The Broken

by Shelley Coriell

  She stared at Ava Conlan, who stared back, her carefully powdered face unmoving, her coiffed hair stiff. The older woman could give stone-faced Hayden a run for his money.

  “How is the search for your friend going?” Ava Conlan asked in a cultured voice, honed by scads of money and a social status unparalleled in all of Dorado Bay.

  “Still going.”

  “Oliver says they’ll find him. They won’t leave a man behind.” For a moment, the older woman’s gaze softened, and Kate wondered what it would be like to have a grandmother in her life.

  Kate pressed her lips together. Smokey Joe was all the family she needed. “I’d like to join Hayden and the others.”

  Ava Conlan nodded and led her into a huge ballroom. The house was probably ten thousand square feet and, on a normal day, a showplace with its fine furnishings and art. But today it wore an extra glittery party face. Black and gold bunting flounced the doorways, and large gold pots with creamy white flowers dotted the floor. Gold Mylar balloons with curling gold ribbons floated high on the ceiling.

  As they clicked through the ballroom, a heavy silence pressed on them.

  “How—”

  “Do—”

  They spoke at the same time.

  “Go ahead,” Ava said.

  “How many people do you expect tonight?” Kate asked.

  “About five hundred. Even with the bad publicity, it sounds like people still believe in the academy.”

  “Do you?” Kate asked, wondering how someone like her grandmother would support having fifty troubled boys living nearby.

  “When the academy first opened, most of us on the lake were opposed to it. Honestly, we were worried about our property, even our lives. They get a lot of rough boys through there.” Her carefully plucked brows knitted. “But the more we saw, the more we realized the amazing success the academy had with turning lives around.” Her lifted face suddenly lined, and Kate wondered if she was thinking about her daughter, Kate’s mother, who had never been able to turn her life around from its destructive course.

  Kate realized the other woman was openly staring at her. She wanted to pull her hair across her face, but she stood straighter and thrust out her chin.

  “You don’t look like your mother,” Ava said.

  “I’m nothing like her.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re stronger.” She twined her thin, pale fingers. “But you need to be careful, Kate. This Butcher, he’s a monster.” She shivered and inched to Kate’s side.

  Kate didn’t like this conversation or the closeness. “Where are Hayden and Agent Lord?”

  Ava Conlan pulled herself together and let out a husky laugh. “Parker Lord is everywhere.”

  “What?”

  “I take it you haven’t met Hayden’s superior.” The older woman’s eyes glinted like the gold balloons overhead. “This way.”

  Kate found Hayden on the patio with Hatch, Evie, and a half dozen people she didn’t recognize. Everyone was focused on Hayden except for a man sitting at the patio table and staring at her with an enigmatic smile. For a moment, everything blurred but him. Black hair, dusted with silver at the temples, sat atop his head in wind-swept waves. He wore a navy polo shirt with some kind of nautical emblem on the pocket. His jaw spoke of arrogance, his chiseled nose of strength, and his eyes of confidence.

  This had to be the legendary Parker Lord, and her grandmother was right: He had a power that screamed, I am captain of the seas, master of the universe.

  He winked at her.

  She blinked and for the first time noticed he was sitting in a wheelchair.

  When Hayden was done talking, he took her hand and introduced her. He was so casual about it. She could do this. She could be around normal people and act like a normal person.

  “We’ve actually met before,” a man Hayden introduced as Finn Brannigan said. He wore black jeans and a black T-shirt and moved with the grace of a cat. “Jewelry heist at the Atlantis Resort four years ago. I was the JAG specialist you interviewed for your ‘Justice for All’ report.”

  She stared at him, and a hazy memory started to come into focus. The Atlantis was a ritzy resort and spa in Reno, and their penthouse suites housed the highest of the high rollers as well as their jewel-decked spouses. “Yes,” she said with a smile of recognition. “You were the agent who re-created the crime by reenacting the thieves’ escape route. You went out onto the ledge of the twenty-seven-story building and crawled down a rope. Everyone, including the livid hotel manager, was afraid you’d fall.”

  “Pretty good, huh?” Agent Brannigan said, but he really meant It’s so good to be bad.

