The computer was still on the desk, along with Trinity’s backpack.
I picked it up and was surprised by the weight. I unzipped it and forgot to breathe. This entire time I thought she’d just had her teenage crap like video games and junk inside; I couldn’t have been more wrong.
She had a backpack full of men’s clothes. I dug through the contents. I found stacks of hundred-dollar bills at the bottom, along with pornographic pictures of the killer and the hooker I’d seen him pay during one of the times I was trying to track him.
My gaze swung to the computer, and I sat down and booted it up. There wasn’t just a password and log in. Even the screensaver was encrypted.
Was this stuff the killer’s? Was this the blood money he wanted back?
I sat idly on the bed, my hot coffee forgotten as I tried to process why Trinity didn’t tell me.
I dialed Sam’s number, unsure what room he was staying in. “Doc?”
“I need a favor. Can you meet me in the war room in ten?”
“Sure, let me just grab some coffee.”
“It can’t wait. I’ll make your coffee while you splash water on your face. Meet me there.”
There was a pause. “Are you okay?”
“Not yet, but I will be,” I answered. “Ten minutes, Sam.”
“Okay, okay,” he grumbled and hung up the phone.
I’d woken the others and had them meet me in the war room after I found what I was looking for.
Sam was behind the computer on his second cup of coffee, cussing at the laptop when every trick he had wasn’t working to decrypt the computer.
“This better be good,” Ford said, walking into the room.
Grant walked in next, carrying Gigi who was holding two coffee mugs. Both of them were smiling the way I remembered before any of this happened. He gently lowered her to one of the plush chairs.
Last to arrive was Noah through the front door, and he didn’t look happy.
I gestured to the table and the chairs and waited for them to sit.
“What’s this about?” Noah asked.
“Have you tracked him?” Grant asked.
“She did more than that,” Sam answered.
“We.” I glanced over my shoulder at him. “We figured out a way to get to him that he won’t see coming.”
Noah clasped his fingers together. “Okay, you’ve got my attention.”
I tossed the pornographic photos on the table and waited for them to look.
“Okay, so the guy likes sex,” Ford said, tossing the picture he’d picked up back onto the table. “How is that supposed to help?”
I picked up the pictures that Sam had printed off. “All of the pictures are the same girl. The same one that I saw him paying the last time I tried to tune in.” I put the new pictures on the table. “I’d like for you to meet Gina Sharp, and she knows where he lives.” I pointed to the hooker standing on the street corner that showed the street names. “And she’s going to tell us exactly where that is.”
“Where did you even get these pictures?” Noah asked, picking up the one of Gina on the street corner and her mugshot from an arrest for prostitution three months ago.
“Trinity’s backpack,” Sam answered. “We believe she stole it from the killer’s room, along with his laptop, which I’m trying to crack.”
“Where is she?” Noah asked, standing from his spot. “She’s got some explaining to do, like why the hell she didn’t tell us all this before now.”
Heat crept into my cheeks. “Carson is taking her to his lake house. I thought it might be safer for her there while we deal with this guy.”
“Lucy,” Noah growled. “What’s to stop Trinity from blabbing our location and what you’re capable of. We have protocols to follow.”
“Oops.” I shrugged. “My bad. But we got a hit on Trinity’s DNA. None of the men were a match, but we got her biological grandfather, who’s sitting in prison.”
Ford plopped his feet on the desk and leaned back in his chair, resting his laced fingers behind his head. “Does he know who the dad is?”
“The correct question is…who’s Trinity’s mom? It’s not Georgina.”
Noah and Grant shared a look that said I’d stumped them. Yeah, I had, and it felt fabulous.
Ford dropped his feet to the ground, and a smile grew on his face. “You’ve already figured this out, haven’t you?”
“Sort of,” I said. “There’s a few pieces that don’t fit.”
“Well, don’t leave us in suspense,” Gigi said, sipping her coffee on the other side of the room.
“Trinity’s biological mother gave her up for adoption. Trinity was conceived in a rape that happened in college.”
“A rape?” Noah asked.
“Well, who the hell is the mother?” Grant asked.
“Her grandfather sitting in jail is Mr. Mount. His daughter’s name is Susan Montgomery.”
Ford’s mouth parted. Noah’s brows dipped.
“Who’s Susan Montgomery?” Gigi asked from across the room.
“Sloan’s assistant.” Grant answered his wife. “Lucy saved her life on that Florida trip I was telling you about.”
“Ohhh.” Gigi cooed and lifted her coffee cup as if saluting me.
Ford rubbed his head as trying to fight a migraine. “You mean the Susan that just died with your boyfriend?”
“The same one.”
“Oh, that’s sad,” Gigi butted in again just as the phone rang.
Sam picked it up and held it between his cheek and shoulder as he typed on his computer. “You’re serious?”
His fingers paused, and the look on his face was priceless…even more, priceless than when I’d told him my plan. “Thanks.”
He ended the call.
“You’re never going to believe this,” Sam said, lifting his gaze to ours. “The lab just matched Trinity’s dad.”
