by Terri Reed
“Be careful. I don’t want to lose one of my best agents.”
Warmed by his concern and the compliment, she promised she’d be cautious. She clicked off and immediately the phone rang. “Agent Bennett.”
“Jordon here,” came the tech’s deep voice. “I found something interesting on Becca Kraft.”
“Tell me.”
“Her name is listed on the deed to a house in Michigan, just outside Detroit.”
Sami’s pulse jumped. Detroit. The city where Corben Kraft had killed for the first time. Twenty-eight years after his mother’s unsolved murder.
Something niggled at the back of Sami’s mind, like a shadow that disappeared every time she attempted to look at it.
“And get this,” Jordon said, drawing her attention back to the conversation. “The house was never sold. The same corporation that originally purchased the house in Becca’s name all those years ago still owns the house. It’s been empty all these years.”
Sami doubted that Corben hadn’t visited the home he’d shared with his mother. “Text me the address.”
Why hadn’t Lonnie told them about the house in Michigan?
“Just did.”
Within seconds a text came through with the address for Corben’s childhood home.
Drew sat next to her, so close she could easily rest her head on his shoulder. His leg brushed hers when he stretched. Awareness rippled over her.
“Corben has another potential hideout,” she told Drew, and tilted the phone so Drew could hear Jordon.
“And it gets better,” Jordon continued. “The property taxes have been paid through a corporation. I’m working on tracking down the responsible party, but whoever set this up knew what they were doing. Plus, when the house was bought thirty-eight years ago, there were no computers, so I’m having to do some old-school investigating.”
“I appreciate your effort. Hey, Jordon, can you check with Atlanta PD’s cold case division? See if they have any similar crimes to our current ones dating back to November of last year?” She was checking on the location of the symposium.
“Will do. Anything else?”
“Not yet. Let me know when you find who owns the corporation.” She clicked off.
“A dummy corporation,” Drew mused. “Hmm. Curious. Who had been in Becca’s life and would have provided for her?”
“Corben’s father?” Sami suggested. “Lonnie had suspected Becca didn’t know who fathered Corben. But maybe Becca had known.”
“And that man could have set Becca and Corben up with a house. That’s plausible.” Drew gestured to his phone. “My people obtained a sample of James Clark’s DNA. They’re working with Portland Forensics to see if he’s a match to the body part we found in your house.”
“Good.” Her mind turned over the possibilities. “If they are a match, then we’ll have our answer as to whether James Clark is still alive.”
Talbot joined them. “Corben deadheaded on a flight bound for JFK Airport in New York. Apparently airline employees can use unsold seats on their off time.”
“He’s running,” Sami said. “We need to alert airport security and the New York field agents.”
“Already done,” Talbot said.
Sami rose. Holding out her hand to Drew, she said, “We need to find out why Lonnie forgot to mention the house in Michigan.”
His hand clasped hers. The warmth of his palm and the pressure of his fingers curling overs hers sent delicious little sparks shooting up her arm. He stood but didn’t release her hand.
“Seems odd that she’d let the house sit for so long unoccupied.”
“Right.” She stared at their joined hands. His was so much bigger, stronger. “Remind me what your people found out about James Clark.”
“Married. Business owner. Two adult offspring. What are you thinking?”
“This is a long shot, but I can’t stop thinking about the fact that Birdman switched gears. Going from all female victims to one random man. Maybe he wasn’t so random?” She tugged on her bottom lip for a second, her mind working through the niggling detail that wanted her attention.
“You think Clark has some connection to Corben?” Drew stroked his chin with his free hand as he mulled that over. “Okay, I’ll buy in. What’s the connection?”
“I don’t know yet. But think about it,” Sami said. “Twenty-eight years after the murder of his mother, Corben kills his first victim.”
“You’re supposing he didn’t kill his mother,” Drew pointed out.
“True. I don’t think he did. The brutal nature of the crime and the force necessary seems far beyond the capability of an eight-year-old boy. Even an abused boy who might have acted out of rage.”
