by Jo Robertson
Olivia watched Jack gesture with those long fingers. He’d been a handsome boy, but he’d become a compelling man with hair like heavy black silk, burnished complexion, and dark eyes that glistened like obsidian. She couldn’t tell if the hitch around her ribs was from memory or from gazing at him now. He’d grown into assurance and command, she realized, the mantle of leadership resting comfortably on his wide shoulders.
"We’ll add team members later on for the grunt work," Jack continued.
Slater nodded and ADA Torres lifted her shoulders negligently. When introduced to Olivia, the woman had seemed friendly enough, but preoccupied. She was a small woman, like Olivia, but in a graceful, long-limbed way.
Finally Torres cleared her throat and spoke up. "I want it known for the record that I'm opposed to discontinuing the Vargas assignment. I’m close to getting him on the assault charges." She threw a defiant look at Jack. "I don't want to lose the momentum."
Uneasy silence followed while Olivia wondered how they were supposed to work together with all the land mines lying around.
"Maybe you can do both," Jack suggested in friendly compromise that surprised Olivia. "We’ll start with the notes and Olivia’s expertise while you continue on the Vargas case."
Isabella looked relieved as she gathered up her materials and stuffed them in her briefcase."Okay, then, that’s settled."
After the ADA left, Slater took a deep breath and said grudgingly, "Thanks for letting Isabella work the other case. Barrington won't make it easy for her."
"What’s the deal there?"
"Diego Vargas?"
"I've heard of him," Olivia said as she rose and swung her purse over her shoulder. "He's a city councilman in Sacramento."
Slater nodded. "They're looking at him for campaign fraud at the loud insistence of the Latino community, interestingly enough."
"Why's that Bigler County's problem?" Jack asked.
"Several months ago, Vargas’ wife Magdalena walked into my office and asked for confidential police protection."
Olivia felt a sliver of apprehension as she remembered her ex-husband's late-night visit. "Why didn’t she go to the local police?"
Slater shook his head. "Said her husband's influence was too deep and she couldn't be sure which officers were in his pocket. Claimed her husband’s been mentally and physically abusing her for years. Came to me off the record because she went to school with an old law school friend of mine."
Jack spread his palms. "Still, it’s domestic abuse."
"Magdalena contends that Vargas is heavily involved with local gangs and is a major player in drug running, prostitution, and gambling from Stockton to the Nevada and Oregon borders."
Jack understood. "Ah."
"I convinced her to talk to Isabella Torres. Magdalena issued a large number of allegations against her husband, but few provable facts."
"But Torres believes her," Jack prompted.
"Isabella wrangled a voluntary meet with Vargas, thinks she can rattle his cage."
"Voluntary? That doesn’t sound like a guilty man."
Slater shrugged. "Internal affairs is running a parallel investigation on the money sources, so he probably thinks he’s safe on the assault."
"Still, isn't that a waste of your resources?"
"Magdalena insists Vargas is a violent psychopath, so Isabella's following that lead." Slater paused. "She has a particular hatred for men like Diego Vargas."
Jack had liked the efficient young ADA and figured she owed him a favor now. "I’d like to watch her work," he mused. "Maybe I’ll sit in on her interview with the Councilman."
Slater lifted his brows. "Yeah, that’ll work."
"I'm sure she can be persuaded." As Olivia made her way to the door, Jack closed his briefcase, and followed her.
"There's more," Slater said to their backs. "Earlier this year, the Maidu City PD contacted me about someone targeting young prostitutes in that area."
Jack turned back. "Maidu?"
"College town near San Francisco. Anyway, they initially thought the women were being attacked by college frat boys as part of an initiation prank, but had no physical evidence."
"But Mrs. Vargas implicated her husband in the attacks," Jack guessed, seeing where Slater was going.
"Magdalena might not be a reliable source, but Isabella believes her." Slater ran a large hand over his shadowed jaw. "The fact is that three prostitutes were raped and brutally beaten, and although they're looking at a serial rapist, I thought of your boy."
Jack shook his head. "Not likely."
