The Search

by Nora Roberts

  “Good.” He heard the truth of it, felt it—and realized that until that moment, he’d carried those shadows inside him, too. “Then it was worth it. But until Eckle is in the same place, things stay the same here. No chances, Fiona.”

  “I can live with that. I’ve got window boxes, and pizza.” She unfisted her hand, reached for his. “And you. So.” She took a long breath. “Tell me something else. What did you do besides window boxes?”

  “I’ve got a few things going. Let’s take a walk.”

  “Beach or woods?”

  “Woods first, then beach. I need to find another stump.”

  “Simon! You sold the sink.”

  “I’m keeping that one, but Syl got a look at it and says she’s got a client who’ll want one.”

  “You’re keeping it.”

  “Half-bath downstairs needs a bump.”

  “It’ll be fabulous.” She glanced over at the dogs, back at Simon. Her guys, she thought. “Come on, boys. Let’s go help Simon find a stump.”

  ECKLE FELT SOMETHING, too. He felt freedom.

  A new task, a new agenda. New prey.

  He knew he’d severed the strings that held him to Perry, and rather than falling limp, an untethered marionette, he stood strong and vital. He experienced a new sense of self, one he’d never felt before, not even when Perry had helped him reach inside to the man he’d hidden for so many years.

  He owed Perry a debt for that, and one he fully intended to pay. But the debt was one of student to teacher. A true teacher, a wise teacher knew the student must step away, must carve his own path once the roadbed was laid.

  He’d read, with interest and pride, the article in U.S. Report. He critiqued the style, the voice, the content, and gave Kati Starr a solid B.

  As he would have done in his other life, he edited, corrected, made suggestions in red pen.

  He could help her improve, he had no doubt of it. And he’d considered communicating with her, collaborating, so to speak, to give her series of articles more depth.

  He’d never realized how addictive notoriety could be, how piquant the flavor once tasted. But his new self wanted more sly licks and nibbled bites before the end. He wanted to feast. To gorge.

  He wanted to sate himself on legacy.

  As he’d studied his potential student’s habits, routines, read her other articles, researched her personal and professional data, he detected in her what he’d often seen in his own students.

  Particularly the females.

  Whores. All women were whores at their slippery, wet roots.

  Bright, clever Kati was, in his opinion, too headstrong, too rash, too sure of herself. She was a manipulator, and wouldn’t take instruction or constructive criticism well.

  But that didn’t mean she couldn’t be useful.

  The more he observed, the more he learned, the more he wanted. She would be his next and, in a very real way, his first even as she might be his last. His own choice, rather than a mirror of Perry’s needs.

  She was older, not particularly athletic. More inclined to hours at a desk, a keyboard, a phone than physical pursuits.

  Playing in her fancy fitness club so she could show off her body.

  Yes, she showed off her body, he thought, but didn’t tend it, didn’t discipline it. If she lived she’d grow soft and fat and slow.

  Really, he’d be doing her a favor, ending it while she was still young and smooth and tight.

  He’d been busy during his time in Seattle. He’d changed his license plates twice and had the car painted. Now when he returned to Orcas any cops watching the ferry traffic wouldn’t note the return of the car—not that he gave barely educated hayseeds that much credit.

  Still, Perry had schooled him carefully on precaution.

  He considered the best time and location to take her, then simply waited for Seattle’s weather to give him the final element.

  KATI SHOT UP her umbrella and stepped out into the drenching rain and gloom. She’d worked late, polishing up some details on her next article. For now, she didn’t mind inhabiting a cubicle in a small building in the rainy Northwest.

  It served as a stepping-stone.

  Her series was gaining her the attention she wanted, not only from readers but from the powers that be. If she could keep the heat turned up, just a little longer, she had every reason to believe she’d be packing her laptop and looking for an apartment in New York.

  Fiona Bristow, George Perry and RSKII created and stamped her ticket out of Seattle and into the Big Apple. And it was there she’d shop her book.

  She needed to crack Fiona open a bit, she thought as she dug for her keys. And it wouldn’t hurt for RSKII to take another coed, keep that flame high—and her byline front and center.

  Of course, if the feds broke the case, that wouldn’t hurt either. She had sources primed, including the one who’d fed her the information that the Tawney-Mantz team had interviewed Perry again that day—and the fresh, hot juice that Fiona had joined in.

