by Mary Burton
The security guard was a tall, lean man with deep creases ironed into his pants and shirt. A neatly trimmed mustache and a sharp part in the center of thick hair finished off the polished appearance.
The security guard’s brown eyes sparked with excitement. “I got a heads-up from your partner. I found something for you. Last Thursday morning. Your victim pulled into her parking space at ten minutes after ten. Here, let me show you.”
He turned and clicked a television remote. The screen behind him flicked on, and a grainy black-and-white tape rolled. “This is her spot a minute before she arrives.”
Malcolm watched, his nerves jumping. Sierra pulled into the spot, checked her makeup in the rearview mirror, and reached for her purse. She got out of the car and opened her hatchback. Tall and regal, she moved with confidence. She was just reaching for the garment bag when a figure approached her. He wore a dark coat and a hat so his face was obscured from the camera. When she spotted him, her pensive expression brightened.
“Seems she knew whoever approached her,” the guard said.
Malcolm nodded. Dixon. But the size didn’t seem right. “So it seems.”
“And look here. He says something to her, and she closes the car up, locks it, and follows him without a bit of hesitation.”
“Do you have footage of where they went?”
“The camera in that section of the mall wasn’t working. Someone had shot it out with a gun.”
“A gun. Like a rifle?”
“So it seems. Came to my attention last Friday. We had it fixed by Saturday.”
“Do you have the old light with the bullet?”
“Maintenance crews didn’t save it.”
Frustration chewed at him. “What about footage of whoever might have shot the camera out?”
“Nope. He never came into camera range.”
“Shit.”
“Whoever you’re chasing after is one slippery bastard who does not want to be caught.”
He didn’t want to be caught, and yet he’d left Sierra’s bones out for anyone to find. He didn’t want to be caught, but he wanted to play a cat-and-mouse game with the cops.
Lulu lost track of time in the shadowy, putrid room. Whoever had spoken to her from the darkness had made no move to approach her.
And so she’d sat in the darkness, breathing in the smell of death as she sat on the stone floor, her back to a cold, damp wall.
Several times she dozed off. But the sleep was not restful or peaceful. Even in her dreams a dark figure chased her and laughed as she struggled to run and get away. But the harder and faster she ran the slower she moved. Her pursuer always caught her, and when his icy hands touched her bare flesh she’d start awake.
Lulu’s head rolled from side to side. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but please let me go. I won’t tell anyone what happened here. I just want to leave. I just want to see my kid.”
Each time she’d plead to the darkness there’d been no response, but this time she heard the creak of a door.
“Now why would you want to leave? The party is just about to get rolling.”
The deep, familiar voice sent her scrambling to her feet. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Hunger had her swaying. “Please, just let me go.”
“I can’t let you go. We have yet to play, and I have been looking forward to this for so very long.”
The lights flipped on, and she winced at the sudden brightness. When her gaze focused and she looked into the eyes of her captor, she knew she’d never see the outside of this room again.
She screamed.
The hum of conversation drifted around Angie’s head as she sat in the metal folding chair. Her chair, like a dozen others, was a part of a circle located in the basement of a local church that hosted AA meetings. She attended meetings regularly because they had been so helpful in the beginning, and she hated to fiddle with success.
Everyone in the room shared a common experience: they all struggled with addiction.
Though Angie had not taken a drink in nearly fifteen months, temptation had been nudging her hard the last day or two. She understood the stress of her pending medical test results had been weighing on her. But it was Sierra’s death and Lulu’s disappearance that lurked behind the urges. Was there something that linked the women, other than their association with her? Was she missing a key link that would solve these cases? She wracked her brain for answers, but there’d been none. There’d been only an unholy thirst that beckoned surrender.
“Angie.” Sara Wayne’s soft, soothing voice cut through her thoughts.
Angie uncrossed and crossed her legs as her gaze shifted to the petite woman with ivory skin and a splash of freckles across the bridge of an aquiline nose. Sara couldn’t be more than thirty, but behind her warm gaze was wisdom rooted not just in academics but personal experience. “I’m sorry, my mind drifted to the office.”
If Sara recognized Angie’s white lie, she didn’t call her on it. “We’re making introductions. It’s your turn.”
Her gaze shifted around the circle of six. There was Sandi, a sixtyish school bus driver who’d been beaten and raped and drank to forget; Denise, a plump, round-faced girl of twenty who’d lost her parents in an accident; Jason a slim, nervous man who’d only once been able to talk about his near drug overdose; and Winnie, a waifish woman who loved to wear red and struggled with a meth addiction.
There was a new man in the circle who, to her surprise, had taken the seat next to her while she’d been lost in thought. He’d moved so silently that he’d barely disturbed the air around them. Tall, broad shouldered, he wore a blue dress shirt, a sport jacket, and khakis. He looked neat, pulled together, and she couldn’t imagine him lost to drugs or alcohol.
