The Broken

by Shelley Coriell

  Her hair flying, she turned and saw a flash of black. Oh, God, no! She ran out of the parking lot toward a grassy hill and bolted toward a shallow ditch. A hand grabbed at her. Fingers sunk into her chambray shirt.

  “Nooooo!” she cried over the hiss of tearing fabric.

  She careened forward, but someone tackled her from behind. Her chest slammed to the ground. Her teeth rattled. A boulder settled on her legs, pinning her to the grass. She jammed her elbow back.

  “Ooaf!” Her attacker winched her arms behind her.

  Pain ripped through her shoulders, but she couldn’t scream. Fear closed her throat.

  Jason is not here, she told herself as hot breath slid along the back of her neck. He couldn’t have found her. Hayden wouldn’t have left her in a place where the Butcher and his knife lurked.

  Her breathing slowed, and so did her attacker’s. A set of hands, cold, hard shackles, turned her over. Her eyes closed. She didn’t want to see the face. His face.

  She tried to picture Hayden. His surprisingly warm hands. His gaze that said stronger than his words, I’ll keep you safe.

  When she opened her eyes, her racing heart stilled, and she swallowed the terror clogging her throat. Safe. She was safe.

  As she let loose a long breath, two hands clamped down on her shoulders and fingers dug into her flesh. Her relief gave way to irritation that skyrocketed to anger, more at herself than the oaf sitting on her.

  “What the hell are you still doing here?” Kate asked.

  For the second time in as many days, Agent Hayden Reed said nothing as he straddled her, pinning her to the ground. But this time, he didn’t wear a face of granite. He was livid.

  * * *

  Thursday, June 11, 4:15 p.m.

  Colorado Springs, Colorado

  Detective Traynor handed Lottie a pair of orange sneakers with yellow zebra stripes. She turned them over. Size nine.

  “Ain’t my size.” She tossed them on her desk. “And I look like shit in orange.”

  “But apparently Shayna Thomas’s stalker liked them,” Traynor said. “We had a shoe guy check the casts, and a pair of shoes like these made the print in front of Shayna Thomas’s bedroom window.”

  “I’ll let Hayden know ASAP. We need to find out if this Jason Erickson he’s hunting down has size nine feet and shitty taste in sneakers.” She nodded to the papers in his hands. “What about the other prints?”

  “Boot print confirmed. Matches shoes worn by Thomas’s lawn man.”

  “Got a location on him for Monday night?”

  “At home in bed with his wife.”

  “And the other print from that orthopedic-looking shoe?”

  “Still working on that one.” Traynor held out a stack of papers that listed orthotic shoe vendors. “You up to some shoe shopping?”

  * * *

  Thursday, June 11, 4:30 p.m.

  Denver, Colorado

  “You know, Reed, my ass is on the line, letting you take her,” Agent Wulbrecht said. “Officially she’s in our custody, not yours.”

  “Officially she’s alive, and I plan to keep her that way.” Hayden shut the passenger side door and walked around to the driver’s side of his rental car. “She’s coming with me.”

  “You’re in the middle of a case,” Agent Wulbrecht said.

  “Exactly. I’m in the middle of a case, and that woman”—he jabbed a hand at the passenger side of the car, noticed his fingers shaking, and jammed his hand in his pants pocket—“is a vital part of it. You and your team were assigned to watch her, and you failed. You jeopardized the investigation and put Kate’s life in danger.”

  “We left her for less than two minutes. How the hell were we supposed to know she would jump out a second-story window?”

  “You,” Hayden said, pulling out the rental car key and aiming it at Wulbrecht’s chest, “obviously don’t know her.”

  “But she never would have gotten away, Cisney was out that window seconds after her.”

  “Like I said, you don’t know her.”

  “And you do?”

  Hayden pictured the hundreds of files, dozens of video clips, and stacks of interview transcripts he’d gathered on Katrina Erickson. And he compared them to the woman he knew as Kate Johnson. He heard Kate’s voice, sharp as broken glass as she talked of her brother but soothing as she held Smokey Joe. He saw her hands, fisted at him but gently holding Maeve’s. “Yes.”

