“No, no, I’d never do that. You know that, Lexie. I’d never do anything to hurt a child, even if it’s one I hadn’t planned. But if I am pregnant, then I know the truth. I’ll be the killer’s next target.”
Lexie’s head fell back against the seat. “Angel, you can’t do it again. That killer in Oklahoma nearly got you last time, remember? You’re not going to use yourself as bait. And it wouldn’t be just you either. If you’re pregnant, you’re risking the baby too. I won’t let you.”
“Listen. I’ve already got it approved with my team. I called Quantico and they agreed with my plan, but they didn’t realize I might actually be pregnant. However, that won’t change anything for them. Pregnant or not, this is my case. And pregnant or not, they agreed for me to act as bait. They’re sending plenty of backup. It’ll work. We can get him this way. The thing is, since three members of the task force fit the profile, I’m not going to tell any of them that I’ve become the target.”
Lexie couldn’t fathom that Angel might be pregnant. “Have you told the baby’s father?”
“No.”
“Who is it, Angel?”
“You don’t know him, Lexie, and who he is isn’t what’s important now. Whether the killer sees me as the perfect target, that’s what’s important.”
“How do you know he’ll even come after you?”
“I fit the criteria. I haven’t taken the pregnancy test yet, but I just picked one up, and I’m fairly certain it’s going to tell me that I’m about eight months away from a baby. If I am, he won’t pass up the opportunity. I’m a thorn in his side, for sure.”
“If you are pregnant, you need to tell the task force. They could help.” Lexie closed her eyes again. God, please, don’t let Angel be pregnant. But if she is, Lord, as in all things, let Your will be done. But protect her please, Lord. Protect her, and protect the baby.
“I’m not telling the task force anything. I’ve told Pierce and Etta the rumor isn’t true. I’ll let them relay the information. Then I’ll start showing signs of pregnancy. That will get their attention. Any way I look at this thing, the killer would be close to the case. If it appears I lied to them about the pregnancy, that’ll only pique the killer’s interest. He may not be a task force member, but he could be.”
“You said three of them. Who are you counting?” Lexie asked, realized—feared—the reasoning behind the given number.
“Lou, Ryan and John.”
Lexie’s attention quickly turned from Angel’s potential pregnancy to John’s innocence. “John didn’t do it. You can’t still suspect him.”
“Hey, I’ve seen the way you look at him, and I admit I trust your judgment, but he does fit the profile.”
“I think I may love him.” Lexie waited for a response, or the sound of Angel’s breathing. She heard nothing. “Angel?”
“I told you not to get involved. Not until we know for sure.”
“He’s innocent, Angel. I can see it in his eyes, and I feel it. Plus, I realized this morning why I trusted him so soon. He looks like his father.”
“His father?”
“Milton Tucker, the Bibb County Sheriff back then, when it happened. He’s the one who came to talk to me after everything; he’s the one who made me feel safe. And he was a friend of Granddaddy’s.”
“How do you know this?”
“Granddaddy said so, this morning.”
“He talked to you? In sentences?”
“Broken sentences, but yeah, he did. And he looked at John and saw Milton Tucker’s son.”
Another silence echoed through the line.
“Angel?”
“You took John Tucker to meet our grandfather?”
“He followed me down there. He thought I might be chasing a lead on my own.”
“For Granddaddy to remember, and to speak it aloud, that’s huge, Lexie.”
“I know. I couldn’t believe it. And there’s something else I should tell you.” She hoped Angel took the next news well, especially since Angel seemed to be getting a lot of unexpected news today.
“What else?”
“He called me by name, in front of John.”
“Your full name?”
“He called me AJ. But John asked what the initials stood for.”
“And you told him?”
“I trust him.”
“You told him.” Angel’s disbelief filtered through her words.
“Yes, I did.” Lexie wouldn’t feel bad for what she’d done. John wasn’t the killer, and the sooner Angel realized that, the better.