Slater glanced at Olivia before continuing. "All three girls were beaten pretty bad after the attacks. They survived, but one won't walk again, another's in a coma, and one lost her sight."
"My UNSUB didn't rape any of his victims and he wasn't gender specific. One of the victims was a man. Plus, he keeps a low profile. I doubt your Diego Vargas is my suspect."
"At least one weapon in the rape beatings was the metal end of a golf club," Slater pressed.
Olivia stepped around Jack toward Slater, understanding on her face. "You think there's a connection to my student Keisha."
Jack doubted multiple assaults on hookers were related to his Dead Language Killer, but he could follow the lead while the deputies did the knock and talks. "How far away is this Maidu?"
"Not far, about a three-hour drive."
A day, he thought, that's all it'd take to check it out. And two of his victims had been beaten to death by some kind of club. He studied Olivia's face for a moment. She would want to come along, he guessed, determined as she was to find her student's killer. "We could make a day trip," he offered, clearly addressing her. "Might be worth the trip."
Slater frowned, but remained silent.
Olivia looked surprised. "Maybe."
Suddenly the day seemed a little brighter and Jack refused to wonder why.
*
Before going home, Olivia swung by the university to pick up a set of essays. The campus was quiet and the quad lights cast dim shadows as a few students hurried home from late classes. Crossing the campus to the faculty parking lot, Olivia pressed the remote unlock button on her car, preoccupied with Jack's strange suggestion that they travel to Maidu together.
The faint sound of footsteps startled her and she whirled around, bumping against the car door. Ted Burrows loomed behind her. "Ted, what are you doing here so late?" she blurted out.
"I could ask the same thing of you, Teach."
"Excuse me?" Olivia frequently found Ted amusing, sometimes irritating, but never threatening. Now she wondered if she'd underestimated the graduate student.
"Sorry, didn't mean to surprise you. I stayed to finish up some research for Randy's class."
She eyed him thoughtfully. She didn't think Howard Randolph would appreciate Ted's use of the disrespectful nickname. Randy, indeed. Somehow Ted managed to infuse the name with a tone more snide than affectionate, toying with a double entendre that might be deliberate.
Ted watched her slid into her car. "I'll wait until you leave," he offered with a smirk. "Wouldn't want anything to happen to you."
His tone made her feel uneasy. Ted had a reputation as a player. Every week a different pretty girl trailed after him. Olivia wondered if he'd ever crossed any lines in the teacher-student relationship. Close to a doctoral degree in Ancient Studies, Burrows was taking longer than most graduate students to finish, evidently liking his play-as-you-go plan.
Even though he was handsome in a bad boy sort of way, she wondered how he attracted so many different girls. She almost laughed. That was a no-brainer. They were freshmen and sophomores, after all, and the sense of danger probably titillated them.
"Oh, wait." Ted pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. "Someone called while you were out."
"You were in my office?"
"It's Randy's too, isn't it?" He thrust a pink message paper in her hand and hurried off.
Frowning, Olivia locked the doors, a
nd pulled out of the parking lot onto Newcastle Road, then headed west on Highway 50 toward her house in Willow Park, an upscale Sacramento neighborhood near the zoo. Clearly she needed to set some boundaries for the young, flippant grad student. Although he might be annoying, she was sure he was completely harmless.
As she pressed down on the gas pedal, her car surged ahead on the nearly empty highway. At the first opportunity she read the message by the glow of the dashboard light.
Pick you up at 8:00 a.m. Jack.
Her heart fluttered in the region of her stomach and she forgot about reprimanding Ted Burrows. If he hadn't snooped around her office, she wouldn't have gotten the message. Feeling like a schoolgirl, she turned up the car radio and tapped her fingers to the music.
*
A discreet knock drew the Judge’s attention from the files spread on his desk.
"Yeah?"Myron Higgins’ voice sounded through the door. "Dr. Davis is here, sir."
