by Lisa Gardner
The log came out of nowhere. A dead tree probably felled by lightning decades ago. She connected first with her shin, couldn’t bite back her sharp cry of pain, and went toppling down the other side. Her palms scraped savagely across a thorny shrub. Then her shoulder hit the rock-hard ground and her breath was knocked from her body.
The faint crackle of twigs behind her. Calm. Controlled. Contained.
Is this how death comes? Slowly walking through the woods?
Tina’s shin throbbed. Her lungs refused to inhale. She staggered to her feet anyway and tried one more step.
A faint whistle through the dark. A short stabbing pain. She looked down and spotted the feathery dart now protruding from her left thigh. What the …
She tried to take a step. Her mind commanded her body, screamed with primal urgency: Run, run, run! Her legs buckled. She went down in the knee-high grass as a strange, fluid warmth filled her veins and her muscles simply surrendered.
The panic was receding from her consciousness. Her heart slowed. Her lungs finally unlocked, giving easily into that next soft breath. Her body started to float, the woods spinning away.
Drugs, she thought. Doomed. And then even that thought wafted out of her reach.
Footsteps, coming closer. Her last image, his face, gazing down at her patiently.
“Please,” Tina murmured thickly, her hands curling instinctively around her belly. “Please … Don’t hurt me … I’m pregnant.”
The man simply hefted her unconscious form over his shoulder and carried her away.
Nora Ray Watts had a dream. In her dream it was blue and pink and purple. In her dream the air felt like velvet and she could spin around and around and still see the bright pinpricks of stars. In her dream, she was laughing and her dog Mumphry danced around her feet and even her worn-out parents finally wore a smile.
The only thing missing, of course, was her sister.
Then a door opened. Yawned black and gaping. It beckoned her toward it, drew her in. Nora Ray walked toward it, unafraid. She had taken this door before. Sometimes she fell asleep these days just so she could find it again.
Nora Ray stepped inside the shadowy depths——
And in the next instant, she was jerked awake. Her mother stood over her in the darkened room, her hand on her shoulder.
“You were dreaming,” her mother said.
“I saw Mary Lynn,” Nora Ray countered sleepily. “I think she has a friend.”
“Shhh,” her mother told her. “Let her go, baby. It’s only the heat.”
CHAPTER 6
Quantico, Virginia
7:03 A.M.
Temperature: 83 degrees
“Get out of bed.”
“No.”
“Get out of bed!”
“No.”
“Kimberly, it’s seven o’clock. Get up!”
“Can’t make me.”
The voice finally disappeared. Thank God. Kimberly sank blissfully back down into the desperately needed blackness. Then … a bolt of ice-cold water slapped across her face. Kimberly jerked upright in the bed, gasping for breath as she frantically wiped the deluge from her eyes.
Lucy stood beside her, holding an empty water pitcher, and looking unrepentant. “I have a five-year-old son,” she said. “Don’t mess with me.”
Kimberly’s gaze had just fallen on the bedside clock. Seven-ten A.M.
“Aaaagh!” she yelped. She jumped out of bed and looked wildly around the room. She was supposed to be … supposed to do … Okay, get dressed. She bolted for the closet.
“Late night?” Lucy asked with a raised brow as she trailed behind Kimberly. “Let me guess. Physical training or firearms training or both?”
“Both.” Kimberly found her khaki pants, tore them on, then remembered she was supposed to report to the PT course first thing this morning, and ripped off her khakis in favor of a fresh pair of blue nylon shorts.
“Nice bruises,” Lucy commented. “Want to see the one on my ass? Seriously, I look like a side of beef. I used to be a trial lawyer, you know. I swear I once drove something called a Mercedes.”
“I thought that’s what drug dealers had.” Kimberly found her T-shirt, yanked it on while walking into the bathroom, then made the mistake of looking in the mirror. Oh God. Her eyes looked like they’d collapsed into sunken pits.