  Wulbrecht offered Hayden his palms. “Fine, have it your way, but you’re going to have to answer to the SAC.”

  There’d been only one other time in his FBI career Hayden refused so blatantly to play by the rules. Six years ago, when he was working for the Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, he worked up a profile of a suspected serial killer targeting homeless men in Little Rock, Arkansas. The commander of the Arkansas State Police’s Criminal Investigation Division, a grandstander with political aspirations, refused to release Hayden’s profile because it was clearly at odds with their investigative course of action. With seven dead men in the city morgue and an investigation stymied by lack of evidence, Hayden went to the press on his own and released the profile. The Arkansas State Police denounced his profile and started a flame-throwing war with the bureau. In a bid for jurisdictional harmony, Hayden’s supervisors demanded that he recant his profile. Hayden refused, was yanked out of the field, and immediately turned in his resignation. Twenty-seven hours later, two Little Rock police detectives who just wanted to get a bad guy off the streets tracked down the killer using Hayden’s profile. Six months later, FBI legend Parker Lord visited his classroom at the University of Arizona, where he was teaching psychology, and invited him to be part of a new team he was starting.

  Hayden pointed to the pen in Agent Wulbrecht’s pocket. “Write the report. I’ll sign it.”

  Hayden got into the car, clicked the door shut, and stared straight ahead. Next to him, Kate squirmed in her seat. He placed his hands on the steering wheel. “You have to stop running, Kate. Do I need to remind you again what we’re up against?”

  She shot a hand toward the building. “Do you really think the Butcher would come after me so close to an FBI office?”

  No, the Butcher would never try anything that bold or stupid. Stupid right now belonged to him. Hayden made an error. He should never have entrusted Kate to the care of someone he didn’t know and trust implicitly because she was anything but stupid.

  It was no sixth sense that made him turn around to check on her. It was his intimate knowledge of her psyche. She was a victim, but at her core, she was a survivor. He pressed his arm to the tender spot of his side where she’d jammed him with her elbow fifteen minutes ago. She was also a fighter. He’d made the colossal error of forgetting this, which is why she was going to the Box, the SCIU’s home base on the coast of northern Maine. There’d be hell to pay from FBI higher-ups for breaking protocol, but Parker would stand by him. Hayden promised Kate he’d protect her, and he was going to keep that promise. The Butcher spent too much time in Hayden’s head for him to be worried about conventions.

  Hayden was also mad at himself. He’d demanded her trust but gave her nothing in return. He unclenched his fingers from the steering wheel. Maybe it was time to trust her. Kate was a journalist, someone who cared about justice and truth. Maybe Kate needed to see the truths of this case.

  He reached into the backseat for his briefcase and took out a folder. One by one he set six eight-by-ten glossy photos on the dash in front of Kate.

  Color drained from her face.

  “They don’t even look human, do they?” Hayden asked.

  Her teeth dug into her bottom lip, but she didn’t take her gaze off the photos of blood and bone and shredded flesh. “Why are you showing me these?”

  “So you know what we’re dealing with.”

  “I know, more than anyone else, I know what kind of vile creature Jason is. I lived with him.”

  He banged a fist on the dash, shaking the photos. �
��Then why the hell do you keep running away?” The volcano he’d kept a lid on let out a fiery spurt. This woman, unlike anyone he’d ever met, had the uncanny knack of pushing his buttons.

  Hot sparks shot across her cheeks as she jabbed her thumb at the FBI building behind them. “That was hell for me back there. Hell. Do you know how many people I’ve talked to in the past six months? I can count them on one hand. One. Hand.” Her hand, hovering between them, visibly shook. She shoved it under her thigh. “I needed to get away, Hayden, and I’m not going to apologize for it.”

  Knowing they needed balance, he calmed his racing heart and gathered the photos. “This isn’t time for alone. That will come later. Right now you need to be patient with the process, and you can’t forget who’s after you.”

  Her finger traced the scar near her right eye, which was no bigger than a grain of rice. “I won’t forget,” she said. “He made sure of that.”