Angie straightened, cleared her throat, and recrossed her legs. “I’m Angie. I’ve not taken a drink in four hundred and seventy-two days.”At some meetings she mentioned that her mother had left her when she was four. Other meetings she discussed her bout with cancer. And at others she’d mention her sister’s imprisonment. But this time she opted out of the personal details. She couldn’t say why. Maybe Kier’s warnings had put her senses on high alert. Maybe it was the presence of the new guy. Maybe she just wasn’t up to it. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t sharing today.
Sara waited an extra beat, and then smiled. “Congratulations, Angie. That is no small feat.”
And she was proud of it. “Thanks.”
“We have a new member,” Sara said.
With a boldness Angie didn’t feel, she swung her gaze over to the man beside her, as if daring him to ask her a question.
Brilliant blue eyes stared at her with an intensity that warmed and chilled her in an instant. She could see that The New Guy had to be in his late fifties. He had an olive complexion, lines around his eyes, graying hair that dipped slightly below his collar, and a square jaw. He wore no aftershave, but the faintest aroma of soap mingled with his scent.
With ease, he shifted his gaze from Angie to Sara. The brittle blue eyes softened. “My name is Robert. Like Angie, I’m not interested in discussing too many details. But I will say I’ve not taken a drink in six months, two days.”
Robert’s voice was steady, deep—the voice of a man in control. That was the thing with people with addiction. It was a sneaky, quiet affliction, and those who suffered with it worked double-time to look normal.
The others had supplied a good many details initially. Even Angie had said more than she’d intended the first day. But Robert ended his statement with a clear control that piqued her interest. He either didn’t need the group, or he was here to satisfy someone other than himself. Unless the extreme control masked deep chaos.
Sara offered her warm Welcome smile. “I’m glad you could join us, Robert. Feel free to chime in at any time.”
Robert nodded to Sara. “Thanks.”
Again, the brief answer gave nothing away. Angie found his silence intriguing. Was there someone else in the wo
rld who didn’t like blathering on and on about their problems?
Sandi discussed a nightmare. Denise mentioned a panic attack in the grocery store. Winnie talked about her dead sister’s birthday. She’d wanted to toast her with a can of beer. Through it all Angie and Robert didn’t speak, remaining silent witnesses to the carnage.
Finally, when Sara had finished giving Winnie meditations to consider, she shifted her gaze to Angie. “You’re quieter than usual today. Everything all right?”
She refused to talk about Sierra or Lulu. The investigations were open and active, and she did not want to say anything that might compromise the police department’s work. The information shared here was considered sacred and not to be shared. But after her affair with Connor Donovan, she didn’t trust anyone.
Folding manicured hands over her lap, she told of restless nights and the desire to sit on a beach with her toes in the sand. For a moment, everyone in the room stared at her, their expressions reflecting varying degrees of understanding. “My nerves are on edge. I even got a little freaked out in the parking garage the other day. Not like me to worry about shadows.”
Robert’s gaze remained direct and unmoved by the account. “You’ve a talent for saying a lot and not saying anything. You a lawyer?”
Angie glared at him. “I am.”
Robert folded his arms over his chest. “Thought so.”
Sara cleared her voice like the schoolteacher reining in a couple of children. “Robert, I hear judgment.”
A half smile tweaked the edge of his lips as he glanced to Sara and then back at Angie. “No judgment intended.”
Angie didn’t spare Sara a glance. She didn’t need a defender. “If you have something to say you are welcome to say it, Robert.”
The muscle in his jaw pulsed before it eased, and he smiled. “I know you. I’ve read about you in the papers. If I were you, I’d drink too.”
Sara sat forward. “Robert. That’s unnecessary.”
Angie held up her hand. “No, Sara. Let Robert say what he needs to say.”
“I’m not saying anything that everyone else in the room isn’t thinking. You are the attorney that defended that guy Dixon, and now you got that client who was murdered. Body reduced to bones. Kind of an odd coincidence.”
“Really?”
“You must think there is a connection.”
If law school had taught her anything it was to turn an attack back on the attacker. “You know so much about me, and I know so little about you.”
Robert frowned, but if Angie thought he’d trip into some long explanation of the demons that had brought him here she was mistaken. In seconds, he slipped behind a steel veil. “Maybe another day.”
She folded her arms over her chest.
Forty minutes later the meeting ended, and Angie found herself grateful to stand. She rarely remained after the group to chitchat with the others.
She’d just reached the top step of the banister leading out of the church basement when she heard steady, purposeful footfalls on the staircase. It didn’t take a glance over her shoulder to know who followed. Robert had an energy that radiated and announced his presence.
“Angie,” he said.
She exited the staircase and moved to the sunny, wide-open lobby of the church. The warmth of the sun gave her a calming sense of connection. “Yes, Robert.”
“I didn’t mean to go after you back there.”
Sitting he’d been intimidating, but standing he overwhelmed. He stood over six-five, and his shoulders filled the average doorjamb. Her pulse throbbed faster in the base of her neck. “You were just asking questions. No harm, no foul.”
“Are you sure?” He dipped his head a fraction as if to whittle off some of his height. She guessed this was a practiced move he’d done a thousand times before.
“No worries, Robert.” She checked her watch. “And I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a meeting in a half hour.”
“Of course.”
She tossed him a smile because it seemed the right thing to do and turned.
