“Lisa?”
Riggs heard Masters clear his throat. “Yes.” Riggs remained silent. “It was her daughter, wasn’t it? This guy’s got her, doesn’t he?” Masters asked.
“Looks like it,” Riggs managed to get out.
“Where are you?”
“Look, George, I don’t think I’m ready to give you that information yet.”
Masters started speaking more forcefully. “He’s got the little girl. You two could be next, Matt. Think about it. We can protect you both. You have got to come in.”
“I don’t know.”
“Look, you can go back to her house. I’ve got the entrance under twenty-four-hour guard. If she agrees to go there, I’ll fill the place up with agents.”
“Hold on, George.” Riggs held the phone against his chest and looked at LuAnn. His eyes told her all she needed to know.
“Charlie?”
“Unconscious. They don’t know if he’s going to make it. The good news is that a medevac helicopter flew him to the trauma center at UVA hospital.”
“He’s in Charlottesville?” she asked.
Riggs nodded. “It’s only a short hop from Danville by air, and the trauma unit there is top-notch. He’ll get the best care.”
She continued to stare at him, waiting. And he knew exactly what for.
“Jackson probably has Lisa.” He moved on quickly. “LuAnn, the FBI wants us to come in. So they can protect us. We can go to Wicken’s Hunt if you want. Agents are already guarding the entrance. They think—”
She snatched the phone out of his hand.
She screamed into it. “I don’t want protection. I don’t need your damned protection. He’s got my daughter. And the only thing I’m going to do is find her. I’m going to get her back. You hear me?”
“Ms. Tyler, I’m assuming this is LuAnn Tyler—” Masters started to say.
“You just stay out of the way. He’ll kill her sure as hell if he even thinks you’re around.”
Masters tried to remain calm even as he said the awful words. “Ms. Tyler, you can’t be sure he hasn’t already done something to her.”
Her reply was surprising, both for its content and its intensity. “I know he hasn’t hurt her. Not yet.”
“The man’s a psycho. You can’t be sure—”
“The hell I can’t. I know exactly what he wants. And it’s not Lisa. You just stay out of the way, FBI man. If my daughter dies because you got in the way, there won’t be any place on this earth that I won’t find you.”
Sitting at his desk in the heavily guarded Hoover Building, with twenty-five years of high-level criminal detection work behind him, during which he’d confronted more than his share of evil, now surrounded by a thousand superbly trained, hardened FBI special agents, George Masters actually shivered as he listened to those words.
The next sound he heard was the phone slamming down.
Riggs raced after LuAnn as she stormed to the car.
“LuAnn, will you wait a damned minute?” She whirled around, waiting for him to speak. “Look, what George said makes a lot of sense.”
LuAnn threw up her hands and started to get in the car.
“LuAnn, you go in to the FBI. Let them protect you from this guy. Let me stay on the outside. Let me track him down.”
“Lisa is my daughter. I’m the reason she’s in this danger and I’m the one who’s going to get her out. Just me. Nobody else. Charlie’s almost dead. You were almost killed. Three other people have been slaughtered. I’m not involving anybody else in my screwed up, miserable, sonofabitchin’ excuse for a life.” She screamed the words at him; when she stopped, both their chests were heaving.
“LuAnn, I’m not letting you go after him alone. If you don’t want to go to the FBI, fine. I won’t go either. But you’re not, repeat not, going after him alone. That way you both die.”
“Matthew, did you hear me? Just get out of this. Go to your buddies at the FBI and let them get you a new life somewhere the hell away from all of this. The hell away from me. Do you want to die? Because if you hang around me, you’re going to, sure as I’m looking at you.” The polished facade had fallen away, shed like a snake’s skin in autumn. She was one long, raw muscle standing alone.