Chapter 20
“To whom?” I asked, hurrying to the other side of the computer.
“They matched it to the blood they got off your arm, Lucy. Heath Tenure, the killer, is her father.”
My shoulders sagged. “He’s the rapist?”
“When Grant submitted Tenure’s DNA, which we pulled off your arm and Georgina’s body and clothing, apparently there were a ton of hits and not just that rape case.”
Sam clicked a few more buttons, and several different police files appeared on the screen. “Tenure’s DNA was a match to twenty-one different crime scenes.”
“Is it possible that Tenure connected the dots? Do you think he’s realized that Susan had his baby and then gave her away? Is that why he killed Georgina?” I theorized.
“Tenure must have figured it out. Why else would he have killed Georgina if there was nothing linking the her and Susan together.” Ford said coming to stand beside me. “Without the DNA connection, he had to have used something else, something we’ve yet to find.”
“Oh, oh, I know this one.” Gigi said from across the room. “There are probably some adoption records, and judging by the encryption on his computer, I bet he’s savvy enough to hack things.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Sam who was already viciously pounding on his keyboard.
Within a few strokes he pulled up files. “They were sealed but not anymore.” Sam said. “Actually…” A few more keystrokes pulled up another screen with computer code. “Someone else accessed them a month ago. It lists both women.”
“If Tenure hacked the system like Sam did, he would have found the connection between Georgina and Susan. He might have even killed Georgina to draw Susan out again.”
“It doesn’t explain what she was doing in the hotel.” Grant said.
“She was blackmailing Sloan. She wanted money to keep her mouth shut and not tell Trinity the truth.”
The room turned silent and I blew out a breath. I’d just blabbed it. I picked up the street corner picture on the table. “We get the hooker, we get Tenure.”
****
/>
Finding the hooker was easier than I thought, although we had to wait. With the police department’s assistance, they’d caught Tenure red-handed with the hooker and arrested them both.
The arrest was kind of anticlimactic. No gunfight, no chases, not even a death threat as he was cuffed and read his Miranda rights. His demeanor was as calm as the day he’d tried to kill me.
The deal I’d made with Asher was that I’d give him my information in exchange for getting a chance to question Tenure. It was either that or Noah would have to claim jurisdiction since the crimes Tenure had been linked to crossed state lines.
So now I sat across from the man who’d buried a bullet in my shoulder. A man that had tried to snuff out my life.
I hid the ache at the pull of the bandage, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing me adjust it.
It didn’t matter. His gaze dropped to my shoulder, and a smile formed on his lips. “Looks like someone missed.”
“Lucky for me.”
“Lucky, indeed,” he said. His chains rattled as he tried to lift his cuffed arms in the air. “Anything you have on me is circumstantial.”
I leaned forward. “Wrong. I have your DNA. I have your naughty pictures, your money, and your laptop. You’re going away for a long time.”
The smile he’d been sporting slipped into a frown.
“Oh, and I almost forgot.” I sat back and smiled in the annoying way that tended to make people want to kill me. “I know about the rape and your kid. Kind of hard to deny DNA. Is that why you tried to kill her?”
Anger seethed in the room, for the first time since I’d been tracking this guy, “I didn’t try to kill her. I was aiming for you.”
“You should work on that. You can’t seem to hit your target.”
His lip quivered into a grin. “The first time I was going to kill you dead. The second, I was told just to wound you.”
I leaned forward, “Who told you to wound me?”
“You think I didn’t know about my kid?” He half chuckled. “She found me four months ago. She’s the whole reason I was in the hotel. Trinity told me Georgina would lead me right to Susan.”
“You’re lying.”
“Over a pumpernickel sandwich, she told me that she wanted to find her mother just as bad as I did. She told me that Georgina would lead me right to her, and she had, just like Trinity said.”
“Adoptions are closed. How did you find out the two were connected?”
His lips twisted into a deadly grin. “I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough.” He leaned forward; his gaze slid over my face. “You think the only thing that whore was giving me was sex?” He chuckled. “I paid for more services than you’ll even know. She has all kinds of public officials under her thumb and a few cops too. I won’t spend more than a month in jail before I’m out again and then I’m coming for you, Lucy Bray. And next time, I won’t miss.”
Chapter 21
“No way was Gina Sharp smart enough to pull this off.”
He shrugged and sat back in his chair.
Had Trinity used the excuse of not knowing her daddy to pull me into her game? I shook my head as my heartbeat sped up. “You’re lying about Trinity.”
“Am I?” he chuckled. “You do realize that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Where is my offspring? Is she right where she wants to be?”
“She led me to you,” I said as I rose. “How do you think I obtained the evidence to put you away?”
I walked out the door and slipped my phone out of my pocket. I tried to reach Carson, and he didn’t answer. I busted into the observation room to find Noah talking to Asher.
“I need a helicopter. I need to get to Carson.”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Noah said.
