not interrogate Cooper without me. Do you understand? My team and I will be in the city by nightfall.”
“By nightfall it’ll be too late,” Jean said bluntly.
“Now you listen to me, Rizzo.” Milton Buck’s voice took on a threatening edge. “We’ve been tracking Cooper for months. We now have concrete physical evidence implicating him in the New York and Chicago jobs. It is imperative that you do not alert him to your presence, or scare him off before we have a chance to interrogate him. Is that clear?”
“Kiss my ass, Buck,” said Jean, and hung up.
He called his own team next. “Any news?”
“No, sir. Nothing yet.”
Jean thought, I’m on my own. I have less than two hours to work out where Tracy and Cooper are meeting. Think, Rizzo. Think!
TRACY ARRIVED AT THE stadium just as dusk was beginning to fall. The air was still warm and humid and she could feel sweat running down her spine underneath her white T-shirt. She’d dressed casually for tonight’s encounter, in jeans, sneakers and a light jacket. The latter meant she could conceal her gun, but it also meant that she was uncomfortably hot. Hopefully by nine the temperature would have dropped considerably.
The area around the stadium was all but deserted. Tracy saw a number of boarded-up kiosks, the kind that sell tourist crap at every “attraction” in Europe. Evidently the restoration work was expected to go on for some time, months or even years. A few people crossed the square adjacent to the main entrance, but everybody was passing through, hurrying home after work. Nobody paid either Tracy or the stadium any attention. There was no one taking photographs and no one who looked like a tourist, other than Tracy herself.
Good.
“Closed” signs had been erected around the ancient structure, and here and there some lines of yellow tape had been haphazardly stretched between dilapidated wooden poles. But no significant effort had been made to keep out any would-be intruders.
How different from the States, Tracy thought. A place like this would be padlocked and alarmed to within an inch of its life. She strolled the perimeter, looking for CCTV cameras, but there was nothing. As meeting places went, this one was both spectacular and private. Tracy grew increasingly confident that it was the place where Cooper would be waiting.
“Confident”? Was that the right word?
The truth was, Tracy felt sick with nerves. And not the sort of preheist stage fright she’d grown used to experiencing over the years. That was a blessing, a necessary adrenaline rush that hardened one’s determination and honed one’s reactions. This was different, debilitating.
Jeff’s life could depend on what happened tonight, on how she handled Cooper. And she didn’t know what to expect. Through Jean Rizzo, she’d come to know Daniel Cooper as a sadistic and remorseless killer. But she couldn’t totally shake her own perceptions of him as a weak, rather pathetic figure. She would never forget the day Cooper had come to visit her in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. His receding chin, twitching nose and wide-set, shifty eyes gave him the look of a vole, or some other small rodent. She remembered his small, effeminate hands and struggled to imagine them strangling a grown woman, let alone overpowering a man like Jeff.
And yet, she now knew, Cooper had done both of those things. Her fear returned.
Tracy had underestimated him that day in prison. She had misread both his intentions and the enormous power he wielded over her life and future. She would not make the same mistake again tonight.
By eight thirty, the square was totally empty. What streetlamps there were were widely spaced and dim, and the stadium floodlights had been disconnected. Treading carefully in the dark, Tracy glanced briefly around her before slipping under the construction tape and walking up to the main entrance.
It was quite beautiful. Masonry pillars on either side of the entrance were decorated with intricate marble reliefs. Two busts of Hermes on the pilasters were topped with vases and palm sprays, and something that looked to Tracy to be a bit like a mace, or in any event a thoroughly unpleasant-looking weapon with spikes. Everything looked as if it had been carved yesterday. She couldn’t imagine how it had remained so well preserved, with no protection and in the middle of a busy city.
Inside, the ground immediately seemed to fall away beneath her feet and Tracy felt herself to be inside an immeasurably vast structure. The space! You got no sense of it at all from walking around the perimeter. Seats made of solid marble, some decorated with lion’s claws, were arranged in fourteen rows, with steep, stepped aisles between them leading down to a circular track. Walking down through the empty, white rows, Tracy had an eerie sense of having stumbled into a ghostly and supernatural place. Inside the stadium one felt completely cut off from the world outside. It was as if she had crossed over into a different dimension, a place frozen in time and space.
Standing in the center of the arena, Tracy spun around, allowing her eyes to become fully accustomed to the gloom. Cooper wasn’t here. No one was here.
It’s still early, she told herself. She could not entertain the thought that he’d gone to Plovdiv’s other amphitheater. That Jeff might be there too, waiting for her, hoping against hope, praying for rescue . . .
She thought about calling out into the darkness but dismissed the idea. Daniel Cooper wants to meet me. He asked me to come. If he’s here, he’ll find me.
Just then she caught sight of an opening directly in front of her. Hidden as it was in the shadows, she hadn’t noticed it before. But now it gaped at her like the ugly mouth of a monster, lurking in wait. Some sort of tunnel or cave ran beneath the tiered seats. A vault? Or a passage, leading somewhere? Leading out? Leading in?
Feeling her palms start to sweat and her mouth go dry, she reached into her jacket and coiled her fingers around her gun. Then she walked into the tunnel.
It was pitch-black, and narrower than it looked from a distance. With her arms outstretched, Tracy found she could touch the walls on either side. Slowly, like a blind woman, she began to move forward, her feet alert to any bumps or potholes in the uneven ground.
If it branches off, which way should I go?
The thought of getting lost, trapped here in the darkness, filled her with profound fear. And then she remembered. My phone! How could I have been so stupid? She stopped, pulled out her cell phone and turned it on. The moment the screen came to life, the light was blinding, dazzling. Tracy saw at once that the tunnel was in fact very short, running only a few more feet. After that it forked both left and right into a long, curved corridor. Looking right, she saw abandoned machinery, including a small cement mixer and a pair of pneumatic drills. This must be the part they’re restoring, she thought. Astonishing that they don’t lock those up, or take them home at night. Anyone could wander in here and steal them.