She remembered the incident with the watermelons when Ellie was fourteen. Had Rachel and Paul been involved then? Had she been out partying in the fields and things got out of hand? Regardless, the remembered episode lent credence to what Ellie was telling her now.
“Okay,” Sabrina said, going over it in her mind, “what happens after you get to the irrigation shed?”
“Paul had the key. He’d brought a case of beer and everyone starts drinking, partying,” Ellie says quietly. “About an hour after we got there, Rachel and Paul started to fight, which was totally normal. She tells Paul we’re leaving and we started walking.”
“Did you guys make it home?” Sabrina said, remembering her own walk home the night Wade abducted her. She’d almost made it. She could still remember the lights above the row of apartment mailboxes, the dull shine of them bringing on a starburst of hope in her chest as she hurried home. She’d almost made it before Wade’s hand fell against her mouth.
Almost.
“She was pretty drunk so after we left, her fight with Paul became her fight with me. It was a long walk home and we didn’t even make it to the main road before she wanted to go back, but I refused,” Ellie said. “When we finally got to her house, we were fighting so bad, I decided to walk the rest of the way home. When I left she was standing on her front porch, looking for her keys.”
The fast skim she’d given Rachel’s rape file at the station didn’t say anything about Ellie or that she’d been with her. It also didn’t say anything about Rachel sneaking out of the house to party with Paul Vega either, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. All it meant was that the Vega family had a long reach and deep pockets. Long and deep enough to erase witnesses and suspects as if they never existed.
“The report doesn’t mention any of this.” She had to say it, even if she believed her. “The party. The relationship between Rachel and Paul. You being there. His friends. None of it’s documented. Why is that?”
“I’d caused my mother so much grief already …” Ellie said, looking miserable. “I knew right away that it was Paul. It had to be, but … he had a temper. I’d seen him lose it on Rachel more than once. I was afraid of what he would do—what his family would do—if I said anything. After a few days, I made up my mind that I was going to the police but then …”
“But then they found Rachel.”
Ellie nodded. “When they found her, I was sure she’d say something. That she’d tell them it was Paul and his friends who’d raped her, but she didn’t. She lied for him.”
“Did you know everyone there that night, Ellie?” Sabrina said. “Had you met Paul’s friends before?”
Ellie’s brow furrowed for a moment while she rifled through memories, her eyes widening just a bit when she landed on the one she was looking for. “Kids from school. I think his cousin was there. A few of his friends … one guy I’d never seen before.”
“What did he look like?”
“White guy. Around Paul’s age. Kinda cute …” she said slowly. “I think his name was Wayne.”
Wayne Conway was the name Wade had used to fly to and from Arizona to meet Nulo. To teach him how to kill. If Paul Vega had been the one to abduct and rape Rachel Meeks, he hadn’t done it alone. He’d had a partner.
Wade.
“Did Paul have a nickname in high school?”
Ellie looked confused for a moment. “Not that I know of, why?”
Sabrina shook her head. “Did anyone ever call him Nulo?”
“Nulo?” Ellie said, her face crumpling again. “No. What’s this about?”
Before she could answer, the main door to the sanctuary opened, letting in a bright burst of sunlight. She opened her mouth to share her theory as if shafted across the chapel, but the words dried on her tongue as she caught movement from the corner of her eye.
It was the guy from the hotel stairwell. Different clothes. Mirrored aviators to obscure his features, but it was him. He moved down the center aisle toward the front of the church without so much as a glance in her direction, but she knew his being here wasn’t an accident. He didn’t look like a Pip—one of Livingston Shaw’s personal watchdogs—but she’d learned the hard way that that didn’t mean anything. Church didn’t look like a Pip either and she’d been one of Shaw’s most vicious operatives before she defied him by letting Sabrina’s family live.
