The Last Time I Saw Her

by Karen Robards

  Photos of six of the eight escapees were in a row across the bottom of the board: Charlie mentally categorized that grouping as still at large. The two pictures that were together on the lower right side—Fleenor and Sayers—she knew were dead.

  “Charlie, this is Major Lee Hintz,” Tony said. “Dr. Charlotte Stone.”

  Charlie turned to see a compact man in his mid-fifties wearing a state police uniform, who extended his hand toward her.

  “Glad for your safe recovery, Dr. Stone,” Hintz said as they shook hands. “This is a bad business.” He looked past her and added, “Glad to see you safe, too, Mr. Hughes.”

  “Glad to be safe,” Michael replied, and they shook hands, too.

  Charlie quickly told Hintz what she had come to say. He nodded. “I’ll pass that on to my men up there now,” he said, and left them, presumably to do just that. Glancing around, Charlie saw that Michael was gone, and frowned. Where could he have…?

  “Feel up to telling me what happened?” Tony asked. The tent was packed with people coming and going. It was noisy and slightly chaotic, but where they were, a little to the left of the board with the pictures, was a small oasis of privacy. Charlie spotted Michael on the other side of the tent, felt a flutter of relief, and leaned against the nearest table for support—there were no chairs—as she gave Tony a lightning recap of events. Everything to do with Michael, of course, she left out, along with most of the unnecessary details, including her confrontation with Abell and that she had punched Fleenor. While she spoke she kept track of Michael as he moved around inside the tent with the spidey-sense she seemed to have developed where he was concerned.

  “Jesus. I can’t begin to fathom how something like this could have happened.” Tony rubbed a hand over his forehead when she finished. “Hughes saved your life?”

  Charlie nodded. “And Paris Troyan’s.”

  Tony frowned at her. “You still thinking he might be a serial killer?”

  Charlie shrugged. Well, actually, yes, she did, but Michael was not Hughes, and for right now it might be better to skirt the issue.

  “All I know for sure is he saved my life,” she replied.

  Tony continued, “Because I went ahead and sent the coffee cup in your office to the lab. At least, I’m presuming the one on the outside corner of your desk was the one with his DNA on it.”

  Charlie looked at him in surprise. “Yes, but—how in the world were you able to do that?”

  Tony shrugged. “When I got to town, first place I went was the prison. See, all I knew at that point was that on the one hand, there’d been a mass escape from Wallens Ridge, and on the other hand, you, having been inside Wallens Ridge at the time, were missing. Those two things might or might not be connected. The last person you’d been seen with was Hughes, who I knew you had suspicions about. It was always possible that Hughes had done something to you under the cover of the fire and the prison break. I went to your office, which wasn’t damaged, by the way. The fire in that wing was confined to the library. Anyway, I was in your office looking for anything that might provide a clue as to what had happened to you and was told that a messenger had arrived to pick up some DNA evidence you had made arrangements to send off. Remembering you telling me about it, I bagged up the cup and gave it to him, still thinking that possibly Hughes had abducted you and we might need to know real quick if there was a possibility that you were right about him being a serial killer. But then Hughes’s car was found in the prison parking lot, and your car was found in the parking lot, and finally a witness was interviewed who thought he’d seen you getting on the school bus with the Scared Straight kids. When it turned out the witness was right, I almost found myself wishing you’d been grabbed by Hughes.”

  Before Charlie could reply to that, Buzz and Lena—FBI Special Agents Buzz Crane and Lena Kaminsky, who made up Tony’s team—came rushing toward them.

  “Charlie! Thank God you’re okay!” Buzz exclaimed. Five-ten and wiry in his FBI standard dark suit, with springy brown curls, a thin, sharp-featured face, and bright blue eyes beneath black-framed glasses, he was cute in a geeky kind of way. He enveloped her in a hug. Charlie hugged him back. “The boss here was freaking out.”

  “I was a little worried,” Tony corrected, smiling at Charlie as Buzz released her. She smiled back. God, she really did like him so much! But the operative word there was like, not love. She now absolutely, positively, and without a doubt knew the difference, God help her.

