by Debra Webb
“How many years of therapy did it take for you to get this deep in denial?”
That was it. She dropped her feet to the deck and stood. “I’m calling Worth.”
McBride pushed off the railing, took a step toward her. “I was deep into an abduction case of my own at the time you went missing, but I heard some of the details. He kept you two weeks, didn’t he?”
When she didn’t answer he took another step toward her. She refused to be intimidated. She was finished with that. This conversation wasn’t happening.
“How many times did he rape you?” He went on with his heartless interrogation.
The rage she had thought she could hold back erupted inside her. How dare he ask her that? “Shut up, McBride. Just shut up.”
“Every day?” he pushed ruthlessly. “Twice a day? More?”
Fury overrode her common sense and she took the final step, got into his personal space for a change. “That’s right, if you must know. Every damned day. I lost count of the times.” She laughed, a dry, nasty sound. “And I killed him. Just once,” she qualified, “but that was all it took.”
More of that deafening silence. They stood so close she could feel the tension running through his body, could smell the sweet wine on his breath.
“You were what,” he murmured, the sound harsh, “number twelve or thirteen?”
Number Thirteen. She shook with the words shuddering through her. “Thirteen victims in five years. I guess I was his unlucky number.”
The voices and images tried to intrude. The blood all over her … the taste in her mouth. She shuddered and fury twisted her lips, made her want to scream. But she held it back … she had learned how to do that with the fear too. Only once in a while did she screw up and let those old emotions get the better of her. Like freezing up in front of McBride. If Worth found out … her career would stall and she would never get a chance at reaching her full potential. Damaged agents weren’t reliable in the Bureau’s opinion. She was looking at a prime example.
Hell yeah, she spent a hell of a lot of time pretending the past hadn’t happened. And she wasn’t changing that strategy now.
“Did you ask for this assignment? To come back home and prove you could live only a couple of hours away from where it happened?”
Answering that question would just give him another avenue to explore. She was not going there.
“You were attending college in Nashville, right?”
He just kept right on digging … forcing the issue.
Damn him.
“Or was it Memphis?” he prodded.
“Lipscomb,” she admitted, knowing he wouldn’t stop until she did. “I was barely half a quarter into my freshman year, a month shy of my eighteenth birthday.” The memories howled inside her like an imprisoned beast. She wrapped her arms around her middle to hold herself steady. Nameless, Satan himself, had stolen her out of her warm, happy life. He had taken over her whole world.
He. He or them? She still couldn’t put the idea out of her head that there had been two of them. The whispered voice had felt different at times … as if there were two different men taunting her. But when the police had discovered her and the body, there was only one. All DNA and trace evidence had pointed to him. There was absolutely no evidence of a second unsub … just the confusing voices in her head. But her shrink had insisted that the creation of the second persona could have been an attempt by her mind to escape the evil … to pretend she’d had an ally or to excuse her inability to escape her captor sooner.
So, she’d spent seven years pretending not to hear the voices … pretending she wasn’t that person anymore. Pretending made it go away.
Eventually she had changed her name and transferred to Boston College, to escape all of it—even her overprotective parents. She had cut ties with the friends she’d had her entire life and never once looked back. Six months back in Birmingham and she hadn’t called a single one. Took pains to ensure that if she ran into anyone she used to know she looked away or hurried in the other direction. Her parents didn’t fully understand her decision but they honored her wishes. Unlike this Neanderthal.
“Is that why you came back here?” he persisted.
“I asked for Baltimore.” She closed her eyes a second and concentrated on banishing the images and voices. “But I got Birmingham.” She knew who to blame for that. Her mentor and friend, Special Agent Collin Pierce. Maybe one of these days she would actually forgive him.
“Couldn’t be coincidence,” McBride guessed. “Sounds like someone wanted you to deal with the past. Does Worth know?”
That was all he was getting.
“Your turn,” she demanded. She couldn’t talk about this anymore. She had told him too much already.
“Fair is fair,” he confessed. “Hit me.”
Her cell phone trembled against the tabletop, the drone cutting through the tension.
She considered not answering it. McBride damn sure wasn’t getting off this easy. Transporting him to his hotel could wait. If Worth had the security detail in place, he could leave her a voice mail.
Ring number two.
“You have to answer it,” McBride suggested.
“We had a deal, McBride. It’s your turn.”
“It may have to wait.”
That he looked so smug and that he was inarguably right only made the statement more infuriating.
A third ring.
Dammit.
She snatched up the phone and flipped it open. “Grace.”
It was Worth all right. The information he barked into her ear sent a cold chill deep into her bones. “Yes, sir. We’ll be right there.”
Closing the phone, she faced McBride, dread mounting at warp speed. “We have to go to the office.”
“Tell me there isn’t a new e-mail.”
