The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 2

by Maegan Beaumont

  “Is there something I should know?” Church said under her breath, shooting the uniform a brief look.

  “Probably,” she said in a matching tone. She remembered sharp eyes and a ruthless calculation barely hidden behind a smile that was a little too harsh to be genuine.

  The last time Will Santos had seen her, her face had been nearly obliterated. It’d taken nearly a dozen surgeries to put her back together after Wade had finished with her. Still, thanks to the countless articles written about her, there was a chance he’d recognize her.

  Before she could say anything else, the elevator across the lobby dinged, its door sliding open to release its passenger. He hadn’t changed much. Same dark, assessing gaze. Same crooked nose. Same cauliflower ear. Short stature but powerfully built, with wide shoulders and muscular arms, the only thing that lent to Santo’s advance in years was the silver threaded through his hair and a slight softening around his belly.

  He headed straight for her and for a moment, Sabrina was sure she’d been made. “I’m Detective Santos,” he said, extending his hand while giving her one of those smiles that said he was carefully weighing her. “Thanks for coming so quickly.”

  His words made it sound like he’d been the one to request the FBI’s involvement and she wondered how true that was. While not all LEOs hated federal intervention, most of them resented the perceived loss of power when the FBI showed up. “Not at all,” she said, forcing herself to look him in the eye. “I’m Agent Vance and this is my partner, Agent Aimes.”

  Santos shook Church’s hand before turning his attention toward her. “Your timing is impeccable, Agents. We’ve got another victim—care to join me?”

  17

  “You know him.”

  It wasn’t a question and Church didn’t phrase it like one. Instead of denying it, Sabrina just nodded. “Yeah. I know him.”

  She and Church had decided to follow Santos to the crime scene rather than ride along. They’d been driving for about twenty minutes, heading away from the city into the flat, dusty desert that surrounded it.

  “From before—when you lived here?” Church said, choosing her words carefully. It made her wonder just how much Ben had told her about what had happened to her. If she had to, she’d guess he’d told her everything.

  “He was the lead investigator on my case,” she said. “But that’s not where I met him.” She stared out the window, waiting for Church to pepper her with questions. She didn’t, which only confirmed that Ben was the king of the over-share. Finally she continued. “A few weeks before he took me, Wade killed a kid in a gas station bathroom.” The corner of her mouth lifted in a humorless smile. “He and bunch of his friends had come into the restaurant where I worked and he tried to hit on me.” Outside her window, brown gave way to green as they made their way through farmland. Beyond the grass she could see workers in the fields, men and women, walking alongside a slow-moving truck, relaying melons into its bed. “Wade stabbed him to death and cut off his hand.”

  “He killed a guy for hitting on you?” Church gave a low whistle. “Let me guess—Santos caught that case too?”

  Sabrina nodded. “Yeah. I was sure it’d been because of me but then Santos came back into the restaurant a week later to tell me the clerk at the gas station had confessed.” She’d thought she was safe. She wasn’t. Wade took her a few days later and she was pretty sure it was something Santos never really got over. “He’s a good cop. Sharp. Careful.”

  “That’s not really going to work in our favor here, is it, Kitten?” Church said.

  “You think he’ll recognize me?” It worried her. The last time she saw Santos she’d just gone through her final surgery to repair the damage done to her face. She’d worn a compression mask for nearly three months while it healed. When she finally took it off, her own grandmother hadn’t recognized her. But that was before Jaxon Croft had come along and dragged her story—and her real identity—into the public eye.

  Despite the very real possibility, Church shook her head. “I’m not worried about him recognizing you. You don’t look like you. The real you or the fake you.”

  “Yeah,” she said, running a quick hand over her short hair. “The stylist did a good job.”

  “It has nothing to do with your hair, Kitten,” Church said. “Everything about you is different. You seem lighter somehow. Less… occupied.”

  The assessment reminded her of Wade. Made her wonder how long she had before he pushed his way in. Instead of voicing her fears, Sabrina slipped a pair of mirrored Aviators from her breast pocket and put them on. “Stop calling me kitten.”

