by Mary Stone
With a wistful smile, she met his eyes. “I missed you too.”
Just as he was about to ask whether or not she should press the button to resume the elevator’s movement, she took a swift step forward and threw her arms around his shoulders. He knew hugs were not in Winter’s normal repertoire, but he wasted no time wrapping her in a tight embrace.
The familiar scent of her hair, of strawberries and citrus, was more than enough to drive away any lingering doubts about their friendship. Even if their relationship never went beyond platonic, he knew he would just be glad to have her in his life.
“We should see if this elevator will start back up before the fire department gets here.” He offered a light kiss to the top of her head before pulling away from her, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
“Right,” she agreed. Nodding, she reached out to tap the glowing button. “Do you want to go get some coffee? I’ve been drinking the stuff from the breakroom all day, and it’s, well, I’m not really sure it’s fit for human consumption.”
He grimaced. “You’ve been drinking that?”
As she snickered in response, some of the leaden weight appeared to have lifted from her shoulders. “It’s nice outside again today too. Seems like a good day for a walk.”
And just like that…they were friends again. The awkwardness began to disappear, almost as if it had never been there.
On their way through the office, he gave her a summary of the mostly uneventful months since Kilroy’s death. Aside from Sun Ming’s injury and the information he and Aiden Parrish had unearthed on Justin, they had gone about business as usual.
Once the commotion from the mass shooting died down, Noah’s main focus had shifted to the items and documents left behind by Douglas Kilroy. Aside from a letter that pointed them in the direction of Bowling Green High, Kilroy’s belongings were all but useless.
Even after an extensive examination of Kilroy’s life, the conclusion about his motives had changed little. Kilroy was a sociopath, and both he and his father had exhibited symptoms consistent with paranoid schizophrenia. Their breaks from reality came in the form of religious experiences, and according to Aiden Parrish, such a manifestation wasn’t uncommon with schizophrenia.
The conversation between him and Winter didn’t become personal again until they were out of the coffee shop, drinks in hand, and away from the prying ears of any bystanders. Their route to the café had been straightforward, but the path they decided to take back to work wound through a handful of residential neighborhoods and passed by a park. Winter dubbed it “the scenic route.”
“So, are you officially back? At work?” he asked, glancing over as she took a sip from the paper cup.
“Not quite. I talked to Max about it earlier. I was gone for so long because, well, there are a lot of reasons, but my grandpa wasn’t doing so well. He was having a lot of pain, and the doctors ran a ton of tests looking for anything they could find, but they didn’t get anywhere. I was staying with him and Gramma Beth so I could help them and just recuperate, I guess.”
Noah was immediately concerned. He liked the old man. “He’s all right, though?”
Before he finished the question, Winter nodded. “Yeah, that’s why it took me a little while to get here, actually. He was in the hospital, and that’s when they found out that he has lupus. He’s probably had it for a long time but didn’t realize it. It sounds bad, but it’s a relief to have an actual diagnosis. I hung around while he started treatment, and when I left for Richmond, he seemed like he was doing a lot better.”
“Lupus,” he echoed. “Yeah, my aunt has that. She’s been dealing with it since she was thirty-something, though. We aren’t blood related, so I guess that’s good news for me.”
“Wait, what? What do you mean you and your aunt aren’t blood related?” There was a twinkle of amusement in her eyes when she looked up from the sidewalk.
“She’s my stepdad’s sister, my Aunt Hazel.”
“Your parents are divorced?”
“Since I was five.” He lifted a shoulder. “Dad, Eric, moved away and married the woman he’d been cheating on my mom with. Started a new family, you know the type. Mom didn’t get married again until I was something like ten. I was too old to be the ringbearer, I remember that.”
“Wow.” Winter stared at him, the paper cup resting on her lower lip, but she didn’t drink. “I’m sorry, Noah. I had no idea.”
