CHAPTER 16
The two women came out the door hesitantly, Emily spotting Grady almost immediately and throwing herself into his arms. Randi was caught up by a uniformed police officer and comforted as he spirited her away from the door.
Joe Landon stood next to Dante. He wiped his sweaty brow as he said, “Thank God. Two of them are safe. Hostage negotiators and the SWAT team are en route now. It’s going to take another fifteen minutes or so. There’s nobody local. I can act as the negotiator, but the bastard doesn’t seem to want anything other than for us to back off. He’s not making any demands.”
Emily pulled herself from Grady’s fierce embrace and grasped Dante’s arm, still panicked. “She doesn’t have fifteen minutes. He’s going to rape her and then kill her with a huge knife. He’s not who you think. There’s some Windy City Carver who raped and killed women in Chicago, and then he killed more women while he was on the run. He’s not an enraged father or husband like we thought. He’s a psychotic rapist and murderer. He’s angry because Sarah blew his cover when he tried to kill her after his son died. He isn’t just holding her hostage. He wants her to die.”
The Windy City Carver? Impossible.
Hell, there wasn’t a police officer in the country who didn’t know about the Carver. Still an unsolved mystery in Chicago, the bastard had been responsible for the rape and murder of over a dozen women in the past decade. “Are you sure?” Dante asked Emily urgently, not wanting to believe that Sarah was the prisoner of an insane sociopath like the Carver. But strangely, gut instinct was screaming at him that Emily was speaking the truth. There hadn’t been a Carver victim in Chicago for quite some time, and the intervals between killings were usually pretty much the same. Once he’d stopped killing for much longer than he usually did, many had assumed that he’d died or fled.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Emily sobbed. “When Sarah confronted him, he admitted it. Dante, she set herself up as bait, telling John Thompson he could rape and kill her easier if we were let go. She knows she’ll never get out of there alive. We have to do something. She said to tell you that she’d keep him talking as long as possible. But he’s not going to wait very long. He’s too nervous.”
“We have to wait for backup,” Joe said firmly.
Wait for backup. Wait for backup. Wait for backup.
In a perfect scenario, waiting for backup was protocol. But this wasn’t really a hostage situation, and Sarah had no time. Waiting for backup was exactly what Dante and Patrick had been doing when his best friend had been killed, and waiting for backup hadn’t worked out well for his partner. Dante had been trying to formulate a plan, but Joe had told him that they had to wait for SWAT to arrive. Granted, they had heavier armor, but it wasn’t going to do Sarah any good if she was already dead. Thompson was the goddamn Carver, and unstable as hell. If Emily said they were out of time, she meant it.
Fuck that! I’ll go it alone. Sarah’s not dying because we’re waiting for backup.
He shook off Emily’s hold and walked out the main entrance without looking back. There was no way he was waiting another goddamn minute. If Joe felt he needed to wait for backup, then Dante was on his own.
The Windy City Carver.
A cold chill flooded Dante’s body as he moved around to the side of the building. The Carver was one sick bastard and left his victims in nothing but pieces. Dante couldn’t stand the thought of anyone touching Sarah, much less her being in the same room as that sick, twisted bastard.
A cloud of red was starting to form over his vision, but he pushed it back. Right now he needed to be as cold and calculating as the killer inside the building with Sarah.
He and Joe had assumed that John had been lying in wait somewhere, but Dante had checked the room before he brought Sarah in. Granted, maybe somehow he could have missed some small hiding place, but his gut instinct was telling him something different, that there was a point of access they didn’t know about. He’d checked every damn inch of that area.
He drew his Glock as he approached the area outside where Sarah was being held, immediately noticing the high window with broken glass, a space that would be damn hard to get his big body through. That window had been the point of entry. It was high, and the window was small, but the asshole had somehow managed to break the window and gain entry to the tiny bathroom attached to the room where Sarah had been playing. Most likely, Sarah’s music had drowned out the sound of breaking glass, and after that it had just been a matter of waiting for his opportunity.
There was no window on the inside.
Dante remembered checking the bathroom, and the window hadn’t been visible from the interior. The entire small bathroom had been wallpapered. The building was old, and obviously someone had done the cheapest job possible to make the bathroom look better before Grady had taken over refurbishing the center. Grady hadn’t gotten to the music room yet.
Why bother working around the tiny window when it could just be covered with a board and some wallpaper?
“Fuck,” he whispered harshly. Dante shoved the Glock back into his waistband and reached up for the windowsill. Just as he was about to pull himself up, he was yanked back down midjump.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Jared asked furiously, pulling Dante’s arms away from the window.
“Back the hell off. I don’t have time. I’m going in,” Dante growled at his brother.
