“Gentlemen, gentlemen.” Townley walked into the house looking as though he’d forgotten there ever existed a thing called sleep. “Calm down. Gage…heel.”
Gage shot him a look and released Joel before putting several feet of space between them, the urge to choke him still lingering.
“While you FBI boys have been over here doing whatever it is that you do, I’ve been doing some digging of my own,” Townley announced, dropping a stack of folders onto the coffee table.
“You can’t give us anything we don’t already have,” Joel challenged. “I’m pretty sure your department still uses file cabinets and rolodexes.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” Townley deadpanned. “Do you want my help or not?”
“Don’t need it.”
Townley glanced at Gage. “I should’ve let you finish what you started.”
“I still can.”
“No, we might still be able to use him.” Townley smiled. “Look, I know you’re combing through your fancy databases and whatnot, but had you kept my guys in the loop, you probably wouldn’t have lost him in the chase.”
“So, that’s the FBI’s fault?” Joel contested.
“It sure as hell isn’t YPD’s fault. We know these woods like the back of our hands. Some of those woods could take you all the way to Brunswick.”
“We know that.”
“But,” Townley flipped open a folder, “there aren’t many ways to access the main road through them. You’ve got the couple outlets here in Yearwood, one in Brunswick, and another in Montague, not too far from Myrtle Grove Church. Everything else is pretty much a steep cliff or water.”
“So, you’re saying that he’s likely in one of those areas or has passed through?” Gage asked.
“Possibly. Personally, I don’t think he’s gone very far. I called up Brunswick and Montague and they haven’t seen a truck matching the description you gave passing through. Nor anyone fitting the description of your driver.”
“I’d bet money that he’s probably got a bullet in his head somewhere,” Gage said. “Hall doesn’t seem like a man who works with accomplices.”
Joel’s phone rang and he left the room to answer it. Gage decided to humor Townley by going through the files with him to try to take his mind off that last look on Tayler’s face.
She’d tried to let him know that she loved him, which in a roundabout way, he already knew. He just didn’t care for the reason she’d said it—because she didn’t think she would ever get another chance.
“Well, they found the driver,” Joel announced, his footsteps angry enough to leave indentations in wood. “And they found the truck with him. He’s dead. Blow to the head. They also found a man’s footprints, but no woman’s. They track into the woods but then just disappear.”
Gage nearly tore the entire folder in two. If they found one set of footprints then it was likely that Hall was carrying Tayler. If he was carrying her, she was unconscious.
The doorbell rang, and everyone in the room, with the exception of Gage, turned toward the door. Joel pulled it open to find Julien standing in the doorway. To his left, leaning against the house with his arms folded as though he’d been standing there for hours, was a man he knew only as Dez. At the bottom of the stairs, he recognized Giorgio Pozza, although he suspected that neither were any of the man’s real names. In front of Giorgio was a woman who didn’t look as out of place as he would expect standing with the group of men.
The men had supposedly met through the business they conducted, but Joel suspected a deeper, and possibly deadlier, connection.
“You called your hounds?” Joel asked, turning to Gage. “And there’s a woman in the group now?”
Gage’s brow ticked up. The group walked into the room, formally uninvited. Up close, Joel could see bits of gold flecks in the woman’s chocolate-brown eyes and they reminded him of someone that his mind hadn’t brought to the forefront in the months since he was assigned to the case.
When Gage saw the woman, his brow fell. “I told you not to come with them, Mo. But it doesn’t surprise me that you’re here. Where’s Huang?”
“On assignment,” she answered. “Look, Tayler’s missing. Women are dying. If I can do something to help, I will.”
Julien pulled a laptop out of a pack strapped to his back. “Where do I set up?”
“I don’t know if I want you messing with any of our equipment,” Joel replied.
“You guys would still be running MS-DOS if it wasn’t for Julien,” Mo argued. “You should feel honored that he even asked for permission.”
“And who are you again?”
Giorgio made a noise deep in his throat. His face held no expression, but it somehow still conveyed that for whatever reason, this woman was off-limits.
“Don’t mess with Mo when Giorgio’s around,” Julien said, making his way to the room where the department’s computers had been set up. “Actually, don’t mess with Mo when he’s not either.”
Joel knew it would only be a few minutes before Julien had everything they’d accumulated on the case, leaving no trace of his entrance behind the government’s firewall. Everything that was about to happen was more illegal than he could quantify, but Julien was one of the bureau’s top liaisons because of his technological expertise. The men were like Navy SEALs compared to his officers and at that point, any assistance was welcomed. However, he couldn’t admit to that and validate the very little trust they already had in the government’s infrastructure.
Giorgio made himself comfortable along an empty wall. Dez walked to the kitchen. Although Joel was not a small man himself, standing a couple inches over six feet, the size of the men that had entered the house helped him understand why the King of Prussia had created his army of Potsdam giants in the late-seventeenth century. All it had taken was four of them and the room shrunk to half its size.
Julien reappeared, balancing his laptop on one hand. “Didn’t take as long as I thought it would.”
Dez followed, chewing on a green apple.