“Then what? You think James Clark murdered Becca Kraft and Corben exacted revenge on him thirty years later?”
“Why not?” The more she thought about it, the more it made sense.
“If that’s the case, then why not start with Clark? Why kill so many women?”
“Practice? He wanted to make sure he could do it?” Sami said, grasping at possible motivations. “Though we won’t know for sure until we have Corben in custody.” She withdrew her hand from Drew’s and pushed the button to call back Jordon. “I’ll have my tech guy see what he can dig up on Clark. Maybe we can find out what he was really doing in the States.”
Drew took out his phone, as well. “And I’ll have my people check to see if Clark was in Victoria thirty years ago.”
After hanging up with their respective teams, they joined Talbot as he hung up with the New York FBI field office. “Security has been alerted in New York City and in the airport. When the plane lands, they’ll nab Corben Kraft.”
“Good.” Tension drained from Sami’s body. Though she was still alert, she didn’t think she needed a bodyguard. Neither was she ready to let Drew go. They still had work to do, a case to solve. “Let’s go talk to Lonnie again.”
When they arrived at the hospital, they were told Lonnie had gone home sick. Getting her address took another ten minutes. Lonnie lived in an apartment in Redmond, Washington, beneath the shadow of Microsoft, Nintendo and over three hundred other technology companies. A tech fanatic’s paradise.
After a half hour of working their way through Seattle’s commuter traffic to the suburb east of the metropolitan area, they drove into downtown Redmond and quickly found the apartment complex. It was a four-story eighteen-unit boxy building set back in a wooded area off the main road. Sami led the way to Lonnie’s apartment on the third floor.
The door was ajar. She halted, holding up her clenched fist to clue Drew and Talbot to stop. The fine hairs at the back of her neck rose and caution blanketed her like a mist. With one hand on the butt of her holstered weapon, she approached the door and toed it open to reveal a narrow hallway.
“Lonnie?” she called out. “It’s Agent Bennett.”
No answer. Dread slithered across her skin. She met Drew’s grim gaze.
She withdrew her sidearm and eased over the threshold into the dimly lit passageway. Leading with her gun, she checked the first open door and the large bathroom. Empty. She continued until she came to the end of the hall, which opened to a large living space with floor-to-ceiling windows letting in the setting sun’s rays. To her left a kitchen with standard appliances ran along one wall, while the right side of the studio held a futon situated in front of a television set.
With a start, Sami realized Lonnie was sitting on the futon, her back to them. Drew moved past Sami to open the sliding doors to the closet. No one was hiding inside.
“Lonnie.” Keeping her weapon at the ready, Sami stepped around the end of the futon until she could face Lonnie. She sucked in a harsh breath.
Lonnie’s head listed slightly to the side. Her eyes were open and showed petechial hemorrhaging. A thin dark bruise circled her neck above the collar of her scrubs.
Sami holstered her weapon, slid on a pair of gloves and checked Lonnie’s pulse. She was dead. Sam
i didn’t need a medical examiner to announce the cause of death. She’d been strangled. And the weapon, a computer cord, lay coiled on the floor like a snake ready to strike.
Another realization slammed into Sami and she snatched her hand back.
“She’s still warm.” Alarmed, she met Drew’s gaze. Lonnie hadn’t been dead long. “If Corben’s on a plane to New York, then—” Her lungs seized, refusing to take in oxygen.
“Then Birdman has a partner. And he’s on the loose.” Drew finished her thought. His grim voice matched the expression on his face.
The ramifications sliced through her. She still wasn’t safe. No one was safe. “Uh, so I told my boss you would act as my, uh, bodyguard until this was over.”
Drew’s expression softened. “You don’t have to ask. And I’m honored. I know accepting protection is hard for you.”
It dawned on her how well he’d come to know her in such a short time. The knowledge was alarming and yet made her feel cared for, special.
But it didn’t matter how she felt. She’d made a gross error. “I failed Lonnie.” Disappointment bowed her shoulders. “How could I have been so wrong?”
