The Coldest Fear

by Debra Webb

  “His, too.”

  Damn. Bobbie had hoped that wouldn’t be the case.

  “But those weren’t the only curious finds. Our favorite fed’s were there, too. Imagine.”

  LeDoux. “Of course LeDoux’s were there. He probably questioned Zacharias right after Weller escaped.” She opted not to mention she’d run into LeDoux. She would get around to sharing that part eventually.

  “Except that Agent LeDoux is on administrative leave pending a review by the Office of Professional Responsibility,” Owens said. “Hadden wouldn’t give me the details but apparently LeDoux has been on thin ice for several weeks now.”

  Bobbie had suspected the same. “I had a feeling something was going on with him.” The events of the past year had cost him dearly. “Are the feds looking for me now?”

  “Since you went to Atlanta to see Weller last week,” Owens said, “I told Hadden your prints were in the attorney’s house because you met with him, as well.” The LT sighed. “I don’t fully understand what’s going on with you right now, Bobbie, but I’m trusting that you’re doing what you have to do. Don’t make me regret covering your ass.”

  “I appreciate it.” She was more than grateful the LT had backed her up. “Wait, you said three things. What else did Hadden mention?”

  The LT’s hesitation had adrenaline roaring through Bobbie’s veins.

  “He made it clear Nick Shade is a person of interest in the facilitation of Weller’s disappearance as well as in the deaths of certain serial killers.”

  A hot mixture of anger and fear on Nick’s behalf roiled in Bobbie’s gut. “They’re wrong. When Nick went to see Weller two months ago, it was the first time he’d seen him since his trial fourteen years ago. He went to Weller about the Storyteller. He was trying to help me.”

  “I’m with you on this, Bobbie,” Owens reminded her. “Stay safe and out of trouble.”

  Bobbie relaxed just a little for the first time in days. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good, because we need you back here. We’re rebuilding this team. Holt and I need you.”

  “As soon as I’m finished here, I’ll be back. You have my word.”

  With a final warning to take care of herself, Owens ended the call. Bobbie plugged her cell back to the charger. She stared a moment at the black screen of her phone. Considered calling Nick again, but the call would only go unanswered.

  Where the hell are you, Nick?

  Thirteen

  10:08 p.m.

  Nick stood on the sidewalk well away from the streetlamp. He watched Bobbie stare out the window, the soft light inside the room like a halo around her long dark hair making him want to reach out and touch her.

  He curled his fingers into fists. She shouldn’t have come. He closed his eyes and wished he could make her understand the moment they’d shared had come and gone. His place was in the darkness searching for the monsters that haunted the lives of innocents like her. A reluctant smile tugged at his lips. Bobbie would be the first to say any innocence she had ever possessed was tarnished now. Evil had touched her life with a heavy hand. Daring to draw so close to him had pulled her more deeply into the darkness she used that badge of hers to fight every day.

  Why won’t you go home?

  Naively she thought she could help him. Some foolish part of her dared to believe she could make him the man she wished him to be.

  Not possible.

  He could never allow her close again. Not once in all these years had he allowed anyone close until Bobbie.

  A mistake.

  The destiny he had fought against his whole life had come to be. Killer.

  He had taken a life. No matter that the bastard he had eliminated was a heartless serial killer who would have murdered Bobbie, Nick had ended his life and he had savored the feel of freshly spilled blood on his hands. Nothing could have stopped him from taking Steven Devine’s life in that moment. After all the bastard had done, Nick had needed to watch and to feel him die.

  Weller had warned him.

  When it comes, you’re completely helpless. You’ll see.

  On some level Nick refused to accept that reality, but deep inside where no one else could see, he was afraid he would feel that urge again. That he would become the kind of monster he had spent years hunting.

  No. He would never be like Weller. He had taken the life of a serial murderer to protect Bobbie. Nick was not a killer.

  As if she sensed his presence, she touched the glass.

  Nick stepped back, deeper into the darkness. Somehow he must convince her to leave. Weller was close. Nick had tracked him from the carnage he’d left outside Atlanta only to lose him once more. His call while Nick was in the cemetery confirmed he was in Savannah. The monster wanted him to know just how close he was. Stopping Weller had to be his priority. Nothing and no one else could get in the way.

  Not even you, Bobbie.

  She moved away from the window and his chest tightened. He remembered well how she had attempted to push him away when he first showed up at her door. Detective Bobbie Gentry had been on a mission to stop the serial killer known as the Storyteller at all costs. No one was going to get in her way.

  Aren’t you doing the same thing now, Shade?

  Nick ignored the mocking voice. How could he choose between focusing solely on finding Weller and protecting Bobbie? She was here because Weller had lured her to Savannah somehow. She would not have known to come otherwise. The son of a bitch wanted Bobbie nearby to serve as a distraction or to play the starring role in some depraved game he had set in motion.

  “You will not win, old man.”

