Deep as the Dead

by Kylie Brant

  “We split up.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, then shut it again and nodded. She could go where he couldn’t. And she’d already proven that she was more than adept than he at garnering the attention needed to show people the picture. Men would be far more likely to notice the woman in the image than another female would. And Alexa had already proven that she had no trouble eliciting male cooperation.

  For some reason, that thought wasn’t comforting.

  The bartender was right. The place drew a decent crowd and there were more than enough young men here to take advantage of the Hump Day specials. Jeanette was glad she hadn’t left earlier. Now it was time to narrow her focus because she had to be up early for the interview tomorrow, which meant a short night in bed with her favored selection.

  She was squeezed into a booth with five prospects, and she needed to choose while she could still focus. One of the enterprising souls had hooked his finger in the narrow strap of her dress and lowered it to write his number on the back of her shoulder with a Sharpie. She didn’t bother telling him that whoever she took home tonight wasn’t going to get a callback.

  As if they recognized that she was on the prowl, all of the young men were plying her with drinks and what they probably thought passed for witty conversation. The conversation was part sophomoric laughter and part one-upmanship, with lines thrown in from the latest juvenile movie that guys always thought was hilarious.

  It was one of the downfalls of selecting outside her age group, but as long as she made her choice early enough in the night, she could overlook a few faults. She studied each of them in turn and decided that when it came time to make her exit, she’d just grab the one that seemed soberest. Because she definitely wasn’t.

  He was going to have to do all the work. Laughter spilled from her lips, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, shocked. The guys seemed to take her amusement as encouragement. Their voices rose and their gestures grew wild. A drink was knocked over, which of course landed straight in her lap to pool in her bare thighs. She’d forgotten her vow earlier not to sit in the dress. Right now, it resembled a short glittering shirt.

  “Shit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” One of the young men reached over to sop up the liquid with a damp napkin. His hand lingered where it met bare skin, then skated upward. She batted it away. He was out of the running, she decided, disgruntled. Not only a slob but one who’d take every advantage as well.

  “I’m going to the restroom.” She grabbed the small purse she’d brought.

  “We’ll save your place,” one proclaimed.

  “On my lap,” another said.

  “On my face,” one of the others put in and then of course they all laughed like the young fools they were.

  Morons. Jeanette weaved through the wall of bodies, barely managing to avoid a flailing arm from one of the dancers. “Here, don’t forget your drink,” someone said. She didn’t even turn around. If she ever did get to the ladies’ room, she wouldn’t be returning to that table of dickheads.

  But suddenly the drink was in her hand, and she looked down at it, before scanning the moving crowd behind her. Her benefactor was lost in the ocean of people, but he was right about one thing. There was no reason to leave a half-full Crown and coke behind. Especially when it’d been free.

  She managed to make her way to the back corner of the structure, groaning when she saw the line to the ladies’ room. Now that she’d stood up, she needed to pee as well as mop herself off. Propping herself against the wall behind a girl who really shouldn’t have been wearing the middriff top and Daisy Dukes she was sporting, Jeanette sipped at the drink and looked around. She remembered the bartender from earlier and craned her neck trying to get a look at him. But he wouldn’t be off for hours, and there was no way she was going to last much longer.

  There was a guy leaning on the bar. A little older than she liked them, but she appreciated the day’s scruff of beard, as dark as his hair. In the next moment, a woman next to him craned her neck to see what he was looking at, and, noting Jeanette’s interest, flipped her the bird.

  She was tempted to take the guy home, just to prove that she could. She was Jeanette Fucking Lawler! Sure, she might have come from nothing, but she’d clawed her way to a good place now. Bitch at the bar would never rise as far as she had.

  The queue moved infinitesimally. As soon as she got close enough, she was going to invade the men’s room and the fuck with everyone else. A new couple entered the bar. Their faces appeared and disappeared in the swell of people, but the man pushed his way through the crowd with determined intent.

