“Lying on the floor.”
“Don’t move. I’m going to try to surprise him when he opens the door. Did he have a weapon? What did he hit you with?”
“A purse.”
A purse? “You didn’t see a gun?”
“No.”
“Okay, good. I’m gonna get you out of here. Just stay down on the floor, low as you can, don’t—” He broke off, listened. “Molly, I hear his car coming. I can’t talk anymore and don’t you say anything else and give us away. Got it? Not another word.”
She didn’t answer, minding him without an argument for once in her life.
John’s heart was in his throat as he heard the car come to a stop and the engine die. The car door closed. Footsteps led up to the bolted door. He knew he had to time this just right, to catch him between opening the door and shutting it behind himself. He couldn’t spring either too soon or too late.
He was out of sight of the door as he crept along the side of the building toward the front. He got close enough to hear metal sliding against metal as the bolts were worked, then the swish of the door as it was pushed open.
“Hello, Molly. Ready for your big day?”
John rounded the corner and launched himself at the figure standing in the open doorway. He knocked him facedown to the floor and put the muzzle of his .45 against the back of his neck. “Don’t move or you are dead.”
“Detective Bowie,” he said pleasantly. “Surely you wouldn’t kill me in front of your daughter.”
“I wouldn’t count on that if I were you, Professor.” Mitch came up beside them. “I’ve known John for a long time. He gets pissed easily. I have to talk him down all the time.” He knelt and cuffed the man behind his back. “I’ll take over here, bro. See to Molly. Ambulance is coming down the road.”
John went over to where she was lying just as he’d instructed her to. He pulled her into a sitting position, then gathered her into his arms and hugged her against his chest. Due to the tightness in his throat, he managed to speak only her name, but he said it repeatedly.
“Stop rocking me, Dad,” she whispered. “I may throw up on you.”
He stopped the rocking motion, laughing softly. “I wouldn’t care.”
“Can you take these things off my hands?”
“Right away.” He pulled the knife from his boot and cut the zip ties. The raw marks on her wrists made him see red. He looked around and saw that Wallace had already been hauled away. Which was fortunate. He might have killed him bare-handed.
As he was freeing Molly’s feet, a pair of EMTs hurried in. They began asking Molly questions. She said, “I’m thirsty, but I’m afraid if I drink, I’ll throw up.”
“We’ll get an IV going. What’s your favorite flavor?” the young man teased.
“I’m riding to the hospital with you, sweetheart,” John said. He looked the female EMT straight in the eye, daring her to contradict him. She didn’t. Maybe because she’d watched him slide his knife back into his boot. “Meet you at the ambulance,” he said to Molly.
“Okay, Dad. Is Mom totally freaking out?”
“Totally. But so was I. I’ll call her.” He kissed her on the forehead, then reluctantly moved away so the EMTs could do their job.
He wandered over to a workbench and looked at the surgical instruments laid out as though a butler had aligned them using a yardstick. On a shelf above the array was the tattoo kit Beth had spied in the professor’s bookcase.
His stomach roiled when he thought of the torture that psycho would have put Molly through, what Crissy Mellin and the others girls had been put through at the hands of these twisted, moon-gazing motherfuckers.
He looked over at Molly, where one of the EMTs was checking her eyes while the other was starting the IV. John steeled himself against an onslaught of unmanly emotion and stepped outside.
Mitch was talking to a detective from the sheriff’s office, with whom they’d both worked on cases before. On his way over to them, he saw Beth arguing with two deputies who were trying to keep her outside the tape they were stringing around the building.
“I’m with Crisis Point. There’s a camera crew on their way. Do you want to be seen on TV—” Then she caught sight of John. “I’m with him.” When they turned their heads to see who she was pointing toward, she ducked beneath the tape, ran to him, and, when she reached him, clasped his hands and searched his eyes.
“She’ll be all right,” he said, “but we got here just in time.”
She wilted against him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Oh, John. Thank God.”
“Yes, but also thank you. If you hadn’t seen that damn tattoo kit in the video…”
“I got lucky.”
“Lucky? I don’t think it was luck. We’ll talk about that later.”
He noticed that the professor was being ungently packed into the back seat of a squad car. As it moved past Beth and him, he smiled at them beatifically through the car window.
Beth shuddered. “He makes my skin crawl.”
A savage compulsion surged through John. He might very well have acted on it if Mitch and the SO’s detective hadn’t approached him and Beth just then.
The detective’s name was Glen Derby. He and John shook hands. “Derby, this is Beth Collins. She’s—”
“I know. Mitch filled me in. Ms. Collins,” he said, brushing the brim of his hat. Then he said to John, “How’s your daughter?”
“Shaken, but looks like she’s gonna be okay.”
“That’s good. Glad you got here in time.”