She watched him over Ellie’s shoulder as he knelt in front of the altar, moving his hand in the sign of the cross before bowing his head. As it fell, he turned it slightly, casting a quick look over his shoulder that landed right on her. She shifted in her seat, planting her feet to push herself up to go after him. To ask him what he was doing here. Why he was following her.
“Agent Vance.”
She turned, looking up to find Mark Alvarez standing over her. He didn’t so much as look at Ellie, but there was no other way he could’ve known where Sabrina was.
“Yes?” she said, dividing a look between him and the man at the front of the church. He was no longer looking at her. Crossing himself again quickly, he stood before moving toward the door that led to the prayer garden. She needed to follow him. Find out—
“I tried calling you,” Alvarez said, finally flicking a glance in Ellie’s direction. “But you didn’t answer … we need to go.” Santos stood at the back of the aisle, nearly lost in the shadows of the chapel’s atrium.
“Go where?” She stood, aiming a quick glance at Santos over Alvarez’s shoulder. He looked tired. “What happened?” she said, even though she knew.
“There’s another body. And this one is different.”
Forty-four
Berlin, Germany
Ben stepped off the elevator on the sixtieth floor, moving quickly across the reception area of his father’s office suite, cloned keycard in his hand.
When he’d gotten out of the shower, the card had been in an envelope slid under his door and Celine was long gone. His father had meetings in London before heading to South Korea. That meant she would be scuttling along behind him, juggling his schedule like a perfectly coiffured circus clown. It also meant his father’s office was empty.
Empty or not, security remained tight. Aside from the Pips—the less-than-flattering nickname Michael had given to lower-level FSS operatives—and surveillance cameras, each of his father’s office suites was equipped with added measures. Like its original, the keycard he’d scanned and cloned was embedded with a microchip. Once that chip was scanned it would send a signal, alerting the small army his father called a security detail that his office had been breached. Since he and Celine were currently somewhere between Berlin and London, that presented a problem.
As soon as Ben swiped the card, the clock would start ticking. He figured he had less than three minutes before he was surrounded by Pips. That meant he had less than that to get into his father’s desk and get what he came for. Taking a deep breath, he let it out slowly while he settled the tip of the card into the reader, sliding it downward swiftly.
The door let out a soft click.
Ben pushed it open. Not bothering to close it behind him, he crossed the sea of blood-red carpet, heading straight for the desk. Angled in front of the vast bank of floor-to-ceiling windows, he took a seat behind it before reaching into his breast pocket, producing a large folding knife. While he had no doubt Michael had the skills to pick the lock in the time it would take him to sneeze, he wasn’t that good. His B&E skills were more angry looter than international art thief. Before he could go to work on the lock, his cell rang.
“What?” he said, in lieu of hello, putting the call on speaker before tossing it on the desk.
“You got company,” Lark said, his tone stuck somewhere between amusement and panic. “About eight of them. Four in the stairwell, the other four in the elevator. You’ve got less than a minute.”
Fuck. They were faster than he’
d thought.
“So …” He worked the flat of his knife between the collar of the lock and the hard wood of the drawer. “Stop ’em,” he said through clenched teeth, giving the blade a vicious jerk. The following metallic twang of the lock falling apart inside the desk drawer was music to his ears.
“I hate this shit, you know that, right?” Lark griped, but in the background Ben could hear his fingers clacking across his computer keyboard.
He laughed, couldn’t help it. “Bullshit. You love it.”
“What’s to love, motherfucker?” Lark bitched while he worked. “You and Mikey keepin’ me buried in shit? Knowing that when I start doing you assholes favors, a messy, painful death is all I’m probably gonna get out of it? A brother can’t even catch … there.” One final clack followed by a sigh of relief. “Got the group in the stairwell jammed up on fifty-eight and the elevator is stuck between fifty-nine and sixty. Now hurry your cracker ass up because it won’t hold them for long.”
“Keep your panties on, Green Mile, I’m in,” Ben said, yanking the drawer open, sending the scrapped lock bouncing and flying across the carpet. “Give it another twenty and then let them out.” He hung up on a string of Lark’s protests.
