14 - J. T. Ellison [105]
“What’s that?”
She jumped, the deep rumbling of Baldwin’s sleep-strewn voice startling her. It was the first words he’d spoken to her since they’d entered the hotel room several hours earlier. She remembered how it was between them and felt herself blush, then pushed it all away.
“A package, hand-delivered. Get the concierge on the phone.”
She looked at the manila envelope. It had her name and the name of the hotel. Obviously, someone knew they were here.
Baldwin came back to the hallway. “Concierge said it was delivered by a man about half an hour ago. They ran it through their security checks and an X-ray, said it looked like a cell phone. He didn’t seem concerned, said he felt the source was of pure motive, whatever the hell that means. I’d feel more comfortable if we got the local bureau involved, let them send it through the bomb sniffer.”
But Taylor had already slit the top of the package, looking inside. There was a cell phone.
“No way, no how, Taylor. This is definitely going to the lab. You don’t have any idea what they can do with a phone these days….”
Briiiinnng.
The phone buzzed in Taylor’s hand. She looked at Baldwin, then back at the phone. Four rings, five, six, seven. Eight. She took a deep breath.
“If they wanted me dead, they would have done it back at the warehouse.”
She flipped the phone open and held it to her ear. There was a bit of static, then she heard a voice. “Taylor?”
“Oh my God. Daddy?”
The voice rocked Taylor to the core. It had been a long time—three years, since she’d seen him in person. He was dead. Missing. Gone. This tortured, broken man couldn’t possibly be her father. But there was no mistaking the voice. It was his.
And he was scared.
“Taylor? Are you there?”
“Daddy, where are you?”
“Taylor, I want you to listen to me. You need to do what he says. Just go along with him, sweetheart, and you’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.”
“But, Daddy—”
“Taylor? Are you there?”
“I’m here, Daddy.”
“Taylor, I want you to listen to me. You need to do what he says. Just go along with him, sweetheart, and you’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.”
She looked sharply at Baldwin. Exact words. She stopped speaking. The voice came again.
“Taylor? Are you there?”
She didn’t respond.
“Taylor, I want you to listen to me. You need to do what he says. Just go along with him, sweetheart, and you’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.”
A recording. Her heart sank. Jesus, still being manipulated by this freak. She handed the phone to Baldwin, let him listen to the loop.
With a shake of his head, he handed it back to her. Not her father. Just a voice recording. It could have been made anytime. There was nothing about it that said he was actually alive.
The fury bubbled up in her chest and she turned the cell phone so it faced her, then screamed, long and loud, into the mouthpiece. She went to hit the end button, but heard a laugh coming from the speaker. She held it to her ear.
That voice she did recognize. The same jeering tones that had spoken to her in the warehouse. He was laughing at her.
Thirty-Nine
Nashville, Tennessee
Monday, December 22
11:58 p.m.
“Father?”
Snow White was asleep in the chair in his expansive library. Charlotte looked at him, his body bent, the misshapen hands, and felt nothing. No pity, no sorrow for the pain he obviously suffered. It was fitting, actually, that a man who had been the source of such agony and misery, who had tortured the life out of ten young women, should be afflicted with a disease that crippled his tools of destruction.
She had that feeling again, fleeting as it may be. She’d always wondered what it would feel like to empty the soul from a body. When it came down to it, she didn’t have the power, wasn’t able to consummate the burning desire she felt. So she fed on others who could.
Which was the course that led her to her father’s apprentice. Where better to satisfy her lust than in the behavioral unit of the FBI? She was fed a steady diet of