Seeking

by Calle J. Brookes

  It was the most she’d heard him say since he’d returned from the hospital with Max. When Max had called her to let her know of Ezra’s connection to this victim, fear had flooded her. That had only subsided when Ezra had walked in, determination in every movement he made.

  “Why? What would make a man feel this way? And we’re certain it is a man, correct?” Shannon hopped from her chair and paced around the conference room. She grabbed the red marker when Ken held it out to her.

  She stepped closer to the board. She had the neatest handwriting of her team—she often did the board work. She carefully wrote male on the board.

  “Yes. It’s a man. Probably thirty to forty years old. Physically fit to climb up there, but also old enough to not rush things. This guy has patience. Lots of it. He stayed on that roof for hours, watching. Waiting. Why?” Ken asked. “And then he waited longer, until the rest of us arrived. More targets. More damage.”

  Shannon filled out the list of what they had.

  “It was deliberate. Someone did something that triggered him to choose Jaynice and Shannon,” Ken said. “Shan, I want you to grab a forensic specialist. You and Hahn are going to recreate everything that happened when you were shot.”

  She nodded. They’d already done all of that. But there weren’t many other options.

  Something had made this killer target the people he had. But so far, they had been unable to find anything connecting the list of victims they had at all.

  Except for Jaynice Miller and Sin Lorcan. And Nils Schneider with Geoff Morten. Those were the only connections between each scene that they could find.

  Other than Ezra, and the fact that he knew those particular victims.

  But it could be anything else. It could have been coincidence, but she wasn’t buying it. But what made the killer target everyone else? A politician, a grandmother, an attorney, a school teacher, college co-eds, all of them seemed so random.

  Some were from the city originally, others were from as far away as France.

  Nothing connected anyone except for the bureau connecting Jaynice Miller and Sin Lorcan, possibly. And Geoff and Nils had served together.

  With Ezra.

  She had a hard time not circling right back there to that same spot. To him.

  Was it possible that all of this had something to do with Ezra? If so, why?

  ONE HUNDRED SEVEN

  “CALL YOUR FORMER unit, Ezra. Warn every one of them to watch their backs until this is over. And you are to watch yours,” Chalmers said.

  “You think he’ll come for me next?” Ezra asked as Shannon turned to stare at him. Her fear for him was plain for anyone to see.

  “I think we need to see what connects all of our victims.” Shannon said, quietly. “Besides Ezra. Because of the almost thirty victims we know of, only four had any connection at all. And it was Ezra connected to each of them.”

  “Except, I never worked directly with Jaynice Miller, and the only thing connecting me to Sin Lorcan is PAVAD. And Geoff and Nils—we’ve been friends for six or seven years now. But they haven’t ever had contact with the other victims.” He wanted to touch her. Prove to himself that she was real and right in front of him.

  If he’d gone through what Nils had that morning, his first thought would have been for Shannon, same as Nils’s had been for Adrienne.

  Ezra didn’t doubt that at all.

  Ezra couldn’t go around PAVAD grabbing at the girl he wanted. People would think he’d lost his mind. And it would cause them all kinds of hell on the job.

  But he wanted to touch her.

  Shannon stepped closer. One hand reached out to him, and Ezra took it before thinking it through. Chalmers no doubt saw. But Ezra didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything at that moment but finding the sonofabitch who’d targeted Geoff and Nils.

  “Is it just coincidence? How is that likely? Why would someone target the two of them? Are they connected to the other victims somehow?”

  Chalmers held up one hand to cut off what Shannon was saying. “We’ll need you to go over their phones and emails, Shannon. See if there are any red flags. Something that maybe they were involved in now.”

  “There has to be something. These connections are the only ones we’ve been able to find anywhere,” Shannon said. “And whether we want to think about it, it could coincidental. Four out of thirty with very tenuous connections doesn’t a strong victimology make.”

  She was right. It didn’t. “It’s more than what we had before.”

  “I understand. And we want to be proactive. But we need to also consider that this guy is shooting randomly for some reason. He could be a mission killer who sees something that triggers him. Maybe the couple aspect of it? Maybe he’s grieving someone and is angry at men who have women in their lives? It would explain why he targeted Jaynice and Adrienne. The rest of the women who were hit first? That may be a trigger completely unrelated to Ezra’s unit.”

  “How do we reconcile the fact that two of the shootings were originally thought to be professional hits?” Max asked. “Very clinical, expert, and swift. It explained the difficulty in coming up with a profile, as well. And there is no repeated pattern until Jaynice Miller. Yet we’re certain this is the same shooter, correct? So, what’s so different between the shootings that occurred before Jaynice and those that came after?”

  “It’s not so much what’s different,” Ezra said, looking at the charts Shannon had made in her neat little handwriting. “It’s the why. Why did things change with Jaynice?”