“Please,” he laughed as he waved away the sympathetic words, “don’t be. Chris, my stepdad, he’s a great dude. His sister, Hazel, used to be a concert pianist. If my mom hadn’t divorced my dumbass father, she’d never have met Chris and his family.”
A flash of pain passed over Winter’s expression, but she hid it with a smile. “They sound wonderful.”
Noah nodded. “The Alvarez family is like the epitome of what a family ought to be. Nothing but love from them, which is more than I can say for any of my dad or his kin. They’re a bunch of stuck up pricks like…” He trailed off and shrugged before he could say the man’s name. Like Aiden Parrish.
“Huh, all right.” Winter offered him a thoughtful glance. “Well, good for your mom, then. I’m glad it all worked out for you guys. You’ll definitely have to tell me more about your family because I didn’t know any of your history.” She laughed, her cheeks turning pink. “Shit, have I really been taking up that much of our conversation space? So much that all we’ve done is talk about my family, but I didn’t even know that your parents were divorced? Or that you had a stepdad? Or that your biological father is an asshole?”
“Knock it off, Winter.” He grinned, giving his head a little shake. “That’s how friendship works. When one friend is going through some rough shit like you have been, the other one’s there for them. I know you’d do the same for me, right?”
“Of course.” There was no hesitation, no pause, and all he wanted to do was hug her again.
“See. Now, any time you’re feeling guilty, just remember that. Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it’s not going to. Someday, I’ll be the one apologizing to you about, what did you call it? Hogging all the conversation?”
Her laugh sounded closer to a snort as she nodded. “Yeah, basically.”
For close to an entire block, they walked in silence. The din of the nearby busy street melded into the whisper of the summer breeze, and birds chirped from the branches overhead.
“I’m worried about Justin.” The quiet statement snapped his attention away from the scenery and back to the woman at his side.
He reached out and squeezed her shoulder, but only for a quick moment. “We’ll find him.”
“I know.” Even though the response was reassuring, there was a flicker of darkness on her face as her eyes fell on his. “But I think that’s part of what I’m worried about. We’ll find him, but who will we find when we do?”
7
Lips pursed, Aiden glanced over Jaime Peterson’s meager school records for what felt like the fifteenth time. The kid was smart, and the only grade lower than a B was during his senior year chemistry class. Otherwise, his academic record was impeccable.
Well, at least we don’t have to worry about him throwing together a bomb, Aiden thought, frustrated beyond measure.
The conclusion did little to stifle the unease that clung to the darker recesses of his mind. Aside from the records of his graduation at Bowling Green High, searches for a nineteen-year-old named Jaime Peterson turned up little and less. Aiden had checked colleges throughout the state, even bordering states, but none had records of a Jaime Peterson matching Justin Black’s description.
As far as Aiden was concerned, the null search results were an ominous sign.
He knew from his research on Douglas Kilroy’s formative years that the Kilroy family had been just short of nomadic. None of their stops lasted even two years, and based on the year and a half that Justin had spent at Bowling Green High, the pattern still fit.
Had Justi
n been raised by Douglas Kilroy? Or had Kilroy spared the young boy because of some deeply ingrained sense of misogyny that insisted he could brutalize women, but that he spare males whenever possible? Had he intercepted the letter about parent-teacher conferences from the people who had actually raised Justin?
If Kilroy had been a bystander during Justin’s adolescence, then the kid might have stood a chance. But there were too many question marks, too many aspects of the discovery that didn’t make sense.
Aiden was careful to keep the sentiment to himself. The pained glint behind Winter’s eyes had been plain for him to see, and he hadn’t wanted to add his pessimistic theory to her bereaved mind.
When the hell had he started that? Since when did he withhold pertinent information in an effort to spare someone’s feelings? Facts were facts, and the way they made someone feel wasn’t supposed to matter.
And maybe those feelings didn’t matter most of the time, but with Winter, it was different.
