Lethal (Small Town Secrets Book 1)

by Ann Voss Peterson

  “The sheriff’s department is doing a fine job.” Subera nodded his kudos to Cassidy. “But we received reports that Dryden and your sister were seen on the Iowa banks of the Mississippi, just across the river from Prairie du Chien. And once he transported her across state lines, it became an FBI case.”

  “Someone saw—” She caught her breath. “Dryden couldn’t have taken Nikki to Iowa. He was at my house this morning, leaving me a message. He couldn’t have gone to Iowa and come back again that fast. It’s impossible.”

  “It’s not impossible,” Trent said in a low voice. “It’s not even a two-hour drive from your house to the Iowa border.”

  She turned blazing eyes on Trent. Were Dryden and Nikki really spotted across the border? Or had Trent trumped up a publicity-seeker’s sighting as an excuse to bring his FBI colleagues into the case? To take control of the manhunt from the sheriff’s department? To take control from Cassidy?

  Beside her, Cassidy shifted his weight from foot to foot like a dancing prizefighter. “The professor here was just telling me how she would be willing to help us set a trap for Dryden.”

  Subera raised his eyebrows. “You’re suggesting using a civilian as bait?”

  “I’m suggesting nothing. She offered.” Cassidy’s voice rang with defensiveness and thinly disguised hostility. Apparently he appreciated the FBI taking over his manhunt about as much as Risa did.

  Subera shook his head. “We won’t consider that option until we’ve exhausted all other avenues.”

  Risa’s head throbbed in time with her pulse. She turned her glare on Trent, clenching her hands at her sides to keep them from shaking with the frustration building inside her. “I want to talk to you, Trent. Now.”

  “Fine.” Judging from the look on his face, he knew what was coming. And judging from the speed with which he excused himself, he knew exactly how close she was to losing control right here in front of Subera and Cassidy.

  Trent led her out the front door to the tiny gravel parking lot, nearly emptied of cars now that she’d heard the task force moved to a larger location Starting for his rental car, Trent unlocked the doors with a press of his keyless remote. “Get in the car. We’ll talk on the way.”

  Risa came to a dead halt. The last thing she was going to do was crawl back in that car and let him whisk her to someplace safe, far away from any chance she might have of helping track Dryden and Nikki. “Damn you.”

  He stopped and turned to look at her, like a human punching bag waiting for the latest torrent of abuse.

  “You—” She glanced around at a straggler walking to his car and struggled to control the volume of her voice. “You made up this Iowa sighting, didn’t you?”

  “There was a sighting. I just took advantage of it.”

  Took advantage? A nice way of saying he took a sighting no one would ever believe was real and blew it out of proportion. “And when Subera took over the case, you talked him into excluding me. You told him the risk was too great.”

  “Of course I did. The risk is too great.”

  “But I’m the one taking that risk. It should be up to me.”

  His mouth flattened into a hard line. “Getting yourself killed isn’t going to help Nikki.”

  She shook her head and started back in the direction of the police station. “How about forgetting to tell me her car was found? Is that going to help? Not mentioning a man was murdered and that my sister is now considered an accomplice?”

  “Come on, Rees. I’ll explain. Get in the car.” He reached for her. His fingers brushed her arm, but didn’t close around her bicep. Instead he yanked his hand back as if it had been splattered with hot grease and let it fall limp at his side.

  She stopped in her tracks, staring at his hand. “Now you’re withdrawing from a simple touch?”

  Anger blossomed within her like a mushroom cloud. Anger over his withdrawal two years ago. Anger over his withdrawal this morning. Anger over old pain and new, mixing and swirling inside her. Searing like fire. “Are you afraid merely grasping my arm will contaminate me with the evil of your job?”

  “Open your eyes, Rees. Look what’s happened to Nikki. Look what’s happened to you so far. If I hadn’t brought Dryden into your life, you and Nikki would be busy living your lives, not in fear of losing them. I’ve already contaminated you.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but her voice caught in her throat. He wouldn’t listen. He would never accept that her selection of Dryden to be part of her study didn’t have anything to do with him.

  And realistically, she didn’t accept it, either.

  Dryden’s case had changed Trent. He’d gone to Wisconsin and returned to her a different man. A tortured man. A man who couldn’t marry her.

  And he’d never told her why.

  After he’d canceled their wedding, she’d thought it an ironic coincidence when the University of Wisconsin had offered her a professorship. But when she’d started her criminal psychology project and compiled her list of prisoners to study, it was no coincidence that she’d included Dryden’s name. She’d wanted to know what had changed Trent. She’d wanted to find some answers. She’d wanted to look the devil in the eye.

  And she had.

  But it wasn’t answers she’d found. Just anger and hatred and evil.

  “All right, Trent. Have it your way. All of this is your fault. And you should stay as far away from me as you possibly can.”

  The words were bitter on her tongue. She spun around and resumed her march to the police station, her legs heavy as lead. If she was lucky, Police Chief Schneider would still be inside and eager for their chat about Nikki. Trent might lock her out of his heart and out of his life, but he couldn’t keep her from assisting in the search for Dryden.

