by Lori Ryan
“Ready?” Eve said as she finished up her call. Cal nodded and followed her over to where their assault victim was sitting. The woman had finished with evidence processing and now stood with a uniformed officer nearby. She huddled into herself, arms wrapped around her waist as she stared shell-shocked at the space in front of her. Cal wished they hadn’t had to make her wait to speak with them. He’d get this over with as quickly as possible.
“Ms. Gentry?”
The woman looked at Eve and nodded.
“I’m Special Agent Eve Sands with the FBI. This is Detective Cal Rylan with the New Haven Police Department. We need to take your statement and then we can get you a ride home with one of the officers.”
Another blank look and a nod.
“Is there someone you want us to call? A family member or friend?”
Her brows came together and she looked confused for a minute, then took out her phone and held it up. “I texted my mom. She’s on her way.”
“That’s good, Ms. Gentry. We’ll also give you the name of a counselor with the victim’s advocacy office. You can call them anytime if you need someone to talk to.” Cal had a feeling she still wasn’t processing much of what was being said and he knew they’d have to follow up with her another time.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Eve leaned into the woman’s line of sight, drawing her gaze away from where the body of her attacker was being loaded into the back of the coroner’s van.
“I was coming home from work. I stopped to run a couple of errands, so it was a little later than usual, but when I entered the park, it was still light.” She glanced up at the darkening sky rubbing her arms. “I thought it would be okay,” she said quietly.
“Can you tell us what happened next?” Eve guided her, using the open-ended questions to pull more from the woman without controlling where the conversation went. They wanted the woman to talk freely, taking the conversation where she chose.
“He—” the woman’s voice faltered. “He just came out of nowhere. I’m usually pretty aware of my surroundings, but he just came out of nowhere.” She pressed her hand to her mouth and looked at Eve and Cal. “I should have been watching. I should have seen him.”
“If he was this bold, he’s probably done this before. He was likely good at not being seen.” Cal wanted to give her some reassurance, but he also hoped she’d get into a self-defense class, maybe carry a Taser or pepper spray.
“He started to—” She stopped again, as though she couldn’t say the words, and Cal had a feeling she might not be able to say them yet. It would take time. “He was going to hurt me. He had me pinned down. Then, I don’t know what happened. I heard a shot and his neck exploded.”
“You heard the shot and then saw it?” Eve asked. Cal knew she was trying to confirm what Dr. Kane had told them. When a sniper shot from a great distance, the bullet would reach the target before the sound of the bullet reached it. It was why he didn’t hear the shot that hit Jarrod and Eddy Preiss before the bullet hit. It had come from far away.
In this case, the evidence was pointing to the bullet coming from close by. That meant the sound would hit before or close to the bullet hitting the target.
Mary Gentry closed her eyes as she seemed to be replaying the moment. He saw her flinch before opening her eyes to them. “Yes. I heard the shot a split second before it happened.”
“Okay. And think back to that moment for me,” Eve said. “Do you remember seeing anyone? Seeing where the shot came from?” It was a long shot. She was on the ground and her focus would be on the man pinning her down.
“No.”
Cal studied the victim and he realized, she wasn’t saying no, she didn’t remember. She was saying no to something else.
She confirmed his thoughts. “No. I won’t help you catch the shooter. Whoever it was, he saved me. Saved me from being raped.” She stepped back away from them. “Saved me, maybe, from being killed. I won’t help you catch him.”
Cal felt a surge of anger, but he tamped down on it. “Ms. Gentry, this guy is dangerous. We can’t have someone walking around as judge, jury, and executioner. People could get hurt.”
“Mary!” An older woman with red hair that matched the hair of their victim came toward them, her face a mask of terror.
Mary Gentry turned and fell into the woman’s arms with a sob, and he knew she was finished talking to them for the day. He watched as the dam broke. Eve quietly gave the mother the contact information for the counselor and explained they’d contact Ms. Gentry in the next day or two to follow up with her.
With any luck, the woman would realize having a shooter loose on the streets of their city wasn’t making things safer for anyone.
Chapter Nineteen
Scout climbed back into the car and chugged a Pepsi to get rid of the taste of vomit. The General sneered from the passenger seat but didn’t say anything.
Converting the car to a sniper’s nest had been brilliant. The DC Snipers had supplied the idea and the media had been good enough to post images of exactly how they’d done it. It hadn’t been hard at all.
“It was a good idea, but now you need to get rid of it.” The General pointed up at the roof of the car, but Scout knew he was pointing to the sky. “They have eyes up there. They’ll track this in no time.”
He was right. They did have traffic cameras at a lot of the intersections in the city. Scout pulled back onto the road and drove further south, looking for a place to ditch the car. It was an old model sedan and the plates on it wouldn’t match the VIN number, but getting another car made more sense.
“That old guy up the street hardly takes his car out of the garage. We can grab that one next.” The General said this like he was in charge and Scout bristled at the tone. The days when the General was in charge were over.
