Lily started the first clip, listened to a few words from the speaker, then moved on. Again. Again. With each click of the touch pad, her shoulders seemed to droop further, her full lips tighten even more.
There had been two dozen workshops and it took less than an hour to listen to the clips from all but the two panels.
Though disappointment rolled off her, Lily didn't give up. She pulled up the first panel, listened long enough to hear a few words from every speaker. Then came the second group workshop, the final possibility.
The panel featured five speakers, including the sisters-in-law Drs. Kean and Underwood, both of whom they'd already heard. Relaxed at first, Lily began to physically tense as they finished their presentations, giving way to the other speakers on the panel. Because the other speakers were all men-ones they hadn't heard before. Theirs would be the final voices, the last chance to hear the echoes from her nightmares. Lily appeared to hold her breath, waiting for them to get their turns at the microphone.
Then they did. And her last hope died.
"Nothing," she said, shaking her head in utter disappointment, shock tugging her mouth down and lowering her lashes over her eyes.
"Look, it was a good idea. But we both knew it was a long shot."
"I guess." She leaned back in her chair, lifting her face to stare at the ceiling. When she spoke, her voice was so soft, he almost didn't hear her, especially over the voice of the workshop presenter, still droning from the computers speakers. "Maybe it's better."
Though he thought he understood, he still asked, "Why?
She continued staring straight up, not meeting his gaze. "Because now the only time I hear his voice is in my nightmares, when I'm asleep. If I hear it when I'm awake, I might never be able to get the sound out of my head."
Wyatt couldn't stand the defeatist tone, or the awful weariness in her body. Jesus, the woman had survived so much, she deserved some peace. And knowing the man who wanted her dead would never be able to touch her again would give her that peace.
"We'll find him," he insisted. He put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it in reassurance. This time, she didn't pull away. "I promise you we're going to find him."
She turned her head, watching him with pale blue eyes that swam with emotion. "I'm treading water, Wyatt. Just treading. Barely keeping myself from drowning, but getting no closer to shore."
He should have murmured something comforting, maybe squeezed her shoulder again. Instead, he reached for her, pulled her out of her chair and into his arms, until she sat on his thigh. Lily offered no resistance, coming to him freely, as if needing the warmth, the physical connection, the reassurance that she really wasn't alone.
"It's all right," he murmured. "You don't always have to be so damned strong, Lily."
Holding her close, he tangled his fingers in her short hair, rubbing its fineness, picturing its blond shade. The movement brought his fingertips to her scars and he touched them lightly. The feel of them made him instinctively grip her tighter, wanting nothing more than to keep anyone from hurting her again.
Lily's head rested on his shoulder, her mouth so close to his neck he experienced her every warm exhalation flowing across his skin. Against his chest, he could feel her heart thudding.
As was his.
Hunger rose within him, surprising, insistent, and compelling. Sweat broke out on his brow and every muscle in his body tensed. He closed his eyes, willing away any personal thoughts, any emotions. He'd become adept at doing so at such a young age, it was second nature now. Yet while he could bring his physical reactions under control, getting a grip on the tenderness he felt for the beautiful woman in his arms proved more difficult.
He could feel her heart pick up its rhythm in her chest. Beating faster in confusion. In surprise. And those warm breaths against his neck grew more rapid, more shallow. Closer. Until he wasn't sure whether he was feeling her exhalations or her soft lips.
Then she lifted her head, stared into his eyes with intense emotion-curiosity? Surprise?
Want.
Groaning, he muttered, "Lily…"
He didn't know what he was about to say, if his impulse would be to apologize or to let her know exactly what she made him feel, but he ended up saying nothing. Because Lily suddenly shot straight up, leaping to her feet with a shocked cry. Her eyes shifted wildly, her mouth open as she gasped for air. Her hands fisted by her sides, she remained very still, rigid with tension.
"What-"
She cut him off with a slash of her hand through the air. "Shh."
