Lieutenant Taylor Jackson Collection, Volume 2

by J. T. Ellison

Purity bound to bloody passion.”

  Fane hugged him hard, wiping tears away from her cheeks. “Oh, Raven. It’s beautiful. You wrote that for me?”

  “I did. I wanted you to have something special, just for you. Now that Ember and Thorn are…gone, I wanted to give you my soul.”

  She slid back down to the floor at his feet, caressing the inside of his calf. “I’ll take your soul, and damn them. How dare they run off like this? No, I can’t believe they would betray us, Raven. It must be something else. Ember’s parents might have taken her phone away, and you know Thorn is going to be somewhere close to her.”

  He slipped to the floor next to her, put his arm around her thin shoulders. He loved to feel the bones sliding under her skin, so close to the surface he could practically see their edges.

  “I do know that, love. I have to believe that they are being kept away against their will. The spell we did last night was so strong, the only thing that could keep them away is if they were being held somewhere. I should go, actually—see if I can find out what’s happening. It’s been entirely too quiet out there.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Back to my house. I can look into the mirror, see if I can find them.” He stood, and she scrambled to her feet.

  “I’ll come with you,” she said.

  “No. I must do this alone. You know I need all my concentration to scry, and you’re too much of a distraction, my dear. A good distraction, but one nonetheless.”

  He kissed her deeply, running his hands along her body. When she put her arms around his neck and drew her to him, he felt that incredible high that no drug could ever bring him close to. She slipped her hand into his pants and brought him to readiness in an instant, running her tongue along the edge of his collarbone as she wormed her way farther and farther down his body.

  He stepped out of his pants and guided her mouth to his cock, let the warm ache begin inside his balls as she suckled. When he started getting close, he reached down and brought her to her feet, face-to-face, and took her mouth. He loved to taste himself on her lips. Kissing her, he slid up her skirt. She was wearing his favorite garters and panties, the black-and-silver striped ones. They were crotchless, and she was wet, ready for him. He lifted her off her feet and onto the bed, pushed into her body with a single thrust, his hands beneath her buttocks so he could get as deep as humanly possible. They writhed together, becoming one, building to a climax quickly. No spells, no potions, just their love, exploding between them.

  He came back to himself, realized he must be crushing Fane, though she didn’t complain. He sat up, stroking the length of her, then smiled.

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” he said.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Northern Virginia

  June 17, 2004

  Baldwin

  Baldwin watched Harold Arlen through the two-way glass. Goldman was going at him hard. Arlen just sat shaking his head, repeating over and over, “It’s not me. I didn’t do this.”

  Baldwin watched the nonverbal cues, looking for the lie. Looking for the trail Arlen had left for himself, the winding, narrow path back to reality. Back to the broken body of another little girl.

  The cues were all there. It wasn’t the obvious things he usually saw when interviewing child killers: the leering face during the interviews, the preening, the giggles. The dead eyes that got lively only when the crime-scene photos appeared under his nose. No, Arlen was much more subtle than that. It was all but invisible, masterfully contained below the surface.

  Arlen talked in rapid-fire denials, getting angrier and angrier the longer he was kept in the interrogation room. Baldwin was utterly shocked that he hadn’t asked for a lawyer. There was something wrong with that.

  They still had a young girl missing. There were no signs of her whereabouts found at Arlen’s house, no clues where she might be. If he’d stuck to the pattern, she was already dead, though they hadn’t told the parents that. Baldwin thought it was cruel to let them have hope when the whole team knew there was none, but that wasn’t his call. This wasn’t his investigation—he and his team were simply support.

  In the meantime, Sparrow was scouring property rolls and tax records, looking for anything that could be tied to Arlen or anyone close to him. So far, she’d come up with nothing. Butler was in the same boat—he hadn’t found any matching cases within a three-hundred-mile radius. Geroux was still working the other potential suspects, but they were all checking out. Arlen was their last real hope of ending this.

  Baldwin was trained to get into the mind of a killer, to anticipate based on the previous kills. Arlen was so squeaky clean that another thought started to form.

