by Karen Rose
“Hell, Daniel. Tell me some good news.”
“I think I know where Janet was grabbed. I canvassed the area where the phone call to her boyfriend originated and found a guy behind the counter at a sub shop that remembers her, down to the meatball sub she ordered. They have her on their security tape making the order. Felicity didn’t find the sub in Janet’s stomach contents, so she never ate her dinner. I’m thinking he broke into her minivan and overpowered her when she came out.”
“Did we get the van on camera?”
“Nope. No cameras in the parking lot, only inside. And none of the surrounding businesses have cams either. I checked.”
Chase glared. “Then at least tell me the artist’s making some headway with the kid.”
“The artist isn’t available until tomorrow morning,” Daniel said, holding up a weary hand when Chase started to explode. “Don’t fight with me about it. Both artists are with victims. We’re next in the queue.”
“Then who’s got the kid now?” Chase demanded.
“Chase.” Mary McCrady came into Daniel’s office, giving Chase an admonishing look. “The kid’s name is Hope.”
Daniel had always liked Mary McCrady. She was slightly older than he was, slightly younger than Chase. She had a no-nonsense attitude about the world and never allowed anyone to intimidate her-or any of the patients she took under her wing.
Chase rolled his eyes. “I’m tired, Mary. For the last hour I’ve had my guts sliced and diced by my boss and his boss. Tell me you’ve made progress with Hope.”
Mary lifted a shoulder. “You’re a big boy, Chase. You can take a little slicing and dicing. Hope’s a traumatized child. She can’t.”
Chase started to rant, but Daniel cut him off. “What have you been able to learn, Mary?” Daniel asked calmly, and Mary sat down in one of his chairs.
“Not much. Dr. Fallon did exactly what I would have. She’s used play therapy and made Hope feel safe. I can’t pull anything out of Hope that she’s not ready to let go.”
“So you have nothing.” Chase banged his head against the wall. “Wonderful.”
Mary threw an annoyed glance over her shoulder. “I didn’t say we have nothing. I said we have not much.” She pulled a piece of paper from her folder. “She drew this.”
Daniel studied the page. It was the crude drawing style of a child, one figure prone, the head scribbled over with red. The other figure, male and standing upright, nearly filled the page. “It’s more than we’ve gotten before. Since she was found in that closet on Friday she’s only colored predrawn pictures in coloring books.”
Mary got up and went around to his side of the desk. “As close as we can figure, this is Bailey.” She pointed to the prone figure.
“Yeah, that I got. The red was the giveaway.” He looked up at her from the corner of his eye. “Meredith Fallon told you about the pizza sauce and the Play-Doh, right?”
“Yes.” Mary frowned. “I hated to push this baby this far, but we need to find out exactly what she saw.” She pointed to the figure standing up. “Bailey’s attacker.”
“Well, yeah, I got that, too. He’s huge, three times bigger than Bailey.”
“It’s not the man’s actual size,” Mary said.
“It’s his threat, his power,” Chase said from the door and looked a bit sheepish when Mary looked up, surprised. “I’m not a monster, Mary. I know this kid’s been through hell. But the sooner she gets it out, the sooner you can start… fixing her.”
Mary sighed with affectionate exasperation. “We’ll treat her, Chase. Not fix her.” She looked back down at the picture. “He’s wearing a cap.”
“A baseball cap?” Daniel asked.
“Hard to say. Kids her age only have a limited number of graphic images they can draw. All hats mostly look the same. All figures look the same. But look at his hand.”
Daniel rubbed his eyes and brought the picture close. “A stick. Dripping with blood.”
“Did Ed’s team find any bloody sticks?” she asked.
“They’re still processing the scene,” Daniel said. “They’ve set up lights in the woods, looking for the place where Hope might have hidden. Why’s the stick so small?”
“Because she’s repressing it,” Chase said. “It terrifies her, so she makes it as small as she can in her mind.”
