Ellie hesitated, looking away again, her eyes trailing over the wooden confession booths against the far wall of the church. “I knew Melissa Walker,” she said, he gaze trained elsewhere. “She and my sister worked together at a restaurant. She lived in our apartment complex...” Her voice grew as thin and brittle as blown glass. “I babysat for her. Loved her like a sister.”
She pretended to be thinking in order to buy some time. So she could force the hurricane of emotion that swirled and raged within her into a chokehold. “You’re Valerie Hernandez’s sister,” she said, like she’d just put the pieces together. “You think the killer was reaching out to you somehow?”
“I don’t know,” Ellie said, her voice losing that confident edge. “It sounds crazy, right? I mean, why would he reach out to me?”
Sabrina didn’t have an answer for that. “I don’t know,” she said, tilting her head slightly. “Maybe Melissa Walker is just a piece of the puzzle… can I ask you something else?”
Ellie’s hands went still for a moment. Sure,” she finally said, giving her a curt nod.
“What was your relationship with Rachel Meeks?” she said if fast, watching Ellie stiffen up the second the words left her mouth. “And please don’t tell me that the two of you just went to high school together.”
“Rachel was my best friend growing up.” Ellie gave her a sad smile. “We were inseparable. Where one was, the other was right beside her.” She laughed, shaking her head. “It used to drive my mother crazy. She thought Rachel was a bad influence.”
She remembered what Amelia had told her last night—that she’d never liked Rachel Meeks. That she felt bad about it now that she was dead. “I’ve had a few friends like that—usually that’s what makes them so great.”
“She was fearless. Exciting...” Ellie’s smile widened, even as tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. “Talked me into some pretty crazy stuff when we were kids.”
“When did the two of you stop being friends?” She could hear it in her tone, a wistful sort of sadness that told her that whatever they’d been to each other as kids, it’d changed a long time ago. “Was it after she was raped?”
“How…” Ellie’s eyes widened for a moment before she slumped in her seat. “Oh, right… FBI.” She let her gaze rest on the badge around her neck for a moment before she forced it up to her face. “Yeah. After… ward, she acted like nothing was wrong. Like those four days never happened. I tried,” she said, the tears in her eyes finally falling. “I stayed. I tried to help her. I tried.”
“It wasn’t you.” Sabrina let the words slip out before she could catch them. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“If I’d just kept my mouth shut and played along…” Ellie shook her head. “She didn’t want to press charges. She wouldn’t even say his name to the police. He chained her up like an animal and let his friend do whatever he wanted to her for four days.”
“He.” Sabrina sat forward, her hands wrapping around the back of Ellie’s pew. “She knew the man who raped her?”
“She knew and so did I.” Ellie’s tone went flat, her wide, dark eyes suddenly dry. “It was Paul Vega.”
Something cool brushed against her nape, before tumbling down her spine. The irrigation shed Rachel Meeks had been found in was on Vega Farms property. Still… “I read the report, Ellie. Nothing in it points—”
“You don’t understand,” Ellie said, the words a sharp bark of frustration. “I know it was Paul Vega. Because I was there.”
42
Hid hands reeked of gasoline. It wasn’t wholly unpleasant, the smell of it. The scent drifted up to him, sharp and heavy, from where his fingers gripped the steering wheel, every breath he took reminding him of his Margaret and what he’d done to her.
You mean what we did to her, don’t you, boy?
The voice inside his head sounded petulant, like a complaining child who’d been told he couldn’t go outside to play. It annoyed him. Still, he owed Wade Bauer his freedom. Without him, the night he’d watched him drape a very dead Melissa Walker across that bench, he never would’ve understood the urgent need that’d gripped him since he was a young boy. Never would’ve had the guts to act on it.
He would have been alone.
His father abandoned him. His mother dead. There’d been no one else to guide him. To tell him it was okay. Show him how to be who and what he was.
A killer.
“Of course I mean we,” he murmured out loud, the ghost of a grin sliding across his face. He’d been sitting in his car for a while now, watching the steady trickle of people flow in and out of St. Rose for confession. Thinking about all those sins, confessed on hushed, shame-filled tones. All the bad things people did that needed forgiving. Aside from the killing, it was his favorite part of what he did. Saying it out loud. Listening to the soft, labored breathing of the old priest behind the screen while he shared his sins. The difference was, he never asked for forgiveness. He didn’t want it. Didn’t need it.
She was inside. Nosing around. Asking questions about him. It was only a matter of time before the priest told her everything.
You’re gonna have to make sure that doesn’t happen.
“I know,” he muttered, distracted by the slam of a car door. He watched Elena Hernandez cross the lot, heading into the sanctuary.
What’s little sister doing here?
He didn’t know. She was an observing Catholic but he suspected that her attending mass and giving regular confession was more for her mother’s benefit than because she actually believed. He could see it, her doubt. Her loss of faith. She knelt and prayed. Accepted communion and the blessings of the old priest but it was all for show.
Elena stopped believing in miracles a long time ago.
He wondered if she’d change her mind if she knew the truth. That she was a miracle. That every breath she’d taken since that night had been a gift from God.
God don’t want no part of what we’re doing here, boy.