  She felt a spark of interest, and tipped her glass to her mouth again, studying him over the rim. He wouldn’t be able to see her in the crowded hallway so she could spy on him to her heart’s content. Wide shoulders. Trim hips. A face that looked hard. Experienced. A trickle of regret traced down her spine. Not her type, unfortunately. She liked to be in control, and he looked like he had a hard time giving it up.

  Her gaze flicked to the woman at his side. Buttoned up. Smoothly professional. An odd type of look to wear to a place like this. Her focus returned to the man. There was an air of familiarity about him…something recent… Then the two were lost to sight as patrons crowded past them to the front entrance.

  “Ouch! Dammit!” She slapped a hand to her neck where the sting had occurred and whirled on the woman behind her. “What the hell did you do to me?”

  The woman gave her a push, which, given the way they were packed inside the hallway, reverberated all the way up the line. “I didn’t do anything, bitch.”

  Guys were starting to line up near them, which meant the men’s room would be as impossible to get into as the women’s.

  “You poked me with something.” Her vision blurred and she swayed, slapping a hand on the wall again for balance. Jeanette didn’t feel good. Not at all. There was something wrong with her equilibrium, and her eyes wouldn’t focus.

  “You’re drunk, bitch.” Another shove, and this time she stumbled, dropping her drink on the floor. The glass shattered. One of the flying shards jabbed at her ankle. It felt just like what had stabbed her neck. She reached up to finger the site that still stung. “Go home before you barf on your skyscraper heels.”

  “Don’t mind her. She’s not feeling well, are you love? Here, now.” Her arm was lifted, draped over narrow shoulders. She was propelled forward, through the mob in the hallway that had swelled dramatically since she’d first walked back here.

  One of the guys from the table. Her thoughts were scattered. Probably thought they’d get… She searched for the word as she teetered on her high heels. Plucky. Fucky. Lucky. She wanted to smile in triumph at finding the word, but the man at her side was making her move too fast. Slow down she wanted to tell him, and managed to turn her gaze toward him.

  Oh, shit. Not one of the boy toy prospects at all. Not even close. This guy was a stranger. And he was old, with gray bushy hair and a matching mustache that looked like something from a Halloween costume. With her heels, he barely came up to her shoulder. Nausea rose, and she thought she was going to be sick. Hell, no, she wasn’t going anywhere with this guy.

  “Get…away. Get…off…me.” The floor tilted beneath her and she nearly face-planted. And then there was a door with a big red warning sign on it. You couldn’t get out this way. She stopped and ducked her head, managing to dislodge his arm, but it was back a moment later, and the door was opening in front of them.

  “Not much longer,” the cheery voice sounded. “A little tap on the head and we’ll get you all curled in, nice and cozy.”

  No alarm sounded when they stumbled through the door. She wished for an alarm. She wished everyone would look. Because something was very wrong and she couldn’t even manage to scream.

  Chapter Nine

  For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

  —Ecclesiastes 12:14

  “Well, you were a bit of
extra trouble.” Anis Tera kept his voice cheerful. A soldier of the Lord didn’t complain about doing God’s work. “But the rental car came in handy. This van would have been much more visible in that dark alley.”

  He’d secured his guest to the chair in the van, her mouth taped shut for the moment. He’d had plenty of time to hide the car away in some nearby brush once he’d gotten her safely inside the larger vehicle. The storage garages were in as remote an area as he could find, worth the extra time traveling because he’d never seen anyone around at night. Although he’d had Jeanette Lawler’s demise planned for nearly a year, the car wasn’t the only deviation he was contemplating.

  His pulse raced as he considered the enormity of the change. Was it worth the risk? Was he allowing his newest obsession to counter his usual reason?

  It was a real possibility. Anis’s crusade required focus and strict adherence to the plan. Already he’d used more time than he could afford to discover everything he could learn about Dr. Alexa Hayden because he knew the Lord had put her in his path for a reason. Just as he’d realized the meaning of the boy’s appearance in the river, and immediately recognized what God meant him to do, there had been a similar zap of rightness when he’d seen Hayden on TV today. It had only grown stronger the more he learned about her.