Then she leaned closer to the computer. Listening. Concentrating.
She'd heard something, or someone. A familiar voice.
He froze. The speaker was a woman-Dr. Kean, maybe?-talking about the psychology of plastic surgery, how it changed lives.
"Does that answer your question?" the woman said as she concluded her remarks. "Or do you need me to spell it out a little further?" There was a mocking tone there, as if she felt some sort of antipathy toward the person she addressed.
"Nothing further," a man's voice said faintly, almost in the background.
"That's him," Lily whispered. She lifted one trembling hand to her mouth, pressing the other tightly to her stomach as if she had suddenly become nauseous. "That's him, Wyatt."
He didn't know if she was right. He knew only that
Lily believed she was. That she was convinced she'd just heard the voice of her would-be killer.
The audio continued for a few seconds, both of them still and silent, thinking of the ramifications. Then Lily suddenly snapped out of her daze. Mumbling something, she bent over the laptop, skimming her fingers across the touch pad. Pausing the digital file, she backed it up by about two minutes, then resumed.
"He asked a question. That's what I heard."
"What did-"
"Shh!" She leaned close to the monitor. A speaker droned on, then asked, "Are there any further questions?"
A moment of silence. Then a voice said something, indistinct and distant. Wyatt shook his head, not sure he could recognize his own voice if he'd been the one on the tape.
"Could you approach the microphone, please?"
Ah.
Another hesitation, then a man's voice spoke, loud and clear. "Yes, Dr. Kean? I was wondering if you'd tell us just how long a person should try to combat nature by buying a new face or body. When is it time to give up and age gracefully?"
Lily closed her eyes, nodding once, then slowly lowering to crouch down until she was eye level with the screen. "That's the man who kidnapped me, who held me prisoner."
"You're certain?"
She nodded once. "More certain than I've ever been about anything in my entire life. That cruel tone, that edge of sarcasm, did you hear it?"
Of course he'd heard it. The question had been an intentional insult, a taunting gauntlet thrown at Dr. Angela Kean. As if the unsub was mocking her.
Was the doctor, perhaps, an advertisement for her own practice? Someone who lived life that way-putting off aging with expensive surgery?
If so, the question would imply that the questioner knew her. Or at least knew of her.
They might just have broken this case. After all these months, one simple recorded question might have handed them the identity of Lovesprettyboys.
Lily listened to the answer, then the mumbled acknowledgment of the questioner, who once again had spoken off mike, having apparently returned to his seat. When it was over, she paused, scrolled back, and started the exchange again.
"He sounds cold, doesn't he? Jovial on the surface, as if he's intending just a harmless poke at someone he knows. But beneath it…"
"Cold. Yes." More than that, they knew now. He was vicious.
After the third playing, Lily stopped the recording, but this time, she didn't rewind. Instead, her fingers still resting lightly on the keyboard, she slid up onto her chair, staring vacantly at the paused screen. He sensed she was hearing that voice saying any number of ot
her things. Words he whispered in her subconscious.
But she didn't give in to it. She didn't shrink, draw into herself in fear. Did not pull back whatsoever. If anything, the set of her jaw screamed determination and her entire body leaned forward, tense, as if ready to fight to defend herself.
She wouldn't have to. Damn it, he never wanted her to have to do that again.
"Dr. Kean might be able to identify the person speaking, since it sounded like there was some personal tension there," he said, believing every word.
"Exactly. Then well have a suspect"
"That's all we'll have, though," he said, warning her not to get her hopes up. "Remember, I can't do a thing to this guy, can't prosecute him, or even get a warrant to bring him in, without evidence. Namely you."
She nodded once.
"Meaning Lily Fletcher would have to come back from the dead and testify."
Her cheeks, so flushed with color this morning when she'd worked out down on the beach, were powder white. "Will it matter? My testimony, I mean?"
"Of course it will."
"I'll have no credibility. The frightened agent who pretended she was dead."
