Page 32 of A Dead Man's Pulse
Punching the accelerator with his foot, he yanked the steering wheel to the right. The tires spun a moment before gaining purpose. Dirt and gravel flew behind the car as the tires squealed when they caught the pavement. The bitch heard him coming and glanced back with sheer terror in her eyes.
Hmm . . . maybe she could still be a masterpiece.
As he closed the distance between them, another vehicle came around the bend, and the Dom watched it impact the submissive’s body, tossing her like a rag doll into the air. The other driver slammed on his brakes far too late to keep from hitting her, but it appeared he was going to stick around, which meant the Dom had to cut his losses and get the fuck out of there. Flooring the accelerator, he sped past the broken body of Georgia Branneth, confident she wouldn’t survive her injuries.
Damn it! Now he had to find a new dungeon to continue his art . . . and select a new victim. His cock twitched as Dakota Smith’s face and delectable body popped into his mind. Risky or not, she would be his best masterpiece to date. He just had to figure out how to get her away from that wannabe Dom, Logan Reese.
Dakota rushed into the emergency room on Ian Sawyer’s heels with Logan right behind her. The partners had just come out of the gym at the Trident compound and found the owner throwing a ball for Beau to catch. He’d offered the use of the state-of-the-art facility as another way for Logan and Kip to bond with their new partners by working out together and sparring against each other.
A brief chat between the trio had been interrupted by Sawyer’s cell phone ringing, and the resulting conversation with SAC Parrish had him barking for Dakota and Logan to follow him to Tampa General Hospital. A naked woman, fitting the missing Georgia Branneth’s description, had been struck by a vehicle on Route 39 off I-75, near the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge. She’d been flown via helicopter to the trauma center. Ian didn’t know her condition, other than she was unconscious, but if this was the missing submissive, she might be the only person who could tell them who the Kink Killer was.
SAC Parrish and SA Novik were in the hallway, outside a treatment room, speaking with a short, gray-haired man wearing blue hospital scrubs. The lead federal agent’s attention swung briefly to the newcomers, before returning to the other man. “So, what you’re saying, Doctor Rayburn, is you have no idea if or when she’s going to wake up and be able to talk to us.”
The physician nodded his head. “She came in unconscious, and her Glasgow Coma Score is a seven, which means she has some responses to pain, none of them verbal. If that doesn’t improve within twenty-four hours, she’s got a little less than a 50/50 chance of survival. The CT scan showed a subdural hematoma, and she’s heading to surgery now. On top of all that, she’s got a fractured left femur and wrist, and maybe a few ribs, but obviously, the brain is what we’re worried about most right now. Do we know if there’s any next of kin?”
“I know she’s got a brother on Miami PD,” Sawyer responded gravely. “I can have Captain Bowman call a supervisor down there for the notification. I assume a verbal consent over the phone will be fine for the surgery until her brother or other family members can get here.”
“Yes, although, with her injuries, it’s not necessary. If you can’t get ahold of a family member, we’re covered under implied consent.” In other words, if they didn’t operate right away, she would most likely die from her injuries, and they could assume the patient would want everything done to prevent that. “Oh, before I forget, we took photos of her wrists and ankles, at the request of the police officer who had come in with her, before we sent her for the CT. We couldn’t wait for him to get a camera from the station. It looks like she’d been restrained somehow. The abrasions on her ankles aren’t too bad, but she did do quite a bit of damage to her wrists, especially the right one. A lot of the skin is missing from struggling against the restraints. The officer is in that report office over there.” He pointed to a room a few doors down the hallway. “He’s got the SD card with the photos.”
As the doctor hurried into another treatment room after a nurse called for him, the door to the ambulance entrance swung open and in walked Tiny, Mitch Sawyer, and a woman Dakota didn’t recognize. She stood about five foot four and had long black hair framing her exotic Asian features. Worry was etched on all their faces, but Tiny seemed to be taking it the worst. “How is she?”
Not one to mince words, Ian shook his head. “It’s not good.” After filling them in on what the ER doctor had said, he addressed his cousin. “Mitch, can you look up her brother’s name in the member files? I remember he’s a cop in Miami, and we need to contact him.”
“Sure thing.”
As the co-owner and manager pulled out his smart phone and got to work finding the information, the woman who’d come in with him placed a comforting hand on Tiny’s arm. The fifteen-inch size difference between the two of them was almost comical, but the grief on the pale, Black man’s face was heart wrenching. He was blaming himself, and the woman knew it. “Come on, big guy. While Mitch is doing that, let’s go to the surgical waiting room.” She glanced at Ian. “We’ll be there for her at least until her family can get here. She mentioned last night her folks were on a cruise in the Caribbean somewhere. It’s their anniversary.”
“Shit—happy fucking anniversary. Thanks, Charlotte. When Bowman talks to her brother, I’ll make sure he finds out what ship. I’ll send CC to their next port of call in the company jet and get them back here as fast as we can.”
Once again, Ian Sawyer surprised Dakota. She knew he was protective of the subs in The Covenant. But to send his company’s jet and pilot to pick up the couple on some island in the Caribbean showed how he took his role as head Dom of the club seriously and didn’t care about the cost.
