Compulsion (Max Revere Novels Book 2)

by Brennan, Allison

  “Riley returning?”

  “No—because we see her exiting the main building five minutes after that and cross through the courtyard again. There’s no camera on the dorm entrances, but a log has her entering about two minutes after she leaves the main building. She was carrying a small laptop in her hands, and that was not found in her possessions.”

  “Her attacker was waiting in her room.”

  “That’s my guess,” Marco said. “Friday night—early Saturday morning around two—it has to be Duvall or Baker. Duvall has access to the facilities, would know how to stay off camera, and has access to the drug cocktail that Riley was pumped up with. He wasn’t on duty that day because of his trip to Boston, and someone else found her.”

  “He planned on killing her.”

  “And, barring that, injected her with a roofie so she’d forget everything about that night.”

  “You think Jackson is clean?”

  Marco nodded. “We’ve been digging around her, and there’s nothing there. But she’s a nervous Nellie, and as we’ve been pushing on Duvall, she’s come around to admitting that he has some unorthodox treatment techniques. Dr. Ullman is heading up there as a consultant to review Duvall’s files.”

  Marco looked down at his phone. “Sally O’Hara just sent us a sketch of the girl seen with Baker the morning Warren was killed. Let me get this printed out and distribute it to NET staff.”

  Marco left the room and Nick had it to himself. He stared at the corkboards again, at what was essentially Max’s life for the past two years. The woman didn’t slow down.

  He’d considered walking away now, before he became more invested in their relationship. As he’d told David, his life was complex, and Nancy didn’t make it any easier. He’d even considered staying in Menlo Park when Nancy finally moved, because he wasn’t doing his career any favors by following her around. And since it was so damn complicated, he didn’t know if following her would make it worse.

  Then he talked to his son Logan today. He’d said exactly what David had suggested. That he would have been there if he’d known.

  “I know, Dad,” Logan said. “I’ll send you my schedule next year so you can put it in your calendar.”

  Logan was a good kid, and he deserved both parents, and if Nick’s career had to take a backseat, so be it. He would still have a job, he would have a pension, and he would be able to go to Logan’s baseball games. He wouldn’t make captain, but he didn’t much care. He liked what he did, and he was good at it. But he was more than his job.

  He wondered if Max ever really relaxed. If she was more than what she did. If she ever did anything for herself. If she was even capable of it.

  And yet, still, he was drawn to her.

  Marco stepped back in with a small stack of paper. He handed one to Nick. “I’ve already given a stack to Ben to distribute to his people. The witness is confident this is the girl. ERT came back with crime scene forensics on Warren’s place, and there are two sets of fingerprints other than Warren’s—one we ID’d to Baker, and one that isn’t in the criminal database. I’m betting they belong to this girl.”

  She was young, with blond hair and light eyes. She had a half smile on her face.

  Marco said, “The witness said she was playing with the dog, smiling. And that was the only way it worked for the sketch. We’re doing a limited distribution first, before we go wide through the media.”

  “Let me know what I can do.”

  “I appreciate it,” Marco said, and Nick thought he really meant it.

  Ben ran into the room with the NET crime reporter Ace Burley right behind him. “Ace knows this girl.”

  Marco and Nick both turned to him.

  Ace said, “I sat in the courtroom for a day and a half. That’s Ava Raines, Adam Bachman’s would-be victim.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  When Max and David were seated at Ava Raines’s dining-room table, Ava didn’t seem to know what to do or say, so Max spent twenty minutes going through what she could expect from the interview tomorrow. How long it would take, the types of questions Max would ask, and Max’s primary goal.

  “I want you to be empowered,” Max said. “You are not a victim. You escaped, you testified, you persevered. It’s not easy—but you did it, you stood up and spoke for the victims who couldn’t speak for themselves. You should be proud of yourself, whether or not you speak publicly.”

  “If I don’t want to go on television, I don’t have to?”

