THE TAHOE CAME TO AN ABRUPT STOP, FARTHER UP THE ROAD from where Joanna had parked three days earlier and close enough to the water hole for streamers of crime-scene tape to be briefly visible in the headlights. Jeremy switched off the engine. For a matter of moments—the better part of a minute—neither he nor Joanna spoke or moved.
“What happens now?” she asked at last, needing to break the silence.
“We go for a hike,” Jeremy answered.
He exited the vehicle, opened the back door, and then roughly manhandled Joanna out onto the ground. In the glow of the dome light, she saw that he held the Taser in his left hand. In that brief instant, she realized this was a near replay if not an exact one of what must have happened to Susan Nelson. Jeremy had escorted his victim away from her classroom, gripping her with his right hand while holding the pocketed and hence invisible Taser in his left.
The Taser. Even though the darts had been deployed, Joanna knew the weapon could still function as a contact stun gun. After dragging her out of the vehicle, he shoved her face-forward up against the SUV’s tailgate.
“We’re going to climb up to the top,” he said. “I know you can’t do that with your hands cuffed behind you, so I’m going to fasten them in front. If you try anything at all, I’ll knock you senseless. Understand?”
Joanna nodded mutely at this answered prayer. Having the cuffs in front of her would be far better than having them fastened behind, but it wouldn’t be a big help in terms of weaponry. These days, with her protruding belly in the way, leaning over far enough to tie her shoes was a challenge. Ditto for grabbing the Glock out of her ankle holster.
A moment later, one of the cuffs clicked open. Jeremy spun her around while clutching the arm with the cuff still on it, then he slammed the back of Joanna’s head against the car hard enough to leave her seeing stars and wavering drunkenly on her feet.
“Give me your other hand!” he ordered. “Now!”
Still swaying dizzily, Joanna could do nothing but comply. As the second cuff clicked shut, she found herself staring into Jeremy Stock’s throat. There was no moon, but enough starlight beamed down on this empty piece of desert to allow nearby bushes to cast pale shadows on the ground. And there was also enough illumination for her to get a full-on look at her opponent.
Since Jeremy was a good eight inches taller than her five-foot-four, that meant she was facing the base of his chin. He still wore his uniform. A jagged cut of some kind trailed from the base of his chin and down to his collar, where a dark stain some two inches across marred the khaki fabric. Looking down as he struggled to refasten her cuff, she noticed that the backs of both hands were covered in a wild pattern of scratches.
Joanna was a cop. She had seen her share of those kinds of injuries and she knew what they meant—that the person wearing them had recently engaged in some kind of life-and-death struggle. Now, with sickening clarity, she understood what must have happened.
“What have you done?” she demanded. “Did you hurt Allison or Travis? Are they all right?”
“They’re fine,” he said. “They’re totally fine.”
But from the empty and coldly dispassionate way in which he delivered the words, she realized at once they weren’t true—couldn’t be true. Travis and Allison weren’t “fine” at all. In fact, they were most likely dead. She remembered the hard-eyed stare with which Jeremy had regarded Travis during that earlier interview. Even then, his plan for what would happen next was most likely under consideration if not already in motion. What was it that had pushed him over the edge—the DNA sample, maybe? He had clearly been furious about that, but why?
Joanna had thought for a time that if she pleaded with Jeremy to spare her life for the sake of her baby’s, maybe he would let them both live. Now she forced herself to let go of that tiny thread of hope. Pleading for mercy clearly wouldn’t work. Granting mercy wasn’t in Jeremy Stock’s playbook. If he was so deranged at this point that he had sacrificed his own child, he certainly wouldn’t hesitate to slaughter hers.
So rather than beg and plead, she went on the offensive, focusing on the scratches on the backs of his hands—scratches that hadn’t been there earlier in the afternoon. The fact that there had been no defensive wounds on Susan Nelson’s body had made Dr. Baldwin theorize that she had participated in consensual sex before she died. Joanna doubted that was true.
“We know Susan had sex shortly before her death,” Joanna said. “Traces of DNA were found on her clothing, but how did that happen? Did she want to have sex with you or did you knock her senseless before you raped her?”
Joanna never saw the blow coming. Jeremy delivered a powerful slap that hit her full across her right cheek and sent her tumbling helplessly to the ground. The way the Taser darts pricked into her made her feel as though she had landed on a piece of cholla. Rolling over onto her side, she tried to cover her belly with her cuffed hands in case he kicked her, but he did not. Instead, grabbing her by the shoulders, he lifted her to her feet and shook her as if she were little more than a rag doll.
“Susan knew I was furious with her. She thought giving me a piece of tail would settle me down. It didn’t work. When it was over, she got just what she deserved, and you will, too,” he growled. “Now get moving!”
Still woozy from the blow, Joanna fought to remain upright and put one foot in front of the other. She tasted blood in her mouth and knew that he had loosened at least one and maybe several of her teeth. Already she felt the side of her face swelling. She’d look like hell tomorrow. And then she remembered. Tomorrow was the day of the funeral—her mother’s funeral. If she somehow made it through the night and lived long enough to make it to the mortuary, she knew exactly what a disapproving Eleanor would have said.
During Joanna’s childhood, there had been very few school or church or Bible school events at which Joanna Lee Lathrop hadn’t shown up with at least one scraped knee or torn elbow or maybe even two of each. Her mother’s comment had never changed.
“Wouldn’t you know,” she’d say, shaking her head in despair. “Here you are looking like something the cat dragged in. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
Joanna realized that if she and Sage somehow made it through this awful night and came out alive into the light of day, Eleanor would be totally justified in saying the same thing. Except since Eleanor wouldn’t be there to deliver those words, Joanna would have to do so herself.
And suddenly, despite everything that was going on, she felt the beginning of a very inappropriate giggle bubble upward in her throat. She realized that if she could laugh in the face of all this, maybe she was as deranged as Jeremy. But the giggle came anyway. She couldn’t stop it.
“What’s so funny?” Jeremy demanded, shoving her from behind and making her struggle to retain her balance.
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”
But she knew one thing about that inappropriate attack of laughter. It was symbolic of something else—of a determination to overcome and live.
One way or the other, Joanna Brady intended to do exactly that.