He checked his watch and figured it was still early enough to call Lottie. “Let’s head inside. I have work to do.”
Kate didn’t argue, and he realized that she, too, wanted to get out of this place that dredged up painful memories and opened old wounds.
“How long will we be here?” she asked. The rental had a high-tech security system, three bedrooms with storm windows, a small kitchen so they wouldn’t have to dine out in restaurants, and a single great room with a wall of windows giving million-dollar views of the bay. The curtainless wall of windows was not optimum for his efforts to hide and protect a witness, but the summer season in this resort town had started, and he was able to book this secluded cottage only because of a last-minute cancellation.
“A few days, possibly a week,” he said. But this time, he didn’t have the luxury of time. The Butcher hadn’t broken all of the mirrors at Shayna Thomas’s house. He was going to strike again soon with the intent to get it right. The fact that Jason wasn’t at his home or the family cabin meant he was on the hunt.
“What are we going to do?” Kate asked.
We. After she led him to the hunting cabin, Hayden finally made peace with the word. His head told him he should tuck Kate into the Box in Maine, where she would be safe, but something deep in his gut, the part of him that would do anything to stop the Butcher, the part of him that made him one of Parker’s Apostles, told him he needed Kate.
“We’re going to walk in Jason’s shoes,” he said. “Get into his head.” Who better to have at his side than the monster’s sister, who had lived with him for almost half his life? “I plan on talking to Jason’s employer, his coworkers, his neighbors, friends, and relatives. I’m going to re-create Jason’s days, his routines, his complete existence.”
“Sounds like a plan, Agent Obscenely Thorough.” On her words floated a hint of a laugh, and it shocked him at how much he enjoyed that sound.
* * *
Saturday, June 13, 6 a.m.
Dorado Bay, Nevada
Kate stood in the bathroom of the lakeside cottage the next morning frowning at a tube fisted in her trembling hand. “Stop being such an idiot,” she told herself. With a shaky breath, she uncapped the tube and raised her gaze to the mirror.
It had been almost three years since Kate had seriously studied her face in a mirror, and after three years little had changed. The left side of her face was untouched by Jason’s blade, but the right side showed signs of his wrath. The Butcher’s knife had sliced along the right side of her neck and near her right eye.
Last night Hayden told her she’d spend the day with him as he interviewed those who knew Jason, and she wasn’t about to go out looking like a monster. With the tip of her finger, she dabbed the cover-up cream on the scars. After applying the cover-up, she sponged on foundation and translucent powder. Stepping back from the sink, she surveyed her work. With the brown contacts and the scarf around her neck, she looked almost normal.
She found Hayden at the dining table in front of the wall of windows overlooking the lake. A plate of Danish and a cup of coffee sat next to his laptop. He wore another crisp white shirt and neatly pressed trousers, this pair a nice, dark gray, the color of his eyes. A matching jacket and a beautiful tie with red poppies sat on the back of one of the empty chairs. His hair was slicked back, and his jaw was smooth.
Perfect, as usual.
“Coffee cups are in the cupboard by the sink,” Hayden said as he tapped on his laptop.
She poured herself some coffee and sat in the chair next to his. Her face reflected in the laptop’s lid. She noted the scarf completely covered her neck, and, unless she squinted, she couldn’t see the scar near her eye. She jabbed a fork at the top of a sugary Danish and scraped the crumbs into a small hill of white.
Hayden continued to click away on his computer. She continued to scrape.
Scrape. Click. Scrape. Click.
“Well?” The fork clanked to her plate.
“What?”
“What do you think?” She pointed to her face.
His fingers paused. “The brown contacts cover the green.”
She jammed a hand at her right eye. “And this.”
“What?” His face twisted in bafflement.
“The scar, Hayden, what about the scar?”
He shrugged and turned back to the computer screen. “It looks fine.” Click. Click.
“Fine? You can see it?” Her voice rang out in a screech.
He closed his computer, crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned back his chair. He looked almost…casual. Well, as casual as a man as uptight as Hayden could look. “No, Kate, the scar isn’t noticeable, but it wasn’t before.”