Wyatt could handle Lily fearing for her own life; she had good reason for that. But he was not about to allow her to question the choices she made to stay alive. He reached for her, taking her chin in his hand and forcing her head up so she'd meet his eye.
"The world decided you were dead without your help. Just because you had the fight-or-flight instinct and hid out so you could stay alive, hoping the monster who tried to kill you would be caught, does not reflect badly on you."
She licked her lip, nodding her thanks for the pep talk. Wyatt dropped his hand.
"I need to go call Brandon," he said, immediately turning toward the door. "I want him to segregate that snippet out, enhance it as much as possible."
"And then?"
"And then," he replied, "I'm going to make an appointment to see a doctor."
Something was going to happen. Soon.
After all these months, all the manipulation, all the effort, this whole ordeal was going to come to an end. The uncertainty, the fear, the worry that one day Lily Fletcher would crawl out of whatever hole she'd hidden in and ruin everything, would stop. No more worrying. No more waiting for a knock on the door from the police or the FBI. No more speculating about what the agent knew, what she remembered, how much she'd heard, or whom she could identify.
Fletcher had been badly injured during that entire week. Incoherent most of the time. Feverish and in pain, she'd held conversations with her dead sister and her sister's kid, and she should, by all rights, have died all on her own.
'Did you die?"
At first, in those early months, it had seemed the most likely scenario. That the media didn't report what would have been a pretty major story didn't mean anything. Maybe the FBI agent had staggered out onto the beach, died of her injuries, and been swept away by the tide. Or buried in the blowing sands of the dunes swept wildly on a cold winter's night.
A month had gone by.Two.Three. But instead of growing more at ease, more confident that no one would ever find out, the tension had built Because, wouldn't something have been found? If she'd been buried in a dune. wouldn't she have been discovered come spring when people started filling Virginia's beaches? Or if she'd been swept away, wouldn't her remains have washed up somewhere? Why had there never been a single piece of evidence, as if the woman had simply never existed?
Because you're hiding, aren't you, Lily?
Yes. Lily Fletcher was in hiding. Even though she had had no family and no close friends, she'd still found someone to help her get away. Then she'd stayed away, managing to remain dead in the eyes of the world for seven long months. The more time that passed, the more certain that seemed. The passing days of silence didn't comfort; they merely increased the insane uncertainty until it had become nearly all-consuming.
Until Lily was found, and dealt with, life could never go back to normal. Not really. Because, despite her injuries, the woman might have seen something, could remember something damning. If not an outright physical description, then the clothes, the eye color, the height, the build, the voice, a chance incriminating word. Something.
Damn it. Why hadn't he just killed the blonde when he'd had her at his mercy?
Weakness. Panic. Fear. Vindictiveness. Who knew?
And it was far too late to dwell on now. Fletcher would be found, one way or another. All that had been set in motion this past summer would come together to force her out of her hiding place and put her in position for elimination.
Scenario one: Jesse Tyrone Boyd, with his excellent legal representation, no eyewitness, and an alibi provided by Will Miller, would be released. That release would serve to draw out the woman who would want to see him put back behind bars.
If not that, the other option would put a whole lot more people on Lily's trail and make finding her ever so much easier. Somebody at the FBI would finally bother paying attention, do his job, and connect the murders of those three men with their own supposedly dead agent.
God, they must be complete fools not to have done it so far. How much more obvious did the crime scenes need to be? Would leaving the former agent's picture, writing her damned name on the wall in blood, do it? How about dropping off her tattered bulletproof vest, kept hidden all these months? What in heaven's name would it take?
It had all been so carefully planned. Easy enough that a child could put it together. But apparently not a police officer.
There'd been the specific victim type. The Internet connection. The obviously vengeful crime scenes- passionate, planned, full of rage. The names of the supposed children. The flowers, eventually even a damned tiger lily, which had been the fake online name the agent had used when trying to capture the man Lily Fletcher had known as Lovesprettyboys or Peter Pan.
