Winter’s End: Winter Black Series: Book Nine

by Stone, Mary

  “Yeah. Trust.” Winter picked up the teacups and stood. “Like, ‘trust me, Justin, I won’t let anything happen to you.’” She took them to the sink, rinsing the delicate cups out and setting them carefully on the counter.

  “By the way…” Winter turned as Autumn walked into the kitchen. “I was actually still drinking that.” She winked and pointed to the cup next to the sink.

  “Ah!” Winter smiled and what appeared to be a startled laugh escaped her. “I am so sorry! I really am. It won’t take more than a minute to get some more hot water. I’m just not here.” Winter shifted the kettle and slapped the burner back on. “Same as before or do you want to try a different flavor?”

  “Anything is fine. So…” Autumn cocked a hip at the doorframe while Winter dug in the cupboard, sorting through packages of tea. “Where do we start?”

  Winter turned and smiled at her friend, nearly dropping a box of Chamomile in the process. “Thank you.”

  Autumn smiled back, the gesture feeling more forced than she liked. “Don’t thank me. If I’m helping you, we’re going to work with the Bureau. Evidence goes to them right away.”

  “Deal,” Winter said slowly, like she knew it was reasonable but didn’t like it.

  “But…when we find any evidence, we’ll comb through what we have first and then give it to the office.”

  Winter grinned, looking relieved. “That’s an even better deal.”

  “So, tell me about some of what your brother said. Do you think he believes all of this? And what exactly is ‘The Path’ he spoke about?”

  Winter sighed and pressed her fingers to her temple. “Kilroy was insane. As to whether or not Justin believes what he’s saying, it’s hard to say. If he does, he’s as mad as I feared, but if he doesn’t, why even bother sending this message?”

  “All right.” Autumn stretched her arms above her head to get some circulation going. “Let’s take another look at that recording and strip it apart piece by piece until we know it frame by frame.”

  “Thank you.” The words came out as the barest of whispers.

  “And you can call it in once we’re done with it, in case they take it off the server when you do. Though I expect you’ve already copied the file?”

  “They will. I’m sure they will. And you’re right, a copy automatically saved to the cloud.”

  Autumn looked at the design in the floor under her feet for a moment while she searched for the words she needed. When she looked up, she met Winter’s gaze and tried to smile. “I shouldn’t say this. I really shouldn’t because I know you’ll hate me for it, but it’s very likely they really are the best hope of him getting the help he needs.”

  Winter blinked. “Help?” She glanced away, staring at the fridge as though it had just come to life and might walk away any minute. When she spoke, her voice was carefully controlled. “There’s no hope for him. Not anymore.”

  “Winter…”

  “No.” Winter was calm and clear-eyed when she looked back at her. “No. I can’t help him. I can’t.”

  “All right.” Autumn didn’t like the way this was going, but to press harder would be to lose her friend completely. The last thing she wanted was for Winter to feel like she was going through this alone. “What do you want to do?”

  Winter’s gaze locked with hers. “Stop him.” The words were a hoarse whisper, barely audible over the clatter of the tea kettle. “I have to stop him. Me. He’s my brother, my responsibility. He always was.”

  7

  Stella Norcott’s office smelled like old chemicals and gunpowder. No matter how the weapons were fired and how well ventilated the room was, the smell permeated the walls, the carpeting, hell, even the people themselves…or at least their clothing.

  In most cases, such as a situation where a single shot was fired, a good airing would solve the problem. In a ballistics lab where constant testing took place, the ventilation simply wasn’t up to the challenge. The office had taken on a rather permanent odor that wasn’t altogether pleasant, especially if a person wasn’t used to it.

  Noah Dalton was nearly bleary-eyed from exhaustion. Last night with Winter had been a long one. After seeing the message from her little brother and then having to flag the video by the Bureau for evidence, Noah had sat up with Winter a long time to let her process what she’d seen.

