"Saturate the area," he says into the phone, tossing a Kevlar vest my way. "If you find him, hold back. No one goes in until we get there. And tell your men to suit up. He robbed a woman at knifepoint a little more than two hours ago."
I shove my arms through the vest, strapping it quickly over my chest as we hurry down the hall toward the front of the empty precinct. Everyone is still out, combing through the three crime scenes McKee left in his wake.
Lewis listens to the phone for a minute and then shoves it into his pocket before turning to me. "He entered a convenience store about twenty minutes ago," he says, filling me in. "The clerk recognized him from the paper and called local authorities. They just pulled the security tape and confirmed it was him. When he left, he was heading toward Highway 101."
"He's going to San Rafael," I murmur, pushing through the front doors of the precinct.
"Jared! Mr. Corbit!"
I mutter an oath under my breath, slapping a blank mask on my face.
"Fuck me," Lewis mutters, coming to a dead stop as flashbulbs light up the night from the cameras turned in our direction.
"Is it true Toby McKee vandalized your apartment?"
"Was Toby McKee working with Stewart Paulson?"
"Did your fiancée live with him in Italy?"
Questions come at us from every direction, shouted from reporters shoving microphones in our faces. Lewis growls and throws a hand up. If they notice, they don't give a shit. They keep on, spitting out questions so fast it'd be impossible to answer even if I intended to do so. And I don't.
"No comment," I say loudly as I shove through the throng to Lewis's unmarked cruiser.
"Back up!" he barks, right on my heels. "If you have questions, call the PIO."
"Come on," one ballsy redhead shouts. "You gotta give us something."
Lewis stops walking and turns. He towers over her, a scowl on his face. "You know how this works. He said no comment, and he means no fucking comment. Now move out of the way."
A chorus of groans goes up, but the group reluctantly moves back, allowing us to make it to the car.
"I didn't know they were out here," he mutters, slamming his door with another curse. He sounds contrite and pissed at once. It's not his fault though. They're following me.
"I can't wait until this shit is over." I shove my seatbelt into the latch, shaking my head. "I swear to God, I see reporters in my nightmares."
He snorts before pulling away from the curb. "You're handling it better than I would. If I were in your shoes, I'd have told them all to fuck off weeks ago."
"I've thought about it." I lean my head back against the headrest, completely spent. "They'd have a field day with that one. I can just see the headlines now. Embattled FBI agent waves middle finger at news crews."
Lewis throws his head back and laughs loudly.
Chapter Fourteen
Words as Weapons
"What the hell is taking so long?" I demand, my leg bouncing up and down in agitation. We've been in Corte Madera and San Rafael for over five hours, waiting for someone to find something. At this point, I'm ready to climb the walls. I can't take much more. My patience is wearing thin, my nerves are shot, and I haven't seen Savannah since I left her with Evans last night.
How hard can it possibly be to find one conspicuous son of a bitch?
Incredibly hard, apparently. The local police have been all over, looking for anyone else who might have seen him since he fled from San Francisco, and they've come up with nothing. I'm beginning to think he isn't holed up in San Rafael at all. We're wasting time, cooling our heels in the local precinct office.
Even Lewis is irritable, snapping at everyone who doesn't move fast enough.
"There are almost sixty-thousand people in San Rafael," he mutters, balling up his paper coffee cup and tossing it into the trashcan across the room. "That's what's taking so long. Did your fiancée give you anything useful? A restaurant they frequented? A shop? Anything?"
I grit my teeth, striving for patience. I've answered that same damn question fifty times today from fifty different people. I tell him what Savannah told me, "He brought her up here on the back of a motorcycle. They'd ride along the coast, stop and eat or watch a movie, visit the Mission, and then head back to San Francisco. They never visited anyone here. As far as she knows, he brought her here because he was a fucking coward who thought he was better than she is."
Lewis snorts, scrubbing his hands down his face as if to wake himself up. "Why was she with him?"
