Kill her without any interference.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Laura spun back in the direction she had come from. The doors—they were locked to her again. She had gone outside, made the stupid mistake of falling for it. She raced back to the way she had just left, hammering all the intercom buttons again, hoping and praying that someone was stupid enough—
The door buzzed open and let her in, and she almost fell through it in her haste to get inside.
Laura thought of the killer, how he could possibly get back in. He hadn’t gone in the same way she was going now. He couldn’t have. She would have passed him there again. So, if she was him, then how…?
The same way he’d entered in the first place, of course. It had to be.
He would have doubled back along the back of the building, climbed up the fire escape, then shimmied over to the window…
Yes, in the vision he’d been lined up that way. Coming in from the room filled with boxes. Laura’s heart was almost hammering like it would burst as she took the stairs two at a time again, cursing every day in her life that hadn’t been spent at the gym, every beer or hamburger that slowed her down at this moment now. The pounding in her head became a ringing, leaving her dizzy as she spun through turn after turn in the staircase.
She reached the apartment too late. He was already there. The twin who had been on the floor was still there, but somehow she’d found the strength and the presence to fight back. They were locked together down there, a whirling and turning mess of limbs, both grunting and gasping and crying out in pain as they struggled to hit each other, to kick, to get the upper hand.
Laura held her gun in front of her. Her hand was shaking with the exertion of her enforced run, with the adrenaline, with the pain in her head. She aimed, but couldn’t fire. They were moving too much, her shot too uncertain. If she fired now she might hit the wrong one, might end up killing the woman instead—
“Freeze!” she shouted, as if it was going to make any difference, and of course it didn’t, because he had no reason to listen to her. He was already fighting as hard as he could. The knife had dropped to the floor but they were rolling toward it, rolling almost in arm’s reach…
A blur shot past Laura, almost knocking her to the ground. She stumbled, righting herself against the wall, steadying her hands. She only just managed not to pull the trigger, firing indiscriminately into the area in front of her, hitting god only knew what it would have been. When the initial flare of shock and panic was gone a split-second later she saw something unbelievable.
Something she never would have expected if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.
There were two of them.
The other twin, the one who had run—she had come back. She and her sister were both fighting him now, wrestling him down, pinning his limbs between them until he was unable to move.
Laura froze. She felt like she was back in that room. Back in the room where the smell of blood was still in her nose, where her hands were still wet with it from touching Mrs. Fallow. She felt herself frozen as she had been then, no idea where to point the gun, how to help. Watching Nate wrestle a killer, knowing that Amy was only feet away, so close she was in the line of fire. In the line of danger.
She couldn’t breathe.
In front of her, the killer still fought the twins, fought them so wildly Laura couldn’t get a chance to use her weapon in their aid. It was happening all over again. She couldn’t shoot. He was snarling, twisting, throwing his weight—every time they almost seemed to have him, he threw an arm or bucked his back and slipped out again, his hand grappling toward the one he wanted to kill as if he was going to squeeze the very life out of her given one second’s chance.
“What are you doing?” he yelled, and Laura heard his voice for the first time. There was a wild kind of desperation in it, a pleading, a sound that broke raw from his throat. “Can’t you see I’m trying to help you? Why would you want to save her?”
It was a moment, but it was enough. As he yelled, he stopped fighting so hard. One twin, the one who had been unconscious, had his left arm on the floor, her leg looped over his left leg, holding him down. The other twin, the one who had come back, managed to get his right arm pinned at the same time.
He was there in the middle, between them, pinned and just for a moment totally still. They were out of the way, and he was right in front of Laura.
She had to wake up.
She couldn’t let anyone else get hurt because of her own fear.
Laura felt a newfound ferocity bursting through her, driving her to take action. No. No! No one else was going to get hurt here, not at his hands! She sprang forward, placing her gun safely on the floor out of reach, using the same motion to drive her on top of him. To overpower him. To add a third body to the two trying to take him down.
And just like that, they had him.
They pinned him like they were a team, like this was all natural to them. They flipped him onto his stomach and forced his arms behind his back, even though he fought and shouted at every step of the way.
Laura sat up across his back, pinning him down, pulling her cuffs off her belt as she heard behind her a cacophony of voices. Primary among them, Nate’s. At first they were only yelling in the hall, and then they were right behind her, and Laura heard Nate demanding to know about the blood, if anyone was injured, if Laura was all right. She got the handcuffs snapped onto Gregory Clifton’s wrists at last and sat back, finding that she only wanted to sit right now, that she didn’t have the strength for a moment to stand back up.
“Yes,” she said at last, only after he’d repeated the question again. She looked at the doorway, at the cluster of detectives arrayed there. At the two girls, sobbing and holding each other. At Nate, leaning over her and Clifton, concern etched onto his face. “Yes, I’m all right. But we’re going to need a couple of ambulances—and to read this creep his rights.”
Nate took in what she’d said, and just for a second she thought he was about to smile.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR