Page 28 of A Dead Man's Pulse
What? Him?
He was a Dom she knew but had never played with.
Why is he doing this? What does he want? I have to get away!
Georgia continued to struggle as seconds ticked into minutes. Her mind blurred as her movements weakened. As she collapsed into darkness, her last thought was her brother was going to kill her if she died.
The Dom let Georgia drop to the floor. For a small thing, she sure was feisty—just how he liked them. When she woke up in his dungeon later, he was looking forward to her spirit putting up a fight.
Tucking the rag doused with an isoflurane derivative—chloroform didn’t work like in the movies—into his pocket, he then pulled out a tourniquet and a syringe filled with a combination of barbiturates commonly used for anesthesia. He’d gotten very good at estimating his victim’s weight so he wouldn’t give them an overdose.
Quickly wrapping the tourniquet around her left bicep, he found a large vein and injected the drugs into her system. That would keep her out long enough for him to carry her out the back door and lock it behind them, then leave her in the shadows at the side of the house while he retrieved his vehicle from where he’d parked it three blocks away in a used car lot. The trip to his dungeon would be about fifty minutes at this hour of the night, with traffic at a bare minimum. After he chained her to the bed there, he’d return home and get some sleep. The fun wouldn’t begin until she’d woken up from the drugs and had a few hours to panic over her predicament.
Stepping over to the bedside lamp, he screwed the light bulb back in place until it lit the room. The Dom glanced around to make sure he wasn’t leaving anything out of place and there were no signs he’d ever been in the house. Turning the lamp back off, he bent down and picked up the petite woman. Luck had been on his side tonight. Since the police and Doms had been stepping up their game, making sure the submissives in the area knew to take precautions and being escorted whenever possible, he’d needed to step up his game too.
The internet was the greatest invention ever for research. For the past few weeks, he’d been practicing picking locks with a set of tools he’d found online. There were countless instructional videos on YouTube, and while he was still practicing harder locks, he’d been able to pick the one on Georgia’s back door within five minutes. He’d been watching her for about three weeks now, and saw she was sometimes lax with setting the alarm system in her house. From a side kitchen window, he’d been able to see the alarm panel near the back door had been dark. Being careful not to leave any scratch marks on the brass, deadbolt lock, he’d gained entry about a half hour before she got home. He hadn’t expected Daultry to drive her home and walk around the house with a flashlight, but the asshole hadn’t come inside with the sub. If he had, the Dom would have shot him with the 9mm handgun he had holstered at his lower back. The big oaf was lucky he sucked at being a bodyguard—it’d saved his life.
An hour later, his new masterpiece was naked, blindfolded, and restrained spread-eagle on the old hospital bed in the sparse, one-room building in the woods bordering Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge. It had been used as a utility building a few decades ago, but then abandoned when a new one had been built a mile closer to the main road at another turnoff. The only other items in the concrete structure were a cabinet that held his tools and a St. Andrew’s cross where his scenes took place, where his masterpieces came to life and then met their deaths at his hand. He was their Master and their executioner, and only he said when enough was enough. No one else. Him. The ultimate Dom.
Following Captain Bowman from TPD’s Special Ops Division through the lobby of the FBI building, Ian and Devon flashed their government IDs to the armed guards manning the metal detectors. All three men were waved around the full-body scanner—the guards knew them by sight now and were aware of the weapons they were carrying—before approaching the bank of elevators. While they waited for a car to open, Ian tilted his head side to side, cracking his vertebrae. He’d gotten very little sleep last night and neither had Angie. They’d only gone to the club to celebrate Colleen’s birthday, otherwise, they would have spent the Wednesday night at home. They’d only been home an hour or so, when Angie had made a beeline for the bathroom. They’d thought her nausea was a thing of the past as she entered her second trimester, but apparently, Little Bit hadn’t liked something Angie had eaten, and she’d spent half the night in the bathroom. After her stomach was empty, the dry heaves had continued, and Ian had to make a 2:00 a.m. run to the store to get saltines and ginger ale for her.
When Ian had left their bed this morning, Angie was still sleeping, so he’d asked Kristen to check on her for him in a little while. The task force meeting was scheduled for 0900. After that, he’d be able to go back to the compound and catch a catnap for a bit.
The bell above the middle elevator car dinged, and when the door opened, Parrish came rushing out with two other agents on his heels. He spotted Ian, Devon, and Bowman immediately. “Good, you’re here. We might have another missing submissive.”
