“How many cases are you focusing on at the bureau?”
I sighed tiredly. “Not sure. Maybe . . . fifty a day.”
Candice looked at me like I’d just said something crazy. “Why would you think you could handle that kind of volume?”
I attempted a smile. “That’s part of the job description.” And even as I heard the words come out of my mouth, I knew that pace would be the death of me.
Candice was shaking her head back and forth. “Abby,” she said gently. “You’re not built to do that. You can’t even read more than six clients a day!”
My eyes welled with tears. I knew she was right, but to admit it meant admitting I’d failed. “What can I do?” I asked.
“You can quit,” came a deep baritone voice behind me.
I jumped a little. I hadn’t realized Dutch had come back into the room. He set my sandwich on the coffee table and sat down on the couch next to me. “I can’t quit,” I told him, and more tears leaked out of my eyes.
Dutch and Candice exchanged a knowing look, and my sweetheart tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Of course you can,” he said. “And we can rehire you as a consultant. You could work for us part-time. Just a few hours a week, whatever you think you can handle.”
“I’ve already talked to Brice,” Candice said. “He’s good with it if you are, although he really wants you to continue teaching the classes for the agents. He says that’s the most important element you bring to the table.”
“Even more than the audits?” I asked.
Dutch snaked an arm over my shoulder and pulled me backward into him. Kissing the top of my now squeaky clean hair, he said, “We can do our own audits. Once you teach us how to differentiate the viable files from the dead ones, we should be off and running.”
I glanced up at him. “You’re sure?”
He grinned. “Miss Cooper, as your supervisor, allow me to inform you that you’ve been officially let go from full-time status with the CCS. We’d like to offer you a consulting position instead. And we’re willing to pay you at your former hourly rate.”
My eyebrows arched. “You realize that even working part-time I’d be making more money than before when I was on salary.”
“Yes,” Dutch said. “But you’d be responsible for your own benefits like health insurance, etc.”
“I’ve paid for that before.”
“You and I can get a group rate,” Candice assured me. “Especially when you come to work for me!”
I laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever changed jobs so fast in all my life.”
“Civilian profiler one minute, private investigator the next,” she sang.
“We always did make a good team,” I told her.
Candice grinned. “And just think about how well we’ll do when Milo joins us.”
Dutch leaned forward. “Milo’s agreed to move to Texas?”
“He says he’ll be down in the fall, right before the new school year. He doesn’t want to take his son away from his friends too early. He wants to give him the summer to say good-bye.”
“That is good news!” I sang, and just like that, I felt much better.
A little later I walked Candice out to her car. “So, after I heard that you were having a migraine from overusing your radar, I called Mrs. Dixon about Genevieve’s list. I’m headed back to the church tomorrow morning to meet with her and Genevieve. Hopefully Mrs. Dixon will recognize a name or two, and if not, I thought maybe Genevieve could help narrow the scope.”
“Can I come?”
Candice smiled. “Of course! But only if you think you’ll feel up to it.”
“I’ll be okay,” I assured her.
Candice nodded. Then, out of the blue, she said, “I’m really sorry about Friday. Brice told me it was you at the door.”
I cleared my throat uncomfortably. “Please don’t mention it,” I said. “Like, ever again.”
Candice laughed. “Agreed.”
“You two are back together again?” I couldn’t help it; I had to know.
Candice blushed. “Um . . . yeah,” she said, and then she took something out of her pocket and put it on her left ring finger before waggling her hand at me. “You could say that we’re permanently back together now.”
I swear I did the Wile E. Coyote baaaarruuuugah! eyes. “You’re engaged?!” I shouted, and then I believe I launched myself right into her and hugged her until she protested that she couldn’t breathe.
I made Candice tell me all the details—well, not all the details—I was pretty sure I had a feel for what happened immediately after she’d accepted the ring, but the part leading up to it was what I was most interested in.
“I wish I could take credit for telling Brice that I was crazy about him and didn’t want him to move out, but the truth is that he came over Friday for lunch, and while I was fixing us some salad, he got down on bended knee and offered me the black box with this beautiful ring inside. He told me that he’d never been so in love and he couldn’t imagine life without me, and if I wanted to say no again, I could, but he wasn’t going to stop asking until I eventually said yes.”
I sighed contentedly as I held her hand in front of my face and tilted it back and forth to catch the fading afternoon light. “I’m so glad you finally said yes,” I told her. “I mean, it’s about freaking time! For a minute there, I thought we’d all be old and gray by the time you two got around to saying ‘I do.’ ”
Candice smiled. “I’m not the only one putting off commitment, you know.”
I looked up from oggling her ring. “Huh?”
“I’m talking about you and Dutch, Abs. What’s up with this whole we’re-just-living-in-sin stuff anyway?”
I blinked at her indignantly. “Hey, we have a great relationship.”
“Oh, I’m not saying you don’t. What I am saying is that you guys don’t practice what you preach.”
“Will you please speak English?”
“One of you needs to pop the question already,” Candice said, moving over to her car and opening the door.
I stood there completely dumbfounded in my own driveway. I had no words to muster a retort, and Candice waved daintily from behind the wheel and left.
