He’d vanished.
Macey stretched slowly as she stood in the conference room at the police station. She’d pulled an all-nighter and she wanted to crash but...how could she just go and sleep when Jonah was out there? With every hour that had passed, the tension and the fear she’d felt had deepened.
They all knew the drill in their business. The more time that passed, the greater the likelihood that they wouldn’t find their victim. Not alive.
“You need to rest.” Bowen’s voice. He’d just entered the room behind her. She turned at his approach, her eyes sweeping over him. He looked tired, too, the faint lines around his mouth deeper, his gaze weary. He’d been out with the search teams, running through the town.
But they were in the Smokies...too much ground to cover. Too many places for a person to vanish.
“The perp stopped calling you,” she said.
Bowen’s lips thinned. “Yeah, no more fucking taunts.”
“But why? Why stop? He was pulling you in constantly, and now you’ve got nothing but radio silence.”
He moved toward their board—their victims were on that tactical board. Daniel Haddox. God, it was still hard for her to think of him as a victim. When she saw his face, she just remembered what a cold, sadistic bastard he’d been.
“I wanted him dead,” Macey whispered as she stared at Daniel. “I wanted that for so long.” And she’d gotten what she wanted. Time for her confession. “I went to Jonah. I knew he was working on a program to predict the behavior and identify the location of serials. I wanted Daniel Haddox to be his test dummy. I gave him every bit of information I had on Daniel. Everything I knew...” She turned to look at Bowen. “And he turned up nothing.”
Bowen’s face was hard. “Macey...”
“He turned up nothing because Daniel had vanished so completely. I even began to wonder if he was dead. There weren’t any victims who fit his profiles. I mean, I know that Daniel liked to hide the bodies, so Jonah and I were focused on the missing. On people who’d had recent surgeries or any genetic abnormalities—the things that used to make prey stick out for Daniel. But we weren’t turning up any hits. We couldn’t find missing individuals to fit our profile. We knew Daniel wouldn’t have turned away from medicine. He had to be practicing off the grid, so we figured he’d gone to a rural area or maybe...maybe he’d fled the country.” That had been her suspicion. “If he’d gone to Mexico and set up shop, we weren’t ever going to find him and we wouldn’t be able to find his victims, either.”
“But he hadn’t gone to Mexico.”
“No.” Her lips pressed together, and then she said, “And Jonah’s program—it didn’t predict where he was. We only found Daniel because Dr. Lopez recognized the wounds on Gale’s body. Dr. Lopez is the one who notified the FBI. She put the wheels into motion for us.” She reached out and curled her hand around his arm. “Do you see what I’m saying? The whole program that makes Jonah a suspect...it doesn’t work. That’s why he didn’t go to Samantha with it sooner. He wasn’t able to find the serials.”
But a serial had found him.
“The hacking, Mace,” Bowen murmured, his voice gruff. “It went back to his personal computer. Not his work computer, but the laptop he kept at home. The guy was prying into all of our files.”
“That doesn’t make him a killer. We need to look at him as a victim.”
“Right now, I think we’re looking at him as both.”
But they weren’t finding him. “He’s in these mountains, somewhere,” she added. “And we know the perp we’re after doesn’t keep his prey alive for long.”
Bowen shook his head. “No, he doesn’t.”
“He was calling you,” Macey said again. “Each time. But something changed. Something made him stop. What? What was it?”
He glanced down at his watch. “Peter Carter should be awake now. The guy hasn’t asked for any lawyer yet—”
Mostly because he’d been unconscious and in surgery.
“—so this is our chance. We can go to that hospital and grill the bastard.”
Right. She nodded abruptly. Her hand slid away from his arm, but his hand flew up, and his fingers curled under her chin.
“This is going to get even worse before it gets better.”
They both knew that.
“I will have your back. I will stand with you no matter what comes our way. You can always count on me.”
Her chest seemed to burn. “And you can count on me.” Didn’t he see that? With them, the trust cut both ways. She trusted him more than she’d ever trusted anyone.