She gnawed the Danish. This was more of his psychobabble crap: mock nonchalance to give her confidence to go out into the world of light and the living.
Hayden righted his chair and leaned toward her. He was close enough for her to see the cool gray flecks in his eyes, smell that sweet cinnamon scent that shouldn’t smell like trussed-up Hayden. “I’m serious, Kate. Unless they’re looking closely, most people won’t even notice the scars, even without the makeup. Only in your head are they this huge, ugly disfigurement.”
She wanted to believe him. He was an analytical observer, a man who saw everything. And he believed in justice and truth. For so long she’d been running from her past. Maybe he was right. Maybe part of her was stuck in the past, the part that refused to see beyond those first few weeks when her face had been swollen and disfigured and colored by scarlet and purple. Maybe time had worked its healing magic.
Damn, he was doing it again, getting into her head. It drove her nuts. She’d rather have him in her bed than in her head.
A picture of Hayden sprawled on her bed with a sheet draped low on his hips flashed through her mind. In this image, moonlight slipped in the window and tugged at his hair, mussed by her fingers. A silky glow of sweat coated his chest where her tongue slid. The vision was so bright, so clear, it sent a geyser of warmth surging through her midsection.
Across from her Hayden pulled in a sharp intake of breath. He stared at her, his customary staid expression one of bafflement and…heat.
The Danish dropped from her hand. Please don’t tell me he saw that in my head.
No, that was ridiculous. Hayden couldn’t read her mind. He was just a man, albeit a man with keen powers of observation. There was no way he could get into her head. Nor was he ever going to get into her bed. Men like Hayden Reed were control freaks, and at age sixteen, on the day she ran away from her dragon of a mother, she swore no one would ever control her again.
She brushed the glazed sugar from her fingertips and stood. “Let’s go look for a butcher.”
* * *
Saturday, June 13, 7:10 a.m.
Dorado Bay, Nevada
Hayden pulled the rental car in front of Hope Academy, a two-story lodge made of warm cedar, native stone, and huge glass panels reflecting the brilliant expanse of morning sky. Fifty-six boys stood in six arrow-straight lines doing jumping jacks. Ten jumping jacks per rep. Five reps. He counted every one, anything to get the vision of Kate sitting at the breakfast table out of his head.
Didn’t work. He pictured her tongue dart out and capture the fleck of glazed sugar on her lower lip. He saw the pulse at her neck stutter. He saw heat flooding her cheeks. All of which sent a rush of hot blood through his veins. Absolutely unacceptable given she was his witness and currently facing the demons of her past, not to mention the uncertainty of her future.
He focused on the boys in Hope Academy T-shirts. They moved on to lunges. One lunge up. Two lunge up.
Hayden, you work too hard. This Broadcaster Butcher case is consuming you. Maeve.
Take a few days off, get some R & R, and come back fresh. Parker.
You know what you need, Hayden? A good fuck. Hatch.
Hayden pushed the voices aside along with the vision of Kate at the breakfast table. What he needed was to get his hands
on Erickson. Kate’s brother should be his focus. Not Kate’s sugar-dusted lips.
He turned off the car and jammed the keys in his pocket.
Next to him Kate scrunched her forehead. “Where are the barbed wire and the tower with armed guards? This looks more like a church retreat than a home for delinquent boys.”
Good. Kate, who was employing a few more brain cells than him today, had gotten over the awkward moment at breakfast. “Looks can be deceiving.” He pointed to the white post fence that bordered the property. “See that thin wire above the top rail? Electrically charged.” Then he lifted his hand and motioned to a small wooden box in the spruce tree at the corner of the main house. “There’s a camera in there, and there was one at the gate we passed off the main highway. We’ve been watched since the moment we entered the property.”
A shiver rocked her body, and he rested his hand on her thigh, giving it a squeeze that had nothing to do with breakfast. Kate couldn’t stand people watching her because she considered herself disfigured. The scars near her eye and along her neck were faded and no longer raised, but he’d studied enough victims of violent crime to know that in her mind she saw a monster, which was ridiculous. This was also a good reminder that Kate was also a victim and that he was obligated to protect her, not ogle her over morning coffee.