"Her classmates were dicks who thought they were better than her because her mother was a maid. They treated her like shit. And then here comes McKee, telling her that she's amazing. He got to act like her White Knight, pretending he was protecting her from them by keeping her away from them. All the while, he's telling her the same damn things they were. Only he's more insidious about it. One minute, he's telling her how much he loves her and wants the best for her, and the next, he's telling her how she'll never belong here, that she's a burden to the Talbot family, but if she goes with him to Italy, she'll have a place."
"Prick," Lewis grunts.
"She was a teenager and she believed him," I continue quietly, not really sure why I'm telling him any of this. Or why Savannah believed him. "Maybe because her mom abandoned her. Maybe because everyone around her kept telling her how she didn't fit in and never would. I don't know. I don't even think she really knows why or how it started or when, but it did. By the time she realized what he was doing to her, she was thousands of miles away with no-one to rely on. Isn't that usually how it goes?"
Abuse always starts small, little offenses that don't seem like such a big deal in the grand scheme of things. And then those little transgressions grow, but by the time the abuse gets really bad, by the time you know it isn't right or normal… your abuser has already isolated you, broken you down, and stripped away pieces of your soul. My mom didn't see it happening and she was well into her twenties when she married my father. How the hell is an eighteen-year-old kid supposed to read the warning signs?
Lewis grunts again but doesn't say anything. What can he say? Abuse is ugly. There's no explaining away that fact or dressing it up or making it better. It just is. Ugly. Nasty. Fucking awful. And I will never be okay with the fact that people like Savanah, good people who deserve the world, live with the scars people like my biological father and Toby McKee leave behind. And that's if they're lucky. My mother wasn't. I'll be damned if McKee takes Savannah's life like my father took my mom's.
Savannah walked away from the bastard. He doesn't get to drag her back to hell now.
"Can I ask you another question?" Lewis asks after a minute.
"Yeah."
"How'd you two end up together?"
I consider telling him it's none of his business, but don't. I've come to respect him in the last few days, and now that I've started talking, I find myself wanting to tell him the whole story. I never have told it to anyone before, but I want to. I think maybe I need to vocalize how she completely changed the trajectory of my life without even trying.
"While she was lying in a hospital in Italy because of McKee," I say, "Matthew Talbot was murdered. The first time I saw her, she was this stunning, broken woman barely holding it together. She didn't ask for anything or expect anything from anyone. She was just quietly there, taking care of the girls, making sure that they had what they needed. Her life had fallen apart, but all she cared about was getting the girls through their grief. She never blamed me for what they were going through or accused me of doing a piss-poor job of protecting them. She looked at me, and knew I blamed myself. For some reason, that bothered her. She told me I wasn't terrible, that it wasn't my fault. Hearing her say it, for once, I felt like less of a failure."
I shake my head, still awed and humbled that, despite everything, she was able to look at me and see someone worth loving. God knows I didn't feel it at the time. Sometimes I still don't. But the day she told me I wasn't terrible
? I think I fell in love with her right then and there. I spent so long staring at her pictures, captivated by her. I don't think I ever stood a chance when it came to her.
"I didn't mean to fall for her, but it's impossible not to love that girl," I say with a bemused smile. "She's extraordinary."
"Yeah, I'm getting that," Lewis says and then laughs and holds up his hands when I shoot him a warning look, not liking the way he said it. "Not like that, man. My wife, Ivy, owns my ass. I think she has since the minute I met her. I just mean… I've talked to a lot of people in the last few days, and not one of them had anything bad to say about your girl." He pauses for a moment, thinking. "Working in this field, you see a lot. People will sell out their own grandmothers if it means they get what they want. An heiress to a billion-dollar company willing to hand it all over without hesitation to save the woman who supposedly stole her fiancé just doesn't happen. That the Talbot family was prepared to do exactly that for your fiancée, coupled with the fact that they're rallied around her now?" He shrugs. "Well, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the girl in question is something special."
