Road to Danger

by Olivia Jaymes

  Jason was standing in the doorway of a large conference room, white boards on all of the walls. They dumped the food on the table while Jason quickly chatted with his men. He looked serious. Way too serious. Whatever he had to tell them wasn’t good news. Again.

  The group dug into the food, filling their plates and settling around the table. Jason sat at the head with Carter on his right. Mallory sat next to Carter while Wyatt, Zach, and West – who had just showed up – sat on the other side. They ate for the most part in silence. West asked Carter about a project they were both working on and then they tried to guess what would be served for Sunday dinner this week.

  Ordinary, dull small talk. She had a feeling it was for her, to ease the tension. Maybe Jason was going to tell her they didn’t have any clues and she could be in this state of limbo for weeks or months. Or maybe he wanted to use her as bait like on television.

  Mallory didn’t consider herself brave but she’d probably say yes. She wanted to bring this to an end as quickly as possible and she didn’t want this to happen to anyone else either.

  When their plates were empty, Jason stood and walked over to one of the white boards on the far wall. He pointed to a photo of a young woman. Dark hair and eyes. Pretty.

  “This is Amanda Livingston. Her body was found dressed in her stolen lingerie in the park behind your house, Mallory. She was thirty years old, single, no children. She worked as a barista at a local coffee house. Her friends and family say that she was dabbling in online dating. We’re looking into that angle as to how he might have found her.”

  Then Jason walked to the next white board and pointed to a photo of a man, maybe in his thirties. She knew who he was. She’d seen that photo on the news, although it didn’t look anything like what she remembered. His face had been pale and contorted as he’d died.

  “This is Matthew Montgomery. He was thirty-two, divorced, with no kids. Like Amanda, he died from multiple stab wounds to his torso. We didn’t think we’d find any connection but we asked the forensics lab to see if the wounds matched. It turns out they do. Whatever knife was used on Amanda was used on him.”

  “That means that the same person did it,” Mallory said, her gaze back on the photo of Amanda. There was something about the young woman that kept drawing her back but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. “Will that help you find him?”

  “It will, I think. Any connections that we can make help us piece the puzzle together.” He paused, his own gaze going to Amanda’s picture. “She looks like you.”

  Mallory swallowed hard, words clogging in her throat. She wanted to deny it but it was right there in living color. That’s what had been bugging her. Amanda looked like Mallory.

  Her stalker had a type.

  Jason walked over to another white board, this one behind Mallory so she had to twist around to see it. “These two women were also killed with the same weapon and found dumped in a deserted area in their own stolen lingerie.”

  They looked almost exactly like Mallory, too. It was creepy. He hadn’t chosen her at random. She’d shown up on television and he’d picked her because of how she looked.

  “So what do we do now?” Carter asked, placing his hand over hers. “How does this help us?”

  Jason pointed at Matthew Montgomery’s photo. “He doesn’t fit the pattern. I think if we figure out why he was killed, we can figure out who is doing this and stop him from doing it again.”

  “And how do we do that?” Mallory asked.

  The other men had been quiet this entire time, not saying a word, but West tapped the table with his fingers so they swung their attention to him.

  “We reconstruct that night at the rest stop. Second by second. Everything you remember or even think you remember. We need to know why he broke the pattern and we think you may have something in your heads that will tell us.”

  Chapter Thirty

  ‡

  Mallory looked a little nauseous and Carter wasn’t feeling all that great himself. Reliving that night – again – wasn’t an activity he was anxious to do but as West and Jason had explained, it had to be done.

  “I have a question,” she said. “Do the police know that this murder is connected to three others?”

  Jason nodded. “They do now. The three jurisdictions are banding together and have created a task force to streamline the investigation.”

  “And you’re heading it up,” Carter guessed. “Am I right?”

  His cousin nodded self-consciously. “My consulting firm is. I thought you’d rather speak to me than to one of the other members of the task force.”

  Carter didn’t have time to reply. To his surprise, Mallory stood and walked around the table to a white board located at the far end of the room. Her fingers skipped along its surface and for a moment he wondered what in the hell she was doing but then he saw it.

  It was a drawing of the rest area.

  Crude and rather lopsided. There wasn’t much artistic talent in the Anderson DNA so Jason probably did it. He should have turned the job over to Wyatt or Zach.

  She pointed to a rectangle. “The cars were closer than this. He’d parked over the line so there was less than a whole space between us.”

  Carter remembered now. He’d parked where he had because the now deceased man had parked poorly.

  Wyatt smiled. “That’s good, Mallory. What else do you remember? Any little thing can be important. No detail is too small.”

  Standing to join her, Carter studied the bare bones drawing. It was incomplete.

  “You’re missing the woman that was alone,” he said, picking up a marker and drawing a rectangle between his own vehicle and the lone man who had rummaged in his trunk. “She was parked just here.”

  Zach checked some papers in front of him. “The police drawings had her parked around the side.”

  “No, she came in right behind us,” Carter replied, erasing and redrawing. “I think they have her mixed up with the family that was there. The minivan was sort of parked right at the corner.”

