Guarding Him

by Kori David

  “Now that everyone is here, I want us all on the same page,” Nic said. “We’ve got a missing agent, potentially a couple of serial killers in the city, and at least one guy hired to either kidnap Ian or steal his plans.”

  Cody followed, “I’ve got a homicide that’s as grisly as they come.” He slid a file across the table toward Drake. “I’m here for Ms. Jamison’s protection in the interim, per Nic’s request, and if this matches your profile, then I’m formally requesting the FBI get involved. I know you’ve been to the scene. This is the preliminary report.”

  Drake nodded and opened the file to begin reading. “Kei?”

  Ian was interested in the small woman who managed to put herself opposite the big FBI agent. It was as if the two had a force field around them that repelled and yet attracted the other. If Kei Whyte had been a cat, her hair would have stood up any time Drake looked at her. She appeared faintly Asian with her almond-shaped dark eyes and shiny black hair that was pulled back in a bun.

  “I found Lindsay’s car, as well as the panel van she described. The license plate matched. Both vehicles are less than a block from here.” She rattled off the cross streets of both the van and the car, at which point Cody got on his phone to have patrol units show up for an official missing person’s report.

  “What else do you have?” Drake asked, eyes never leaving the report.

  Those black eyes narrowed, but Kei said, “I found a burner phone inside the van. Lindsay’s phone must be with her.”

  “You have Courtney working on the phone?” Nic asked.

  Kei nodded and held up a hand when Drake looked like he might say something. “You can send your agent to my office to watch, but don’t get in her way. She’s better than your tech.”

  Drake nodded. “Fine.” Pulling out his phone, he too turned away and made a call.

  Ian stepped in. “Is it possible that the man in the van and the two men in the black Mercedes were hired by the same person?”

  Nic shrugged. The coffee machine beeped, so she started filling cups as she said, “It’s possible but unlikely. Contracts like these typically go to those who work alone. Drake’s profile of the two men says they’re probably family of some kind; otherwise, one would have killed the other by now.”

  Drake was off the phone. “They’re partial to knives and working up close and personal with their victims, but the one thing that stands out is the filet knife. One of those bastards likes to filet his victims before killing them.” He tossed the file down on the table. “The autopsy has not been completed, but this could be their work. We’ve profiled that one is significantly more disturbed than the other because some of the kills we’ve found show the kind of damage done to this poor girl. And some are clean, cold, and precise.”

  “And it’s rare that one killer can vacillate between reason and insanity,” Kei said.

  “Exactly,” Drake said.

  “Heads up, people,” Cody said, coming back into the kitchen. His hand was white-knuckled around his phone, and his voice was solemn. “We’ve got another body.”

  “Male or female?” Kei asked immediately. Her tone was remarkably even, and her face could have been carved out of stone for all the emotion she showed.

  “Male, Hispanic, and carved up like a fucking fish,” the chief said. Running a hand through his hair, he looked at Nic. “You need to go and see if the ID matches the man you saw.”

  “Drake can take me,” Nic said. “Stay here with the Jamisons and run point.”

  “You got it.”

  Kei moved toward the door, saying, “Call me once you know, Nic. I’ll be at the office with the burner cell.”

  Cody followed her. “I’ll send a unit to you for the missing person report and to collect that phone.”

  “When I’m done with it.”

  Drake interrupted Cody and said, “Don’t even try with her. She’ll let you have it when she’s good and ready. Her tech really is the best, and she’ll strip it of all the secrets.” Drake then nodded to Nic and said, “I’ll drive.”

  She turned and looked at Ian. Was he the only one that could see the agony on her face? “Stay here. You and Isobel. Please?”

  He nodded. Ian knew he’d be in the way at the crime scene, and she needed to focus. The best thing he could do was finish the final touches on the schematics. His meeting with the Secretary of Defense was in two days. Plus, he could do some snooping of his own without anyone watching him like a hawk.