Mary nodded. “Pretty much. I thought you’d want to see this. We broke for the night. After we got this, I was afraid to push her anymore. We can continue tomorrow. Get some rest, Daniel.” One side of her mouth lifted. “Doctor’s orders.”
“I’ll try. Good night, Mary.” When she’d gone, Daniel looked at Hope’s drawing, feeling guilty and torn. “Part of me wants all three of them in a safe house, Alex, Hope, and Meredith. But so far Hope and Alex are our only link to whoever’s orchestrating this. If we hide them away…”
Chase nodded. “I know. I increased the police presence. Twenty-four-seven. That’s part of what was on the agenda in this last meeting.”
“That should settle Alex’s mind. And mine. Thank you, Chase.”
“Mary’s right. Get some sleep, Daniel. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I’ll have Ed meet us at eight,” Daniel said, mentally calculating how long the commute would be from Dutton to the GBI building with morning traffic. Because even with the police presence outside, Daniel wasn’t taking any chances. There was a sofa in the bungalow’s living room. He’d be sleeping there tonight.
Tuesday, January 30, 9:00 p.m.
His cell phone rang. The one that wasn’t registered in his name. He didn’t have to look at the caller ID. He was the only one who ever called this number.
“Yeah.” He sounded tired to his own ears. Because he was. Body and… soul. If he still had a soul. He remembered the look in Rhett Porter’s eyes. Help me.
“Is it done?” His voice was cold and would suffer no weakness.
So he straightened his spine. “Yeah. Rhett went up in a blaze of glory.”
He grunted. “Shoulda fed him to the gators like you did DJ.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t. I didn’t have time to get down to the swamp and back. Look, I’m tired. I’m going home and-”
“No, you’re not.”
He wanted to sigh, but he sucked it in. “And why not?”
“Because you’re not finished.”
“I’ll take care of Fallon. I’ve already got plans in motion. Discreet plans.”
“Good, but now there’s more. Vartanian went out to dinner tonight with Alex Fallon and Bailey’s kid.”
“The kid’s talking?”
“No.” There was an angry pause. “But she covered her face in pizza sauce. Like she was covered in blood.”
He froze, his mind wildly searching for an explanation. “That’s impossible. She was in the closet. She didn’t see anything.”
“Then maybe she’s psychic.” The words were biting and harsh. “But Bailey’s kid saw something, Sweetpea.”
His gut twisted. “No.” She’s just a child. He’d never… “She’s only a little girl.”
“If she saw you, you’re fucked.”
“She didn’t see me.” Desperation clawed at his throat. “I was outside.”
“Then you went inside.”
“But all she would have seen is me trashing the place. I grabbed Bailey outside.”
“And I’m telling you a restaurant full of people saw that kid cover her face in sauce.”
“Kids do that. Nobody’ll think anything of it.”
“On its own, perhaps not.”
“What else?” he asked dully.
“Sheila Cunningham.”
He closed his eyes. “What did she say?”
“Mostly that Bailey wasn’t the trashy slut everyone’s made her out to be. And that while everyone is upset about the rich girls’ being dead, that nobody cared about the regular girls, that nobody cares about Bailey.”
“That’s all?” He felt marginally better. “So she didn�
�t say anything.”
“Weren’t you listening to me?”
“Yes, I was,” he said, defensive now. “What are you talking about?”
There was total silence on the other end, and in the quiet, the words clicked.
“Oh, hell.”
“Yeah. And you can bet good old Danny boy heard it, too. He’s no idiot.”
He absorbed the barb. “So did he talk any more with Sheila?”
“Not yet. He whisked Bailey’s kid out of there so fast it made everybody’s head spin. But he did give Sheila his card.”
Fuck. “Were you there?”
“Yes. I saw it all. And people are talking all over town.”
“Has Vartanian gone back to talk to Sheila again?”
“Not yet. They took the kid back to the place the Fallon woman is renting, then fifteen minutes later all four of them piled in Vartanian’s car and headed out of town.”
“Wait. I thought you said there were three.”
“You don’t know what’s going on in your own town, do you? The Tremaine woman’s brought her cousin in to help her take care of the kid. The woman’s a kid shrink.”