The Judge glanced at the wall clock. Where had the time gone? He'd been ruminating like an old fart who didn’t have better things to do than think about past triumphs and failures. He wasn’t sure which category Jackson Holt fell into. He drummed his fingers on the desktop, wondering why the hell life couldn’t be simpler. He’d brought the boy in, trained him, and discovered how unique he was. Now it looked like something was messing Jack up, and things were getting out of hand.
The knock at the door sounded firmer.
"All right, all right," he grumbled. "Give me five minutes and send him in."
He gathered the files and stacked them neatly in one pile, thought better of it and scooped them into the bottom desk drawer. The office door swung open as he rose to greet Dr. Spencer Davis, research scientist and practitioner for the Invictus’ drug program.
A lanky, boneless man in his early fifties, Davis towered over the Judge. He extended his hand and gave a cordial shake, then sat in the chair opposite Warren’s desk. Davis crossed his legs at the knee and jiggled his foot as his eyes jumped around the room, lingering here and there, but avoiding Warren’s gaze. The Judge realized this was the first time the doctor had been in his office. Usually, their meetings took place in laboratories or medical facilities, where the doctor displayed the confidence of a man at home in his own element.
"Good of you to come, Doctor."
"Sure, sure." Davis rubbed his chin and then pushed his glasses up on his nose. "I’m not sure why you wanted to see me. Has anything gone wrong in the field?"
"Why would you think that?"
"Just wondered." Clearing his throat, he hurried on, "You've never asked me here before."
The Judge leaned back in his chair. "You’re right. We have a problem with Jackson Holt."
"Agent Thirteen? Oh, sure, how’s the new medication working on him? We tweaked his meds several missions ago." He opened his PDA and worked the screen. "The benzoids – they're the white ones that bring him down during Recovery – are up to 50 mg, the lysergic – the reds – to 150 micrograms."
"A hundred fifty? Won’t that fry his brain?"
Davis frowned and looked up, as if the fact they’d been experimenting on a human being had never crossed his mind. "It’s a heavy dosage, but we sent him the Phenobarbital compound."
"You're sure the Phens will counteract the aggression side effects?"
Davis nodded and scrolled the hand display. "Actually, Holt has tolerated the increase surprisingly well. Previous subjects died on that dosage and subsequent specimens had deleterious effects with a lesser dosage."
"So his body can handle it?"
"If he follows the correct drug regimen and dosage." Davis tapped his forefinger on his lips. "Of course, Holt’s, uh, pre-existing condition skews the normal results, but he can take a far heavier dosage than the other agents."
"What if he increases or cuts back on any of the dosages?"
Davis raised his brows like he’d never considered the possibility. "Why would he go off protocol? He understands the risk, knows the drugs must be taken in tandem."
Warren leaned back in his chair, his fingers laced over his gut. "Pretend I don't know anything. Explain it all to me again."
"Lab rats given extra dosages of the lysergic underwent extraordinary adrenal changes. Without a proper dosage of the benzodiazepine and Phenobarbital compounds, they couldn't slow down their metabolism."
Warren waved an impatient hand. "Bottom line it, Spencer."
The doctor shifted in his chair and let his eyes wander toward the door as if he couldn't wait to get out of the room. "They became aggressive, violent, and unpredictable. Within seventy-two hours, they were dead."
"That's what I thought."
*
It was far too late for an unexpected visit, Jack told himself, glancing at the gym's wall clock. Olivia had said she was going to work at home on the Latin notes, but it was now past 11:00 pm. She'd probably gone to bed.
He spent several hours working out his frustrations. Normally satisfied only by hunting, the burgeoning need inside him quieted down after thirty minutes on the speed bag. Then he'd done a full hour on the punching bag. Even through the protective gloves, his knuckles ached. Punch it down, kick it out, he muttered with every blow.
Even with the Phens and the benzoids, the Change felt like liquid fire running through his veins. Unless he hunted soon, or satisfied its equivalent, his blood would ignite like an accelerant-driven explosion. He continued taking the reds, but he didn't think that was fueling the Change. It was Olivia, but how or why he didn't understand.