“I spoke to my son last night,” Lucy was saying behind her. “Kid’s telling everyone I’m learning to shoot people—but only the bad ones.”
“That’s sweet.”
“You think?”
“Absolutely.” Kimberly found the toothpaste, brushed furiously, spit, rinsed, then made the mistake of looking in the mirror a second time, and fled the bathroom.
“You look like hell,” Lucy said cheerfully. “Is that your strategy? You’re going to scare the bad guys into surrendering with your looks?”
“Remember which one of us is better with a gun,” Kimberly muttered.
“Yeah, and remember which one of us is better with a pitcher of water!” Lucy brandished her weapon triumphantly, then, with a final glance at the clock, replaced the pitcher on top of her desk and headed for the door. Then she paused. “Seriously, Kimberly, maybe you should curtail the midnight sessions for a bit. You have to be conscious to graduate.”
“Have fun shooting,” Kimberly called after her exiting roommate while frantically lacing her sneakers. Lucy was gone. And in another second, Kimberly was also out the door.
Kimberly was a lucky girl after all. She could pinpoint the exact moment when her whole career fell apart. It happened at eight twenty-three A.M. That morning. At the FBI Academy. With only seven weeks to go.
She was tired, disoriented from too little sleep and a strange midnight chase with a Georgia special agent. She’d been pushing herself too hard. Maybe she should’ve listened to Lucy after all.
She thought about it a lot. Later, of course. After they’d taken away the body.
Things started out fine enough. PT training wasn’t so hard. Eight A.M., they did some pushups, then some sit-ups. Then the good old jumping jacks everyone learns in grade school. They looked like a sea of blue-clad kids. All obediently standing in line. All obediently going through the motions.
Then they were sent out to run three miles, using the same course Kimberly had jogged just last night.
The PT course started in the woods. Not a difficult path. Hell, it was paved. That would be one hint of where to go. The signs were another hint. Run! Suck it in! Love it! Endure.
They started as a herd, then gradually thinned out as people found their individual paces. Kimberly had never been the fastest in her class. She generally wasn’t the slowest either.
Except this morning. This morning she almost immediately fell behind.
Vaguely, she was aware of her classmates pulling ahead. Vaguely, she was aware of her own labored breathing as she struggled to keep up. Her left side ached. Her feet were sluggish. She stared down at the blacktop, willing one foot to land in front of the other.
She didn’t feel well. The world tilted dangerously, and she thought for a moment that she was honestly going to faint. She just made it off the path and grabbed a tree for support.
God, her side hurt, the muscle stitched so tight it felt as if it had a vise-grip on her lungs. And the damn air was so hot already, filled with so much humidity that no matter how many times she inhaled, she couldn’t get enough oxygen.
She headed deeper into the woods, desperately seeking shade. Green trees whirled sickeningly, while goose bumps suddenly burst out across her arms. She started shivering uncontrollably.
Dehydration or heat sickness, she thought idly. Is that good enough for you yet, Kimberly, or would you like to take this self-destructive streak a step further?
The woods spun faster. A faint roaring filled her ears while black dots spotted in front of her eyes. Breathe, Kimberly. Come on, honey, breathe.
She couldn’t do it. Her side wouldn’t unlock. She coul
dn’t draw a breath. She was going to pass out in the woods. She was going to collapse onto this hard, leaf-strewn ground and all she wanted was for the dirt to feel cool against her face.
And then the thoughts rushed her all at once.
Last night, and the genuine terror that had seized her by the throat when she’d seen a strange man standing beside her. She had thought … What? That it was her turn? That death had come for every other woman in her family? That she’d barely escaped six years ago, but that didn’t mean death was done with her yet?
She thought that she spent too much time with crime-scene photos, and though she would never tell anyone, sometimes she saw the pictures move. Her own face appeared on those lifeless bodies. Her own head topped shattered torsos and bloodied limbs.