Flashes of training crept in. Days on end of crawling under barbed wire, avoiding traps set in the woods, punishments when training goals were missed. The punishments had been the worst. Not because Scout had to withstand them. That had been okay. But seeing friends and family punished for mistakes that weren’t their own had cut deep. The mind games. The mind games had been the hardest part. Those lessons had sunk in and held.
Scout blinked away memories and slowed the car, then turned onto an isolated road leading out to a set of commercial warehouses that had seen better days. Most of them were empty. Those that were not didn’t see much traffic. The car might not be noticed here for days. Scout thought about setting it on fire to destroy evidence, but that might just draw attention and bring the police to it sooner rather than later.
Wiping down the interior and exterior would have to do. The cover of night provided the time Scout needed to get the job done properly. The car would be connected to the shootings. The sniper’s nest carved into its guts made sure of that, but there would be no evidence that would lead the police to Scout. Nothing for them to find that would help put an end to this. Not until Scout was ready for it to end.
Chapter Twenty
“Do you think she’ll come around?” Eve asked the question as she poured them each a beer. He liked that she drank beer instead of wine and that she had cold mugs ready to go in the freezer.
“I hope so. Either that or we get lucky on a traffic cam. I still can’t figure out how the sniper would have picked this guy. The crime wasn’t called in, so it couldn’t have been a scanner. The victim hadn’t been arrested and walked or about to walk like the others.”
“Could be strictly opportunity?”
“He just stumbled on a crime in progress?”
Eve made a face that showed she didn’t like the coincidence either. “Is it possible he somehow knew this guy? Knew he was preying on women and followed him? What better way to prove his cause? If a vigilante can stop crime in progress, it proves the need for him in the first place.”
Cal nodded and took the beer she handed him. Coming to her place for a drink probably wasn’t the best idea, but they’d been running ha
rd since this case began and this break would likely be a short one. They needed the chance to unwind and maybe talk about the case. Talk but not over-analyze. Just a breather.
One thing Cal had discovered was that taking time to let your brain shut down a bit could end up being crucial to a case. When you were in constant overdrive, mistakes would be made.
What he hadn’t really thought through was the fact that having a beer with Eve would be very different than having a beer with Jarrod. He never got distracted watching the delicate line of Jarrod’s throat as he swallowed. And if Jarrod let out a satisfied groan at the taste of a cold beer, it never did a damn thing to Cal’s groin.
Eve, on the other hand, was another story. Cal knew he’d made a mistake when his body tightened at the sight of her tongue coming out to flick the foam off the top of her lip. He was in hell.
He turned all his focus to the news, but that wasn’t a whole lot better. They were showing video clips of Guy Duerte and his girlfriend leaving the courthouse and a clip of Rebecca James standing in the rain at her husband and son’s funeral. Both images had been played over and over on all the major channels and they weren’t doing the police department any favors.
“The press is flat out running with this vigilante thing.” Eve crossed her feet on the coffee table in front of them and leaned back, sinking into the couch. “That poor woman. The press hasn’t left this alone for a minute for her. They love to splash her grief all over the TV for their ratings.”
Cal ignored the fact that he wanted to cover her with his body and press her further into that couch. Maybe after the case was over. When the case was over, there’d be no conflict with them sleeping together. They’d be unlikely to work together again. “I’m beginning to think they may not be far off,” he said.
“I agree. I’m afraid they’re probably right. Not about the fact that New Haven needs a vigilante, of course. The James and Duerte cases were anomalies.”
“You and I know that, but I have a feeling the public is beginning to buy into what the press is feeding them.”
Eve picked up the remote and clicked off the television, leaning her head back on the couch. She blew out a breath and closed her eyes.
Cal took the beer from her hand and set it on the coffee table, his next to it. She kept her eyes closed and he turned his body halfway to face her. “I know you hoped to use this case to get to Genesio. It’s looking less and less likely that’s going to happen.”
She murmured and nodded her head. “I have a feeling you’re right.”
“I’m sorry. I know you want to get him for your dad.”
“I will someday.” She opened her eyes and turned her head to face him. Her eyes burned with intensity and he believed her. She would take Genesio down.
Cal chose that moment to do something even dumber than coming to her place for a drink. He leaned in, taking his time just in case she wanted to stop him, but hoping like hell she didn’t. He watched her eyes and saw them turn from intensity in her chase for a criminal, to a heat that told him she was wanting this as much as he was. He closed the distance between them and pressed his mouth to hers slowly, tasting, savoring, feeling the softness there.
She kissed him back, her hands coming up to his chest. He ran his hand up the back of her neck, deepening the kiss and delving his fingers up into that hair. That hair that was always tucked so tight and neat. He wanted to pull it down and muss it up. To see what she might look like first thing in the morning when she wakes up.
He didn’t. He was too damned close to the edge with this woman to take a chance like that. Cal pulled back with a groan. “If we don’t stop now, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop.”
She didn’t say anything, but nodded, and he could see she was trying to catch her breath.
“We will continue this one day.” He made sure she knew that. “When the case is over.”