Drew pulled her close, wrapping her in a soothing cocoon. “Don’t. There was no way we could’ve known she would be a victim.”
She rested her forehead against his chest. “But why?” She fisted her hands. A hot fury flushed through her. “Why would Corben allow this? She loved him. It doesn’t make sense.”
“We can’t hope to know the mind of a psychopath.”
She straightened and couldn’t keep the venom she felt from invading her voice. “I’d like to crawl inside his head and scramble his brains.”
Drew smiled and the impact was like a cooling spray of spring water on the hot fire of her anger. “Maybe you can when the New York federal agents pick him up.”
“Yeah.” Sami wasn’t sure she’d get the opportunity to interview Corben. Now that the brass had taken an interest in him, the higher-ups would do the heavy lifting. “Do you think Corben’s partner was afraid Lonnie would point us in his direction?”
“Or hers.”
“Right. Could be a woman.” She sighed and looked around, realizing there were wooden photo frames turned upside down on the floor and broken pieces of glass glinting in the sun. She adjusted her gloves and picked up a frame. The picture had been taken out. She checked the other frames. “They’re all empty.”
“The partner protecting Corben.”
“Or him or herself.”
Talbot walked in. “Local police are here. Our forensic team is on their way.”
Sami nodded her thanks. “Where are we on obtaining a judge’s order for Dr. Cantwell’s file on Corben Kraft?”
“I’ll check on it.” Talbot headed back outside, already on his cell.
“It’s good to have minions,” Sami remarked drily.
“It’s good to work with a team,” Drew replied.
She met his clear dark eyes, hit once again by the force of her trust in him. “True.”
It was good to work with him. But she couldn’t let herself get too used to having him around. The warm, almost heady feeling he gave her drained away. This partnership was temporary, she reminded herself, and for a single goal—to stop Birdman.
Once Corben Kraft and his partner were behind bars, Drew would return to his life and his work with IBETs, and she’d move on to the next case. Without Drew.
Purposely, she turned away from Drew and made a slow search of the studio apartment, looking for anything that might help them to understand Corben and why he, or his partner, had wanted Lonnie dead.
She paused at the desk in the corner where a computer monitor took up most of the space on the desktop. Next to it was a raised platform where a laptop would sit, acting like a desktop computer. The platform was empty. “The killer took her computer.”
“More pictures?”
“Possibly. Or information on the dummy corporation that provided a home for Becca and her son.”
“You think Lonnie was involved?” Drew stared at her with a quizzical expression. “I didn’t get the impression Lonnie was hiding anything.”
“She had to have known about the house in Detroit, right?”
“Maybe. But if a dummy corporation bought it, then maybe Lonnie expected that the company had reclaimed the place.”
“Could be.” Her gaze slid back to Lonnie. Her heart ached at the loss. “We may never know.”
Talbot returned. “An agent will meet us at Dr. Cantwell’s office with a judge’s order.”
Drew headed toward the front door. “Let’s see if the doctor can shed some light on the situation.”
*
“What do you mean, the doctor left?” Sami’s incredulous voice rose, rousing the interest of two of the three people waiting to see the doctor.
Drew did a quick assessment of the three people in the quiet waiting area. A family, he guessed. The husband glanced at his watch, clearly annoyed by the delay. The nervous mother darted a glance from her husband to her teenage son and back. The boy, probably about fifteen, sat slouched in the chair with earbuds clinging to his ears, the cord running to an electronic device tucked inside the pocket of his shirt. A bomb could go off and the kid wouldn’t notice.
“She stepped out right after you left.” The receptionist lowered her voice. “She said she’d be right back but she hasn’t returned.”
Drew focused on the receptionist. “Did she receive a phone call before she left?”
The receptionist shook her head. “Not through the office phone.”
“But she has a private phone,” Sami said. “We need that number.”
The woman quickly wrote the doctor’s private cell number on a sticky note and handed it over to Sami.
