He’d already proven he was smarter than Shaw. He’d run circles around her, both professionally and personally. The twit. He could walk away a free man any time he chose, with the added bonus of seeing her take the fall for his crimes. But mere freedom was no longer enough.
She needed to realize exactly who had custom-designed her fate, and why she deserved every consequence he’d dealt out. He had the chance to watch the two people responsible for destroying his life pay, the way he had. In blood. He wasn’t going anywhere until this was finished, his way this time.
He’d already pitted them against each other. He’d been listening. And he had no doubt his star-crossed lovers would be screwing once more by nightfall. Then it would be time for him to make his most ingenious move yet. Something that would position his pawns precisely at the very flash point that would ensure their destruction. Soon, Shaw’s haunting would either become permanent, or she’d be dead. Either way, she’d be forced to stare into his grotesque face and know he was her tormentor. And Marinos would have the rest of his life to feel guilty over how he hadn’t been able to stop Shaw’s destruction.
On the monitor, Marinos returned to the kitchen, his expression murderous.
The man ran his hand over his hairless, disfigured head, his mind spinning with possibilities. His body was nothing more than a shell of what it had once been. But thanks to him, from the moment they’d met in the woods, Marinos and Shaw had been doomed to a fate of his choosing.
Could any plan be more beautiful?
Chapter Twelve
Cole had never in his career felt more like an idiot. Someone was terrorizing Shaw right under his nose. Someone undetectable by his equipment and off the radar in every effort the task force had made to ferret out a suspect. Someone intimately familiar with Cassidy Global’s operations and assets, who’d gained access to the mansion itself and knew his way around. Someone triggering Shaw’s fears like a Svengali.
It was only a hunch, a long shot really, based on what a less-experienced agent might dismiss as an insignificant string of minor accidents. But Cole had profiled enough lunatics in his career to know he was on the right track. And that the guy he was after was nowhere near finished.
Shaw’s stalker was starting to make this personal. Maybe it had been personal since the shooting. Hell, since before then. Almost as if whoever was behind her company’s treasonous activity had ultimately wanted his illegal deeds to come to light, and Shaw discovering what he was up to had been a catalyst to everything that had happened since.
But why hadn’t she been killed that night at her office? Maybe so the bastard could move on to tuning up her brain even more, with all the unexplainable, unprovable bumps in the night and voices and odd happenings she’d endured here. Whoever it was definitely had an ax to grind. For someone to take the time to gaslight her this way, rather than simply taking her out and moving on, he had to be getting a sick pleasure out of each strike.
No doubt about it.
Someone was carefully orchestrating Shaw’s demise, both professionally and psychologically.
Cole hammered a final nail into the top of the sagging step he’d repaired, then turned and sat on his handiwork, knowing he had time. The type of bastard who would carry out a scheme this elaborate and sick would want to savor his latest victory before triggering another episode.
While Shaw slept, Cole had first gone over the house again, inside and out, with the handheld scanner he’d brought back with him from his place. He’d done a thorough visual check of every room and entrance, looking for signs of electronic monitoring and more traps that might have been set. He’d turned up nothing out of the ordinary. And even though he’d planted several more sensors that would report back to his computers if anything suspicious were to happen in or around the house, he was betting they’d pick up nothing, either. Regardless of what occurred next.
His technology was obviously inferior to the equipment being used by the unsub who was terrorizing Shaw. There was no other explanation. And unfortunately, no clear-cut remedy. Overtly ripping the house apart looking for hidden clues wasn’t an option. It would throw away the element of surprise, and likely their shot at catching this guy. So Cole had instead spent the last half hour beating away at the stairs, after digging up tools, spare lumber, and nails in the storage room. He’d been determined to come up with something he could do to catch this maniac the next time he tried to get to Shaw, without prematurely tipping his hand that he was onto the guy.
Cole could push for a forensics team to go over the mansion with more sophisticated equipment than his, but that would be seen as a nonstarter by the powers-that-be. It would blow the cover off their High Lake operation. Dawson, if properly motivated, had the chops to orchestrate a sting that would end this once and for all, and free Shaw to live her life unafraid. But Cole still had nothing credible to report to his task-force leader, or to sell his hunch up his chain of command at the Bureau. Asking for a retaliatory response against a suspect he’d yet to pinpoint even a location for, with only the shreds of evidence he’d so far collected—a boo-boo on Shaw’s thumb and overly hot bathwater—would likely result in him and Shaw both being yanked from High Lake, not in the identification and capture of her tormentor.