  Noah rubbed his nose, but that only increased his sensitivity to the aroma and made his eyes start to water. Where the rubber smell came from was anyone’s guess. He resolved to keep the visit brief, the shorter the better.

  Stella, on the other hand, was a very nice woman who didn’t deserve to be associated with such smells. She probably had very good personal hygiene too, it was just impossible to be sure when she was surrounded by the hazard of her profession.

  “Tell me you have something good,” Noah started out more brusquely than he had intended. He knew he was reacting to the stench. Especially when Bree shot him a suppressing look.

  “And also, hello.” Bree smiled at the thin ballistics expert, her version of damage control. “Excuse my partner. He’s been watching a lot of Dragnet reruns.”

  “Only cause I’m not old enough to have seen the originals,” Noah shot back with a grin. Humor was his saving grace in most things, and when Bree fake scowled at him, he knew it had saved him again.

  Stella seemed to be enjoying the exchange, but her smile faded as Noah looked back at her. He was here for a very serious reason, and no amount of humor could save him from this discussion.

  “I hear you’re working point on Winter’s brother?” Stella asked softly, directing the question at Bree.

  “On the Jaime Peterson case,” Bree corrected her. They’d agreed it was best to distance Justin as far away from Winter as possible, even if it was only through words. “Yes.”

  “Well, you have my sympathies. I guess it can’t be easy tackling a case so close to home. Please give my regards to Winter, I’ll be happy to help however I can.” She flashed a smile, including Noah in the gesture to show there were no hard feelings.

  “Thank you.” Bree nudged Noah with her shoulder, reminding him of his manners.

  “Yeah, uh, thank you.” Why was he tripping over the small talk? It was very unlike him, unable to pull out the charming, easy manner that made him a good interviewer. Maybe the smell of sulfur was getting to him. More likely it was the ghost of that video and the way it had affected Winter, and thus the way it had derailed most of his night.

  To her credit, Winter had been reasonably calm by the time he’d gotten home, the press of the moment behind her. But she’d been distant for most of the night. Of course, her mind had been on Justin. Could he blame her?

  “Noah?” Bree punctuated her word with a hard poke to his arm.

  “Right, sorry. Was thinking about Strickland’s interview yesterday.” He shook his head when Bree’s eyebrow shot up at the obvious lie. “I’m sorry, Stella, could you please repeat that?”

  “I said…” Stella replied slowly. She didn’t sound angry, but she was watching his eyes now very closely and speaking like he was a reluctant student dreaming of recess. “We took the footprints found at the Black family home in Harrisonburg and compared them to the crime scene of the murder of William Hoult, Jaime’s henchman. They match. That puts the same shoe in both places.” She indicated a couple of plaster casts that showed a distinctive shoe-tread pattern.

  “But it doesn’t indicate that Justin is the killer of either of them,” Noah pointed out.

  “There’s only so much you can do with the image of a shoe tread,” Bree said, her bright smile somewhat muted as she gave a very unsubtle clue to her partner to lighten up. “At least he didn’t leave a stack of dead rats this time.”

  His arm was going to have a Bree-shaped bruise tomorrow.

  Noah gave himself a mental shake. She was right. He was allowing the way this case was affecting Winter to cloud his judgment. It was becoming harder to maintain emotional distance when it hur
t the woman he loved so much.

  Winter was trying, but he could tell she was chafing at the bit, all the while trying to quietly pry information from him. Information he didn’t have. He knew she thought he was just not telling her what he knew, but the fact was there was very little to tell.

  According to George Strickland, Jaime Peterson was one of the “trio of terror.” Noah wondered what Kent would think of that. The odd thing about this particular teenage-military-wannabe-secret-society was that they seemed to be very polite. At least they had been to the elder Strickland.

  The old man had recalled how they’d helped him and Kent around the place, especially as George grew older and less capable of keeping up with the demands of a working farm. He recalled no time in which the boys were drunk, though it wasn’t to say they were teetotalers. They just hadn’t made a habit of drinking around him.