“Backup is coming,” Jared reminded him heatedly.
“Too late. I need to take this guy down now.” Dante yanked his arms from Jared’s grip and turned to face his brother, ready to coldcock him if he needed to. “This bathroom is attached to the room where he’s holding Sarah. He came in through this hidden window in the bathroom. You can either help me or get the fuck out of here. We’re out of time.”
Jared gave him a stormy look, but answered, “You’re going to end up getting yourself killed.”
“I don’t give a shit. If something happens to Sarah, I might as well be dead. If she dies, I die with her.” He’d never be a functional human being again. They’d have to put him in a straitjacket and haul him away.
“Shit! Fine. What do you want me to do?” Jared answered, sounding frustrated. “I can follow you in.”
“No,” Dante answered harshly. “Go back inside. Find somebody with a key to the door and see if you can unlock it without making a lot of noise. I might need backup if I have to go hand-to-hand with this asshole. Listen at the door. You’ll know it’s time once you hear a scuffle or gunshots. Before you do anything else, get Sarah the hell away from him. Promise me.”
“Done. Be careful,” Jared responded hoarsely. “Don’t get dead.”
“I’m not planning on it,” Dante replied, hoisting himself onto the windowsill without looking back. Jared might be a pain in the ass, but Dante knew he could count on him when he really needed him.
As Dante started to force his large body through the small space, he could hear Sarah’s eerily calm voice and the replies from the murderer.
That’s it, sweetheart. Keep him talking. Smart woman.
When he heard John starting to talk about Sarah’s scars and how much he was looking forward to doing a better job at carving her to pieces, Dante almost lost it. The moment the asshole mentioned slicing off Sarah’s nipples, Dante stopped thinking like a cop and reacted like a man.
I’ll kill the fucking bastard.
By the time he dropped quietly to the floor of the bathroom, he was running on purely primal instincts, and he knew the Windy City Carver wasn’t leaving the room alive.
I can’t let him see that I’m afraid. I need to stall for more time.
Sarah was waiting for the right time, and it wasn’t now. He had the gun pointed directly at her head and John wasn’t close enough for her to get a shot at his groin. Since she didn’t have a weapon of any kind, her best bet was to maneuver him close enough, with the weapon pointed away from her vital organs, for her to take her chance at immobilizing him. If she could disable him for even a few moments, she could get out.
Just wait to make your move. He’ll have to change position eventually.
She talked to him steadily to buy herself time, but he was getting tired of talking about himself. He had her on her feet and he’d jerked her tube dress down to her waist. Right at the moment, he was tracing every one of her old scars with the mammoth knife in his right hand, letting her know exactly how he was going to carve her up this time, while the gun remained steadily at her temple in his left hand.
“I’ll take your nipples for a reminder of how much I enjoyed slicing you up,” John told her, now sounding crazed.
Sarah flinched as the knife blade scraped over her nipples. It was sharp, and she was bleeding from a few nicks he had left when he was assessing her old scars with the point of the knife.
“I think I’ll slice your throat just enough to watch you bleed to death while I’m using you,” he decided, lifting the knife to her throat.
Sarah had just decided that she would rather die from a gunshot wound than let him defile her body while she was bleeding to death when a furious blur passed by her face.
“Like hell you will,” a homicidal Dante roared as he flew through the air, putting his body between her and John, grasping the murderer’s wrist that was holding the gun, taking John down with him.
Sarah watched in horror as both men flew through the air and hit the floor. She swore she heard the crack of Dante’s skull as it connected with the hardwood platform for the piano as he fell.
“Get the fuck out of here, Sarah!” Dante said furiously.
She didn’t. She couldn’t. Instead, she froze in place, watching in horror as John escaped Dante’s hold and rose. He ran for the bathroom, minus his gun and blade, which had been knocked to the floor.
Dante was slow to rise, and Sarah reacted on instinct as John staggered toward the bathroom, obviously to escape.
Here’s my chance.
Sarah blocked his path and lifted her knee hard into his balls. John stopped and cursed, his voice a furious, angry snarl. She’d stopped him, but she wasn’t sure for how long.
“Move,” Dante demanded angrily.
Sarah moved instinctively to Dante’s command, stepping sideways and dropping to the floor. She looked at Dante, blood pouring down his face, as he lifted his gun without hesitation and shot the Windy City Carver straight through the heart before he fell backward and collapsed.
The police burst through the door, swarming the room, but Sarah’s mind was on nothing but getting to Dante. Not even sparing a glance for the dead man on the floor, she crawled across the room until she reached her savior, and cradled his bleeding head in her lap.