What little hope he had of being able to control what happened next fizzled and died. “You want them all gone?”
“Discreetly. If Vartanian knows they’re dead, he won’t stop till he finds out who did it. So make it look like they all just went home.”
“He’ll find out sooner or later.”
“And by then I will have dealt with him. Take care of Sheila first, then the other three. Call me when you’re done.”
Tuesday, January 30, 11:30 p.m.
Mack looked up from the ’Vette’s engine to where Gemma Martin lay on his makeshift garage floor, wide-eyed, hog-tied, and terrified. “You’ve kept the engine well maintained,” he said with approval. “This one I believe I’ll keep.” He had buyers already lined up for the Z and the Mercedes. It was one of the few perks of being inside. You met all kinds of helpful people.
“Who are you?” she said hoarsely and Mack laughed.
“You know who I am.”
She shook her head. “Please. If it’s money you want…”
“Oh, I want money and I’ve got a good bit of yours.” He held up the cash he’d found in her purse. “Once I carried around a wad like this. But times change and tables turn.” Feeling a bit like one of the old Mission: Impossible agents, he peeled off the thin latex with which he’d covered his cheeks. Along with makeup, it had allowed him to hide his one identifying feature.
Gemma’s eyes widened even more. “No. You’re in prison.”
He chuckled. “Obviously not anymore, but logic was never your strong suit.”
“You killed Claudia and Janet.”
“And didn’t they deserve it?” he said mildly. He sat down on the floor next to her. “And don’t you?”
“We were kids.”
“You were bitches. Tonight you’ll be a dead bitch.” He pulled his switchblade from his pocket and began cutting away her clothes. “You three thought you were so clever.”
“We didn’t mean any harm,” she cried.
“What did you think would happen, Gemma?” he said, still mildly. “I asked you to the prom, you agreed. But you didn’t want to go. I was no longer of your class.”
“I’m sorry.” She was crying now, huge terrified tears.
“Well, it’s too late for that now, even if I were so inclined to accept. Which I’m not. Do you remember that night, Gemma? Because I do. I remember picking you up in my sister-in-law’s old car because it was all we had left to drive. I expected you to offer your own car. I should have been suspicious when you didn’t. I remember meeting your friends. Then I don’t remember anything else until I woke up hours later, naked at a rest stop a hundred miles away. My car was gone and so were you and your friends.”
“We didn’t mean anything,” she said, choking on her sobs.
“Yes, you did. You meant for me to be humiliated and I was. I remember what happened after that. I remember waiting in the bushes until a man about my size stopped to use the john. I stole his car so that I could get home. He came back while I was still hot-wiring his engine. He and I fought and I was so angry at you that I beat him unconscious. I hadn’t made it five miles before the cops pulled me over. Assault, battery, grand theft. I did four years because nobody in Dutton would help me. Nobody would help my mother raise the bail. Nobody helped me get a decent lawyer.
“You didn’t mean anything,” he finished coldly. “But you took everything. Now, I get to take your everything.”
“Please,” she sobbed. “Please don’t kill me.”
He laughed. “When the pain gets so bad, you scream that for me, sugar.”
Dutton, Tuesday, January 30, 11:30 p.m.
Daniel pulled into the bungalow’s driveway. The car had been silent since they’d left Atlanta. In the back Meredith and Hope slept soundly. Beside him, Alex had been awake and deep in troubled thought. Several times he’d almost asked what was wrong, but the question was ludicrous. What wasn’t wrong? Alex’s life had fallen apart once. It was doing so again. And I’m about to make it a million times worse for her.
Because the silence had given him time to finally think, to start pulling pieces together, and a single phrase wouldn’t leave him alone. It had been pushed to the back of his mind with the appearance of Garth Davis and Hope’s breakthrough. The phrase had come from Shelia at the pizza parlor, bitterly delivered through her red lips.
Nobody cared about the regular girls. Cared. Sheila the waitress had used the present tense when talking about “the rich girls” and Bailey. Everybody’s upset about the rich girls. Nobody cares about Bailey.
