The Surviving Girls

by Katee Robert

  They’d gone so far as to hire an out-of-state guy to do the windows and doors, and Emma had done an extensive background check on him before they contacted him. There was no way he was connected to this.

  But they couldn’t afford to assume anything at this point.

  Lei took a deep breath. “Dante and I cleared the house, but we need to go through it again. While we do, talk me through what happened.” Emma had given Dante a rundown, but Lei knew her friend—and she was holding something back.

  They started with the sitting room. Lei checked each window’s lock and tried to muscle them open to make sure it held. It only took a minute to check them all, and then she headed into the living room. “Emma. Talk.”

  “I did all the checks after you left. Both doors. All the ground-floor windows. Prince and I were set up in my office while I worked through the background checks I put together on the agents.”

  She shot Emma a sharp look. “Britton vouched for them.”

  “Britton is human, not the god you think of him as. He’s capable of making mistakes.”

  She opened her mouth to argue and then thought better of it. Another window down. “Did you find anything?”

  “No.” Emma sighed. “Dante graduated Stanford with honors and probably could have gone into any career he wanted to in his field, but something happened. He was home during that summer after graduation, and then that fall he enrolled in the FBI Academy. That’s where Britton found him, and he went straight from the academy to the BAU. He’s got a decent rate of cases closed, and there haven’t been any complaints filed against him that were legit. He still visits his parents every Christmas, but doesn’t seem to go home that often during the course of the year.”

  It matched up with the tidbits she’d gleaned from his comments. Something tight inside her unraveled a little. There were no warning signs with Dante. Twelve years of hindsight gave her the ability to see that Travis had warning signs. She couldn’t have known that he was a killer, but he’d been controlling and completely willing to level emotional abuse and manipulation at her if it would suit his purposes. She hadn’t cared. She’d been too in love with the idea of him to realize that the glossy exterior covered a rotting heart and a sociopathic brain.

  Dante was different.

  She hoped.

  They moved to the kitchen, and Lei started with the door and then moved to the small window over the sink. “And Clarke?”

  “Clarke is . . . different.” Emma grabbed two doggy cookies from the jar on the counter and knelt to give them to Saul and Prince. “She grew up in foster care. I’m not really sure what happened to her parents—if there are records of it, they’re not electronic—but she bounced from home to home from the time she was five. After she barely graduated high school, she dropped completely off the radar for two years. The next time I found her was when she was enrolled in the academy—with Britton’s recommendation.”

  There was a story there, but it wasn’t connected to their current situation. Lei gave a mirthless smile. “Britton sure does love his strays.”

  “Yes, he does.” Emma stood and they walked upstairs. “Both agents are aboveboard. Neither was close to California twelve years ago, and they have no connection to Travis or the Sorority Row Murders. Britton excepting, of course.”

  “Of course,” she murmured. Lei stopped at the top of the stairs and faced Emma. “You were listening to Dante’s calls.”

  “So were you. I was just less obvious about it.” Emma shrugged, completely unrepentant. “I don’t know if there was someone else there that night, but if the agents think it’s possible, then it is. It changes the framework of my search, and I haven’t had a chance to implement it.”

  No one was ever truly off the grid, not unless they went to great lengths and stayed out of well-populated areas. If this killer was somehow connected to the original murders, there would be a record of it somewhere. The search was too broad, though. Even with Emma’s skills, Lei didn’t have much faith that they’d somehow stumble across the lead that would crack this whole case wide-open.

  They moved through the bedrooms, testing windows. Every single one of them was secure and locked. What the fuck is going on? It would have been a whole hell of a lot more comforting if they discovered the killer had climbed in through a window or something that they could deal with. As it was, he might have been a ghost, because they had no way to keep him out.

  Her stomach tried to twist at the thought, but she took several calming breaths. It didn’t work to distract her from the fact that they most definitely weren’t safe in this house. This is what you planned for.

  What I planned for was Travis.

  This isn’t him.

  In a way, that was so much worse. “Let’s check the safe room.” They’d missed it in the first search with Dante because the killer had obviously fled the house, and getting to Emma was more important.

  She had to keep moving, because if she didn’t, she might actually panic. If she lost control, there would be nothing to anchor Emma, and Dante would come back to find them locked in the damn safe room, having a collective panic attack.

  She strode into her bedroom, taking it in with a single glance. She didn’t do clutter, so if anything had been touched, she would have known. Everything was exactly where it should be. Lei headed into her closet and shoved the hangers containing her coats to the side. It took seconds to type in the six-digit key code, and then she muscled the door open and stepped inside.

  And stopped cold. “Fuck me.”

  “What? What’s going on?” Emma started to shoulder past her and ended up clinging to Lei instead. “What the hell?”

  A blanket lay in the middle of the floor, a human-size indentation on it. Lei stepped farther into the room and twisted to watch the monitors set into the far wall. They showed everything that Emma’s downstairs did. All the rooms in the house, though this safe room included cameras in both women’s bedrooms and closets. “He was here.” She spoke through numb lips. He’d watched them.