In the car, almost as if he had no conscious will of his own, Jack set the GPS instructions to Sacramento and Olivia's home. He hadn't a clue what he'd say to her, but urgency pulsed in his blood like wild jungle drums. He had to see her.
Had to be near her. Had to be with her.
*
After Olivia ate and showered, she rang Jack's cell number which went straight to voice mail. Disappointed, she messaged him, and an hour later set to work in the library, her favorite room in the century-old house. Furnished with the traditional desk and a deep leather chair in a buttery hue, the room's colors complemented the drapes hanging from the wall-to-ceiling bank of windows to the right. A large oval rug covered the hardwood floor, a small television provided white noise, and a chaise lounge in a cheery print sat in the corner.
She retrieved her research materials, placed the books on the floor by the chaise, and immersed herself in her study of the Latin notes. Arranging books and papers around her, she sat cross-legged and examined the texts. Her first priority was to determine if the writer had "borrowed" his messages from another source as opposed to constructing them.
She began with Caesar's Gallic Wars, but quickly realized the phrasing of the killer's notes wasn't in the Roman general's style. Caesar had written of battles and wars, conquests and liberations. The abyss phrase from the DLK case was too flowery for Caesar's rather boring, but concrete, writing style.
After an hour's search she found the first quote in an innocuous list of common Latin quotes and phrases attributed to no particular writer. That could mean the writer of the notes was simply copying lines from textbooks. Tired, and finally giving up on Jack returning her call, Olivia went to her bedroom and propped herself against the headboard to read for a while. She promptly fell asleep amid dozens of lavender and tan floral pillows.
The knock from downstairs was a soft swooshing that barely pierced her consciousness as she fluttered her eyes open. Groggy and half asleep, she padded down the thick carpeted stairs to the front door. Through the distorted image of the peephole, she saw Jack standing on the porch. A bird's wings fluttered in her chest and she breathed deeply to steady herself before opening the door.
Dressed in a black tee shirt and jeans, Jack looked as dazed as she felt. His gun was still holstered under his left arm, his hair was damp and awry, and dark circles smudged the skin beneath eyes as black as the night. "Sorry," he whispered, shifting awkwardly. "I didn't
mean to wake you. Just wanted to be sure you'd gotten home all right."
Olivia watched his gaze travel over her bare legs, take in her man-shorts and tank top, her breasts loose beneath the thin ribbed material. She saw the hesitation in his face, the struggle and longing in his eyes, and knew he wanted her to invite him in. Knew he wanted her.
"I've been getting home all by myself for a long time."
She tried to hold on to her irritation, but a flash of clarity made her realize she'd seen the same look of indecision in Jack – years ago, in another time, another place. Had watched him struggle between his love for her and his need for her. She'd seen the desire win.
Until now, she'd never realized how hard she had made it for him.
It was too late to weep for the children they'd both been, to tell him that being with him was what she'd wanted. For the first time she understood what a sacrifice their act of lovemaking had been for him. All along she'd thought of her pain, her loss. Nothing of Jack's.
Still, she warned herself, he'd abandoned her, run off when she needed him most. That wasn't something she could ignore or easily forgive. She turned away, feeling his dark eyes follow her down the hall. "Coffee?"
"Maybe a little," he said behind her. "I know it's late, but I wanted to give you my change of address."
"Oh?" He could've called, she thought, a heated thrill she didn't want to acknowledge sliding down to settle at the base of her spine.
"Slater offered his guest house for the duration."
"He must want to keep an eye on you."
He laughed. "Probably." He hesitated. "I'm going to visit the police chief in Maidu tomorrow. I thought you might take the drive with me, make sure I don't get lost."
"I got your message." Olivia thought a moment. "Before we work together, we should discuss… our issues." She reached for the coffee mugs and saucers, feeling her boy-shorts hike up in back, and turned in time to follow Jack's eyes.
He sat on a bar stool at the kitchen island and dragged his eyes back to her face, scraping at the rough looking bristles of his beard. Feeling suddenly uncomfortable, she hurried down the hall to grab a long sweater out of the hall closet.