  Could there be two of them?

  A motion caught Baldwin’s eye, chasing the vision of a team away. He watched Arlen’s hands. He was stroking his index finger with his thumb, over and over. Baldwin leaned closer to the speaker to hear better. Goldman was asking about Kaylie Fields. Arlen’s body was completely still except for that repetitive caress. It was almost as if he was fondling…Baldwin realized Arlen was mentally masturbating, using the descriptions of the missing girl as fodder for his disgusting imagination. Since he wasn’t physically capable of having sexual reactions, he was using the hand gestures as a surrogate.

  “We have exactly nothing, sir.” The voice made Baldwin jump.

  He gave Butler a sheepish grin. “You startled me.”

  “Sorry, boss. I’ll give you more warning next time.”

  Butler was small, only about five foot seven, lithe and wiry. He had a very slight British accent, a leftover vestige of two years in England when he was a child. He didn’t have the usual look for the Bureau—sandy-blond hair a little long, covering a piercing in the upper left flange of his ear, jeans instead of a suit. Baldwin didn’t care what he looked like—the man was a genius with forensics.

  “You were saying?”

  “The Fairfax County crime-scene techs got nothing. Not a single hair, a minuscule fiber, a shred of mitochondria. Nothing. His house was completely clean. There is no evidence at all to support the theory that any of the girls were kept there. And now the power is out in his neighborhood, so they had to wrap it up. The storm is really bad. Over an inch of rain so far.”

  Yes, he’d heard the wind whipping trees against the bricks, saw the torrential downpours. All he could think about was Kaylie, alone in the vicious rain. Baldwin turned back to the window. He’d missed the last exchange. Goldman was flushed with anger, Arlen grinning slightly. Oh, no. What had just happened?

  Goldman came bustling out the interrogation room door.

  “Fucking squirrel lawyered up.”

  “Now?” Baldwin asked. “It’s been hours. Why now? What did you ask him last?”

  “I asked about Evie Kilmeade. He shut down like a freight train ran him over. Smiled that creepy-ass smile and said ‘lawyer.’”

  Baldwin looked back through the glass. Arlen had resumed his finger sex, eyes closed, a small smile on his lips. Why now? After hours of being interviewed, after all the games, the denials, why did the name Evie Kilmeade make him put the lid down?

  Because he was playing them. And he was doing a damn good job of it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Nashville

  2:30 p.m.

  Taylor and McKenzie rolled up to Fane Atilio’s address. Bob Parks was behind them, and another patrol car was on its way. Taylor didn’t anticipate trouble from a fifteen-year-old girl, but if her boyfriend was around… She had to wonder, who was she relying on now? Ariadne’s impression of a couple of teenagers at a rave? Or her own gut, which told her there was more to come?

  So far all the kids she’d talked to in this case fell along the clique lines—the good kids, the athletes and high achievers—were pleasant, easy to deal with, cooperative. Probably lying through their teeth to save their own asses, but at least they were respectful about it. The bad seeds were living up to their reputation as well—Juri and Susan were nasty,
ill-tempered children.

  The exception to all of them was Theo Howell. The clean-cut kid, holding his friends’ drugs to keep them safe. He was due into their offices at noon today. McKenzie told her Theo’s parents were back in the country, would be accompanying their son. She wondered what he was hiding. Self-preservation taken into account, he’d been a little too forthcoming. Was he truly the good kid as he depicted himself, or was there a dark side, a silent specter of the truth waiting to come out?

  She pushed it all away. The Atilio house looked deserted. A two-story, it was tan brick with powder-blue shutters, a terrible combination. Taylor stepped out of the car, stared up at the windows. Was this it, then? Would this girl be the key?

  She went up the five stairs that led to the front door. She rang the bell, then stepped to the side. At her signal McKenzie and Parks took up positions to her right and left.

  She could hear footsteps. She touched her Glock briefly, unlatching the snap so she could unsheathe it from its holster quickly if needed. The door swung open. A sultry voice rang out.