Snagging the file, Ben slipped it into the zippered lining of his suit jacket. There was no time to open it now. He’d have to take it with him. He’d been about to shut the drawer when he caught sight of it. Beneath the file was a key. Not a plastic card but an actual key. The two-pronged metal piece was as long and thick as his finger. Deep, jagged cuts on each side, the head of it nearly as wide as his fist. He’d never seen it before.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t know what it opened.
He could scan it, have Lark make him a copy like he had with Celine’s card, but there was no time. A quick glance at the clock told him he had less than ten seconds and both escape routes were clogged with his father’s goons.
On impulse he swiped the key and dropped it into his pocket along with his cell phone. Lifting the lid on the humidor his father kept on his desk, he pulled out an Opus X, cut the tip, and stood, taking a stroll to the sleek, polished sideboard his father kept stocked with liquor.
Down the hall, he heard the elevator let out a discreet chime, followed almost immediately by the loud bang of the stairwell door being thrown open. Within seconds his father’s office was flooded with Pips, guns drawn and pointed straight at him.
Showtime.
“Afternoon, fellas,” he said, cigar still clamped between his teeth, turning slightly to cast a dismissive glance at them over his shoulder. There were nearly twice as many as the eight Lark had counted. He lifted the stopper from the mouth of a cut crystal decanter before bringing it to his nose. Scotch. He hated scotch. He poured himself a couple of fingers anyway and turned to face them. He scissored the Opus between his fingers to pull it out of his mouth. “Something wrong?”
Guns were immediately dropped but they weren’t reholstered. A few of them had been there the day his father had ordered his head of security to put a bullet through Ben’s hand to stop him from saving his brother. Most had heard the story about what Ben had done to the man afterward. All of them knew what he was capable of.
Which meant none of them wanted to be the first one to approach him.
He sipped his scotch and watched them. Fifteen of them now, all displaying varying degrees of apprehension. Waiting for him to make a move. Finally one of them found his balls and spoke up.
“What are you doing in here, sir?” Mr. Ballsy said, the FSS-issued Kimber twitching in his hand as his flat brown eyes slid across the room, over the surface of the desk before landing on the pilfered drawer. “Mr. Shaw left for London an hour ago.”
“I wanted a cigar.” He moved to the front of the desk, still grinning. “You guys want one?” he said, spinning the humidor around to face them. A few of them flinched like he’d just pulled the pin on a grenade.
“No, sir,” Mr. Ballsy said, shaking his head, trying like hell to put some bass in his tone. “You really shouldn’t be in here.”
“Yeah, well …” He slammed the rest of his drink before gently setting the glass on the edge of the desk with a pronounced click. “What are you prepared to do about it?”
“I, uh … I …” Mr. Ballsy looked around, hoping to find someone to back his play. Unfortunately for him, players were in short supply. “I’m gonna have to ask you to come with me, sir,” he finally managed, his eyes widening just a touch, like even he couldn’t believe what he was saying.
“I’ll leave when I’m ready.” Leaning across the desk, he reached into the drawer and fished around while all fifteen of them tensed up, hands flexing around the grips of their guns. He pulled out the large desktop lighter his father kept there. “And I can guaran-fuckin’-tee that when I do leave, it won’t be with you, sweet cheeks,” he said before sticking the cigar back into his mouth. Lifting the lighter, he clicked it, turning his head to the side so he could catch the short burst of flame, puffing on it until the blunt end of the cigar glowed red.
He stood there for a moment, puffing on a two-hundred-dollar cigar he didn’t want, letting the room fill with smoke, making sure every single one of them knew he was here and there wasn’t a fucking thing any of them could do about it. The file he’d taken pressed against his ribs. The key weighed heavy in his pocket. The fact that he took them wouldn’t stay hidden for long. As soon as he left, this chump would call his father and fill him in on his latest episode. Hopefully the show he was putting on would buy him a few hours—just another one of Ben’s tantrums—before his father realized what he’d really been up to.