  Chalmers looked at him. “I think that’s something we need to figure out. What was so special about that particular day?”

  ONE HUNDRED EIGHT

  EIGHTEEN HOURS. IT had been eighteen hours since she’d hit PAVAD—two hours before her regular shift began. Shannon stretched. She needed coffee or she wasn’t going to make it another fifteen minutes.

  She and Ezra and the forensic specialists had managed to recreate every crime scene digitally that they currently had. They knew where the shooter was located for each and every event.

  What they didn’t have was what he looked like.

  She was still combing footages for the approximate times of the events. And before.

  Ezra had pointed out that a sharpshooter would often get into position well in advance and wait.

  Sometimes for days.

  But she didn’t know exactly how that was going to help their case. She didn’t have all the footage to check for days before each attack. Several traffic cams and security systems were the kind that overwrote themselves every twenty-four hours.

  It was a Hail Mary effort, but she was going to try.

  Someone sat a cup of coffee down in front of her before she’d even fully turned around. “Drink. Eat.”

  Shannon thought about retorting back, but he looked just as tired as she felt. And he’d been through a rough day. Far rougher than hers. He’d brought her a sandwich, no doubt ordered from the cafeteria. And coffee just how she liked it. He held his own in his hand. It was the first she could recall him actually eating anything the entire day. Maybe. They’d skipped breakfast yesterday in her kitchen. Or was it the day before? She couldn’t remember now, and he might have grabbed something when Ken had them separated. She looked around the conference room where they’d set up camp so many hours before. Everyone looked just as exhausted as she felt. “Thanks.”

  “You need to take better care of yourself. It’ll catch up to you one day.” He nudged a container of sliced fruit toward her. Shannon took it without protest. There was something in his eyes that had her complying, feeling that maybe he needed to take care of her in that moment.

  “Look who’s talking.” She took a moment to study him. Cases wore on people; everyone in PAVAD—in the entire bureau—knew that. Some were far harder than others. This one could be no other way for him. “You’re right. I can’t keep living on pizza and cafeteria food forever. And I’m starting to forget what sleep feels like.”
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  “We’ll catch him. I promise that.” He rubbed his eyes with his free hand, then took the chair he’d pushed up to her desk earlier. “Some buddies and I are getting together, going to give Geoff a proper send-off—once I have answers and his body’s been released, anyway. Nils wants to be there, too. I’ve already talked to the funeral home, gotten things started.”

  She winced. She hadn’t realized that would fall to him. It was just another added burden he shouldered now. “Did he have any family?”

  Ezra shook his head. “Geoff has some distant family, but I don’t remember where. Leghari’s flying in from Ft. Benning in the morning. I made the call an hour ago when I was in with Chalmers. Warned them to watch themselves. Just in case. I couldn’t reach Kessinger or Sefton, but they weren’t overly close to Geoff to begin with. We’re tracking down Hollace now. He’s the one guy in our unit Geoff didn’t like. But he’s the only other one who lives in St. Louis. Figured it couldn’t hurt to see what he knows and give him a warning. It might be best if he takes his wife and gets out of town for a while.”

  She dropped the chicken salad sandwich back on the desk and wrapped her hand around his arm. He wasn’t the bulkiest of the men she worked with, but Ezra was definitely in fine physical shape. He felt so strong and real beneath her hand.

  She didn’t like the idea of him suddenly being so vulnerable.

  They were on the clock and visible for anyone who wanted to look closely at them. But she didn’t care. “I’m sorry, Ez. About your friends. About all of this.”

  “We knew each other well. Emailed all the time. Hell, he drove the rental truck with half my shit in it from West Virginia when I moved here. He was always pestering me to go do this, go do that. I meant to introduce him to Cam but never did. I wish I had—the two would have gotten along like wildfire.”

  “I’m not sure what to say.”

  “I’m going to find this guy no matter what. I won’t stop.” His hand went around her elbow, less than two inches above the bandage still on her arm. She was healing, but she had to wonder if he would. “He’ll not hurt you again. Or anyone else I care about.”

  “Ez... He’s not going to hurt me again. I promise that.” She’d been incidental. Bad luck all around. Chances were slim the man who had shot his friends even knew she existed. She and Ezra had certainly never gone out to eat like that together.

  Except for Smokey’s that one night.

  And if something was going to happen, it would have happened that night.

  ONE HUNDRED NINE

  SHANNON PACED IN front of him, her attention turned inward as she worked. Her hand brushed his arm, just for a moment. Lightly. Absently.

  To let him know she was there. He didn’t think she was even aware that she’d done it. She was just that attuned to him, like he was her.

  A little bit more of his world righted itself just then.

  He looked over at her, just for a moment.

  Shannon had become his world. In a moment, a flash of time so brief he could barely record it, she had become his entire focus.

  It was time he stopped denying it.

