Hide & Seek - Nicole Edwards Page 0,88

women. We need to get them help.”

Clearly ignoring him, John took a step forward, toward the table.

“John, I need you to stay where you are.” Brantley glanced at Reese, back to John. “We’re not done talkin’.”

“We’re done,” he said, taking another step forward.

“John, don’t do this.”

“I have to. I can’t let Jake be taken. They’ll hurt him again.”

“No, they won’t. He can get some help. You both can.”

Another step, then another.

Brantley’s finger shifted to the trigger. “John, stop movin’. Now.”

“I can’t do that, Walker. You know I can’t.”

A few feet away, just out of his visual range, he could hear Reese breathing calmly.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, Walker,” John said, his voice odd now. “Jake doesn’t want me to hurt you. He likes playin’ this game with you.”

The detective reached down.

Fuck.

“John, don’t do this,” he warned.

The next few seconds happened in slow motion, but at a speed Brantley could do nothing to stop. A fist pounded on the front door, startling John. He lunged, grabbing a pistol from under a newspaper on the coffee table. Later, Brantley would question why he hadn’t cleared the room, checked for weapons.

In a move too quick for anything but reaction, John lifted the gun…

“Don’t do this, John,” Brantley shouted, the words still hanging in the air when the gun fired, the detective crumpling to the floor.

Dead by his own hand.

***

Reese managed to make his way outside after the officers stormed in, the EMTs following close behind. There was nothing anyone could do for John Collins. The man’s brains were sprayed across his living room wall.

Despite all their efforts, despite the fact they had three of the four women alive to see another day, Reese was most disturbed by the news that had been delivered a few minutes ago. Officers had found the naked, severely beaten body of Shelly Masters dumped in shallow water beside a private pier at the very lake she was taken from nearly a year ago.

He wished he could say he was bothered by what had happened, by the fact the detective had taken his own life, but he wasn’t. Not after seeing the state those three women were in. Terrified, tortured, and yes, scarred both mentally and physically by what they’d been through. Reese had no idea what had been the motivation behind the anguish Collins had delivered to those women, but whatever it was, it had come out in the form of white-hot rage.

“You okay?”

Brantley’s hand touched his shoulder and Reese stopped, turned to face him. He didn’t say a word, just met Brantley’s eyes. There had been a moment when Collins had gone for the gun that Reese’s worst nightmare had arisen. For terrifying seconds, he hadn’t been sure what the detective was going to do, but he’d feared that Brantley was going to be the one on the receiving end of that bullet. Reese’s finger had been on the trigger, but he hadn’t gotten the chance to fire before John had done it for him.

“I’m okay,” Brantley said, clearly reading Reese’s need for reassurance. “I would’ve taken him out first.”

Or Reese would have.

That didn’t change the fact that Reese had been terrified in those few seconds.

“We’ll give our initial statements here,” Brantley explained. “I told Special Agent Jones they could hit me up for more later. She’s meetin’ with the mayor. It’s a huge clusterfuck since he’s a police officer.”

Reese could only imagine. Damage control was going to be necessary.

“Have you looked at the rooms where he kept them?” Reese asked softly.

“I was gonna do that now. You can stay out here.”

Reese shook his head. He couldn’t. “I’ll go with you.”

He could see the concern on Brantley’s face but there was no rebuttal. Reese followed Brantley into the house, past the police and the FBI agents who were processing the crime scene.

When they stepped through the hole in the Sheetrock, Reese took a deep breath, expelled it.

The stench was horrible.

“We’re worried about the structural integrity of the house,” one of the agents stated. “He took down some of the support walls.”

Yes, John Collins had removed the walls separating the two bedrooms and the bathroom to make one large room where he kept the women. The irons that had been affixed to their ankles were empty now, spread across the floor near the twin beds they’d been chained to. From what he could tell, the chains were long enough for them to reach the toilet but nothing else.

There were no windows, no Sheetrock on the walls or the