Identity Crisis(110)

‘They’re in my bag,’ she managed, pressing back as tightly against his chest as she could to avoid the bite of the blade.

‘Good girl.’ He relaxed the tension on the knife just a little. ‘Get them, and let’s go.’

With hands made awkward by fear, she fumbled in the bag where she’d hung it on the peg next to the door and found the keys, wishing like hell there was something in there, anything she could use for a weapon. There might be a nail file somewhere in the bottom or an ink pen, but she’d never get the chance to use either of them at the moment. Think, Kendra, think!

‘That’s a girl,’ he said again as she slowly, carefully pulled the keys from her bag and held them up for him to see. He took them from her hand and pocketed them. ‘And now there’s only one more thing we need to take care of and then you can take me for a ride.’ He reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the BlackBerry, and her heart sank as he tossed it onto the sofa. ‘You won’t be needing this anymore, darling. I’m the only one you have to speak to now, and I’ll never be more than a blade’s edge away.’

‘Detectives in Santa Monica say that though the dead man they found in Edge’s burnt-out house could have been someone else, it was assumed to be him. Apparently the body was so badly burnt that 100 per cent identification was impossible without DNA testing.’ Wade turned off his BlackBerry. His half of the conversation had had everyone’s full attention, and now he filled them in on the rest. ‘They had no real reason to doubt. Besides, after the body was discovered, there was no sign of the man again. After all, he was dead.’ Wade turned his attention to the big screen of the computer and pulled up a satellite map of the Northwestern US. ‘There was no reason to suspect anything, no reason not to think Edge was dead. Fredrick Parks, that’s the man’s real name, and he’s from North Dakota. But look at this.’ He zoomed in on the map. ‘Two weeks after Edge’s supposed death, a liquor store was robbed in Priest Falls, Idaho. Look at the CCTV footage.’

Carla wondered how anyone could get hold of this kind of information. She wasn’t sure whether to respect Wade Crittenden or fear him. She was certainly glad he was on her side.

Garrett, who was struggling through construction on

I-5, had Kendra’s BlackBerry on, listening.

‘Sure as hell looks like him,’ Harris said.

‘But he’s dead,’ Wade said, ‘so no one cares. No one bothers to check. Then –’ a few more key strokes ‘– a couple comes home to Kalispell, Montana after spending the winter in Florida to discover their house on Flathead Lake has been squatted in all winter. Another couple who had rented out the cabin up the lake gave Edge’s description. They said he told them he was renting the place for the winter. Since they weren’t residents, they had no reason to doubt his story.

‘About that same time, a couple from Yakima, Washington came back early from spending the winter in Australia to find their Jeep Cherokee missing. It turned up two months later in a deserted parking garage of a high-rise in Seattle. Again, very grainy CCTV footage shows a man that looks like Edge. The trail goes on, with every incident just far enough apart, time wise and distance wise, so that no one ever quite connects the dots.

‘And then, two days ago, a dental hygienist in Nevada comes back from a holiday in Europe to find her Ford Focus stolen. And this was the footage at an all-night supermarket maybe an hour after the incident in the woods behind Ellis’s house.’

‘Same man,’ Ellis said.

‘He tried to walk out without paying, not sneaky or anything, the clerk said, but just like his mind was on something else. When the clerk confronted him he paid and made light of it, no problems. But the clerk called it in because he was suspicious. Said the man’s jeans were wet up to his thighs and he looked like he’d been rolling in pine needles.’

‘OK, I just got through the last of the construction,’ Garrett’s voice came over the speaker phone. ‘I’ll be at Kendra’s in – Hold on. I’m getting a text. It’s from Kendra!’

Everyone gathered around Wade’s desk, where the speakers were rigged up.

‘What does it say?’ Dee asked, pressing in close.

The sound that came from Garrett’s end of the phone was a desperate animal cry. ‘He’s here. That’s all it says. He’s here.’ He cut the connection and all hell broke loose in Wade’s boudoir.





Chapter Twenty-Seven

Edge held her close to him in the elevator all the way down to the parking garage. The knife was under a jacket he had folded over his arm, and he knew exactly how to ease the point in close and threatening between her ribs. Kendra breathed from her diaphragm like Dee had taught her, like singers were supposed to do. That assured her enough oxygen and kept the knife from piercing her skin. He gave her no room, not an inch, and she yielded, yielded for her own protection. But only physically. Inside she held her ground, inside she’d drawn the line in the sand. She wouldn’t allow him the space inside her head. Not this time.