The Broken

by Shelley Coriell

  Hayden knew this story hadn’t been easy, but they were chasing evil, which invariably meant a walk through hell. “Katrina, I’m sorry you—”

  “You’re sorry?” She dropped Smokey’s hand and bolted upright. “For what? For the scars that disfigure my face and body? For the ineptitude of your law enforcement brothers? For believing in a system that doesn’t work?”

  “It works.”

  “Like hell it does! It’s a broken system, a broken world, Agent Reed, shattered and ugly and full of evil.”

  The force of her words, the power of her emotion, slammed him like a heat wave rolling across the desert.

  Hayden worked with enough victims to know that no matter how loud he talked and how long he offered valid, substantiated arguments, Katrina wouldn’t hear him, not at that moment. She wouldn’t hear that the scars had faded, that law enforcement had not failed because he was still working the case, and that she was safe. Full of anger and fear, she was as deaf as Smokey Joe was blind.

  Smokey scratched a spring of hair at the back of his head. “So this slasher fella, your brother, he has something to do with the Barbie murders?”

  Katrina tilted her chin toward Hayden in a dare. “Absolutely.”

  Smokey pounded his fist on the table, the Las Vegas candy dish rattling. “Then stop your yammering at Kate, G-man, and git on that damn government-issued phone of yours and call someone to nab this guy.”

  “That’s my intent, Mr. Bernard,” Hayden said. He reached into his pocket and took out a set of handcuffs. Before anyone could blink, he slipped one circle of silver around Katrina’s wrist.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she cried, trying to pull away.

  He clicked shut the cuff. “I’ve been chasing you too long to let you out of my sight now.”

  She yanked her arm, the metal digging into her flesh. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  The second cuff locked around the rung of a kitchen chair. “I know.”

  He pulled out his phone, made his way to the living room, and dialed Parker Lord’s direct line, his heart beating triple-time. Was this it? Was he finally closing in on the Butcher?

  As he waited for his boss to answer, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye, and he ducked just in time to see a candy dish with a picture of a donkey go flying past his ear. It slammed into the wall, where it shattered into hundreds of jagged tiny pieces. He turned and looked at the kitchen table where Katrina glared at him and Smokey Joe grinned.

  * * *

  Wednesday, May 10, 2:30 p.m.

  Colorado Springs, Colorado

  “It’s like fucking Cinderella without the glass slipper, only shoeprints.”

  Lottie stared at the terraced set of planters that made up the slope of Shayna Thomas’s backyard and shook her head. CSD already made a cast of the print found below Thomas’s bedroom window, and now they were making a few more.

  Detective Traynor pointed to the disturbed earth next to the red flag. “We found these large prints throughout the backyard. Looks like some kind of work boot.”

  “Check Thomas’s bills. Find out if she has a lawn man and what size shoe he wears.”

  Detective Traynor brushed aside a leafy fern with brown, brittle tips. “But this one has us stumped. You’re the shoe queen. What do you think?”

  Lottie squatted, her old knees creaking as she stared at the boxy footprint comprised of wavy lines and the letters O and K. “I ain’t ready to bet the grandkids’ college education fund, but I think it may be some kind of orthotic. Line of ugly shoes called Ortho King. My doc keeps nagging me to get a pair.” She’d hurt her back two years ago playing ball with one of the grandsons, and her doctor told her to get shoes with more support, but she couldn’t give up her flashy heels. For the first twenty-two years of her life, she wore hand-me-down shoes, walking through this world in threadbare soles, scuffed toes, and other people’s sweat. Her old hoofers deserved better. She gave her foot with its four-inch cheetah-print slingback a little jiggle.

  Traynor squatted next to her. “Didn’t Agent Reed say that the killer may have some kind of handicap or disfiguration?”

  “Yeah, he did. Said it could be something unseen, like a stutter, or visible, like a limp.” Lottie pointed to the odd shoeprint. “Get a cast made.”

  * * *

  Wednesday, June 10, 8:30 p.m.

  Mancos, Colorado

  Agent Reed walked into Smokey’s kitchen, a key dangling from his finger. “If I take off the cuffs, are you going to run?”