“Dante,” she cried frantically. “Open your eyes.” She sought and found the laceration on his head, feeling a hematoma also starting to form on his scalp.
“Pull your dress up.” Dante’s voice was weak and muddled.
His eyes were barely open, but Sarah was relieved to see him responding. Of course, Dante’s first concern was her pulling up her dress to cover her breasts. EMTs came up beside her to help. “Do you have some sterile gauze?” she asked the female technician closest to her anxiously, yanking her dress up and over her breasts.
“We can take over from here,” the EMT said in a soothing voice as she handed Sarah some gauze.
“I’m a doctor,” Sarah informed her, gently placing the gauze over Dante’s laceration and putting pressure on the wound. It was bleeding profusely, as most head wounds did, but she didn’t like his sluggishness or the forming hematoma. “Dante?”
“Am I going to die?” he asked incoherently. “If I am, the last thing I want to see is your face. Don’t leave.”
“You’re not dying,” Sarah told him sharply. “And I’m not going anywhere. Stay awake with me.”
“What kind of injury is it, Doc?” the EMT questioned.
Since Sarah didn’t go into the hospital, she wasn’t familiar with most of the hospital staff. “Head injury. Blunt trauma from a fall. He has a hematoma forming, and a laceration. I’m worried about his mentation.” She held the gauze in place and stroked his cheek. He’d risked his life for her, obviously without permission from the local police. Had Joe been planning a rescue attempt at that moment, it would have been the local police who entered the building, and there would have been a lot of them.
“We need to do spinal precautions, Doc,” the EMT reminded Sarah.
“Yes,” she agreed with a nod of her head.
Moving back, she made room for the EMTs to get Dante on a backboard and apply a neck brace, strapping him to the board to prevent him from moving until he was X-rayed. She knew she was in no frame of mind to take care of him medically right now, and she let the EMTs handle it.
“Dante?” she called from her place near his head. This time he didn’t respond. Dante was out cold.
“Sarah?” a male voice called gently from behind her.
She turned to see Jared behind her, and he put an arm around her waist and pulled her to her feet.
“Are you hurt? What happened to Dante?” Jared asked, his expression troubled.
“He saved my life. He jumped between John and me, and they both went down. He hit his head pretty hard. He’s unconscious.” She was babbling and she knew it, but she was trying to relay information to Jared as quickly as possible.
“He must have killed the bastard first. I promised him the first thing I’d do was rescue you, but he obviously took care of that himself before he passed out. You okay? The bastard didn’t . . .” Jared’s voice trailed off, and he actually looked disconcerted.
“He didn’t rape me. And I’m okay, Jared. I’m just worried about Dante,” Sarah said tearfully, her body trembling with reaction now that her adrenaline level was down.
“His vitals are stable,” the EMT informed Sarah. “We’re going to load him up now. Do you want to ride with him to the hospital?”
“Yes,” Sarah said anxiously, looking at Dante’s face. She saw his lids flicker open and then closed again. “He’s starting to wake up.”
Jared put an arm around Sarah’s shoulders and told her supportively, “He’ll be okay. He’s got a hard head.” He hugged her tightly and used the hem of his shirt to dry the tears from her eyes. “You sure you’re okay? You’re covered in blood.”
“It’s Dante’s,” she told him as she hugged him back, knowing Jared was worried. She could see it on his face. “Head wounds bleed a lot.”
The EMTs put Dante on a gurney. “We’re ready to go, Doc.”
“It’s Sarah,” she told the EMT with a weak smile. “Let’s go.” She was anxious to get Dante to the hospital as soon as possible.
“We’ll follow you,” Jared told her huskily.
Sarah walked with the gurney to the main door, watching Dante’s face. He opened his eyes occasionally, so she knew he was semiconscious.
“Sarah, we have questions,” Joe Landon told her as he caught her arm by the main door.
“Catch me at the hospital. I’m going with Dante,” she told him firmly. Questions could wait. John was dead, and the investigation could be conducted after she made sure Dante was going to be okay. That was her only concern right now.
“He wasn’t authorized to enter the building,” Joe told her as he shook his head, his voice more awed than reproving. “He killed the Windy City Carver. I should be pissed off that he acted on his own, but the man has some balls. We didn’t even think to check the outside of the building because neither room is supposed to have any windows. We figured the killer was already here by the time you entered. He’s one hell of a cop, even if we were supposed to be waiting for backup from SWAT.”
“Yes, he is. And if he hadn’t acted exactly when he did, I’d be dead,” Sarah answered, wanting to tell Chief Landon that Dante was one hell of a man in general, but she hurried after the rolling gurney, not wanting Dante out of her sight.
