Sight Unseen

by Iris Johansen

  “You’re damn right we’ll discuss it.”

  “So you’ll do it?”

  Olivia hesitated for a long moment, then finally nodded. “Yes.” She added, “But I wish you’d come with us.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I packed up and left my condo earlier this evening. I’m staying with Lynch, and his place couldn’t be safer.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Don told me you’d left your place.”

  Kendra cast an amused glance at Agent Nelson, who was trying to be stone-faced. “Of course he did. Come on, I’ll help you get your things together.”

  She followed Olivia to her bedroom and pushed the door closed behind them. The second the door clicked shut, Kendra jumped in front of her, and whispered, “How in the hell did that happen?”

  “How did what happen?” Olivia said with a blank expression. “Please hand me the duffel in the corner.”

  “Oh, don’t play dumb with me. You know what I’m talking about.” She added teasingly, “You seduced the poor guy?”

  Olivia laughed and walked over and grabbed the duffel herself. “I’m kind of surprised, too.”

  “So what happened?”

  “You know what happened.”

  “Of course. But how did it happen?”

  “You want to know the details?” Olivia opened a drawer and felt the Braille codes on her blouse clothing tags. She selected a few articles of clothing and shoved them into the duffel. “He stopped by earlier this evening. He wanted to say good-bye.”

  “That’s how he says good-bye?”

  Olivia smiled. “No. He told me he wasn’t going to be guarding you anymore. He said that he was going to miss seeing me. Sweet, right?”

  “Precious.”

  “Stop it. So I let him in for a few minutes, and I suddenly got sad at the thought of not having him around anymore. I … didn’t want him to go. One thing led to another, and—”

  “—And the guy never had a chance.”

  “Well, I didn’t hear him complaining.”

  “Oh, I’m sure not. So … what is this? A one-night stand? Where’s it heading?”

  “Hell if I know. I told you I was curious, and he was very good in bed. Maybe it’s going nowhere. You’re the one who’s throwing me out of my home, out of my life.”

  “He may be going with you.”

  “Along with your mother.” She made a face. “Not exactly a romantic getaway.”

  “It’s not supposed to be. He’ll be working. Don’t you go distracting him.”

  “Don’t worry.” Olivia threw in some jeans, shoes, and a clear gallon-size Ziploc bag of toiletries. “He was good, but not good enough to risk my life or your mother’s.” She zipped the duffel and slung it over her shoulder.

  “All set?”

  “Yeah. On the way out, you guys can grab my laptop, my work knapsack, and some of the boxes next to my desk. I’ll take the opportunity to get some articles and reviews done.” She turned back toward Kendra. “By the way, where are we going?”

  “I’m not sure. I need to talk it over with Mom. She’ll like having some control. It might make it easier to convince her. It has to be someplace no one could possibly predict.”

  “No one.” Olivia smiled. “Including us?”

  “Exactly.

  CHAPTER

  10

  University of California San Diego

  La Jolla, California

  “NO WAY, NO HOW.”

  Kendra was alone with her mother in the large Ledden Auditorium, an amphitheater-styled lecture facility in the campus Humanities and Social Science Building. It was a few minutes before seven, and, as Kendra had predicted, her mother was there preparing for her early-morning class.

  Also as predicted, she was having none of Kendra’s plan.

  “If I left town every time you took on a case, I’d have to quit my job.”

  “Mom, this is different. He’s zeroed in on me. The people in my life aren’t safe.”

  “Now you know how I feel every time you take one of these cases.”

  “This is your idea of payback?”

  “It’s not payback. I have a life.”

  “And I want you to keep—” She broke off.

  The door at the front of the lecture hall swung open. Kendra and Diane turned around as Dean Halley walked into the room.

  He smiled. “Kendra … I thought I saw you come in here. Did you come to see your mother lecture and show you how it’s done?”

  “Something like that. Good morning, Dean.”

  Diane looked at the wall clock. “Good lord, Dean. I didn’t think you ever woke up before ten.”

  “Aaah, I had some work to take care of here in my office.” He spread his arms wide in a flamboyant gesture. “I guess it was fate, huh?”