“We have a judge’s order for Dr. Cantwell’s file on Corben Kraft.” Drew gestured to the FBI agent, who handed the order over to the receptionist.
“Uh, Dr. Cantwell would need to find it. She’s very particular about her files,” she said, clearly unnerved.
“We’ll find the file,” Sami said.
The receptionist rose. “I don’t think Dr. Cantwell would want you in her office without her here.”
“Doesn’t matter with a judge’s order.” Sami opened the door to the office and went inside.
Drew followed. The office looked exactly as it had a few hours ago, except the doctor wasn’t behind her desk.
“I’ll take the filing cabinet. You check her desk,” Sami said as she opened a file drawer marked with the letters I-J-K.
Drew moved to the desk and opened the large file drawers. He checked the names on the files. No Corben Kraft.
“It’s not here,” Sami said slamming the cabinet drawer closed.
“Not here either.” Drew checked the shallow middle drawer to find a plethora of pens, paper clips and prescription pads. Something caught his eye. Using a pen, he pushed the pads aside. On the bottom of the drawer was a bird drawing.
“She must have taken it with her.” Sami’s frustration echoed in her words.
“Look at this.” Drew made room for her to step beside him.
“That bird again.” She shook her head. “What does it mean?”
“And how did it get here?” Drew shut the drawer. “I didn’t peg Dr. Cantwell as homicidal but…”
“She could be Corben’s cohort. I don’t think it’s coincidence that she disappeared after our visit.”
“Right.” Drew had a hard time wrapping his brain around the concept. “So after trying to kill you three times, Corben flees after following us from Victoria. He finds out we talked to his aunt.”
“She could’ve called him,” Sami stated. “We need to get Lonnie’s phone records.”
“So Lonnie calls Corben while we’re talking to Dr. Cantwell.”
Sami nodded. “Then while we’re at Corben’s house, Dr. Cantwell takes Corben to the airport, where he gets on a plane bound for New York, where he could hop on an
other plane to leave the country.”
“And then Dr. Cantwell drives to Redmond and kills Lonnie?” Drew shook his head. “You’ve seen the traffic out there. How could she get from her office to Sea-Tac Airport and then Redmond in the amount of time it took us to search Corben’s house?”
“Driving in the car pool lane?” Sami guessed. She shrugged. “Once we find her, we can ask her.”
Drew stepped into the waiting area. “We need Dr. Cantwell’s home address.”
The receptionist bit her lip and regarded him with uncertainty. “I don’t think the doctor would want me to give out her private address.”
“We could charge you with obstruction of justice,” Sami said, joining Drew. The threat was becoming her favorite shtick.
The receptionist hesitated a second or two, then nodded. On another sticky note, she wrote down the doctor’s home address.
They left the doctor’s office and headed to the Queen Anne neighborhood northwest of downtown Seattle. Traffic crawled up the tight streets of the hill that made up the popular and posh area. Talbot did his best to maneuver around cars but the sea of vehicles was thick. Drew took a page from Sami and tapped his foot impatiently, his tempo matching the drumming of her fingers on the door handle.
Finally they reached the doctor’s residence, a Queen Anne–style home like most of the other houses from which the area took its name. The house sat perched on the side of the hill with spectacular views of Elliott Bay and the Puget Sound.
Drew whistled through his teeth. “Nice place.”
“Worth a few million,” Sami said as they stepped onto the wide wraparound porch.
Drew knocked. The house remained quiet. Eerily so.
Exchanging glances, they separated, going in opposite directions, peering into the house through the large windows. They worked together like a well-oiled machine. Words weren’t necessary.
They met in the back of the house. There was no sign of anyone in the house, no car in the carport. Disappointment seeped through Drew but he refused to give in to hopelessness. God had led them this far; He’d lead them the rest of the way.
“Place looks empty,” Sami commented. “But we’ll have an agent sit on the house in case the doctor comes home. If she’s Corben’s accomplice, maybe she’s running, as well.”