She turned for the door and she’d only taken a few steps when her gaze met the golden stare of Samantha Dark. Macey stopped short.
“Agents,” Samantha said, but her voice was weary. “We need to talk.” She shut the conference room door behind her. “Clear the air a bit.”
“Jonah—” Macey began.
Samantha held up one hand. “There is no doubt that he accessed confidential FBI files. And that he’s been accessing them for some time.” Samantha’s eyes were lined with dark shadows. “I spent two hours at his home last night. He’d been keeping journals on all of the agents in my unit. He was profiling you all.”
Shock pushed through Macey.
“I don’t think he took well to not making the original cut for the team,” Samantha continued with a tired shake of her head. “So it seemed he wanted to find out just why you all were deemed to be better agents than he was.” She rubbed a hand over the back of her neck. “I hate to say this—God, I hate it—but everything I turn up on Jonah seems to indicate that he fits the profile for the perp that we’re after in Gatlinburg. Even the way this killer has been competing with the FBI, the way he’s so zealously hunted down serials...it’s like he was trying to show us he was better.”
“That he should have made the fucking team,” Bowen said grimly.
Samantha inclined her head. “Yes. Damn it, yes.” She began to pace. “I have a crack team of computer analysts going through his files now, and that infamous program of his? Turns out he was trying to use it to locate Patrick Remus.”
Bowen rolled back his shoulders. “We need to talk with Patrick’s girlfriend again. Find out just what Patrick may have been doing for the last two years. No way he quit cold turkey.”
“Lydia Chasing didn’t know who he was!” Macey fired back. “She’s not going to have any clue about what he did.”
Samantha seemed to consider this. “Let me take a run at her.”
Macey’s head tilted toward her and her eyes widened in surprise.
“I’ve got a bit of experience,” Samantha continued as her lips twisted into a humorless smile, “with being too close to a lover who turned out to be a killer. I can understand exactly what she’s going through.”
Because Samantha’s ex-lover had turned out to be one of the worst killers out there.
“As for you two... I hear that Peter Carter is out of surgery and that he’s conscious—for the moment.” She looked pointedly at them. “Find out what you can from him. Push hard on the dead vic, I think her name is—”
“Susannah Kaiser,” Bowen supplied. “We already tried to dig, but it seems her family is gone. Her mom passed away when Susannah was a teen. Her dad died a few months back. She has a brother, but the guy cut out when he was seventeen. No one seems to know where he is.”
“Then he doesn’t even know his sister is dead.” Sadness flashed in Samantha’s eyes. “I’ll make sure the FBI is using all resources to locate him.” Then her gaze dipped between Macey and Bowen. “Is there anything else I need to be aware of regarding this case?”
“When do I officially get my gun back?” Bowen demanded.
“Consider yourself cleared,” Samantha told him. “The shooting was justified, we’re in the middle of a clusterfuck, and I want you in the field. If there is any pushback from brass, I’ll handle them.” Her eyes gleamed. “I’m pretty good at getting Executive Assistant Director Bass
to see things my way these days.”
Bowen’s head inclined toward her. “Thank you.”
“Before you two go, don’t you think you need to update me on your...personal situation?”
Macey tensed.
“There’s nothing you—” Bowen began.
“We’re lovers,” Macey said as she stepped forward. “I’m the one who went to Bowen. I’m the one who pushed for the relationship.”
But it wasn’t a relationship, not really. It had just started...
As a way to stop the pain.
Only, being with Bowen had become so much more. A lifeline.
At Macey’s blurted words, Samantha merely raised one perfectly arched brow.
“Did you know?” Macey asked, taken aback.
“Let’s just say that I knew this could be coming.” Her gaze slid to Bowen, then back to Macey. “FBI brass won’t approve of you two continuing to be partners in the field, so we’ll be dealing with that firestorm after we close this case.”
“Do you truly think Jonah is the killer?” Macey didn’t want to be wrong about a friend again. No, damn it, not again.
