Free The Holiday Killer by Holly Hunt Page B

attracting her attention. She sped up casually, and glanced in the window at the driver.
    Mark Windsor.
    Adrenaline coursing through her blood, she followed the car, fingering her gun. Could this be the lead she needed, the detail she didn't have before? He was using rich cars to move the kids, not a van or something that would stand out.
    She followed him a block over, and realized he was heading to the docklands, barely a block from the station, and near to where Jamie was found. With so few cars on the road, she was forced to race ahead of him and park the car, then wait for him.
    As she parked, she spotted movement in one of the fallen-down warehouses. There was definitely someone in there.
    Liz climbed from the car, her gun at the ready, watching the place where she'd seen the movement. The person she'd seen had slipped around the back of the building, but there was no way to tell if anyone else was still in there. The Holiday Killer worked with someone else, the evidence said. And she was certain that he was heading here now. She needed to know if his accomplices were here as well.
    She crept closer to the building, glancing through the tumbledown walls at the small shape hidden under an upturned table. She approached slowly, pulling a flashlight from her pocket and using it to aim her gun.
    "Hello?" she whispered, stepping up to the body on the ground. She toed it gently and it rolled, giving her a view of the face.
    Her eyes had been stripped from her body, an incision opened up under her chin, though what it was for, Liz couldn't tell.
    What she could tell, though, was that the girl was clearly dead.
    Liz pulled out her phone, called in a quiet rendezvous with dispatch, and stepped back, looking around. This was Tiffany Heart, the eleventh victim of the Holiday Killer, and the third girl to be taken by the madman. The scanner in her car had called in her kidnapping less than an hour ago.
    Suddenly the anger that Liz had been suppressing in the week since Jamie's murder bubbled to the surface. Rage colored her feelings, convincing her that she could murder the killer if she found him. Guilt edged up her throat, but she swallowed it down, forcing herself to forget that she could have caught the killer sooner, that she could have stopped this useless murder.
    And Jamie's.
    But I will stop him now. He will kill no one else.
    Her hands shaking from a mix of nerves, excitement, and dread, she pocketed the flashlight, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, and stepped forward carefully, feeling around with her toes.
    "This is Special Detective Donhowi of the Matryville Central Police Department. You are surrounded. Lay your weapons down and you will not be harmed."
    A can rattled toward her right and she aimed at it, trying to see what caused the noise. She squinted in the dark, but nothing moved. Nothing shifted, or breathed. She was alone.
    She stepped sideways, keeping her eyes open, searching. She knew he was here, she knew he was watching. And she knew he knew it.
    Ahead of her, a shape suddenly threw open a door and vanished into the snow, his boots slapping on the concrete outside.
    "Halt, police!"
    The man ran, fleeing between two of the large metal warehouses toward the river. Liz chased after him, gun up, mindful of tricks, and spotted him before he ran around a corner.
    She wasn't meant to be part of this case, to keep following it now that she was suspended, and now she knew why Bill and the others tried so hard to deter her from hunting him down.
    The thirst for revenge ached in the back of her neck, and she wanted—needed—the man's blood to spill across the ground. She aimed the gun at him and fired, but the bullet missed, ricocheting off the metal wall of the neighboring warehouse and making him duck.
    The night lit up as police sirens cut through the air, the lights illuminating the man's face as he looked back over his shoulder. It was Mark, she saw, and he ran faster, but Liz was faster still, gaining