Once He Sees

O N C E H E S E E S (A Claire King FBI Suspense Thriller —Book 1) M o l l y B l a c k CONTENTS PROLOGUE CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER TWENTY ONE CHAPTER TWENTY TWO CHAPTER TWENTY THREE CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE CHAPTER TWENTY SIX EPILOGUE PROLOGUE As if someone had flicked a switch deep inside her, consciousness flooded back. Her senses groped for information, but the messages that came back were incomplete. Confused. She was lying down, could feel the bed beneath her, the blanket covering her face. She must have wriggled down underneath the sheets in her sleep, the way she used to as a small girl. Back then it was as protection against the monsters that lived beneath her bed. Twenty-five years later, she was almost convinced those demons no longer existed. As her other senses started to come to life, she tried to move her hand, to free her face from the cloying sheets. Nothing. She could feel her brain screaming its commands, but her hand, her arms, everything refused to obey. There was something else. The cloth on her face. It wasn’t the Egyptian cotton from her bed. It wasn’t even the sheets from her childhood. It was something else entirely. A blindfold. As confusion morphed into panic the realization dawned on her that she was not alone. There was someone behind her. She could hear him. Humming. A hand gripped her shoulder, not hard, not even threatening, but somehow that was worse. It was the grip of someone who possessed something. The humming grew louder, filling her ear with its sound, with its warm, moist breath. Then she became aware of another noise. One that caused her breathing to cease, her bowels to clench. The sound of something metallic. Something sharp. Every part of her brain commanded her voice to scream, and incredibly a noise escaped her throat, drowning out that awful humming. Any relief, any lessening of the panic was short-lived though. The humming continued if anything the tune became even more upbeat. She heard the moist lips, inches from her ear, separate into a smile. With a terror worse than anything she had ever experienced before, she realized the terrible reality. The fact that he didn’t care if she screamed could only mean one thing. There was no one else there to hear her. CHAPTER ONE Claire peered through her water-flecked Aviators at the sleek black outline of the speedboat ahead of her. At the man who had filled every waking hour of her last five months. The man who had haunted every dream, every nightmare when she had fallen into a restless sleep. The man the press and then, almost unwittingly, those tracking him had dubbed The Artist. Those five months had been the toughest of a tough twelve years as an FBI agent. They had caused her to question herself. Question the society that could have spawned such a monster. Even question humanity. The crimes of the man in the speedboat fifty yards ahead of her would stay with her for the rest of her days. It wasn’t just what he had done, terrible though those crimes were. It was the way he had done them. How he had extracted every last bit of pain from his victims. The fact he had sent evidence of exactly what he had done to the victim’s mother, father, son, daughter – whoever he could find. Those closest to the victim were always the first to know. The ones who had to tell the police that The Artist had notched up one more on his ever-increasing body count. That hunt had cost her a lot. A relationship. Almost her sanity and grip on reality. It had cost the life of Tyler, her partner, and very nearly her own. But now she could see him. Only a stretch of murky Mississippi water separated them. And there was no way he was going to get away from her this time. No matter what it took. A burst of static in her ear made her start, then the hiss was replaced by the voice of Wilson. “I’ve got visuals on you both Claire.” She imagined her current partner somewhere on shore, one eye on the road, the other glued to a pair of binoculars trying to keep the two racing boats in his field of view. She resisted the urge to scan the banks, and though his presence offered a crumb of comfort, she knew full well that this scene – hopefully the closing one – was going to play out on the river. “Ok, stick with me,” she said, her voice coming out jerky as the boat leapt and bounced over the waves created by the one in front. Claire could make out the bulky form, silhouetted against the blue sky, of the man in the boat ahead of her. She could see him staring back at the one chasing him. Could sense him putting a face to the person who had been one step behind him all this time. Her eyes lifted to another shape further ahead. That of a rusted barge, moored in the middle of the river’s flow. Moored, right where the boat in front was speeding. She pulled slightly at the wheel, keeping The Artist’s attention behind him, not on what was going on in front. The barge got closer, towering over the oncoming black rigid inflatable boat, or RIB as Wilson had assured her they were called. If this chase, both the five-month-long one and this latest one that had begun at a deserted Illinois boatyard less than an hour ago, ended with the country’s most wanted fugitive crashing into several tons of rusted metal, it was not