When it came to her wellbeing, he felt like he tripped over himself in his effort to ensure she was okay. But of all the people he knew, she deserved a sense of peace.
He would keep the theory about Kilroy’s motivation for kidnapping Justin Black to himself until he had more to backup his assessment than a hunch.
In the world of research, the absence of evidence was a poor method to prove a theory. But no matter the number of hours he’d sunk into familiarizing himself with statistical analyses and behavioral research, he already knew he was right.
Kilroy hadn’t left Justin alive because of a soft spot, not even because of his set of twisted ideals that insisted men were superior to women. The Preacher, the man responsible for a body count that rivaled any serial killer in existence had not decided to spare Justin’s life because he cared about that life.
In fact, Aiden wasn’t so sure that his goal had even been to spare Justin’s life in the first place.
Serial killers as entrenched in their methodology as Douglas Kilroy didn’t decide one day to change their routine. Those men and women adhered to a ritual, and the only deviation from the established modus operandi occurred gradually over a number of years and a number of bodies.
The brutal murder of the Black family and the disappearance of six-year-old Justin Black was far too different from Kilroy’s previous crimes to be a change in the man’s MO.
There had been a reason he targeted Jeanette and Bill, and that reason was Justin Black.
Aiden was sure of it. And he was beginning to think that he understood why.
Sure, Kilroy had intended to kill Jeanette and Bill, but his selection of a family with children was no accident. Kilroy had never married, and he had never procreated, that anyone knew of, at least. But the man was a fanatic, and like his father before him, he was not about to leave his work half-finished.
In the twilight of his life, Kilroy had searched for a young boy to become his protégé.
Even if Justin had spent the first six years of his life in the loving environment provided by his parents, he wouldn’t have stood a chance under the guardianship of someone like Douglas Kilroy. Any semblance of morality the boy possessed would have been malleable at his tender age, and Kilroy would have exploited the early stage of development.
If Justin, or Jaime, or whatever the hell he was called now, had been raised by Douglas Kilroy for the past thirteen years, there was no doubt in Aiden’s mind that the kid was just as fucked up as the man who had kidnapped him.
When she got the text message from her new friend, Autumn groaned. She had planned to eat a sleeve of Saltines, drink a glass of ginger ale, and then sleep for sixteen hours in hopes that when she awoke, the pain in her stomach would be gone.
Though she had only just turned twenty-eight, she was convinced that the stress from her final year as a Ph.D. student had given her an ulcer.
In the last two weeks, she had dropped a full five pounds, and aside from the impromptu chimichanga eating contest with Noah Dalton, she couldn’t remember the last real meal she’d eaten. She had always prided herself on her ability to eat as much in one sitting as a linebacker, but she had tapped out well before her Texan friend.
And, to top off her decreased appetite, she had tossed and turned all night as she fought against throwing up the three chimichangas she’d eaten.
I’m meeting Bree at The Lift tonight. You should come hang out with us. My friend Winter will be there. Noah’s text message ended with a smiling cat emoji and another emoji that was just a pint glass of beer.
She’d expected the muscular, broad-shouldered Texan to be a dog person, but his adamant love of cats had taken her by surprise. Apparently, his grandmother’s affinity for kittens had worn off on her grandson.
Before she could rationalize an excuse to avoid going out to meet Noah’s best friend, she composed a response to advise him she would be on her way within the next fifteen minutes.
The clatter of nails against the hardwood floor drew her attention, and she rolled to her side and stretched out an arm to waggle her fingers at the little dog that approached. Her cat, Peach, was asleep at the other end of the sectional couch.
“Come here, Toad,” Autumn cooed.
Wagging his fluffy tail, the Pomeranian mix trotted over and hopped up to sit beside her.
Toad’s namesake wasn’t the Mario Brothers character of the same name, and as far as Autumn was concerned, her cat wasn’t named after Princess Peach.