"She is," I say, unable to keep the smile off my face. There aren't words to describe how special Savannah is, not just to me, but to the girls, and to my family. We all love her. Despite everything she's been through, she still has hope, laughter, and an endless abundance of compassion. She's fiercely protective, and so sweet. So fucking sweet.
"The fact that Richardson was in our office the moment he found out McKee was back in town says something too, you know." Lewis climbs to his feet as Lieutenant Ben Canton starts toward us across the precinct office at a quick clip, his badge tapping against his belt with every hurried step. "I know Whitfield blames you for his cousin dying and there have been murmurs that you'll be fired before all is said and done, but let's face it. The big wigs don't pull strings for people in the middle of a media shit storm for no reason. That he did it for you and your fiancée tells me that you have his respect, and that's a damn good indication you've earned it. Having spent the last few days working with you, I'm inclined to say his opinion of you isn't wrong."
I have no idea what to say to that, and before I get a chance to work it through, Canton is in front of us, breathing hard through a grin. I'm on my feet in an instant, demanding to know what he found.
"We found him," Canton says, looking between me and Lewis. "He's been staying at an estate on the Bay. The property is part of his maternal grandmother's estate, to be turned over to a younger cousin on his twenty-first birthday. An uncle is contesting the will, so the property has been vacant since her death four years ago. It's overseen by her lawyer, who just so happens to be on an extended vacation in Italy."
"Son of a bitch," Lewis mumbles, a pleased grin spreading across his face.
My heart thumps wildly in my chest, relief twisting through me, loosening tense muscles all over my body. We finally found him.
"The judge just signed the search warrant. My guys are loading up now to head out." His gaze moves over me, a no bullshit look on his leathery face. "I shouldn't let you anywhere near the son of a bitch, but since you're FBI and it's your fiancée he's after, I figure why the hell not? Do not make me regret it."
Quelling the part of myself that wants to tell him to fuck off, I nod instead. No way am I staying behind. I want to be there when they slap the cuffs on the bastard. I want to see the look on his face when he realizes that the only time he'll ever be close to Savannah again is when he's sitting in a courtroom and she's testifying against his sorry ass.
"Let's roll," Canton says, turning on his heel.
Lewis and I fall in line behind him without a word.
"Police! Open up!" Canton yells, pounding on the front door of the beachfront home. His men surround the three-story mansion overlooking the Bay, pouring out of a SWAT van like an army of ants. They cut off all possible escape routes in a matter of moments, leaving McKee nowhere to go.
No one responds to Canton's demand. The massive, glass-fronted house is silent and still, as if it truly is vacant.
Canton lifts his hand and motions for two of his guys to step forward. They respond immediately, strolling toward him from their spot behind us on the deep steps, their guns drawn. Everyone has Kevlar vests strapped over their chests, ready in case McKee decides to do something stupid.
"Kick it in," Canton says to his guys.
"Hell yeah," the younger of the two mutters, grinning. He takes Canton's place directly in front of the door, holsters his gun, and waits for Canton's signal.
His partner pulls a flash-bang canister from his belt, ready to pop it if needed when the door opens. The canisters are harmless, but they're distracting as hell. They're loud and will momentarily blind anyone not prepared. If McKee is inside and tries anything, popping it will catch him off guard.
Two other guys close ranks around the two on door duty, weapons drawn and aimed. They're all business, like they've done this a thousand times before. I'm sure they probably have.
Canton keys up on his radio. "We're going in on three. Eyes open."
"Three," the guy with the flash-bang says, counting it down.
I roll my neck, trying to loosen tension. My grip on my Glock doesn't waver. I'm so ready for this it's not even funny.
"Two."
Flash-bang's partner grips the doorframe in his hands and nods.
"One!"