She clambered into the back of the ambulance, and sat at Dante’s head. His eyes were open again. “Dante? Can you hear me?” Sarah left the exam to the EMTs, knowing she was too emotionally involved to be taking care of Dante medically. Right now she wasn’t a doctor. She was a woman who was tormenting herself about whether or not the man she loved was going to be okay.
“I hear you. Are you okay?” Dante pulled at the restraints on his body that kept him from moving around. His voice was suddenly frantic. “Did the bastard hurt you?”
Sarah put a hand on his shoulder. “Stop fighting. I’m fine. He wasn’t able to do anything other than touch me. You can’t move around right now until you get some X-rays.”
“Thank fuck,” Dante muttered, sounding relieved as he stopped fighting the constraints on his body. “Is the asshole dead?”
“Yes. You killed him,” Sarah replied, knowing it was Dante’s pure stubborn determination that had allowed him to shoot before he succumbed to the blow to his head.
Dante’s brows drew together in concentration. “I remember. I told you to get the fuck away from him. You stopped him with a kick to the nuts. Goddammit, you were supposed to run.”
“I had to do it,” Sarah confessed. “My anger at what he’d done took over, and I wasn’t going to let him get away and live in fear again. I didn’t want him to ever take another woman’s life. I already knew you were injured, and I was pissed.” It felt good to actually say that. She’d acted totally on emotion, something she had never done before she met Dante.
“It worked. But don’t ever do that again,” Dante said grudgingly. “Jesus, he was even more sick and twisted than I thought. Did he really admit to being the Windy City Carver?”
“Yes. When he was talking about the women he raped and killed in Chicago, I figured it out before he even told me. You were right. If a man has the capability to murder, it’s already there. His attack on me didn’t just happen because his wife and Trey died. He was furious because he didn’t have the cover of being a working family man anymore. He didn’t really care about either of them at all.” Sarah’s heart grew heavier when she thought about poor Trey and his mother.
“Completely sociopathic,” Dante replied angrily.
“He was,” Sarah admitted. “He wanted me dead when he caught me in the stairwell. If not for a couple of coincidences, I would have been. If not for you, I would have ended up dead this time. He was ready to cut my throat. I’d just decided I’d rather fight and die by a gunshot wound than let him rape me as I was dying.”
“Fuck. That thought will haunt me forever,” Dante answered savagely.
“No, Dante. It wasn’t meant to torment you. I wanted you to know that you’re the bravest man alive, and you saved my life. It’s just killing me that you were hurt while you were doing it. Again. You just healed.”
“My head hurts like a son of a bitch,” Dante admitted. “I must have hit something.”
“You did. You cracked your head on the stage platform when you grabbed John. I’m worried,” she admitted, running a hand down his cheek lightly. “You were unconscious. I don’t even understand how you stayed coherent enough to shoot him.” Really, she shouldn’t be surprised. Just weeks before, after taking several bullets himself, he’d managed to accurately shoot the man who had killed his partner. Dante was an extraordinarily stubborn man, and she’d never complain about that again. That sheer bullheadedness had saved her life.
He grinned up at her. “Don’t worry. I’m hardheaded,” he answered, amusement in his voice.
“That’s what Jared said.” Sarah smiled weakly back at him. She was still worried, but her heart was lighter from seeing him coherent.
“Bastard,” Dante mumbled.
Sarah’s smile grew larger. Obviously it was okay for Dante to be self-deprecating, but he didn’t like hearing it from his brothers. “He was trying to be supportive. I was freaking out a little.”
“You? What happened to my logical and rational woman?”
Sarah wanted to tell him that she hadn’t been sensible since the moment he’d come crashing into her life, and she’d gotten more emotional every day since then. “I think you ruined me.”
“I was scared, too. I was afraid I was never going to see your beautiful face again. I need to touch you,” Dante told her in a husky voice, his eyes tracking over her face.
Still stroking his hair and touching his face, she understood his need, but she replied, “You can’t move right now.”
“Then kiss me,” he demanded grumpily.
Sarah glanced at the EMT and the woman smiled. “I’d kiss him,” she informed Sarah with a wink and a shrug.
Leaning over, making certain she didn’t touch anything except his lips, Sarah fitted her mouth to his in a gentle embrace. Her heart squeezed inside her chest as he kissed her back like she was the most coveted woman on earth.
Pulling back, Sarah watched Dante as he closed his eyes and fell asleep with a satisfied smirk still on his face.
“We’re here,” the EMT told Sarah as the ambulance came to a stop. The woman jumped out at the emergency entrance, the driver joining her so they could pull Dante from the vehicle.
Sarah followed Dante without a thought, never leaving his side as they wheeled him into a room in the emergency department.