“Let’s get out of the cemetery and off this hill first, huh? At least get to where we can open it carefully? It’s no good if it’s ruined.”
He was right and she knew it.
“Okay, we’ll go back to the B and B,” she said.
Suddenly Killer, who’d been at her feet, quiet and obedient, began to bark.
He stared at the trees, his body rigid and his posture fierce.
“Killer, hey!” Meg whispered.
She saw that Matt had already reached for his Glock. Startled, she did the same.
There was movement in the trees along the massive rock across from them. Meg thought she heard the sound of footsteps receding on the trail down.
Someone had been there, someone who was gone now.
The dog continued to growl.
“Stay as low as you can!” Matt ordered. He crouched down, level with the gravestones, then crept toward the trees. She followed, and they rose to a standing position when they reached the trees, walking furtively through the dark shadows. But they found no one.
“We are being followed,” Matt said slowly. He pointed to a broken branch. “Someone was watching us from these trees.”
“People are up here all day,” Meg said.
“This is a fresh break,” he told her. “See?” It appeared to be; Meg didn’t argue. She’d never considered herself much of a tracker. The situation hadn’t arisen for her before.
He set his hand on her back. “Let’s go to the hotel. I want to read what this note says.”
At his touch, she suddenly felt close to him; maybe it was natural. The two of them against the world as they stood high above the town, surrounded by graves.
“All right.” Killer stayed at her heels as they hurried down. At the top of the steps, Matt paused. He kept very still.
“Whoever it was is gone,” Matt said. He dropped down by the dog. “You know what, Killer? You weren’t such a bad idea, after all. Go figure.”
He started down the stone steps, Meg right behind him. Then they headed back up the hill to the General Fitzhugh Lee.
When they reached it, everything was quiet. Meg used her house key to let them in. Matt followed her to her room.
Killer hopped up on her bed and curled up to sleep. He seemed to believe that his work for the night was done.
Matt took the rolled note out of the evidence bag and set it on the television stand. “You have tweezers?” he asked her. “And a pen or something that’s not sharp?”
She found her tweezers and an eyeliner pencil with a soft end for smudging color.
Matt very cautiously began to use the tools to open the damp paper. Meg watched it unfold.
As she saw Lara’s writing emerge, her heart seemed to beat harder. Then she felt it sink to her stomach as she saw how much the ink had bled and run.
“We’re never going to be able to read it,” she murmured.
“You know her handwriting. See what you can figure out,” Matt said.
He was standing close to her again. They were nearly touching as they both scrutinized the paper. She felt an instinctive and almost overwhelming desire to turn to him, to gaze into his eyes and pretend this letter didn’t exist, that her friend wasn’t missing. She wanted him to hold her.
She gritted her teeth, appalled that she could suddenly want a man so much.
Especially this man.
Especially since she was now officially FBI. Officially Krewe...
She blinked and stared hard at the paper. She saw her name at the top.
“‘Meg,’” she read. “‘Silly, huh? You’ll probably never...’ Never what?”
“‘Find this.’ It says, ‘find this.’”
“Yes, yes, you’re right,” Meg said. “‘You’ll probably never find this, but...’”
Matt kept trying to read. “‘But if you do—if I haven’t retrieved it myself—then I’m in trouble. I’m doing this because I don’t know what’s really going on. I don’t want to falsely accuse, but this has something to do with...’”
He stopped reading. “To do with what?” he demanded.
Meg tried to study the paper again. “I can’t tell—I just can’t tell! The ink ran right there.”
Matt said softly, “I can make out the letters b-a-r-d. Does that mean anything to you?”
“The bard. Shakespeare.” Meg shrugged. “I don’t think she’d leave me a note about Shakespeare.”
“Seems unlikely,” he agreed. “Any ideas at all?”
She shook her head. “We used to leave notes when we were bothered by something. One semester she knew about cheating going on at college. She didn’t want to say anything. She felt it wasn’t her place. But it wasn’t right. She left me a note about it.”
“And what happened?” Matt asked.
“Easily solved. The girl doing the cheating dropped out. She was actually a good kid who had some problems. She admitted everything, so Lara never had to do anything. Nor did I.”
“Let’s leave this here,” Matt said. “It’ll be dryer by morning. If we still can’t read anything, we’ll bring it to the lab. I know Gettysburg is on our tour list, but we’re about an hour and half from DC and maybe an hour and a half on to Gettysburg from there.” He gave her a questioning look. “I know you’re really worried and that you won’t be happy until we’ve followed the trail you and Lara used to take, but as you said earlier, the note may tell us something important. It could be too far gone for even our best techs, but I think it’s important to try.”
Meg nodded and sat on the foot of the bed. She didn’t move as Matt walked to the door.
“Hey,” he said, his hand on the knob.
“Yeah?”
“Lock this. Lock it when I go out.”
“Yes, of course.” She stood and met him at the door.
“You’re okay?”
“Of course,” she repeated.