  Ian had an idea about who one of the players might be, and it galled him that he might have missed it. Now, he had some checking to do, so he’d sit in the house like a good boy until he had some answers. Once he did, then someone was going to pay for all of this.

  * * *

  “How did you know they would come here?” Nic asked. Watching Drake with Kei in the same room had been fascinating. She wondered if they knew how much they gave away in micro-expressions.

  He glanced at her before turning his attention back to the road. “You know about the Dark Web?”

  Nic nodded. “Courtney regularly trolls through the grime there to find information, so yes, I am aware of its existence, but since I don’t speak hacker, she just gives me the highlights.”

  “We put a spider in there that continually searches for aspects of my profile and jobs that fit. It’s basically a very sophisticated tracing program that’s hard for other hackers to spot.”

  Nic cocked her head to the side. “A spider, huh? For the Dark Web. Well, never let it be said the FBI doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

  Drake sighed, but she could tell he was amused. He’d relaxed the moment Kei was out of sight. Interesting. When he didn’t rise to her bait, she asked, “So, can you find who posted the job in San Francisco?”

  “That could take months because the purpose of the whole thing is anonymity. My best bet was to be here when the bodies began to drop.”

  “And what was the job’s description?”

  He glanced at her again. “To steal the plans and kill the designer. Money to be wired to a designated account once completed.”

  “Damn.”

  “I know you’re good, Nic. But these guys are vicious. Watch your six.”

  “Copy that.”

  Drake had been a Marine before he’d joined the FBI, and they’d been able to find common ground in their military kinship. He was a big guy, and he scared the shit out of most people, but Nic liked him. He spoke his mind and didn’t give a damn what anyone thought.

  “How is she?”

  “Who?”

  When he rolled his eyes, Nic found a small smile. It was gallows humor for sure, trying to find a way to laugh when they were on the way to view a dead body. She was terrified that her friend was missing, but it was a way to cope.

  “Never mind.”

  Nic let him stew about it for a moment, and then she said, “She’s quiet. Not that she was ever a big talker, but it’s worse. I don’t think she’s sleeping.” Kei would strangle her, probably literally, for talking to the one person on her persona-non-grata list, but Nic decided to meddle anyway.

  “I don’t sleep either.”

  It was quietly spoken as they arrived at the scene. Getting out of the warm car, Nic pulled on the jacket she’d grabbed on the way out. They were at the water’s edge, and the wind blew the cold air right through her. A crowd of officers was still taping off the area when Drake pulled his badge and got them through.

  The rocks were slick with moisture and freezing to the touch as they climbed down a narrow rocky inlet. The Golden Gate Bridge loomed up at them from the north. The sergeant on the scene clearly recognized Drake and made his way over.

  “Page.”

  Drake nodded back, “Sergeant. This is Nicolette Montgomery; she might be able to ID the vic for you.”

  “Maybe she’d rather wait until we have the body wrapped up and back at the morgue,” he said, giving her a thorough once-over.

  Men, she thought. But she merely smiled
and said, “I can handle it, and I’d like to see him now if possible.”

  “Suit yourself,” the sergeant replied. “He washed up here. Probably dumped a couple of miles from here, but the current shoves them here. We found a jumper here a couple of years ago. Same place.” He looked a little yellow under his tan as he pointed toward the bridge. “The fall always kills them. This wasn’t a jumper.”

  “We can show ourselves down,” Drake said.

  He nodded and fled to higher ground. Nic watched him go. “Think he’s going to pop?”

  “He did look green,” Drake agreed.

  “I hope he keeps it together for the reporters; they were pulling up behind us. The headline Cop Pukes on Crime Scene isn’t good for the guys.”

  Drake shrugged and continued toward the lump of gray flesh that lay partially out of the water. Nic followed, noting the little crabs being shooed away by a couple of senior officers. “Makes me not want to eat crab legs anymore,” she said.

  The body didn’t look real. Bloated and sort of whitish-gray, the flesh looked like something out of a movie special effects studio. Nic had seen all kinds of death in the Army—blown up pieces, bodies riddled with bullets, just about every type of horror a body could go through, but she’d never seen a floater. That’s what cops called the ones they found in the water.