  Before she could answer, the patio doors swung open and out stepped Dr. Trowbridge, followed by her grandmother, who was wringing her hands.

  “Get out.” Dr. Trowbridge pointed at Hayden and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “You have no reason to be here.”

  “I do if I plan on catching a murderer.” Hayden’s hand knotted, the pressure intensifying on her fingers.

  “Not during the fundraiser,” Dr. Trowbridge said. “The academy is relying on this event to bring in money to keep our doors open for the next year. We can’t have you and half the FBI wandering among our guests looking for a serial killer. Your presence will jeopardize the academy’s future.”

  “You’re worried about me jeopardizing your damned fundraiser?” Hayden took a step toward the doctor, but Hatch grabbed his arm.

  Kate, along with everyone else on the patio, turned to stare at Hayden, who was visibly shaking. And swearing. He looked like a cannon ready to blast the Hope Academy doctor.

  “A man known as the Broadcaster Butcher has left a clear signal that he’ll be here tonight, at this fundraiser,” Hayden said. “And I’ll be here, waiting for him.”

  “This is a private affair, by invitation only,” Trowbridge insisted. “Since our good director, Kyl Watson, has gone AWOL, I’m the one handing out invitations, and you don’t get one. There is no way you are going to link Hope Academy to the Broadcaster Butcher.”

  Hayden threw off Hatch’s hand and took a step toward the doctor. Dr. Trowbridge drew back a fist.

  “Fifty thousand dollars a head. Four heads.” The words stilled the entire room, and everyone turned to Parker Lord, the man who’d spoken. “Hayden, Hatch, Evie, and Kate. Those four get admittance into the fundraiser, and I pay Hope Academy two hundred thousand dollars.”

  Hayden gave a single stony nod. Hatch flashed his megawatt smile and chucked an arm around Evie. “She cleans up real nice,” Hatch said with a wink. Evie elbowed him in the ribs.

  A struggle played out on Dr. Trowbridge’s face, and eventually the $200,000 won. “Three agents.” He looked at Kate. “And her. But no guns.”

  Hayden shifted, but both Hatch and Finn reached out and grabbed him by the arms.

  “It’s a deal.” Parker Lord wheeled off the patio.

  * * *

  Friday, June 19, Noon

  Dorado Bay, Nevada

  “Dammit to hell!”

  Smokey Joe threw the broken water bottle on the ground. That was the third shovel to take a dump on him. He squatted and ran his fingers over the muddy floor of his underground prison. Where the hell was his last water bottle? He needed to make another shovel.

  A day and a half ago, that son of a bitch Butcher snuck into his room through an open window, and before Smokey could rally the troops, the Butcher whacked him in the mouth with the butt of something hard and followed with a thwack to the side of the head. Smokey ran his fingers along the crusted blood at his temple and chin. Didn’t hurt no more.

  Smokey didn’t need no eyes to tell him he was in an underground hole—three and a half feet square and four feet deep—and that the top was covered by plywood weighted with a foot or two of dirt. He’d found six bananas and four water bottles in one of the corners and felt a slight but steady stream of fresh air coming from a small mesh-covered hole above him. He heard mallards and not-too-far-off mo
torboats, so he figured he was close to the lake. He also figured he’d been in the hole going on two days. Two times birds started yammering, telling him the sun rose, but only once did bullfrogs and crickets make a racket.

  At last he found the final water bottle and poured the few remaining drops into his mouth. When it was empty, he bit into the base of the bottle and made a small hole. Then with his old, muddy hands—nothing shaky ’bout ’em now—he tore at the hole, peeling back the plastic bit by bit. This one probably wouldn’t last too long either, but it didn’t matter. He’d keep digging. He’d done it before, and back then it had only been his sorry old butt on the line.

  “You haven’t got me yet, Butcher Boy, and you ain’t gonna get my girl.” Smokey gouged his plastic shovel into the three-foot wormhole he’d been working on for two days. “I’m coming, Katy-lady. Just you hang on and stick with G-man. Old Smokey’s coming for you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Friday, June 19, 4:10 p.m.

