Nowhere to Hide by Nancy Bush Read Free Book Online

finally there was utter silence.
    He didn’t like to kill them with the cord. He wanted the knife. The knife was the instrument that sang when he cut them.
    It would be different with September, but for Glenda it had been what needed to be done to service the beast. He watched her eyes dim and grow glassy. He had to fight the urge to take her one more time but he’d purposely only brought one condom. He had to be careful. When he was finished he put the used condom in the baggie and yanked up her red blouse, exposed her black bra, and started to cut. But then the neighbors came back to their apartment, shouting and screaming. Through the thin walls he heard a huge, brawling fight break out, loud enough to be heard outside.
    He couldn’t stay. Couldn’t finish. Couldn’t risk it. In a cold fury he had to sneak away quickly.
    Unsatisfactory.
    Now, he watched September’s interview in its entirety again. He reset the recording and watched it again. And again. Played it nine times, watching September Rafferty talk about the killer, acting like she knew him.
    But she didn’t know him . . . not like she thought she did.
    His gaze lifted reverently from the television to the picture on the wall above it. An underwater seascape collage of sea anemones, some clinging to rocks. Some floating, one with its center opening to him . . . beautiful. . . vibrant . . .
    In his mind’s eye he saw her lying down in the field, opening to him.
    She wouldn’t be able to dismiss him again.
    Nine . . .
    Getting up, he walked to the locked door at the back of the room, which led to a stairway and his special room. He took a key from around his neck and unsnapped the hasp, pulling open the door. There was a cot inside and a shelf above it with a box. Ignoring the cot, he pulled down the box and reverently lifted the lid, which was only locked when he brought his prey back from the hunt and tied them to the cot. He hadn’t been able to do that with Glenda, hadn’t been able to later take her outside to the fields, and he could feel the pulse of the beast starting to thrum with need inside him.
    Inside the box, the red-brown tress of hair was delicate within its tiny plastic bag. He touched it gently. The other items nestled in the box he would only touch with gloves, but his eye ran over them. Her things . . . drawings and chewed Crayolas and the All About Me book. Pictures of her childhood. A bounty that he’d discovered after much searching.
    He’d waited so long . . . had fretted during long nights that it might never happen . . . had sometimes managed to forget for a while.
    But now he knew they would be together. He knew where she worked and he knew where she lived.
    Soon, very soon. She would be his last . . . and they would spend eternity together. But not yet. The hunt was on. The beast was in his prime.
    There was much more to do before he allowed her to catch him.
    Nine . . .

Chapter 3
    September grabbed an iced coffee on her way to work the next day. The air was already hot and felt heavy with humidity at seven in the morning. Oregon rarely had serious humidity but since the beginning of the month the heat had been oppressive.
    She seriously thought about going through the back door, the one the department used to bring in those under arrest. It was generally asked that all personnel come through the front along with the general public, but that meant passing Guy, who wouldn’t know how to ease up on protocol if it clobbered him over the head, and he was such an overall pain in the ass “ruleser” that she felt like flouting authority and just going for it. Let someone call her out, if they saw her.
    But she was also fairly new at the job and didn’t have the power or clout to thumb her nose at the rules, like Auggie did. Whenever Auggie passed Guy he simply pointed at him, a silent, “Don’t mess with me, asshole,” that caused Guy much distress as he was a