  “Alright?” Drake asked. He didn’t look particularly worried about her, but she’d stopped a few feet from the body, and the officers gave her sympathetic looks.

  Shaking her head, Nic finished her approach. He was on his side, his back relatively clean of wounds, just some gashes around the calves and the Achilles tendons. But when she rounded the front—Oh, Lordy. “Oh, my.”

  “They had fun with him.” Drake’s voice was grim, and his expression was stone cold. He’d seen this before, and probably much worse, but Nic had a harder time because this wasn’t war; this was cold-blooded murder.

  The face was relatively intact. One eyeball had been plucked clean from the socket, and both ears were gone, sliced off neatly. There was no doubt that this was the man from the break-in to Ian’s home. The rest of his body hadn’t fared as well. Long sections of skin and muscle were sliced off as if someone had tried to skin him but lost interest. Fingers and toes were sliced and then broken, sticking out in odd positions.

  The genitals were gone, and one long slice from the groin to the throat had laid the poor man open just enough to allow his intestines to come free. The slice likely hadn’t killed him, though; it was too shallow to damage any organs. Nic was no forensic scientist, but torture was torture. Why bother to make the cut so shallow unless the one doing the cut had wanted the victim to see his own insides?

  “It’s him. The man from the break-in.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  Drake nodded. “That’s what we needed. We’re running down the registered owner of the van now. So far, no one has been at the address registered with Motor Vehicles, but we’ll keep on it. Someone will know something.”

  They reached the car, and Nic slid inside. The sick feeling inside that churned her guts had steadily increased. No one wanted to voice the negative, but it was becoming obvious to everyone that Lindsay wasn’t going to make it home alive. The girl was too fastidious to just disappear on her own. It wasn’t in her nature.

  “Damn it.”

  Drake slid her a look but didn’t say anything. What could he say? That because Lindsay was a pretty girl, she’d probably had to endure or was still enduring much, much worse? Nic had seen the way the dead man had been mutilated, and Drake had described the burned victim and what had been done to her.

  “We’ll know soon. They never hold onto a victim very long, so it’s just a matter of finding her body.”

  “Bastard,” Nic said, but it didn’t hold any heat. The need to blame someone was strong, but it wasn’t his fault. He followed the monsters, not the other way around. This was her fault and hers alone.

  “You don’t want to be coddled, Nic, and you know it.”

  Looking into those solemn topaz eyes, she saw the sympathy, but Nic also saw the iron will he possessed. He was a man who looked into the shadows, often losing himself in the minds of vicious killers in order to catch them. She wondered what he saw when he looked at the rest of them.

  “No, I don’t.” She sighed and buckled up. “Take me back to Ian.”

  “I am a bastard. You weren’t wrong.”

  Nic knew his brutal looks went a long way toward his reputation, as well as his matter-of-fact manner. But, Nic had seen him flinch before and knew a mere mortal lurked under that superhuman veneer. She also knew that nothing she said would change his mind. “You’ve got broad shoulders; you can carry it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is the abyss looking back?”

  His shoulders tensed ever so slightly. If she hadn’t been watching him closely, she wouldn’t have noticed it. “It always looks back.”

  * * *

  Kei leaned against the wall of the shitty little apartment complex with a baggy sweatshirt on, skinny jeans, hair in a ponytail, and big hoop earrings on. With her olive-colored complexion, she could be mistaken for any other “homegirl” that hung out in this neighborhood if no one looked too closely. She’d slathered on the makeup to make sure she fit in. And when Hector Garza rounded the corner, he barely glanced at her. He was a smaller guy, dark pitted complexion, stained white wife-beater shirt, and tan Dickie pants. Tats covered most of the skin she could see; some were gang affiliated, and some came from prison.

  “Hey, Hector,” she said, putting a little accent into her voice to roll her “r.”

  “What?”