It took me about five whole minutes to collect myself and walk back into the house. The truth was that I really did love my relationship with Dutch. We’d never talked marriage or next steps. Living together came so easily to us that it seemed a shame to go messing with that. Still, when I saw him sitting on the couch watching a ball game, I asked, “You’re happy, right?”
Dutch held up his beer in one hand and the remote in the other. “Ecstatic.”
“No,” I said. “Seriously, Dutch. We’re good, right?”
He reluctantly pulled his eyes away from the TV. “Yeah, doll. We’re good.”
I nodded. Dutch went back to watching the game. “I mean, you don’t want anything more than this, right?”
Dutch’s posture stiffened. He then muted the TV and focused on me. “More?” he asked carefully.
His reaction confirmed my suspicion. Talking about marriage and stuff like that—even in the most general of terms—was enough to cause tension between us. “Forget it,” I said, and pushed a smile onto my face to show him that I was only kidding. “Stupid Candice put a crazy thought into my head.”
Dutch’s stiff posture became downright rigid. “What kind of crazy thought?”
“She and Brice are officially engaged.”
The muscles of Dutch’s jaw bunched. “Well, we knew that was coming,” he said after a pregnant pause.
I nodded. “Yeah, but now that she’s got a ring on her finger, Candice thinks one of us should pop the question.” I then laughed to show him how ludicrous I found that idea.
He laughed too.
We sounded like a couple of tortured hyenas.
“I’ll let you get back to the game,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“Oh, and Candice and I are headed
up to Dallas tomorrow.”
“You are?”
I nodded. “We’re going to try and have Mrs. Dixon and the church secretary help us narrow the list down. If we can isolate a few individuals, we’ll be able to turn the names back over to you guys to follow up on.”
“That’d be great,” he said, his posture finally relaxing a little. “But just to be clear, none of the names on the list flagged your radar?”
I shook my head and turned to the stairs. “I honestly haven’t looked at it yet. It’s a long list and I really wanted to give my noggin a break.”
“How many names are there?”
“About fifty.”
“Good thinking. You two be careful, okay?”
“Aren’t we always?”
Dutch laughed, and unmuted the TV. “No.”
“Good point. Okay, we’ll be careful this time. I pinkie swear.”
Chapter Fifteen
I woke at some point in the middle of the night with the most foreboding feeling. I couldn’t pinpoint the source of it, which made it all the worse. Sleep proved impossible and eventually about four a.m. I got up and tiptoed downstairs.
I made myself some coffee and just sat huddled in an afghan waiting for the sun to rise.
Dutch found me at five. “Abs?” he said, from the middle of the staircase.
“I’m down here.”
He came to sit next to me on the couch. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“No.”
“Is the headache back?”
I shook my head. “Something bad is going down.”
Dutch rubbed his face tiredly. “Something bad is going down,” he repeated. “Care to elaborate?”
“I’m not sure I can,” I said honestly. “I just have the worst feeling that I’ve failed in some way. Like, there is something I’m missing, and because I didn’t connect the dots, someone’s going to pay . . . big time.”
Dutch reached for my nearly empty coffee cup, inspected the contents, and got up with it to shuffle into the kitchen. He was back two minutes later with a fresh mug for both of us. “Drink,” he ordered. I took a sip. “I’m going to cook up some breakfast. Once I know you’ve eaten, we can talk about it.”
Dutch got busy in the kitchen and I joined him by taking a seat at the kitchen table. We didn’t speak while he cooked us up a couple of omelets, plus one for Eggy and Tuttle to split. He wouldn’t let me talk until I’d taken a few bites. The truth was that the foreboding was so intense that I didn’t have much of an appetite. “So talk to me,” Dutch said when I settled for pushing my eggs around the plate.
I sighed. “I think someone’s going to die.”
Dutch eyed me over his mug of coffee. “Do you know who?”
I closed my eyes and tried to sort out the pieces. There was so much jumbled information swirling around in my head that it was really hard to figure it out. “I think our serial killer may have found his next victim,” I said sadly. “I feel such a strong connection to Jason, Felix, and Avril, like everything points to them.”
“Is it going to happen today?”
I closed my eyes and waited for my radar to figure it all out. “I’m not sure,” I confessed. “I’d like to say no, but only because I feel the energy could go either way. Regardless, events are set into motion today, and the consequences seem grave. That’s the only thing I’m sure of.”
“What do we do?”
I opened my eyes again as the familiar throb began to pound behind my eyes. “Put all your men on the case, Dutch. There has to be some sort of connection that ties those three together, and if you can figure that out, then maybe you can stop this guy from claiming another victim.”
“Done. Do you want to come into the office with me?”
I thought about that for a minute, weighing it against the promise I’d made to Candice and an uncanny sense of urgency I felt to go with her. “No, I feel like I really need to head to Dallas. But keep me in the loop on anything you guys find that might be a lead, okay?”
“Got it.” Dutch kissed me on the cheek then and said, “If I’m going to get a jump on this, I gotta shower and get to the office.”
“No sweat. I’ll do the dishes,” I told him.