  Kate eyed the key, debating if she should grab for it first or knock him off balance with a shoulder to his midsection and then snatch her ticket to freedom. “No.”

  He rubbed his swollen lip. “Are you going to head-butt me again?”

  Only rookies would use the same offense twice. She would lunge for his legs. That would bring him down fast and hard. “No.”

  He laughed and dropped the key in his pocket. Kate stiffened in the chair. She hadn’t expected the laugh. It was a low and rusty sound, as if he didn’t do it often.

  “If you’re going to lie,” he said when the chuckle tapered off, “you can at least try to be a little more convincing. You may want to work on the blinks. Two quick ones before each lie was a dead giveaway.”

  Pompous know-it-all. But he was right. She was a horrible liar, which is probably why she ended up in investigative journalism. She’d spent her on-air days in pursuit of truth. Now she just wanted to pursue any long and winding road that would take her far away from Agent Organized and Efficient.

  Agent Reed had spent the past nine hours in Smokey’s living room on the phone, issuing orders, mounting the cavalry, and trying to close in on a butchering madman. Early on he’d offered to take off her cuffs if she agreed to go to the local police station so he could work without worrying about her safety, but she’d made it clear she’d rather be shackled to one of Smokey Joe’s kitchen chairs. From what she could tell from Agent’s Reed’s phone conversations and teleconferences, her brother, Jason, was missing from his home in Dorado Bay, a small resort town on the Nevada shores of Lake Tahoe. Police had found a week’s worth of mail crammed in the mailbox, and neighbors hadn’t seen him for days. Their mother, who lived in the same house, was also AWOL. No one at Jason’s work had seen him for two weeks. With each dead end, she found herself one step closer to the edge of terror. Jason could be outside Smokey’s cabin at this very moment.

  Hayden didn’t seem fazed. He made calls, took notes, and, when he reached a dead end, headed off in another direction without losing speed. On his last phone call she heard him make arrangements for him and his team, an elite FBI group out of Maine, to descend on Dorado Bay tomorrow. She should feel relieved. The power, the efficiency, the might of the U.S. government manifested in one Special Agent Hayden Reed was on the case, but all she felt was the need to run fast and far. She yanked at the cuff around her red wrist.

  She’d sworn at age sixteen she would be in charge of where she went and what she did, but from the moment the FBI agent pinned her beneath him, she’d felt powerless, and in her world, there was nothing worse.

  “I’m not the enemy,” Agent Reed said softly as he sat in the chair next to hers.

  She hadn’t expected that either, the softness. Everything about Agent Reed was hard—the razor-sharp creases in his suit pants, the square jaw, the gunmetal eyes.

  He reached for her face, as if to smooth back the curl hanging over her eye, but she jerked her head away. “I’m not either.” She meant for her words to come out as a barb, but they landed in the air between them on a sigh. Today had been exhausting. Telling Smokey about her attack and reliving her past had been an emotional roller-coaster.

  But she’d get through this, past Agent Reed, and back on the road, and sooner rather than later.

  A feather-light set of fingers slid along her wrist.

  “If you try to run, I’ll catch you,” Agent Reed said as if he could he read her
mind. “You realize that, don’t you? I’ll find you and keep you safe until the Butcher is behind bars. Don’t fight me on this.”

  Fight? The mighty Agent Reed had obviously never run across someone like her. She fought monsters in her childhood, scrapped and scraped her way through college, and battled her way to a coveted anchor spot in broadcast news before age thirty. She may have been on the run the past two years, but that didn’t change who she was at her core.

  She faked a yawn and held up her wrist, metal clanking against metal. “I’m too tired to fight tonight. Just take off the cuffs so I can go to my room and go to bed.” But only after she checked the window in the cabin loft. It was probably too small to slip through, but she had to try.

  Agent Reed checked his watch then reached into his pocket and took out the key. “Actually, you will go to your room and pack. Tonight I’m taking you to the FBI field office in Denver. You need protection.”