  Up ahead Sabrina could see what looked like a roadside circus. Tents and protective screens had been erected, forming a barrier between the crime scene and the cluster of news vans across the street. Squad cars and unmarked SUVs fashioned a haphazard circle around the tents, bright yellow caution tape looped around side mirrors and door handles. Uniformed officers stationed at intervals to ward off bystanders.

  The car ahead of them swayed onto the soft shoulder, kicking up a plume of dust and Church followed. Pulling up alongside Santos, she killed the engine. Before she could ask her if she was ready or if she needed a minute or any of a thousand insane questions Church would see as normal or thoughtful, Sabrina opened her door and stepped out of the car, the heat of the day pushing back at her, the sun instantly scorching the back of her neck. Gluing the ridiculous silk of her blouse to her damp skin.

  Without waiting for Church to join her, she circled the hood to stand in the space between their car and Santos’s. It wasn’t long before he joined her. “Hear you worked down in Phoenix for a few years, out of the academy,” he said to her. Whether it was small talk while they waited for Church to join them or if he was vetting her story, she didn’t know—but the Santos she remembered hadn’t been one for small talk.

  “Seven years.” She cut him a look behind the reflective lenses of her sunglasses, grateful for the coverage they offered.

  “Yeah…” He wagged a finger at her like he’d just remembered something. “It was your profile that busted the Russel case,” he said, letting her know he read her jacket. “Pretty impressive.”

  “Not really.” She shook her head, refusing to take the bait. That Ben had managed to plant her alias into the FBI database so quickly and back it up wasn’t even impressive anymore.

  “Don’t cut yourself short, Santos said. “Russel was a sick son of a bitch who hurt a lot of women.” Roger Lee Russel had been dubbed The South Mountain Killer by the media. He’d stalked and strangled seven female joggers in the state park on the south side of Phoenix, taking their engagement rings as trophies before he was caught.

  “Phoenix PD did the heavy-lifting. All I did was provide some insight.”

  “I read the profile,” he said. “You did a hell of a lot more than that. You were the one who figured out he was targeting women who were engaged to be married and led the police to focus on wedding venue cancelations around the same time the murders started up.” Santos nodded his head. “You’re a helluva profiler.”

  Because she’d done none of those things and pretending to made her uncomfortable, she changed the subject. “I read about you too,” she said, flashing him a cool smile. She remembered this game. It was a cop’s equivalent to measuring dicks in the locker room. She hadn’t enjoyed it when she was on the job and she didn’t enjoy it now. “You were the lead investigator on the Melissa Walker case, weren’t you?”

  His jaw flexed, clamping down tight, letting her know they weren’t just playing anymore. The jab she’d just thrown had drawn blood.

  Before he could say anything more, Church joined them. She’d been smart enough to shed her jacket. “Whoever said, it’s a dry heat, is a complete liar,” she said, softening her complaint with a good-natured grin.

  “It’ll cool off as soon as the rain starts,” Santos said, pointing a thick, blunt finger upward. Dark, heavy clouds were starting to accumulate in the distanc
e. “We’re in the middle of our monsoon season—which means we’re racing the clock.” He angled his body toward the tents and started walking, forcing them to follow. “Once it starts coming down, CSU will be finished.”

  Stooping below the tape, the three of them walked in silence, heads down and necks stiff against the shouts and calls of the reporters across the street. So far they’d all minded their manners and stayed on the far side of the narrow strip of blacktop that served as a road but that wouldn’t last long. Sooner or later, one of them would get tired of waiting. “Suppose you’ll want to hold a press conference,” Santos said, reading her mind.

  “That’s your call, detective,” Church said, leaving the media behind as they neared another cordoned area, this one surrounded by CSU techs in shirt-sleeves. “My partner and I are here to help catch a killer. The operative word is help. Any and all decisions pertaining to the case and how it’s handled, are entirely up to local law enforcement.”

