Torn (Second Sight) Read Online Free Page A

said.

    • • • • •

    Prentiss smiled at the disposable phone as he turned off his own phone and tucked it into his jacket pocket. His recording of Angela’s scream had been crisp and clean, almost as luscious as the real thing. Leaving the burner phone on, he carefully laid it in the shallow depression he’d scraped in the sand with the heel of his shoe. As he stood up, he paused to watch the ferris wheel, up on the Santa Monica pier, only a couple hundred yards away.  
    Are those people insane? Riding in those big, swinging buckets?
    He had to shake off a shudder at the thought.
    Quickly, he turned and headed back to the parking lot. No doubt they’d be here soon. Suddenly, he felt the goatee slip and quickly pressed it back into place.
    “Crap,” he muttered.
    He hadn’t used enough spirit gum.  
    As he passed the two-story lifeguard headquarters, he allowed himself a long look. This was where Baywatch had been shot. The sand he was trudging through right now had once been a film set. He grinned despite the irritating goatee. Los Angeles was a magical place.

    • • • • •

    “Hello?” Isabelle tried for the third time.
    Though Angela’s mother was quietly crying, neither she nor the others had removed their headsets. For some reason that Isabelle didn’t understand, the phone call seemed to be going on and yet they’d heard only muted, unknown sounds after the initial rustling.
    Mac and Ben were leaning over the young agent between them, staring at his computer screen. Isabelle waited for Sharon to signal her again but suddenly the agent in the middle nodded vigorously and all three of them ripped off their headsets.
    “We’ve got a triangulation,” Mac said.

CHAPTER FIVE

    Though Mac already knew this was pointless, they had to go through the motions. The Hostage Rescue Team went first, piling out of their SUVs, hitting the ground running to an area on the beach behind the lifeguard headquarters. Assault rifles ready and dressed in military style uniforms with helmets, it looked like the marines had arrived to secure the beach.
    No serial killer was going to torture their victim on a public beach in broad daylight. Even so, as they homed in on the location, their feet pounding through the sand, Mac’s adrenalin surged. Other agents and uniformed police spread out to the left and right, keeping anyone in the vicinity well back.  
    “Fifty feet,” the head of the HRT yelled.
    And as Mac counted off the paces in his mind, the head of the HRT signaled for a stop. In moments Mac had joined him as he and the rest of the agents gazed down at a cell phone lying open and face up in a shallow hole.
    “Son of a bitch,” someone muttered.
    Mac thumbed the switch on his radio.
    “Forensics,” he said. “You’re up.”
    The scream had to have been a recording. And who knew if it was even Angela? The Priest could well have a collection of screams that he’d recorded. As the HRT stood down and was replaced by agents in clean room suits, Mac forced himself to calm down and process what he was seeing.
    He already knew there’d be no fingerprints on the phone. The Priest didn’t make those kinds of mistakes–not in four murders and one attempted murder.  
    “Question everyone in the area,” he said to the growing group of agents around him. “Both out here and inside the lifeguard headquarters. Anyone who might possibly have seen a priest.”
    As the group disbanded, Mac stood with hands on hips and looked down at the phone as it was bagged and then up at the pier.
    Such a public place. The Priest is getting cocky. He squinted at the turning ferris wheel. Overconfidence would bring mistakes. That was inevitable. But whether it was in time to save Angela was another thing. Her time was dwindling.
    “I want that phone traced ASAP,” Mac said to one of the technicians. “Point of sale, payment method, interview the cashier. And collect everything here out to a few yards.”
    This had