  “I don’t think so.” Law enforcement had already failed her twice. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m doing much better on my own. I don’t need your buddies in snappy blue suits.”

  “But I need you.” He stood and pushed in his chair. “If your brother is behind these murders, you’re important to me and the U.S. government. As a material witness in a capital crime, you’ll need to testify against him. There’s no way I’m letting you run away.”

  For a moment she had the urge to laugh. There was no way Hayden Reed or anyone else was going to get her in a courtroom full of people who’d stare at her, point, whisper, and turn their heads when she met their gazes straight on. It happened to her countless times since she’d been stabbed. The grotesque was fascinating.

  “I’m not going to Denver,” she said matter-of-factly. Agent Reed so loved facts. “I can’t leave Smokey alone.”

  “He can go with you.”

  “And disrupt his life even more than I already have?” Smokey Joe had dropped into bed right after dinner, emotionally and physically exhausted. He didn’t even ask for a rain check on their nightly domino game. “If you have any ounce of compassion behind that man-of-steel persona, you will not drag him into this any more than he is.”

  He stood motionless for the longest time, and she pictured the gears in his brain whirring and clicking as he weighed the facts and analyzed their options. “You care about him.” There was his non-question thing again. It drove her nuts, and so did the fact he didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “This is just a job,” she insisted.

  “A job?”

  “Something to pay the bills.” She straightened the dominoes on the table and made a note to tell Smokey’s caseworker that he liked his nightly game. “So what happens with Smokey?”

  “I’ll call social services and get them out here first thing in the morning.”

  She shook her head. “They’ll put him in a temporary group home. He doesn’t do well in institutional settings. He flooded the last one he was in, and it wasn’t an accident. He needs one-on-one attention, someone to be with him, but not to micromanage his days.” Someone like her. But her time with Smokey was over. For now she’d resigned to go with Agent Reed to the Denver field office. She pictured that upstairs window. Unless she got a chance to run.

  “Don’t worry about Smokey Joe. I’ll find him a safe place.”

  “Not a group home?”

  “Not a group home.”

  “And you’ll make sure he ends up in a place where he’s not surrounded by buildings and cars and noise. He needs room to breathe.” Smokey had spent two years in a hole in the ground in a North Vietnamese prison camp and had an insatiable need for fresh air and wide open spaces.

  “I’ll find a place with plenty of space.” She opened her mouth, but he held up a hand. “I’ll take care of everything.”

  And she believed him, because Special Agent Hayden Reed was the kind of man who’d take care of Smokey and the rest of the free world.

  He finally circled his hand around her wrist and turned it so the lock was faceup. “Give me his caseworker’s number, and I’ll make arrangements for tomorrow.”

  “What about tonight?”

  He inserted the key and turned, the cuff clicking open. “We’ll stay here.”

  “We? You’re sleeping here?”

  “No, I’m working here.” The cuff slipped off, but his fingers remained circled about her wrist. “I have plenty to keep me busy.”

  She hopped to her feet. “But—”

  “Would you prefer I set up a team of deputies from the sheriff’s department to stand guard?”

  She tried to shrug off his hand, but his fingers tightened, a golden manacle that was stronger than tempered steel. Agent Efficient was enough. “Fine. Work here. If you get tired, there are pillows and blankets in the hall closet.” When he finally let go, she took off up the stairs to her loft. Footsteps sounded behind her, and she spun and glared at him. “Is this really necessary?”

  He answered with a pair of raised brows. She stood in the doorway with her arms crossed as he searched under her bed, in her closet, and through her drawers. He tugged at the tiny glass window at the V of the loft.

  She let loose an exasperated sigh. “You’re being ridiculous. The Butcher can’t get through that window.”

  “I’m not worried about someone trying to get in.” Damn him. And damn those eyes. “I promise, Katrina, if you make any attempt to leave this place, I’ll cuff you to the bed.”

  She wanted to swipe off the unbearably confident look on his face, but it was his world, his way. He wasn’t giving up control. He was Mr. Unflappable.

  Oh yeah? She’d seen that flash in his eyes when she’d taken off her shirt in the kitchen. He was Super Agent, but he was also a man.