  Behind her, Trent’s car door slammed and the engine roared to life. Gravel popped and spit under tires as he gunned the vehicle in a tight circle and hit the brakes in front of her, cutting off her path.

  He leaned across the passenger seat and threw the door open. “Get in.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  “You’re not going to let me out of your sight, but you’re afraid being near me will contaminate me? What, you want me to stay twenty paces behind you?”

  He gave her a withering frown.

  “Ahead of you?”

  “Get in the car.”

  Risa folded her arms across her chest. “Not until you tell me where we’re going.”

  “Back to the prison.”

  Trent

  Trent watched Rees settle into the corner of the little interview room provided for depositions of prisoners and force herself to bite into the vending machine sandwich. Even though she hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours, she looked as if she was enjoying the cardboard ham and cheese on rye about as much as he had. Tough. She needed something to keep her going.

  Her skin had already taken on the pallor that comes from stress, and her eyes held a sheen he’d seen too many times in the families of victims. She’d been through a hell of a shock. First the trauma of Dryden kidnapping her sister, and then learning she herself was the serial killer’s true target. And now…

  On the drive to the prison, he’d told her about the murdered man found in Nikki’s car. And when he added that Nikki’s suitcase was in the back and what appeared to be her blood-soaked clothing had been on the passenger side floor, Risa had started to cry.

  She needed food. She needed sleep. She needed comfort.

  He’d taken care of the first order. But sleep would be hard to come by.

  And comfort?

  He wasn’t the one to supply that.

  Images of the moments in the hotel room bombarded his brain. The sight of her naked body. The feel of her breasts pressed against his chest. The smell of her scent clinging to his skin. Lavender and woman. Passion and…

  Knuckles rapped on wood, and the door swung wide. The guard who had escorted them to Dryden’s cell
the day before lumbered into the room. Gordon Young. The harsh overhead light glared down on him, draining his face of color and adding shadows around his deep-set eyes. Eyes that flicked to Rees.

  “Hi, Gordy,” she said.

  Young offered her a shy smile before narrowing his eyes on Trent. “You asked to see me?”

  Trent had chosen to start with Young because the burly guard had seemed cooperative the first time they’d met. But judging from Young’s narrowed eyes, his demeanor seemed to have changed considerably in the past hours. Trent motioned to the chair next to him at the bolted-down table. “Have a seat.”

  The guard lowered his big body into the chair, his movement rigid. The man was probably pissing his pants at the thought of being questioned by the FBI after a prison break on his shift.

  Trent could use that anxiety to his advantage. “It looks like Dryden didn’t pull off his escape all by himself, Young. It looks like he had help. Inside help.”

  The tinny smell of sweat and fear tinged the air. The big man shifted in his chair. “What does this have to do with me?”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  A stain of red crept up the guard’s neck and blossomed over his cheeks. Righteous anger flattened his mouth and turned down the inside corners of his bushy brows. “It doesn’t have a damn thing to do with me, that’s what.”

  Trent kept his expression carefully blank. “Oh?”

  “That’s right. I would never help a murdering bastard like Dryden.”

  “So you would never let him into the garbage bay right before the truck arrived to pick up the waste-paper and cardboard?”

  “No.”

  “You would never disable the cameras in that section of the prison?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  Trent let the guard’s denial hang in the air. Most people with guilt on their consciences rushed to fill silence, as if saying nothing was an undeniable admission of guilt.

  Young didn’t bite.

  Time to work another angle. “What were some of the things you and Dryden talked about in his time here?”

  A fresh surge of angry color rushed to the guard’s cheeks. “I didn’t talk to him.”

  “Oh, come on. Dryden was a charming guy. If you didn’t know his background, you could almost say he could be nice. Surely he chatted with the guards.”

  “Not with me he didn’t.”

  “Never?”

  “No.”

  “Are you saying I could ask some of the other guards working your shift, and they would say that not once did they see you talking to Dryden?”

  He seemed to flinch slightly. “I never talked to him unless I had to.”

  “And what did the two of you talk about? When you had to talk, that is?”

  Young’s eyes had the look of a man being led someplace he didn’t want to go. “He’d complain about the food or about being locked in his cell too long. Stuff like that.”

  “And what did you say to him in those exchanges?”

  “I told him to go to hell. Son of a bitch got far more consideration than he deserved. More than he gave those girls.”

  “So you didn’t like Dryden much?”

  “You could say that.”

  Trent snapped open his briefcase and pulled out a thick file that had nothing to do with the prison or Young. A small fact the guard would never know. Laying it on the table, Trent tapped the closed manila cover as if the file contained all the damning proof he could ever need. “It seems Dryden has been receiving special favors, more time out of his cell, phone privileges, that sort of thing. And he received virtually all of those favors during your shift. Can you explain that?”

  Young lurched forward in his chair and slammed his open hand down hard on the table. “I don’t care what that file says. The only thing I wanted to give Dryden was a bullet in the head.”

  “If not you, where were these favors coming from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “One of the other guards?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t help you. Now I need to get back to work.”