I stepped closer, barely keeping a lid on my fright. “You don’t understand. Carson is delivering Trinity straight to Susan. If there’s even one-tenth of truth in Tenure’s story, then they’re all in danger, and they don’t even know it.”
“They can handle a teenager, Lucy,” Noah said.
“That manipulative little shit had us all fooled, including me,” I growled. “Now I need that chopper. We have two hours before the meet.”
****
By the time we landed and drove to the lake cabin, we had fifteen minutes before Sloan and Susan were supposed to arrive. I would have stopped to appreciate the canvas full of trees and the beauty of the lake if I didn’t have an unruly teenager to put in her place.
Parking down the long driveway, Grant, Noah, and I went in on foot.
A dark Town Car was parked next to Carson’s truck. Sloan was an overachiever when it came to being prompt. Carson’s brothers’ trucks were nowhere to be found.
Grant took the front, Noah was his backup, and I took the back.
I eased into the kitchen, cringing at the sound of the squeak of the screen door hinges. I eased the door closed behind me and spotted Carson on the ground, lying face down. An iron skillet lay next to his head.
I pressed my finger to his neck and checked for his pulse.
Relief filled my body when I felt a strong pulse. I stepped over him and toward the sound coming from the living room. Sloan’s voice was steady.
“You don’t want to do this,” he argued.
I arrived in time to see him take a step forward.
“Stop, or I’ll kill you first,” Trinity said backing away a step.
I lifted my gun and aimed it at Trinity as I burst into the room behind her just as a shadow passed the front window. “You don’t want to kill the man I’m going to marry, do you?”
Trinity swung the gun toward me and then waved it between Sloan and me resting it in Susan’s direction. “You aren’t supposed to be here, Lucy.”
“I know why you’re doing this,” I said as I sidestepped my way closer to Sloan and Susan. “You’re angry; she gave you away. You don’t really want to kill her, do you? You just want to hurt her the way you’ve been hurting since the day you found out that she gave you away.”
A tear slid down Trinity’s face, but I wasn’t dropping my guard. Not with the way she’d already played me. My compassion for what she was going through warred with the way she’d manipulated everyone from the beginning. It was hard to reconcile this teenager with the one who’d led us down this road.
“You’ll never get away with it,” I said, and Trinity spun her gun toward me. I pointed my weapon at her chest. “It’s over, Trinity. Your dad has been arrested, thanks to what you left behind.”
Trinity’s eyes narrowed. “You found the evidence I left.”
“I did,” I answered. “It’s how we caught him.”
Trinity nodded in understanding as if that had been her goal this entire time.
“You made a mistake thinking that your dad would cover for you. He gave you up.”
“You’re lying,” she spat.
“Am I? Pumpernickel.”
“What the hell did I ever do to her?” Trinity growled and waved her gun toward Susan. “She left me, and I was just as innocent as she was.”
“That’s for you and her to work through in therapy, don’t you think?” I said, almost making it to Susan and Sloan before Trinity cocked the trigger.
“She doesn’t get another chance,” Trinity said, ignoring the tears that streamed down her face. She pressed her finger on the trigger.
“Wait, there’s one thing I have to know. You owe me that much. I’m innocent in all of this, just like you were.”
“What?” Trinity’s hand dipped slightly, as if the weight of the gun was getting to be too much, just like her circumstances.
“How did you find your dad?”
Susan gasped. “You found him?”
“I didn’t,” she answered.
“Oh, see now, that’s not how Tenure tells it.”
“Tenure?” Susan asked. “Are you saying he’s the man who raped me?”
Trinity swung the gun in Susan’s direction.
“It wasn’t hard after I found the adoption paperwork. Georgina had a copy of my real birth certificate and a copy of the police report from the rape. I don’t know how she’d gotten it but she had the paperwork and it had everything I needed to find the bastard who raped Susan,” she answered.
“I gave it to her to protect you, so she’d know the truth in the event that you asked,” Susan answered.
“How did you figure out who your dad was when the police couldn’t?”
“It listed the place where it happened.”
“The library,” Susan whispered.
“Bingo. I must get my smarts from you because I definitely didn’t get them from him.”
“How did you figure it out? None of the cameras caught him entering the library.
“That took a little bit more time,” Trinity answered. “I volunteered at the library, and I pulled all the records of library card holders who checked out books for that entire week, including the ones that were due to be returned. I knew he had to be familiar with the place to know where the dark corners to hide would be.”
“Smart,” I said, keeping my gun trained on her.
“How did you narrow it down?”
Trinity’s lip twisted into a smile. A gleam entered her eyes. “All it took was the college yearbooks from when it happened. I looked up every single name from the library records. He was on the second page of names. I eliminated all the others, but when I reached his picture, I knew it instantly. He was my dad. We had the same eyes and cheekbones.” Trinity turned the gun back on Susan. “He was in your class. How did you not know it was him?”
“I didn’t know everyone in my class. I was too busy trying to pass,” Susan said.
Hunting Justice (Fractured Minds Series Book 3) Page 9