  They worked long into the night. Finally, Shannon’s head dropped to her desk. Chalmers had taken off for an hour to run home, grab clean clothing, and kiss his wife and kids. Stephenson had headed down to the morgue to check on his newly pregnant wife, who was only working half days at this point, thanks to problems with her new pregnancy.

  Ezra stepped up to her desk, mindful that they were still in the center bullpen of PAVAD and that the dozen desks still occupied could see everything they did. He knelt down beside her to give them a modicum of privacy. “Hey, babe, you doing ok?”

  Doe eyes blinked up at him, but she didn’t lift her eyes from the desk. “I am so tired. I’m just going to sit here for a bit.”

  He winced. No doubt she was. She’d been working non-stop since they’d come in—the day before. Or was it the morning before that? Chalmers had been pushing them all hard. He honestly couldn’t remember. “I’m sorry. What did Chalmers say?”

  A flash of guilt hit her face. “To get some sleep in the bunks. But I’m on my last video clip now. I’ve got this guy walking around. I can almost isolate him, but I need to try this new software Carrie wrote for video enhancement. But it’s not fully vetted yet, and there’s a problem with the code. I need to fix that before I can apply it here. I need to think, but my brain is somewhere in cyberspace...”

  He smiled, surprising himself. He hadn’t realized he could still smile at the moment. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Take a break. Sleep. One of us needs to be cognizant when the forensics come back in, right?”

  “I’m not sleeping until you do. You’ve been going just as long as I have. I’ll stop in a minute.” She looked back at the screen. But he could see the exhaustion. “Find food.”

  He pulled her from the chair with the hand he still held. Screw the people surrounding them. Everyone got it. They already knew something had changed between him and Shannon. Why bother hiding it? Besides, no one was watching the two of them. It didn’t matter to him if they were. He nudged her toward the steps leading out of the bullpen. “Go. I’ll be in the men’s dorm within the next fifteen minutes myself.”

  She finally walked away, turning to look at him once. She shot him an exhausted smile that hit him right in the gut.

  Ezra just watched her, biting back emotions that had no place on the clock at all.

  She was the only way he was dealing with what had happened, and he knew it. Once he got through this, she was his future. And that was what counted.

  ONE HUNDRED TEN

  WHEN SHANNON WOKE the next morning, two other beds in the women’s small dorm were occupied by PAVAD agents she didn’t know well. That was the nature of PAVAD now. More than four hundred people worked in the eight-story building, plus another forty or so in the medical examiner’s annex.

  She quickly grabbed her bag and showered. She’d have to run by her townhouse soon and grab more clean clothes, but that was a problem for later.

  Ezra was already in the bullpen when she made it in. He was showered and looked a little better than he had the night before.

  They’d be releasing his friend’s body that afternoon. She’d gotten a message from Mia, who had handled Geoff Morten’s autopsy personally.

  They hadn’t found anything they hadn’t expected.

  Jaynice Miller was still in critical condition, but her fiancé had moved up a rung. He’d opened his eyes. Rumor had it the first words he’d spoken had been for Jaynice. He’d been worried about her.

  Nils Schneider’s girlfriend had also been upgraded. The bullet had pierced the edge of her lung. The woman was highly asthmatic, and it had been touch-and-go for a little while the day before.

  But she was doing well now.

  Shannon had two files on her desk. She grabbed them and looked at Ezra quickly. “Have you eaten breakfast?”

  “I called out an order. Got you something, too.”

  He looked better than he had yesterday. If they weren’t in the middle of the bullpen, she’d want to touch him.

  The way she’d seen Mia touch Evan and Leina touch Ken. Nothing overt or offensive, just little brushes against their husbands. Even Kyra would put her hand on Cam.

  Just a connection in a world that so often spiraled out of control.

  But she didn’t. “What do we have going on this morning?”

  The question was directed at the other man in the bullpen.

  “Video, for you. I finally got a response from the traffic division. You’ll need to go pick up the newest footage—apparently, they are so short-staffed it would be next Tuesday before they could get it to us—and get on it.” Ken’s tone told her exactly what he thought. Nothing that was all that unusual. Some local cops still had a problem with PAVAD in the midst of the city.

  “I’ll do that.”

  Ken hesitated. “Knight’s man, Ward, is going to hang with our team today. Se
e if he can help out here. Evan needs to go with Mia to the doctor this morning. The rest of Knight’s team is going to with us, as well. Director Dennis has arranged to get them off administrative. They want to help.”

  “Of course. Jaynice made it through the night again. I called the hospital a few minutes ago and talked to a friend I have in intensive care.” She looked at Ezra. “I asked about your friend and his fiancée. They’ve both been moved out of intensive care.”

  “I heard he’s able to speak a bit now.”

  “Shan...when you’re out getting the footage, swing by and talk to him. See if he can shed some light on why he and Geoff Morten were targeted.”

  Ezra protested. “I can do it.”