  Trent leaned toward the guard. “I need answers. If you don’t give them to me, I’ll have to get them from someone else.”

  “Then get them. I’m fresh out.” Young shot to his feet.

  “Wait, Gordy,” Rees implored from her corner.

  Young stopped in his tracks and turned to her.

  “I know you hate Dryden,” Rees said, her voice steeped in understanding. “You never would have tried to help me stop Nikki’s wedding if you were helping him.”

  The guard nodded, tilting his chin at a self-righteous angle. “Damn right.”

  “But someone helped him escape. And that someone could know where he is.” She rose from her chair and walked across the small room to Young’s side. She reached out and laid a hand on the big guard’s arm. “We need your help.”

  Trent wanted to tell her to sit down, to stay out of this. But her voice had stopped Young in his tracks. And her plea was softening the wariness in the big guard’s eyes. Trent bit his tongue and waited to see what would happen next.

  Rees continued in her soft voice. “Who do you think would have helped Dryden?”

  Young shook his head. “I truly don’t know, Professor.”

  “What about the warden?” Trent asked.

  “The warden? Why the warden?” His eyes darted to Trent and narrowed.

  Risa answered. “When we met the warden outside Dryden’s cell this morning, he complained about funding shortages at the prison, remember? About not having enough money to pay guards overtime wages, or to update security measures. Are his complaints legitimate?”

  Young bobbed his head in a nod. “We’re always short staffed.”

  “What about updating security?” Rees continued.

  “I don’t think one thing has been updated since I started working here. And that was ten years ago.”

  Rees glanced at Trent, as if she’d run out of questions.

  Trent thought back to the warden’s specific complaints. “He mentioned that the prison’s funding was being diverted to out-of-state prisons and to the new Supermax penitentiary.”

  Young let out a guffaw. “Yeah, I thought that was a good one.”

  A slight smile turned up the corners of Rees’s lips as if she was dying to be let in on the joke. “What’s so funny, Gordy?”

  “It’s not the funding that the warden has his shorts in a bundle over.”

  “Oh?”

  “The Supermax is a real thorn in his side.”

  “How so?” Trent prodded.

  Young shot him a condescending look, as if the answer was more obvious than dirt. “Look at this place. It’s falling down around our ears. It’s the biggest dump in the state system. It’s no secret Warden Hanson took the job as a stepping stone. He wanted to head the Supermax.”

  “But he was passed over?”

  “Not only that. Some of his most notorious prisoners are being transferred to the Supermax next week.” A bitter smile tweaked the guard’s mouth. “All the warden will have left is crumbling walls housing a bunch of no-names. Not much to brag about at cocktail parties.”

  Young’s words shifted and fell into place in Trent’s mind. The funding issue. The lost promotion. The prisoner transfer. A picture was forming. There was only one piece missing. A piece that would tie the entire package together. “Dryden is on that list of prisoners scheduled for transfer, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  Nikki

  Nikki didn’t realize the plan had changed until Eddie made the turn north, heading back in the direction they’d come. “Where are we going?”

  Eddie waited for her to repeat the question before he answered. “I have a stop to make.”

  “But this is the way back to Lake Loyal. We can’t go back. You said it—”

  “I said I have a stop to make.” His voice sounded sharp. Angry.

  Nikki clamped her hands between her knees. She s
houldn’t be questioning him. She didn’t want to make him angry. “I just worry. They’re going to be looking for you.”

  “And you think I need you to explain that?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “I have things to take care of.”

  “Things?”

  He stared at her, his face hard at first, then softening. The stubble on his cheeks sparkled in the sunlight, and for a moment, Nikki could almost imagine they were a regular married couple just out for a drive.

  “Believe me, baby. There’s something I need to do, and it’s important. Would I lie to you?”

  Nikki felt stupid. What was she thinking? Eddie wouldn’t put them at risk. He knew what it was like in prison. He didn’t want to go back. “No. No. I’m sorry.”

  “And you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have a place for us to lay low.” He chuckled. “The guy who owns it would bust a gut if he knew.”

  “Why?”

  “He was weak, and I took advantage of it.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “It’s what winners do. And I am a winner, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Winners get all the beautiful things. That’s why I have you.”

  Right then, with the sun shining on his boyishly handsome face and his voice soft and a little teasing, Nikki wanted to throw her arms around him and never let him go. “I love you, Eddie.”

  “And you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want to make me happy?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Good.” Eddie turned his attention back to the road, a hard smile breaking over his face. “Because there’s one more place we have to stop first. Someone we have to pick up.”

  “Someone? Who?”

  “You’ll see. And I’m sure you’ll like her as much as I do.”

  Trent

  Trent pulled the car into Warden Hanson’s driveway. Throwing the car into Park, he studied the house cowering beyond the spiked security fence. Long shadows of approaching twilight fell over the light beige colonial, but lights glowed from inside. Someone was home. Good.

  Hanson had already left work by the time they’d finished questioning Young, but Trent couldn’t afford to wait until the next morning to talk to him. There was no telling exactly when Dryden would strike next, but Trent was willing to bet it would be soon.