Chapter 25
SHANE SLAMMED HIS CAR into park in front Tina Vallen’s house. Jones had said he was five minutes behind. Shane wasn’t going to wait, considering Kara’s car was just across the street and she was nowhere to be found. He reached for his weapon just as his phone rang. He glanced at the screen and recognized the number.
Kara.
“Where are you?” He stepped from the vehicle, phone to his ear, weapon in hand.
“Kara? She’s right here,” Tina said. “Come to the front of the house.”
He took a controlled breath as he eased his way toward the front door. “Where’s my son?”
The curtain in the large picture window to the right of the door slid open a few inches.
“He’s safe,” she said. “But I’d put that gun down or I’ll shoot Agent Martin.”
Tina drew back the curtain, showing the back of Kara tied to a chair, her head slumped to the side, a gun pressed against her temple. Kevin was only inches away.
“You don’t want to do this.” Shane holstered his weapon, raising his hand to the side. “Let them go and then we can negotiate—”
“No,” Tina said. Her hand held the weapon with a steady grip. “I see your partner just rolled in. Better tell him to stay back.”
Looking over his shoulder, he held his hand up. Jones stopped in the middle of the street.
“Smart man,” Tina said. “Now back away and keep your people out of my house. Anyone comes in, I’ll kill Kara.” Tina pushed the gun, forcing Kara’s head to the side.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. If he made a move and Tina pulled the trigger, Kara had no chance. Based on the angle of the shot and the chairs, the bullet would most likely hit Kevin.
“What do you want?”
“Right now, I want you to back up. I’ll call you back in twenty minutes.”
The curtain closed. He stood there for a long moment, his hand hovering over the butt of his gun. His pulse beat out of control. The urge to storm the house, grabbing Vallen’s neck with his bare hands, was so strong it took every ounce of energy he had to turn and walk toward Jones. Sirens echoed in the distance, growing stronger.
“She’s got both Kevin and Kara,” Shane said, now standing behind Kara’s SUV, his forefinger itching to feel the trigger of his Glock. “Both tied up in the front room. I’m sure she’s watching us, and if we try to get in the house she’ll shoot Kara and kill Kevin with the same shot.”
“Fuck,” Jones muttered. “Let’s clear these houses and barricade both ends of the street.
“She’s calling me back in twenty. We’ve got to figure out how to get in there before that.”
“We will,” Jones said.
Shane rested his hand on the hood of Kara’s SUV and sucked in a deep breath. “I’ve got a plan.”
“No, you don’t,” Jones said.
“We go one street over, both of us entering through the back door. Catch her by surprise.”
“We don’t know the layout of the house,” Jones said.
“We don’t need to. We just need to draw her from the front room. You know it could work.”
“Could,” Jones repeated. “But it’s too risky and you know it.”
“I’m not going to stand around here and do nothing.” Foster and the SWAT team had arrived. They were currently exiting their van, one of them pointing at various things while others leapt to action. Shane took a step in their direction, but Foster stepped in his way.
“You need to stay out of this.”
“No fucking way.” Shane took a few steps sideways.
Foster put a firm hand in the center of Shane’s chest.
He glanced down. “Get out of my way.” Shaking himself free he pushed forward, but was given a good shove back. “Jones and I have a plan.”
“You’re not going anywhere near that house,” Foster said. “You need to sit this one out.”
“That’s my fucking son in there.” He glared at Foster as heat rose from his toes to his face.
“And my partner’s in there, too,” Foster said. “SWAT is going to cover the house; they have a green light to take the shot, if they have one. Until then, we need you to talk with the hostage negotiator.”
“Right. Because that’s going to stop that psycho from killing Kevin and Kara,” Shane muttered as he followed Foster to the SWAT van. The sound of the helicopter overhead only added to the gripping pain pulsing at his temples. He stared at the house as he leaned against the van.
“You talked to the woman holding your son and Agent Martin?” Tillman, the hostage negotiator, asked.