  “Could you see the parking areas to the side and the back of the building?” Wyatt asked, standing and leaning against the table. “There could have been people parked back there.”

  Jason was already shaking his head. “We know there weren’t. We have the security tapes from the rest stop. Unfortunately, not all of the cameras were functioning and the murder took place in one of those gaps.”

  “Can we see those tapes?” Mallory asked. “It might remind us of little details we’ve forgotten.”

  Or put out of their minds deliberately. Carter had known there was video but he wasn’t so sure that Mallory should watch it. She was already having bad dreams, tossing and turning in bed, waking up in a cold sweat. Did she need a movie of her nightmare played out in front of her eyes?

  He moved closer to her and bent his head so he was speaking softly in her ear. “Think about that, babe. Seeing it all again. Are you sure you’re ready?”

  She considered his question for a long minute and then lifted her chin, so determined and strong. He had no doubt she could take on the world if she wanted to.

  “I know it won’t be pleasant but I think we need to do whatever we can to find this guy.”

  He couldn’t argue with her logic because he agreed. He only wanted to protect her because of how he felt about her.

  And how do you feel about her, asshole? Are you in love?

  Fuck you. Leave me alone. I might or I might not. I like her. It’s enough.

  Is it? If she only likes you, is it enough?

  Sometimes Carter hated that little voice in his head. He muffled the annoying bastard and put his attention back to the job at hand.

  “I agree with Mallory. Let’s see the videos and we can fill in the blanks. Hopefully.”

  He’d hold her hand while they watched.

  * * *

  Technology had come a long way but the video from the rest stop still wasn’t high-definition quality. It had b
een nighttime, of course, and the rest stop was surrounded by trees casting shadows, making it difficult to see clearly. The rest stop was fairly well-lit with lights around the building and in the parking lot, but that only added to the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t atmosphere. One minute a person was easily discernible on video and then next they were shrouded in darkness and shadow.

  Or a blank. A few cameras were out of commission and on a list to be repaired. Unfortunately, they had been scheduled for maintenance the week after the murder, which meant there were gaps in the footage. A vehicle or a person would appear and then disappear with no clue as to where they went until they popped up on another camera.

  Zach stood by the television and pointed to a car parked by the building. “Okay, here we go. This is where things get interesting. We know from the cameras at the entrance and exit that during the time of the murder it was only you two and the four other vehicles at the rest stop because we counted all the cars that came in for several hours before and they all left as well. What we don’t know is if one of those vehicles dropped someone off much earlier to lie in wait.”

  “I never saw anyone that didn’t belong to one of the cars,” Mallory said. “Everyone seemed to have a place to be.”

  Carter nodded in agreement. “I didn’t see anyone loitering around. Like Mallory said, they all had a sense of purpose if you know what I mean.”

  Wyatt nodded. “I do, although if someone were hiding out they wouldn’t want you to see them until they were ready to strike. But we think this theory is low down on the list of possibilities. We have other theories that make more sense.”

  “That someone there did it,” Mallory stated. “One of the people in the other cars.”

  It was the only theory that seemed logical. Except that none of this was logical. The man getting killed at the rest stop didn’t fit in. Carter wasn’t a cop but he’d been around them for the last twenty years or so and the one thing he’d learned was that criminals were stupid. Although some were smarter than others, they all eventually made a mistake. They got sloppy or emotional or they escalated…and that’s when they slipped up. This man’s murder just might be the mistake they needed.

  “That makes it a crime of opportunity, though,” West said. “Which doesn’t make sense knowing what we know about the killer. He’s methodical, patient. He likes to play with his victims. He’s not impulsive.”

  Carter didn’t agree. “Everyone is impulsive. They just need the right circumstances. I can be as methodical and rote as the next person but I can also be impulsive as shit. I think the question that we should be asking is what triggered him to kill Montgomery? What set him off? My guess would be fear.”

  Zach nodded in agreement. “Fear is a powerful motivator and can make a person act out of character. For the most part, our serial probably is very patient and methodical, but if something or someone made him fearful he might act without thinking it through.”

  Her brows pinched together, Mallory scratched her chin. “You think he’s afraid of something?”

  Carter’s mind was firmly back at that rest stop, his memories in living color. “Just because he’s a killer doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have fear. If I were killing women I would be scared of police, of going to jail, of Mom and Dad finding out.”

  Jason was smiling. “You would have made a good cop. That’s actually an excellent theory, and one to follow up on. So, go on,” he urged. “You think he was scared and somehow Montgomery made him feel that. We’re just brainstorming here so anything is possible.”

  Everyone was looking at Carter and it made him uncomfortable. As the youngest in the Anderson clan he wasn’t often looked to for advice or counsel. Most of the time, his brothers and cousins were telling him what to do or how to think. This was…new. A little unsettling but not the worst feeling in the world.

  The fact was he probably wasn’t going to say anything that Jason or West or any of the other guys hadn’t thought about at some point.

