Together they walked out to the parking lot. Laney loaded her case of collection tools into the trunk and accepted the keys Jim held out.
“God go with you, Laney,” he said.
She smiled grimly. “And you all. Thanks, Jim.”
He squeezed both of them on the shoulders. “Well, I’ll leave you two to get started. Ryan, keep me updated.”
“Yes, sir.” He waited in silence beside Laney for a long moment as his father walked back inside. Part of him wanted to ask what she’d been about to say a moment ago in the equipment room, but somehow the timing felt wrong. So instead, he hugged her again, this time pressing a kiss to her forehead when they pulled apart.
“Ready?” he asked one more time, searching her face for the answer.
She nodded, her jaw set. The same determination he’d seen in those eyes so many times sparked to life again.
“Then let’s test your mic and get you on your way.”
With a final squeeze of her hand, Ryan stood back and waited as she climbed behind the wheel of the car. Then he turned for the surveillance van, praying desperately that this wasn’t the last time he’d see the only girl who’d ever held his heart.
* * *
The sun was creeping toward the horizon—Laney could see a faint orange hue breaking the twilight above the trees ahead as she headed east toward the bog. Somewhere behind, Ryan sat in a police van keeping a watchful eye on the situation. While that certainty brought a measure of comfort, nothing could stop the fear paralyzing her insides.
She lifted her chin a fraction higher. For the sake of the poor girl who’d been taken and to catch a killer, she could do this.
Even if her heart was doing flip-flops inside her chest.
Of course, part of that was Ryan’s fault. His words rang through her mind as she left behind the last traces of Sandy Bluff’s commercial zones and turned onto the highway that would lead her to the bog.
You’re a part of me, and you always will be.
How foolish she’d been to think she could come back here, see him again and not have her life thrown upside down. Her heart had wanted so desperately to say the same things back to him at that moment. Their lives had become intertwined as children, and nothing short of death could ever separate them. She gripped the steering wheel as dread constricted her muscles.
If she got out of this predicament alive, maybe then she could tell him.
Or perhaps it was for the best that Jim had interrupted. Because was she ready to give up her new life and come back to Sandy Bluff, after everything she’d done to escape?
No. Coming back here would always feel like a metaphorical return to her mother’s trailer. No matter how much she loved Ryan.
She ignored the way her heart twisted in protest and instead focused on each turn of the highway as she left Sandy Bluff behind. The road was as familiar again as if she still lived here. There was the big white farmhouse with the sagging front porch. Her throat closed, and she forced in a deep breath. Almost there.
Around the bend, the road dipped and a valley draped in thick fog opened before her. The bog was down there, buried beneath that fog like a body lost to memory beneath the dirt. A shiver tickled her spine. Woods masked the rising sun to the east, leaving only a vague pinkish-orange blush over the horizon.
The road vanished into white mist. Laney slowed the car, double checking the headlights were on. The last thing she needed was to die in a head-on collision before she even reached the bog.
Besides, the dirt road would be easy to miss in these conditions.
She flipped on her turn signal when she saw the narrow opening to the right, creating an eerie blinking orange that glowed too close, like the fog had become a living thing hemming in her car.
The car jostled as the tires rolled onto the bumpy road. It had been, what, six days since she’d come out here with Ryan? What she wouldn’t give to have him at her side right now.
“I’m pulling onto the dirt road,” she said softly into the mic. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, Laney, I’ve got you.” Ryan’s familiar voice came through the earpiece, a tiny measure of comfort to ease the trembling in her hands. He’d always been there for her, until she pushed him away. Even after what she’d done, leaving him like that, he’d never withheld his love from her.
The thought warmed her heart as she pulled the car to a stop and killed the engine.
“Laney, we’re going silent on this end so he doesn’t notice your earpiece.” He paused, and for a moment, unspoken words seemed to hover in her ear, but then the radio clicked off.
“Okay,” she answered.
She clutched Ryan’s jacket around her as she stepped out of the car. Fog pressed close in eddying waves, so that one moment she could see fifteen feet into the bog, and the next, she could barely see the car door as she closed it. The latching sound seemed to die instantly. Running one hand along the cool metal, she walked around the vehicle to the passenger side and pulled out the collection kit. Her boots crunched against the gravel until she reached the mucky edge of the bog.
Hip waders wouldn’t work today. Not when she was acting as bait for a serial killer. They’d impede her movement and make her claustrophobic. Instead, she’d keep to the thick clumps of moss as she worked her way out into the bog.
She tipped her head down toward the mic. “Heading out into the field.” It’d be her last intentional communication with Ryan.
Maybe forever.
There was so much more she could say, more she wanted to say, but not now. Not in front of the other officers and not with what she still had to do.
Her heart rate increased with each slurping, muddy step into the soggy field. The air smelled of rotting vegetation and wet earth and mist. As the sun rose above the tree line on the far side, shafts of light penetrated the fog, revealing dark, skinny arms of bushes and short trees like so many skeletons.
Was he watching her already? Lurking somewhere in this thick pea soup, waiting to leap out of nowhere? Would he crush in part of her skull, the way he had Jenna’s?