  Nick’s resource at the FBI had warned him that LeDoux had been released after several hours of interrogation. He would be headed this way already. He, too, would be an unwelcome distraction. LeDoux had alerted Nick days ago that he suspected someone inside the FBI was facilitating Weller’s actions. As far as Nick was concerned, that was the FBI’s problem. His singular goal was to stop Weller.

  Bobbie had spent most of the day with the homicide commander, Lieutenant Troy Durham. Only a few minutes ago, the local source Nick procured had provided him with a copy of the report that included Bobbie’s name and cell phone number. The news left no doubt—Weller had inserted her into this investigation. He had something to say to Nick and those long-dead children were part of the message. Weller was far too much of a coward to face Nick one-on-one. He would put as many innocents as possible between them.

  Nick closed his eyes and called to mind his favorite dream. The house where he grew up was burning down and Weller was inside with no way to escape. The flesh would melt from his bones and that insidious brain would be scorched from this earth.

  The cold wind kicked up, scooting leaves along the cobblestoned sidewalk. Nick opened his eyes and looked around. For the first time since his arrival just before noon today, he felt eyes on him. He scanned the windows. All dark. Even Bobbie’s light had gone out.

  He moved quickly across the street and into the alley tucked between the inn and another historic home that was now a business. He’d almost made it to the far end of the alley when he sensed someone behind him. He darted into a stoop and waited.

  Bobbie moved soundlessly past the stoop. Nick stepped out behind her.

  She whirled around, eyes wide, Glock palmed. “Nick.”

  Hearing her voice changed the rhythm of his heart. He cursed himself for the foolish reaction. “Go back to Montgomery, Bobbie. There is nothing you can do here.”

  “You know that’s not going to happen.” Her full lips in a tight line, she slipped her Glock back into her waistband and covered it with her sweatshirt. “Hello to you, too.”

  Arguing with her was pointless. He understood this. He also fully understood the infinite danger and still he wanted he
r to stay. Instead of walking away, he took her by the arm and pulled her close to his side. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Neither said a word as they moved through the darkness. The warmth from her body invaded his, making him weak like no one else he had ever encountered. He braced himself against the invasion. Her safety depended on his ability to keep his distance.

  Three blocks later they reached the room he’d rented. Just about anything could be found and purchased or rented on the internet. The room was one of four above a bakery. The stairs on the side of the building led to a common hall. Nick guided her past the closed doors of the other rooms to the final one at the end of the hall. His was the only room with an original fire escape out the back of the building. The four had likely been one large space before being chopped up into rentable rooms. He opened the door, waited for her to go in ahead of him and quickly locked it behind them.

  For one long moment he stood there inhaling the scent of her. If his life was different...but it wasn’t. She deserved to spend her life with someone like the lieutenant, Troy Durham. A man who could provide her with a real relationship...a real life and family without the fear of passing on a monster’s genes. With the flip of a switch, the room filled with light and frustration nudged aside the other, dangerous tension Nick felt.

  “When did you arrive?” She surveyed the small room, her attention settling on the work he’d started on the far wall.

  The furnishings were few and simple. A single bed, a three-drawer chest and a sparsely appointed kitchenette. But he hadn’t rented the room for its amenities. The location near the police headquarters and the anonymity of a place hardly noticed by passersby were the qualities he had sought. The blank wall she studied was the one necessity he sought when preparing for a hunt.

  She moved to his case map and stared at the photos. The face of each child, of their families and of the suspected killers, the Sanderses, were taped to the wall. Fury burned in his gut as his gaze moved over the photo of Weller and then the one of Zacharias, his attorney.

  Nick joined her, his attention fixed on the photo of the man who was his father. He felt her watching him. “Weller is close,” he warned as he gave up the battle and turned to her.

  “I know. He killed Zacharias, his driver and a courier in the last twenty hours.” She chewed her bottom lip for a half beat. “The FBI found your prints at Zacharias’s house in Atlanta.”

  “I heard.” Jessup had given him a heads-up. “After I left Montgomery—”

  “After you left me,” she corrected, anger laced with frustration colored her voice.

  “I called Zacharias,” Nick finished without acknowledging her jab. He held her gaze. He never tired of looking into her pale blue eyes. So clear, so full of concern for him. How long had it been since anyone looked at him that way? As if it mattered whether he lived or died. He averted his gaze. “He told me I would find what I was looking for in Savannah. He wouldn’t say more on the phone. He wanted to tell me the rest in person so he picked the time and place.”

  “But he never showed,” she guessed. Then her eyes widened. “Weller got to him first.”

  He nodded and turned his attention back to the case map. “I found their bodies at the location where I was to meet Zacharias but it wasn’t his house in Ansley Park. I was especially careful—if my prints were found there, they were planted.”

  “You have no idea what Zacharias wanted to share with you?”

  The surprise in her voice had him searching her eyes once more. “Do you?”

  “Maybe.” Bobbie touched the photo of one of the younger children, the boy, Noah Potter. “LeDoux told me the courier was sending a photo of you to this child’s mother, Amelia Potter.”

