The Witness

by Nichole Severn

  Finn flipped through the file, trailing his finger down the report Illinois marshals had sent, then moved on to the photos. Every detail—no matter how small, how out of place—would get them one step closer to finding who had stalked Camille all the way to Oregon. He studied the first photo, a mug shot of a man he’d never seen before, and raised his gaze to Watson. Narrow jawline, short black hair with thick matching eyebrows, dark circles and a permanent exhaustion settling under brown eyes. “This isn’t Jeff Burnes.”

  “It’s kind of a good-news, bad-news situation.” Watson tapped the face of the subject in the mug shot. “The guy they scooped up was wearing Burnes’s prison uniform, but once they had their suspect in custody, they realized his face had been made to look like Burnes’s with a bunch of makeup and silicone. The fugitive was wearing color-changing contacts and a wig to convince marshals they had their man. This guy? You’re looking at Special Agent David Ronaldson of the FBI.”

  He recognized the name, and the world threatened to tilt on its axis. Finn had done his homework, right down to memorizing the law-enforcement officers and agents who’d worked Camille’s case back in Chicago. Now Watson wanted him to believe David Ronaldson had been posing as Jeff Burnes all this time while in federal custody? What the hell was going on here? “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me one of the agents assigned to find the Carver has been behind bars for a year disguised as his target? And nobody—not the FBI, not the prison warden, not the guards or Chicago PD—noticed until the man escaped?”

  “This is what he looked like before.” Watson peeled the mug shot away from the rest of the file, exposing the photo behind it, and Finn pinched the file cardstock harder. The man from the mug shot had been expertly transformed into someone else entirely. Not a trace of black hair, that narrow jawline or those light brown eyes. In his place, Finn could’ve sworn he was staring at a photo of the Carver if it hadn’t been for the hundreds of hours he’d spent studying this case from the beginning until now. “Someone went through a lot of trouble to make sure the real Jeff Burnes wasn’t behind bars. Enough trouble one of the agents assigned to the case stepped up as a body double. Agent Ronaldson still isn’t talking without his lawyer present, which is going to be a couple more hours at least, but I have to think the Carver—the real Jeff Burnes—is the puppet master here.”

  Hell, if he hadn’t seen the “after” photo, he never would’ve believed the “before.” Outlines of leaves cut through the reflection off the photo paper, and every cell in Finn’s body stilled. Agent Ronaldson had used makeup and a facial prosthesis to make himself look like the Carver, which meant Jeff Burnes was still out there, still looking for the one victim who’d gotten away. “Camille.”

  Finn dropped the file and sprinted as fast as he could back toward the safe house. Heavy footsteps fell in line behind him. He didn’t have to explain the situation to Watson. He was already calling in for backup to their location. He just hoped to hell they’d make it in time. Pain radiated through his side and the balls of his feet as he rounded into the small alley leading to the safe house. Nearly ripping the handrail off the stairs, he charged toward the open front door. Camille wouldn’t have left the safety of the remodeled garage, let alone left the front door open on her way out. The bastard had already been here. “No. No, no, no, no. Camille!”

  The metal stairs shook under the fury of Watson’s approach behind him.

  Unholstering his weapon, Finn kicked the door wide and immediately cleared the hallway. He moved deeper, Watson taking point at his back. One of the kitchen bar stools had been pulled to the middle of the room. He motioned his colleague toward the bathroom with two fingers. The kitchen looked exactly as he’d left it. Smears of brownie mix stained the countertop and the sheets he hadn’t gotten the chance to change before he’d left. The sink was filled with the evidence of his and Camille’s extracurricular activities.

  To the untrained eye, it might look like he and his witness had decided to bake brownies, then gone on with their day, but Watson had been trained to rely on the smallest details when it came to military ordnance, hand grenades, pipe bombs and any other kind of explosive device. The marshal’s life had depended on it. There was no way Finn could explain his way out of this. The former FBI unit chief now knew Finn had had an intimate relationship with his witness. “Clear.”

  Finn lowered his weapon and studied the room again. He’d left Camille vulnerable for attack, but how had the Carver known she was here? How had he gotten past the alarm system in the first place or known Finn had left? No sign of a struggle, but his gut said Camille hadn’t walked out of the safe house on her own. She wouldn’t have taken the risk. He focused on the bare surface of the nightstand on her side of the bed, then her overnight bag on the floor. “Her camera is missing, but all of her other belongings are still in the duffel bag you packed. If she’d walked out that door on her own, she would’ve taken everything.”

  “The smoke detector has been disassembled, as well as the alarm clock I assume sat on this nightstand. There are pieces of it all over the floor.” Watson holstered his sidearm and dove into his coat pocket for a pair of gloves. Latex snapped against his wrists, then he picked up the fragments and arranged them on the nightstand. This was what Watson did, what he’d been trained to do during his time in the FBI. He’d analyze the pieces of the puzzle scattered over any given landscape and spend a grueling amount of time re-creating the original device and determining how it functioned. “There are two power sources here. One for the alarm clock, and one for something else. A hidden camera maybe.”

