The Broken Doll (Inheriting Evil Book 1)

by Paris Hansen

The one she wore was useless in that it didn’t allow her to move around the various parts of the building without someone else. She couldn’t access the elevator or the stairwell. She couldn’t get into secured rooms. She couldn’t stomp off and have a tantrum without him. It had to be frustrating to be so limited after years of having the run of the place.

  Sloane didn’t look over at him when he reached her side. She didn’t acknowledge him when he swiped his card at the door, then pressed the up arrow. As the doors opened, she walked inside, continuing to give him the cold shoulder as he swiped his card again, then pressed the button for their floor.

  Cade knew he should be thankful she’d put up a wall between them. He’d already gone too far the night before, admitting he thought she was sexy and how much he loved her smile. There’d been a few moments he’d been close to doing something stupid that would have fucked everything up. It was a move he couldn’t afford to make. There was too much riding on him, which meant he had to keep his distance from her. He had to stay focused on the reason he was there.

  He couldn’t let Sloane Matthews screw things up for him.

  No matter how badly he might want her to.

  Still, having her mad at him wouldn’t make things any easier. It would make things worse. He needed her cooperation. He needed her to confide in him like she had the night before. People’s lives depended on it.

  Could he lie and give her false hope? Tell her he believed Zach Bennett was their unsub? No. But he could let her investigate him. It wouldn’t take too much time for one of the analysts to get more information about him.

  “Look, I’m sorry, I don’t think Bennett’s our guy. I just don’t see how a man his size could move around women who probably weighed more than him, especially after he killed them. With that said, it can’t hurt to have one of the analysts look into him. Maybe he has a partner, or he’s protecting our unsub. He could be how our unsub found his victims.”

  Cade could feel her eyes on him as he spoke, but he didn’t turn to look at her. Instead, he watched the numbers slowly change as the elevator moved up the building. Right before the elevator stopped on their floor and the doors opened, he heard her say a muffled okay, then watched as she stormed out of the metal box. She was still mad at him, but he’d given her a peace offering, and he knew she’d take it.

  Following her through the maze of desks, he arrived in the conference room a few seconds after her. She went straight for Brian Mills, while Cade watched the rest of the team move around the room in a hurry. Something was up. Neither he nor Sloane had received a text message while they were gone, so it had to be a relatively recent development.

  “We’re bringing in Jared Bryant.”

  Cade turned to see Morgan standing in the doorway behind him, his hands on his hips. The name sounded familiar, but Cade wasn’t sure why.

  “Who’s that?” Sloane asked as she joined them.

  “He came up in one of the searches Dixon ran. He’s got priors, and he’s been out of state for the last four years. Plus, he worked as a janitor at St. Joseph’s during the first set of murders.”

  Cade watched as Taylor King put a mugshot of Jared Bryant on the whiteboard they’d set up for suspects. The man was menacing, with a thick neck, and dark eyes, a snarl on his face. It was how he’d expect a man who’d pulled off these murders to look. Having priors was another reason he fit, whereas he suspected Zach Bennett was going to turn up squeaky clean.

  “Cade, I’d like you to sit in on the interview. Sloane, you can watch from the observation room if you want.”

  Cade looked over at Sloane, their eyes meeting for half a second before she looked back at her ex. She gave him a smile and a thumbs-up before walking over to Mills, who was waiting for her. The younger man started writing down everything Sloane said, which Cade figured was most likely instructions or search term ideas or both.

  It didn’t surprise him that she planned to continue looking into Bennett despite having a more viable suspect. And he was even less surprised she didn’t mention a single word about it to Morgan. She’d wait until she had more to work with, knowing her ex would try to rip apart her theory more than Cade had.

  While they waited for agents to bring Jared Bryant into the office, Cade took one of the empty seats across from Sloane and typed up his report for the interviews they’d conducted that morning. As he added in the comments Belinda Thompson made about her neighbor, he looked over at Sloane, who was still talking to Mills. The analyst was typing away furiously on the keyboard of his laptop while Sloane took notes.