  “No. You absolutely do not. I can interview you one-on-one and quote from the interview; I can interview you on camera but not show your face—only your voice. Or you can sit across from me and we can just talk. The tape will be edited, so if you get nervous or don’t know what to say, we can cut those parts out.”

  “What happened to Adam Bachman? Ms. Golden really didn’t tell me much. She said he killed himself Friday night.”

  Max nodded. “Like I said on the phone, guilt.”

  “How?”

  “How what?”

  “How do people kill themselves in prison? Aren’t there guards watching them and stuff?”

  “It happens. I was told he made a crude knife out of a toothbrush handle.”

  Ava didn’t appear repulsed, but Max supposed knowing that Bachman planned on suffocating her might make her less emotional about his own demise.

  “Do you have questions for me?”

  Max glanced at David who was on his cell phone, texting someone. His posture changed, then he pocketed his phone.

  “We need to go,” he said, standing.

  Normally, Max would question him, but after everything she’d been through this week she simply stood up.

  “Okay,” Ava said with a shrug. She didn’t get up, but watched as David maneuvered Max outside.

  “What’s wrong?” Max asked as they walked briskly down the front walk. David was looking right and left.

  “She knew Baker.”

  “Cole Baker?”

  He nodded once. “In the car. Now.”

  David unlocked the car remotely and pushed Max into the passenger seat, slamming the door shut. He walked briskly around the front of the car to the driver’s side, opened the door, then turned slightly, his hand on his gun.

  It was too late. A gunshot echoed in the air, and David collapsed, half in, half out of the car.

  * * *

  Marco was driving while talking on both a radio and a cell phone. Nick was in the passenger seat juggling both for him, and giving him directions to Ava Raines’s house on Long Island. Local police were on their way, as well as federal agents.

  “Her bodyguard said he was getting her out, but I haven’t been able to reach either one of them for fifteen minutes,” Marco was telling someone over the radio.

  “Local units report two minutes ETA,” the radio operator said.

  “Shit,” Marco muttered as he signed off. “God, I hate New York. I hate New York traffic. I hate the city. I hate all these damn people!”

  Marco was driving an FBI Suburban with lights and sirens, but they were still moving slow. Nick was using the onboard GPS to help navigate.

  “Forty-five minutes,” Nick said.

  “That’s just stupid. Move it, people! I swear, New Yorkers think they own the damn country.”

  Marco’s cell phone rang. He had it hooked up to the Bluetooth in the SUV and turned on the speaker. “S.S.A. Lopez.”

  “It’s Pierce. I’m behind you, but just heard from the RA that they’ve arrived at the house and the car in question is not in the area.”

  “Have them approach the house with caution. Put SWAT on standby.”

  “Already done, waiting for a target address.”

  “Now just move these damn cars so I can get there. Where’s Duvall?”

  “He hasn’t left his house.”

  “Get eyes on him. I don’t like this.”

  “I’ll call the team and get back to you.”

  Marco disconnected. �
��Kane is supposed to protect her.”

  “Trust them.”

  “I can’t.” He took a deep breath. “Maybe Maxine is right.”

  “She would say she always is.”

  “Yes, she would.” Marco paused. “These risks she takes. It kills me, each and every time.”

  “I imagine it’s what a spouse of a cop would feel.”

  “No. It’s different. She’s not a cop.”

  Nick understood what he meant, and he was partly right. They were trained for this. Max wasn’t.

  “She couldn’t have possibly known that Ava Raines was involved with Cole Baker,” Nick said. “Raines was the star witness for the prosecution. She’d almost been killed.”

  “And what was it? A setup? Was Bachman part of it? But that doesn’t make any sense.” Marco answered his own question. “None of this makes any fucking sense. And now I can’t reach David or Max. How long?”

  “Thirty-nine minutes.”