  Kendra smiled. “I’m not a big believer in fate.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll settle for a happy accident. In any case, it’s nice to see you.” He looked from her to Diane. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Just my mother’s stubbornness.”

  “Nothing will ever get in the way of that.”

  Kendra flipped back the cover of Lynch’s tablet computer and raised it to chest level.

  “Are you trying to take my picture?” Diane asked.

  “No, I have some photos to show you.”

  “Please, no more Maui vacation photos.”

  “This isn’t Maui.” A dismembered corpse appeared on the screen.

  “Whoa!” Her mother recoiled and raised her hands. “You could have warned me.”

  “No one warned this woman before she was hacked to death two weeks ago.” Kendra swiped her finger across the tablet, and the screen lit up with another bloody corpse, this one almost decapitated by a long strand of piano wire.

  “Kendra!”

  Dean looked as if he were going to be sick.

  Another finger swipe, and they were looking at the corpse with a Latin phrase carved on his chest.

  Her mother frowned. “Kendra, please.”

  Dean finally turned away. “More dead bodies … Is this becoming our thing? Because if you think I’m into that, you’ve been seriously misinformed.”

  Kendra moved the tablet closer to her mother’s face. “Look. This is the kind of diseased mind I’m dealing with. And just a few hours ago, he killed the mother of one of my clients. That’s why I’ve arranged a security detail for you and Olivia.” She said urgently, “Olivia is blind. She’s smart and strong, but she needs you to care for her. The way you cared for me all those years. Help me, Mom.”

  Her mother was silent for a long moment. “When would you want me to leave?”

  “Now. Olivia is waiting in Lynch’s car outside.”

  “Impossible. I have a class in twenty minutes.”

  “I can stick around, answer any questions and give them their reading assignments for next time,” Dean said.

  “I couldn’t ask you to—”

  “You didn’t ask.” Dean shrugged. “I offered.”

  Kendra nodded. “See? And I know for a fact your teaching assistants are chomping at the bit for some lecture experience.”

  “Of course they are. That doesn’t mean they can do it. I’m too exceptional to replace.”

  “You wouldn’t tolerate a T.A. who was anything less than brilliant. You know they can do it. Perhaps not as well, but adequately.”

  “Where do you propose we go?”

  “Nowhere you’ll be expected. I prefer it would be someplace you’ve never been. Where do you suggest?”

  Diane thought about it. “Maybe Mount Laguna. Remember I told you about another professor who offered me her weekend house in Mount Laguna anytime I wanted to use it?”

  “Vaguely. There’s no guarantee it’s free right now, though.”

  “On a Tuesday? Odds are pretty good. I’ll call and ask her.” She frowned. “But I don’t have her number with me.”

  “I do,” Dean said. He pulled out his phone and scroll
ed through his contact list. “You’re talking about Dr. Richmond, right? I spent a weekend down at her place when I first came here. It was a sort of welcome to the academy family.”

  Diane nodded.

  After a few seconds, Dean looked up. “I just e-mailed you her home, office, and mobile numbers.” He grinned. “Now get out of here. I have to have a little time to recover my composure after that deluge of sickening photos Kendra threw at us. I have a class coming here in twenty minutes.”

  Mount Laguna, California

  11:37 A.M.

  “BEAUTIFUL PLACE,” Lynch said as he pulled in behind Diane’s and Agent Nelson’s cars in front of the rustic two-story house on a hill overlooking the Cleveland National Forest. “I wouldn’t mind spending a few days here.”

  “Neither would I. It’s supposed to be a vacation house deluxe, with balconies and an entire finished rec room in the basement.” Kendra got out of the Ferrari. “But I guarantee Mom and Olivia aren’t going to feel that way. I’m glad that Agent Nelson is here to report back if there’s an insurrection, and one of them takes off.”

  “If Olivia doesn’t persuade him to take her away from here himself,” Lynch murmured. “I had no idea she was such a vamp.”