  His surly tone didn’t faze Kei. She could tell he wasn’t armed, and he didn’t stand a chance against her hand-to-hand, plus her gun rested comfortably in its holster at her side—hidden under the black sweatshirt. “Where’s your cousin?” she asked with a sly smile. “He said he had something for me.”

  “Fucking Nestor says a lot of shit, but that don’t mean it’s so,” he snapped.

  She threw up her hands, palms out. “Chill. I mean, damn, who pissed in your Wheaties?”

  “Go away,” he said as he walked by. “And if you see Nestor, tell him to bring my fucking van back.”

  “Maybe I got the wrong guy. I don’t know nothing about no van. I’m looking for Nestor Valenzuela. I was told he lives around here and that you were his cousin.”

  Hector shook his head. “Pacheco is my cousin, so fuck off.”

  “Okay, okay.” Kei shuffled away, head hunched, and her hands in her pockets. Two plainclothes cops watched the scene from a silver Impala across the street. It was going to take some time for them to get any info from an already pissed off Hector, so she had a jump start.

  No one paid her any attention, not even the cops. Hector climbed the stairs and slammed his door. She kept up the character until she was a block away, then she stood up straight and increased her stride until she got to her car.

  Kei had several cars at her disposal, and each one was useful for wherever she needed to be in the city. This one was a beat-up old blue Chevy Monte Carlo, lowered with some tattoo club stickers in the windows. The hubcaps were missing, and the trunk was dented and held closed with some frayed rope. No one would think to steal it because it looked like a junker that probably didn’t even run. It was perfect for this neighborhood.

  But when she fired it up, the engine hummed and purred. Her mechanic was paid well to make sure she didn’t break down and could outrun just about anything on the road. Pulling out her cell phone, she dialed the familiar number.

  “Hit me,” Courtney said.

  “Nestor Pacheco.”

  “You’ve got a gift, my friend. Are you coming back to base?”

  Kei checked her mirrors and slid into the flow of traffic, headed back into San Francisco. “Yes. I’m sure Drake will be there soon enough. Do you still have an agent with you?”
<
br />   A short laugh drifted through the phone. “He wasn’t fast enough to read my code, so he gave up and went to sulk.”

  “Good. Keep the info to yourself and then send it to me through the secured server.”

  “Got it. See you soon.”

  Kei took the earrings out, let her hair down and shook it, and pulled out the moist wipes she had in the glove box. At every light, more make-up came off until she wasn’t wearing any. The sweatshirt was next, thrown in the passenger seat for the next time she needed it. By the time she pulled into the secure underground parking of her building, she looked like her normal self.

  Kei sometimes wondered if anyone really knew her, or just one of her many facets. Hell, she wondered if she knew herself any longer. She shook off her musings and went to her office. Courtney would have info for her soon enough, and then the police and Drake could make an ID on the floater.

  The pieces were beginning to come together, but the puzzle wasn’t clear yet. One player was out of the game, but two very deadly players remained—plus whoever pulled the strings. Now, that person was someone she wanted to have a chat with—more like a reckoning. For Lindsay—because no one had to tell her the girl was dead. She knew it deep in her soul.

  She poured herself a shot. The amber liquid burned her throat as she swallowed, but then warmed her as it settled. Slamming the small glass down on her desk, it made a shotgun sound in the quiet room. “Damn it, Lindsay.”

  Chapter 15

  Ian worked hard on the remaining aspects of his design, finishing up what he needed and putting together the last pieces of the presentation. Sending it off to Isobel’s computer, he left the details of printing up to her. Then he went diving headfirst into his own little mystery. Who hired the guy that broke in? They already rejected the idea that he was hired by the same person who hired the other two, especially since he’d ended up dead.

  He cast a wide net, looking at business associates as well as rivals when his tamper alarm lit up. Someone was attempting to access his work computer. The way his sensors were set up was a bit like a web, and one particular strand quivered. His program went into action, capturing the IP address and location of the computer doing the hack. The person was a relatively competent hacker, but not nearly as skilled as Ian was, so less than an hour later, he had the address.