Her half-lidded eyes were making it even harder to walk away. “We’ll see.”
He stood, then reached his hand out to pull her up. “Get some sleep. If we don’t get called out in the middle the night, I’ll pick you up in the morning.”
Chapter Twenty-One
They didn’t get called out in the middle of the night, but they did have a conference with the press first thing in the morning to announce the joint task force with the FBI.
Once again, Cal watched as Eve took the podium in front of the press. Once again, he had to clamp down on the urge to step in front of her and protect her. There were now protestors outside the building and he’d heard protests were springing up at the community policing locations throughout the city.
“No, the FBI is not taking over the case. We’re merely consulting. The local police department is still the lead on this task force. We’ll help in any way we can to put an end to this. We can’t have a vigilante running loose on the streets of our city.” Eve had picked up the new message the brass had told her to run with and she was doing just that.
They had decided it was better to embrace the vigilante storyline rather than try to fight the press. But they were framing it in the way it needed to be seen: as an unpredictable danger to the citizens of the city.
“Wouldn’t the victim of last night’s attack disagree with you?” One of the reporters called out.
“I think all of us can be grateful that the woman wasn’t hurt last night, but what happens when our vigilante targets an innocent person? What happens when this vigilante decides the death penalty is justified for burglary, let’s say? We have a justice system in place for a reason. We can’t have one person deciding that our justice system is no longer in place in our city. It simply doesn’t work that way.”
Cal couldn’t stop scanning the room. He wasn’t familiar enough with the press to recognize faces and put names or newspapers to all of them. But he looked around for faces he didn’t recognize at all. People he hadn’t seen before. The more of those faces he saw, the more agitated he became.
He had realized last night that his attraction to Eve went deeper than just her looks and the fact that he got hard when she walked into the room. It was more than just the fact that he’d been dying to get his hands on her and his cock buried inside her for days. He wanted it to be more with her. Needed it to be more with her.
But, watching her put herself in danger every day might be more than he could handle. She wrapped up the session, and he felt the same relief he had felt the last time the press briefing was over. He wanted to whisk her back into the precinct where at least he knew she was surrounded by people he trusted. People who would have her back and protect her.
Creating the task force meant that they were getting two additional agents from the FBI and two more detectives assigned to work with them. He and Eve were still taking point.
“Are Agents Taylor and Martinez any good?” He asked quietly as he and Eve walked back to the bullpen.
“Yes. I’ve worked with them both several times and they’re excellent agents. What about Jepsen and Mullen?”
Cal flinched and glanced around before answering. “Jepsen is a jerk. You met him the first day you were here. Tall guy, can’t stop running his mouth. He’s like the high school bully who never grew up. His partner, Mullen, is a good guy. Just got stuck with an idiot.”
“Ah. I remember him.”
“Hard not to.” He opened the door for her and led her over to his desk. They’d be meeting with the rest of the task force in half an hour.
Cal glanced up and saw Detective Ronan Cafferty leading a small woman through the room. She had the look of someone who had aged far past her years. It was the look that came from a lot of drug use and living on the streets. He recognized her and knew this woman had cleaned up and gotten herself off the streets, but the damage had already been done.
“What is it?” Eve asked, following his gaze.
“Her name is Sissy Johnson. She’s the only lead we had in the James murders, but she’s been afraid to talk. Detective Cafferty has been worki
ng her over the last two months, trying to get her to come forward about what she saw.”
“Did she see the killer?” Eve spoke quietly even though there wasn’t anybody around them.
Cal nodded. “We’re pretty sure it was her boyfriend, and yeah, we think she was there. She told a friend, but of course—”
“That doesn’t get you anywhere in court.” Eve knew the deal.
“She’s pretty frightened of him. I just hope she’s ready to talk this time. Cafferty hasn’t brought her in here since the day it happened, so that’s a good sign.”
“It would be a big help if that case was cleared,” Eve said.
Cal’s cell phone buzzed an incoming text before he could agree with her. He glanced at the screen. “A patrol officer working an off-duty shift as security at an old warehouse complex just found our shooter’s vehicle. Stolen plates and the car is stolen, so no leads there.” He scrolled down the screen. “The back seats were removed and there’s a hole behind the license plate that let our shooter get a sniper rifle through there.”
“I don’t suppose there’s video surveillance of these warehouses?” Eve asked with a look that told him she didn’t think there would be any more than he did.
“I doubt it, but I’ll find out. They’re towing the car now. They’ll let us know what they find ASAP. The Captain has put a priority on all our evidence from here on out.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The first job of the task force was to raid Kevin Williams’s apartment. When they interviewed the former military sniper, he vehemently denied being involved. Unfortunately for him, the people he thought would provide alibis had turned out to be a little fuzzy on dates and times.
Digging deeper had revealed a connection they couldn’t ignore. Williams’s mother lived in the apartment building the sniper’s first shot had come from.
Given the severity of the crimes and the danger of the suspect, they’d secured a no-knock search warrant, giving them the right to enter without any warning.