  From inside the dark interior of the stucco sanctuary, someone coughed. “Bullshit.” The word was followed by another cough.

  A look of pure exasperation passed over Santos’s face. “Agents Aimes and Vance, I’d like you to meet Detective Mark Alvarez, my partner.”

  In the open doorway stood a man in a limp-looking polo shirt and a pair of lightweight khakis, his short, dark hair plastered to his scalp by sweat and humidity. Instead of offering to shake their hands, he looked at his partner. “You were right,” he said, his tone holding an odd mixture of awe and anger. “It’s her. She’s dead.”

  18

  “Old lady found her,” Alvarez said, rummaging through the pages of his pocket notebook until he found the one he was looking for. “Graciella Lopez.” He read the name off the page before tucking it back in his pocket. “According to her, she’s a housekeeper at the Vega place.” Alvarez jerked his chin in the direction of a private drive about a hundred yards away. “As soon as she made the discovery, she high-tailed it back to the house, called 911 and promptly fainted.”

  The name was familiar. Twenty years ago, Vega Farms accounted for nearly a fourth of the crop production in Yuma. It had been Vega watermelons Ellie had been caught smashing as a girl. Sabrina nodded, surveying the land around her as if for the first time. “Is this all privately owned land?”

  “Yup,” Santos said, his jaw going tight again. “If it grows out of the ground and you’re eating it within a hundred miles of here, chances are you peeled a Vega Farms sticker off it before you took a bite. This is all Vega land—” He made an encompassing gesture. “Last count, nearly fifteen thousand acres.”

  “Mrs. Lopez stopped in on her way home to light a candle for her grandson—we’ve got him locked up on drug charges,” Alvarez said. “She took one look at what’s going on in there and forgot all about her grandson’s legal troubles.”

  While Alvarez filled then in, Santos stood to the side to allow her into the sanctuary while Church hung back. It was dark inside the small, windowless room, forcing her to take off her sunglasses. Once her eyes adjusted to the gloom, it took everything Sabrina had in her to stay put.

  Just another case. Just another body.

  “You said, it’s her,” she said. Reaching into the front pocket of her pants, Sabrina pulled out a pair of gloves. “You were able to identify the victim?”

  Another look passed between Santos and his partner. “We can’t say with one hundred percent certainty until we get her back to the morgue and call her family down to make a formal ID,” Alvarez said, digging his hands into his pockets. “But it’s Rachel Meeks.”

  “Rachel Meeks?” Church spoke up from the doorway. The structure was too small for all of them to fit at once. Along the back wall was a deep cement ledge littered with tall glass votives and flowers, wilted by the oppressive heat. In front of the ledge was an altar. That’s where he left her.

  “Rachel Meeks—local girl. Went missing a few weeks ago from the mall parking lot,” Santos said, filling them both in but Sabrina was barely listening, his voice nothing more than a faint drone as she circled around the front of the altar.

  There were obvious signs of torture. Cuts and abrasions—some deep while some seemed more like scratches—littered her body. Bruises, in shades varying from yellow to black, scattered across her back and belly. Her fingernails were missing while the fingers themselves appeared to be broken. She’d been posed, her body forced into a kneeling position and secured with looked like baling wire. Wrapped around, tight enough to cut into her skin, it bound her thighs to her calves, holding her in place. Her legs, bent behind her, were crossed at the ankle—large nails driven through the sole of each foot.

  Her hands had been posed also, flat and clasped together as if she were praying—pinned against each other at the wrist with another large metal spike—held aloft with more baling wire. Sabrina’s gaze followed the length of wire upward, seeing the way it was secured to the braided steel cable that ran down the center of the roof. Her eyes had not been taken but they’d been gouged. Dried blood ran down her face like tears, the color of rust. The wounds at her wrist and feet were reminiscent of religious stigmata. Their significance was obvious. The latter brought back memories she’d rather not harbor.