“There isn’t a new e-mail.” Her fingers felt limp around the phone. He was not going to take this news well.
“What the hell is it, Grace?”
His usual cocky tone had gone cold and impatient.
“At five-thirty this evening WKRT aired a story about you that was picked up by all the networks. Worth found out a couple of hours ago; he’s been running damage control with Quantico since. He’ll brief us both when we—”
“What kind of story?” McBride demanded. “I don’t want to hear it from Worth. I want to hear it from you.”
Vivian braced for his reaction. “An anonymous source provided details as to why you were right in the Braden case and your superior, Andrew Quinn, was wrong. Some of the details in the story were straight out of your final report, McBride. The original version, not the declassified one.” She swallowed back the bitter taste that rose in her throat. “An hour ago, Derrick Braden went to Quinn’s home and shot him once in the head, then shot himself.”
Silence.
Standing so close, she could not miss, even in the meager moonlight, the disbelief and shock that played out on his face.
Vivian could only imagine how many times Braden had replayed those final days before his son’s murder. How many times had he asked himself what he should have done differently? What the Bureau should have done differently? Now the world knew some of the answers to that last question … and Derrick Braden hadn’t been able to live with it.
McBride shook his head, denial etched in the planes of his face. “Braden couldn’t have—”
“He did.”
“But—”
“We have to get dressed and go in.” She turned away, her movements stilted. This couldn’t be happening.
“Wait.” He clutched her arm, hindered her escape. “What else did Worth say?”
Telling him the rest would only add insult to injury. She would rather he hear it from Worth.
“What?” he demanded.
“Director Stone called.” She didn’t have to explain that Stone was currently the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. McBride would know that. Anyone who watched Fox News or CNN would k
now that.
“And?”
“He wants you disassociated with the Bureau and off this case.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
11:30 P.M.
This was very distressing.
Very, very distressing.
Martin changed the channel to another twenty-four-hour news station. This could not be correct. And yet, on every channel, the breaking news was the same.
After three years, a distraught father carries out his vengeance for an inept investigation.
No, no, no, no. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
There was no room in Martin’s careful plan for that kind of distraction. Death was not his goal. He was not a murderer, which was far more than he could say for some he had chosen to take part in his plans.
But that was not the worst of it. He had also learned that Tuesday’s scheduled event had been moved up to Monday. This simply would not do. Timing was everything.
Martin moved restlessly about the room. He picked up the newspaper, folded it neatly, and placed it on the table next to his recliner, then straightened the doilies his wife had made for the arms.
He had planned each challenge very carefully. There was absolutely no margin for error where emotions were concerned. Precise calculations of each move and estimations of the possible repercussions were essential. He had studied criminal investigations in-depth … he knew all the essential steps. Had followed hundreds of cases on television news and in the newspapers. FBI Files and New Detectives were among his favorite docudramas. He knew how this worked. His planning was too careful for such a deviation!
The news flashed Quinn’s and Braden’s pictures.
How could this be?
Three years! If the poor man hadn’t sought his vengeance in three years, why now? Martin had watched interviews with Derrick Braden that first year after his son’s death. The man hadn’t been a fool. He had surely known that there was a possibility the Bureau had failed in some way. Martin could have told him that. The Bureau failed far too often.
The second year after his son’s death, in honor of his memory, Braden had started a Web site to instruct parents in how to spot the signs of an abusive family member or friend. Martin had admired that effort.
Calm down, Martin.
“What?” Martin turned a bit too sharply to face his beloved wife. “How can I calm down?”
She smiled at him patiently. You must carry on.
But he knew she was right. He couldn’t fall to pieces over this unexpected and unfortunate turn of events. His mission was far too important. He must carry on.
Still, the timing was essential. Deirdre wasn’t math inclined so she didn’t quite understand just how serious this other glitch in the schedule could prove. The business on the news was one thing, but the schedule change quite another.
He had to stop replaying the news report over and over in his mind. That was not his doing … not part of his plan. Focus was necessary to his success. He had spent twenty-five years paying attention to the most insignificant details in his work. Distractions could not be tolerated, then or now.
The question of “why now?” persisted, making him anxious.
Three years ago, every single thing about the Braden case had played out in the media. Special Agent McBride had been crucified! Braden hadn’t gone after him or his superior then—not in all this time. Why this sudden violence over a mere news report that finally told some semblance of truth that the man could have deduced on his own?
Martin could not reconcile this behavior.
McBride was a saint … a hero that came along only once.
It’s time the world knew.
Deirdre was right. She always was.
As unfortunate as this tragic news was, sacrifice was at times necessary for justice to be realized. If this was one of those times, then so be it.
He would move forward with his plans and put this other sad business aside.
“Of course, you’re always right, dear,” he said to her. “This is not an insurmountable setback. And the news about Braden and Quinn is simply none of my concern.” He lifted his shoulders ever so slightly. “Though I must say, Quinn surely deserved no better.”