“I did.” Shane scanned the area as various SWAT members situated themselves in key locations, trying to get a visual inside the house.
“No demands?”
Shane shook his head, forcing himself to concentrate on the case. “We believe she’s the Butterfly Murderer. We have six dead. All had a different organ transplanted. All within the last eight months. All on a Thursday.”
“I’ve been told your son had a transplant.”
“On a Thursday, a little over six months ago,” Shane said. “Just moments before my son was abducted, it came to our attention that Tina’s daughter died the day of my son’s transplant.” His voice trembled. He kept his hand firmly planted on his weapon, his forefinger tracing the side of the cold metal. Fear and anger were a dangerous mixture. Fear and rage were worse.
His anger bubbled toward rage, and if something didn’t happen, and quick, no one was going to be able to stop him from going in.
“We’ve also found out,” Foster began, “that Vallen’s ex-husband donated all her organs.”
“So, it’s possible Vallen’s daughter could have been the donor for your son’s heart?
“That’s the working theory,” Shane said. “We don’t know if she’s trying to rebuild her daughter, or taking the lives of people she believes should be dead. The profile on this is split right down the middle.”
“Could be a bit of both,” Tillman said. “When did she say she’d call back?”
“Should be any minute now.”
* * *
Kara’s vision continued to be blurry and her mind remained a tad on the foggy side, but she didn’t need to be fully alert to understand the gravity of the situation. She scanned the room, but didn’t see Vallen.
“Where’d she go?” she whispered to Kevin.
“I don’t know,” he said softly. “Are you okay?” His voice quivered.
“I will be once I get us out of here.”
“This might help.” He shoved his hand toward her, holding out a pocketknife that he placed in her bound hand.
“How did you get it out of your…where did you get this?”
“Don’t tell Dad I had it. I’m not supposed to take it to school.”
Kara tried not to smile, but it was impossible. “Sit back down and keep that rope around your wrists so she doesn’t know, okay?”
He nodded.
“Try to let me do all the talking; if I tell you to do something, no matter how scared you are, do it.”
He nodded.
She continued to fiddle with the small knife, scanning the room, assessing what she’d do once her hands were free. Footsteps echoed from the right side of the house, so Kara had to slow her process down as Vallen entered the room.
“I never wanted it to come to this,” Vallen said, waving the gun in the air.
“How did you see this ending?” Kara blinked a few times, glancing toward Kevin, who kept his eyes wide and locked on her. His chest heaved up and down with his labored breath.
“Had you not shown up,” Tina said, “I’d be reconnecting my daughter with her heart.”
“But why kill all the others?” Kara knew she had to keep Tina talking. Explaining. Buy some time as she continued to work her hands from the rope tied around her wrists. “We got the donor lists, and the others didn’t have your daughter’s organs.”
“Perhaps,” Tina said. “But it wasn’t just about her organs. It was about removing what didn’t belong to those people. Fate dictated their time was up.”
“Wouldn’t fate say the same about your daughter?”
Tina nodded. “But I didn’t get a say in what happened to her body. She was kept alive for hours as they harvested her organs. They had no right to do that.”
“You were her mother. You had a say.”
“Not that it’s any of your business,” Vallen narrowed her stare, “but her father had both physical and legal custody, stripping me of all my rights as a parent to make any decisions about my daughter. I barely got to see her.”
“That seems a bit drastic in today’s world.” Kara hadn’t had a chance to go over Vallen’s file once they had made the connection, so she was totally flying blind. The clock was ticking and she needed to slow it down. “How did he manage that?”
“According to him,” Vallen said, her voice laced with venom, “I willfully violated his legal custody rights so many times that it wasn’t considered an isolated incident. He said I continually denied him his rights as a father after our divorce, which was a crock of shit. By the time my daughter was three, he’d stolen her from me.”
“Did you fight him?” Kara kept her voice as sympathetic as she could. “It’s rare courts strip parents of all custodial rights.”