Tiny and Charlotte headed down the hall toward a bank of elevators, and Parrish tilted his head in that direction. “Novik, go with them. Keep me updated on her condition. Talk to security—tell them she’s in protective custody. I don’t want this bastard trying to get to her in here when he finds out she’s escaped—if he doesn’t already know. I’ll call the office and have Stonewall send more bodies this way. Oh, and grab that SD card or get a copy of it. Reese, Swift, you’re with Sawyer and me. Let’s head to the accident scene and figure out where the hell she was running from.”
About forty minutes later, they were standing on the edge of the accident scene. A state police escort had sped their civilian vehicles up the fifty miles faster than they could have gone without the lights and sirens. The driver of the car who had hit Georgia was a man in his late-fifties—a real estate agent on his way to meet a client. The poor guy was sitting on the guardrail behind his damaged vehicle, distraught. Dakota could see tears running down his cheeks as he spoke to someone on his cell phone. From the report one of the first officers on scene gave the newcomers, the driver had come around the tight bend and barely had a chance to hit the brakes when he came upon the naked woman running toward him in the middle of his lane. It had all happened so fast, and he couldn’t remember if there were any other vehicles or people in the vicinity at the time. A few minutes later, two female drivers came across the accident and stopped to help. They’d stayed and given their information to the police, before being released from the scene.
It was easy to figure out where Georgia Branneth’s battered body had ended up. There were some discarded, stained bandages and latex gloves in the middle of the road from when the paramedics had worked to stabilize her and place her on a backboard for transport. A small pool of blood was another indication of how serious her injuries were. The local cops had immediately shut down the road in both directions upon arrival, and an accident investigation team was in the process of measuring tire marks and photographing everything for evidence. They’d determine how fast the vehicle had been going before the driver had hit the brakes and impacted the victim. So far, there was no press in sight, and hopefully it stayed that way for now before they got a whiff on the big story that one of the Kink Killer’s victims may have escaped and survived. The questions were, what direction had the naked woman been coming from and where had she been held? Had she, in fact, been kidnapped by the same sick bastard who’d killed all those other women? If she had, how did she escape?
SAC Parrish had commandeered the scene and was doling out orders to the police chief, who had responded, and several of his officers who weren’t already busy with the accident scene and detours around it. “All right, our victim came from somewhere nearby. It’s possible she escaped from a vehicle, but I don’t think that’s the case. She was being held close by. Chief, I want you and your men to take the north side of the accident, check both sides of the road. Look for bare footprints or any indication of how she ended up on the road. We’ll take this south side. Go at least a mile. If we don’t find anything, we’ll spread out into the woods. I have about a dozen agents responding. Call in whomever you can to help search, but make sure they don’t disturb any evidence. This is the first real chance we’ve gotten to catch this bastard.”
If the older chief had any problem with being ordered about by a fed in his own jurisdiction, he didn’t show it. “Our fire department has a search and rescue team we can utilize. They know their stuff about tracking in these woods and won’t fuck up a crime scene if they can help it. I can have them out here within fifteen minutes.”
“Do it.”
It took a while, but Logan found a set of prints, that had to belong to Georgia, coming out of the woods on the opposite side of the road from where she’d been hit, about an eighth of a mile to the south. When the police chief strode over, Ian pointed a little further down. “Chief, what’s that dirt road for? Where’s it lead?”
“Basically, it’s a fire road . . . there’s a bunch of them along this strip, every mile or two, in case of a brush fire, we can get the needed equipment further in. They go in about a mile or so.”
A uniformed officer with a K9 partner approached, and Parrish nodded toward Logan and Dakota. “You two, follow the dog. Chief, send two more uniforms with them just in case. I want this fucking bastard alive but not at the cost of one of my team or yours. Sawyer, let’s go see what’s down that road. We’ll walk it, so we don’t obliterate any evidence.” Several federal agents had pulled up to the scene, and the SAC waved them over. “Davis. Melendez. You’re with me too.”
Once two more male officers joined them, the K9 handler got the animal on Georgia’s scent, and the others followed them into the foliage. Their weapons were drawn and at the ready as they had no idea what was waiting for them at the end of the trail. Dakota shifted the bulletproof vest Sawyer had loaned her to wear over her T-shirt. It was for a much larger male, but was better than nothing, and Logan had helped her adjust the Velcro straps so it was as tight as they could get it. The female versions were curved slightly to accommodate their breasts, but with the extra room this one afforded her, the girls weren’t squished. Logan’s vest had been in the back of his SUV which the two of them had followed Sawyer in. Dakota was glad she’d thrown on a pair of jeans with her sneakers after their workout and sex-filled shower at the gym—it would keep her legs from getting scratched up in the brush.
As the dog weaved back and forth, his nose following the microscopic particles carrying the scent of the victim, Dakota and the others kept their eyes peeled on their surroundings. The K9 was a passive tracking dog, which meant he could walk them right up to their suspect—that was ideal with missing children or Alzheimer’s patients, but not something you wanted when tracking a violent serial killer.
The big-eared Belgian Malinois reminded Dakota of the dogs-in-training back at the Trident compound. Keeping her eyes front, she addressed Logan to her right. “How’s FUBAR doing?”
He’d told her about the pup that was probably going to fail out of the aggressive training during one of their stakeout shifts—it was the one she’d seen roll over for a belly rub the day she’d met her partner.
“Kat says he’s a hopeless romantic and isn’t cut out for guard duty. Babs officially adopted him the other day, and Tori, who trained Russell’s service dog, is going to help her get him trained as a therapy dog. That way she can bring him to the veteran hospital when she goes for her therapy and stuff.”
