by J. D. Barker
“Then show me.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“I can’t go along with this,” Gimble said.
“You’ve caught one of the most prolific serial killers of the twenty-first century. Your methods will be taught at Quantico. This puts you on the path to take my job one day,” Beckner told her. “Don’t blow this, Agent. This is a make-or-break moment for your career.”
Gimble took out her badge and gun. “Agent Begley died working this case. So did many U.S. marshals. Their families deserve to know the truth.”
“Discussing any of this with anyone outside this room will be considered an act of treason,” Vela said. “Don’t commit career suicide over the reputation of a dead man. Kepler is your killer.”
Beckner stood. “Your reports have been vetted. Do the right thing here. Believe me, this is the right thing. It’s bigger than personal feelings of right or wrong.”
“I’ll take care of her,” Vela assured Gimble.
An alarm blared through the office, a high-pitched alternating tone accompanied by flashing strobes in the ceiling.
“Megan!” Gimble shouted, bolting from the room.
Chapter One Hundred Forty-Eight
Gimble
One day later, Gimble stood in the rain. Thick icy drops whipped to a mild frenzy by the fall wind beat on her from above. Her hair was plastered to her head. Water had found its way under her coat, soaking her clothing. She’d catch a nasty cold, but she really didn’t care.
She glanced at the expansive cemetery grounds, then back to the three fresh graves before her. Somebody had spray-painted a large red X across the front of Michael Kepler’s black granite tombstone. She tried to wipe it away, but the paint had already dried.
Deep in her pocket, her fingers snapped.
When an umbrella appeared above her, she didn’t turn. “For a cop, you’re not very stealthy,” she said.
“I figured you’d be here,” Dobbs said.
“I really don’t want to talk to you.”
“You need to talk to someone.”
“Vela’s a shrink—maybe I’ll talk to him.”
“Good luck finding him.”
Gimble said, “You just stood there through all of that. You didn’t back me up once.”
Dobbs stepped closer, squeezed under the umbrella with her. “Working for LAPD, I’ve learned to pick and choose my battles. I’ve also learned there is a right time to fight. In that room, we were outnumbered, and we didn’t have all the facts. Personally, in this case I think it’s best to lie low, gather additional intel, and come back to fight another day. This isn’t going anywhere.”
“It’s already gone,” Gimble told him. “They moved her this morning.”
“Moved her where?”
“Exactly.”
“Is she—”
Gimble shook her head. “She’s still in a coma. The machines are keeping her alive. Zero brain activity.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“It’s all my fault. I didn’t spot Vela—two years, and I had no clue. And I left those pills in the room with her.”
“We all did,” Dobbs said.
Gimble’s stomach was in knots. “I tried to get in to see Nicole Milligan this morning, and they wouldn’t let me. I read her statement instead, but it’s already been altered. Goes on and on about Michael Kepler kidnapping her, dragging her to Windham Hall, Nicole killing him to save her…completely whitewashed.”
Dobbs said, “Neace’s statement is the same way. She called Michael a bad seed. Said the Fitzgeralds did their best to rehabilitate him, but he was too damaged by what happened to his mother. She even said he admitted to killing her. Who knows if that’s even true. I’m sure both their bank accounts are recently flush.”
“I had the same thought. Sammy could check, but every time I call him, I get voice mail.”
“I saw him this morning. He gave me this—told me to give it to you.” Dobbs pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to her.
Gimble unfolded the scrap of paper, doing her best to shield it from the rain.
Intercepted a text conversation between the sniper and Patchen:
Unknown: You didn’t tell me there would be federal agents involved.
Patchen: You didn’t ask.
Unknown: You didn’t tell me about her either.
Patchen: ?
Unknown: You should have told me what she was capable of.
Patchen: ?
Unknown: At least six dead marshals here, maybe more.
No calls. Talk back in LA.
—Sammy
“She flipped the pronouns in her written statement,” Gimble said. “She must have killed the marshals before the sniper shot her, then she killed him, the only witness. Christ, a girl covered in blood—she probably walked right up to them.” She paused for a second. “I bet she killed that trooper at the truck stop too. Winkler.”
“We’ll regroup back home,” Dobbs said, reading over her shoulder. “Fight another day. All of this will come out eventually. We need to work smart, under the radar.”
Gimble didn’t respond. She shoved the note in her pocket.
“You kept your gun and badge for a reason,” he pointed out.
