Lover Unleashed - J. R. Ward [180]
“It’s not in the cab.” Veck swung his flashlight around the seats. “In the back.”
There was a padlock on the square double doors of the cap, but Veck just went to the trunk of the unmarked and returned with a battery-powered Sawzall.
There was a high-pitched whine . . . a ping! . . . and then Veck was in.
“Oh . . . fuck . . .”
José shook his head as he came around to see what his partner had cursed at.
Veck’s flashlight beam was illuminating an entire collection of little jars with things floating in or sunken down at the bottom of clear liquid. The containers were held safe in a custom-made rack system mounted on the left side. The right side was reserved for tools: knives and ropes, duct tape, hammers, chisels, razor blades, scalpels, retractors.
Hello, David Kroner: highly improbable that the killer had installed this setup in someone else’s truck—and what do you bet that the trophies in all those jars filled the holes in the dermis of the victims.
Their best hope was that the K-9 units tracked him in the woods.
Otherwise, they were going to lose another woman. José was willing to bet his house on it.
“I’ll sync with the FBI,” he said. “They need to come down here and see this.”
Veck scanned the interior. “I’ll give the CSI boys a hand. I’d like to get this vehicle moved back to HQ ASAP so everything can be logged properly.”
José nodded, cocked his cell phone, and hit speed dial. As the ringing started, he knew that after he got off with the feds’ regional field office he was going to have to call his wife. No chance he was coming home in time for breakfast.
None at all.
FORTY-SEVEN
“The sun! Oh, my God! Quick, you’d better—”
Manny came fully awake in midair: Evidently, he’d leaped out of bed, taking the duvet and several pillows with him, and they all landed at once, his feet, the comforter, and the quartet of puffies.
Bright sunlight was streaming in the glass windows, flooding his bedroom with brilliant illumination.
Payne was here, his brain told him. She was here.
Looking around frantically, he rushed into the bathroom. Empty. Ran through the rest of the condo. Empty.
Rubbing his hair, he went back to the bed . . . and then realized, holy shit, he still had all his memories. Of her. Of Jane. Of the Goateed Hater. Of the operation and the . . . that incredible shower hookup. And of Glory.
What the hell . . .
Bending down, he picked up a pillow and put it to his nose. Yeah, she’d definitely been lying beside him. But why had she come? And if she had, why hadn’t she scrubbed him?
Marching out into the front hall, he grabbed his cell phone and . . . Except it wasn’t as if he could call her. He didn’t have her number.
He stood there for a moment like a planker. And then remembered he’d agreed to meet Goldberg in less than an hour.
Pent-up and strangely panicked over nothing he could really point a finger at, he changed into his running gear and hit the elevator. Down in the gym, he nodded at the three other guys who were pumping iron or doing sit-ups, and got on the treadmill he usually used.
He’d forgotten his damn iPod, but his mind was churning, so it wasn’t like there was silence between his ears. As he fell into his pace, he tried to recall what had happened after he’d taken his shower the night before . . . but he just came up with nothing. No headache, however. Which seemed to suggest his black hole was a natural one, courtesy of the alcohol.
Through the course of the workout, he had to juice the machine a couple of times—some jackass had obviously tuned the damn thing up and the belt was sluggish. And when he reached the five-mile mark, it dawned on him that he didn’t have a hangover. Then again, maybe he had so much buzzing through his head, he was too distracted to care about any ow-ow-ow.
When he stepped off the treadmill about fifteen minutes later, he needed a towel and headed for the stack by the exit. One of the lifters got there at the same time, but the guy backed off in deference.
“You first, man,”