by Kylie Brant
“If you don’t come with me, the monster said she’d blow me up.”
Sophia whirled around again to look at the boy. The monster. A horrible comprehension filled her. “Henry…Adams?”
He nodded. Tears ran down his face, but he made no sound. And perhaps that was the most heart wrenching of all. “She can turn it off. She’s got a clicker thing. But she can speed it up, too. She said she would if you don’t come with me.”
A cell rang. It added to the confusion and panic warring inside her. But the boy reached in his pocket, pulled out a black phone. Handed it to her. “Please.” He whispered. “If you don’t answer…I don’t want to get blowed up.”
She let out of sob of anguish. Unlocked the screen. And as if watching from a distance saw herself reach for the phone.
“I’ve been waiting to talk to you for a real long time, Doc.”
Sick fear unfurled inside her. She’d heard that voice once before. When Baxter had been pretending to be Rhonda Klaussen. Until that moment Sophia hadn’t realized how much she never wanted to hear it again.
“He says you can turn it off. Do it. Then just go. They don’t know how you got away yesterday. Head out of state. Find an airport. You’re free. You’ve earned that.”
“Always the shrink, huh?” The laugh on the other end was nasty. “I know exactly what they know. Or what they think they do. But I believe in choices, so here’s yours. The backpack is wired to blow if taken off, so try that, and you both die. Or you can shut the door on the kid and run and take cover in your bathtub, hoping that will save your ass when I detonate it. It won’t, but you can try that. Or you can walk out your door and across the yard with the kid. I had to park a ways away because of the feds watching your place, so you’ll have to move your ass. Way I figure it, you got under four minutes.”
Sophia couldn’t have moved if she tried. Her limbs were frozen, the blood in her veins congealed. Feds? How could she know about…
“No purse. No phone. No weapon,” the voice in her ear continued. “Better start moving.”
The boy gave a loud hiccupping sob, his little shoulders shaking.
Yesterday at the hospital she’d empathized with two men who had been faced with an impossible choice.
In the end it was no choice at all.
She made a grab for the one item she could reach that she thought would do the most good. Then opening the door, she took Henry Adams’ hand in hers and started walking across the yard.
* * * *
“Ring her again,” Cam said softly to Jenna Turner, who was seated next to him at the conference table. The female agent nodded grimly. Tapped Sophie’s number in.
It’d been thirty minutes since he’d talked to her. He let Tommy Franks fill in the members of the team collected in the room about the recent update this morning. His mind was too distracted.
Sophie wasn’t overly late. He tried to cling to that knowledge and concentrate on what Franks was saying. She’d likely walk in here at any moment in one of those two- piece suits of hers that made her look like she’d stepped out of a glossy women’s magazine. There was any number of reasonable explanations. The battery in her phone went dead. Her cell had fallen out of her purse, and she couldn’t reach it when she was driving.
Or Baxter had found vulnerability in the security system and was even now in his home threatening Sophie.
Jenna caught his eye, gave a slight shake of her head.
“…the BOLO has been released to all surrounding law enforcement agencies. State Patrol and an Air Wing plane are currently also…”
Cam left as Tommy Franks was winding down. He wasn’t going to sit and wait and worry. Not his style. Outside in the hallway he dialed FBI agent Del Harlow’s number. When the man answered, he said without preamble, “It’s Prescott. Can you contact the man you have on my place right now and ask if Sophie’s left and how long ago?”
“I was just about to call you.” At Harlow’s response, his gut turned to lead. “My guy just contacted me a few minutes ago and said she did leave the house, but not driving. She was walking hand in hand with some little kid. They went down a side street and got into a black SUV. Then it took off in the other direction. Weird enough that he thought he should call, ask if he should follow them.”
A cold blade of fear sliced through him. “Tell me you said to follow them.”
The man’s voice grew uneasy. “I dispatched another car to the scene, but you know as well as I do, the protection detail is for you and your home. But I’m worried, too. If Moreno found a way to get to you through Dr. Channing…”
“It’s not Moreno,” Cam said bleakly. Disconnecting, he took a moment to lean against the wall as a wave of desolation crashed through him.
Sophie.
She’d said it herself, early on. Sonny Baxter’s death had been a trigger for his mother. Whatever Vickie Baxter had gained from Vance’s escape, it hadn’t diminished her need for revenge.
The door pushed open then and Jenna walked out, her expression going concerned when she saw him. He pushed away from the wall and gave voice to the anguish that was gnawing inside him.
“Baxter’s got her.”