  Before he could ask her if they’d found anything, Morgan was back in the room to grab them. Sloane looked up then, something unreadable in her gaze. Cade hadn’t known her long, and to be honest, he barely knew her, but it was apparent she was hiding something. She’d found information she thought was important but didn’t want to give away what it was just yet.

  He had a feeling she was done dealing with him. Instead, she would move forward with any lead she found on her own so she could gather the proof she needed to convince him she was right. Cade knew he should stop her, but he wasn’t sure how to go about it. The woman was a force to be reckoned with and would do whatever the hell she wanted no matter what he did or said.

  She said a quick thank you to Mills, then stood up and walked over to Morgan, her notebook still in hand. Cade shook his head, then got up to join them. None of them said a word as they made their way down the hall to one of the interview rooms. Sloane slipped into the observation area and closed the door, leaving Cade alone in the hallway with Morgan.

  “What did you do to piss her off?” he asked, a bit too gleefully for Cade’s taste.

  “We’re just having a mild disagreement, is all. Is there anything I need to know about this guy?” Cade asked, changing the subject.

  The last thing he wanted to do was talk to Morgan about his ex-wife. It was neither the time nor the place. There was a suspect on the other side of the door they needed to deal with first.

  “He’s not very cooperative, though that shouldn’t come as a surprise. He was read his rights but refused a lawyer. He said he’s got nothing to hide, so why would he need to bother with the cost of one.”

  “Well, that’s helpful for us.”

  Morgan nodded. “Let’s see if we can get him to slip up.”

  “After you.”

  Morgan opened the door and walked into the tiny room. Cade followed, then closed the door behind them. Even sitting down, Jared Bryant was a big man. He engulfed the small metal chair he sat on. Cade glanced at the camera over his shoulder, wondering what Sloane thought about the other man’s size.

  Taking a seat next to Morgan, he let the other man start the interview. The questions were easy at first. Things they’d already verified on their own. Name, age, place of employment now, and five years ago. Why he’d left town and what the deal was with his prior arrests, including the one that landed him in jail for a year, more than half a decade earlier.

  “I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but I’m clean. I haven’t done a damn thing since I got back to town six months ago except work.”

  “And you were out of town to take care of your sick aunt?”

  Bryant sighed, annoyed with the repeated question. “I already told you that. She raised me, so I felt like it was only right that I take care of her in the end. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The decline was slow at first, then hit her pretty hard.”

  There was a catch in Bryant’s voice as he talked about his aunt. He obviously cared about the woman, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t their unsub. Morgan started listing out dates, beginning with the most recent ones, since those would be freshest in his memory.

  “Where were you between noon and one p.m. two days ago?”

  “Tuesday?” Bryant asked before looking up at the ceiling. “Tuesday, I had an appointment with the lawyer handling my aunt’s estate. My cousins are contesting the will, saying I coerced her into leaving most o
f her stuff to me. Those ungrateful little assholes couldn’t be bothered to help out with her after her diagnosis; that’s why she changed the will. Had nothing to do with anything I said. Not that it matters. There isn’t much there to divide up anyway. It’ll all go to paying off her doctor’s bills.”

  Morgan asked him about the rest of the dates when attacks occurred, including the ones five years ago. Cade wasn’t surprised Bryant couldn’t remember what he was doing back then. Not many people could.

  What tripped Cade up was Bryant’s alibi for Tasha Simpson’s attack. If it checked out, they’d be back to square one. While the man looked big and menacing and like he spent a lot of time on the wrong side of the law, his interview proved otherwise. Either he was a decent nephew who took care of his ailing aunt, or he was an excellent actor. Cade wasn’t sure which was more likely.

  Even so, he had to admit there was something off about Jared Bryant being a suspect. Something that wasn’t adding up in his head, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was. He had no doubt Sloane picked up on whatever it was and now had more questions than answers about Bryant’s involvement with the case. Cade knew she wouldn’t hesitate to bring them up the second they stepped out of the interview room. It didn’t matter that none of it helped prove her theory; she just wanted to disprove theirs.