Vallen laughed. “The courts didn’t understand what a horrible and abusive father he was, and actually handed down court orders that he’d have her half the time during the first custody hearing. That wasn’t going to happen.”
“You ignored the court order.” Kara felt the rope loosen around her wrists. “What about the abuse? You weren’t able to prove it?”
“Worse,” Vallen said. “He was able to make the courts believe I made it up and that I was the one who posed a threat to my daughter.”
“I’m so sorry,” Kara said. “That had to have been very difficult for you.”
Vallen nodded, but she kept her gun pointed at Kara’s head. “Acting like you care isn’t going to help you. I’m still going to kill you.”
Vallen pulled up a chair and sat across from Kara, gun pointed at her head, cell phone in her lap. Out of the corner of her eye Kara could see Kevin, sitting stoic and brave, but his little body trembled slightly.
“I was working when they brought my daughter to the emergency room,” Vallen said. “She’d been hit by a car. Her stupid father let her walk everywhere. Never protected her from anything. I tried to fight the organ harvesting once I realized there was no saving her, but he had all the paperwork at his fingertips, and hours later Kevin got his new heart.”
“You don’t know for a fact that Kevin has your daughter’s heart.”
“Do you know how many heart transplants are done in this country per year?”
Kara shook her head.
“Somewhere between ten and thirty. I’d say the odds are pretty damn good he’s got my baby girl’s heart. I intend to take it back.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Kara said, swallowing the bile rising in her throat. “You let us go and I can make sure you don’t—”
“I can’t let you go.”
“You know this place is surrounded now. You’re not getting out of here alive if you kill us.”
“Maybe I don’t care.”
“What about your daughter’s heart? How can you get it back if they kill you first?”
“The point is to make sure her heart stops beating.” Tina laughed. “I need to call Shane.”
Kara continued to work the small dull knife through the rope while Tina made her call.
“You want to see your son?” Tina asked into the phone. “You’ve got five minutes to drop your weapon and come to the front door. You try anything, and either Kara or your son dies.”
* * *
Shane took his holster off his belt and handed it to Jones. “I’m going in.”
“Before you do that,” Tillman said, “we need to have a plan.”
“The plan is, I’m going in,” Shane said. “We know there’s a back door. I’ll keep her to the front of the house; send someone in and we’ll take her down before anything happens.”
“At least wear a bulletproof vest,” Jones said.
“Too antagonistic.” Shane ignored his partner’s plea. “Just get in through the back of the house.”
Jones nodded.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Tillman said, standing in front of Shane.
“I don’t fucking care.” Shane pointed to the house then stepped closer to Tillman, who had to crane his neck to look up at Shane. “My son is in there, not to mention a Federal agent. If I don’t go in, that bitch will kill one of them. I’m not willing to risk that. Now get out of my way.”
Tillman stepped to the side.
Shane shed his suit coat so that Vallen could see he was unarmed. He kept his arms out to the side, palms raised to the sky. He forced himself not to look around and concentrated only on the front door, though out of the corner of his eye he could see members of the SWAT team scurry to the other side of the house.
This had to work.
He swallowed. His pulse beat so fast his hands shook. As soon as he crossed the porch, the front door opened.
He clutched his chest at the sight of his son. Kevin’s face was stoic. His body rigid. Vallen stood behind him, gun pointed at the back of his head. Shane couldn’t fill his lungs with air. “You okay?” he said softly.
Kevin nodded.
It didn’t ease the crushing pain in Shane’s chest.
“Come on in,” Tina said, pulling Kevin by the arm. “Glad you could finally make it.”
“What do you want?” Shane scanned the empty foyer that led to the main room. His knees went weak when he saw Kara on the far end, her face bruised, eyes swollen, and a thick wad of dried blood clinging to her hair just above her ear.
“Go sit down.” Vallen shoved Kevin, then pressed her gun firmly against Kara’s temple.