A booted foot connects forcefully with the door below the lock. A loud splintering sound echoes, the door shuddering. The local guy lifts his foot and plants it in the door again. The lock gives, torn away with a piece of the wooden doorframe.
As soon as it flies open, Flash-bang and his partner spin out of the way, letting their back-up through the door first. Everyone pours in behind them, weapons drawn. Lewis and I hurry through behind Canton's men as they spread out in all directions, flooding into the lavish home like a well-trained army.
"Clear!" echoes from all directions as they move from room to room on the first floor.
Lewis and I pound up the stairs behind Canton and three of his guys. As soon as we reach the landing for the second floor, Canton's guys peel off to begin searching the second story. We continue on to the third level, banking left.
There are five doors along the wide hallway, all closed. Canton and Lewis take the first, ripping it open. It's a large bedroom, the furniture covered in sheets. Dust motes hover in beams of light in the heavy air. The room hasn't been used in a while. A door on the far wall leads into a marble bathroom, almost as large as the room itself. Another door opens into a massive walk-in closet. As soon as we're sure it's clear, we're out, moving on to the next.
Distant calls echo from the floors below, "clear" shouted over and over again.
Canton, Lewis, and I continue searching, making our way through the last four rooms, checking thoroughly. If anyone's been in them recently, they've touched nothing, leaving the rooms completely undisturbed.
"327 to 232," someone says over the radio as we clear the last room.
"232, go ahead," Canton responds, his free hand on the radio clipped to his vest.
Static sounds over the radio and then, "We found something, sir. Second floor."
The three of us look at one another and then we're moving out of the room, back down the stairs. I turn the safety on and holster my gun as we make it to the second floor. One of the local guys waits for us in the hallway. He points to the door at the very end and steps out of the way.
My heart pounds and I have to swallow hard, unsure what's waiting for us in that room. We crowd into the doorway, and I curse. McKee's definitely been staying here. The room is a mess; the sheets covering the furniture in the other rooms have been stripped off here and piled in the corner. Clothes are strewn around, and the bed is unmade. Savannah's face stares back at me from the wall above the dresser where he's pinned dozens of newspaper clippings. In every single one, I've been marked out, my face a swirl of black ink. The pen has been pres
sed into the paper so hard in places, it's torn. Whore is scrawled across some of them in bold, angry letters.
"Has anyone found him?" Canton demands into the radio from beside me.
"Negative," comes through the radio again and again, every team in the house sounding off.
"Motherfucker," Canton curses. "Has anyone left the residence?"
"Negative, sir," another voice responds. "We've still got the house surrounded and have searched the outbuildings as well. No one is here."
"I want two teams to comb through every room," Canton barks.
"We already did, sir."
"Then do it again!"
"10-4, sir."
Someone downstairs begins barking orders, breaking the team up into two search units. It's pointless though. McKee's not here. Somehow, the bastard got out before we made it onto the premises. Defeat assails me, burning like fire as I stand there, looking at the articles he's pinned to the wall like a twisted shrine to Savannah. The word whore screams at me, violent and just so fucking wrong.
"Goddamn it," I roar, my clenched fist slamming into the wall. The plaster crumbles in a spider-web. Pain radiates from my knuckles up my arm, searing in its intensity.
Lewis grabs my arm, yanking me backward. "Calm the fuck down, man."
I pull away, lifting my hands when the officer from the hall rushes into the room, gun drawn. He whips his head back and forth, assessing the situation, before his rigid stance relaxes and he backs off, weapon lowered.
Canton says nothing, merely shoots me a look that tells me to settle my ass down pronto.
"I'm good," I mutter, shaking out my hand. Blood drips from my cut up knuckles, and it hurts like hell, but I don't think it's broken. Everything moves like it should. Taking a deep breath, I push back the rage, trying to contain it. It's hard, so hard to do with those goddamn clippings on the wall, taunting me. McKee really has lost his mind.
All Cried Out (All Falls Down Book 2) Page 17