  Reno, Nevada

  Home sweet home.” Kate tried to keep her voice light, but it wavered as she stood at the front door of her Reno condo, trying to get the courage to slip her key in the lock.

  Hayden motioned to the two-story ground-floor unit with the walled private patio. “Nice place. You could have sold it for a considerable sum. Why did you hang on to it?”

  “Honestly?”

  Shoot straight or ditch the rifle.

  Hayden nodded.

  “This is my home, the first real home I ever had, and I guess a part of me wanted to hang on to it in case I ever felt safe enough to come back.”

  “More hope?”

  “Or stupidity.” She laughed, but the sound died off as she aimed the key at the lock and missed.

  Hayden held out his hand, and she handed him her key. Good, let Agent Efficient help her get what she needed, and then they’d go. He turned toward the door but didn’t insert the key. Instead he squinted, frowned, and plucked a small round object from above the door jamb.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Kate asked.

  “A camera to watch you coming and going.” Hayden fisted it in his hand. “Set up no doubt by the Butcher.”

  Fear burrowed in her chest as she tried to comprehend someone so consumed with finding her that he’d set up miniature cameras at her home. And he must have seen her when—“The trigger. Oh, my God, Hayden. I’m the trigger.” Guilt, an icy, heavy avalanche, almost knocked her over. She steadied herself against the patio wall. “The Butcher made his first attack six months ago, and you said something happened to trigger that attack. It was me. In January, I came here to get some jewelry to sell, and he must have seen me. It’s just like you said. Realizing I was alive, he must have killed the other broadcasters, knowing that I would have to come out of hiding because I could never live with myself if I let the injustices against those women go unanswered.”

  Hayden slipped the disk into his pocket. “But he won’t get you. Let’s get the dress and go.”

  Kate didn’t argue. After Hayden unlocked the door, she hurried up the steps into the master bedroom, refusing to look at the brown stain of her own blood and terror and anger indelibly imprinted on the carpet. She threw open her walk-in closet and rummaged past the suits to the back, where she kept her formal wear. She took out three full-length dresses. The first, a sapphire velvet gown, was too low in the front. She studied the black with the jet beads, but the sleeveless sheath would show too much of her arms. Finally she held an emerald green charmeuse with a high waist and cap sleeves.

  “The green,” Hayden said. “Definitely the green.” She spun and found him sitting on her bed, his legs stretched out in front of him, his back against the headboard.

  “Why the green?” She held up the shimmery fabric with the flowing skirt and low back.

  “It’s my favorite color.”

  “You like green?”

  “Is that a crime?” For the first time since his run-in with Dr. Trowbridge, Hayden smiled. The sight sent a brilliant light through the dark, dusty room.

  She shrugged a laugh. “You’re just not a green kind of guy.”

  He shook his head like a parent amused with a precocious child. She knew she and Hayden were fundamentally different. He was an analytical control freak and she was…She clutched the dress to her and sunk onto the edge of the bed. She didn’t even know who she was anymore.

  “I’m not green,” he said. “Okay, then what color am I?”

  She squinted. “Something practical. Black. Brown. Maybe camel.”

  “Nope.” He reached for her. “I’m definitely a sucker for green.” He ran his finger along the side of her face then nodded to the wad of emerald charmeuse in her hands. “Wear it. It matches your eyes.”

  She hugged the flimsy fabric to her chest. “Tonight I’ll be in a room with a killer who needs me dead.”

  “And I’ll be right beside you.” Hayden was a large man, but he moved with surprising agility as he landed a deep, hot kiss on her lips.

  When she pulled away, she steadied her hands on his chest. “Is that a classic case of courage delivered with a kiss?”

  “No. That was purely primal on my part. It happens when I’m lying in a bed with you.”

  She took a deep breath. She’d handled dragons as a child, dealt with barracudas like Robyn Banks in broadcast news, survived twenty-five stabs wounds, and she got Hayden Reed to tap into and act on primal feelings. She was ready for tonight, for a cocktail party with a butcher.

  * * *

  Friday, June 19, 7 p.m.

  Dorado Bay, Nevada

  “Damn, Pretty Boy, you look good in a tux.”