  “Maybe they know each other,” Carter finally suggested, his mind ticking away at all the possibilities. “Shit, perhaps Montgomery knew something and the killer had to get rid of him.”

  “If they knew each other why would the killer do it at a rest stop? Why not do it somewhere private and get rid of the body?” Mallory asked.

  “To make it look random,” Wyatt replied. “This way he wouldn’t be linked to the murder.”

  Carter stroked his chin. So many possibilities. “He couldn’t have known the cameras weren’t functioning in the front of the building. He might have been scared and desperate. He didn’t put a lot of thought into this.”

  Jason pointed to the television. “Let’s go back to the video. Walk through what you heard or saw. This is you parking your car. You don’t get out immediately but when you do Carter checks the tires and Mallory walks around to your side of the vehicle before she heads into the building. What did you see? What did you hear? Was anyone talking?”

  Carter let Mallory go first. Her eyes were closed and she, too, was reliving that night in her head.

  “It was cold. I remember the chilly air sort of hitting me and waking me up when I stepped out of the car,” she began. “Matthew Montgomery’s car was to the right of us. He was sitting in the driver’s seat and looking at his phone.”

  The victim’s car wasn’t visible on the video though. They had to rely on their memories.

  “Good, Mallory,” Jason praised, pausing the video. “Keep going. What else did you see?”

  “The family in the minivan. The kids were asleep in the back seat. The dad was behind the wheel and the mom was with me at the vending machine. She said that she was getting her husband some caffeine because he was tired.”

  “The dad never got out of the vehicle,” Carter said. “He waited with the kids.”

  “What about the victim?” Jason asked. “Did he get out of his car?”

  That night played in front of Carter’s eyes, over and over, like a bad Tarantino film.

  “No, he didn’t. At least not while I was outside. He obviously did when I was in the bathroom.”

  “What about the others?” Wyatt queried, pointing to the frozen screen. “What did you see or hear from them?”

  Carter and Mallory exchanged a glance, a silent agreement that he would continue speaking. “The woman came in right behind us and the video shows that. She went inside when I did and when I came out of the bathroom she was gone.”

  Mallory nodded in agreement. “She was gone when I came out of the building as well.”

  “That leaves one other person,” Jason said. “The man that was by himself. Tell me about him.”

  “I barely noticed him,” Mallory replied. “I can’t tell you much. Carter?”

  Carter had given the lone man a hell of a lot of thought since that night. Mallory had immediately suspected him and that first night he’d defended the guy but… Upon reflection, she might have a point.

  “I noticed him. He was rummaging around in the back of his car. It was a hatchback type. I assumed he was rearranging luggage or something like that. He was doing that when we got there and he was still doing it when I went inside the building. He was gone when I came out.”

  Wyatt’s eyes narrowed at Carter’s statement. “You have a sort of tone when you describe him. Is there something else?”

  Carter didn’t have shit and that was the problem. He threw up his hands in frustration.

  “No, but he makes the most sense as the killer, doesn’t he? The woman probably didn’t do it, the family didn’t do it. So that only leaves him.”

  Mallory was frowning and shaking her head. “Why are you giving the woman a pass? Because she’s female?”

  Carter didn’t have time to answer as Zach leaped on the question. “Statistically speaking, he’s right. The vast majority of serial killers are men. A woman is rare, although they do exist. But you have a point, too. Our victim was stabbed and that is a woman’s method. When they do kill, they
like to do it up close and personal.”

  Charming.

  “Okay, what about the family then?” Mallory said, her gaze roaming around the table. “Couldn’t the killer be using them as a distraction? Maybe those kids were drugged. Maybe the man and woman work together.”

  “There have been husbands and wives who have worked together,” Zach agreed. “A woman is much more likely to trust a man when he has a female with him.”

  Jason pushed a button on the remote and the video began to play again. “There’s only one problem with all of this conjecture. All of the people at the rest stop had opportunity. They were all alone with the victim while you and Mallory were in the building and then one by one they all left. From what we can find, none of them had motive either. No one. They’ve been checked out by the police and they’re clean, but I think we need to dig deeper. What are we not seeing on this tape? Where does that leave us?”

  With nothing. They had nothing.

  Chapter Thirty-One

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  Mallory had a nasty headache and the ibuprofen she’d taken wasn’t making a dent. It had been a long day and much more draining than she’d thought it would be, which was actually kind of silly. Of course, it would be difficult to relive a traumatic event. Whatever had made her think it would be a walk in the park? Or at the very least not horrible?

  She wandered into the kitchen and opened the freezer, hoping to find something that could be thrown into the microwave. Kathy and Peter had filled it with food but she honestly had no idea what to do with it all. She couldn’t, however, expect Carter to do all of the cooking while they were here. She had to pitch in, too. Even if it was inedible.

  “I thought I’d find you in here,” Carter said, coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. “I’m fixing dinner, honey. You can do the dishes later. Right now, you have an appointment at the spa.”

  Twisting her head around, she gave him a suspicious look. “The spa? I don’t think so, although I wouldn’t mind a full body massage and a facial. Maybe a mani-pedi too.”