  “Thing you gotta remember,” George had said, “is that they wanted to enlist when they was old enough. They wanted to be special forces. No one wants hotheads on their teams, so getting a rep, or going to jail would of potentially ruined that chance.”

  “Model citizens?” Noah prompted him, his eyebrow raised.

  “Well…” Strickland coughed a bit before continuing, “mebbe. I know my boy. Well, he was young and full of hisself. Loved nothing more than the sound of his voice. He got in trouble plenty and I reckon the rest of them got in trouble with him, probably like as not to keep Kent company. They was always good friends.” He paused and sipped his tea.

  “What else can you remember?” Noah prodded.

  “I recall Jaime was a serious one. It was that grandpa of his, I think. That old man kept the boy on the straight and narrow. He had a way of talking, though, that could set a chill down a man’s spine, and that’s the truth. God-fearing as he was, I wouldn’t want to cross him. He probably kept the boy on a tight leash, is my guess.”

  Noah shook his head to clear the fog. All he was doing was running the same evidence around and around in circles when he should be listening.

  “What about Sandy Ulbrich?” The image of her laying in the morgue after she and her husband were assaulted flashed through his mind, and after they’d survived the shooting at the mall.

  “We got the saliva DNA samples from the coroner’s office.” Stella sighed and shook her head. “So far, we haven’t found a match on the database. There’s nothing to compare it to.”

  “From where the killer…” Bree wrinkled her nose, “licked her cheek?”

  Stella nodded. “Yes. We were lucky to be able to extract a minute amount.”

  “Could you compare it to Agent Black?” Bree asked.

  Before Stella could answer, Noah interrupted. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. According to that video Winter turned in, Justin is claiming to be her half-brother. If that’s true, the DNA wouldn’t be a good match.”

  “Which half?”

  “Mother.”

  Stella nodded slowly as she thought this through. “That would be less conclusive. On the other hand, we do have the markers in the Ulbrich case so that if you do catch a suspect, we can prove that much at trial anyway.”

  Noah reached back to scratch the back of his neck and thought for a moment. “Thanks, Stella, we won’t keep you any longer.”

  “I’m always here.” Stella smiled, though the thrust of the smile was directed at Bree. “If you find anything else, let me know.”

  Noah winced. He certainly hadn’t won any awards with her today. He was definitely off his game, and he didn’t like it. Get your head on straight, Agent.

  “Thank you, Stella.” Bree smiled brightly and shook her hand.

  Noah followed Bree silently into the hall, deep in thought.

  “How do you do that?” Noah turned to Bree as they cleared the elevator.

  “What?”

  “Stella was about to offer you milk and cookies and a footstool. How do you do that?”

  Bree shrugged and turned her mega-watt smile on him. “Noah, it’s a matter of listening, of paying attention. When I talk to someone or ask them a question, I listen to what they say. It’s important to me.”

  He was about to protest, to insist that he listened too, remembering just in time that Bree had been chastising him a lot lately for not paying attention. Given the way he’d checked out while Stella had been talking, it was probably well-deserved. Hell, when was the last time he hadn’t been lost in thought when he was supposed to be focused on the task at hand?

  Thinking quickly, he amended what he had been about to say. “Okay, I usually pay attention. I’m a trained agent and know how to look for visual clues if I’m being lied to. I don’t think I’ve missed anything.”

  “And while you’re cross-examining their face, I’m listening. You know what happens when someone is listened to? They talk more. The more you listen, the more they talk, and they will tell you what you want to know and plenty you don’t.”

  He nodded. Bree had more than twenty years of experience in the field. He was arrogant enough to shrug that experience off or not drink in the lessons she gave.

  “You’re saying I need to be more friendly?”

  Bree snickered as she held a door open for him, ushering him into the beehive of activity which was the warren of cubicles where the agents had their desks. “Well, cowboy, I don’t know many people more friendly than you, so you’d be salivating sugar if you got more friendly.” She stopped, grabbing his arm. “You’re a good agent, Noah. A damn good one. You’re going through some personal shit, and you just need to work on compartmentalizing it all a little more. That’s all.”