  “Bartoli rushed us down here so fast I forgot and left the iron on. I had to call my sister after I got here to turn it off.” Lena was giving her a frowning once-over. “You look like crap.”

  Despite everything, Charlie had to smile. That was so typically Lena.

  “Thanks,” she said. Lena looked as exotically lovely as always. Her chin-length black bob was smooth and shining, deep red lipstick outlined her full mouth, and, because she was working and Lena loved her job, her slanting brown eyes were as bright and alert as a terrier’s on the hunt. Five-two barefoot, she was sensitive about her height and routinely wore four-inch heels to compensate. Her figure was curvy, and she preferred fitted skirt suits to pants. The one she wore at the moment was deep green, with a matching blouse and nude heels.

  Next to her, Charlie was pretty sure she did look like crap.

  “She means you look like you’ve been through an ordeal,” Buzz said.

  “I mean what I said. Don’t put words in my mouth, Crane.” Lena gave him a dark look.

  “Sorry.” Buzz held up both hands in an appeasing gesture.

  Charlie took from that exchange that the off-and-on romance the two had going was currently in “off” mode.

  Lena scanned Charlie again. “You basically look like you got run over by a train, but that’s not what I’m talking about. You’re skinny, you’re pale, you’ve got dark circles under your eyes. All of this in the past two and a half weeks. What on earth have you been doing since we last saw you?”

  Charlie was speechless. She hadn’t realized that what she’d been through with Michael’s absence had left such a noticeable imprint on her appearance.

  “Okay, enough with the small talk,” Tony said. Charlie was grateful for the interruption. Impossible to explain that she’d spent the last seventeen days racked with grief. “You two get preliminary cause of death on our fatalities?” he asked Lena.

  “Four victims suffered fatal gunshot wounds, one suffered gunshot wounds but expired from blunt-force trauma thought to be the result of a car crash, and two had broken necks,” Lena replied promptly.

  “The gunshot wounds were of different calibers, which means multiple shooters and/or weapons,” Buzz said. “The two corrections officers were shot once in the head each with the same caliber bullet, probably the same weapon; the police officer was hit multiple times in the torso, which means multiple weapons and probably multiple shooters; and the teen was shot twice in the back. Same caliber bullet, probably the same weapon and shooter, but we won’t know definitively until the test results are back.”

  “First question: Where did the escapees get the guns?” Bartoli said, and looked at Buzz.

  “Working on it, boss,” he said.

  Charlie folded her arms over her chest. She was so tired that she was practically sitting on the corner of the table by this time. “While I was on the bus, I heard Torres say something about one of the librarians smuggling guns into the prison library. Torres described the librarian as male and fat.”

  “That should narrow it down,” Tony said, and looked at Lena.

  Lena grimaced. “I know. Find the fat male librarian.”

  Tony nodded.

  “Heads are going to roll.” Buzz shook his head. “Security at that prison must have been off-the-charts lax.”

  Tony said, “So tell me about the two deaths that weren’t by gunshot. Broken necks, you said?”

  Buzz nodded. “Both were broken by manual force in the same style. Those were our two deceased hostage t
akers.”

  Tony asked something else, but Charlie missed it because she realized with a tiny flutter of alarm that she’d lost track of Michael.

  And that would be because he was right behind her, she discovered a second later. She felt the brush of his body against hers even as she anxiously skimmed the knots of people surrounding her, trying to locate him. She couldn’t see him, but still she knew who it was instantly, identifying him on what she thought had to be a cellular level, even before he said “Here” in that still too-gravelly voice and handed her a bottle of water.

  She knew it was him because when he touched her the air went out of the room.

  You’ve got it bad, she told herself. But she was also resigned to it. She’d come to terms with the fact that apparently, by some inexplicable quirk of fate, he was it for her.