“I think that’s a possibility that can’t be ignored. He’s either involved or he’s a victim. Either way, he’s one of us, and we will be bringing him in.”
* * *
A SHORT TIME LATER, Samantha Dark paused just outside the interrogation room. She squared her shoulders. She tucked her hair behind her ears. She eased out a slow breath.
Lydia Chasing was in that room. Samantha had gotten an officer to bring the other woman back to the station. Lydia was grieving, hurting for the lover who’d been brutally taken from her.
She was also a woman trying to come to grips with the fact that she’d never known that lover at all, not really. I understand. Believe me, I do. Samantha reached for the doorknob, and then she walked briskly inside, her high heels clicking on the floor.
At her approach, Lydia glanced up. She wore no makeup. Her nose was red, her eyes were bloodshot and her lips were trembling. “Who are you?” Lydia’s voice was weak and rasping, probably because she’d broken it with too much crying.
“My name is Samantha Dark, and I’m with the FBI.”
Lydia’s gaze fell. “Patrick wasn’t a killer.” Her scratchy voice was almost painful to hear. “He...he was a good man. He loved me.” And her hand fell to her stomach.
Oh, sweet hell. That one gesture pierced right through Samantha. The way the woman cradled her stomach. “Are you pregnant?” Slowly, Samantha sat down in the chair across from Lydia.
A tear leaked down Lydia’s cheek. “The other agents...they had my blood checked. They said they thought I might have been drugged while Patrick was taken. They don’t have the results yet on the drugs. I—I hope I’m okay.”
“Did you tell the nurse who took the blood sample about the baby?” Because she was convinced now.
Lydia shook her head. “Patrick...he wasn’t a monster.”
Samantha’s gut was in knots. “As a precaution, I’m going to call the local hospital. I want you to go in and have a full evaluation, okay?” She started to rise.
Lydia’s hand flew out and curled around her wrist. “He wasn’t a monster.”
She knew that Lydia desperately wanted her to agree, but Samantha couldn’t speak because she’d seen the victims left in Patrick’s brutal wake. A lie wouldn’t come to her lips.
“He didn’t start all those fires.” But now doubt had crept into Lydia’s words.
Samantha swallowed. “How long were you with Patrick?”
“Over a year,” she whispered in her broken voice. “And I would have known. I would have known if...” But she didn’t finish that sentence.
It didn’t matter. Samantha knew what the woman had been about to say. I would have known if he was a killer. “I didn’t know.”
Lydia trembled.
“I didn’t know that the man I’d given my trust to, the man I’d shared my bed with...I didn’t know he was a murderer.”
Lydia’s trembles grew worse.
“I didn’t know until he came for me.”
More tears slid down Lydia’s cheeks. “Patrick never hurt me.”
“Did he hurt anyone else?” She kept her voice as soft as possible. “Think about it, Lydia. Was there ever anyone who may have...” God, how to say this delicately? “Were there any unexplained fires during your time with Patrick?”
Lydia’s eyes squeezed closed and a low, keening sound emerged from her.
“I have to ask, I’m sorry. But Patrick Remus had a schedule, of sorts. He took a victim every six months. You said you were with him for over a year. I want you to think about that time. Think about it really hard. Was there ever a suspicious fire in the area where you lived? Ever anything that—”
A sob broke from Lydia.
Samantha wanted to reach out and comfort her. She wanted to pull her close and tell the other woman she wasn’t alone—
“My stepmom.” Lydia was rocking her body back and forth now, still cradling her belly. “There was a fire at her house. Thought it was just... God! God! She was always so mean to me. Never letting me see my dad, and I told Patrick, I told him...” She nearly choked as she said, “That I wished she was out of the way.” Her tears came harder.
“Did she die in the fire?” Samantha asked her.
Lydia nodded. “I didn’t mean it...when I told him... I was just mad... I didn’t mean it...”
And Samantha knew that Patrick had been up to his old tricks.
She rose.
“Will the baby be like him?” Lydia asked her.
Samantha’s heart seemed to freeze in her chest.