  “Damn it.” Finn studied the bar stool left in the middle of the small space, then shifted his attention to the smoke detector. “That’s not the same detector I installed when I remodeled this place. It’s been replaced.”

  “Most likely with another camera.” Watson moved beside Finn. “Someone was watching you here. Watching her. They knew the location of your safe house and infiltrated it without you knowing.”

  “And then they came in here and took her and the cameras.” Uselessness filled him, suffocating any hope he’d had of finding a lead on Camille’s location. “How? The only people I told about this place were you and Remi.” Understanding hit, and his gut pitched hard. “And she would’ve made a note in Camille’s file in the Warrant Information Network.”

  “The marshal in Chicago. The autopsy showed the victim had been killed two hours before her log-in information had been used by Miles Darien to find out where Camille had been relocated. Illinois marshals should’ve disabled access after the ME’s findings were released,” Watson said. “But there’s a chance it was overlooked. Whoever took her might still have access to the system, and maybe any security protocols you’ve put in place for your witness.”

  “I told Camille not to open the door for anyone unless they knocked twice. She gave her abductor access without knowing who was on the other side because the bastard followed the protocol noted in her WIN file.” This was on him. He’d left her unprotected, turned his back on her and everything she’d needed from him because he’d been too afraid to confront his own damn weaknesses. But he wouldn’t fail her again. “It’s the Carver. This whole investigation is centered around him. The attack last year, her relocating to Florence, Miles Darien getting access to her location, Agent Ronaldson’s escape from federal custody. It’s all been planned from the beginning, a manipulation to throw us off. This is personal for him. Camille is the only victim who got away, and he’s going to make sure it doesn’t happen again, but he couldn’t have gone far.”

  “Twenty minutes gives him a good head start, though.” Watson discarded his gloves as screeching tires and echoed voices sounded down the hall. Backup had arrived.

  Finn extracted his phone from his pocket and punched in the web address for Global Geographic, then scrolled through the archive of articles he’d studied over the past few days. “Jeff Burnes was a writer fo
r Global Geographic. He and Camille only worked on a handful of assignments together, but there’s one location within driving distance.” He found the article he’d been looking for and jammed the phone into Watson’s hands as he headed for the door. “He’s taking her here.”

  Something squished under his boot, and Finn froze. Lifting his foot, he studied the skin-colored shape that’d been discarded up against the wall. He hadn’t seen it before now, had been focused on clearing the scene and finding Camille, but now he understood. Silicone shaped to look like a human nose. Her abductor had either removed the appearance-changing prosthetic, or Camille had fought back and torn it away from her attacker’s face. Either way, Finn was certain now.

  The man who’d hurt her had come to finish the job.

  * * *

  COLD WATER SPLASHED against her face, ripping her from unconsciousness. The ground was soft, gritty, and shifted under the weight of her shoulder as Camille turned onto her back. Her head fell to the opposite side. Sand stuck to the back of her neck, her hands, her hair. Gray clouds changed shapes over a long, unoccupied stretch of beach, divots of one set of footprints leading toward her. Blurred trees and black rocks went in and out of focus, her arms and legs somehow heavier aside from the added weight of her soaked clothing.

  What...?

  “I remember the first time I saw you with this camera. It was on our very first assignment for Global Geographic together. You’d been assigned as my photographer for an article I was writing, and I remember thinking I’d finally found my equal,” he said.

  That voice. Every nerve ending she owned screamed warning as the haze of whatever sedative he’d injected her with clung to her senses. The familiar click of her camera reached her ears over the noise-canceling swell of ocean waves. He was close, closer than she’d realized, and a fist of dread knotted in her gut.

  Sand gritted under heavy footsteps. “You were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen—intelligent, creative, passionate.”

  Recognition flared as she took in the stretch of damp beach, the bright red-and-white lighthouse positioned on the cliffs that’d served as a beacon of hope and relief to lost sailors for more than a century and the never-ending dark expanse of ocean on her left. She’d been here before. On assignment for Global Geographic. It’d been a couple of years, but she hadn’t forgotten. The beach stretched for nearly a quarter of a mile in each direction, a thick line of trees stood guard at her back and the choppy waves sliding toward her wouldn’t do her a damn bit of good.

  No matter which direction she ran, the Carver would catch her.

  A humorless laugh broke through the ringing in her ears as she turned over onto her stomach. And there he was. A sharp jawline contrasted the roundness of the man he’d posed as for the last year. His medium brown hair had been parted slightly to the right, giving him more of a boyish appearance, rather than looking like the manipulative killer she’d known him to be. He was handsome, distinguished, with an easy smile and gray eyes that’d once promised to give her the world. He towered over her at six foot one, her camera in his hand. “I’d never met anyone with half as much passion for their work as you, and that’s when I knew I had to have you. That together, we would make the ultimate team. At least until the moment you let that marshal touch you.”

  Ultimate team for what? Camille dug her fingers into the sand, her shoulder protesting the paralysis of desperation to escape. “How...? The marshals said you escaped prison a week ago, but you’ve been posing as my therapist for a year.”