  God had sent him a helpmate. Lawler started struggling, trying to call for help, but he paid her no mind as he drew his favorite scalpel from its sheath. What else could Hayden’s sudden arrival in his life mean? A woman trained in the insect field he loved. One who knew how to look into a man’s deepest heart and see the pain that had set him on his path.

  One who would stand beside him once she came to understand the holiness of his mission.

  “There’s still much to be done,” he murmured, as he approached the woman in the chair. Not so much more for Jeanette Lawler, of course, but he needed to learn everything he could about Alexa Hayden. Each new detail that emerged from his research just seemed more preordained. So, he was going to allow himself a small variance from his previous plan tonight. Alexa Hayden had once lived in Truro, so that’d be Jeanette Lawler’s final resting place. Hayden wouldn’t recognize the significance. Not yet. But he’d soon change that.

  “Maybe I slipped too much into your drink.” Lawler’s struggles were weak, futile. When he occasionally used the liquid Scopolamine before the injection, the kidnapping went more smoothly. But it was hard to judge the proper dosage for someone who had drunk as much as Lawler had this evening.

  He pulled up a metal stool and sat down in front of her. Watched her eyes try to focus on the instruments in his hand. “We’ve had dealings before, Jeanette. I tried to keep my word, but you…you did not. Once you paid the fifty thousand four years ago, I never bothered you again, did I? But I watched you, just as I said I would. After your penance, you were to turn away from your sins forever. But you’re still finding young vulnerable girls, aren’t you? So easy in your profession. Because you’re a seedy celebrity of sorts, they contact you, filling your ears with hero worship. And you. So altruistic. You get close to the girls, act as a mentor. And then provide their names and addresses to a man who’ll scoop them up for use in the sex market.”

  She was crying now, fat tears that traced down her cheeks. Anis watched her, unmoved. The satisfaction he usually felt while carrying out his mission was strangely absent. Instead, the thrum of excitement in his veins was reserved for the woman who would gaze upon Lawler’s body. And try to make sense of it.

  Did Alexa realize the holiness of his cause? Did she guess at his noble calling? He ripped the duct tape off Lawler’s mouth. Immediately she opened her mouth to scream, and he leaned forward to jam the stainless steel dental gag inside it. She reared back, tried to spit it out, but her head was held in place by the binding around her neck and the large blocks on either side of her face. It was a struggle, but he managed to work the instrument into place. Then he picked up the next two tools. He reached into her mouth with the forceps to clamp on her tongue. Drew it out.

  The guttural sounds she was making were lost on Anis. As he sliced at her tongue with the scalpel, he could only think of Alexa Hayden.

  Chapter Ten

  “That’s it.” Ethan disconnected the call and shoved his cell back into his pocket with barely concealed frustration. “Officer Mallard was the last to check in. We covered the busiest clubs in the city. No one saw Jeanette Lawler.”

  The trepidation in the pit of Alexa’s stomach knotted. They were standing in the lobby of the Piedmont Hotel, where Lawler’s crew was staying. She, Ethan and Nyle had returned here after they’d covered the clubs on their lists. The woman could have left an establishment before the team had started the search. She could have gone home with someone. She hadn’t returned here. Lawler wasn’t responding to phone calls to her room or repeated hammering at her door.

  “Nothing says she would have brought her date back to her room.” Nyle’s face flushed a bit at the euphemism for a one-night stand.

  “Right.” Ethan’s voice was flat. “No way to be sure for a few more hours.” A few of the clubs stayed open until four a.m.

  “We may as well get rooms here. We’ll just need to come back in a few hours.” Alexa stifled a yawn. It seemed cavalier to allow exhaustion to override her concern for Lawler. But there was nothing to be done now but wait. And hope.