  If only he could walk out of the interview room as sure that Bryant was their guy as he had been when he walked in. Sloane would smell his uncertainty like a shark smelling blood in the water. Which meant he needed to figure out a way to distract her or, at the very least, figure out a way to fake the confidence he’d felt before.

  Otherwise, she’d eat him alive, and he wasn’t quite ready to admit defeat.

  Chapter Thirty

  Forty-five minutes after Cade and Reid started their interview with Jared Bryant, they made their way back to the conference room, where the rest of the task force waited. She followed behind them, slowly wondering how the two men would try to convince her the man in the other room was their unsub.

  It had taken Sloane two seconds to realize the man on the other side of the glass wasn’t their killer. Just looking at him made it obvious, but then listening to the interview solidified what she’d already known.

  They had the wrong guy.

  The trick was figuring out how to convince two stubborn men she was right. Not just about Jared Bryant, but about Zach Bennett as well.

  In the limited time she’d had with the analyst before the interview, she’d discovered some fascinating information about Zach Bennett. If Jared Bryant was such a good suspect because he worked at St. Joseph during the first attacks, then Zach’s work history would have to make him an even more compelling one. Not only had he worked at St. Joseph’s five years ago, but he was also now an employee of Williams Memorial, where the newest victims had regular appointments with their doctors.

  She’d also learned that another person was receiving mail at Zach Bennett’s address. The disability checks for Bethany Gibbons, who happened to be his sister, were being mailed to the Cherry Court address, and from what she saw before she was pulled away, the checks were being cashed. So, either Zach was illegally cashing checks that weren’t his, or Bethany Gibbons lived in that house. So, did he lie about living alone, or was he cheating the system?

  Sloane planned to find out.

  “Dixon, we need to check into this guy’s alibi for the most recent attacks. He can’t remember what he was doing five years ago, which, to be honest, I’m not sure I’d be able to if I wasn’t an agent. We need to focus on the ones he can remember. We also need to look into known associates,” Reid said as soon as he walked into the room behind her.

  She bit back a smartass response to his not remembering what he was doing five years ago and instead asked the question that had been burning a hole through her tongue during the entire interview.

  “What’s his tie to Danielle?”

  She’d almost texted the question to Cade during the interview so he could get her an answer but decided against it. She was still annoyed with him for not believing her. However, she didn’t know why his opinion mattered so much. She was used to fighting battles on her own. No one had ever trusted her gut instinct before. Why was it so important to her that someone trusted in her now? And of all people, why him?

  It made her wonder which part angered her more, Cade not believing in her or her giving a shit that he didn’t. Either way, instead of letting it go, her annoyance bubbled inside of her, waiting for her to lash out. She knew she couldn’t, though. She had to be deliberate in everything she did. Otherwise, they’d never pay attention to what she had to say once she had the evidence on her side.

  Sloane noticed everyone looking at her like she’d grown a second head. Her question didn’t mean anything to them at all, despite the number of times she’d said there was something different about Danielle’s attack and that she was the key to finding their unsub. And despite the number of times they’d agreed with her.

  Cold hard facts were necessary in a case like this, but they also blinded people to other possibilities during an investigation. Just because the man they had in custody would’ve had the opportunity to find some of their victims, that was all they needed. Danielle being an anomaly, was once again easily overlooked.

  She shook her head, then took a deep breath before explaining why Danielle was important for the hundredth time. And more importantly, how a man like Jared Bryant couldn’t have approached the rest of their victims without eliciting a need to run the other way.

  “How did he get Danielle Zimmerman to open the door and invite him inside? And to that point, how would he have used a ruse to get these women to trust him. There’s no way he could’ve gotten any of them close enough to a van to take them without someone else noticing.”