They walked up the neatly manicured gravel drive to the academy, a ten-acre residential treatment center for emotionally and socially troubled teenage boys. According to the school’s website, the academy accommodated sixty boys, ages twelve to seventeen, and a residential staff of fifteen. Jason had worked as a Hope Academy cook for the past five years.
“Do you really think someone here may know where Jason is?” Kate asked.
They stopped in front of an oversized pair of cedar doors. “No, but they will help us get a better picture of his routine and interests.”
“And you want that because…”
“Only Jason is going to be able to tell us where he is.” And that meant walking in his shoes, slipping into his skin, and becoming the monster.
Before they knocked, the door swung open to frame a short woman with a smudge of silver glitter on her cheek. “This is private property. You’ll need to get off, or I’ll call the police.”
Her words and expression were as sharp as the scissors she held in her right hand. In her early forties, she wore a yellow polo shirt that read HOPE ACADEMY STAFF; shoulder-length, no-fuss brown hair; and a frown. No jewelry but for a lanyard noosed around her neck with a half dozen keys. She reminded Hayden of a tiny, angry sparrow.
He took out his credentials. “And this is Kate Johnson. We have an appointment with the camp director, Kyl Watson.”
The woman studied him and slipped the scissors into her pocket. “My apologies. Kyl didn’t mention you were coming.”
They stepped into a great room with an oversized fireplace flanked by large leather sofas and groups of comfortable chairs. In the center of the room were four card tables, each littered with buckets filled with sequins, feathers, ribbons, and glitter. Two teenage boys sat at each table, and most were gluing baubles onto papier-mâché masks with long stick handles.
One boy had written FUCK HOPE in glue on the table and was sprinkling the words with silver glitter.
“Get it cleaned up, Bradley,” the woman said. “If it’s not gone by the time I get back, you’ll get bricks. Do you hear me?”
The boy nodded.
“Excuse me?” she said with unexpected force.
“Yes, Miss Watson, I hear you, and I understand what you’re saying.”
She pointed to a long table beneath one of the windows where at least twenty masks, bedecked in sequins and feathers, were drying in the sun. “The boys are making masks for a fundraiser we’re hosting next weekend.”
“We’re ar-teests,” said one of the boys, who was crafting a bright sun of red, orange, and yellow onto one of the mask shells with sequins.
“They’re lovely,” Kate said. “I like your colors.”
“Some of the masks will sell for up to five thousand dollars,” the woman explained. “It’s our biggest fundraiser of the year.” She motioned them to follow her down a hallway. “I’m Beth Watson, the assistant director. I’m sorry about the junkyard dog routine. I thought you were the press.” Her gaze slipped to Kate, who, in her blue jeans, blazer, and neck scarf, really did look like the intelligent, attractive broadcast journalist she’d once been. “We’ve had them hounding the place for days, ever since word got out that Jason is wanted for questioning in the Broadcaster Butcher slayings.” Her lips pinched in a little beak as she swung open a door marked DIRECTOR. “This Butcher stuff must come to an end.”
“That’s why I’m here, Ms. Watson. To find him and stop the killings.”
Beth Watson shuddered and took off at a clip. The woman didn’t waste time or energy. Everything about her was purposeful.
The director’s office was not much bigger than a broom closet with file cabinets covering every inch of the walls. Within seconds, a man wiping his hands with a damp paper towel walked in and introduced himself as Kyl Watson. In his mid-thirties, he had the look that most social service providers wore: overworked and underpaid, but dedicated to his cause.
“I’m afraid you caught me working on the plumbing this morning. Clogged sink in team five’s dormitory.” Watson folded the paper towel and dropped it in the garbage can near his desk. “As I told Chief Greenfield yesterday, I’ll give you everything I have on Jason. I need this nightmare to end.”
“This has been hard on you,” Hayden said with a tilt of his head.