  But how?

  She crouched and ran a finger over the blanket, coming up with a thick layer of dust. Several months’ worth—maybe even several years. Lei didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that he hadn’t visited the room in a long time. They were never inside it. They did system checks once a month, but they were remote. Emma’s office safe room was the one they’d always assumed they’d have to use, because Emma spent most of her time in that space, and Lei did as well when she was home. To get to this room, someone would have to bypass all the security measures in place and walk past one of their beds.

  She shuddered, her skin breaking out in goose bumps. There was no telling how long ago the killer had been there or what he’d seen.

  Long enough to figure out their habits and how they operated on a day-to-day basis.

  The question was—how did he get in?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Dante met Sheriff Bamford at the place Emma traced Clarke’s cell phone to. The man had aged ten years in the last twenty-four hours, dark circles developing beneath his hazel eyes, and his skin seeming to almost sag in exhaustion. Dante didn’t imagine he looked much better.

  Bamford yanked his hat off and raked a hand through his hair. They stood at a little rest stop about twenty minutes outside town. The squat concrete building wasn’t much to look at, and the whole site seemed abandoned—not uncommon for the time of day. “She must have stopped here before she called me.” Damn it, Clarke, why didn’t you just drive through?

  “Split up and search?”

  He nodded. “You have other deputies coming?”

  “They’ve all been on call for three days straight.” Bamford shook his head. “We’re not equipped to deal with this level of shit. The most crime Stillwater has seen was a B&E last year because Brent and Brandon Gilsbreath got drunk at the bar and decided it’d be a fine time for snacks. They even left the money on the counter to pay for the chips and beer they walked out w
ith.”

  Typical small-town stuff. Even this close to Seattle, they had a quiet little community that boasted the belief that nothing bad could ever happen to them. Until it did. Dante wasn’t there to shit on the other man’s stress, but he could give two fucks if Bamford was overwhelmed.

  Clarke was missing.

  He left the man standing there and stalked around the edge of the rest stop again. Nothing. The highway ran to the south of the stop, cars flying past every few minutes. It created the opportunity for witnesses, but the stop was intentionally positioned a couple of hundred yards off the road. If someone snatched Clarke, all they had to do was drag her around the other side of the building and they’d be out of sight.

  With that driving him, he walked until the concrete walls blocked his view. He could still hear cars when they drove past, but it felt muted there, as if the trees bordering the back side of it were closer. A chain-link fence bordered the property, but it was hardly a barrier if someone was determined. How the hell did he know she was here?

  The unsub had been at Lei’s house. He was sure of that. Not only had Emma heard him, but Saul had been in a frenzy, and both Dante and Lei heard the four-wheeler fleeing the scene. There hadn’t been nearly enough time for him to drive back to Seattle, find Clarke, and follow her to this rest stop so he could ambush her.

  It didn’t make sense.

  Frustrated, he strode to the fence and moved along it. There was no sign of tampering. Nothing to indicate the unsub had come through there. There were no other cars here, though, which meant the unsub hadn’t come in his own car or there would be an abandoned vehicle there . . . He rubbed his temples, gritting his teeth against the headache pounding there.

  “Agent Young.”

  He opened his eyes to find Sheriff Bamford down on one knee and peering at the overgrown bushes on the other side of the parking lot nearest the highway. Dante hurried over as the sheriff picked up a plain black phone. He clicked the home screen, and a picture of a middle finger, nail painted black, appeared.

  Clarke.

  Dante turned a full circle, but there was nothing else. Nothing to indicate what had happened to her. Slow horror rolled through him. What if this isn’t connected to the unsub? As a BAU agent, he knew all too well how monstrous the world really was. Clarke was one of the most capable agents he knew, but when push came to shove, she was still a 120-pound woman. If someone surprised her . . .

  But that didn’t make sense, either. She’d been in her car when she’d called him, probably pulling out on this exact exit to get back onto the road. There was no evidence of an accident.

  He must have been in the backseat. Clarke knows better than to leave the doors unlocked, but shit happens sometimes. If he hid back there and surprised her, she wouldn’t have had a chance to fight back or do anything.

  “You need to put a BOLO on the plates.”

  Sheriff Bamford sighed. “She’s in a rental car. Don’t even know what the plates are. I can find out, but I’ll probably need a warrant and for you to file a missing-persons report to make it official.”

  More wasted time. Dante had never chafed under the restraints of the law. The rules were there for a reason, and they might be inconvenient at times, but they served the greater purpose.

  There was no purpose in this.

  His body burned with the need to sprint down the highway and search for Clarke. To call every person he knew locally and demand they help him. To . . .

  He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and let the fresh pine scent of the surrounding trees soothe his rattled nerves. Clarke was an FBI agent with more than half a decade of experience under her belt, and she’d been a survivor a long time before she ever enrolled in the academy. If there was a way to make it out of this situation, she would do it. He needed to play this by the book even if it felt like wasting time. “I’ll file the missing persons.”

  “Good.” Bamford sounded downright relieved, as if he thought Dante was in danger of losing control and freaking out. Considering how close he’d been to doing exactly that, he didn’t blame the man.