  “Olivia is many things. She’s had to survive and make a good life for herself, and she’s done it her way.” She looked at him. “But she’s smart and honorable. She wouldn’t do anything that would hurt Mom. She’d just figure out a way to do what she had to do that wouldn’t have dire consequences.” She started to walk toward her mother, who was standing by her car and looking up at the sleek, lovely house.

  Diane’s expression was gloomy. “It looks like a damn gingerbread house.”

  “It does not, it’s lovely,” Kendra said. “Maybe not your cup of tea, but it’s bearable.” She paused. “Anything is bearable if you know you’re doing the right thing. And you are doing the right thing, Mom.”

  “Maybe.” She whirled to face Kendra. “What are you doing standing around here? You’ve delivered us. You should get the hell out and get rid of that nasty piece of work who’s causing all this ugliness.”

  Kendra smiled. “Yes, ma’am. May I say good-bye and ask you to take care of yourself?”

  “Of course I’ll take care of myself.”

  Kendra’s glance went up the path to the front door Agent Nelson was unlocking while Olivia stood waiting. “And ask you to take care of Olivia?”

  Diane gave her a glance. “She grew up running in and out of my house. Do you think I’d let anything happen to her?” She frowned. “Though sometimes she forgets that I know better than she does.”

  “She’s an adult, Mom.”

  “She’s blind,” Diane said bluntly. She started up the path toward the front door. “And that young FBI person who is hovering around her doesn’t know anything. I’ll have to get her familiar with the house and choose a bedroom where she can smell the fresh pine breezes. And she has to be able to hear the sound of the wind through the trees.”

  “And not fall off the damn mountain,” Kendra called after her.

  “There’s always that.” She turned and looked back at Kendra. She held out her arms. “Come here, brat.”

  Kendra ran toward her. She was immediately enveloped in her mother’s arms.

  Love.

  Security.

  “Thank you, Mom,” she whispered as she held her close. “I know how hard this is for you. I promise it won’t be for long.”

  “The only promise I want from you is that you won’t let that monster touch you. Not even a hair on your head.”

  “I promise.” She gave her a final hug and stepped back. “Now go and take care of Olivia.” She smiled mistily. “Or that FBI agent, whoever needs it most.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me what to do.” Diane’s voice was throaty as she moved up the path toward the front door. “Get going. You always did dillydally.”

  Kendra turned and quickly headed for Lynch and the Ferrari.

  “Okay?” His gaze was studying her expression as he opened the passenger door for her.

  She nodded jerkily. “I don’t want to leave them. I want to stay and take care of them.”

  “Nelson is a good agent. I checked on him.” He got into the driver’s seat. “And I just made a call to an ex–Special Forces buddy who lives in LA and hired him to come up tonight and guard the perimeter. He’s hell on wheels.”

  “You did?” She swallowed. “That was very kind.”

  “Yeah. That’s me, brimming with the milk of human kindness.” He shrugged. “And I didn’t want to have you worrying and gnawing your fingernails if I could prevent it. It would be counterproductive to the investigation.”

  “Heaven forbid.” She smiled. “Still, it was thoughtful even though you don’t want to admit it.”

  “Of course I want to admit it. It makes you believe I’m a sterling character.” He tilted his head as she laughed. “No, you’re too intelligent to fall into that trap. But it can’t help but soften you a little.”

  Soften … Yes, she did feel an undeniable softening toward Lynch. But she would have felt a softening toward anyone who was trying to protect Mom and Olivia, she told herself. She looked back over her shoulder at the lovely house on the mountain. It looked very solitary from this distance.

  “You’re scared,” Lynch said.

  She nodded. “I’ve been scared since I saw that poor woman on the floor of the bathroom.” She straightened in the seat and looked straight ahead. “But I’ve done all I can for the time being. Now the only solution is to get Myatt before he reaches out and destroys anyone else.”

  * * *

  SHE THOUGHT SHE WAS SO CLEVER, Myatt thought scornfully as he watched Kendra get back into Adam Lynch’s Ferrari after leaving her mother. Not that she wasn’t clever, or she would never have been able to trap Colby and throw him into that prison. But she hadn’t been able to touch Myatt yet, and he’d see that she never did. He’d learned so much from Colby during these last months that he felt as if he was invulnerable. Sometimes he wondered if he had risen to be even greater than Colby.