  “I’ll have to admit, that was a stroke of genius I wasn’t sure would play out as I’d planned.” Jeff raised his eye to her camera’s viewfinder and snapped a photo of her. The flash blinded her for a split second before color returned. He lowered the device, crouching beside her. Sand clung to his slacks and black shoes. “I’ve always been very good at reading people, Camille, figuring out what they wanted. Within seconds of approaching my target, I’d know exactly what their greatest desires were, what they feared. In every instance I narrowed my focus on my next victim, I had the power to grant them everything they wanted or ruin their life beyond repair.” His gaze lifted from her, out to sea, brighter than she remembered, and a deep muscular quake shook through her. This wasn’t her former fiancé standing over her. This was a killer in his element. The Carver. “It just so happened, I discovered that same talent could be used to find people with...similar interests. Like one of the FBI agents assigned to investigate the six women who’d been found strangled with the word mine carved into their chests throughout Chicago.”

  Surprise coiled through her. “What?”

  “Believe me, I know how it sounds, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see how far I could push a man who’d taken an oath to protect the innocent. Once I realized his obsessive interest to find me lay in the inner workings of how and why I killed my victims and not some warped sense of duty the bureau brainwashed their agents to believe in, it wasn’t hard to convince him he could lose everything. I had the power to take his career, his family, everything. Unless he did exactly as I told him. Over several months, I was able to pinpoint and use his own fear against him, mold him into the perfect body double.” Straightening, Jeff centered those steel-gray eyes on her, and the muscles down her spine spasmed in warning. “As you’ve already seen, I’m quite good at blending in. Stood to reason I could also make Agent Ronaldson resemble my likeness. At least, enough that the FBI didn’t know they had one of their own in cuffs instead of the Carver. I was arrested that night in Chicago after surgeons pieced me back together from your knife, but he was the one who ensured I never set foot behind bars.”

  “And he went along with it because you’d threatened to expose him for what he really was.” There was another piece of the puzzle still out there, one Jeff Burnes had recruited solely to convince the FBI Jeff Burnes was the man behind bars. “Miles Darien was right. You killed Jodie Adler. You left her in the woods behind my house, knowing the marshals service would find her and I’d connect the location to the photograph you encouraged me to take that day. And your protégé? Was Miles Darien another stray you blackmailed to do your bidding or was he just a fan of your work?”

  Jeff circled into her vision, his attention on the camera in his hands. “Miles played his part well, until he betrayed my trust by coming after you. I’m obviously disappointed to lose someone of such talent, but if your marshal hadn’t killed Miles, I would have. I gave him specific instructions he was never to lay a hand on you, and he broke the rules.”

  “Why?” The way he talked of murder, so casually, as though a human life meant nothing more than crushing an ant under his heel, hollowed her from the inside. How could she not have seen him for what he was? How could she have let him into her home, into her bed, into her life without knowing something was wrong? Camille clawed at the sand, mentally gauging how fast she could run for the trees or the cliffs with a small amount of sedative still pulling at her arms and legs. Tourist season had slowed months ago. Losing him in the woods would be her best chance at survival. At least long enough until night fell, and she could run without being seen. A shiver chased across her shoulders as her body temperature dropped. Another spray of seawater added to the cold settling into her bones. Bitterness entered her voice. “Why do all of this? Why pose as a therapist pretending to help me? Why lie about a break-in to Dr. Gruner’s office and make me choose Jodie Adler’s final resting place? Why install surveillance equipment in the safe house? Is all of this just so you could finish killing me yourself?”

  “I told you, Camille. When I choose my target, I have the power to give them everything they want or the power to destroy them. I didn’t want to kill you. I realized I’d made a mistake last Valentine’s Day when I set out to add you to my collection of victims, right around the moment you stabbed me with your steak knife. For the first time I could remember, I’d been driven by a sudden desperation to hide what I was
from you. Something I’d never done with any of my other victims. You were sitting across the kitchen table from me, so perfect, so enticing, and all I could think was that if you knew the truth about me, it was only a matter of time before you left. I obsessed over that idea all throughout the day and when dinner came, I attacked, only...you changed everything. I had my hands around your throat, that brightness I’d come to admire was slipping from your eyes, and right then I felt...empty. Like I was killing a piece of myself.” He tossed her camera into the sand, cloud-shaded sunlight revealing the photo he’d queued on the LCD monitor. One she’d taken of Finn.

  He reached for her, pinching her chin between his thumb and index finger when she pulled away, and forced her to look him straight in the eye. Tearing at the collar of her shirt, he exposed the tape and gauze covering the gouges on her chest. Stinging pain seared across her nerve endings as he ripped the dressing from her skin. “I meant what I said when I started carving those letters into your chest, Camille. You’re mine. Not Miles’s. Not the marshal’s. Mine. We were so much alike, you and me. We both had so much passion for what we did. I was ready to give you everything. Then you let a man who left you unprotected and alone try to take what’s mine. Now, you’re nothing more than an insignificant part of my past and the past of your marshal, and no one is coming to save you this time.”

  Truth resonated through her, but Finn had been right about one thing.

  She’d survived that past because she’d become her own hero.