“On the entire academy.” Watson shifted the pad on his desk, aligning it a quarter-inch from the edge. “I have sixty boys here, troubled boys struggling with everything from low self-esteem to drug addiction. We’re trying to provide a safe, healthy, nurturing environment where they can make positive life changes, but with all the media attention and talk of the brutality of the crimes, our campus has been disrupted to say the least.”
“The boys have been upset?”
“We’re a small staff here, Agent Reed. Jason may have been the kitchen manager, but he also interacted with the boys, supervising activities and helping with homework.”
“Reaction from parents?”
Watson dropped his hands in his lap. “Concern from most. Outrage from a few. Two families pulled their boys.”
“I’m sorry.” And Hayden was. Serial killing—any killing—had a ripple effect that reached far and wide.
“Not half as sorry as I am.” He straightened the desk phone then folded his hands in his lap. “So what can I do to help?”
“Help me paint a picture of Jason. Give me the colors and textures of his days, his work, his relationships.”
“Jason was an exemplary employee. He started as a kitchen hand and within a year had worked his way up to kitchen manager. He kept meticulous records, never complained, and willingly took on new and challenging tasks.” The director handed him Jason’s file, the contents nothing short of glowing.
“What was Jason’s schedule like?” Hayden asked.
“As a live-in, he worked three weeks on, one week off.”
“Was he ever late? Did he ever miss any work?”
“Until this week, he had a perfect attendance record.” Watson pulled out the work schedule and handed it to Hayden. “I’m sure this will interest you.”
It did. Each of the Butcher attacks occurred while Erickson was off work.
“Has he contacted you at all since he took off two weeks ago?”
“Not a word. He was due back here on Monday.” Five days ago.
“And you weren’t concerned about his failure to show?” Hayden asked.
“We were, but Beth mentioned that he’d been going to his family’s cabin during his weeks off, and she got the impression he was having some family issues. Since Jason had plenty of vacation time banked and a great work record, we were going to give him until Monday b
efore doing anything, including contacting the police. Honestly, we were beginning to think he might have been the victim of some crime.”
Hayden set aside the schedule. “How did Jason get along with others here?”
“Everyone liked him. Staff, students, even visiting parents said kind things about him.” Beside him Kate stiffened. “Jason was quiet and shy, but he was always pleasant and respectful.”
“Did he have any close friends or confidants?”
“None. He was a lonely kid, but a good one.”
Kid. Interesting word choice to describe Jason, a man in his mid-twenties. Shades of paternal feelings. “Girlfriend?” Hayden asked.
“I think he had a special girl in his life. I never met her, but I remember him picking flowers from the academy gardens to take to her.”
“Did he ever talk about his childhood, his family?”
“No, I think he spent his weeks off with his mother, but I never met her. I heard in town that she’s a bit of a recluse, hadn’t been out of the house in five or six years.”
Kate’s entire body tensed, and her leg started to bounce. He casually reached over and set his hand on her knee. He knew this was hard on her, but there was no way he’d leave her alone at the cottage. Plus, her intimate knowledge of Jason might give him a different insight.
“About six months ago, around January, did you notice any changes in Jason? Or were there any changes here at the academy?” Hayden was fishing for triggers, anything that would explain the onset of the slayings in January.
“No. Jason was very much an even-keeled individual, very predictable.”
“Do you have any idea where he may be?”
“Not a clue. As I said, he was very quiet and private.”
Hayden went fishing and came up with an empty net. “I’d like to see Jason’s things and the places where he slept and worked.”
The Hope Academy kitchen smelled of pine cleaner, and the stainless steel appliances were so clean Hayden could see the tight lines of Kate’s mouth reflected on their surfaces. Likewise, Jason kept his dorm room tidy and unadorned, except for one small picture. On his nightstand sat a photo of a little brown-haired girl dressed in a blue princess costume with a tall gold crown. She held a baby dressed as a pumpkin on her lap. Both smiled at the camera with chocolate-smeared faces.
The Broken Page 11