  Face-to-face with the man who abducted her, killed her lover. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in that room. But even without the access, she’d gotten enough from her sources for a solid piece—above the fold—for tomorrow’s edition.

  She hit the unlock button on her key ring and in the flash of lights saw the flat rear tire.

  “Crap. Crap!” She hurried closer to make certain. Even as she turned, digging into her bag for her phone, he boiled out of the gloom.

  Out of nowhere, no more than a blur.

  She heard him say, “Hi, Kati! How about an exclusive?”

  The pain shot through her, an electric bullet that sizzled in every cell of her stunned, seizing body. The rainy gloom burst into blinding white as a scream gagged in her throat. In some shocked part of her brain she thought she’d been struck by lightning.

  The white sliced to black.

  IT TOOK LESS than a minute to bind her, to lock her in the trunk. He stowed her bag, her computer, her umbrella in the back, for now, carefully turned off her phone.

  Filled with power and pride, he drove off into the rainy night. He had a lot of work to do before he slept.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Kati’s phone provided a wealth of information. Scrolling through, Eckle carefully copied down all the names and numbers, studied her incomings, outgoings, her calendar, reminders. It fascinated him that virtually every communication, every appointment in her logs—but for an upcoming dentist appointment—dealt with professional interests.

  Really, he mused as he wiped the phone clean, he and Kati had a great deal in common: no real connection to family, no particular friends and an absorption with rising in their chosen field.

  They both wanted to make a name for themselves, leave a deep mark.

  Wouldn’t that make their brief time together all the more important?

  He tossed the phone in the trash at the rest stop where he’d parked, then backtracked, exited the interstate and drove the wandering twenty miles to the motel he’d chosen for this leg of the work.

  He paid cash for a single night’s stay, then parked away from the lights. Though he doubted he’d need it, he angled her umbrella to shield his face as he climbed out of the car. People who frequented motels of this type didn’t sit around their shitty little rooms looking out the window at a rain-swept parking lot, but it paid to be cautious.

  He opened the trunk.

  Her eyes were wide open, full of fear and pain with that glaze of shock he found so arousing. She’d struggled, but he’d learned a thing or two and had linked the bindings on her wrists and ankles together in the back, hog-tying her so she could do little more than hump like a worm. Still, it was best to keep her absolutely still, absolutely silent through the night.

  “We’ll talk in the morning,” he told her as he pulled a syringe from his pocket, removed the tip. Her screams were no more than harsh whispers swallowed by the rain as he gripped her arm, shoved up her sleeve. “Sleep tight now,”
he said, and slid the needle under the skin.

  He replaced the tip. She, like the others, wouldn’t live long enough to be bothered about any infection from shared needles. He watched her eyes dull as the drug took her under.

  After securing the trunk, he got his suitcase and her belongings out of the back and carried them across the broken pavement of the lot to his room.

  It smelled of old sex, stale smoke and the cheap detergent that couldn’t mask the brew. He’d learned to ignore such annoyances, and he’d learned to ignore the inevitable groans and thumps from adjoining rooms.

  He switched on the TV, scrolled until he found local news.

  He entertained himself first with a pass through Kati’s wallet. She carried nearly two hundred in cash—for payoffs? bribes? he wondered. The money would come in handy, another advantage of changing his target type. The coeds rarely had more than five or ten, if that.

  He found the current password for her computer hidden behind her driver’s license. He set it aside for later.

  He made piles of what he could keep and what he would dispose of from her handbag, and munched on the M&M’s she had in an inside pocket, toyed with her bag of cosmetics.

  She carried no photos, not his all-work-and-no-play Kati. But she had a street map of Seattle and one of Orcas, tidily folded.

  On the Orcas map she’d marked several routes from the ferry. He recognized the route to Fiona’s, wondered about the others. If time permitted, he’d check them out.

  He approved of the fact that she carried several pens and sharpened pencils, a small cube of Post-its, a bottle of water.

  He saved her breath mints, towelettes, pack of tissues, removed her IDs and credit cards to be cut up and disposed of along the way.

  He used the money in her change purse to buy a Sprite and a bag of Lay’s potato chips from the vending machine outside the room.

