The Kill List

by Nichole Christoff

  As if hearing his name taken in vain, my ex-husband glanced our way. He spotted me between Pearce and Barrett. He ordered his wife to stay put and rose to his feet.

  He still resembled the man I’d married, but only to a point. Like a weasel, his runner’s body was long and strong. And like a skunk, his shock of black hair had gone white at the forelock.

  The contrast would’ve looked good on him, except his face was as pinched as if he’d caught his cheeks in a vise. Maybe the pressure of command had squeezed the life out of him. Or maybe the pressure of losing his only child had.

  In any case, Tim crossed the room to me. He didn’t bother to acknowledge Barrett or even Pearce. And he had only one thing to say to me.

  “Took you long enough to get here.”

  Chapter 3

  Tim’s greeting had me tamping down my frustration—and my humiliation. I’d been free of him for over three years. But in a minute and a half, he’d managed to make me feel like a sinner late to Sunday school—not that I’d ever let him know it.

  Across the room, Tim’s new wife, Brandy, told Kev all she knew about her daughter’s abduction. It was no wonder Tim had found her attractive. She was round where I was flat. Soft where I’d worked so hard to be firm. More than that, she radiated a vulnerability I knew I had, but had never shown.

  My father, the General, had never let me.

  Now I didn’t know how to show it.

  “Y’all don’t understand,” she told Kev, and the sound of the South rang in her every word. “If my little Brooke woke up and saw a stranger, she wouldn’t cry. She never made a fuss. Not at bedtime. Not even when I prick her finger for her blood glucose test…”

  And in that moment I imagined I understood part of Tim’s agony.

  “Your daughter has juvenile diabetes.”

  “Type I,” he confirmed. “Unless she has a good breakfast in the morning, and insulin—”

  Tim’s jaw clamped shut. But it wasn’t anguish that had him so emotional. It was anger. “Brooke’s been missing for five hours. What does it take to get you to start working?”

  Words failed him at this point, but Pearce didn’t.

  “Take a breath, Tim. Take a break. Jamie’s here now and that’s what matters.”

  Tim nodded, looked heavenward.

  Unless I missed my guess, he was blinking back tears.

  “You’ll want to speak in private,” Pearce said.

  Lamplight sliced across his lenses as he chucked his chin at me, then at a hallway branching from the room. With a bolstering pat on the back, he steered Tim in that direction, too. All the while, Barrett eyed the three of us the way a scientist eyes an unstable mixture just before the chemical reaction.

  Reluctantly, I followed Tim like a dog at heel. We wound up in the bedroom-cum-office at the back of the house. Once upon a time, I’d known the room well. It had been my father’s study. And my favorite place in the world.

  Back then, bookshelves had lined every wall. Books on history, philosophy, and biography had filled the shelves—and filled my head. Sacked out on a couch of glossy green leather, I’d read for hours.

  And earned my father’s approval.

  Sometimes.

  Now Tim skirted the thick glass slab that served as a poor excuse for a desk. For some reason, his taste in home furnishings had always run toward Modern. Which seemed strange, since his ideas about women and marriage were completely Victorian.

  “I know what you want,” he said.

  I doubted it, but he moved behind the desk and opened the door to a closet. In the bottom of the space, a fire safe squatted like an oversized toad. Tim dropped to one knee in front of it. The back of his head blocked my line of sight as he spun the fat dial studding the flat black door.

  I spotted a framed photograph gathering dust on his desktop. In the five-by-seven photo, a smiling towheaded toddler, wearing a frilly pink dress and a paper party hat, snuggled against Tim’s shoulder. The child looked just like her mother, whose own photo was nowhere to be seen.

  “Tim, has anyone paid too much attention to Brooke lately? A deliveryman? Or a daycare worker?”

  “Every morning, I drop her at the preschool program on the post. The workers there are screened thoroughly.”

  “Is there anyone who’d take her to scare you?”

  “I don’t know. I just want you to bring Brooke back to me.”

  His words sounded too much like the words of Charles Chapman Brown. Lady, come back to me. But I reminded myself the sentiment was completely different.