“Has he put it together yet? Has he put us together?”
“No. He knows about my parents and Aunt Bev. But I plan to tell him everything. I just wanted to let you know first.”
“Lexie, if you’ve misjudged him—”
“I haven’t.” Lexie would stake her life, and her love, on it.
“Okay. Then we’ll deal with that as it comes. And if we can trust him, that may help me with my plan.”
“How’s that?”
“If I convince the killer to come after me, and if we haven’t caught him within the forty day period, then I could use a guy like John Tucker around to help me catch him before he kills me.”
Lexie’s throat went dry, and she forced a swallow. “Don’t even say that.”
“He won’t,” Angel assured. “I’m not going to let him hurt our family again. I’m saying it wouldn’t hurt for me to have another gun along for the confrontation.”
“When are you going to take the pregnancy test?”
“When I get back to my hotel, after our meeting. And you should head over here. The meeting starts in five.”
“On my way.” Lexie disconnected and said a prayer that Angel would trust John, especially if she had a baby to protect. Because she trusted him, more than to protect her from a killer. She trusted him with her heart.
John stared at the computer monitor in disbelief. He’d only had an hour before the task force meeting, long enough, thanks to the State’s birth records being more up to date than the missing persons’ info. The detective in him refused to wait to learn more about Lexie’s past. Or maybe the incredible urge to protect her from the killer caused him to forge ahead. In any case, John had started searching, and the State’s database didn’t disappoint.
According to the Georgia birth records, Nicholas Rydell Truman and Lauren Wilson Truman had three daughters: Sophia Clair, Carol Lynn and Beverly Diane. He selected Lexie’s mother’s record first. Sophia Clair Truman married Joseph Wilkins and had one daughter, Alexandra Jane Wilkins, on January 22, 1977.
January 22, Lexie’s birthday. He made a mental note.
He next selected Carol Lynn’s record. Aunt Carol, as Lexie had called her, never married and had no children. Caring for her mentally-challenged father as well as her orphaned niece filled the woman’s life until she died last year.
John clicked on the daughter murdered by the Sunrise Killer. Beverly Diane. Lexie’s aunt had been either separated or divorced when she became the killer’s target, since her married name displayed on the screen. The death acknowledgement at the bottom of the screen identified Beverly Diane Truman Jackson. Odd, since all of the articles had listed Beverly Truman as the victim. There were no details about the cause of death. John hadn’t expected any, but he thought he might find something.
He collapsed the window on the computer, turned to the stack of victimology on his desk and opened the file of 1985 victims. Flipping to the third page, he viewed the pretty, smiling blonde in a whole new light. Beverly Truman, prominent senator’s daughter...and Lexie’s aunt.
A knock sounded on John’s door, then Ed Pierce poked his head in. “You’re coming down, right? We’ve got the missing persons’ names from the State.”
“Be right there.”
Pierce nodded, then left, while John continued to scan the information. What had he missed? He read through Beverly’s file again. Lexie—or AJ—hadn’t been mentioned as a sur
viving relative. But then again, none of the victimology reports included children.
Children. John turned back to the computer and opened the window displaying Beverly’s information and then noticed a name listed in the children field.
Olivia Danielle, female, born May 17, 1985.
He moved his attention back to the death acknowledgement field at the bottom of the page, to the date of death.
May 17, 1985.
His phone buzzed, and he slapped the speaker button. “Tucker.”
“We’re ready in the conference room,” Pierce said. “Need you down here.”
“On my way.” He closed the State’s database on his computer and grabbed the victimology file. The impact of the information he’d obtained today, from Lexie and from the database, made his head pound. Lexie’s aunt had been the killer’s second victim, or rather, his third victim, if their theory was correct, and he’d murdered seven women that first year.
Not only that, but her aunt appeared to have been the only woman who delivered her child after the attack. She hadn’t survived, but her baby did. A baby girl named Olivia. Why hadn’t Lexie told him about the surviving baby, a baby who would be Lexie’s cousin? Surely the killer didn’t realize one of the children had survived. If he did, wouldn’t he have felt compelled to go after that child, to complete his sick plan?