  “Silly, why didn’t you use your key?”

  Taylor stepped into line of sight to the door. A young girl stood there, mussed, hair askew, half-dressed in a bustier and skirt. Long black hair. Green eyes. Their girl.

  “Who are you?” she asked with such a note of horror Taylor nearly laughed out loud. She bit her lip and said, “Fane Atilio?”

  The girl straightened—she was eye to eye with Taylor.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Lieutenant Jackson, Metro Homicide. I—”

  She didn’t get to finish. The girl started to slam the door, face full of panic.

  Taylor got the toe of her boot into the crack just in time, but paid the price. She’d have a bruise for a month on the arch of her foot after that.

  “Ouch!” she shouted, shouldering the door open. “Stop right there, Fane.”

  Not surprisingly, the girl didn’t listen. She bolted up the stairs, her long legs moving gracefully. Taylor took off after her, heard a door slam.

  She made it to the top of the stairs just in time to see the wood still quivering. She tried the knob, it was locked.

  “Come out of your room, Fane. Right now. Unlock this door,” Taylor yelled.

  There was no sound from within. Parks and McKenzie had caught up to her now. Parks whispered, “We’re clear.”

  Taylor nodded, then said, “Fane, I’ll force it if you don’t open the door. You have three seconds. Three, two, one.”

  Nothing. Taylor stepped back, kicked the door open. It swung back and smashed into the wall, rebounding nearly closed again. Taylor pushed it open with her left hand, Glock pointing into the room.

  Fane Atilio was trying to go out the window, one leg over the sill and an arm in a tree outside, calculating the drop. Taylor holstered her weapon, crossed the room in three strides and grabbed the girl by the wrist.

  “Stop that. Get back in here right now.” She half dragged the girl away from the window. Though thin, she was still heavy. She collapsed onto the floor and refused to look up, a low, keening moan escaping her lips. Taylor nudged her with the toe of her boot.

  “Get some clothes on. We need to talk.”

  “I have nothing to say to you,” Fane said. She looked up at Taylor, eyes haughty behind their makeup.

  “Oh, really? Well, just you wait and see, little girl. Because I think you have more to tell me than you can possibly imagine.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Taylor took the struggling girl to the Criminal Justice Center, read her Miranda warning, snapped a Polaroid of her and threw her into an interrogation room. Ariadne had identified Fane instantaneously when the six-pack was put together.

  Taylor tried to look at the bright side of things. They had a positive ID on two women, a drug dealer with a chunk out of his leg and a missing teenage boy, possibly the mastermind behind the whole shebang. The Specialized Investigative Unit had confirmed that Barent Johnson was making methamphetamine and Ecstasy, so they had their drugs covered. How they all fit together—that was something she was still working on.

  Ariadne insisted that Juri Edvin was not the boy she’d seen at Subversion. Her drawing of Fane Atilio was right on the money, both with and without the makeup. So maybe she was right about this mysterious fourth.

  Regardless, Fane Atilio was not cooperating. It was getting close to dusk, the day bleeding away. Taylor was hungry and getting frustrated.

  She took a deep breath, tried again.

  “Fane. Where are your parents?”

  Nothing.

  “Fane, where were you on Halloween?”

  Blank, soulless stares that never met Taylor’s eyes. Nothing.

  “Fane, your boyfriend. What’s his name?”

  They continued in this vein for a good thirty minutes before Taylor finally got huffy, stood and left the room.

  McKenzie was in the video-feed room, watching.

  “Stubborn brat,” Taylor said.

  “She is at that. But a true believer. Want me to have a go at her?”

  “Sure. Why not. I’m getting nothing. She’s giving me the creeps, really. How do these girls get so much attitude?”

  “You didn’t have attitude when you were fifteen?”