  Evidently someone high up in the Weller task force was keeping aspects of the investigation close to the vest. Jessup had not passed along that one. Nick offered, “Her son was the anomaly in the case of the missing children.”

  Bobbie nodded and gestured to the other children’s photos. “Wealthy parents, members of the same church.” She explained about the Foster girl who’d been raped and murdered just three weeks before the children went missing. “Treat Bonner, the young man initially accused of her murder, was the other anomaly.”

  Nick studied the photos of the dead children’s parents. “Is there any connection between Foster’s murder and those of the children?” His source hadn’t been able to get his hands on the coroner’s report on the remains found at the pet cemetery.

  “Nothing tangible yet,” Bobbie began, “but her violent death may have been a sort of trigger.”

  “Is that Durham’s opinion?” Nick gritted his teeth at the edge in his voice. He had no right to be envious of the time another man spent with her.

  “We discussed the possibility.” Bobbie searched his face, attempting to read what he was thinking. “What about Potter? Is it possible Weller had some sort of relationship with her? Or is she connected to him some other way?”

  Nick studied the photo of Amelia Potter. “He would have been intrigued by her purported gift. He once wrote a paper on the link between psychic ability, schizophrenia and psychosis.” At the time Nick had wondered if he would ever be as brilliant as his father.

  What a fool he’d been.

  “Lieutenant Owens called,” she said, drawing his attention back to her. “She warned me that the FBI still considers you a person of interest in Weller’s disappearance as well as the deaths of certain serial killers. You need to be especially diligent about keeping a low profile.”

  “What the FBI believes or doesn’t believe is irrelevant to me. Finding Weller is the only reason I’m here.”

  She ignored his obvious snub. “We’re more likely to stop him if we work together.”

  Nick refused to meet her gaze this time. “Stopping him is my responsibility. I will stop him.”

  “You believe sending me away will protect me from him, is that it?”

  He glared at her then. “I know it won’t protect you completely, but the risk is far greater with you close. Walking away will protect you in the future.”

  She shook her head. “You know, I thought I was the one who couldn’t stop looking back long enough to look forward, but I think it’s you. You’re so afraid of the past, you won’t dare reach for the future. You’ll avoid it, go around it.” She moved in toe-to-toe with him. “You’ll keep existing in the shadows...alone.”

  “That’s where I want to be.”

  “You’ll be there because you’re a coward.”

  He flinched. Mentally kicked himself for the reaction.

  “That’s right. You’re a coward.” Sadness clouded her eyes. “All this time I thought you were some kind of hero. I guess I was wrong.”

  She turned her back and walked out.

  As much as her words stung, he couldn’t let her walk through the night alone.

  Keeping his distance, he followed her back to the inn.

  When she disappeared inside he drew in a sharp breath and turned away.

  Before returning to his room, he made a detour.

  The Gentle Palm was dark, as were the living quarters above it.

  He thought of the woman in the photo in his room.

  Who are you, Amelia Potter?

  Fourteen

  East River Street

  10:30 p.m.

  Amelia dabbed her face dry. The towel dropped from her fingers. When had she grown so old? She traced the lines around her eyes, and the ones that bracketed her too-wide lips. A smile trembled across them as she closed her eyes and remembered kissing her little boy. She had loved him so, so much. More than anything else in the world.

  She drew in a sharp breath and stepped away from the sink. Her fingers trailed down to her breasts. She had nursed him with these breasts. Her nipples peaked a
t the memory. Her belly had swollen with him. Her palm glided over her abdomen. He’d been a big baby but she hadn’t cared. The marks her expanded belly had left on her skin were a badge of honor to Amelia. She had been so in love with her little boy.

  How had she allowed him to be taken? How had she not seen the evil lurking so close?

  Her hands dropped to her sides and she went in search of a nightgown. She’d made a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake. That mistake had cost her the most precious thing in her life.

  How was it that she could warn others of imminent doom while she had been completely unaware?

  When the worn thin cotton fell over her skin, she shuffled into the next room and knelt at her prayer bench. She smiled as her fingers traced the sweet face in the framed photo of her little boy. She lit a candle and said the same prayer she had said every single night for thirty-two years.

  Please come home to me.

  After a minute of meditation she stood and padded to her bed. She burrowed beneath the down covers and turned off the lamp. From the moment Camille left today, Amelia had been in a state. How could Camille have experienced the same dream Amelia had?

  The dark-haired woman had visited her dreams. Amelia had felt herself running in the woods. She’d watched her labored breath fog in the cold air. She’d felt the damp leaves beneath her bare feet. Then the water came rushing up to her waist. She and the dark-haired woman were in the water together. The struggle was powerful.

  Amelia hadn’t seen the bones Camille saw, but now she understood why her old friend had. Troy Durham had stopped by earlier this evening. All afternoon she had sensed tragedy was coming.

  The children had been found. All but one.

  Troy had explained how all the remains had been positively identified except his little sister’s and Noah’s. As selfish as it was, she had immediately started to silently pray that her little boy was not among the bones.