“I’m heading down to the site where they found the driver’s body,” Joel announced, walking to the door. “While I’m gone…don’t kill anybody.”
None of the men acknowledged the request that he hadn’t quite made jokingly.
Gage pulled out the information from Eric’s personnel file that he found in Sheriff Townley’s records. Something didn’t sit quite right with him about it, but his gut and brain hadn’t yet made it to the same page.
“What else can you find me on the address he has on file?” Gage asked, glancing up at Julien.
“It’s an abandoned property,” Townley piped up. “Again, if I’d been kept in the loop, I could’ve saved the feds a lot of time instead of having them drive out there.”
“How many people knew it was abandoned?” Dez’s voice cut into the conversation. “Is it something that would come off as a red flag if he put it on his application? Wouldn’t someone in human resources notice?”
“Possibly,” Townley replied.
Julien squinted at his laptop screen. “How’s the real estate market here? Is it common to have a lot of houses lying around abandoned? I remember Gage telling me that Tayler’s house was in a similar state.”
“It’s actually very good.” Townley’s face brightened with a show of pride. “We’re small, so we weren’t hit as hard as the rest of the country when the bubble burst some years back. We also generate most of our revenue during the summer months and tourism hasn’t slowed.”
Mo walked over to the laptop. “You might want to take a look at this, Gage,” she said, waving him over.
In bold on the laptop screen was an article header: A Tale of Two Houses. An image of both Tayler’s and Eric’s abandoned houses were on side-by-side display, and according to the sub-header, they were being investigated to determine if they were historical properties. Specifically, both properties had been identified as possible pivotal stops on the Underground Railroad.
“The man th
at used to own this house, the one that left it to Tayler, the reason he never let them demolish it was because he’d claimed that it was an important stop for slaves escaping to the North, specifically to follow a path that led up through North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and New York to end in Ontario,” she explained. “The man’s family didn’t agree about its historical significance and wanted to tear it down, but he was determined to have it investigated to determine if it was what his abolitionist mother had claimed it was on her death bed.”
Gage’s gut feeling and his mind began to converge. It was common knowledge that allies and abolitionists had helped men, women and children seeking freedom by hiding them in basements, beneath floorboards, and in secret rooms.
“Did they ever actually come out to investigate?” he asked.
“Let me see. It looks like they did come out to investigate,” Julien added.
Gage was already strapping on his gear. Dez joined him, already equipped ever since they got word from Mo that Gage wanted them to come to North Carolina.
Mo looked over at Giorgio. “You’re not going with them?”
“You already know he’s staying here with you,” Julien said.
She shrugged and went back to the article. “The historians checked out both properties, but they couldn’t find anything that pointed to this house being a historical property. It’s most likely why the old man finally released it, and it was cleared to be renovated. The other property was deemed inconclusive after they found an aberration in the basement. The historians, when checking the basement, found a brick wall that they thought was odd. When they checked the floor plan against the original blueprints, the basement was designed to be a longer room. They were supposed to return to check it out, but the local museum shut down before they had a chance.”
Gage and Dez were already out the door. As far as Gage was concerned, it was enough evidence for them to investigate the property. It seemed odd that Hall would leave the address to an abandoned property on file, especially if it was an address that was well known by the people around town. It seemed too risky, but the man enjoyed a thrill. He also seemed to enjoy thinking that he was smarter than everyone in the room. The last motion that he’d made while holding Tayler had left Gage wanting to plant a bullet in his skull. But, no more. When this man died, it would be by his hands.
A matte black, custom-designed Pontiac GTO waited for them in front of the house, and Gage didn’t have time to wonder how Giorgio had already gotten one of his collectibles clear across the country.
Gage hopped in and gripped the wheel until his knuckles turned white. This was the last big lead they had. If Tayler wasn’t at this house, then she could be absolutely anywhere. That last look on her face couldn’t be the last time he laid eyes on her, and that night wasn’t going to be the last time his hands touched her skin. She’d walked into his life at a time when he hadn’t even known that he needed her. Now, she needed him.
*****
When his phone began to chime, Sheriff Townley excused himself from the men, especially the one situated along the wall. The man hadn’t said a word since the group arrived, his coal black eyes slicing through every form in the room like daggers. Out of the four men, he got the sense that the wall-hugging one really wasn’t needed for the operation, but he wasn’t prepared to let the woman named Mo out of his sight.
He looked at the caller ID and realized that the local medical examiner was calling, but from her private number.
“Sophia, hi,” he greeted. “Something wrong?”
“Not wrong, per se,” she replied. “It’s just that this bit of information would’ve gone through too many channels before it got to you and I couldn’t wait that long. We appreciate the Feds’ help, but I’m loyal to our department.”
He beamed. “Thank you. So, what have you got?”
“Anya definitely died of strangulation just like the other women. Same smooth pattern and everything. Except that this time, our guy slipped up. I think I know what he used to strangle her.”
“And what’s that?”
“I found a tiny shard of glitter along the ligature mark.”
