“Agent Sariah,” the lieutenant said with a smile. “I hear good things about you and your team from Agent Tanner.”
“Thank you,” she said, taken aback.
She knew Tanner liked her, but with some of the struggles her team had been through lately, it was good to hear that she wasn’t persona non grata. At least not in Tanner’s book.
“So, what is it that we can do for you, Lieutenant?” Sariah asked.
The man’s face registered surprise as he turned to Tanner. “She doesn’t know?”
“I wanted her to hear about it in person,” Agent Tanner answered. “Thought it would be best to get the information from the source so there’s no corruption of detail.”
Clevens sighed. “I wish I had more details to provide. That’s part of what’s so frustrating about this.”
“What’s going on?” Sariah asked, hoping to get more information.
“The army’s had two kidnappings from right out of Basic Training. Thing is…” the man trailed off.
“Yes?” Sariah prompted.
“Well, the kidnappings were almost identical in every detail. Late at night, someone taken from right outside his barracks after lights out.”
Sariah waited. There had to be more to it than that. There would be no reason for him to come all the way out to Quantico, otherwise.
After a moment, the lieutenant cleared his throat. “Here’s the thing. The kidnappings happened at the same time in two completely different parts of the country.”
Sariah thought about that for a moment. There was something else here that didn’t seem to make any sense.
“Are you sure they aren’t just a couple of guys that decided to go AWOL? I have to think that happens quite a lot.”
“Well, yes, it does,” the man confirmed. “And we thought that’s what this was. Until we got a call from a police station out in Des Moines. They’d found our guy’s dog tags in a gutter there. A thousand miles away from the base.”
“Okay…” Sariah began. This still wasn’t making any sense. And it continued not to, until the lieutenant made his next statement.
“Well, that’s the thing,” the man said after a long moment.
For a man who made a living in the armed forces, he seemed ill-at-ease. Jittery. He took a deep breath before speaking again.
“The tags were attached to the man’s severed head.”
* * *
Agent Kyle Hadderly counted to ten in his head. His temper was starting to get the better of him, and it really wouldn’t do for him to blow his top right now.
Not while he was talking to his mama.
“I told you why I couldn’t come out, Mama,” he said, trying to keep the whine out of his voice.
Whining would just get him the old grow a pair of balls speech that he loved oh-so-much. Nothing like your mother talking about your testicles to make them want to retract and never come back down again.
As he spoke, he continued packing his bags. This was the Deep South they were talking about, and Had’s experience with that kind of heat and humidity had not been all that positive. So he tossed the raw denim jeans to the side. No need to risk another constriction injury to his family jewels.
“Well, you would think that the US government would be more accommodating when it comes to family,” his mama groused. “That’s what this great nation of ours was founded on.”
“Really?” he asked. “I thought it was a republic based on democratic values.”
“Oh, child, that’s just what they want you to learn here in the North,” she answered in a tart tone. “It’s a loosely bound confederation of states. And they should respect the fact that we’re having a family reunion.”
“Mama, I’m not sure the two of us getting together for some barbeque qualifies as a family reunion.”
“Don’t you get sassy with me. Families come in all shapes and sizes,” Mama shot back. “Besides, you were gonna bring that Indian girl of yours out here.”
“Pakistani.”
“Whatever.” There was a pause, in which Had was pretty sure he heard his mama start to cry. It was a tactic. He knew it was a tactic.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t working.
“Mama. Mama, come on,” he begged. “Don’t do that.” Then he came up with an idea. “Hey, why don’t you come out and visit us? I’ll pay for your plane ticket.”
The crying stopped, like a faucet had been turned off. “You sure, sweetcakes? You won’t be embarrassed of your mama?”
“Of course not,” he answered, wondering as he said it how true it was. “I could never be embarrassed of you.”
“So, should I come out there to Quantico, or should I meet you in South Carolina? Might be good to get back to my roots for a while.” Had could hear her clattering away at her computer, probably already looking up flights.
“Um…” he hedged. “Let me talk to Coop about it. Not sure if I should have you out there in the middle of an investigation.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, pumpkin. Agent Cooper loves me.”
It was possible that her statement was not one hundred percent true.
Had said goodbye and hung up the phone. Well, there was no getting out of this whole thing now.
But who knew? Maybe Coop would be okay with it. And even if she wasn’t, Had was sure they could figure something out, maybe for when they got back from South Carolina.
At the very least, Had knew that Joshua would be excited to see Mama. He talked about her pulled pork incessantly. To the point that Mama had sent the man a care package filled with pork, dry ice and her own special recipe bourbon barbeque sauce.
Thinking about that for a moment, Had wasn’t positive that sending a slather infused with liquor was a good idea for an alcoholic. Maybe he should talk to her about it before she came out.
Wait.
His mama was coming out.
What the in the name of Sam Hill had he just done?
* * *
The inside of the house was about the same as Joshua remembered. Sparse to the point of being Spartan. The only difference was that everything had aged a couple of decades since the last time he’d been here.