  “Dixon, see if you can find a connection between him and Zimmerman. We’ll ask him about her the next time we head in there. As for the rest of it, maybe he had something they’d want to see. A puppy or something.”

  “Really?” Sloane asked, then turned to look at the other women in the room. “Taylor, Lily, if this guy approached you and said he had a puppy in his van, would you follow him over there to take a look? Even if he said the puppy was hurt and needed help.”

  “Oh, hell no,” Taylor said emphatically while Lily shook her head.

  “No sensible woman is going to go anywhere with that man. Not even if he had an entire shelter’s worth of puppies in his van. Hell, the man could say he had Chris Hemsworth back there, and Chris desperately wanted to meet her but couldn’t come out because people would swarm him. It’s still not going to happen with a guy that looks like that,” Lily said as she pointed toward the man’s mugshot taped to the whiteboard.

  None of the men said anything for a long time. Sloane couldn’t tell if they believed what she and the other women said or if they were trying to come up with an argument against it. So, she had to try again, and this time she knew she had to use the same question Cade had asked her about Zach Bennett.

  “What’s his motive?”

  Reid opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted by someone rushing into the room behind him. They spoke in hushed tones before the other man ran out, and Reid turned back to address them. She could tell by the look on his face whatever was happening was going to change things dramatically.

  “Last night, two baby boys were dropped off at a fire station in Sacramento. One is almost three weeks old, and the other is a day old, maybe two.”

  “What the hell?”

  Sloane was the one to say it out loud, but she could tell everyone else had been about to. Why in the world would the unsub turn the babies over? If he didn’t want the babies, what the hell was he after? And where the hell was Addy?

  “Right now, we don’t know for sure these are the missing Moreno and Simpson boys, so we continue to follow the evidence we have. King, Gardner, I want you guys to head up to Sacramento. The babies are at the hospital closest to the
fire station. They’ve been checked out and seem healthy and well cared for. They’ve put a rush on DNA tests, and as soon as we get the results back, we want to reunite them with their fathers.”

  “What if these are two other random little boys, and this is just a huge coincidence?” Trevor asked.

  “I don’t believe in coincidences, Morrisey,” Reid answered. “If these babies don’t belong to the dead women, then they’re meant to throw us off our game. The unsub knows we can’t afford to ignore these abandoned children. He probably assumes we’ll stop looking into him for a while so we can work this angle. Maybe he’ll even take a break from grabbing women, so we’ll think he’s done again.”

  “If these little boys are the children of the most recent victims, that changes everything we’ve theorized so far about his motive. What does it mean for the little girl we assumed he took with him and has been holding for the last five years?” Taylor asked.

  Sloane felt eyes on her. When she looked up, she expected to meet Reid’s gaze, but instead, it was Cade’s eyes she met. He’d seen her with Maggie. He knew how close she was to her and how badly she wanted to bring Addy home to her. If this unsub didn’t want the babies he was taking, then where the hell was Addy?

  “It could mean a lot of things. Maybe we missed a baby dropped off last time, or maybe he still has her, or he sold her to someone else who wanted her. Or maybe she’s no longer alive, and we never found her body.”

  Sloane cringed at Reid’s bluntness. Cade looked like he wanted to comfort her, but he stayed where he was. Part of her would’ve loved to let him soak up the pain Reid’s words caused, knowing she’d be the one to break the news to Maggie once they knew more. The other part of her said she didn’t need his comfort or his sympathy. Reid was wrong about Addy, Sloane knew it, but once again, she had no way to prove it.

  At least not yet.

  “We need to get back in there and talk to Bryant. We need to know where he was last night. Finding these babies alive changes things. Maybe all along, the unsub has been trying to free these babies from something, and the first time around, they were collateral damage. The mothers may be a surrogate for his own mother,” Reid said, the look on his face telling her he was eating up his theory like it was gospel. “Dixon, look into Bryant’s childhood. We know he was in Ohio taking care of the ailing aunt who raised him, so what happened to his parents, specifically his mother.”