“If I hear that dog barking, I’ll be right back in here.”
“I graduated—”
“Yes, from the academy. If you hear me screaming, I’ll expect you to have my back, too, okay?”
He was smiling, and she nodded, feeling a little foolish. The door closed, and she thought he was gone. Then she heard his voice from the other side. “Lock it now!” he barked.
She did.
Twenty minutes later, she was in a long T-shirt. Her regulation-issue Glock was at her bedside. She didn’t turn the television on; instead, she thought about the night. Matt believed that someone had been watching them at the cemetery. He believed that a black sedan might be following them. He wasn’t certain, but he was willing to consider the possibilities.
She smiled. He wasn’t so bad, after all.
She started to drift off, Killer curled at her feet. She did sleep for a while, but it was a light sleep. Suddenly she found herself wide-awake, hoping it wasn’t time to get up for the day. From the dim light easing through the drapes, she thought it must be very early in the morning. She could rest her eyes a few more minutes. She drifted in comfort, but then began to picture Lara’s note: b-a-r-d.
She jumped out of bed, startling the dog, who gave a worried “Woof!”
“It’s okay, Killer,” she said.
She hurried over to the TV stand and turned on the light, then stared at the note again. She still couldn’t read that part, but the b-a-r-d was the end of a word—the beginning of which had smudged.
She ran to her door, ready to tear over to the next bedroom. But when she opened it, Matt Bosworth was already there. He wore just his trousers, bare chest and hair damp from the shower.
“Bard,” he said. “I know...”
“Me, too. Bard. Hubbard.”
“Yes, Hubbard. Lara’s note to you is about Congressman
Hubbard. I’m pretty sure that your friend suspected something about his death wasn’t right.”
“And,” Meg said, “it has to do with Congressman Walker!”
He nodded, then stepped back. She realized that her hair was tangled around her face and she was inappropriately dressed in her giant sleep tee.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,” he said. “It’s still early. Not quite six.”
“I was awake. I can be ready to go in about ten minutes.”
“Good. Great. I’d like to get that note in, see what our experts can tell us. They have lights that can detect what’s faded, trace the slightest indentation on paper.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s perfect.”
“Perfect,” he echoed.
They stood awkwardly for a moment, and then he spun around to return to his room.
Killer followed him.
“Hey, you!” Meg called to the dog.
The animal ignored her.
“It’s all right,” Matt said. He disappeared into his room with Killer trotting behind him. She ran into the shower, anxious to be as good as her word.
When she stepped out of her room, he was waiting for her. There was a somber look on his face.
“Has something happened?” she asked.
He nodded. “We have another one,” he said grimly.
“Another...”
“Dead woman.”
Meg’s heart leaped to her throat. “Not—not Lara?” she asked.
10
Slash was tired as all hell. For once in his life, he wished he didn’t work alone.
He’d spent part of the night trying to determine how to break in on the agents. But they had the damned dog. The stupid creature had barked at him when he’d been quite a distance away, hidden in the trees. What would it do if he tried to get into that ramshackle inn with the agents sleeping? Not only that, Slash knew that agents slept with their firearms by their beds, always within reach.
He’d given up watching the old bed-and-breakfast and headed out in the early-morning hours. He was tired and irritated, but he’d worked out his next moves carefully. First, where to grab someone. Second, where to leave her. This latest killing would change the focus yet again.
It would have every law enforcement agent in the tristate and District area fixated on one thing and only one thing.
The killings. These killings. The dead women. Eventually, he’d know what he needed to know. Eventually, it would work out. This spate of serial killings would end as swiftly as it had begun. As swiftly as it had ended years before. Once again, the killer would disappear into the annals of crime history.
That was too bad. He realized he’d acquired a taste for what he did. Maybe Slash would remain active; the persona of Slash was so alive and so real now. Sometimes he woke up believing he was Slash McNeil. Sometimes it was difficult to pull back, to remember who he really was.
Last night hadn’t been easy. She’d been a fighter and a squirmer. He’d chosen her differently. But in the end, it didn’t matter. And in the end, the river would be his salvation, washing away any trace of what had happened.
None of the women mattered. They were nothing—nothing at all. The end result was everything.
Except of course...
The agents. He wanted them dead. But that would create a disruption that would cause an even more intense kind of manhunt, would change the dynamics, could ruin everything.
Perhaps, though...
He thought about the one he’d been ordered not to kill, at least not yet. Made no sense. A hole in the ground was a hole in the ground.
Maybe she was already dead. Maybe he could find the time to go and watch her beg and plead, let her know exactly who had done this to her, let her see his face before he watched her die. Maybe that would calm his soul, stop this terrible craving to find a way to kill the agents.
But killing a man wouldn’t fit Slash’s profile, he told himself.
Killing her, though...
He ached, longing to kill them, to see them die.
His phone rang. “Hey, up and at ’em—boss wants you!”
Slash silently gritted his teeth.
Some people—who weren’t women—deserved to die, too.