  Tim shifted and, past the angle of his cheek, in the safe, I spied stacks of cash. I had no idea how much money was in there, but it had to be more than an army colonel makes in a year. I wondered how in the hell he’d come to have it.

  “You never told me what you charge.” Tim grabbed a handful of cash, rose, and tossed a sheaf of bills at me across the blank surface of his glass desk. “But I think this will be enough to get you started.”

  I accepted the money, thumbed through the notes. There had to be at least ten thousand dollars in the wad. No doubt the money meant a lot to Tim. More to him than to me. After all, I certainly didn’t need it.

  But his little girl needed all the help she could get.

  And if he paid for my help—for my abilities and my advice—Tim would value it.

  “Tomorrow,” I said, “I expect you to sign a contract.”

  “Whatever. I gave you money. You work for me. Isn’t that how a contract works?” He sank into his chair and buried his face in his hands.

  I picked up the picture frame, slipped the snapshot from the back of it. “I’ll also need to take this photo with me.”

  “No. It’s from Brooke’s last birthday and I—”

  “I’ll return the photo when I find your daughter. If you want that to happen—”

  “Of course I do!”

  “—then you need to be completely open with me.”

  “About what?”

  I could hear the caution in Tim’s voice. Maybe caution was an old habit. But he had another habit that concerned me. “Are you having an affair?”

  “What? No.”

  “Is there a jealous husband who’d take Brooke to get back at you?”

  “No.”

  “Have you pissed anyone off lately? A golf partner? A babysitter?”

  “What would anything like that have to do with—”

  “Have you received hang-up calls or hate mail? Has anyone keyed your car?”

  Now Tim hesitated. “No.”

  “Your daughter’s life may depend on your being honest with me.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you? You’ve got to be honest, Tim.”

  He nodded, his face as open as a Boy Scout’s taking an oath. “I’ll be anything to get Brooke back, Jamie. I swear.”

  And in that moment, looking at my ex-husband cowed behind his desk, I did something I hadn’t done in years: I believed him.

  Not that I got to stand there and do so for long. Shouting from elsewhere in the house electrified me. I rushed from Tim’s study, ran toward the thunder of boots on the staircase.

  Upstairs, cops of all kinds clogged the corridor that cut through the middle of the house. I elbowed my way past them and into the bedroom that had once been mine. No Seventeen magazines lay scattered across the floor anymore, and my poster of a tuxedo-clad Remington Steele was long gone.

  Instead, My Pretty Pony coloring books lay forgotten on the hardwood. In one corner, a plush purple unicorn as tall as a Golden Retriever seemed to prance, eager for his owner to come play. Plastic teacups topped a child-sized table and the painted face on the matching teapot grinned gleefully. But in the middle of the room, a man and a woman clad in the snowy white Tyvek jumpsuits of FBI crime-scene techs stripped rainbow-patterned sheets from a big-girl bed. They stuffed the sheets into a plastic bag. Ruffled pink curtains stirred with a dawn breeze blowing in through the room’s open window. The breeze carried th
e scent of salt water, pine tar, and decay.

  At the window, Kev and Barrett craned their necks to see past a third crime-scene tech. The guy shouted directions to someone outside. From the lawn, a camera’s flash fired again and again, splashing bright, white light across the men’s faces.

  The window’s screen didn’t get in their way, and that’s because it was missing. Jagged bits of wire jutted from the frame where it had been cut away. Soft pink fuzz—undoubtedly the flannel of the little girl’s nightgown—had snagged on some of the wires. The sight tangled my heartstrings together and twisted them until they threatened to snap.

  The window itself was small, aluminum-framed, and double-hung. It dated to the 1960s and was already old when I’d lived here. From a security standpoint, it was a housebreaker’s best friend. Anyone with a coat hanger or a credit card could jimmy the skinny latch that held the sashes closed. Of course, since we were on the second floor, that same someone would need a ladder to get into Brooke Thorp’s room.