  “A miracle,” she said to herself but Santos and his partner fell silent instantly.

  “What?” Santos said while Alvarez puffed out his cheeks and rattled the keys in his pocket.

  “She was a miracle,” she said distractedly, circling her way to the rear of the body. “They all were. Your victims—they were chosen because they’d survived some sort of disaster or had a near death experience.” She looked up to find both Santos and Alvarez watching her. “Danielle Watson was shot in the head by her boyfriend during an argument and dumped at a rest stop on the way to Los Angeles when she was twenty-three. About the same time her boyfriend was pulling the trigger, a long-haul trucker spilled about a gallon of soda in his lap and pulled off to clean up. He found her in the parking lot, later reporting he never stopped on a haul. Under normal circumstances, he would’ve blown by that rest stop like his truck was on fire.”

  “But he didn’t,” Santos said, rubbing a hand over his chin. “And that’s what saved her.”

  “Everyone involved—doctors, police, EMS... they all said it was a miracle she survived.” Sabrina shrugged. “Isla Talbert’s mother took her to the doctor after weeks of complaining of joint pain. She thought it was just growing pains but Isla’s CT scan lit up like the fourth of July. Her entire body was riddled with tumors. Bone cancer. Doctor told her mom it was too late, treatments would be a waste of time and sent her home to die. Only she didn’t. A few weeks later she told her mother she felt fine and wanted to go back to school so, her mother took her back to the doctor. Her next CT scan was clear. Not one tumor.”

  “A miracle.” Alvarez said, nodding his head, aiming a look at the back of Santo’s head. “It jibes with the religious theme he’s got going. What else you got?”

  “He did this while she was alive,” she said, gesturing toward the victim’s back. It looked as if it had been bathed in blood, thick and dark against pale skin. Sabrina could see the cuts beneath the wash of it. Make out the shape of them—the picture they made.

  Now Alvarez looked uncomfortable while Santos silently watched her. “CSU said they wouldn’t be able to make any—”

  “It would’ve taken hours. He would’ve wanted her to feel every second of it,” she said, interrupting him as if he hadn’t spoken. “He would’ve wanted to watch every twitch, feel every jerk, hear every scream while he cut her.”

  Etched into the victim’s skin were a pair of wings, curling along the curve of her shoulder blades, the tail of them tapering into a point at the small of her back. They furled against her ribs, lying flat along the contours of her flesh. Embraced her spine on either side with painstaking much precision. Even through the blood and gore, she could see how much time they’d taken. How deep each cut had been made.

&
nbsp; “Why?”

  “Because he’s using what makes them special to punish them.” She wasn’t sure who asked the question but she answered anyway. “No matter what lies he’s telling himself, he hates them for what they are.”

  Suddenly Sabrina wasn’t standing in a small, roadside sanctuary. She was crouched in the dark, weak and defenseless. Battered knees drawn to her heaving chest, the smell of infection and old blood—the smell of him—filled her nostrils. Her breath ragged, terror stabbing at her lungs, making it impossible to hold on.

  And she wasn’t alone.

  Wade was standing over her. She could hear him, his breathing quick and shallow—thrilled by the sight of her, cowering and bleeding beneath him. The quiet snick of the knife he used as he flicked out the blade. There was a shuffling sound as if he’d stepped forward and suddenly, she could feel him. His breath on her cheek, hot and fast. Anticipation and excitement rolling off of him in waves as he crouched directly in front of her. Eager to get started.

  The cool of the blade pressed against her skin, its keen edge biting into her, bringing with it a pain so sharp, so clean she almost didn’t feel it as it sliced across her flesh.

  Hey there, Darlin’—did you miss me?

  19

  Kootenai Canyon, Montana

  Avasa wouldn’t move. No matter how many times he tried to entice her away from the back door, the dog wouldn’t budge. She sat with her nose practically pressed against the wood, tensing at every sound on the other side, waiting to Sabina to walk through it. She’d been gone for two days now. Michael knew exactly how the dog felt.