  Hayden ignored Lottie’s smack to his butt and held out the cufflinks.

  She took one of the links and threaded it through the buttonhole of his right cuff. “Are your guys ready?”

  “Hatch and Evie are already at the Conlan mansion. Parker has men set up at the estates on either side. Chief Greenfield has roadblocks all along the bay roads.”

  The old police sergeant turned him around and secured the other cufflink. “You be careful. You might look like a million bucks, but you’re still flesh and blood under this fancy suit.” She straightened his tie.

  “You, too. I’ve arranged for one of Chief Greenfield’s men to go out with you tonight.” Lottie gave herself a clean bill of health, and she planned to spend the evening flashing around the sketch of the “woman” seen by Shayna Thomas’s stalker. The difference now was that she’d be telling everyone that this was a man disguised as a woman.

  Lottie placed both hands on his chest and pushed him away. “Kate’s right. You’re a control freak.”

  “No, Lottie, I care about you.”

  The sergeant waggled her eyebrows at him. “You got an older brother hiding somewhere who likes old bags with great shoes?”

  Hayden laughed. “No, but if I did, I wouldn’t hesitate to introduce you.”

  At that moment, Kate and Maeve walked out of the bathroom, and his heart dropped to his knees. He was sure of it, because they were knocking with a steady beat as he looked at the fairy-tale version of Kate. Here, in the early twilight, she looked like something out of her closet mural, Happily Ever After. Her creamy skin peeked out from the brilliant emerald of the long, flowing dress that hugged her slim curves, and in her hair, hanging in loping curls about her face, were tiny iridescent pearls.

  “Let’s go,” she said when it became obvious he was gaping at her.

  He nodded. Go. They needed to go.

  Kate remained silent as they drove toward the glittering mansions on the lake. It was like first-date jitters, but to the nth degree. Their date tonight was with a butchering serial killer.

  As they passed the road leading to Mulveney’s Cove, Hayden recognized a car heading to the water. “There’s Jon. I want to check in.”

  Lakeside, they found Jon dispatching an elite SAR group from Phoenix.

  “No news,” Jon said as they joined
him at the water’s edge. “But we won’t stop until we find him, and we’re going to find him. Alive.”

  Kate did the unthinkable and hugged Jon, whispering against his neck, “I know.”

  On the way back to the car, Hayden recognized another face, a smaller one without Jon’s hope. Charlie Hankins sat on an outcropping of rocks overlooking Mulveney’s Cove, tears streaming down his face.

  “Oh, Hayden.” Kate grabbed his hand. “That kid’s miserable. Please go over and say something to him.”

  The kid’s hunched shoulders were carrying something heavier than the weight of the world. “I don’t know what to say to him,” Hayden said. Sorry for letting you down. Sorry for not finding your brother before the Butcher did.

  “That’s crazy. You always know the perfect thing to say and do.”

  “Kate…” he started.

  She thumped him on the chest. “Just go.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t leave you.”

  “I’ll glue myself to Jon. Go.”

  She gave him a little push, and his feet slogged through the lakeside muck toward Charlie Hankins. He climbed the back of the rock, which was covered in dried fish innards and lichen. The boy picked at the frayed edge of his cut-off shorts but didn’t say anything as Hayden sat next to him. Clearly, Charlie’s heart was breaking, and he felt guilty as hell. The hard part was knowing what to say. For once there were no voices in his head, no logical thoughts processing in his brain.

  “I heard the funeral’s tomorrow,” Hayden said.

  Charlie tossed a rock into the red-gold waters of the bay reflecting the setting sun. “Yeah. You gonna be there?”

  “I’d planned on it. That okay with you?”

  Charlie tossed in another rock. “Yeah.”

  Hayden picked up one of the rocks and tossed it in the water, a soft kerplunk harmonizing with the fading day’s chirps and buzzes. He tossed in seven more before Charlie turned his tear-stained cheeks to him. “I have these dreams at night where I find him, the killer, in Benny’s room, and I take Benny’s baseball bat and hit him over the head. Again and again and again until…until…there’s nothing left. Is that okay to feel that way?”