Stopping by to visit his kids and his wife during a rare quiet moment in the Humpty Dumpty case. Almost fifteen years ago now.
The kids hadn’t realized that this was a trial separation. Even Joshua hadn’t been clear on that at first, to be fair. He’d just thought that Jacqueline needed some space to figure things out. The case had kind of consumed him, and he hadn’t been there for her like he wanted to.
But it had gone deeper than that.
Jacquie had felt that Joshua was bringing his work home with him. So that even during the moments when he was with them, he was only dragging them all down into the darkness with him.
He’d gone to try to talk her down, get her to come back home. Instead, they’d fought. And his daughters had been there to hear it.
Livvie had cried, wanting to know why they couldn’t go home to be with Daddy. The older girls, who seemed to understand a bit more what was going on, had tried to hush her.
That had been the last time he’d seen his family. Well, most of them.
But the old man didn’t know about his recent encounter with Livvie. Pain stabbed through him at the thought, the wound still fresh and clear in his mind.
Joshua wasn’t about to bring up Livvie’s criminal past and ultimate death at Agent Cooper’s hands on this trip. That was a conversation for another time.
Like, never.
“You didn’t come here for a trip down memory lane,” the old man croaked in his aged voice. “So what is it?”
“It’s you, George. It’s you and me.”
“There is no ‘you and me’ you arrogant piece of shit,” the man growled. Then he paused. “No. That’s too good for you. You are less than the excrement that I would scrape off my shoe with a stick.”
“If that were true, old man, you wouldn’t make sure to visit me every
year.” It was an inflammatory statement, and Joshua knew it. That wasn’t why he was here, but the bastard just got under his skin so badly.
It appeared that maybe the feeling was mutual. His father-in-law’s face suffused with blood, the rage appearing in the set of his jaw, the glint in his eye, the whiteness of his hands that were clenched in his lap.
“You killed my babies, you pathetic animal,” he scratched out. “And you need to get out of my house. Now.”
“Not until I say what I came here to say, old man.”
With obvious effort, George controlled himself. “You have one minute. Then I call the cops.”
Joshua pulled himself together. Now that the moment had come, he found that this was so much harder than he had imagined it would be.
“The first thing that I want to say is this.” Joshua forced the words out of his mouth, against all of the resistance his body could level against him. “I’m sorry.”
Shock registered in the man’s face. Where before his face had been red, now it was white. Joshua halfway expected him to pitch forward out of his wheelchair.
He hoped that didn’t happen. Joshua didn’t want to be faced with that particular moral conundrum, because he was pretty sure he’d let the crusty bastard fall flat on his face and leave him there to have to use his MedAlert bracelet to call 911.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t give Jacquie and the kids the attention they deserved,” he continued. “I wanted to make the world a safer place for them, but instead it brought down destruction on their heads.”
The old man’s mouth worked, as if he was trying to say something through his near-stupor. But Joshua wasn’t here to listen to anything the man had to say.
“But there’s something else you should hear.”
A spark of something showed back up in George’s eyes at that. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
So Joshua decided to oblige him. But there would be no dropping of this proverbial shoe. He was going to throw it straight into the man’s face.
“My wife and children were here. They were in your care.”
George began to speak at that. Joshua cut him off, savagely.
“You don’t understand,” he spat. “I’m not here to assign blame. I’m just saying that bad things happen. I would take back my part if I could. But what about you?”
He turned to leave this place of dead and rotten memories. But before he exited, he said one more thing over his shoulder.
“If I’m to blame for their deaths, you are too.”
CHAPTER 2
Officer Regina Black’s shoulder ached.
It never failed. Every time she traveled, it seemed like she got some kind of weird physical reaction to it. If it wasn’t a tickle in her nose or throat, it was some strange kind of rash, or an odd ache in one of her joints. One time, she’d been sure she’d somehow gotten shingles.
But things had cleared up as soon as she’d arrived at her destination.
This one, though, at least made sense.
Back in high school, she’d played water polo. It hadn’t been great on her joints.
But there had been one of the polo matches where a huge Tongan girl had grabbed her shoulder and pulled. Hard. All while Reggie was under water. She’d ended up with a dislocated shoulder with no penalty called.
The pain had been excruciating. Reggie had almost passed out.
That had been the last of her participation on the water polo team.
As if that hadn’t been enough, her shoulder would act up on occasion. She’d dislocated it four more times since then. It was getting to the point where she almost didn’t mind so much.
Almost.
So, she was no longer a water polo player. At least she was a part of something.
Back in her native Iowa, she’d worked hard, done her best to be a good cop, tried to move up the ladder of success in her local precinct. Problem was, that ladder had all of maybe five rungs. And she’d been on the middle one. There hadn’t been all that far up to go from there.
But here, even though she wasn’t officially an agent, she was a part of something real. A part of tracking down the US’s most notorious serial killer in decades.