  Kate uncrossed her arms and slipped off her overshirt. A half smile slipping onto her lips, she tossed her shirt to the ground and sunk onto the quilt covering her bed. She slid her fingers along her thighs and up her torso. Finally, she raised her hands to the brass headboard. “I’d love for you to cuff me to this bed.” She licked her lips. “Pleeeease.”

  Agent Reed’s entire upper body tensed. She saw it in his shoulders, in his jaw, and in his hand as he slid his palm along his tie as if to straighten the brilliant splashes of yellow and orange scattered across the length of silk. His gaze slid from her bare feet and up her legs. An unexpected tingle coursed through her midsection as he lingered on her breasts before sliding to her wrists. A soft breath caught in his throat, and she didn’t need to be a mind reader to know he wasn’t thinking about the Butcher.

  With her hands still in the bound position, she waggled her fingers at him.

  He blinked and took a step back. Then he spun on his shiny Italian lace-ups and practically raced down the stairs.

  Mission accomplished. She’d just shaken the unshakable Hayden Reed, and if she wasn’t so damned furious at him, she’d laugh.

  * * *

  Hayden sat on the couch and waited for exhaustion to roll over him like a bulldozer, because between Tucson and the latest Butcher slaying, he must be suffering the effects of serious sleep deprivation. That’s the only explanation for his reaction to Katrina as she begged him to handcuff her to the bed. If he’d been sharper, he wouldn’t have been struck speechless. Granted, he still would have noticed the swells of her breasts, the tumbled curls of her hair, and curvy hips straining against her low-riding jeans. And appreciated it all. Any man with eyes would have. But he was the lead investigator in the hunt for the Butcher. She was a victim and a witness, and, as his teammate Hatch would say, never the twain shall meet.

  He unbuttoned his cuffs and snapped back the fabric. Time to get his head off Katrina and onto the Butcher. He picked up his phone and punched in a number.

  “Shouldn’t you be in bed, or do pretty boys like you not need beauty sleep?” Lottie’s throaty voice cackled on the other end. “But I’m glad you called, Reed, ’cause I got something that’s going to knock you on your ass.”

>   Like sassy Katrina stretched out on a bed and inviting him to join her? He blinked away the vision, and focused on Sergeant King. “Shoot.”

  “Got us a witness,” Lottie said with a note of triumph.

  “What?” Witnesses had been nonexistent at all the other crime scenes, but then again, Shayna Thomas’s murder wasn’t like the others. He pictured those unbroken mirrors.

  “You heard right, a witness. A fourteen-year-old kid who lives across the street saw someone on Thomas’s front porch the night she died, and I don’t think he’s shitting us. The kid snuck out of his house through his second-story bedroom window to go meet his thirteen-year-old girlfriend. He swaps spit for a while and comes home around ten fifteen. He climbs the trellis and shimmies in through the window. After he gets inside, he turns to shut the pane and sees someone on the porch across the street. Light’s on so the kid gets a pretty good look at her.”

  Hayden almost dropped the phone. “Her?”

  “Thought you’d pick up on that one. Yep. The witness swears that Shayna Thomas opened her door and let a woman into her house. Looked like a granny. Gray shoulder-length hair. Shapeless pink dress with flowers. He never saw a face and could only describe her build as average, not fat, not thin.”

  Hayden blinked, trying to process this information. “A woman. Are you sure?”

  “The kid was serious, and he was putting his ass on the line, admitting he’d snuck out.”

  When Hayden hung up the phone, he slid a finger along the sharp crease of his pants.

  Most serial killers were men, yet the young boy across the street swore he saw a woman. It’s possible the unsub could have entered the house in drag. Women like Shayna Thomas would be much more inclined to open the door to a woman than to a man. Or it’s possible the killer could have a female accomplice. Most serial killers worked alone. They were social deviants and craved singular power. However, he’d studied a few cases of partner serial killings, and in those cases, there was clearly a dominant/subservient dynamic. It’s possible the woman in the pink dress could gain them entry, and the Butcher would perpetuate the criminal act.