And sometimes she had nightmares where she saw her own death, except she never woke up the moment before dying, the way sane people did. No, she dreamt it all the way through, feeling her body plummet over the cliff and smash into the rocks below. Feeling her head slam through the windshield of the shattered car.
And never once in her dreams did she scream. She only thought, finally.
She couldn’t breathe. More black dots danced in front of her vision. She grabbed another tree limb, and hung on tight. How had the air gotten this hot? What had happened to all the oxygen?
And then, in the last sane corner of her mind, it came to her. She was having an anxiety attack. Her body had officially bottomed out, and now she was having an anxiety attack, her first in six years.
She staggered deeper into the woods. She needed to cool down. She needed to draw a breath. She had suffered this kind of episode before. She could survive it again.
She careened through the underbrush, unmindful of the small twigs scratching her cheeks or the tree limbs snatching at her hair. She searched desperately for cooler shade.
Breathe deep, count to ten. Focus on your hands, and making them steady. You’re tough. You’re strong. You’re well trained.
Breathe, Kimberly. Come on, honey, just breathe.
She staggered into a clearing, stuck her head between her knees and worked on sucking air, until with a final, heaving gasp, her lungs opened up and the air whooshed gratefully into her chest. Inhale. Exhale. That’s it, breathe …
Kimberly looked down at her hands. They were quieter now, pressed against the hollow plane of her stomach. She forced them away from her body, and inspected her splayed fingers for signs of trembling.
Better. Soon she would be cool again. Then she would resume jogging. And then, because she was very good at this by now, no one would ever know a thing.
Kimberly straightened up. She took one last deep breath, then turned back in the direction of the PT course … and realized for the first time that she was not alone.
Five feet in front of her was a well-worn dirt path. Wide and very smooth, probably used by the Marines for their training. And right smack in the middle of that path sprawled the body of a young girl in civilian clothes. Blond hair, black sandals, and splayed tanned limbs. She wore a simple white cotton shirt and a very short, blue-flowered skirt.
Kimberly took one step forward. Then she saw the girl’s face, and then she knew.
The goose bumps rippled down her arms again. A shiver snaked up her spine. And in the middle of the hot, still woods, Kimberly began to frantically look around, even as her hand flew to the inside of her leg and found her knife.
First rule of procedure, always secure the crime scene.
Second rule, call for backup.
Third rule, try hard not to think of what it means when young women aren’t safe even at the Academy. For this girl was quite dead, and by all appearances, it had happened recently.
CHAPTER 7
Quantico, Virginia
10:03 A.M.
Temperature: 86 degrees
“One more time, Kimberly. How did you end up off the PT course?”
“I got a stitch in my side, I went off the course. I was trying to walk it out, and … I don’t think I realized how far I had wandered.”
“And you saw the body?”
“I saw something up ahead,” Kimberly said without blinking. “I headed toward it, and then … Well, you know the rest.”
Her class supervisor, Mark Watson, scowled at her, but finally leaned back. She was sitting across from him in his bright, expansive office. Mid-morning sun poured through the bank of windows. An orange monarch butterfly fluttered just outside the glass. It was such a beautiful day to be talking about death.
At Kimberly’s cry, two of her classmates had come running. She’d leaned forward and taken the girl’s pulse by then. Nothing, of course, but then Kimberly hadn’t expected any signs of life. And it wasn’t just the girl’s wide, sightless brown eyes that spoke of death. It was her violently stitched-up mouth, some kind of thick black thread sealing her waxy lips in macabre imitation of Raggedy Ann. Whoever had done this had made damn well sure the girl had never screamed.
The second classmate promptly threw up. But not Kimberly.
Someone had fetched Watson. Upon seeing her grisly find, he had immediately contacted the FBI police as well as the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Apparently, a death at the Academy’s front door did not belong to the FBI, but rather to NCIS. It was their job to protect and serve the Marines, after all.