Well, that and all the other piddly little cases their team had been handed ever since Joshua had fallen off the wagon. That one slip had cost their team opportunity after opportunity, and Reggie was sick and tired of it.
She just wished she was as sick and tired of the man who had caused the issue.
Call it the bad boy syndrome or call it something else entirely, Reggie couldn’t help the reaction she had whenever Joshua was around. Something about the man’s presence made her skin tingle. And not in the bad way that it did when some creeper was walking behind her in the park at night. Completely different kind of tingle.
She’d done what she could to keep her reaction at bay. When that didn’t work, she just started focusing on making sure Joshua didn’t see it.
It wasn’t that she wanted to punish him. Not at all. She just didn’t trust herself not to get sucked into his vortex of self destruction. Reggie didn’t need that kind of bad mojo, thank you very much. With him deep in his addiction, he just didn’t seem like a safe harbor for her to park her emotional speedboat in.
And that’s exactly what she feared she would be with Joshua if she allowed herself to go there. A speedboat. Hurdling toward her own destruction, and probably his as well.
Thing was, he had a lot more experience with self-destructive behavior, so he was much more likely to come out of it okay. Her knowledge was mostly limited to a couple of random body piercings and a hidden tattoo or three. Oh, and the jet-black hair. She’d cop to that as well.
She waited at the curb of the extended-stay hotel where she, Had and Joshua had been put up by the good old US government. Nothing but the best for their employees.
And truth be told, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Reggie’d certainly stayed in places that were a lot worse. A lot.
“Hey, Reg!” a voice called to her from the direction of the hotel.
It was Had. He rushed toward her, wearing… what was he wearing? There were boots and a ten-gallon hat. But, as if that wasn’t good enough, he was wearing one of those cowboy shirts with the mother-of-pearl snaps. In a bright pink. The man was practically glowing.
“What do you think?” he asked, beaming. “I mean, it’s the South, and my mama always says that you should go big or go home.”
“Well…” Reggie drew out the word, hoping to stall long enough to come up with something good. Or at least not offensive. “It is certainly… big.”
“I know,” he answered, while slapping his hands on his thighs. “And I haven’t even shown you the best part.” He turned around and bent over, fiddling with his boots. “Ta daaaa!”
He had attached spurs to his footware.
That was it. This was the moment. Reggie had now seen the face of fashion crazy and its name was Had.
“Wow,” was all she had to say.
“I’ll have to take them off before Joshua gets back. He just about punched my lights out the last time I wore them.” He stopped, appearing to think about that for a moment. “Actually, I think he did punch me out. Maybe I should take them off now.”
“Yeah,” Reggie agreed. “Might be safer.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Who?”
Reggie knew who. It was no secret that Joshua had jetted off somewhere nearby. What was a secret was what he was doing. Reggie had been there while Had attempted to dig the information out of the former agent, but it had been like talking to a sleepy frog. Lots of blinking and a croak or two, but no real communication.
Had looked at her more closely. “You know. Joshua.”
“Oh, right. Hadn’t really noticed.”
The young police officer kept staring at her for another long moment. Reggie had to fight to keep from glancing back at him. The fear was that if he looked too closely, he’d see what it w
as that she was trying to hide.
“Huh. Well, whatever.” Had seemed to shake off whatever thought had gripped him. “Oh, hey. Guess what?”
“Uh… Chicken butt?”
Had laughed. “I love that you just said that. But no. My mama might be coming in to town.”
“Oh, really?”
Reggie wasn’t so sure about that. Had’s mom was awesome, there was no doubt about it. But she was also… how should she put this? A tad overwhelming.
“Yeah,” he said, heaving a sigh. “I had promised to come visit her this week, but now that the head’s shown up…”
“Right,” Reggie agreed. “It’s tough.”
“Yeah, but…” Had trailed off, his mouth pursed. He sighed.
“But it’s the job, isn’t it?” she completed his thought for him. “And somehow we both love it.”
“Mama just doesn’t quite get that, though.” He grinned. “Actually, I’m pretty sure she still thinks I’m making the whole thing up.”
Reggie suppressed a smile at that. Even though Mama had met everyone on the team, more than once, had seen her son in action, and had even provided multiple barbeque meals for them, Reggie could see her still questioning whether or not her son was actually on the team.
It was just like the woman to think that he had been concocting some elaborate ruse just to try to get away from her. Which was hysterical. Reggie’d never seen a man more devoted to his mother than Had was.
At that point, a taxi pulled up. It was Nadira, Had’s girlfriend. There had been a point, just about a month and a half ago, where they’d all pretty much thought that Nadira was a serial killer.
But no, she was just the most insane driver Reggie had ever met. Enough to get her arrested? Possibly. Enough to send her to jail? Probably not quite.
Reggie entered the back of the cab with some trepidation, nodding a hello at the exotic woman in the driver’s seat. “Hey, Nadira.”
“What’s up, homegirl?” she answered with a wicked grin. One thing about this woman. She didn’t seem to hold the team’s earlier suspicions of her against them.
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