* * * *
She needed to stay awake. Sophia fought against the drug Baxter had injected her with and succeeded in opening her eyes. Black. That’s all she could see for an instant until her sluggish brain made sense of the visual image it had received. The backs of car seats. She was lying on her side on a seat. The vehicle was moving.
Unconsciousness approached and receded in a nauseating rhythm. The backpack was on the floor next to her. The digits on the clock no longer glowed red.
Her eyelids fluttered. She struggled to keep them open. Ordered her mind to focus. She needed to move. To think.
Sophia had been on the phone, hadn’t she? Yes. Baxter. Baxter had given her orders. Where to turn. How far to walk. Then, to get in the vehicle.
The SUV had seemed empty. The boy…Henry. She’d followed him in. Then Baxter had lunged from the back. The flash of the syringe. The prick of the needle.
Trying to think was like clawing cobwebs from her mind. She was in the rear seat, out of the reach of the driver. She could sit up. Signal a passing car. Kick out a window. But first she needed to get up.
A wave of lethargy hit her then, and she could feel herself sinking back into the black hole of nothingness again. Her mind sent a last dim command to her limbs to move. Then it became as unresponsive as her limbs.
* * * *
“You can’t be part of this.” Cam stared at Maria unflinchingly, without responding. “The hell of it is, you know it, too,” the SAC continued. He’d seen her spend all night on a stakeout and never move an eyelash, but she was moving now. Prowling the confines of his home office like a feral cat. “You and Sophia are personally involved. I’d have to be blind not to see it. Dammit, I suspected it weeks ago, but you denied it.”
Admitting to it would have gotten him removed from Vance’s case in a heartbeat after the man had snatched Sophie. Just like it was now.
He’d raced home with half the team in tow to look for himself. When Vance had held her in captivity, Sophie had managed to embed a message in the new profile she’d written to assuage the man, to refute the other one that had been released by the media.
But they’d torn the place apart. There was no note. No hidden message. No secret clues. Nothing but an open back door that acted as a stunning visual rebuke.
He never should have left her alone. Never. And the guilt he felt from doing so had seared itself on his soul.
“Give the lead to Franks,” he said finally. “He knows the case about as well as I do. But you aren’t taking me off this case. You can’t.”
The woman threw him a fierce look, but he knew her. The combativeness was a shield for her worry. “Wanna watch me?”
“You’ve had half of zone one’s MCU DCI agents affiliated with this case at one point or another. The other half doesn’t know the cas
e at all. It requires every man we’ve got, but more than that it requires knowledge. Not just someone who can read the case file, but someone who has breathed and lived the investigation. Who knows the nuances. The little seemingly inconsequential details that will suddenly make sense when joined with a newly discovered fact. Added to that…there’s no one on the team…hell in the entire division who doesn’t have a personal connection to Sophie. Including you. So are you going to recuse yourself? Call up another SAC to supervise?”
Seeing the answer in her expression, he pressed, “We are the ones who can find her. We’re the ones who know Baxter best. And if you sideline any of us—including me—you’ve reduced our chances. You’re not going to do that.”
The woman’s jaw worked. In a rare show of uncertainty she smoothed the tight knot she kept her dark hair contained in. He figured it was moments like these that had liberally threaded it with silver.
“On paper Franks will be lead,” she finally said. He felt no sense of triumph, no satisfaction at all. Her unspoken acquiescence had been inevitable. “You sent out the BOLO alert. Air Wing and state patrol are also searching for the vehicle. What else are you planning?”
“The only thing that will lead us to Baxter. I’m going to start thinking the way Sophie would.”
He went to the briefcase sitting next to the couch in the office and brought it to his desk. Digging in a drawer for a moment he brought out a letter opener and without finesse, pried the locked latches open. He took out her laptop and fired it up. This was easier. He knew the password.
While he waited he dug through the file folders she had in the case. Color-coded and labeled in her neat handwriting, he found Baxter’s file and pulled it out. It was the thickest one in there.
Jenna appeared in the doorway. “Do you want us to go…” She came in a few steps. “What are you doing?”
“Go get the rest of the agents. Divide up the file. I’ll go through her computerized notes. The answer is in here. Wherever Baxter took Sophie, it’s here. We just have to find it.”
Gonzalez was already moving. She took the red folder in his hand and turned away to crouch on the floor. Moving quickly, she divided up the contents into piles. “Wherever Baxter took her, it wasn’t to Kohler’s. The house has been cleared and the man doesn’t own any other property.”
