by Debra Webb
Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Acknowledgments
Also by Debra Webb
Raves for Traceless
FIND ME
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Numbers 32:23: Be sure that your sins will find you out …
Sunday, September 5, 9:40 PM
Mountain Brook, Alabama
She clicked off the flashlight then froze.
Didn’t dare move.
Didn’t even breathe.
She listened intently beyond the frantic pounding in her chest and the roar of blood in her ears. She’d heard something. Anticipation fired through her veins.
The rustling of leaves. An animal? Maybe. These woods were full of wildlife.
Ten … twenty seconds passed with the breeze whispering through the trees. Her heart rate slowed. Nothing. Not another distinguishable noise beyond the night sounds. The consuming darkness continued pressing in on her, engulfing her—and the unsavory business to which she had no choice but to attend.
She had to do this and get out of here.
Now!
Slowly, the panic drained away. Urgency took its place. She was still alone. Hadn’t been caught. Thank God. But she had to hurry!
Reaching for the courage that had momentarily deserted her, she drew in a ragged breath and forced herself to return to the task. With a flex of her thumb, she slid the flashlight’s switch back into the on position and put it on the ground to illuminate her efforts. The narrow beam sliced across her arms as she continued digging, clawing at the soft earth with the shovel. Deeper. A shiver rushed over her skin. She had to hurry. Getting caught would not be good.
Not good at all.
Her respiration grew labored as that reality shrouded her as surely as the darkness had. Dig! Harder. Deeper. Faster. Get done and get the hell out of there!
She had to hide this mess … all of it. This part, the most important part, had to be here, where no one would think to look. Not now, after all these years. On the off chance someone did, the evidence would only do what it had done all along … point in the wrong direction.
Good enough. She stopped, lowered the shovel to the ground, and sat back on her haunches to scrutinize the hole she’d carved out. Yes. This was sufficient.
Twisting her torso, careful not to make the slightest noise, she reached into the bag she’d carried from her borrowed car parked half a mile away. The plastic bag felt heavy though the contents weighed hardly anything at all.
Two gold bands. Symbols of love and commitment, the precious circles stained with blood after being tugged from cold, lifeless fingers.
Goose bumps spilled across her skin as that scenario played out in her head. She banished the images, dropped the rings into the Beanee Weenee can, then crushed the opened end as tightly together as her strength would allow before placing it in the small grave she’d burrowed. If anyone happened to dig around in this spot, they would merely ignore what was presumed to be trash. Campers and hikers buried their trash all the time.
Satisfied, she carefully returned the excavated soil into its rightful resting place. She smoothed and patted the surface, then spread fallen leaves across it.
There.
No one would ever suspect that barely a foot beneath the seemingly undisturbed spot lay the final pieces of a puzzle that to this day, fifteen years later, had not been solved. She shivered.
Grabbing the shovel and flashlight, she pushed to her feet. The past wasn’t important right now. What mattered was the present. And the future. Protection, survival, those were the key elements.
She had learned from experience that survival was the only thing that really counted.
She intended to survive.
Cautiously retracing her steps through the trees and dense underbrush, she reached the side road where she’d left the car. After scanning cautiously for any sign of approaching headlights, she moved more quickly.
She was almost home free.
Just one last detail to take care of and this bothersome night would be behind her.
The tools grasped firmly under one arm, she dug the keys from the pocket of her jeans and opened the trunk. The accessory light flickered once then steadied, filling the trunk with a dim, eerie glow. She tossed the shovel and flashlight inside and should have closed the lid then. That would have been the smart thing to do. But she didn’t.
Instead, she stared at the one remaining obstacle in this monumental mess that required her immediate attention.
The body.
She had to figure out what to do with the body.
Chapter 2
Tuesday, September 7, 3:00 PM
Criminal Justice Center, Birmingham, Alabama
Death was too good for the son of a bitch.
Silence choked the remainder of the air out of the interview room, making it impossible for Carson Tanner to draw a breath. The traumatic seconds expanded into a full minute that felt like an hour.
Misery sat like a cold, hard stone in his gut. He had waited fifteen long years, had bucked the very system to which he’d devoted his entire adult life just to be present today and hear what the shackled animal seated at the table across from him had to say.
Joseph Stokes. The psychotic killer who had murdered Carson’s family. A serial offender who had eluded justice for far too long.
District Attorney Donald Wainwright and Aidan Moore, the court-appointed attorney assigned to Stokes’s case, were seated next to Carson. One of Jefferson County’s finest stood nearby, his right hand resting on the butt of his holstered weapon.
The entire tristate area, first and foremost the city of Birmingham, had been watching this drama unfold in the media … praying that Stokes would get what was coming to him for his heinous deeds. A single move of aggression and Stokes might not exit the room alive, leaving the world home to one less homicidal maniac.