But nobody cared about the regular girls. He was starting to understand. When he’d first looked at Sheila’s face, he’d seen something he’d recognized. First he thought he’d known her from school. But that’s not where he’d seen her before.
He killed the engine and the silence became complete, except for the rhythmic breathing from the backseat. Alex’s gaze moved to the unmarked police car parked on her curb, her profile silvered from the pale light of the moon. Delicate, was the way he had described her in his mind yesterday morning. She looked fragile now. But he knew she was neither. Alex Fallon might be stronger than any of them. He hoped she was strong enough to endure what he knew he could keep secret no longer.
He’d wait until Meredith and Hope slept. Then he’d tell her and accept whatever her reaction would be. Whatever penance he’d have to do. But she had a right to know.
“Your boss moved quickly,” she murmured, referring to the unmarked car.
“It’s either this or a safe house. Do you want a safe house, Alex?”
She looked to the backseat. “For them, maybe, but not for me. If I hide, I can’t look for Bailey, and I think I’m getting close.” She dropped her eyes to her palms. “Or, at least, somebody doesn’t want me looking. Which, unless I’ve watched too much television, means I’m making somebody nervous.”
She was speaking in her cool voice. She was afraid. But he couldn’t lie to her. “I think that’s a fair assumption. Alex…” He let out a quiet breath. “Let’s go inside. There are things you need to know.”
“Like what?”
“Let’s go inside.”
She grabbed his arm, then flinched and pulled her scraped palm away. “Tell me.”
Her eyes had widened and in them he saw her fear. He shouldn’t have said anything until they were inside and alone. But he had, so he’d tell her what he could now, just to get her in the house. “Beardsley is missing.”
Her mouth fell open. “I just saw him yesterday.” Pained understanding filled her eyes. “Somebody’s been watching me since then.”
“I think that’s a fair assumption, too.”
She pursed her lips. “You need to know something, too. While Dr. McCrady was in with Hope, I called Bailey’s best friend from the salon. Her name is Sissy. I’d bee
n trying to call off and on all day, but I never got through. I just got her answering machine. So I used one of the phones there at your office. She picked up right away.”
“You think she was avoiding your phone number?”
“I know she was. When I told her who I was, she got defensive. I asked her if I could come talk to her about Bailey and she said she didn’t really know Bailey all that well. That I should talk to one of the other girls at the salon.”
“But the owner said she was Bailey’s best friend?”
“He said Bailey stayed over at her house every Saturday night. And the social worker said Sissy was the one to come to Bailey’s house on Friday.”
“Somebody got to her then,” Daniel said.
“Sissy has a daughter, old enough to babysit Hope when Bailey worked on Saturdays.” Alex bit her lower lip. “If somebody threatened Sissy, and Beardsley’s missing, maybe Sister Anne and Desmond are in danger, too.”
Daniel reached over and pressed his thumb to her lip, smoothing away the marks her teeth had left behind. “I’ll have a unit go by the shelter and Desmond’s house.” He pulled his hand away. He’d wanted to hold her all day. The quiet had just intensified his need. “Let’s get Hope into bed. It’s late.”
Alex had the back door open and was reaching for Hope, but Daniel gently nudged her aside. “You unlock the front door. I’ll carry her in.” He shook Meredith’s shoulder and she jerked awake, blinking. He unlocked the child seat and lifted Hope into his arms. She cuddled against his shoulder, too exhausted to be afraid.
He followed Alex into the bungalow, conscious of the agents Chase had assigned to watch. He’d known and trusted Hatton and Koenig for years. He gave them a nod as he passed. He’d come back out and talk to them in a few minutes.
Riley sat up when they came in, immediately padding over to follow them.
Alex led him to the bedroom on the left. Gently he laid Hope on the bed and slipped off her shoes. “Do you want to change her into her pajamas?” he whispered.
She shook her head. “It won’t hurt her to sleep in her clothes,” she whispered back.