  Ethan’s expression lightened. “I look forward to explaining my expense report for a night in the most expensive hotel in Halifax.”

  “At this point, I’d spring for a room on my own dime. Not that I expect to sleep much.”

  Ethan nodded at Nyle’s words. “I’ll get us checked in. We all need to rest. It’s going to be a short night.”

  But in contrast to Ethan’s earlier words, sleep proved elusive for Alexa. There were too many questions flashing into her mind. Too much second-guessing.

  It was the what-ifs that proved to be the most disturbing.

  After a couple of hours, she surrendered and took her laptop out of its case. Booted it up. There were a dozen constructive things she could be doing, not the least of which was catching up on correspondence and updating the offender profile victimology pattern.

  She tackled the emails first. Communications from Raiker’s agency and members of this task force were formatted so they would come directly to her phone, but others that she used for social and professional networks had to be accessed online. She quickly scrolled through the emails for the different accounts. Found nothing that was pressing.

  She opened the final one, which was used only for emails from her professional organizations and for media inquiries. There were four new messages in the inbox. A yawn overtook her as she clicked on the top one. Perhaps she’d given up on sleep too soon. Maybe there was time to salvage an hour or two….

  Her stomach did a slow roll as she read the message.

  Hello, Alexa. I hope you don’t mind the familiarity. I don’t know you well yet, but now that my mission here is accomplished, I’ll be remedying that soon. I knew as soon as I saw you on television yesterday that your being here was preordained. What a delight that we have so much in common. You cannot yet understand that I’ve been appointed a prophet to the nations. But soon…. You will know me.

  She wasted precious seconds staring at the message in shock before she finally leaped up, grabbed the laptop and her key card before rushing out the door.

  Ethan was two rooms away. She pounded on his door, her eyes glued to the screen as if the message would disappear before her eyes. And perhaps it would. Fornier had mentioned something about Anis Tera sending emails that later vanished.

  “What?” Ethan stood framed in the open door, clad in nothing but a pair of gym shorts. His tone was grim, but his expression was alert. Perhaps, like her, he’d been unable to sleep.

  “He emailed me.” Alexa brushed by him to enter the room and sat on the edge of the rumpled bed, indicating the laptop she held.

  “Who?”


  “The offender.” She felt an unfamiliar rush of impatience. “He used my professional account that’s public, although rarely used…”

  Ethan was at her side, sinking down next her before she finished the sentence. “How can you be sure it’s him?” She waited for him to read the message. Watched his expression go from grim to dangerous. He bounced from the bed, crossed the bedside table for his phone and returned to take a picture of the screen. Then he reached out to press the reply command. The screen went blank.

  “It’s gone.” Alexa closed out of the window and returned to the inbox, but the message had disappeared. “Just like Fornier said. Vanishing emails. Forensic IT analysts can do something with this, right? Maybe track down the sender?”

  He stared at her. “I think you’re missing the most critical point. He reached out to you. That means he has you in his sights.”

  “Yes. Well…” She couldn’t say that the idea didn’t discomfit her on several levels, but the psychologist in her was oddly thrilled. “Do you realize how much we can learn about him if he continues to communicate with me?”

  Ethan’s face went thunderous. He picked up the phone and pressed a speed-dial number. “Yes, we’re about to learn that you’re his newest obsession. Excuse me if I don’t share your enthusiasm at the prospect.” He spoke a few terse words into the phone and then disconnected.

  “He said his mission here was accomplished.” Her stomach did a slow roll. “Do you think he’s saying that Jeanette Lawler is dead?”

  “We’re soon going to find out.”

  She glanced at the time in the upper corner of her laptop. Nearly six-thirty. They could check again whether the woman had returned in the last couple of hours. But a bitter sense of foreboding told her what they would discover.

  The tap at the door was light. Ethan immediately got up and pulled it open. Nyle walked in. “He messaged you? That’s not good, Alexa. It means he’s focused on you now.”