Violent memories coursed to the front of her mind. She’d cut herself loose with a piece of broken glass from a frame hanging in the houseboat. She’d rammed the makeshift weapon into her abductor’s gut when he’d charged to attack. I think this is the same exact spot I stabbed him before I left him to die. Her breath hitched. Her fingers automatically sought the bed rail for balance as every second of being in her would-be killer’s possession mixed with the demons of the past. The monitors to her left registered the uptick in her pulse. “He was telling the truth. He stabbed you. He—”
“Hey, look at me.” Finn planted his hand over hers on the bed rail, but where her fight-or-flight instincts normally screamed to run, to hide, something inside wanted more. Wanted him, wanted the comfort he offered. “It was my own damn fault for leaving you in the house alone, but I’m still here, okay? We survived, and you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
She nodded, taking a full breath to calm the rush of nerves lighting up her skin at his touch. “It wasn’t your fault. I’m...some part of his plan to prove he’s better than the Carver. Something about finishing the work Jeff Burnes didn’t have the guts to.” Anxiety churned through her. “I’m important to him, and I think he would’ve found me one way or another.”
“You were,” Finn said.
“What?” She didn’t understand.
“You were part of his plan. The man who attacked you—Miles Darien, according to his fingerprints the ME pulled—is dead.” He circled his thumb along the back of her hand, her skin heating and cooling in a hypnotic rhythm. “I shot him three times on that dock before he tried to inject you with a full syringe of succinylcholine. With that, he would’ve been able to sedate you within seconds so you wouldn’t have the chance to fight back.”
He reached for a file folder set on the same side table as the pitcher of water, then opened it and handed it to her.
The card stock felt as though it’d suck the life her attacker had left her with right out from her fingertips. She lowered her attention to the mug shot paper-clipped to some kind of report. Thick eyebrows arched over brown eyes in a straight line—the same eyes she’d memorized that had been framed by the ski mask covering his face. A shudder wracked through her from head to toe. Shiny blond hair framed a wide forehead, and his narrow jaw was peppered with matching stubble. If she didn’t recognize the dead eyes staring straight into the camera that’d captured this mug shot, she’d believe Miles Darien was anything but a killer. “I don’t recognize his name. Miles Darien. He wasn’t one of Jeff’s—the Carver’s—friends that I know of.”
Would she ever be able to distance herself enough to call her ex-fiancé by the name he deserved and not the figment she’d known? Facing one serial killer had been enough to rattle her to her core. Facing a second threatened to throw her back to the beginning, to the ignorant woman she’d been before the Carver’s attack. And she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.
She handed back the file and automatically tugged her hand into her chest to protect herself against the terror she’d felt while being held captive, but the sling wouldn’t let her. She felt exposed, vulnerable, as the memories spiraled through her, and there was nothing she could do to stop them. “When I was in the houseboat, he told me he studied under the Carver for years, but I don’t remember Jeff ever mentioning his name or him coming around.”
“He can’t hurt you anymore, Camille. He’s gone.” He was right. Finn had...shot a suspect to save her life. Killed him before her attacker had the opportunity to kill her. Camille didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t know what to think. No one had ever gone out of their way to protect her like that, to make sure she was the one who was standing at the end, and a strange surge of emotion braided with the loneliness she’d held on to for so long. Time stretched into a comfortable, warm fluid as his hand pressed over hers on the bed railing. The weight of his attention calmed the kaleidoscope of foreboding swirling inside. “Did Miles say anything else that you remember? Anything about Jodie Adler, how he managed to find you while you’ve been in witness protection or where the Carver might be?”
“He said he’s not the one who killed her, that the Carver has been watching me.” The monitor’s incessant beeping accelerated with her rising pulse. Blood drummed in her ears. Air dragged slower through her lungs, and a terrible awareness began to sink in like a deadly poison. If it hadn’t been for Finn, Miles Darien would’ve finished the job his mentor had started. “I don’t know how he found me, and I don’t know how he’s connected to the Carver or how he knew about the photo I took of that clearing where Jodie Adler’s body was found. All I know is he intended to use me as bait to show Jeff Burnes what he was capable of, that he almost succeeded, and I don’t know what to do with that information. I’ve worked so hard to get my life back the way it was, but every step I’ve taken forward has been for nothing. This can’t be it, Finn. This word carved into my skin was meant to constantly remind me how little control I actually have, that I’m just going to be a victim for the rest of my life. And they’ve won. They got exactly what they wanted.”
In an instant, Finn hauled the bed railing into the lower position and stood. Hands sinking into the edge of the mattress, he leaned into her. Closer than he’d ever gotten before. “Camille, look at me. You didn’t die out there. You survived, and now your attacker is the one who’s going in the ground.”