A tremor ran through her body, and she took a long, steadying breath. Unhelpful thoughts. Whatever happened, she needed to be here, both so they could catch the killer and to help that poor, terrified girl who was still alive.
Resolve gave her shaking spine a bit of needed strength. Using the intermittent lighter patches of fog, when she could make out the tall trees on the far side of the field, she traipsed out until she could see the yellow police tape still around the site where they’d excavated Jenna’s remains. She dug the killer’s map out of her pocket and studied it for a moment, always listening for any indication of someone else out in this forlorn place. Maybe it was too early. Maybe he wouldn’t expect her to be out here yet.
According to the map, she needed to head southeast by about fifteen paces to reach the second set of remains. Might as well see if she could find anything. It wasn’t like she had anything better to do.
She checked herself before she accidentally told Ryan what she was doing. He’d know from the tracker stuck to her stomach like a giant Band-Aid. In the distance, a car drove past on the road, the whir of its engine drifting ominously through the fog.
Fifteen paces through the muck brought her past the halfway point of the field and closer to the far tree line. What lay over there in those woods? When they were teens, the land had belonged to an adjoining farm, but would it now, after so many years? It still gave off the same abandoned, desolate air. The perfect place for killers to hide.
Frowning, she dropped the collection kit on the ground near a cluster of bushes and scanned the field again, or what little of it she could see—nothing more than maybe ten feet in each direction. Had she even gone the right direction from the other set of remains? Still, there was nothing else to do but poke around in the ground, hunting for any sign of ev
idence.
Seconds slipped into minutes as she examined the terrain at her feet. Depending on how long the remains had been here, and how many times the field had frozen over and thawed, they could either have worked their way deeper or closer to the surface. There—that spot where the vegetation grew unevenly near the base of one of the scraggly bushes looked promising. She’d seen a similar site in a swampy location near the Chesapeake Bay, where remains had been buried in silt along a river and the plants had grown in an irregular pattern.
Laney carried her collection kit closer and crouched near the bush. Pulling out a trowel, she dug carefully near some milkweed roots, her breath catching as she scraped against something hard about an inch beneath the surface. Gently she pressed cold fingertips into the mud, feeling for the object. Long and thin and with the distinctive texture of only one material.
Bone.
A soft rustling nearby made her sit up abruptly. She’d become so absorbed in searching she’d nearly forgotten why she was out in a bog all alone. And she certainly hadn’t been listening as intently as she had earlier.
Laney’s heart hammered as she glanced automatically over her shoulder, as if the only way a serial killer approached a victim was from behind.
But he didn’t come from behind.
He stepped around the bush where she’d been digging, a smile on his face that twisted her stomach.
Lawrence Brown.
“I knew you’d find me.” He pointed at the ground where the tip of a bone now protruded from the mud, and his smile widened. “And her. I’m so glad to see you again, Laney Hamilton.”
SEVENTEEN
“Brown.” Ryan pointed at the speaker in the back of the department’s surveillance van. His stomach churned. “It’s Lawrence Brown. I knew it.”
He’d known from the moment he’d gotten that man into the interrogation room, yet he’d had to release him. And now Laney was out there alone with him.
He tapped the barrier separating the surveillance equipment from the driver, then rotated his finger even though Henderson couldn’t see. But he’d hear over the intercom. “Get us moving.” Punching a couple of buttons, he connected with his father. “Chief, based on voice recognition, it’s Lawrence Brown. Permission to move in?”
“Negative, Sergeant Mitchell,” Jim’s voice crackled over the speaker. “We need to secure the other victim. Follow, but do not engage.”
“Copy,” Ryan replied. Much as he wanted to swoop in and rescue Laney, his father was right. They were playing the long game.
And there was still the matter of Brown’s accomplice, the woman. It had to be Kathleen Kincaide. She could’ve convinced her brother to plant the bomb in Laney’s suitcase and then hid the components in her ex-husband’s garage herself. After stealing his truck.
But where was she now? And how would they prove her involvement?
He reached for the radio again. “Update Officer McIntosh on Lawrence Brown. She’s en route to search Kathleen Kincaide’s house and might need backup.”
But if her intent had been to scare Laney away, did she know about Lawrence’s scheme to claim her as his next victim? Were they working at cross purposes?
Laney’s ragged breath coming through the mic pulled his thoughts back to the bog where she stood unarmed with the man who’d killed his sister. “But the dog didn’t find—”
Her voice vanished into a crackle of static. Ryan glanced sharply at their technician, Gabby Walters, as she flipped a couple of switches.
A second later, Laney’s line went dead.
He clenched his jaw. “What happened?”
“We lost her.” Gabby shook her head. “My guess is either the mic fell out or he found it.”
It had always been a possibility, but a knot tightened in Ryan’s chest anyway. He watched the flashing red dot representing Laney’s tracker on the computer screen. What if Brown didn’t take her to the other victim? What if he killed her right there?