  He reached for the envelope. “Now there’s one more picture you need to see.” He pulled out another eight-by-ten, but it wasn’t a face.

  “A mirror?”

  “It’s from Shayna Thomas’s guest bedroom. It’s proof that the Butcher didn’t finish the job. He didn’t break all the mirrors. Which means…”

  She inched back from the glossy photo of the unbroken mirror. “Oh God, he’s going to kill again. Soon.”

  “Exactly. As much as he likes order, he won’t wait a full month between killings. He needs to right his wrong. He needs to break all the mirrors, which is why I need to be focusing on him and him alone, not you, Kate. I’ve wasted precious time this afternoon.”

  “I’m sorry, Hayden. I didn’t realize…I…” She fidgeted with her seatbelt and slipped it in place. “Okay, I’m ready to help.”

  “With what?”

  “The investigation. I’m going to help you find my brother.”

  “That’s my job. Right now all you need to do is stay put and stay safe. I’m taking you to the airport, where I’ll be handing you off to Finn Brannigan, one of my teammates. He’ll take you to SCIU headquarters in Maine. The Box is completely secure. You’ll be safe there. I’ll even send for Smokey Joe if you like.” The Box was on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean with plenty of open space and fresh air.

  “No.” She picked up the photo of the unbroken mirror. “I’m not going to Maine.” Her pale cheeks gave way to a fiery wash. “You need me.”

  “I know this is hard on you, that you feel horrible about those broadcasters’ deaths, maybe even responsible, but I assure you we’ll catch the Butcher and bring him to justice. We have hundreds of trained law enforcement officials on this.”

  “I can help. I’m a trained investigator and researcher.”

  “You’re a journalist.”

  “But I’m also the Butcher’s sister.” He opened his mouth, but she waved the photo of the unbroken mirror in his face. “You can get a hundred more trained law enforcement officers on this, but they won’t be able to do what I can do.” The green of her eyes brightened, a look he’d seen so often in her “Justice for All” reports.

  “What are you talking about?” Hayden asked.

  Kate jammed the photo into his briefcase and buckled her seatbelt. “I can take you to Jason. If my brother isn’t at his house in Dorado Bay, I know where he’s hiding.”

  Chapter Seven

  Friday, June 12, 6:15 a.m.

  Fallon, Nevada

  Hayden pulled the rental car out of the EZ-Rest Motel parking lot and aimed it in the direction of the rising sun. Kate noted that not one hair on his head, still damp from his morning shower, moved out of place. How the hell did Agent Reed manage to look so put together when she was falling apart?

  She smoothed the hair along the side of her face, but it sprung back in defiance. Probably had something to do with the nervous sweat on her palms. For only the second time since her attack, she was back in her home state of Nevada. Six months ago, she had made a dead-of-night stop at her condo in Reno to pick up a few small pieces of jewelry to sell because her money had run out. Now, in the bright light of day, every inch of her itched to run, to get away from this place where her terror started. But she knew the terror wouldn’t end until Jason was stopped, and Special Agent Hayden Reed, the man leading the charge to stop Jason, needed her.

  Yesterday afternoon, Hayden had threatened to send her off to Maine to be babysat by his SCIU teammates, but she convinced him that if time was of the essence, he needed her because she alone knew the one place Jason Erickson would go if he needed to hide, a hunting cabin in north-central Nevada. The problem was, she didn’t remember exactly where the cabin was, so she couldn’t give Hayden directions, or even a town. Since his search team found no trace of Jason or any hint of where he may have gone, Hayden had no choice but to bring her along on his investigation, which suited her fine because six broadcasters had died, and she’d do her part to make sure no more were silenced by the Butcher’s knife.

  She took out the road map sandwiched between her seat and Hayden’s. Yesterday she explained to Hayden that in her youth, her family spent a few vacations at a small hunting cabin somewhere east of their home near Lake Tahoe. Thankfully, Hayden hadn’t pressed her to talk about Jason and her childhood, because she sure as hell didn’t want to amble down memory lane. Looking for the cabin was bad enough. The cabin belonged to some distant relative in her father’s family, and Kate remembered it as a quiet, desolate place, more brown than green, swept by small trees and shrubs, a place scrubbed with dust and sun. In her youth, she had hated going to the cabin. It was too remote, and there was nothing to do. Her brother, on the other hand, had loved the solitude and serenity of the place.