  As if I were somebody’s little sister, no one paid me any mind as I crossed the room, drew alongside Barrett. Kev threw me a frown, but Barrett didn’t object to my presence or my peering past his wide shoulder and into the coming dawn. Directly below Brooke’s bedroom window, dew lay heavily on the mulched flower bed and the lawn beyond.

  If the kidnapper had propped a ladder against the house to climb to this room, it wasn’t there now. In fact, in the dawn’s growing light, I saw no sign of human intervention in the flower bed at all. But a short distance away, where the rays of the rising sun fell on the lawn, footprints lay darkly on the glistening grass. Another crime-scene tech rushed to photograph them before they melted away. For now, they tracked across the backyard—and disappeared into the trees behind the house.

  Kev asked, “What’s through those woods?”

  “Gravel access road,” Barrett replied. “It dead-ends at Maintenance.”

  “What’s going on?” Tim called. “What’s happening?”

  I turned. Pearce and Brandy had Tim penned up at the doorway, but if I knew my ex, that wouldn’t last long. Not that Kev paid the situation any mind. He was a federal agent, and this was the scene of a federal crime on federal land. According to the laws on the books, that put him in charge, so he acted like it. I knew from personal experience he’d expect everyone else to act like it, too. That included Tim. And not to mention Barrett.

  “Seal off the road,” Kev told him. “Lock down the Maintenance building. I want to see a list of personnel as soon as I join you there.”

  “There’s only one road out.” Barrett already had his cell phone to his ear. “If the kid’s still there, we’ve got her.”

  “Who’s got her?” Tim demanded. “You found Brooke?”

  Kev didn’t reply. Instead, he pushed past Tim on his way to the hall. But he didn’t get very far.

  Tim gripped Kev’s shoulder the way an owl grips a mouse. “What’s going on? I run this post and I want to know what’s going on.”

  “As long as I’m here,” Kev answered, “I run this investigation. You’d do well to remember that.”

  Tim’s free hand balled in a fist.

  Spotting it, Barrett moved in like a bouncer before a barroom brawl. But Brandy latched onto her husband’s arm before Tim could swing. “Please, baby, let the man do his job.”

  “You stay out of this,” Tim told her.

  Brandy’s pretty face flashed as red as a stoplight. But Tim released Kev’s suit coat. Kev shot the cuffs of his overly starched shirt.

  “Barrett,” he ordered, “see to the family. Secure the scene here. When I see you at Maintenance, I want that list.”

  “List?” Tim said.

  “What list?” Pearce asked.

  Kev, however, didn’t stick around to answer them. He was rapidly disappearing down the hall. I knew he and his crew would head toward Maintenance, but they’d take the long way around—through the woods. They’d scour the forest for traces of the girl’s passage. If any traces were there, they’d find them.

  I explained all this to Tim.

  Not that he caught more than every other word.

  “What list,” he said, “is that FBI agent talking about?”

  “He wants a list of Maintenance personnel. Tim, you’ve got to calm down.”

  “I’ve got to get my daughter back. That’s what I’ve got to do.” Tim seized my wrist, squeezing so hard I had to grit my teeth against the pain. “Jamie, she’s three years old. She’s a diabetic, for God’s sake. Somebody’s got her. You’ve got to find her.”

  “No, sir.” Barrett muscled his way between us. He pried Tim’s fingers from my forearm, leaving me light-headed with relief. “Finding Brooke is up to me and the FBI.”

  “And Jamie.”

  Barrett’s mouth hardened into a fine line. “With all due respect, sir, Miss Sinclair isn’t a federal investigator—”

  “No,” Tim spat, “but I’m within my rights to hire a private one.”

  “A private one?” Brandy’s long lashes fluttered at me. “You’re a private investigator?”

  “She’s a security specialist.” Pearce offered us all a peacemaker’s smile.

  “She’s the best,” Tim said. “So that settles it.”

  He looped an arm around his new wife. Brandy bit her bee-stung lip and buried her face in his side. I realized I was scowling at them both, so I quit. All the while, Barrett watched the three of us. I had no doubt he appraised every move we made.

  Maybe that’s why Tim frowned at him.

  Or maybe that’s why his voice took on the tough tone of authority when he spoke.