  Marco looked at the dashboard clock. “At least we’re making faster progress than these damn—” He honked his horn and swerved on to the shoulder to avoid a collision. “I’m just going to stay here.” He picked up speed driving along the narrow, bumpy shoulder. He sideswiped two cars and didn’t blink.

  Nick’s cell phone rang. “It’s Ben,” he said to Marco and put the producer on speaker.

  “Are you there?” Ben asked, anxious.

  “Not yet.”

  “I called the D.A., Richard Milligan, and told him about Ava. He’d just heard from NYPD. He can’t send me the files, but told me Ava Raines had an expunged juvenile record. We don’t know why, or how long, but we know that she spent a year at a juvenile detention facility in Staten Island.”

  Marco slapped his hand on the dashboard. “When?”

  “We don’t know, but there’s a high probability it overlapped with Duvall’s employment there, based on her age.”

  “Didn’t the D.A.’s office do a more extensive background on their star witness?” Nick asked.

  “Yes and no. She was a victim. She really did go through paramedic training. Her friends’ statements about that weekend all held up. There was no cause to dig into her juvenile years. She’s been clean, no dings on her record since she turned eighteen.”

  “And no one knew she was associating with Cole Baker?” Nick asked.

  “No one knew he was a threat until he kidnapped Max. No one knew he existed.”

  Nick corrected him. “You mean, no one knew he was a threat until Max started pursuing the idea that Adam Bachman had a partner.”

  “I’ve been trying to reach her and David,” Ben said.

  “We have, too.”

  “Richard will help anyway he can,” Ben said. “A.D.A. Golden is on her way out there now. She has a photo from the courthouse surveillance with Duvall talking to Riley Butler, the first day of the trial.”

  “Riley can’t remember what happened to her when she was drugged,” Nick said, “but said she dreamed about someone at the courthouse.”

  Marco said, “The thing about memory-loss drugs is that they don’t work predictably. But even though she recognized Duvall, she can’t place him in her room at Greenhaven.”

  “But he was at the courthouse. He had no reason to be there,” Ben said over the speaker.

  “It’s one more small nail in his coffin,” Marco said. “If we can get to Ava Raines and get her to flip, maybe she’ll be the final nail.”

  “Unless Duvall is already there,” Nick said.

  “Don’t jinx it, Santini. Raines doesn’t know we have a witness. We don’t know why she lured Max to her house, but David is aware she’s involved. He’ll do everything he can to protect Maxine.”

  Ben asked, “Are you sure they’re still at Ava Raines’s house?”

  Nick looked at the GPS tracker in his hand. “David’s car is still there.”

  Marco disconnected from Ben and called Rose Pierce. “What’s the status on Duvall?” he asked.

  “I’m on the line with the team assigned to him. There’s no answer at the door. They’re searching the grounds.”

  “Shit, Rose! They let him slip away? When was the last time they saw him?”

  “When he accepted a package delivery at twelve thirty this afternoon. His car is still there.”

  “Doesn’t mean he can’t get another. Find out where he went and when.” He disconnected. “Twelve fucking thirty. That would give him more than enough time to drive to Long Island. Or that bitch could have been waiting for him, picked him up. Dammit!” He hit his steering wheel again.

  Nick stared at the GPS map and willed Marco to go faster.

  * * *

  Max stared at Carter Duvall and felt nothing but hatred.

  She didn’t hate many people. She didn’t like many people, either, but hate was a powerful emotion and she simply didn’t want to give anyone that kind of power.

  Max hated this man and wanted him to die. If that gave him power, so be it.

  Maybe it was his own hatred of her that leeched into her body, because when he looked at her now, all she saw was violence in his eyes. Like Adam Bachman during his trial, Carter Duvall was not the same man she’d met last week talking shop with his colleagues. He was wild and vengeful and desperate.

  He had nothing to lose. And that made him more dangerous.

  They were in the attic of Ava Raines’s house. Max was handcuffed to an old metal heater in front of a small window that overlooked the front yard. Duvall had positioned Max in that window so she could see everything below.