And Slash imagined a different kind of killing as he rose to face the day.
* * *
Meg stood at the autopsy in Dr. Wong’s OCME, trying not to shake. She knew that the victim wasn’t Lara. And yet she’d felt that terrible dread when she first heard the news. It was painful to stand where she was, completely still and listening, as stoically professional as possible.
When they’d driven here that morning, she’d tried to reassure herself that it wasn’t going to be Lara. Lara had been in Harpers Ferry; she’d left the note. She’d known something—about Hubbard, about Walker—and that was why she’d disappeared. Not because she was dead.
“The victim was killed early this morning, probably about 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.,” Wong said. “The throat is slashed, the body was ripped from throat to groin and stones were stuffed into the resulting cavity. We’ve rushed tests. She was drugged in exactly the same manner as the previous victims. She was found in the Potomac River. What I believe is different about this woman is that she’ll prove to be a prostitute. She was sexually active previous to her murder, but there’s no sign that it was forced.”
“That makes her a prostitute?” Matt asked, puzzled.
Wong shook his head. “She’s got a tattoo on her inner right wrist. A rose. It signifies a loosely organized group of working girls who keep tabs on one another. Kind of a sisterhood. I know that because a john went crazy and killed a member of the group about six months ago. He was familiar to some of the other girls. The victim was seen leaving him, he was identified and arrested and he confessed to the crime. But it was nothing like this. I believe this one has our serial killer’s signature.”
“The tongue is missing?” Meg heard herself ask.
“It is. I’m not an investigator on the case,” Wong said, “but I’d like to point out that I believe this to be a rush job. The cuts are more jagged. The body was poorly stuffed—she floated almost immediately. Unless, of course, the killer needs a faster kick—needs the body to be discovered more quickly.”
“Let me know when you get an ID,” Matt said.
“You bet. Jackson Crow had an artist in, one of your people, Jane Everett. We’ve got her sketch going out in the media.”
“You have any idea where we’ll find other girls belonging to this sisterhood?”
Wong gave them an address and the two of them thanked him and then left. Outside, Meg was startled when she felt Matt’s hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him. He pulled her gently into his arms.
“We’re going to find her alive,” he whispered.
Maybe it was the unexpectedness of his action, or maybe it was because she’d become more and more aware with each passing hour of the physical attraction between them. But she was suddenly more afraid of his touch than even the bad news that might be coming. She couldn’t explain it to herself—other than to suspect that she feared losing control. Losing independence. And yet...she stayed in his arms for a moment, feeling the heat of his chest and breathing in his clean scent.
Then he stepped back and looked at her, searching her eyes. “You okay? Really?”
“Yes, I’m okay.”
“We’ve got to get to the office,” he said. “Then we’ll go see what our newest victim’s friends have to say.”
They returned to the car, where Killer was waiting for them; the windows were down far enough to allow him plenty of air. Meg had been afraid to leave him alone in the car on such a hot day, but Matt had taken care of it. He’d parked in a shady spot, and also made a purchase in a convenience st
ore on the way here—a cloth water bowl that could be folded to fit into a pocket. They could fill it from a water bottle and empty it when they had to drive again.
Meg dumped the water, then slid into the passenger seat.
“Another murder. Here. And we might have been followed in Harpers Ferry. Maybe these murders and Lara’s disappearance aren’t related,” Meg said.
Matt glanced over at her. “But we’re both pretty sure that Lara wrote something about Walker having a connection with Garth Hubbard’s death.”
“That’s what I don’t understand. Hubbard wasn’t murdered. He died of a heart attack.”
“There was no autopsy. His private physician signed his death certificate. He had a heart condition, so there was no reason to suspect anything...untoward. Or anything in the way of a cover-up.”
“He was in his own home,” Meg said. “These women who are being murdered... The killer watches them and takes them off the street.”
“But now a prostitute. None of the other women were prostitutes. They were all new to the area from which they disappeared. Why change his choice of victim?”
“Because...he needed a kill last night or early this morning. He hadn’t chosen a new target yet. Could be that his desire to kill has escalated, that he’s not getting the same fix. And a prostitute is easily picked up on the street.”
“The timing would fit—if the killer is also our stalker. It’s only an hour and a half back to DC from Harpers Ferry,” Matt said.
They arrived at the Krewe headquarters and went directly into Jackson’s office where he was waiting with Will Chan, Angela and Kat Sokolov.
Kat had been to the OCME already; she’d gone in as soon as the body had been discovered. She told them she was as certain as Wong that the killer was the same man who’d perpetrated the previous crimes and she was equally certain that the time of death had been early morning.
Matt described their visit with Nancy Cooper in Richmond and how Meg believed that someone in a black sedan had watched them at a rest stop. He also mentioned the black sedan seen at her new town house, which Angela corroborated. Then he went on to tell them about Joey finding Meg—and their recovery of the note from the gravestone marker. He produced the note; Angela said she’d get it down to tech support right away.