“I don’t... Will the baby be like him?” she asked again. “Is she gonna be...wrong?”
Samantha went to her then, and she wrapped her arms around Lydia. Samantha held the other woman as Lydia cried.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“YOU’RE THE...ONE who shot me...” Peter Carter rasped. He was strapped to the hospital bed, and an armed police officer was at his side. Machines beeped near him and his skin was almost as pale as the sheets.
“Guilty.” Macey gave him a cold smile. She stood to the right of his bed and a very watchful Bowen waited at the foot of the bed.
“Don’t got...nothin’ to say...” Peter began.
“Really?” Bowen drawled. “Because we’ve got plenty to say. We’d actually like to start by telling you that we know what you did to Susannah Kaiser.”
Peter flinched.
“She didn’t choose you, did she?” Bowen demanded. His tone dripped with disgust. “You were fucking insane for her, but she was walking away. She wanted the cop, not you.”
Peter swallowed. “D-don’t have to talk...to you...”
“I don’t think you quite understand what’s happening here, Peter.” Macey kept her voice as cold as her smile had been. “We’re not just looking at you for Susannah’s death. Right now, there are at least four other murders that we are investigating. Daniel Haddox. Patrick Remus. Curtis Zale. Henry Harwell—”
“Didn’t k-kill that cop!” Peter cast a frantic glance at the uniformed officer beside him, an officer that looked pissed. “Didn’t kill any of them—”
“But you did kill Susannah,” Macey pushed. “I mean, you confessed that already. Right before I shot you.”
He swallowed and eased out a ragged breath. “Ac-accident...”
Keeping her skull at your museum was no accident, you freak. “Why don’t you tell me about it?” Macey invited. “Tell us your side of the story before it’s too late.” It’s already too late. There is no going back from what you’ve done.
“Should have let me f-fucking die.”
Macey just stared at him.
“I was...working my shop. Just working.” His eyes squeezed shut. “Susannah came in there, told me we had to talk.” His eyes snapped open. “I knew she’d been screwing Henry. I knew but I thought it was over. That she’d come back to m
e.”
“She didn’t,” Bowen said.
Peter’s head moved in a no motion against the pillow. “She...said we were done. That she was going with him. That she wanted to...marry him.” Anger rattled in his voice. “Fuck, fuck, fuck! I don’t know what happened! I swear, I just—I was so mad. So fucking mad. The hammer was in my hand, and the next thing I knew...the next thing...”
Macey thought of the skull. “She was walking away from you, and you hit her in the back of the head.”
He licked his lips. “I think she was dead...even before she fell to the floor. I grabbed her, I told her I was sorry, over and over, but it was too late. Her blood was everywhere. I—Jesus, she was gone.” His breath panted out. “An accident. See? That’s...what it was.”
No, that wasn’t an accident. At best, he was describing manslaughter. A crime of passion. Gone so wrong. But he hadn’t stopped with killing her. “You took her skull.” Macey couldn’t get past that. Neither would a jury. “You kept it.”
His lashes lowered. “I couldn’t...let her go. The hate nail exhibit had just opened and I—I switched the skulls. I just wanted her close.”
No, she didn’t believe that. “You still wanted to punish her. That’s what the nails were for. Even in death, the hate you felt for her betrayal wasn’t easing. You kept the skull and you kept the nails in it because you enjoyed hurting her. Even. In. Death,” Macey said again.
The uniformed cop’s hand slid toward his weapon.
The machines beeped.
Peter cast her a quick glance from beneath his lashes. “I think I need my lawyer.”
She’d wondered just how long it would be before he lawyered up. “Four bodies. Four other crimes are being linked back to you.”
“Didn’t kill them,” he mumbled back. “Only Susannah, only—”
“Where is her body?” Bowen cut in.
Peter’s lips parted.
“You kept her head. But what about her body? Where did you put her body?”
Peter’s gaze shifted to Bowen. “We had this place in the mountains that we liked. Not too far from Rainbow Falls.”