Peach was a ginger tabby with fur roughly the same color as a peach, and Toad was a fluffy mutt with an overbite. Some people might have thought Toad’s goofy face made him ugly, but Autumn thought his less than flattering jaw made him just the right combination of ugly and cute. Thus, the name Toad had been born.
After she scratched behind his pointy ears, she pushed herself to sit, and then to stand. Maybe while she was at The Lift, she would make another attempt to eat real food. Pedialyte and plain Cheerios provided adequate nutrition, but the flavor profile left a lot to be desired.
Though Autumn walked to the nearby bar as often as she could, she didn’t feel up to the trek while her stomach turned and twisted with each lance of pain. She pushed the grimace off her face as she shoved through the familiar set of double doors.
Seated at the same booth he and Bree usually selected, Noah waved as a wide grin brightened his face. Chuckling to herself, she returned the gesture as she made her way to the little group. Bree scooted to the wall to make room for Autumn as the third member of their entourage watched her approach. The woman’s dark blue eyes were vivid, and her stare was intense despite the slight smile on her pretty face.
Autumn liked her already.
“You must be Winter,” Autumn started before Bree or Noah could make the introduction. With a grin, she extended a hand to the woman.
As Winter leaned forward to accept the handshake, the amber light caught her glossy black hair. “I am. You’re Autumn, right?”
“Right.” Though Autumn’s smile didn’t falter, she fought against grating her teeth together as her hand met Winter’s. Sometimes her “gift” for reading people was a blessing, and other times it was a curse.
Winter Black had seen some shit, and she’d been through a hell most people could only imagine. But amidst all the turmoil, there was a calm resolve. A resolve to close the dark chapter of her life, to heal the open wound and find her place in the world. It was a feeling Autumn Trent knew well.
“It’s nice to meet another seasonally named person.” Winter’s smile seemed lighter as she spoke, and Autumn didn’t have to touch her to know that the words were sincere.
“So, Noah, Bree, what in the hell is this?” Autumn arched an eyebrow at one friend and then the other. “It’s my night off, from this and school, teaching, whatever in the hell you want to call it. And you guys decide to meet up at my work?”
The corners of Bree’s eyes creased as she laughed, and Winter chuckled while the man beside her offered a wide grin.
&nb
sp; “Hey, you said it yourself, all right?” Noah tapped the plastic menu with an index finger. “This place has the best damn chili cheese fries in town, and you know how seriously I take my chili cheese fries.”
“Okay.” Autumn held up a hand in surrender. “Next time we get together, I expect we’ll be at the FBI building, you hear me?”
Winter’s quiet chortle turned into full-blown laughter at the offhand remark. “As long as we aren’t there for coffee,” the dark-haired woman said. “That shit tastes like, well, like shit.”
“Like it was brewed in a dirty sock,” Noah put in with a noncommittal shrug.
“That’s what you said about my beer!” Autumn held out her hands to feign exasperation.
“More than one thing can be brewed in a dirty sock.” His tone was so matter-of-fact, she thought he might have been answering a math problem.
For what was far from the last time that night, Autumn covered her mouth to stifle an outburst of laughter.
And, god, it felt good.
8
Robert Ladwig had never received two calls from Sandra Evans in a span of less than twenty-four hours before, and as he stared at the screen, he thought about returning the ringing phone to the polished surface of his desk. Maybe she meant to dial another person. Maybe her phone was in a pocket, and his number had been selected because of their recent contact.
Right, and maybe that lotto ticket I bought yesterday is a jackpot winner, he thought.
At the last second, he swiped his thumb across the green key and raised the device to his ear. “This is Dr. Ladwig,” he answered.
“Good morning, Robert,” Dr. Evans replied, her voice as velvety and warm as fresh caramel.
“What can I do you for, Evans?” The effort required to keep his tone level was monumental. This conversation would have to be short, or he was liable to lose his mind.
“I’m sure you need to get to work soon, so I’ll only keep you a moment. I’ve been thinking about Patient Zero.”