  Including David’s body.

  David wasn’t dead, but he was injured and possibly dying. She didn’t know how bad, he was obscured from view by the car. She hadn’t seen him run into the house, and prayed he wouldn’t. Duvall had set some sort of crude trip wire over the doorways so anyone who entered the house would be maimed or killed.

  “I’m willing to admit my mistakes,” Duvall said to her. “I should never have let Cole take you. I’d thought you were selfish and self-absorbed and didn’t care about anyone but yourself. And I still think that, except for one important fact: you do care about people. You’re just a bitch. But if David Kane dies, you’ll suffer. If Sally O’Hara dies, you’ll suffer. If Marco Lopez dies, you’ll suffer. Even that new guy from California—I think you’d be sad if he died. Sadder because you’re the one who put the targets on their backs.

  “I didn’t see it before because I only saw you and my anger blinded me. It was my mistake, because everything was there in those pages.”

  “You read my journals.”

  “Yes, I did. Every last one.” He smiled.

  Max pushed away the overwhelming feeling of exposure in front of someone who despised her, who used her past against her. All her thoughts and secrets and fears were in those journals. They had given her peace as a child when her life had been full of surprises and upheavals, month after month.

  “There’s a pain deeper than death,” he said. “And you will experience it today.”

  “They’ll kill you.”

  “That’s fine,” Duvall said. And by the look in his eyes, he’d already accepted that he would die.

  It didn’t bother him. And that made him far more dangerous to Max and to everyone she cared about.

  She glanced over at Ava who sat on a couch with her legs tucked under her, watching Max and Duvall as if it were a movie. She looked her part—a petite girl-next-door type who’d been the unfortunate victim of a serial killer.

  Except she wasn’t. How did that work?

  Max remembered in the courtroom, the day Ava testified, how Adam Bachman became agitated. He’d lost his bravado from the interview earlier, and seemed to shrink. He’d said things to his lawyer that Max couldn’t hear. Now she understood.

  “You lied to him,” Max said to Ava. “That’s why Adam was so upset during your testimony. Because he realized he’d been set up.”

  “Yep,” Ava said as if they were having a friendly co
nversation. “I was so his type. When he got out of line, the doc said time for plan B. I was plan B!”

  Duvall walked over to her and smiled like she was his prize pupil. “You played your part brilliantly, Ava.”

  “He could have killed you,” Max said. Maybe she just didn’t get it because she didn’t have a death wish.

  “Cole was keeping an eye on me. It would never have gotten that far,” Ava said.

  “But why?” Max asked. “You risked your life. If Adam got out of line, so to speak, why not just kill him like Cole Baker did to the Palazzolos?”

  “You mean what we did to the Palazzolos.” Ava practically jumped off the couch in her giddiness. “It was my idea to use the tunnels and the chemicals. Adam didn’t even know where they were. Cole told him everything—well, not everything. We didn’t want Adam to know about me because I was plan B.”

  “You planned on setting him up the whole time?”

  “No,” Duvall said, “but it’s always good to have a ringer.”

  “You shouldn’t have killed Cole,” Ava said. “I loved him.” The way she said it made Max think they were words, nothing more. She had no love in her eyes, no rage, no real emotion at all. The tears, the breaking up, the hesitation on the stand—it was all an act. She behaved exactly how Charlene Golden and the jury expected a victim to behave.

  “Did you coach her?” Max asked Duvall. “Because this girl has no feelings about anything.”

  Ava rolled her eyes.

  Duvall said, “I recognized that Ava was a sociopath from the minute I met her. She was assigned to me at Staten Island Juvenile. But she was smarter than most of those kids. Many were ruthless and street-smart, but Ava had something special.”

  Ava grinned.

  “I worked with her for two years. Taught her how to act like people expected her to act. Taught her how to dress, how to behave, how to show proper emotion.”