For some reason, knowing that made him smile.
43
The admission hung between them while Ellie watched her as if she were waiting for her to call her a liar. Her claim was unfounded. Nowhere in the case file did it mention Ellie Hernandez or the fact she’d been there with Rachel the night she was taken. But looking at her, Sabrina believed her.
I was there.
“Who else knows you were there?” she said, purposely softening her tone. She knew a secret when she heard one. She’d be willing to bet that the answer to her question amounted to less than a handful of people.
“Now that Rachel’s dead?” Ellie said, bitterness clinging to every word. “Me, Paul, a few of his friends.”
A handful of people. And now Rachel was dead.
“Take me through it,” she said, resorting back to what she did best. Investigating and finding answers. “Tell me what happened that night, starting from the beginning.”
“Okay…” Ellie nodded, tucking whatever it was she’d had in her hand into her pocket. “Rachel and Paul were off and on. They’d date for a few months, one of them would get jealous or pissed off at the other and break it off. Then a few days later, they’d be back at it.”
“Who knew about their relationship?”
“No one, really. They kept it pretty quiet…” Ellie shook her head, rubbing the palms of her hands on the legs of her pants. “Not her parents, that’s for sure,” she said. “As far as they were concerned, Rachel was perfect. Paul was way older—they wouldn’t have approved.”
“So that night, the two of you agreed to meet up with Paul and a few of his friends?” she said, filling in the blanks.
“Yeah.” Ellie nodded while chewing on her bottom lip. “We waited for her parents to fall asleep and snuck out through her bedroom window. They were waiting for us at the end of her block in Paul’s truck. It wasn’t the first time we’d done it.”
She remembered the incident with the watermelons when Ellie was fourteen. Had Rachel and
Paul been involved? Had she’d been out partying in the fields and things got out of hand? Regardless, the remembered episode lent credence to what she was telling her now.
“Okay...” Sabrina said, going over it in her mind. “What happens after you get to the irrigation shed?”
“Paul had the key. He’d brought a case of beer and everyone starts drinking—partying,” Ellie says quietly. “About an hour after we got there, Rachel and Paul started to fight, which was totally normal. She tells Paul we’re leaving and we started walking.”
“Did you guys make it home?” Sabrina said, remembering her own walk home the night Wade abducted her. She’d almost made it. She could still remember the lights above the row of apartment mailboxes, the dull shine of them bringing on a starburst of hope in her chest as she ran for home. She’d almost made it before Wade’s hand fell against her mouth.
Almost.
“She was pretty drunk so after we left, her fight with Paul became her fight with me. It was a long walk home and we didn’t even make it to the main road before she wanted to go back, but I refused.” Ellie said. “When we finally got to her house, we were fighting so bad, I decided to walk the rest of the way home. When I left she was standing on her front porch, looking for her keys.”
The fast skim she’d given Rachel’s rape file at the station didn’t say anything about Ellie or that she’d been with her. It also didn’t say anything about Rachel sneaking out of the house to party with Paul Vega either but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. All it meant was that the Vega family had a long reach and deep pockets. Long and deep enough to erase witnesses and suspects as if they never existed.
“The report doesn’t mention any of this.” She had to say it, even if she believed her. “The party. The relationship between Rachel and Paul. You being there. His friends—none of it’s documented. Why is that?”
“I’d caused my mother so much grief already...” Ellie said, looking miserable. “I knew right away that it was Paul. It had to be, but... he had a temper. I’d seen him lose it on Rachel more than once. I was afraid of what he would do—what his family would do if I said anything. After a few days, I made up my mind that I was going to the police but then...”
“But then they found Rachel.”
Ellie nodded. “When they found her, I was sure she’d say something. That she’d tell them it was Paul and his friends who’d raped her but she didn’t. She lied for him.”
“Did you know everyone there that night, Ellie?” Sabrina said. “Had you met Paul’s friends before?”
Ellie’s brow furrowed for a moment while she rifled through memories, her eyes widening just a bit when she landed on the one she was looking for. “Most of them where his friends from high school. I think his cousin was there. A few of his friends... one guy I’d never seen before.”
“What did he look like?”
“White guy. Around Paul’s age. Kinda cute...” she said slowly. “I think his name was Wayne.”
Wayne Conway was the name Wade had used to fly to and from Arizona to meet Nulo. To teach him how to kill. If Paul Vega had been the one to abduct and rape Rachel Meeks, he hadn’t done it alone. He’d had a partner.
Wade.
“Did Paul have a nickname in high school?”
Ellie looked confused for a moment. “No, that I know of, why?”
Sabrina shook her head. “Did you ever know a guy named Nulo?”
“Nulo?” Ellie said, her face crumpling again. “No—what’s this about?”
Before she could answer, the main door to the sanctuary opened, letting in a bright burst of sunlight. She opened her mouth to share her theory as if shafted across the chapel but the words dried on her tongue as she caught movement from the corner of her eye.