All of that and they didn't even suspect yet. There'd been not one news story, not one speculative article, about the FBI's involvement in a tristate murder investigation. Local outlets were covering the cases, but hadn't put them together. It truly seemed that nobody had noticed the perfectly chosen clues.
So perhaps it was time to be just a little more obvious. If the FBI couldn't figure out subtle hints, it was time to drop some not-so-subtle ones.
You could wait for Boyd.
Yes. If Boyd got out next week, Lily would come slinking back into town on her own. There could be no doubt about that. She would never let the guilty man walk free as long as she had breath in her body.
But if the appeal failed, and the man didn't get out to serve as a lure for the woman, even more time would have been wasted. And this had gone on long enough. Hiding the secret, keeping Lovesprettyboys' true identity locked away forever, returning to the real world and a real life, had been a tremendous strain. The pressure had become nearly unendurable and just couldn't continue.
This had to end. Maybe it would, with Boyd's release. Yet it never hurt to cover all bases. Meaning the lily murderer needed to act once more. And this time, there would be no ambiguity whatsoever. Only raw, bloody violence and blatant clues nobody could miss.
Perhaps a strand of hair from Agent Fletcher's own blond head-kept ever since that last night before she'd disappeared? Or something even more blatant?
It was, perhaps, time to look through a few mementos of Lily Fletcher's stay in Virginia last January. They were locked away in a storage locker, had been all along. Just in case of emergency.
"Smart. So smart. Always thinking ahead." Everyone said so.
There was only one thing left to do: reel in the prey. It was soon, mere days after the last killing. But the irons were already in the fire, the contacts established. The Internet connection was live, secure, and untraceable. Which meant it was time to ramp up the e-mail communications with one Frank Addison, a truck driver out of North Carolina, who loved to hang out at a site with a triple-X-rated name any search engine would warn against visiting.
They’d already exchanged many pleasant e-mails. Even an IM session, during which they'd compared stories. Shared fantasies society frowned upon.
Now it was time to bring the matter to a close. Set the date, the time, the location. The trucker thought he was arranging to meet a drug-addicted mother and her son.
A mother named Lily Fletcher.
"And if that doesn't wake you the fuck up, not a single one of you deserves to carry a badge."
Chapter 7
Once she'd recognized the voice on the conference audio recording Friday, both Lily and Wyatt had expected he'd go immediately to Williamsburg to find out whom it belonged to. Unfortunately, that hadn't happened as quickly as they'd wanted. Because when he'd tried calling to arrange a meeting, they'd learned Drs. Kean and Underwood, who needed to listen to the recording, had gone away for the holiday weekend. Several other members of their family, many of whom also worked at the same private practice, had gone as well. Meaning there was no one around to tell them how to reach either woman. Since an outside physician was covering any emergency medical calls, the answering service hadn't been helpful, either.
They'd looked up the other speakers in the panel workshop-all of them were from faraway states, one even from another country. None was likely to remember one question from a long-ago convention. Kean, who had seemed to know the person questioning her, was the best bet.
Without a warrant, and with the need for extreme discretion, there hadn't been much they could do. Which was why, instead of leaving on Friday, as she'd expected, as she'd wanted, Wyatt had remained here with her throughout the holiday weekend.
It had been an awkward couple of days. Lily didn't really understand why, but this trip, this time she'd spent with Wyatt, had been more difficult than the times before it. Something had disappeared. Their ease with each other, perhaps. Or the quiet comfort she'd felt from him, the sense of security from knowing he was in the next room.
There had been no more intimate, late-night talks on the patio, no visits to her room to drag her from her night terrors-of which there had been a few. She'd stayed in her bed, telling him she was fine when he'd asked through the door if she was okay the previous night. They had, in fact, almost been tiptoeing around each other since Friday, talking only about the case. Keeping a physical distance, and an emotional one.
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