Jenna had disappeared to return with Franks, Boggs and Samuels. “Take a portion of the paper copies,” Cam said from his seat behind the desk. He had his computer pushed aside and was engrossed in the case files on Sophie’s laptop. “Look for any thread, any person or place that ties, even loosely, to this case. Because if it’s one thing that Sophie kept saying, it was that Baxter would stay with the familiar. Remember her anchor. Remember her ties.”
They worked for an hour, all packed into the office. Instead of taking their assigned sheaf of papers to spread out somewhere else in the condo, agents were on the floor. Leaning against the wall. Or, in the case of Jenna and Patrick, on the couch.
“There’s that vet link.” Jenna looked up from the page in her hand, a note of excitement sounding in her voice. “Remember? When Vance took Sophie and you found a syringe with the paralytic on the floor of the bathroom? Toxicology report led us to listing vets in the area who had ordered the drugs. We made inquiries.”
Cam turned away from Sophie’s computer to bring up the case file on his. It took a few minutes to find the information. When he did, he ran a copy and Jenna unfolded her long legs from the couch to go get it. “We were left with a dozen or so names of vets who, when questioned, raised some red flags.”
He remembered. And then more pertinent leads had materialized, and the focus of the investigation had shifted. “Okay. Follow up. Concentrate on anything that might have tied them—even in the past—to one of the killers.” She went out the door. He knew she’d be headed for her laptop in her car outside.
“Okay, I was on this thing, then off, then on again so I missed some stuff.”
Cam looked at Samuels. They had started with the Department of Public Safety at the same time, but the other man had joined DCI at the beginning, while Cam had first worked for DNE. “But what strikes me as odd is the Coates kids. The son and daughter. Did they ever agree to speak to anyone on the team?”
Cam shook his head. “Sophie called a couple different times, I think. She got nowhere.”
“What’s up with that?” The man brushed his hand over his blonde crewcut. “Maybe they just don’t give a shit—out of sight out of mind and all that—but it’s weird. Maybe someone needs to get a face to face with those two.”
“They both live in California,” he said slowly, “but you may be on to something. The Coates place. I understand the ruins of the house are still there, that it was never torn down.”
“And that’s weird, too,” Samuels added.
“Sophie went there.” He stilled, searching his memory. “She wanted to get a feel for the place where Baxter spent some of her formative years.” Although to his mind, the makings of the killer in the woman had formed much earlier than when she’d gone to live with her relatives. “She spent a lot of time tugging at threads from Baxter’s past.” He thought best on his feet, so he rose, moving around the chair to grip the back of it. “She talked to old classmates. Neighbors.”
Gonzalez was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her gaze on him. “Manipulation. That’s what Sophia always said. Baxter would find a weakness. Leverage it.”
He went to Sophie’s computer again. Scrolled down until he found the information he wanted. “She lied to one guy about her son’s paternity. Got several thousand out of him before he shut it off. Sophie talked to several people whose names were also mentioned as possible fathers. Bobby Denholt was dishonest the first time she asked him about it. He only came clean later. Maybe the other guys lied, too.”
“That could be a helluva vulnerability to exploit,” Maria said. “No one would want their relationship with a serial killer made public. Even the rumor of it.”
“Then you can take the other names on that list. The ones she talked to about it. I’ll check out the Coates place and the Denholt connection.” Sophie had spent a lot of time following up on both. She’d seen something there, with both of the families that maybe he hadn’t given enough credence to.
With Sophie in Baxter’s custody, he didn’t have the luxury of evidence. He was going to go with his gut.
And his gut said to follow Sophie’s instincts.
* * * *
Sophia came to slowly, aware of little else aside from the painful ringing in her head. Wherever she was, it was dark. Faintly damp. The wall at her back was cement. The floor, too. Their chill had crept into her bones, settled there.
Her eyes strained, but she could only make out vague shapes in the almost total blanket of black. She tried to open her mouth to yell for help. And for the first time realized she had something across her lips. Tape.
Struggling, she pulled at her wrists, but they were bound tightly behind her. Her ankles were also secured. If she was able to get to a corner, she might be able to use the support to get to her feet. And upright she had a better chance of exploring her surroundings.
Sophia began to inch along the wall. The barn Vance had held her in had been dark, but when she’d escaped her cell she’d gone on an exploration by touch alone. Eventually she’d found some old tools to help pry open the door. She needed to get an idea of the place she was confined in to better plan an escape from it.
But she hadn’t gone more than a couple feet before she tripped over some unseen obstacle and fell. She had nothing to break her landing, so she tried to curl as she went down, taking the brunt of the contact with her hip and shoulder. She lay there gasping for air, the wind driven from her lungs. When her breathing eased she finally became aware of one thing about her surroundings.