  Noah smiled despite himself. The sort of banter and teasing Bree was doing made the day go by a little easier.

  The smile didn’t last.

  He could compartmentalize all he wanted, but that just meant all his worries would be knocking on their little walls, screaming to get out.

  8

  Winter sat in the car outside of the house. She’d been calmer going into gunfights, and this was the place she’d always felt the most loved, the most protected. This was her grandparents’ house, for heaven’s sake. Well, maybe that fact alone made it dangerous, after all. Sometimes, it was easier to face a madman with a gun than it was to confront the truth. Especially when this was a truth that had been buried for so long.

  Max had been visibly relieved when she hadn’t fought him about taking some time off. It was hard not to take his enthusiasm personally, but on the other hand, she needed the time. Going back to see her grandparents, though…

  As she got out of the car slowly and dragged reluctant feet up to the doorstep, she couldn’t help but think this was a terrible mistake. A horrifying, terrible mistake. As much as she loved her grandparents, this visit wouldn’t be an easy one. She almost had herself convinced that it would be better to turn around and go home when the door opened and her grandmother shuffled out onto the porch. The option to chicken out and flee was gone, just like that, as she was stared down by a woman more than three times her age.

  She sighed and stopped halfway up the path, feeling the smothering warmth of the older woman’s love and concern from where she stood. I can’t do this. But she did anyway, waving at the woman who’d raised her, who was now waiting for her at the top of the stairs as though she were there for an ordinary, cheerful, your-grandson-is-not-a-serial-killer kind of visit.

  “Well, I’m glad to see you,” Gramma Beth said by way of greeting. “Even if you’re dragging your feet some.” Beth offered a wry chuckle as Winter pressed forward over the cracked and buckled concrete path.

  “Hi, Gramma.” Winter smiled and mounted the steps to kiss the older woman’s cheek.

  “So, what’s wrong?”

  Winter opened her mouth to speak, having no idea what to say. Thankfully, she didn’t have to come up with anything as the door opened wider behind her grandmother, and her grandfather came bustling through, a big grin on his face. “Well, look who’s here. All the way from the c
ity and J. Edgar just to visit us.” Winter was swept into his arms and found herself in a big bear hug. “You’re looking good, kid.”

  “Thanks, Grampa.”

  “Winter was just about to tell us why she was sitting out in the car for ten minutes when she got here,” her grandmother said with a hint of reproach in her voice.

  “What’s this?”

  Winter sighed. The fact that her grandmother was right wasn’t near so annoying as the fact that she hadn’t been alert enough to notice her grandmother had been watching her the entire time. “I have a question for you.” Winter turned and opened her purse. She pulled out an envelope and handed it off to her grandmother. “About this.”

  She took the envelope from Winter and pulled the flap open, taking a piece of paper out and unfolding it. “I don’t understand,” her grandmother waved the paper toward her husband, “this is your birth certificate.”

  Winter’s grandfather took the proffered document and scanned it thoroughly. “It’s the real deal, princess. What’s the question?”

  Winter swallowed, this was harder even than she was afraid it would be. “The name on it, that says ‘father.’”

  “William Black,” he said, looking to his wife. Winter’s training noted the tightness around her grandmother’s mouth, the hint of fear in her eyes. “What’s wrong with that? That’s your father’s name.”

  “Biological father?” Winter whispered, hoping that they would laugh at her, assure her that what she’d always believed about her life was true. They didn’t.

  “Come inside.” Her grandmother turned and disappeared into the house.

  Winter stood on the porch for a long moment. The doorway felt ominous all of a sudden, as if it were a portal to a dungeon or cave. The truth lay in there, waiting in the relative darkness and hidden among the doilies and scent of fresh-baked cookies.

  “Come on, princess.” Her grandfather sounded old, worn out, but he held the door open for her.