Gimble felt the weight of her Glock under her shoulder. Maybe he was right. “What could they possibly have planned for her?”
Dobbs said, “I’ve got a long flight back to California. On my way to the airport, I’ll stop at a bookstore and pick up copies of all Fitzgerald’s books. Figured I’d start there.”
“Gonna build a profile?”
“Something like that.”
For the first time, she looked up at him. “Call and share it with me? When you get something together?”
Dobbs smiled. “I’ll do that, and you need to do something for me.”
“What?”
“Dinner. Back home.”
“Dinner?”
“Yeah, that thing people do a few hours after lunch.”
“Like a date?”
“Yeah, like a date.”
Her voice dropped lower. “You don’t want to date me, Dobbs. I’m a mess.”
“I’m no prize either, but I’m pretty sure we both need to eat.”
Gimble shrugged. “Okay.”
“Really?”
“Too easy?”
“Yeah, a little.”
“I’m still a federal employee. I’m not gonna turn down a free meal.”
“Then we’ll find her.”
“After dinner?”
“Eventually,” he said.
“Fight another day.”
“Yeah.”
Dobbs moved closer. He felt the warmth of her body. The rain rolled over the top of the umbrella and cascaded down around them, their small cocoon. He leaned forward and smelled her hair.
Gimble said quietly, “Working on a second date?”
“Maybe we should get out of the rain,” he told her.
“Not yet,” she said. “Let’s just stand here awhile.”
When his hand found hers, she didn’t pull away. For the first time in weeks, her fingers relaxed, and Gimble thought of nothing else but that moment.
Epilogue
Megan
You did so well, Meg.”
I didn’t see Michael at first; my vision was filled with clouds, white, hidden behind a thin curtain of gauze. The material melted away, broke apart, a dissolving veil, as my eyes adjusted and my mind awoke from deep slumber. I spotted him then. He sat slumped in a chair to the left of my bed, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. There was a magazine in his lap—Psychology Today, I think.
I tried to sit up, and my head started swimming. “Whoa.”
“You shouldn’t do that. Give yourself a minute.”
I nodded, but that was a mistake. The blood swooshed around in my skull.
A rack of machines whirred on my left, a mess of beeps and hisses and little dancing lights and lines across displays.
Just looking at it made things worse. When I turned away, I found myself staring at an IV bag fixed to a pole, a thin plastic tube running from the bag to my arm carrying transparent liquid.
“Where am I?”
“The university hospital.” This came from Dr. Bart, and when I forced myself to sit up, I found him standing at the foot of my bed, looking at a clipboard. “You gave us a considerable scare, but I think you’re through the worst. We had to pump your stomach, but we got most of it out fast. I’ll hold off on the lecture, but I guarantee you one is coming, along with punishments—grounding, no electronics except what’s needed for your schoolwork, and others. I’m sure Rose is working on a list. She’ll be here in about an hour. She got caught in traffic.”
Michael stood up from the chair, came over to me, and took my hand. “I can’t leave you alone for a minute.”
Dr. Bart glared at him. “She shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
“It was just a party.”
“With college kids, alcohol, and obviously a wide assortment of drugs,” he shot back.
“She didn’t take anything. I think someone put something in her drink.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
I coughed. My throat felt like I’d swallowed glass. “It hurts…”
“Try not to talk,” Michael said. “You need to rest.”
He looked young, far younger than he should have. Eighteen, nineteen, no more than twenty, for sure.
Dr. Bart stepped around to the opposite side of my bed. “Your throat hurts because a gastric lavage consists of forcing a large-gauge tube down your throat, filling your stomach with saline, sucking it all back out, then pushing activated charcoal down in its place to absorb whatever is left. I had half a mind to try and wake you up at the start to ensure you’d remember it and think twice about drugs next time.”
Michael’s face went red. “I told you, she didn’t take anything.”
“And I told you, she shouldn’t have been there,” Dr. Bart shot back. “All actions have consequences, good and bad. We’re each the architect of our own fate.”
Michael knew better than to argue with him. We both did. He said, “Do they know what it was?”
Dr. Bart replaced the clipboard on the end of my bed. “The lab is analyzing it for me, but I haven’t received the report yet.”
Michael turned back to me. “Do you remember what you were dreaming? You were tossing and turning so much, the nurse thought she might have to put restraints on you. You screamed too, a couple hours ago. I couldn’t quite make it out, but it sounded like you said Trimble or Nimble.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Aw, hell,” Dr. Bart muttered. He was standing next to a vase filled with roses, sucking on his thumb. “Damn things still have thorns on them.”