The red blip started to move. He pictured the bog in his mind, imagining Brown’s hand clamped around Laney’s slender arm, dragging her through the muck. Each step sent a shiver of fear rippling through his back.
Their van wasn’t far from the field, but each passing second felt agonizingly long as he watched the blip move toward the tree line on the eastern border of the bog.
“They stopped again,” the tech said as the red marker paused on the screen. “Why?”
Ryan sucked at his lower lip. No way would Brown kill her right there in the field, not with the way the fog was lifting. Too exposed. “I don’t know. Unless...”
He watched the red light flash on and off, perfectly rhythmic, perfectly still. The knot in his stomach tightened as his sense of certainty grew. “Unless he found the tracker too.”
Gabby turned questioning eyes on Ryan.
He swallowed. “We’ve got people in position to watch for a vehicle while Henderson and I track her on foot. We’ll call in the dogs if we have to.”
The van slowed, and Ryan’s seat rattled as they pulled off onto an unpaved road. Henderson’s voice came through the speaker. “Fog’s thinned too much to park next to the field, so I pulled off across the road. Walters can monitor us from here.”
Ryan unbuckled and stood, double-checking his gear as Henderson pulled the back door open. He popped an earpiece into his ear and handed a second to Henderson. A moment later, they stepped out into the muggy morning air.
Henderson had parked the truck on a dirt lane deep in the trees. Ryan jogged the short distance back to the county highway, his partner following close behind. The fog had thinned enough to reveal a ribbon of black asphalt stretching toward the hills to the east, but clumps of white mist still lingered over Waltman’s Bog a quarter mile away. At least it would help hide their approach.
The air felt unnaturally still as they crossed the road and hastened along the shallow ditch at the side.
When they reached the dirt road running along the western edge of the bog, Gabby’s hushed voice came through Ryan’s earpiece. “No signs of any vehicle leaving the area.”
Good. That meant Brown and Laney were still close. He tapped his mic three times to indicate he’d heard the message, then nodded at Henderson. Let’s go.
He led the way into the bog, heading straight for where the map indicated they’d find the other remains. And apparently she had. Laney’s collection kit sat on a mound of moss. She’d exposed the top of a bone in the ground. He shook his head. Just like Laney—trying to get some work done while she waited for a serial killer.
Something small and black caught his eye. Laney’s mic, caught in the fringe of a bush. Her earpiece dangled from another branch nearby. A lump formed in his throat, but he swallowed it back down as he searched the ground for footprints. She’d had the tracker on for another hundred feet at least, and he knew the direction they’d taken. But once they reached her tracker, they’d be on their own.
Henderson tapped Ryan’s elbow and pointed to the ground a few feet away. In the mud, the heel of a boot was clearly visible—Laney’s, judging by the size. Her direction of travel matched what they’d seen from the tracker. Ryan took the lead, stepping gingerly around Laney’s print and scanning the ground as he followed her trail. Each step in the mucky field felt too loud, but maybe it didn’t matter.
Brown had found the tracker. He would know the police were looking, that it was only a matter of time.
Would he hurry to kill Laney?
Ryan’s stomach twisted, and he picked up his pace, following the diagonal route across the field until they’d reached the approximate place where the tracker had stopped. The tech’s voice came softly through his earpiece. “You’re at the tracker.”
He surveyed the ground at his feet, but it was nowhere to be seen. Not surprising, given the groundcover and mucky puddles. Another boot print—Brown’s, this t
ime—led them to the edge of the bog where the ground grew firmer and sloped gently upward to meet the woods.
They paused at the edge of the trees, looking for snapped twigs, scuffled dirt or any other indication of the way Brown and Laney had gone. The rising sun peeked through the leaves far above, dappling the ground with bright light. He strained to hear anything beyond the noisy morning chorus of birds, but there was nothing out of place.
Tapping Henderson’s shoulder, he nodded toward what might be a narrow trail leading south-southeast. A crumpled seedling looked freshly crushed, making hope spring into his chest. This would go faster if they called in a dog, but Ryan didn’t want to run the risk of being overheard unless he had to.
Because if Brown heard them coming, hard on his heels...
Ryan didn’t want to imagine how a desperate killer might act in that situation. Instead, he sucked in a calming breath and gestured for Henderson to follow him down the trail.
* * *
Laney couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. She’d agreed to this plan—no, scratch that—the plan was her idea. But she hadn’t expected fear to take over her body like this, an all-consuming, gut-churning terror that drove her blindly forward through the trees.
Brown didn’t even have a physical weapon out, and yet here she was, stumbling and scurrying in front of him as if his sickening grin held her at gunpoint. But that was where a serial killer’s power came from, wasn’t it? From the victim’s own sense of horror, the way her body had turned against her. And the fact that they both knew someone else’s life was at stake.
Laney had walked into this trap willingly to save a girl she didn’t know, and even if she could escape now, she wouldn’t. Not with another life on the line.
How far had they walked since he’d ripped the tracker off her stomach and tossed it into the water? Did Ryan know? Was he coming behind them, ready to intervene the second they found the other victim?
Buried Evidence Page 16