Kimberly and her classmates had been hastily led away, while young Marines in dark green camouflage and more sophisticated special agents in white dress shirts descended upon the scene. Now, somewhere in the deep woods, real work was being done—death investigators photographing, sketching, and analyzing; an ME examining a young girl’s body for last desperate clues; other officers bagging and tagging evidence.
While Kimberly sat here. In an office. As far away from the discovery as a well-meaning FBI supervisor could bring her. One of her knees jogged nervously. She finally crossed her ankles beneath the chair.
“What will happen next?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t know.” Her supervisor paused. “I’ll be honest, Kimberly, we’ve never had this kind of situation before.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” she murmured.
Watson smiled, but it was thin. “We had a tragedy a few years ago. A National Academy student dropped dead on the firearms course. He was relatively young, which led to speculation. The ME determined, however, that he had died of a sudden massive coronary. Still tragic, but not so shocking given the sheer numbers of people who pass through these grounds in any given year. This situation, on the other hand … A facility of this kind relies heavily on good relations with the neighboring communities. When word gets out that a local girl has been found dead …”
“How do you know she’s local?”
“Playing the law of averages. She appears too young to be an employee, and if she were either FBI or Marine, someone at the scene would’ve recognized her. Ergo, she’s an outsider.”
“She could be someone’s sweetheart,” Kimberly ventured. “The mouth … Maybe she talked back one too many times.”
“It’s possible.” Watson was eyeing her speculatively, so Kimberly pressed ahead.
“But you don’t think so,” she said.
“Why don’t I think so?”
“No violence. If it were a domestic situation, a crime of passion, she would show signs of battery. Bruises, cuts, abrasion. Instead … I saw her arms and legs. There was hardly a scratch on her. Except for the mouth, of course.”
“Maybe he only hit her where no one would see.”
“Maybe,” her tone was doubtful. “It still doesn’t explain why he would dump the body on a secured Marine base.”
“Why do you think the body was dumped?” Watson asked with a frown.
“Lack of disturbance at the scene,” Kimberly answered immediately. “Ground wasn’t even stirred up until I crashed in.” Her brow furrowed; she looked at him quizzically. “Do you think she was alive when he brought her onto the grounds? It’s not
that easy to access the base. Last I saw, the Marines were operating at condition Bravo, meaning all entrances are guarded and all visitors must have proper ID. Dead or alive, not just anyone can access Academy grounds.”
“I don’t think we should—”
“That doesn’t make sense, either, though,” Kimberly persisted, her frown deepening. “If the girl’s alive, then she would have to have clearance, too, and two security passes are harder to find than one. So maybe she was dead. In the trunk of the car. I’ve never seen the guards search a vehicle, so she wouldn’t be too hard to sneak in that way. Of course, that theory implies that the man knowingly dumped a body on Quantico grounds.” She shook her head abruptly. “That doesn’t make sense. If you lived here and you killed someone, even accidentally, you wouldn’t take the remains into the woods. You’d hightail it off the base, and get the evidence as far away from here as possible. Leaving the body here is just plain stupid.”
“I don’t think we should make any assumptions at this time,” Watson said quietly.
“Do you think he’s trying to make a personal statement against the Academy?” Kimberly asked. “Or against the Marines?”
At that comment, Watson’s brows fired to life. Kimberly had definitely crossed some unspoken line, and his expression firmly indicated that their conversation was now over. He sat forward and said, “Listen, the NCIS will be handling the investigation from here on out. Do you know anything about the Naval Criminal Investigative Service?”
“No—”
“Well, you should. The NCIS has over eight hundred special agents, ready to be deployed anywhere around the globe at a moment’s notice. They’ve seen murder, rape, domestic abuse, fraud, drugs, racketeering, terrorism, you name it. They have their own cold case squad, they have their own forensics experts, they even have their own crime labs. For heaven’s sake, these are the agents who were called upon to investigate the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. They can certainly handle one body found in the woods at a Marine base. Is that understood?”