He pulled the Opus from between his teeth, flicking a considerable amount of ash onto his father’s desk blotter, the movement of it putting the mass of gnarled scar tissue in the center of his hand on display. He smiled, reaching into the humidor to scoop up a few thousand dollars’ worth of cigars. “Now,” he said, “I’m ready to leave.”
He strolled across the room, Pips parting like the Red Sea. As he passed, he tucked a cigar into each of their breast pockets, smiling. Not one of them was willing to make eye contact with him, much less actually try to detain him. Stopping in front of Mr. Ballsy, he slipped a cigar into the guy’s pocket before pressing his fingertips against his chest. His heart hammered wildly beneath the pressure of Ben’s hand. Ben’s smile widened. “Don’t worry,” he said in mock whisper, the thick, cloying smoke of the Opus X in his hand curling around his nose. “When my father and I have a conversation about this, I’ll make sure to tell him how forceful you were.” He winked before fitting the cigar between his teeth and walking out the door.
In the outer office, he passed by Celine’s empty desk and felt a twinge, remembering what Gloria had said earlier about her. About how his father would kill her if he found out they were sleeping together. Once his father figured out what he’d really been up to and how he gained access to his office …
“Sorry, sweetheart, my boat is full,” he muttered under his breath, swiping the keycard through the reader for his father’s private elevator. He waited less than a half a second before its door slid open.
Stepping inside, he turned to find them all where he’d left them, standing there, clustered in the doorway of his father’s office, cigars sticking out of their pockets like party favors, staring at him like he was some sort of rabid dog who’d slipped its chain. Like he was unpredictable. Indiscriminately dangerous. Someone you didn’t want in your blind spot. Not ever.
They had no idea.
As the elevator door slipped closed, Ben gave them one last grin. Lifting his scarred hand, he waved good-bye.
Forty-five
Yuma, Arizona
Sabrina turned the key in the ignition, switching the car off but she didn’t get out. Not yet. A few yards away, she watched Ellie climb out of her late-model compact while Alvarez and Santos slammed the do
or closed on their unmarked. None of them looked in her direction but she knew they were all waiting for her, the FBI agent, to get out and take charge of the situation. She yanked on the door handle, throwing it open before stepping her foot onto the rain-softened ground.
She could see bright yellow tape fluttering in the breeze, wound around bushes and sharp outcroppings of rocks—but that’s all she could see. At first glance, the crime scene looked deserted.
“Where’s your partner?” Santos said, meeting her at the hood of her car while Alvarez and Ellie walked ahead, heads bent while they talked quietly, shoulder to shoulder.
“She pulled the short straw—eight a.m. debrief with our SO,” she said, the lie delivered so smoothly that for a moment, even she believed it. “She’s going to meet me at the station later.”
Sabrina thought about where Church really was: running down the legal name attached to the PO box used to exchange letters with Wade. There was a definite link between what happened to her nearly twenty years ago and what was happening now. She didn’t want to say anything until she’d untangled the truth.
You sure you’re ready for the truth, darlin’? You sure you even know what it looks like anymore?
“You ready for this?” he said as they started walking toward the crime scene, hands dug into his pockets like they were out for an evening stroll.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” The question echoed Wade’s. Hearing it out loud sharpened her tone. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Santos pulled his hands from his pockets and held them up in surrender. “I just meant that chasing after these serial killer freaks probably gets old after a while, is all.”
“You could say that.” The corner of her mouth lifted in a wry smile “Sorry—I’m running on two cups of coffee and about three hours sleep.” She’d been up well into the small hours of the morning, reading Wade’s journals and the letters he’d received from Nulo during their correspondence. Croft had been right—the two of them had been partners in at least three kills, possibly more.
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