*****
“Eighteen, nineteen, twenty,” Tayler counted while Kendall faced her, a sparkling, neon pink jump rope going over her head and under her feet. When she stopped, she dashed over to Tayler and signed something that Tayler guessed meant “How much?”
“Twenty,” Tayler answered.
Kendall turned to her father who was now sitting in a chair across the room, arms folded and watching the two interact. There’d actually been a smile on his face the entire time, and there hadn’t been anything sinister or perverse about it. He’d actually looked pleased.
She signed across at her father and Tayler resisted the urge to twist or wiggle. Now that feeling was slowly returning to her limbs, it was getting increasingly difficult to deny the urge to shift. The muscles in her back were tight and her neck was beginning to strain, but if Eric so much as caught wind of her ability to move, she would surely receive another dose of his compound. He probably wouldn’t be happy about his miscalculation, either. He had apparent confidence in how long it was supposed to last.
“She really does like you,” he said. “And I think I do too. You’re not like the others. You’re not crying or begging for your life. You were a bit ornery there in the beginning, but once I explained that it wasn’t my plan to kill you, you came around.”
“Maybe it’s because I know you,” she suggested.
“True. I spent two years on you, longer than anyone else. You know where I first saw you?”
“The conference in Fayetteville.”
His eyes lit up. “Yes. How do you remember?”
“I remember you.”
“Really? What do you remember about me?”
“How smart you were. How you seemed to actually listen to me as opposed to everyone else there. The color of your eyes. I just didn’t put it together before because I didn’t want to think that someone as intelligent as the man I’d spoken to in Fayetteville would end up working as a small town paramedic. I assumed that you’d be halfway through medical school by now.”
Kendall waved her hand to get Tayler’s attention.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Tayler said. “One, two, three…”
“Wow.” Eric rubbed his hand over his mouth and squeezed his chin. “Just…wow. That makes me feel…I don’t know. Good. Really good. It’s why I left you alone initially. You’re almost too lovely. I even tried to skip North Carolina altogether, but I couldn’t get you out of my head. I, uh, remembered your eyes too.”
“Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three,” Tayler finished.
Kendall dashed over again, breathing hard, and Tayler let her know what number she’d gotten to which inspired an impromptu dance. Then, Tayler turned back to Eric. “Thank you. They’re my grandmother’s eyes on my mother’s side.”
When Kendall’s dance was over, she dropped the jump rope and moved to one of the storage bins on the shelf. She pulled out another Barbie, this one a replica from a Disney princess movie.
“Tayler?” Eric began, his eyes hopeful. “Could I have sex with you?”
Her muscles automatically wanted to react, but she kept her body plastered to the bed. None of the other victims had been raped. Had he asked and they’d denied him? Was that what had prompted the killings?
“That’s an odd question,” she replied.
“Odd? Why?”
“None of the other victims were rap…uh…penetrated.”
“That’s because I didn’t penetrate them.” His shoulders rose and fell in a slow shrug. “Like I said, I’m not some perverse murderer. It just didn’t work out with them, but I believe that this thing between you and me could work. I think it could even get to that level of intimacy.” He adjusted himself in his jeans. “I bet you’d feel amazing.”
Maybe complimenting him hadn’t been the best strategy.
Outside the door, she hear
d what appeared to be footsteps landing on wood, but it sounded as though it was being filtered through a speaker. Although there was a bit of hope that it could be someone looking for her, she knew that it wouldn’t be Gage. They would’ve never heard his footsteps.
“The FBI was here not too long ago and never found this room,” Eric seemed to be gloating. “I’ll be right back.”
He left but kept the door open. Kendall looked up from playing with her Barbies to see what had caused her father to leave. When he returned, his face was a picture of pure anger. He turned a tablet toward Tayler, and she realized that she was looking at a live feed from surveillance cameras that had been strategically placed around what she now knew was an old, abandoned house. In them, she saw a man she didn’t recognize walking through the house opening doors and checking kitchen cabinets. There was no sign of Gage, but there was something familiar about the way the man moved.
“Confession?” Eric suddenly said, tilting his head from left to right while he looked at the screen. “This man’s movements reminds me a lot of your little friend. That means your friend is most likely in the area. If that’s the case, the FBI can’t be too far behind.”
“But you said they didn’t find the room,” Tayler replied.
“They found something if they’re coming back.”
“So we have to leave?” She went on, hoping to buy some time. “Where to?”
“Well, that wasn’t my confession.” He stared at her and then cast a sidelong glance at Kendall. “Men who have found themselves in my situation are always aware of one significant thing. Eventually, it will all come to an end. Whether it is by incarceration, old age, or,” his eyes flickered, “death, it was never going to last forever.”
“W-what are you talking about?”
“I know this is a terrible comparison as I am not the monster this man was,” Eric began, “but Hitler committed suicide in an underground bunker right before he would be made to pay for his crimes toward humanity. His wife took a cyanide pill and died moments before him.” He pulled a small black pouch from behind his back. “Strangely, I somehow knew that it was always supposed to be like this. The three of us, going together. I just wish we had more time together as a family.”
Angels & Assassins: BWWM Romance Page 21