He reached over to a table near the door, picked up a pair of scissors with a purple handle, and began stripping the thorns from the stems. “The more beautiful, the more vicious the bite.”
I didn’t remember the dream, but something else popped into my mind. I looked at Michael. “You didn’t leave Nicki there, did you?”
He shook his head. “Mitchell gave her a ride home.”
“They’re talking again?”
He grinned. “More than talking. You don’t remember?”
“Last night is kind of a blur.”
Michael glanced over at Dr. Bart, who was still occupied with the roses. He lowered his voice. “After they killed that kid at the airport, Roy something, they—”
My eyes snapped open.
All was dark.
Pitch-black.
Stagnant air, so still that it weighed on me, moist and thick. Warm, too warm.
There was no sound. I heard absolutely nothing but the rush of blood pumping in my ears, the steady thump of my heart.
Where will you be when your life ends?
The thought came into my mind as a whisper across a vast field, barely there and gone before I could fully grasp the words or determine who said them. This was followed by a deep pain, the sickening squeeze of migraine taking root at my temples, waking with me.
When I tried to sit up, I realized I couldn’t—my hands, my arms, were restrained. My legs too.
Why was it so dark?
“Hello?” I spoke the word, but hardly a sound escaped my lips. My vocal cords didn’t want to work; it was as if they had gone unused for days, weeks, months.
I might have been in a room or a box or a grand hall. There was no way to be sure. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the gloom, but they didn’t. The darkness was utterly complete.
I knew a place like this. I was intimately familiar with it, but I couldn’t be there. Dr. Bart’s dark room burned down with the house. I’d seen it myself—it was nothing but a smoldering ruin. Dr. Bart was gone; they were all gone.
“Megan?”
The voice was thin, metallic. Whoever spoke my name hadn’t done so in the room with me but over some kind of intercom. The single word was followed by an audible click. Then: “Remain still, please.”
As if I had a choice.
Lights blazed on above me, incredibly bright. I squeezed my eyes shut, saw nothing but pink and dancing blotches of white.
Behind me, a heavy-sounding door opened with a whoosh of air.
I heard the click of heels on tile from my left, around the back of my head, then to my right. I tried to turn my head toward the sound, but I couldn’t. A band of some sort across my forehead held me still. “Who’s there? Say something…please.”
When nobody spoke, I told my eyes to open. Made them open. The blinding light with the migraine was worse than a steak knife to the cornea, but I did it anyway, and through a haze of building tears, I took in what little I could see.
A stark room.
No windows.
A single chair barely visible to my left. A bag atop that chair, one I recognized. A red Bosca duffel.
The footsteps came nearer. Right behind me now. Someone leaning over, close—a shadow crawling over me as whoever it was spoke.
“Who is on the mark?”
I didn’t answer her, not at first, because it couldn’t be. When I did, her name fell from my lips with the stark crash of shattered glass. “Dr.…Rose?”
“You’ve been asleep for some time.”
“You’re dead.”
“Am I?”
I needed water. My throat was so dry. “Where are we?”
Someplace safe.
Only that wasn’t what she’d said. When I told my mind to focus, when I grasped each word, I realized I had heard her wrong.
“Someplace we can safely continue,” she said. “Now. Who is on the mark?”
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About the Authors
James Patterson is the world’s bestselling author and most trusted storyteller. He has created many enduring fictional characters and series, including Alex Cross, the Women’s Murder Club, Michael Bennett, Maximum Ride, Middle School, and I Funny. Among his notable literary collaborations are The President Is Missing, with President Bill Clinton, and the Max Einstein series, produced in partnership with the Albert Einstein Estate. Patterson’s writing career is characterized by a single mission: to prove that there is no such thing as a person who “doesn’t like to read,” only people who haven’t found the right book. He’s given over three million books to schoolkids and the military, donated more than seventy million dollars to support education, and endowed over five thousand college scholarships for teachers. The National Book Foundation recently presented Patterson with the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community, and he is also the recipient of an Edgar Award and six Emmy Awards. He lives in Florida with his family.
J. D. Barker is the international bestselling author of numerous books, including
Dracul and The Fourth Monkey. His novels have been translated into two dozen languages and optioned for both film and television. Barker resides in coastal New Hampshire with his wife, Dayna, and their daughter, Ember.
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