It was the guy from the hotel stairwell. Different clothes. Mirrored aviators to obscure his features but it was him. He moved down the center aisle, toward the front of the church without so much as a glance in her direction but she knew his being here wasn’t an accident. He didn’t look like a Pip—one of Livingston Shaw’s personal watchdogs—but she’d learned the hard way that didn’t mean anything. Church didn’t look like a Pip either and she’d been one of Shaw’s most vicious operatives before she defied him by letting her family live.
She watched him over Ellie’s shoulder as he knelt in front of the altar, moving his hand in the sign of the cross before bowing his head. As it fell, he turned it slightly, casting a quick look over his shoulder that landed right on her. She shifted in her seat, planting her feet to push herself up to go after him. To ask him what he was doing here. Why he was following her.
“Agent Vance.”
She turned, looking up to find Mark Alvarez standing over her. He didn’t so much as look at Ellie but there was no other way he could’ve known where she was.
“Yes?” she said, dividing a look between him and the man at the front of the church. He was no longer looking at her. Crossing himself again quickly, he stood before moving toward the door that led to the prayer garden. She needed to follow him. Find out what—
“I tried calling you,” Alvarez said, finally flicking a glance in Ellie’s direction. “But you didn’t answer… we need to go.” Santos stood at the back of the aisle, nearly lost in the shadows of the chapel’s atrium.
“Go where?” She stood, aiming a quick glance at Santos over Alvarez’s shoulder. He looked tired. “What happened?” she said, even though she knew.
“There’s another body. And this one is different.”
44
Berlin, Germany
Ben stepped off the elevator on the sixtieth floor, moving quickly across the reception area of his father’s office suite, cloned key card in his hand.
When he’d gotten out of the shower, the card had been in an envelope slid under his door and Celine was long gone—his father had meetings in London before heading to South Korea. That meant she would be scuttling along behind him, juggling his schedule like a perfectly coifed circus clown. It also meant his father’s office was empty.
Empty or not, security remained tight. Aside from the Pips—the less than flattering nickname Michael had given to lower-level FSS operatives—and surveillance cameras, each of his father’s office suites was equipped with added measures. Like its original, the key card he’d scanned and cloned was embedded with a microchip. Once that chip was scanned it would send a signal, alerting the small army his father called a security detail that his office had been breached. Since he and Celine were currently somewhere between Berlin and London, that presented a problem.
As soon as he swiped the card the clock would start ticking. He figured he had less than three minutes before he was surrounded but Pips. That meant he had less than that to get into his father’s desk and get what he came for. Taking a deep breath, he let it out slowly while he settled the tip of the card into the reader, sliding it downward swiftly.
The door let out a soft click.
Ben pushed it open. Not bothering to close it behind him, he crossed the sea of blood red carpet, heading straight for the desk. Angled in front of the vast bank of floor to ceiling windows, he took a seat behind it before reaching into his breast pocket, producing a large folding knife. While he had no doubt Michael had the skills to pick the lock in the time it would take him to sneeze, he wasn’t that good. His B&E skills were more angry looter than international art thief. Before he could go to work on the lock, his cell rang.
“What?” he said, in lieu of hello, putting the call on speakerphone before tossing it on the desk.
“You got company,” Lark said, his tone stuck somewhere between amusement and panic. “About eight of them. Four in the stairwell, the other four in the elevator. You’ve got less than a minute.”
Fuck. They were faster than he’d thought.
“So...” He worked the flat of his knife between the collar of the lock and the hardwood of the drawer. “Stop ‘em,” he said through clenched teeth, giving the blade a vicious je
rk. The following metallic twang of the lock falling apart inside the desk drawer was music to his ears.
“I hate this shit, you know that, right?” Lark griped but in the background Ben could hear his fingers clacking across his computer keyboard.
He laughed, couldn’t help it. “Bullshit—you love it.”
“What’s to love, motherfucker?” Lark bitched while he worked. “You and Mikey keepin’ me buried in shit? Knowing that when I start doing you assholes favors, a messy, painful death is all I’m probably gonna get out of it? A brother can’t even catch... there.” One final clack followed by a sigh of relief. “Got the group in the stairwell jammed up on fifty-eight and the elevator is stuck between fifty-nine and sixty. Now hurry your cracker ass up because it won’t hold them for long.”
“Keep your panties on, Green Mile, I’m in,” Ben said, yanking the drawer open, sending the scrapped lock bouncing and flying across the carpet. “Give it another twenty and then let them out.” He hung up on a string of Lark’s protests.
Snagging the file, Ben slipped it into the zippered lining of his suit jacket. There was no time to open it now. He’d have to take it with him. He’d been about to shut the drawer when he caught sight of it. Beneath the file was a key. Not a plastic card but an actual key. The two-pronged blade was as long and thick as his finger. Deep, jagged cuts on each side, the head of it nearly as wide as his fist. He’d never seen it before.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t know what it opened.
He could scan it, have Lark make him a copy like he had with Celine’s card but there was no time. A quick glance at the clock told him he had less than ten seconds and both escapes routes were clogged with his father’s goons.
On impulse he swiped the key and dropped it into his pocket along with his cell phone. Lifting the lid on the humidor his father kept on his desk, he pulled out an Opus X, cut the tip and stood, taking a stroll to the sleek, polished sideboard his father kept stocked with liquor.
The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 2 Page 52
