Page 32 of Nothing Left

"I'm contacting the local police right away," she said. "They need to come and bring him in, and I want to know if he has a previous record. Perhaps he does, and that's why he made this move to a new place."

It was all starting to come together.

She left the bedroom, not wanting to confront that photo collage a moment longer than she had to. Quickly, standing in his grimy kitchen with a pile of unwashed dishes in the sink, she made the call.

"I'd like to check up on a criminal record, please," she said in Spanish. "It's Juliette Hart here, FBI."

After a moment and having her credentials confirmed, she was put through to the back office. There, she repeated her request and gave the man's name.

"I'm going to have a look for you," the officer replied. She heard the clacking of computer keys. A pause.

"Yes, Mr. Fernando has spent a few months in prison. He was arrested two years ago on charges of assault," the officer said.

Finally, they had identified a suspect with a criminal history who had an obsession with photography and who’d broken into properties to pursue his sick desires. And he’d been in the right place at the right time to have committed the crime.

She thanked the officer and hung up, returning to the living room while Wyatt completed his search of the tiny bathroom. But as she walked into the living room, the front door rattled.

Juliette froze. He was home. It was time to confront the man they suspected of being the killer.

The door swung open with a creak, and Fernando marched in.

He was bigger and taller than she'd expected him to be. His face was twisted in an angry sneer. He barged his way inside. He was holding a piece of steel piping in his hand, and a plastic bag from a hardware store was under his arm.

And then, he saw Juliette standing in the living room. He stared at her for a disbelieving moment, and then she saw his features tauten into pure rage.

"FBI Agent Hart. I need you to answer some questions," Juliette began, but she didn't get further.

With a roar of rage, he lifted the piping and brought it down, aiming directly for Juliette’s head.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Juliette twisted away desperately, evading the sudden, brutal attack, and the steel pipe whistled past her head, missing it by a hair's breadth and thudding down into one of the leather couches.

Fernando's full weight was behind the blow, and the next moment, while Juliette was still off balance, his body crashed into hers. She tried her best to keep her balance, but the weight and the force were too much for her. She lost her footing and tumbled backward, landing on her back on the scuffed carpet and narrowly missing a collision with the edge of a table. He landed on her, fists flailing, and from that moment, Juliette had a life-and-death battle on her hands.

He was hellishly strong, heavy, and well over six feet, and with his weight on top of her, Juliette was at a huge disadvantage.

She writhed on the floor, his furious onslaught crushing her, struggling to free one of her arms so that she could fight back. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his fist flash down and managed to writhe aside just in time to have the blow glance off her head rather than smash straight into her face.

"You are police! Inside my private space? You are not allowed to be here! Nobody is allowed. This place is mine and everything in it!"

He had the piping again. He was raising it once more. And this time, Juliette saw out of the corner of her eye he was aiming it at her partner, who was rushing in to help her.

"Wyatt, watch it," Juliette yelled as Fernando hurled the piping in his direction. She prayed it wouldn't land, wouldn't hurt him, and felt relief when a loud thud and a deafening clanging told her that Wyatt had managed to dodge the blow. He’d dove sideways, and the makeshift weapon had bounced off a wall.

Fernando was unarmed now, but he was still strong and possessed with the recklessness of desperation.

Juliette had no doubt that he was in a killing rage. He was fighting like a man with nothing to lose. She dodged another blow, twisted free from the crushing grasp he had on her shoulder, and then managed to get her other arm out from under him. Now, she could use it. She clawed at his face, jabbed her fingers in his throat. He choked, his spittle showering her face, while she did her level best to get one of her fingers into his eyes while avoiding his grabbing hand.

And then, Wyatt was behind her, grasping the guy again by his big, powerful shoulders while staying well away from his thrashing legs. Wyatt hauled on him with all his force, and that gave Juliette the chance to scramble out from under him. She grabbed his other arm.

“Down! Get on the floor!” Wyatt had a knee in Fernando’s back, but he was thrashing around and trying to dislodge him.

Breathing hard, adrenaline coursing through her veins, she dragged Fernando’s arm behind him, forcing it still while Wyatt battled to get the cuffs on.

Finally, he was cuffed, even though Juliette knew they would still have to be careful.

It was as if he’d tipped over abruptly into the red zone. She'd never expected to confront such a level of incandescent rage. He’d thrown the steel pipe so hard that its collision with the wall had taken out a chunk of plaster. If any of the blows had landed where he'd wanted them to go, either she or Wyatt could be severely injured now.

---