The mere thought had anticipation exploding in Carson’s chest. But as gratifying as that resolution would be, it would not give him closure. He had unanswered questions. One in particular he wanted—no, he needed.
“This is a onetime offer, Stokes,” Wainwright reminded. “Back out now and it’s over. I’ll have you scheduled for lethal injection so fast you’ll think you’re in the express lane at the Wal-Mart.”
“I told you,” Stokes maintained with a haughtiness that made Carson sick to his stomach, “I ain’t signing nothing till you give me your word I can have my say.”
The legal document awaiting endorsement by Stokes offered him one thing, just one. Life. He’d murdered at least a dozen people. He wasn’t worthy of another second on this earth. But death would be far too simple a penalty to pay.
&n
bsp; Carson wanted him to live, a long, long time. In a five-by-nine maximum-security cell until the day he dragged in his last pathetic gasp of oxygen. He wanted him in the worst prison in Alabama, getting what he deserved day in and day out from the cell blocks full of inmates who despised those who included the abuse or murder of children in their inventory of evil deeds.
“Mr. Stokes.” Moore took a moment to adjust his standard black-framed eyeglasses. “I have a legal obligation to advise you against additional comments at this critical juncture. As the district attorney said, we should move forward with the reason we’re here.”
Stokes smirked. “You don’t understand, counselor. I had a dream last night. Made me remember things like it was yesterday. This one part was so vivid.” He looked straight at Carson with glee in his repugnant eyes. “I really need to tell someone.”
Carson’s jaw clenched. He steeled himself despite the probability that whatever the revelation, it couldn’t be worse than what he’d witnessed with his own eyes that day … fifteen years ago. So much blood …
“No more stalling.” Wainwright folded his arms over his chest. “Sign the contract, then you can say what you have to say. Otherwise this meeting is over.”
Carson felt those old haunting fears nip at his resolve. No second thoughts. He had to hear this … had to know.
Smug with victory, Stokes picked up the pen. “In that case, it’d be my pleasure, Mr. DA.” The lowlife scrawled his name, then tossed the pen aside. “Satisfied?”
Moore studied the document briefly then passed it to Wainwright, who glanced at the signature before dropping both the contract and the pen into his briefcase. He leveled a cold, hard stare on Stokes. “Get it over with. But”—he pointed a finger at the piece of shit who’d just signed away his right to trial by a jury of his peers—“you tread carefully.”
Stokes lounged in his chair, not the slightest bit intimidated. “You see,” he said carefully, “things didn’t happen exactly the way the official reports said.” He inhaled a deep, gratifying breath. “The little girl.” He turned his attention fully on Carson. “She didn’t die right away.”
Agony pierced Carson, twisting his insides into writhing knots. The little girl. My sister, Katie.
“Don’t go down that path,” Wainwright warned.
“Let him talk,” Carson overruled.
After a decade and a half of wondering—of obsessing over the possibilities—Carson at last knew the name and the face of the man who had shattered his world.
Now he wanted to know why.
“We played those last few minutes.” Stokes snickered, the vile, grating noise irreverent. “She kept crying, Mommy, but … Mommy was already dead.”
“That’s enough!” Wainwright cautioned.
Carson lifted a hand to quiet the objection even as murder burgeoned in his heart. “I want to hear what he has to say.”
“Don’t allow this, Carson,” Wainwright urged. “It won’t give you the closure you’re looking for.”
“What’s the matter?” Stokes cocked his head, clearly excited about the tension he generated, even shackled as he was. “You got a problem with hearing the real story, Mr. DA?” The bastard snorted. “Well, you shouldda thought of that before. I sorta like seeing you motherfuckers sweat.”
Moore started to object but his client cut him off. “Besides, you don’t gotta listen. What I have to say is personal. Between me and Carson Tanner.” A sadistic grin spread across his loathsome face. “We should be alone for that.”
Carson didn’t flinch. “That’s a reasonable request.”
“Absolutely not going to—”
“Five minutes,” Carson argued, interrupting Wainwright, his mentor, the man he admired and respected above all others.
The district attorney’s gaze held Carson’s for a beat, then two. He exhaled a heavy breath. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.” Wainwright picked up his briefcase and stood. “You watch yourself, Stokes, this isn’t over until I say it’s over,” he warned. “Five minutes. Not a second longer.”
Moore rose from his chair, wordlessly announcing his concurrence. He’d done his job. Represented a killer to the best of his ability as required by law.
Wainwright nodded to the deputy standing by, and the three exited the room.
That suffocating heaviness crowded in once more.
Stokes settled his attention on Carson. After an endless moment of probing silence, he spoke. “Well, well, the lone survivor. Looks like you did pretty good for yourself, a deputy district attorney and all.” Stokes leaned forward. “A regular hotshot, ain’t you, boy? Newspapers call you the Avenger or some such shit. A chip off the old block.” He made a disparaging sound. “’Course your daddy wasn’t so big and powerful when he was on his knees begging for mercy.”