  “All in a good way—not like this,” she said, but blushed. He was right, she’d been just as sullen and noncooperative when she’d gotten picked up for underage drinking when she was thirteen. She wasn’t the one doing the drinking at the time, it was the friends she was with. The patrol officer who arrested her friends believed her. That cop had been Fitz, and he’d let her off with a warning. He’d treated her with respect, actually listened to her when she said she wasn’t involved. She’d been struck by the fairness of his actions, and it had started her thinking. The next thing she knew, she was obsessed with becoming a cop, with being fair and just. She’d not seen such actions before, and she liked it.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She dragged herself back to the present, forcing the vision of Fitz’s eye sitting on a table in North Carolina out of her head.

  “Yeah, fine.”

  He looked at her sideways, but she busied herself with her ponytail until he said, “Lincoln got a warrant for Fane’s phone and laptop. He’s getting ready to delve into that. Ariadne ID’d her, right? That should be solid enough to start.”

  “Yes. Though I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to going to the A.D.A. with this testimony.”

  “LT, she’s credible, no matter what her beliefs. You won’t have any trouble there. I just saw Theo Howell and a couple who I assume are his parents. They’re waiting on you.”

  “I’ll stick here for a few minutes, if that’s okay. I’d like to see you work your magic.”

  He smiled at her. “Your foot okay?”

  “It’s a bit sore. I’ll live.”

  “Good. Here goes nothing.” He went into the interrogation room.

  When McKenzie walked into the room, Fane Atilio sat straight up in her chair, eyes wide. Taylor watched the tiniest bit of a smile curve her lips upward, and then she got it. Fane glanced at the door, saw no one else was coming through it and promptly began to cry. She looked like a wounded kitten, eyes moist and round, the long black lashes filling with salty dew. She cried prettily, demure and low, with glances up now and again to judge the effect.

  Taylor turned the volume up on the tape. She’d seen women like this before. The ones who played men, who acted completely vulnerable just to get the attention. Taylor had watched many a strong man fall all over himself to help a girl like this, a true damsel in distress. A girl who needed.

  Taylor wasn’t like that. She’d always been a hoist yourself by your bootstraps, put on your big girl pants and deal with life kind of person. She detested the very idea of a man rushing to her rescue. Hell, that’s what caused half the friction between her and Baldwin in the first place—his desire to protect her and her stubborn refusal to allo
w it.

  But as she watched, she quickly realized that Fane was her complete opposite. Fifteen and already well-versed in the art of fragile seduction. She was peeking out from under her lashes to gauge the effect her crying had on McKenzie. My God, the girl was just like Taylor’s mother, Kitty. She was Kitty, to a T.

  McKenzie, bless his soul, wasn’t falling for it for a second, but was using it to his advantage. Fane was being played by a player, and didn’t even know it.

  “She’s quite a piece of work.”

  Taylor turned. Joan Huston stood at her elbow, gazing speculatively into the video monitor.

  Taylor gave her a wry nod. “Yes, she is. But at least she’s starting to talk. I was in there for half an hour and she didn’t do anything more than grunt.”

  “This is your suspect?” Huston asked.

  “One of them. We can’t find her parents, and she’s not cooperating anyway, so we’re going to have to sit on her for a while until we clear it up. We’re missing one more, but I’m pretty sure they are all in league together. Our eyewitness drew a likeness of this girl and Susan Norwood, and they matched exactly.”

  “What’s her agenda?”

  “That’s a good question. I’m looking for it. She talks a good game, but who knows? We’ve tracked the drugs back to the dealer. I’m waiting to hear if the lab results from this morning’s bust match what we took from the Howell boy last night. If it does, we have Keith Barent Johnson and Juri Edvin dead to rights for murder one, for Brittany Carson. What I’m trying to figure out is where these girls fit into the picture—Fane Atilio and Susan Norwood—and how the other seven victims are tied in.”

  “The Norwood girl’s brother was a victim, correct?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He was found with his girlfriend, Amanda Vanderwood. When I spoke to the parents at the crime scene, they said their daughter was at home with her nanny. They didn’t seem to know that she was out of the house. And Xander’s best friend is Theo Howell. He was the last person to talk to Xander. We’ve got a lot of loose ends, I’m afraid.”