  She remembered that it took her family about two or three hours to drive to the cabin from their home in Dorado Bay and that there was a small general store with a life-size fiberglass elk out front with only three legs.

  “A three-legged elk isn’t much to go on,” Hayden had said last night as they mapped out their plans. “But it’s something.”

  Hayden’s optimism, his unwavering belief that her brother would be caught and justice would prevail, continued to surprise her, and some small piece of it must have rubbed off on her, maybe as he pinned her to the ground or maybe as he cradled her cheek, because a tiny part of her was hoping that this road trip to find a three-legged fiberglass elk would be the beginning of the end. Hayden had narrowed the initial search to about twenty small towns. His plan was to drive east, stopping at every town, hoping she’d recognize something, possibly the three-legged elk.

  This morning Hayden was impeccably dressed, and one would never guess he’d been awake most of the night putting together a plan of attack. She’d drifted off to sleep in one of the motel’s sagging double beds as he pecked away at his computer and talked softly on the phone, both soothing sounds. When she awoke, he wore another dark, exquisitely cut suit and bright silk tie, which she was sure was custom painted, this one with black and white and red swirls. His jaw was shiny and smooth, his damp hair combed neatly off his forehead. For a moment, she longed to ruffle his hair, not to dust up Mr. Perfect, but simply to assure herself that he was real and at her side.

  “Do any of the towns sound familiar?” Hayden asked as he nodded at the notepad sitting between them.

  Her finger traveled along Hayden’s neat list. “It’s been so long.” She closed her eyes as she tried to picture riding in the car with her parents, but the canvas remained white, no color, no images, which was no surprise. She’d spent her entire life trying to block out childhood memories. “I’m sorry.”

  Agent Reed’s hand settled on her leg, which she hadn’t realized was shaking. “It’s okay.” His fingers pressed down, his calm seeping into her.

  “Okay,” she repeated. Again, she looked at the list of towns Hayden compiled. “Carroll Summit. Lester Flats. Danaville. You know, I think the cabin may have been located in a town with a person’s name. I keep coming back to these three.”

>   “We’re closest to Lester Flats. We’ll start there.”

  The day was clear and bright, and heat shimmered on the sagebrush-covered flats. Game birds chucked, and small animals scampered through the brown-tipped grasses. Was Jason out here planning his next hunt? She shivered despite the heat slicing through the car’s front windshield.

  “Anything look familiar?” Hayden asked.

  She stared past the flats to the rim-rocked mountains. She’d traveled these roads as a child with her father, but now nothing looked familiar. She shook her head. They drove through Lester Flats, and although it had a general store, it wasn’t the one with the three-legged elk.

  The elevation rose, and the flats gave way to hills and washes dotted by sparse juniper and pinyons. Again, she tried to dig into the dark pit of her childhood memories. Trees, yes, she could picture trees around her father’s cabin, smell the tangy bite of pine.

  “We’re getting closer,” she said.

  The highway stretched on, and the road bisected a small canyon with elongated rocks that looked like…

  “The people canyon,” she said with an intake of breath. “I remember this.” She had driven along this stretch of road with her family many times, and on each drive, she and her father would point out rock formations that looked like people. “That’s the granny with the bun, and over there is the Indian chief,” she told Hayden despite her pulse slamming the hollows of her neck. “The town, it’s up ahead and over the hill.”

  In less than five minutes they reached the small town of Danaville with its two gas stations, three churches, and one general store, complete with a life-size fiberglass elk with three legs.

  “Are you sure?” Hayden asked.

  She wanted to laugh. Her nerves tried to catapult her into the heavens, but Hayden, obsessively thorough, pulled her back to earth with a single question. “Yes. To get to the cabin, drive through town and look for a road on the right. It should go for a few miles then loop around a small reservoir.”

  He motioned to the notepad. “Draw me a map?”