Fury burned low and deep, but Carson wasn’t going to waste this opportunity being baited by the son of a bitch. “I have one question.”
Stokes eased forward a little more, putting his face only inches from Carson’s. “I touched her,” he whispered. “That little sister of yours. Could’ve been all up in that tight little pussy, but time was short and I still had your daddy to gut.”
Carson’s fingers curled into fists of restraint. “My sister wasn’t raped. My mother, either.” Stay cool just a few minutes more. “None of your victims was sexually assaulted.” Stokes wanted Carson angry. Wanted him to react. Not today. He needed that one answer. “Your file says you’re impotent so don’t try your perverted strategy with me.”
The bastard had the unmitigated gall to snigger. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t touch ’em.” He growled with sick pleasure. “Felt good. Their skin was so smooth and soft. Their blood so hot, it scorched my hands. Made that old cock of mine stand at attention.”
Carson swallowed back the rising bile of disgust. This one question had burned in his brain, twisted in his gut all those years. He had to know. “Why my family?”
Menace danced in the madman’s eyes. “I watched them for days,” he murmured, his voice thick with something like longing. “Waited for just the right moment.”
“You didn’t answer the question.” Carson refused to let him see for a fucking second that he was hanging on to control by a single unraveling thread. “Why?”
Stokes sprang to his feet, testing his margin of freedom. “Because I could,” he snarled.
Carson took a moment, let those words permeate him, igniting the sheer determination necessary to see this through without yielding to his baser instincts. He pushed back his chair and stood slowly to put himself at eye level with the bastard once more.
“And there wasn’t a damned thing you or anybody else could do to stop me,” Stokes taunted.
The faintest glimmer of what had earned Carson the nickname Avenger awakened. Adrenalized him. “There wasn’t a single link discovered between you and any member of my family.” Therein lay the rub, the part of this that gave Carson pause no matter that the scumbag had confessed. He hadn’t been able to get past that discrepancy when considered with the other glaring deviation from Stokes’s usual MO: the missing personal effects. Stokes never took so much as a lock of hair from his victims. Only their dignities and their lives—in that order. And why take items from two of the victims and not the third? Nothing of Katie’s had been missing. Something was wrong with that scenario. “With every other case linked to you,” Carson continued, “that connection to the victims was present.”
Stokes didn’t answer, merely stared at Carson with demented amusement.
“I’ll ask you again,” Carson reiterated far more patiently than he had any obligation to given the blitz of emotions whipping inside him. “Why?”
“You think you got me all figured out”—Stokes jerked at his manacles, causing the chains to rattle forebodingly—“that you’re better than me, don’t you? But you’re not. You’re just like me.” His gaze narrowed with accusation. “The newspapers said you had their blood all over you. Felt good
, didn’t it?”
“You don’t know me.” Carson’s wrath seethed dangerously close to the surface, the intensity increasing with each second, each breath. “Just like you didn’t know my family. So answer the fucking question. Why … my … family?”
“I could tell you something that would turn your fancy world upside down all over again.” Stokes reared his shoulders back, full of himself. “Guaranteed. But I think I’ll let you wonder. Keep that juicy little tidbit to myself for another decade or so.”
Panic hurtled through Carson, overpowering all else before he could quell the reaction. What could this monster know beyond what he had confessed? Nothing. Nothing.
Just more of his baiting. Had to be.
Didn’t matter. Carson needed an answer. He couldn’t let Stokes go off on one of his power trips. There was only one way to prevent that—withdraw the significance. “Then I guess we have nothing else to talk about.”
When Carson would have turned away, the scumbag spoke again. “Wait, wait. You can’t really say for sure I did or didn’t have contact with your precious little family. That’s not even what’s bothering you.” Stokes laughed softly, revoltingly. “It’s the rings, ain’t it?”
Pain detonated along Carson’s nerve endings as more images burned his retinas. He blinked them away, snatched back his sinking authority. “You aren’t the first to include a new step or to skip one,” he countered, playing devil’s advocate with his own doubts as well as Stokes’s assertion. “Killers far more clever than you deviate from their patterns on occasion.”
Stokes inclined his head left then right as if evaluating the implication. “Or maybe,” he proposed, “I just wanted something so I could remember your family. After all, they were so special. Way more than all the others. Especially that little sister of yours.”
Carson snapped. He went for the scumbag’s throat. His fingers gripped that disgusting flesh and instinctively locked like a vise.
Stokes grabbed Carson’s shirtfront, pulled him in rather than pushing him away. “Do it, you coward,” he dared. “Show ’em what you’re really made of!”
Carson’s brutal grasp tightened with anticipation. A surge of power rushed through him as the color of oxygen deprivation claimed Stokes’s pale complexion. Die, you bastard!