  Dante headed back to his rental. “I’ll follow you back to the station.” He climbed into the car and waited for the sheriff to do the same. Then Dante made his calls. He started with Lei.

  She answered after a single ring. “Did you find Clarke?”

  “No. Her phone is here, but there’s no sign of her car or her. Because she’s driving a rental and we don’t know the plates, I have to file an official missing-persons report to get the ball rolling on a warrant to get the plates.” So much wasted time.

  “Shit.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” He stared at Bamford’s taillights as they merged onto the highway. They’d have to find an exit to turn around so they could head back to Stillwater. “How are you holding up?”

  She laughed, the sound a little hysterical. “Just fine, considering the circumstances.”

  He’d never heard her sound so freaked out, and she’d been the one to find two bodies earlier that day. Holy shit, that was today. It feels like a thousand years ago. “Lei, talk to me.” If something had happened to rattle her, he needed to know. Too many balls in the air. Too many distractions. The danger hadn’t passed for Lei just because Clarke was now also in danger.

  “We’re safe. I’ll fill you in when you get back, but we’re not in immediate danger.” Something dark entered her tone. “We should have more information by then, too.”

  Something had most definitely happened. “Lei—”

  “If something happened to Clarke, you need to call Britton. I’ll text you a little bit later, but we’re okay, Dante. I promise.”

  He believed her that they weren’t in any immediate danger—Lei was too smart to lie to him about that—but he didn’t like her dodging the question. That said, she was right about calling Britton. He couldn’t leave Clarke’s missing-persons report unfiled because Lei was upset. His partner’s immediate safety was more important than potential emotional trauma. Lei was more than just a victim, but he couldn’t afford to let his feelings for her affect his ability to do his job. Dante had to remember that. “I’ll call when I know something.”

  “Okay.”

  “Stay safe, Lei.” He hung up and immediately called Britton.

  Despite the fact that it was nearly midnight on the East Coast, Britton answered right away. “I didn’t expect to hear from you again today.”

  “Clarke’s missing.” He passed along every detail he knew, both about the timeline and the scene, but it was a pathetically small amount. “There was nothing at the rest stop but her phone. No blood. No skid marks on the pavement. No broken glass. She’s just . . . gone.”

  “It’s highly improbable that it’s the unsub.”

  “I realize that.” He tried to keep his tone even, but fear burrowed deep, turning his insides to ice. He shuddered. Dante had never, ever become emotionally involved in a case before. It was a trait that he shared with his father—the ability to take a step back and think logically no matter what was going on around him. It made his father one of the best brain surgeons on the East Coast.

  This case had Dante emotionally compromised on two fronts. Clarke wasn’t just his partner, she was his friend. And Lei . . . he didn’t know what Lei was to him yet, but she was more than a chess piece within the case. “But we can’t ignore any possibilities.”

  “Of course. You’re right.” Britton was silent for a long moment. “I’ll send in Tucker Kendrick. He just finished up a case, so he’s free. This situation is escalating at an unprecedented rate.” Another pause, longer this time. “You realize this isn’t a reflection of my belief in your ability to do your job.”

  Dante clenched his jaw against the sharp words crowding his throat. He knew Britton didn’t think less of him for shit hitting the fan, but he resented feeling like his boss was handling him. “I’m aware.” He didn’t even mind Tucker, for the most part. The man had a mouth on him, but it was nothing compared t
o Clarke’s.

  Clarke.

  Ahead of him, the sheriff turned into the police station parking lot. Stillwater’s police station was a tiny little building that looked like it’d been added to the equally tiny courthouse as an afterthought. Clarke’s fate is in the hands of a man who’s never dealt with a serious case in his entire career.

  It didn’t matter. He wasn’t about to sit back and let Sheriff Bamford blunder through trying to find her. “I’m here. I have to go. I’ll keep you updated.”

  “I’ll be in contact. And, Dante . . . you’re not alone in this. We’ll find Clarke.”

  The words comforted him, even though they had no right to. Dante knew too damn well how many people up and disappeared each year in this country alone. Sure, some of them were voluntary—people who got in over their heads or hit a breaking point and walked away from everything they’d known. But a percentage of those missing-person cases were actually murders that might never be solved. I can’t think like that. “I’ll call you when I have something to update. Lei and Emma are at their house, but Sheriff Bamford has assured me he’s sending a deputy to monitor the situation.”

  “Good, though I’ll feel better when one of our people is there. There’s something off about this case, but I can’t put my finger on the issue. Keep your wits about you.”

  “Will do.” Dante hung up. He parked next to the police cruiser and got out before he could think too hard about all the things that could go wrong—and all the things that already had.

  It’s too much of a coincidence that this is unrelated. The odds are astronomical.

  Which meant if they found the unsub, they’d find Clarke.

  “I’m so sorry, Ms. Zhang. Your brother had your code and your password. Seeing as how you signed the contract with the safety feature of releasing the pass code in the event you forgot it, we were following protocol.”