Chapter Seven

Hold On, I'm Coming

The dawn finally broke. Jordan's back felt as if it were on fire from the beating. And if her back felt badly, her emotions were even rawer than the skin on her back. The thunderstorms had come in waves during the previous night…never letting up for long…the lightning still causing the air around her to sizzle…and the thunder boom so loudly that it echoed in her mind hours after the storms had ended and the sky began to clear.

So Jordan was only barely aware of someone untying her and nearly carrying her inside the house, pulling her up the stairs to the dark confines of her bedroom. She moaned in pain as she was put down on her bed.

"Shhh….be quiet. You don't want to make John angry again, do you?" Sarah asked, frustration over the situation and concern for Jordan lacing her voice in dual tones.

Jordan shook her head and buried it in her pillow. She felt Sarah remove her shirt and bathe her back, then pull the bed covers up closely around her. "Good…then just lay here …and don't make a sound. I'll go tell him I brought you in and ask if I can give you something to eat and drink. Just…don't ever do that again, okay? Don't run. Next time…." Sarah bit her lip. She hoped there wouldn't be a next time. And there wouldn't be if she could help it. She sat by Jordan until she saw that the ME had fallen into a fitful sleep. Then rising quietly, she opened the bedroom door and let herself out.

And ran straight into John. "What do you think you are doing?" the man coldly asked.

Nothing.

For a case that had suddenly gained momentum, it had stopped just as quickly. Woody pushed down his frustration. They had a latent print. They knew who it belonged to.

They just couldn't find him anywhere.

He crossed his arms and paced his office one more time, mentally going back over everything…and came up with nothing new. He felt like screaming, or throwing something…punching the wall…anything to relieve the anger he felt. He walked back over to this desk and stared at a picture of Jordan he had sitting on top of it. The picture had been in his apartment. For years it had sat beside his bed on his night stand. First thing he saw in the morning and the last thing he saw at night. For years, he had dreamed of waking up beside her instead of the picture.

But time and circumstances had vanished that dream ... dissolving it like the sun does the early morning dew. Until lately, anyway. He had taken Lu's words to heart Keep it business…then make it personal.

Slowly, he had felt his dream began to take another breath…gain form once again. But it wore different clothes this time…it was no longer the dream of a relationship between two people who were still somewhere on the cusp of emotional adulthood. Now it was the dream of something between a man and a woman who were both ready to let go of the past and get on with living.

At least Woody hoped so. At least he hoped he still had the chance to share that dream with Jordan. But as the hours clocked themselves into days, the chances of her getting out of this situation alive were growing fewer and far between. Hang in there, he thought, picking the picture up to look into her eyes. I'm coming…just as soon as I know where you're at. Jordan, where are you?

His cell phone soon answered that question. "Hoyt," he said into the receiver. "Another one? And you're sure it's not…thanks."

Another victim. But it wasn't Jordan.

"What do you have, Nigel?" Woody asked, stepping over the yellow crime scene tape at a location barely inside the Boston city limits.

"It's the work of that whack-o again, Woody." Nigel drew down the sheet that covered the victim. "Female. Late twenties to early thirties. Shoulder length brown hair. Brown eyes. Beaten. Strangled. Heart hacked out."

Woody swallowed the nausea that rose in his throat. He was thankful it wasn't Jordan, but no one deserved to die like that….and what did this mean for Jordan's future. When would the pervert decide it was her time to die? "When will you know more?" he asked.

"After I get her back to the morgue and Bug does the autopsy. We'll be running trace and all the screens….and then some." Nigel nodded to the workers to put the body in a bag and transport it back to the morgue.

"Let me know if you get anything…anything you didn't find on any of the other five victims."

"You'll be the first…"

"Detective Hoyt!" a uniformed officer shouted. "We have something…."

Woody and Nigel scrambled over the rough terrain to get to what the officer was talking about. "It's a witness…" the officer began.

"Good…Can I ask you a few questions?" Woody said, anxiously looking at the middle aged woman by the officer's side

"It's better than that," the officer replied. "This lady took down the license plate number of the car speeding away from the scene."

Woody gave the woman an incredulous look. Of all the lucky runs….

The woman caught Woody's amazed expression. "We have kids around here that like to play outside…and often they cross these old country roads without looking. No one should speed through here…there are signs posted and everything about the speed limit and kids playing. So…I was afraid he'd hit one of the kids. I took down his license plate number and called the police…."

Jordan moaned as she felt herself being lifted from her bed. "Wake up, Cavanaugh," John's voice filtered roughly through her fever-induced dreams…"At least wake up enough to walk…." She felt herself dropped to her feet. "Come on…"

Half pulling, half carrying her, John pushed and prodded her down the stairs, through the family room and hallway….down another flight of steps. Jordan struggled with him then…she had seen women go down these steps…steps that led to the cellar. The women had gone down, but not come up again. Sarah had told her it was because John had taken them to a new "home," but Jordan had a feeling the "home" Sarah had been referring to wasn't one with four walls and a roof.

"Damn you, stop it," John hissed in her ear. "Just get down the steps…."

"No…" Jordan protested weakly…only to feel herself being propelled down them against her will. At the bottom, John caught her by the waist and dragged her across the dirt floor to a small closet. "No….." she said repeated. "I won't run away again…I promise…please…"

"It's not about that…they're not going to catch me again. They're not sending me away…" Jordan was only dimly aware of what John murmured when he shoved her in the closet. But the click of the lock on the outside of the door nearly deafened her.