Shane noticed that Tina had positioned herself in front of the window and had a good view of the back door. That wasn’t good. He stood across the room, back to the wall, facing both Kara and Kevin.
“You haven’t told me what you want,” Shane said. “I can make it happen, whatever it is, but I need you to let Kevin go as a show of good faith.”
Vallen laughed. “I’m not going to let anyone go. This isn’t a negotiation.”
“This isn’t going to end well for you.” Out of the corner of Shane’s eye, he saw Kevin’s hand on the side of chair for a brief second before he wrapped the rope around it again.
Regular Houdini.
“This isn’t going to end well for anyone,” Vallen said.
“If those cops out there hear a gunshot, the bullet storm that will come down on this house—”
“You know that’s not going to happen. Not when they have no idea who got shot. Might bring them in sooner, but then…” She raised the weapon, turning it toward Kevin. “I see the back door open, I shoot Kevin.”
“Then what?” Shane asked.
“I kill myself, leaving you to suffer for the rest of your miserable life.”
“But that’s not what you really want, is it?” He inched forward.
“Don’t move!” Vallen yelled. “Sit down on the floor.”
“All right.” He did as instructed, noticing slight movement in Kara’s arms. Then she lifted her finger, showing a frayed rope and Kevin’s pocket knife.
He forced his breath to continue, keeping his elation from bubbling to the surface.
“Put your hands together.” Vallen stood over him. She moved the gun from Kara’s head, pointing it at Kevin while she sidestepped and removed some rope from the mantel. She dropped the rope onto his lap. “Hold one end in your mouth, the other with one hand, and twist it around your wrists.” She held the gun steady. A little too steady. “Hold your hands up to me.”
“Tell me something,” he said, holding up his hands. “Why draw butterflies on the body?”
“A few reasons,” she said. “Butterflies can represent new life or hope. People who get new organs think they’re given a new life; in reality, the new life comes in death. I freed those souls.”
“Other reasons?”
“Last time I was with my daughter was four years ago at a butterfly exhibit.”
Shane swallowed, truly sorry for the woman’s loss, but it didn’t change the current situation. “What do the candles mean?”
She laughed. “The eight organs stolen from my daughter.”
“But you’ve only collected six.” Shane needed to keep her talking so Kara could finish sawing through the rope, but he also had a few questions he wanted answered.
“No,” she said, “I got my thymus last night and I’m about to get my heart.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
She tightened the rope with her free hand, looping the end to form a couple half-hitch knots. “I can show you all the organs I’ve collected. I’ve kept them in special oils so they don’t deteriorate.”
“What are you doing with them?”
“I was going to bury them with my daughter, but I don’t think that’s going to be possible now.”
“Why did you want them buried with her?”
“Because she’s not whole. Her body has been left empty. Robbed of the very things that made her flesh and blood.” She slammed his hands to the floor and stomped on them.
He winced, then groaned in pain, feeling one of his fingers snap as she pulled the rope tighter, gun still steady on Kevin.
“So, let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re going to kill Kara. Then Kevin. Then yourself. But not me.” He didn’t frame it as a question.
“Yes,” she said, still standing on his hands. “I’m going to be reunited with my daughter while you’re left here to suffer.”
“I can’t live with that.”
“You’re not going to have a choice,” she said. “But I left out the most important part.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re going to watch me tear open your son’s chest so we can watch my daughter’s heart stop beating…so she can move on to her rebirth.”
A sharp pain ripped through Shane’s temples. His own heart slowed, then raced wildly out of control. “That’s not going to happen.”
Tina laughed as she removed her foot from his hands, and bent forward, her face just inches from his. Her gun pointed toward Kara, but he noticed her aim was off just a tad.
“And,” she whispered, “Kevin is going to be alive when I do it.”
Kara gave Shane a quick nod, showing both her hands were free.
“You got that wrong.” He raised his fists with brute force, landing squarely on Tina’s nose as Kara threw herself in Kevin’s direction.