Candice came by around seven to pick me up. “Ready to roll?”
I got in and buckled up. “I am.”
“We’re going to stop at Antoine’s first,” she told me.
I remembered then that she’d mentioned wanting to show the church list to the lieutenant to see if any names jumped out at him, but as we pulled out of the drive I had a strange vision come into my head. I saw the image of a tiger dressed in fatigues and sitting on a stony perch eyeing every movement while its tail flickered back and forth.
“You okay?” Candice asked.
I realized I’d been staring straight ahead while I tried to figure out the imagery. “Fine,” I told her, still puzzling over it. I felt that Antoine was the tiger, and I remembered thinking of him in that same way when we’d first met him, but that was before he’d saved my life. Still, there was this nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Maybe we shouldn’t show him the list,” I said after a bit.
“Who?”
“Antoine.”
Candice chuckled. “Are you kidding me?” When she saw the serious look on my face, and realized I wasn’t, she asked, “Why the change of heart, Sundance?”
I wanted to tell her that my radar didn’t think it was a good idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew I could be jumping to conclusions here. Yes, Antoine was stealthy and dangerous like a tiger—but weren’t most war veterans? The guy had just come back from a war zone, so who knew what dangers he’d had to face down? And the man hadn’t even hesitated to save my life, after all. “Forget it,” I said. “You’re right. Showing him the list is the right thing to do. I think this headache is still playing havoc with my radar.”
“You sure?”
I wasn’t, but I didn’t know why I wasn’t, so I insisted we head to Lasalle’s anyway.
Two and a half hours later we pulled up to the lieutenant’s house. He was sitting on his front porch, dressed in fatigues and looking like he’d been waiting for us and the imagery of the tiger flashed through my mind again. “I have to get to work soon,” he said by way of greeting.
“Sorry for the holdup,” Candice told him, and presented him with the list from Genevieve. “We think there is a slight chance that one of the names on here might be a person of interest in your sister’s disappearance.”
LaSalle remained seated while he studied the names one by one. Slowly, he shook his head. “No one jumps out at me,” he said, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I sensed he was telling the truth. “But that might be just my first reaction. Can I make a copy of this and think on it for a day or two?”
My radar weighed in again, and it strongly suggested that Antoine could definitely help point us to the man who abducted his sister, so without any further hesitation I said, “Of course.”
LaSalle got up and turned to his door. “I’ll just scan this into my computer and be back in a second.”
“Take your time,” Candice told him sweetly, and I couldn’t help noticing that she wore her new civilian badge on a lanyard around her neck, just in case LaSalle wanted to send another letter to the state licensing board.
The lieutenant came back out in just under three minutes. “Thank you,” he said, and for the first time he smiled genuinely at both of us. “I really appreciate you two bringing me in on this.”
“Certainly,” I said, easily, even though I still had an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach.
After leaving LaSalle’s, we headed over to the church. Genevieve greeted us warmly and I noticed with satisfaction that when Mrs. Dixon arrived, the two hugged each other fiercely and a few tears were shed before everyone took their seat. We showed the list first to Mrs. Dixon, who took her time and studied it name by name. I kept my fingers crossed that someone there would ring a bell
.
As she was looking it over, my phone bleeped. Caller ID said it was Dutch. I excused myself to the hallway and answered. “What’s up?”
“I’ve figured out your list,” Dutch said.
I looked back through the open doorway at the huddle of women poring over a long set of names. “How’d you get a copy?”
“What?”
“Of our list?”
“No,” Dutch said. “Not your church list, your naughty list.”
I rubbed my forehead, which had begun to throb again. “Why do I feel lost?”
“Abs,” he said patiently. “Remember your Santa Claus vision?”
And I immediately understood what he was getting at. “Oh! That list. Okay, so what’d you figure out?”
“Felix, Avril, and Jason were all registered sex offenders.”
I gasped and a jolt of electricity shot right through me just as my radar started firing off alarm bells in my head. “Dutch,” I said quickly, my heart pounding, “I’m going to e-mail you that list of names from the church. I need you to run it through the sex offender database, and I need it done ASAP.”
“I thought you wanted me to focus on the dead guys.”
“Just do this for me, will you?” I snapped.
There was a pause, then, “Okay, Abby. Send me the list and I’ll pull Todd off the other investigation to run it through.”
“Thank you,” I said gratefully. “And one more thing: I need the last known addresses for the three dead men.”
“Addresses?” he asked.
“I have a theory.”
“Want to fill me in?”
My hands were shaking slightly as I reached into my purse and pulled out a pen and a piece of scrap paper. “No time. Just give me those addresses and work on that list. Call me back the moment you get anything.”
After taking down the addresses, I had Candice e-mail Dutch the list from her laptop. Genevieve and Mrs. Dixon were still huddled together, looking through the names, one by one. “Anything?” I asked them.
The pair looked up. “Not yet,” said Mrs. Dixon, and I could tell she felt bad about not recognizing any of the names.
“It’s okay,” I assured her. “We’ll figure it out.” I then turned to Candice, who was watching me closely. She knew something was up. “Can you pull up Google Maps?”