  Organized and settled, he opened her computer. As with her phone calls and texts, all of her e-mails centered on work and many were cryptic. But he could follow the dots, as he’d been following her.

  While he, Perry and Fiona weren’t her only stories, they were, unquestionably, her focus. She’d pushed, and was pushing, for nibbles and bites from numerous sources.

  Tenacious, thy name is Kati Starr.

  She did well, he thought, digging, digging, digging, amassing details and comments from Perry’s past, from Fiona’s, from past and present victims.

  She had files full of information on Fiona’s search unit, on the other members, on her training business, on her mother, her stepmother, the dead father, the dead lover. The current lover.

  Thorough. He respected that.

  And he understood she’d gathered and was continuing to gather more information, more deep background and areas than a reporter could possibly use in a series of articles.

  “Writing a book,” he murmured. “You’re writing a book, aren’t you, Kati?”

  He plugged in one of the two thumb drives he’d found in her case. Rather than the novel or true-crime book he’d expected to find, he brought up the file containing her next article.

  For tomorrow’s edition.

  He read it through twice, so engrossed he barely noticed when the couple next door began to fuck.

  The betrayal—for he had little doubt Perry had betrayed him—slashed. A whip across the throat that strangled him so he shoved up to pace the miserable little room, his fists clenching, unclenching.

  His teacher, his mentor, the father of who he’d become turned on him, and that turning could—almost certainly would—hasten the end of him.

  He considered running, simply abandoning the plans he’d so meticulously set in place and driving east. Kill the reporter along the way, he thought, far along the way, out of what he knew the police would call his hunting ground.

  Change his looks, his identity again. Change everything—the car, the plates and then . . .

  What? he wondered. Be ordinary again, be nothing again? Find another mask and hide behind it? No, no, he could never go back, never be the pathetic shell again.

  Calmer, he stood, eyes closed, accepting. Perhaps it was true and right and inevitable that the father destroy the child. Perhaps that formed the circle, brought the journey to its better, bitter end.

  And he’d always known it would end. This new life, this sharpness of being was transient. But he’d hoped, he’d believed he had more time. With more time he could, and would, surpass Perry, in song and story, thought the teacher, the lover of books.

  No, he would not go back, could not go back. Would not hide like a rat in a hole. He’d go forward, as planned.

  Live or die, he decided. But he would never, never simply exist again.

  He sat and read the article again, and this time felt a sense of destiny. Of course this was why he took the reporter. Everything was happening as it was meant to happen.

  He was at peace with that.

  By the time his neighbors finished and had checked out to go home to, he assumed, the spouses they’d cheated on, he’d found the book. He read through the draft, noting she worked in what he thought of as patchwork style—scenes and chapters mixed out of order that she’d link and weave together in another draft.

  He looked at her key ring with some regret. How he wished he could risk going through her apartment. She’d have more there—files, notes, books, numbers.

  He began to read again, this time making some changes, some additions. He’d keep the computer, the drives, and merge her work with his if he survived the next stage.

  For the first time in months he felt a bubble of excitement over something other than killing. He’d include the portions of his own book, the draft he’d begun in the first person, with her third-person reporter’s point of view. Juxtaposing his parts of the story with hers.

  His evolution and her observations.

  And with Kati’s help, he would create his own song and story. Death, even his own, would be his legacy.

  IN THE CONFERENCE ROOM where she and Tawney worked together, Mantz held her phone in one hand and tapped her keyboard with the other. “Yeah, got it. Thanks, Tawney.” She set the phone down, gestured. “I just got word that U.S. Report is hyping Starr’s article for tomorrow. They’ve got a teaser online. You should see this.”

  He stepped over to her desk, read over her shoulder.

  Under “Sneak Peeks” the headline glared:

  FACE-OFF

  Fiona Bristow Goes to Prison to Confront Perry

  A Kati Starr Exclusive

  “Son of a bitch.” Tawney murmured it, the low tone more violent than a shout. “The UNSUB will read this and it puts Fee right back in the crosshairs. Front and center.”

  “And Starr’s billing’s going up. She’s piling up career capital with this. Whatever she’s invested to get information, it’s paying off for her.”

  “We need to find the leak. And we need to see this goddamn story. I’m going to push on her editor, her publisher. She’s