Bang!
Vallen flipped back, holding her nose, blood oozing between her fingers.
He scrambled to get to his feet, looking toward Kevin, praying neither he nor Kara had been shot. Kara had snagged the gun and then slammed Vallen up against the wall, the barrel of the weapon pressed into Tina’s temple. Blood continued to roll down Vallen’s face and neck. Dark circles under her eyes already forming from the broken nose. “This is for hitting me over the head with my weapon.” Kara smacked Vallen with the butt of the gun and she groaned, falling to her knees. “This is for threatening to kill the people I love.” She kicked Vallen in the gut.
“I think that’s enough,” Shane said while he watched his son cut through Shane’s restraints. As soon as his hands were free, he wrapped his arms around Kevin, holding him tight. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” Kevin said quietly, his shoulders shaking. His face buried in Shane’s neck. His fingers digging into Shane’s shoulders. “I was so scared.”
“We all were,” Shane said, squeezing his son, trying desperately to stop the trembling fear that still rippled from Kevin’s body. “You were very brave.”
“I thought Kara was dead when she got hit over the head,” Kevin said through sobs. “She laid on the floor for a long time, not waking up.”
“She’s awake now,” Shane said. “I think we’re all going to be okay.”
The house filled with SWAT as well as Foster and Jones. It was Foster who handcuffed Vallen and escorted her out. Shane sat on the floor, holding his son, hand pressed against his chest, feeling the pounding of his heart.
“Hey.” Kara sat down next to him. “You’ve got quite a kid. He literally saved us,” she said.
“How did he do that?”
“Well, that’s up to him to tell you.”
Shane looked at his son. “What is she talking about?”
“Don’t be mad, but I accidentally brought my pocketknife to school again, so I had it with me.”
“Had he not been able to get me that pocketknife, we’d all be dead,” Kara said.
“How’d you manage that?” Shane asked as he cupped his son’s face, checking for damage that Tina might have inflicted as he wiped his son’s tears away.
“I was able to free my hands from the rope.”
“Using the knife that you’re not supposed to take with you to school?” Shane asked.
“No.” Kevin shook his head. “I’ve been practicing escape tricks for the school talent show. Gina’s been helping me. I hadn’t been able to do it until today.”
“Without using the knife? That’s amazing,” Shane said. “How did you get the knife to Kara?”
“When Nurse Vallen left the room.”
“I was quite shocked to see him reach into his pocket and hand it to me,” Kara said. “Then it just became a waiting game. Took me nearly twenty minutes to free my hand and I think he did it in five minutes.”
“A little longer than that,” Kevin said. “I almost didn’t try it because I was afraid she’d hurt Kara more if she found out.”
“It was a brave move.” Shane kissed the top of his son’s head. “Smart to keep the rope around your wrists like that.”
“Kara told me to do that.”
He reached out and traced his finger along Kara’s chin, pulling her toward him. He kissed her temple. “I’m sorry that lunatic hurt you.”
“It’s not your—”
He pressed his finger against her lips. “Thank you for taking care of my son.”
“I think he took care of me.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I’ve got a killer headache and that bitch shot me.”
“What?” Shane lifted her head. “When I hit her?”
Kara held up her arm.
Gently, he tugged at her shirt, noting a small amount of blood. The bullet had sliced through the top part of her bicep. It wasn’t a hole, but it wasn’t a graze either. Shane waved the EMTs over, pointing to Kara’s arm. Then he tilted her head from side to side. A lump the size of a golf ball formed just above her right ear, along with a cut that looked as though it was still bleeding. Her black eye grew darker, along with a nasty bruise on her swollen cheek.
“I’m tired,” she whispered. Leaning against his shoulder. “I don’t feel too well either.”
“You probably have a concussion,” he said. “We’ll get you to the hospital.”
“Okay,” she said. “I think I’ll put in for a few days off starting now.”
“I think I’ll join you.”