“Shit,” Devon spat. “Who?’
Sympathy crossed the special agent’s face, and Ian’s stomach roiled like Angie’s probably had last night. He knew what the man was going to say, but he didn’t know the who. “It’s a Covenant sub, isn’t it?”
Parrish nodded as the blood drained from the faces of both Sawyer brothers. “We’re not a hundred percent sure yet. Georgia Branneth didn’t show up for work this morning. Her purse and keys are in the house, but there’s no sign of her car.”
“That’s because it’s at our compound,” Devon informed them. “It wouldn’t start last night so Tiny drove her home. I told her I’d have Babs check it for her.”
“Tampered?” Ian asked.
His brother shook his head. “I don’t think so. Looked like the alternator was shot, but I can have Babs check now.”
When he pulled out his phone, Bowman stopped him. “Hang on. If it was tampered with, it’s evidence. Let’s do it by the book. I’ll get patrol over there and tow it back to the PD garage.”
Devon nodded. “All right. I’ll let her know they’re coming and to make sure no one touches it.”
“On the way to Branneth’s house, give your man, Daultry, a call and have him respond there too. I want to know everything that happened after he left the club with her last night.” With a hand gesture, Parrish got them all walking back toward the building’s main entrance again.
Ian was glad the fed gave no indication Tiny was a suspect, because he’d put their friend and employee last on a list of over a million suspects before he even considered him to be their killer. If anything, Tiny was going to be devastated when he found out what happened. If Georgia had been kidnapped.
By the time they reached Georgia’s small, ranch-style house, there were three patrol cars, two unmarked vehicles, an FBI Evidence Response Team Unit (ERTU) van, and, unfortunately, two news vans. Ian was certain more were on the way.
The uniformed officers had already begun to hang the yellow tape around the property, and their vehicles had blocked the road, so the press was stuck behind them, unable to get good shots due to the high shrubs blocking the view of the house. A patrol officer put his vehicle in drive and moved it a few feet to let Bowman, Parrish, and Ian’s vehicles into the restricted area, before blocking the way again. Before climbing out of his SUV with its darkly, tinted windows, Ian took the Tampa Rays baseball cap Devon had retrieved from the backseat, and placed it low on his head, hiding his facial features from the news cameras. His brother donned another cap. The last thing they needed in their businesses was to be identified while investigating a crime scene.
Getting out of the vehicle, they strode purposely toward the front steps of the house—at least there they were out of camera range—and met with Bowman, Parrish, and the other feds. There was also a woman Ian didn’t recognize standing next to SA Novik who made the introductions. “This is Ms. Branneth’s friend and vice principal at the high school, Janet Benson. Ms. Benson, this is Special Agent in Charge Colt Parrish, Captain Al Bowman, and investigators Ian and Devon Sawyer.”
Parrish gently shook the pale woman’s hand. “I’m sorry we had to meet this way, Ms. Benson, and I know you’ve already told your story more than once already, but please start at the beginning.”
Taking a shaky breath, Janet told them what little information she had. “All I know is she sent me a text at fourteen minutes after midnight to say she was getting a lift home from the club she goes to because her car wouldn’t start and asked me to pick her up on my way to school today. I pulled up at ten to seven and honked the horn. When she didn’t come out, I rang the doorbell and called her cell and got no answer. I thought maybe she got her car started and forgot to tell me, so I drove to the school. When she didn’t show up before the first bell, I swung by my house to get the spare key she gave me last summer to water her plants while she went on vacation, then came back here. When I saw her purse with her keys and cell phone in the foyer, and her nowhere to be found, I called 9-1-1.” By this point, tears were rolling down her cheeks. “I-I know the type of club she belongs to . . . but no one else at the school does. She was afraid someone would find out, and she’d lose her job, which is why she went to that private club . . . um . . . The . . . The Covenant, I think it’s called. She never went to the public ones.” Her gaze bounced from one person to the next. “You—you think that serial killer has her, don’t you?”
None of them wanted to be the one to confirm that, but Parrish sucked it up and did his best to sugarcoat it. “We don’t know, yet, Ms. Benson. Yes, she fits the profile, but so far, all the victims were taken from their driveways. It appears Ms. Branneth made it inside—”
“She did make it inside—I walked her to the door myself and made sure she locked it and set the alarm.”