John needed answers, answers that Lexie could supply, but he couldn’t get them with an audience, particularly not the task force trying to nail the man who’d murdered her aunt.
Leaving his office, he started toward the conference room. During their meeting, he’d keep his newfound knowledge to himself, but afterwards, he and Lexie were going to have a serious heart-to-heart. And find out how much she knew about the Sunrise Killer.
John entered the conference room, where she had joined the profiler, Pierce, Marker, Sims and Naylor to reevaluate their plan of action for the case. He nodded a hello to Lexie. For the time being they’d decided to keep their personal interests private, at least in regards to the task force.
Taking his seat, he turned his attention to his information file and kept his eyes away from the woman who had a bigger agenda to solving these murders than she’d first admitted.
Why hadn’t she told him the truth?
Before he could think about it further, Pierce spoke up with two bombshells of information and threw John Tucker’s world even more off-kilter.
“A couple of things we need to cover now that everyone is here. First, Special Agent Jackson has an announcement. Go ahead.” Pierce nodded to the profiler.
She stood and cleared her throat. “I’m sure several of you have heard the bizarre rumor that I now fit all parts of the killer’s criteria. I want to set the record straight. I tossed it at the crime scene because, believe it or not, even FBI agents can have a weak stomach. And I went to Dr. Weatherly’s office this morning to see if she had any additional info to help the case, not because I thought I was pregnant.” She looked at Lexie, the only other female in the room, then returned to her seat.
“Okay,” Pierce said. “If any of you hear anything at all about Agent Jackson’s so-called pregnancy, I’ll expect you to dispel the rumor. We do not need our profiler on the killer’s hit list. Agreed?”
John hadn’t heard the rumor, but judging from the responding nods at the table, several of the others had. Great. Who else in Macon thought Special Agent Jackson was pregnant? Did the killer? Before John could process all of the problems associated with the pregnancy rumor, the captain dropped the second bombshell.
“Hannah Sharp and Logan Finley.” Pierce handed copies of the missing persons data sheets to Agent Jackson and directed her to pass them around the table.
John accepted his, then passed them on, staring in bewilderment at the two names and their corresponding information.
Hannah Elizabeth Sharp, 16, reported missing February 27, 1985, the day after the first kill should have occurred. Logan Wyatt Finley, 18, reported missing the same day.
Tucker closed his eyes and remembered Hannah, her long blonde hair, deep blue eyes. He could almost see her, laughing with him, flirting with him, wanting him. She’d been mature beyond her years and captivated all of the teen boys in the Fellowship. He opened his eyes, saw Ryan and Lou’s expressions, and knew they were thinking the same thing. If the three of them weren’t suspects before, they sure were now. For the time being, all attention moved off of Agent Jackson’s rumored pregnancy to the two names on the page. Hannah and Logan.
“But she and Logan left.” Ryan answered the silent question passing between them. “They ran away and got married. Everyone knew it. They weren’t missing. They just left town.”
“You knew them?” Pierce asked.
Lou stared at the file. “We all knew them. Me, Ryan, John.”
“I knew her.” Zed’s confession wasn’t as condemning as the others. Angel Jackson had already pointed out he didn’t fit the profile. But the three at the table who were teens in 1985, teens who knew Hannah Sharp in 1985, did.
“It wouldn’t have been Hannah.” John couldn’t believe it. “She wasn’t his first victim.”
“How do you know?” The profiler turned her full attention to John. “How can you be so sure, Tucker?”
“She left with Logan. She told everyone they were running off, and then they did.”
“We were all friends back then. All of us.” Ryan indicated John and Lou. “Not just us, but lots of other guys and girls from Macon. We hung out, had a good time, you know, the way guys and girls do as teens. But Hannah stood out from the other girls in school.”