  No, he scurried away from the thought as disloyal.

  Colby was the master. Myatt worshipped him and had been lucky to have him for a teacher.

  But Colby was lucky to have him here on the outside, too. Myatt had been able to do his bidding and yet still give himself the satisfaction of displaying a razzle-dazzle talent that even Colby had praised. They were two of a kind that formed a magnificent whole.

  Kendra and Adam Lynch had now passed the tree-shrouded byway where Myatt had pulled in when he’d seen that the three vehicles had reached their destination on the forest’s edge.

  Follow her? Or stay and stalk her mother and the blind woman?

  He would stay here and scope out all the details on the setup for when he wanted to make a move here. He’d plant a GPS bug on the mother’s car similar to the one he’d placed on Lynch’s when he’d realized that Lynch would be constantly with Kendra. Then he would go back to the city and keep Kendra in his sights.

  But first he had a few other things to do.

  Time was flying, and he had to make certain nothing could go wrong at the last minute. He took his notebook out of his pocket and flipped it open. Colby disapproved of notebooks. He thought Myatt should memorize everything. But what Colby didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Colby had rattled off these details so quickly that Myatt had barely had time to absorb them. He wanted to get this right, and his memory wasn’t as keen as the master’s. He could always destroy the notebook after the plan was in place.

  For instance, he had to be accurate about all these difficult names that Colby seemed to have at his fingertips. That tetrodotoxin and Vecuronium Bromide that he’d used on that cop at the Harvey house had been Colby’s idea.

  So he had to be sure that nothing got in the way of Myatt’s fulfilling every aspect of Colby’s plan for Kendra Michaels.

  He looked back at the house o
n the hill. Two people Kendra cared about were within his reach.

  So very tempting …

  FBI Field Office

  San Diego

  THE DOORS OF THE ELEVATOR SLID OPEN at the still-unfinished floor of the FBI field office, and Kendra and Lynch stepped off. The bulletin boards detailing Kendra’s previous cases were now surrounding two long folding tables pushed end to end. There were even more freestanding bulletin boards and whiteboards than before, now adorned with crime-scene photos and note cards detailing the latest rash of killings.

  She gazed straight ahead and tried not to look at the photo of the bathroom at the nightclub. She stared instead at Griffin, Metcalf, Reade, and several additional agents and support staff who were there.

  “Everyone safe and sound?” Griffin asked her.

  “I just left my mother and Olivia. They’re not happy, but they’re safe.” She added, “I hope.”

  “Since I assigned an agent to protect them, at some point I’ll need to know where they are.”

  “I have an address. I’ll give it to you before I leave.”

  “Good. You know that Agent Nelson was most anxious to hold on to this assignment. I told him it was for your friend and mother, not you, but he was still insistent.”

  Kendra hurriedly looked away from him at one of the bulletin boards. “Oh?”

  Lynch nodded solemnly. “You have to admire an agent who throws himself into his work like that. Good man.”

  Griffin looked as if he might have picked up on the sudden awkward vibe, but he didn’t pursue it. “Yeah, Nelson’s coming along.”

  While Kendra had been pretending to look at the bulletin board, something really did catch her eye. “What’s this?” She pointed to a whiteboard labeled ‘Myatt.’

  Griffin walked toward the board and angled it toward her and Lynch. “This is the profile we’re building. If he has been somehow working with Colby, it puts him in a unique category of serial killer.”

  “The tag team.”

  “Yes. Most serial killers are loners who feel powerless in their everyday lives. Carrying out these types of specific, meticulously planned murders is their means of exerting control and gaining a sense of power that’s missing in everything else they do. The tag team is a different animal, especially when the partner is someone as notorious as Colby.” Griffin gazed at the list of characteristics that had been written on the board. “Assuming Colby is the dominant partner, Myatt is most likely someone who’s comfortable taking orders, perhaps ex-military. He’s extremely detail-oriented. These people tend to be obsessively focused on a very narrow range of interests.”