  “Let me be clear,” he said. “I’ll do anything to get Brooke back, Barrett. I expect you to do the same. You let Jamie go where you go. You let her see what you see. You let her know what you learn. You help her bring my baby back—and that’s an order.”

  Chapter 4

  The drive to Maintenance took forever―but lasted only six minutes.

  Part warehouse, part office, the Maintenance building was a low-slung structure of white corrugated metal, a rolling barn-style door, and a pitched roof. A half-dozen pickup trucks lined the gravel lot beside it. The trucks’ doors were splashed with a logo of flowing green letters spelling out “Franklin Contracting”—not “U.S. Army.”

  Capitalism on an army compound.

  That’s military management in the twenty-first century.

  Franklin Contracting’s trucks were ready for the job. Stainless-steel tool chests rode high in their beds. Collapsible extension ladders hooked to racks along their sides.

  And any one of those ladders could’ve reached Brooke’s bedroom window.

  Barrett parked behind the trucks, effectively blocking them in. I approved of the tactical maneuver, and as soon as Barrett cut the engine, I reached for my seat belt. If one of those ladders had been in Tim’s garden, I’d find it.

  Before I could release the belt mechanism, though, Barrett’s hand came down on mine.

  “Let’s get a couple of things straight. You said Thorp’s not your friend and he’s not your relative.”

  “Correct on both counts.”

  “Then what is he?”

  A liar? A cheater? A frightened father?

  “He’s a client,” I said, and hit Barrett with my best watch-your-step smile. “He’s also your commanding officer.”

  “That much I know.”

  “Good. Then I know you’ll follow his order—and you won’t have a problem with my joining you today.”

  “Believe me,” he said, still hanging onto my hand. “I don’t have a problem with your joining me any day.”

  I pushed Barrett’s paw away. Which was a shame. Because his hand was strong and warm and felt like it would be great to hold on to.

  But I had a job to do, so I put just enough pepper in my voice and said, “Glad we got that all worked out.”

  Then I got out of his car to go do it.

  The ladders hooked
to the trucks’ sides turned out to be aluminum affairs. They had adjustable feet soled with rubber pads. The feet would provide some traction if you propped a ladder against the side of a house. And they’d have picked up dirt from Tim’s flower bed if they’d been used to abduct his daughter. Unless I missed my guess, though, these ladders hadn’t been anywhere near landscaping recently.

  If Barrett had another opinion, he kept it to himself.

  Inside the Maintenance building, the shop smelled of grease and sand and the honest sweat of the working man. A couple of guys in green work shirts, trousers, and steel-toed boots lounged against the public side of a long Formica counter. A TV sat mute on the counter, tuned to CNN. A picture of Charles Chapman Brown flashed across the screen. Followed by mine.

  Another guy, also in Franklin Contracting green, stood behind the counter. He pecked the keys of an ancient computer. At his back, a wall of pegboard held row after row of bathtub drain plugs, switch plates, and other small items essential to home and office repair.

  I saw no sign of Brooke Thorp.

  The guy behind the counter stopped typing to speak to Barrett. “Help you, sir?”

  “I’d like a word with the supervisor,” Barrett said.

  The guy grinned. “That’d be me. Steve Sago.”

  Steve abandoned the computer, made his way down the counter. He was all of twenty-five years old if he was a day, but he already sported the deep-down tan of a man who’d worked a lifetime in direct sun. And he limped like a senior citizen in need of a hip replacement—or, it dawned on me, a young war veteran who’d lost his leg in the Middle East.

  An injury like that would’ve meant a medical discharge. And it would’ve put him in line for any federal or contracted job he had the skills for, even maintenance supervisor. Sago might’ve been young for the title, but his service and his sacrifice meant he’d earned the right to apply for it the hard way.

  Barrett said, “Have any of your trucks been off the lot since yesterday?”

  “Not that I know of.” The twang in Steve’s speech suggested he’d been raised somewhere besides Jersey. I put my money on Alabama, changed my mind to Oklahoma, then changed it again when he said, “Can y’all tell me what this is about?”