Deirdre didn’t say as much, but he saw the agreement in her eyes. She had realized this mission to exonerate McBride had to happen before he had. She always saw things more clearly and more quickly than Martin. That was her gift. This was the least he could do for her.
Martin turned back to the news on the television and faced this newest challenge with the knowledge that his goal was far too important to allow an unexpected encumbrance to alter his course.
To the contrary, he would do exactly as Deirdre suggested. Not only would he proceed, he would move his next objective forward to accommodate the schedule glitch.
He would triumph.
The world now knew a great deal more of the truth.
That left only the Federal Bureau of Investigation thrashing in denial.
Time to make those shortsighted fools face the music.
No one was as good as Special Agent Ryan McBride.
Once he was officially reinstated, Martin’s work would be done.
Then he would be a hero in Deirdre’s eyes too.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sunday, September 10, 12:01 A.M.
1000 Eighteenth Street
McBride watched the final moments of the news segment on the wall-mounted plasma in Worth’s office. Ms. Nadine Goodman certainly had all her ducks in a row, including a few to which she shouldn’t have had access.
No one knew better than McBride what Derrick Braden had gone through. There were no words to adequately articulate that kind of pain. McBride would have given anything to go back and fix that moment in time. To save that boy and make his family whole again. But he couldn’t. Quinn had made the ultimate decision and the boy had died. McBride had spent three years blaming him when the truth was … he couldn’t be sure if anything he could have done would have made a difference either.
There was no way to know and that was what he had to live with. Evidently Braden had decided that he could no longer live with the not knowing and had opted to take the man he deemed responsible for his unhappiness with him.
Worth clicked the remote and the recorded broadcast vanished. He shifted his attention to McBride. “Strange that you’re in town barely forty-eight hours and our top-ranked investigative reporter suddenly has all the facts on a three-year-old case.” His gaze turned openly accusing. “More of that irony, huh, McBride?”
McBride shouldn’t waste his time debating, this prick was going to believe what he wanted to, but for the sake of self-satisfaction he would set the record straight. And make one minor point. “I don’t even know the woman. When would I have had a chance to collaborate with her? Thursday night I never left the hotel, last night and tonight I was with Agent Grace.” Now for his point. “You have a leak.”
Outrage turned Worth’s face an unpleasant hue of purple. “This office does not have a leak.”
McBride turned his palms up. “Then your investigative reporter is psychic. Believe it or not, Worth, suspect interrogations actually work. Have you questioned Ms. Goodman regarding her source?”
The purple faded to more of a reddish-blue color. “She’s not talking. We’re holding her as a person of interest for a few hours to see if she’ll budge.”
“There are certain details,” Grace said, drawing McBride’s attention to her, “that no one at this field office could have given Goodman.”
“That’s right,” Worth said. “The copy of the case file that we received electronically had been declassified.”
Didn’t change McBride’s opinion. “Then the information had to come from someone at Quantico.”
Worth snorted. “We both know that isn’t the case.” He did that little forward-lean intimidation maneuver that wouldn’t have worked had he been standing up. “You and Quinn were the key players in that saga and Quinn is dead. Tha
t leaves you.”
“Your powers of deduction are astounding, Worth.” McBride shook his head. “I’m sure the Bureau is very proud.”
Grace shot him a warning look.
“I actually went up against Quantico for you on this whole Devoted Fan fiasco,” Worth said, his tone incredibly level for a man who clearly wanted to rip off McBride’s head and piss down his throat. “I believed you were a pawn in this case, but that may have been a mistake on my part.”
McBride’d had about enough of this bullshit.
“If we find out you’re Goodman’s source,” Worth warned, “or that you manipulated these events somehow or had any contact whatsoever with Derrick Braden, I will nail your ass to the cross so help me God.”
McBride stood. “I assume we’re finished here.” He had stayed this long out of consideration for Grace. He didn’t want his actions coming back on her after he was gone.
Worth rose, postured himself with that authoritative panache guys like him utilized to distract from their lack of personality. Like the thousand-dollar charcoal suit and crisply starched white shirt accented with a red power tie. He was in charge and he didn’t plan to let anyone forget it.
“Agent Grace will escort you back to the Tutwiler,” he announced. “She and Agent Pratt will be your personal security until you’re on an eight A.M. flight to Miami. A representative from the Miami office will pick you up and escort you back to your residence in Key West.” Worth took a breath. “If you divulge to the press anything you’ve seen or heard during your stay here, formal charges will be forthcoming. Your attitude, your appearance, your whole life is a disgrace to the hundreds of agents who work hard and play by the rules.”
This whole affair had stopped being McBride’s problem when Director Stone ordered him off the case. He should have walked out when this bastard paused to catch his breath.