“You think Hannah Sharp was the first victim?” Zed asked the captain.
John spoke first. “Nobody killed Hannah. She eloped with Logan to get away from her family. The whole town knew it. That’s why they both disappeared. If she was the first victim, why would her boyfriend have disappeared too? It wouldn’t make sense. They ran off together.”
Pierce lifted the information sheets and stated the obvious. “There’s no record of recovery on either of them.”
“I’m sure she eventually got in touch with her family and let them know she was okay.” John didn’t want to think about Hannah as a victim. “She may have been a little wild, but she loved her folks. She’d have called them.”
“Her parents were odd,” Zed said.
“They may have had different ideas about things, but they came around, along with the rest of us.” John hoped Ryan and Lou wouldn’t find it necessary to elaborate. “We need to talk to them and verify that they’ve heard from her since she left back then. I’m sure they have. She’s somewhere raising her own teenagers by now.”
“Her family won’t talk to us.” Zed looked toward Tucker. “They don’t do government. You remember that, John.”
“What do you mean, they don’t do government?” Angel asked.
Zed Naylor rubbed his hand down his face, then shook his head, battling with how much to tell. John knew it, as sure as Ryan and Lou knew it, judging from the looks on their faces. Why did it have to come back to haunt them now?
Because, whether he admitted it aloud or not, John knew the truth. Hannah Sharp, the woman who’d smitten them all with her flirtatious smile and golden hair, John Tucker’s first love, had been the killer’s first victim. They should’ve thought of Hannah before, but they hadn’t. Everyone thought she and Logan eloped.
“Was she pregnant?” Lexie’s question silenced the room.
Lou straightened in his chair then looked at John. “Well, was she?”
“Why are you asking me, Lou?”
“Just thought you might know, that’s all.”
“Well, I don’t.”
Lexie’s green eyes sought John’s.
He looked away. Yeah, he’d tell her, but not now, and not with the remainder of the task force scrutinizing his every move.
Hannah. How could he have forgotten Hannah?
“We need to find out if her family has hea
rd from her and if Logan Finley’s family has heard from him.” Angel continued scanning the new information. “If she was the first victim, and if he went missing at the same time, that tells us one of two things.”
“That he killed Logan too?” Zed guessed.
“That’s one thing, but the other possibility is that our killer is Logan Finley.”
All eyes moved to Angel.
She continued the scenario. “Maybe she was pregnant. Maybe he found out the baby wasn’t his, and he blew a fuse. Or maybe it was his, and he didn’t want a child. I just want to make sure we cover all possibilities.”
“But that’d mean Logan Finley is living in Macon now. We all know Logan. We would see him in town,” Ryan said.
“Probably.” Angel squeezed her eyes shut, then popped them back open. “Yeah, you’re right. The killer is living here, and if everyone knew Logan Finley, someone would’ve seen him after that date. But if our killer murdered both of them, then he killed eight people that first year. That’d venture from his plan.”
Lou spoke up. “Not if he’s only counting the pregnant females. Maybe the guy was a problem he had to eliminate.”
“Spoken like a profiler.” Angel pointed to Lou. “You could be right. Either way, we need to talk to their families and see if they ever heard from them.”
“I still see Logan’s folks from time to time,” Zed said. “They never heard from him again, but they assumed he and Hannah started their life away from the situations they faced here.” He quirked his lip to the side, producing two thick paths of wrinkles down one cheek. “As far as her family, I haven’t seen them in years. They still live out from the city, and they don’t take to strangers. Any of y’all seen them around?” He looked at John, Ryan and Lou, and all three men shook their heads.
“Well, if Hannah and Logan were killed by this guy, then their past factors in. Plus, it’d make sense that he picked symbolic numbers,” Zed said. “And that he picked pregnant women.”
“Why? Why would that make sense? What is it about their past that tells you that?” Angel thumbed through her information packet searching for anything that would corroborate his statement, then looked back at Zed. “What is it?”
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