  “Thank you.” Accepting the water with gratitude, Charlie kept her voice cool and crisp, like everything around her hadn’t just taken on a little extra vibrancy just because he was near, like she wasn’t barely resisting the urge to lean back against him, to touch him in some way. Unscrewing the cap, she took a long, appreciative drink while Tony, Buzz, and Lena looked past her at Michael. Tony frowned, Buzz’s expression was assessing, and Lena’s eyes widened.

  “This is Rick Hughes.” Tony made the introduction. “Lena Kaminsky, Buzz Crane.”

  Of course, Michael knew them almost as well as he knew Tony, but they didn’t know that.

  As Michael stepped forward to shake hands with Lena and Buzz, Tony asked him, “You ever serve in the military?”

  Michael met his gaze. “Why do you ask?”

  “Haven’t met many people who could break a neck like that.”

  Michael smiled. “I’ve had some martial arts training.”

  “I see.”

  While they were talking, Charlie found herself looking from one man to the other. It was, she thought, sort of like comparing a French rapier to a Viking broadsword. Tony was tall and leanly muscled, the quintessential FBI agent in his dark blue suit, pale blue shirt, and red tie. His black hair and handsome face turned women’s heads wherever he went. Wearing a dirty, torn, untucked, and open-collared white shirt (he’d apparently lost the tie somewhere) with stained gray suit pants, Michael was inches taller and more powerfully built. With his lion-colored hair, golden tan, and beautifully cut features, he was outrageously good-looking to the point that the same women who would turn their heads for Tony would trail panting at Michael’s heels. There was a hardness around Michael’s eyes and mouth, a hint of aggression in the set of his shoulders that, surprisingly, made him the more formidable of the two, despite his sun-god looks. One looked like the kind of man you could bring home to mother, settle down with, and depend on, and that was exactly what Tony was. The other looked dangerous and dirty-minded, pure sex on the hoof, and that described Michael perfectly.

  Charlie absolutely knew which man she should want.

  Maybe Michael’s right was the rueful rejoinder that popped into her head. Maybe I do need a shrink.

  Michael turned to Charlie and said, “I’ve been sent to fetch you. There’s an ambulance pulled up right outside with a crew that’s here to check out us rescued hostages.”

  She met his gaze. His eyes were still black, and she trusted that it would go unremarked in the jerry-rigged fluorescent lighting. Anyway, it was unlikely that anyone here was familiar enough with the normal color of Hughes’s eyes to notice the difference.

  “Go,” Tony said to her. Deciding to go ahead and get it over with, Charlie nodded, and Tony added to Lena, “Kaminsky, go with her.”

  That told Charlie everything she needed to know about how Tony felt concerning the supposed Hughes: he didn’t trust him. Well, fair enough. Given the information Tony had, she wouldn’t have trusted him, either.

  Michael was already heading for the open tent flap. Swigging thirstily from her water bottle, Charlie started walking after him, and Lena fell into step beside her.

  “He’s pretty,” Lena said under her breath, her eyes on Michael’s broad back. “Tell me you’re not calling dibs.”

  Well, actually, she was, but—

  “What about Buzz?” Charlie replied, indignant on Buzz’s behalf.

  “Forget Crane. Plenty of fish in the sea that weren’t once engaged to my sister.” Lena had been looking Michael over. Now she frowned and glanced at Charlie. “Is that Hunky Guy’s jacket you’re wearing?”

  “We were stuck on a ledge. It was cold.” Charlie knew she sounded defensive: ridiculously, she felt defensive.

  “So he gave you his jacket, which means he’s a gentleman.” Lena’s speculative gaze, which had returned to slide over Michael again, sliced back to Charlie. “Or else it means he likes you. What is it with men and liking the helpless types, anyway?”

  That ruffled Charlie’s feathers. “I am not helpless.”

  “I know. You’re not helpless at all. That’s what’s so damned unfair about it. Men just think you’re helpless.” Lena shook her head in disgust. “It’s that big-eyed, fine-boned thing you have going on. They all want to protect you.”

  “That is a total crock.”

  “Uh-uh. Look at the boss. The minute he heard you were missing, he rounded up Crane and me and had us all heading to the rescue so fast the plane practically broke the sound barrier.”