“Interested in coffee?”
She hesitated. “I have a meeting.”
“Yeah, but you’ll be here next week won’t you? I could tell by the way you sat in that room that you’re a regular.”
“You could tell that by just looking at me?”
“You act like you’re in charge of the group.”
“That’s Sara’s job.”
“But people glance to you when they speak. I mean they look at Sara too, but they want your approval just as much.”
“You’re mistaken. I’m in the same boat as they are.”
“In their eyes, you are the leader.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Nothing like being captain of the Titanic.”
His grin broadened. “So is that yes or no to the coffee next week?”
Instinct had her shaking her head even as curiosity tempted her to say yes. “I don’t think so.”
He grinned. “So that’s a maybe.”
“You’re persistent.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“If I see you next week, we’ll see.”
He cocked a brow. “If?”
She didn’t like being pushed. “Like I said, if I come to the meeting.”
He slid his hands into his pockets and leaned forward. “I bet you almost never miss.”
This guy had known her for less than an hour, and already he sensed things about her that few recognized. Not good. And more than a little unsettling. “Take care, Robert.”
She turned and left without glancing back, but she felt the steady weight of his gaze on her even after she pushed through the front door and hurried down the street. With each step she resented Robert more and more. Who was he to interlope on her group and read her as if she were a book? Who the hell was he?
And of course, she had no answer.
Chapter 16
Friday, October 7, 8:45 A.M.
Angie sat at her desk, grateful to have her meeting behind her, a mug of hot coffee beside her. The papers on her desk remained neatly stacked and piled as she lifted a silver letter opener and sliced open the back of an envelope.
She scanned e-mail, surprised to see a note from Dr. Evans. She clicked it open.
Dear Angie, I am pleased to tell you that the results of your CT scan, chest x-ray, and blood work are NEGATIVE.
Angie stared at the last word: NEGATIVE. Her heartbeat pulsed in her chest. She released a deep sigh letting it carry the worry from her body.
NEGATIVE. She smiled.
For this year she’d dodged another bullet. She was cancer free. Evans said that she should have no worries. But the elevated blood levels had added a layer of stress she couldn’t shake until now.
Her mother had been dead by forty-eight of the same cancer, and she’d seen firsthand how devastating her death had been. As much as she’d loved her mother, she was in no rush to follow her.
She printed out the e-mail, neatly folded it, and replaced it in an envelope, which she tucked in her desk drawer. She deleted the message from her in-box and recycling bin. She’d told Eva, but Charlotte and Iris didn’t know she’d had cancer, and she planned to keep it that way.
Her mind clear, she turned her attention to the mail. It included news from a subpoena company, discovery documents from a North Carolina attorney, and several notices from other clients. It was the last letter that sent a jolt down her spine.
The handwritten envelope was from a private detective, Bill Patterson. She’d done him a few legal favors, and he’d repaid the deeds with investigative work.
Angie had had Bill look into Blue Rayburn’s past. Though Eva had never asked Angie to delve into her past, Angie had decided she needed to know more about the man who’d been her father’s friend and her mother’s seducer.
Angie ripped open the manila envelope and pulled out the typed report. Bill was efficient, and if there’d been facts to dig up about Blue, then he’d find them.<
br />
Ms. Carlson,
Per your request, I have investigated one, Elijah “Blue” Rayburn, 57 years of age. Mr. Rayburn was born in North Carolina to low-income parents and joined the Navy when he was seventeen. He was dishonorably discharged three years later. He traveled around a lot in his twenties before settling in Alexandria, Virginia. He took a job in the security department at the Talbot Natural Museum.
Angie sat back in her chair, staring at the typed words. She’d known Blue had worked for the museum but had never known what he’d done before that.
Within a few weeks of his hire, Mr. Rayburn rose to the rank of head of security at the museum, where he remained for a year. Twenty-eight years ago, he married Marian Carlson and the two had a child, Eva. After leaving the museum, there are no employment records for Mr. Rayburn. After three years of marriage, Mr. Rayburn left his wife and child and moved west. He established a wilderness exploration company and married, though I doubt the marriage was lawful. He fathered a son. Mr. Rayburn was arrested several times for assault, but charges were dropped when witnesses later refused to testify. Mr. Rayburn’s home burned to the ground several years ago, and shortly after that he left his second “wife” after twenty years of marriage and vanished. At this point his trail dies out completely. I have been unable to locate Mr. Rayburn.
I have enclosed several photos of Mr. Rayburn.
Angie set the letter aside and opened the smaller envelope marked PHOTOS. She pulled a black-and-white photo of Blue when he was in his early twenties and, judging by his uniform, still in the Navy. He and Eva shared the same dark hair and high slash of cheekbones. He had been a darkly handsome man who looked as if he radiated energy.
He was the mirror opposite of her father, a tall, slender man who avoided the sun and loved his books. Frank Carlson had been steady and focused but not exciting.
The next photo was a group picture that appeared to have been taken in front of one of the museum’s collections. There were ten people in the group, her father included. All men and all in their early thirties. They appeared genuinely happy as if the photo had just been snapped during a celebration.