  “Thank you for coming, by the way.”

  Lena shrugged. “You showed up for me, I showed up for you.”

  Charlie looked sideways at Lena. “You know what? I think that makes us friends.”

  Lena said sourly, “Oh, gosh, should we go shopping or something? Or, I know, maybe we can get a mani-pedi together. That would be fun.”

  “Shopping would be nice,” Charlie replied, her voice deliberately bland. Lena gave her a sharp, aren’t-you-funny look. Then they were outside the tent, and what with the sudden darkness and the distracting bustle of activity as vehicles moved in and out of the parking area, the conversation lapsed. Charlie cast a compulsive glance at the tent where the bodies were being held—she was contemplating sneaking in and telling whichever of the spirits could see and hear her to look for the light—only to discover that it was empty: the bodies apparently had been taken away for autopsy.

  So. No more to be done there, so put it out of your mind. And keep walking. Because her step had faltered a little.

  “Something wrong?” Lena asked.

  “No,” Charlie replied, and pulled Hughes’s jacket more tightly closed against the brisk wind. Being down in a valley as they were with the jagged black peaks of the mountains towering all around made her feel small and isolated, as if the rest of the world were a million miles away. Thinking about what might be happening on the mountain behind her got her so antsy that her pulse started to race and her breathing quickened. Instantly labeling those thoughts as unproductive, she forced them from her head. An ambulance was parked nearby. The rear doors were open and the interior had a faintly greenish glow in the darkness. A couple of EMTs sat with their legs dangling in the open doorway, looking out toward her and Lena as they approached. Michael had gotten there just ahead of them, and he turned around to watch them, too.

  They reached the ambulance. Because Michael insisted she go first, Charlie was helped inside.

  A couple of ibuprofen, some antiseptic wipes, a turkey sandwich—Michael wolfed down three, courtesy of a catering table that also held coffee—and a trip to a nearby porta-potty later, Charlie was just walking back inside the tent with Michael and Lena when a sudden commotion drew their attention to a table near the dry-erase board. Everybody was rushing in that direction, so they walked over, too.

  “What’s going on?” Lena asked Buzz as they stopped beside him and Tony, who were in front of a table on which an open laptop computer had been placed. Surrounding them was a crowd—a couple dozen cops mixed with some National Guard types, a contingent of local FBI agents in blue windbreakers, and a few random others who weren’t wearing uniforms and th
us were difficult to identify. It was worryingly quiet as they all leaned forward almost as one to try to see the computer. Grainy images of something Charlie couldn’t quite make out filled the screen. Her hand tightened on the Styrofoam cup of coffee in her hand.

  “SWAT’s inside the barn,” Buzz replied in a hushed tone. “They’re just reporting in. What you’re looking at are pictures from one of their body cams.”

  Armed with that knowledge, Charlie felt her heart beat faster as the images resolved themselves into the school bus, its back door open, parked inside what looked like an old tobacco barn. It was darker even than the night toward the outer edges of the screen. The lighting focused on the bus seemed as if it was being supplied by lanterns and flashlights, which made it swoopy and uncertain.

  A man appeared on the screen. He was in full SWAT riot gear, with a helmet and a blackened face.

  “We’ve got three victims inside the barn,” the man reported, and Charlie felt a chill slide down her spine. “They were dead when we got here. No sign of anyone else. No pickup truck. Just the bus, with one dead inside and two dead on the ground.”

  A murmur of dismay ran through the group crowding around the monitor.

  “Can you identify the dead?” Hintz asked. Along with a quartet of fellow Virginia State Police officers, he was the closest to the laptop, leaning toward it with his hands flat on the table on which it rested.

  The man on the computer looked around and said, “Grell, get me a visual on the female. Lane, get me the males.”

  As Charlie heard the word female, her heart sank. Only two females had been left on the bus. That had to mean that either Bree or the chaperone, Tabitha Grunwald, was dead. Blindly she reached out and set her half-empty coffee cup down on a nearby table: she’d just managed to catch herself before her fingers crushed the flimsy Styrofoam.