It wasn’t enough. A humorless laugh escaped past her cracked lips. He didn’t understand. How could he ever understand what she’d been through in the past year? He’d lost his mother to an armed fugitive and been shot in the process, but that man hadn’t targeted Finn. The gunman hadn’t tried to kill him. He’d been an innocent bystander. “I know what you’re trying to do, and I appreciate it, but this is different than what you suffered as a kid.”
“You’re right. I’ll never be in a position to tell you how to process your trauma, but you’ve earned some hard-won perspective.” His voice softened, the lines etched around his eyes more shallow than a moment before. “You might see that branding as your greatest failure and have to deal with the repercussions for years to come, but I see them as proof that you’re a survivor. The Carver and his protégé might’ve taken your passion for photography, your confidence and your sense of safety, but they didn’t take your life, Red. No one can.”
She lowered her gaze to the scratches and crusted blood on the back of her uninjured hand, then nodded. Despite following the suffocating rules to keep as much of the truth to herself as she could when she’d entered the witness-protection program, the marshal assigned to protect her had seen more than she’d originally estimated. He saw right through her, and the hole where a piece of her had been missing since the Carver’s attack filled in slightly. Camille raised her gaze to meet his. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.” He slipped onto the edge of the mattress. “Now let’s talk about the stash of chocolate you still owe me.”
Tension bled from the tendons in her hands. “I knew you weren’t going to let that go.”
Chapter Ten
Finn shouldered inside the safe house, the automatic green emergency lights flickering. He tightened his grip around the handle of Camille’s overnight bag as she moved past him, the discomfort in his side renewed. It’d been a clean cut. No infection. No major damage. Although he couldn’t help but enjoy the fact that the bastard who’d stabbed him had left this world in a lot more pain.
He closed the door behind him and secured the dead bolts. Armed the security system. Less than twenty-four hours ago this place had felt like a reprieve from the world. Now he couldn’t help but see it as more of a shelter from the storm. With the Carver’s protégé in the morgue, Finn had no doubt the master would show his face, and that meant doing what he should’ve done in the first place: keep Camille safe until her former fiancé was back in federal custody. “I’ll get you something to eat while you clean up.”
She moved down the long hallway toward the main room but stopped at the end. The strap of the shoulder sling seemed to dig into the tendon between her neck and shoulder. Long red hair trailed down her back in clumped strings, and an instant flash flood of memory rushed to the front of his mind. Her lying on that dock, her abductor standing right over her. If he’d been there mere seconds later, would she have survived? Would he have found her? Camille lifted her uninjured arm across her chest, then dropped it to her side, as though she’d realized she couldn’t cross her arms with the sling in place. “I’m not...I’m not hungry.”
“Okay.” He followed her path along the hallway and set her overnight bag on the floor. An overwhelming feeling of helplessness dug deep into the space he’d kept reserved for the memories of the night he’d lost his mother and threatened to expose that emptiness to the world. Camille had been taken because of him. She’d nearly died out there because he hadn’t been strong enough to protect her. “Is there anything else I can get you?”
She turned toward him, the hollows under her eyes more pronounced than they’d been at the hospital. Exhaustion clung to the weariness that seemingly pulled her toward the floor. “Do you have a time machine?”
“Unfortunately, no, but if I did, I’d sign it over to you,” he said.
“In that case, you can tell me how you plan to find Jeff Burnes. I want to know what the US Marshals Service is doing to track down the Carver before he has another chance to kill me.” She waved her hand toward the wall, the sleeves of the long cardigan sweater she wore overtaking her wrists and palms. “Directly or indirectly. I know I’m not a police officer or someone who they’ll give access to concerning the investigation, but I just... I need to know.”
Indirectly. She was referring to Miles Darien, the Carver’s protégé. Though from the sound of it, Miles had been working on his own to use Camille as proof of power to his master. There were no indications the Carver had been in touch with Miles during his imprisonment or the past five days of freedom. No inexplicable calls in Miles’s cell-phone records. No digital transfers or a trail of cash withdrawn from her attacker’s account that would help the veteran killer during his time as a fugitive. From the evidence Florence PD had recovered, it didn’t look like Miles Darien had contact with his mentor at all, and the only thing Jeff Burnes had been given access to in federal custody had been a copy of the Chicago Tribune each morning. No visitors. No phone calls. No mail.
“Fair enough.” He had to be honest with her. She deserved the truth. All of it. Finn leaned against the wall beside him. “Authorities have no idea where he is, not even a general idea. It seems the day Jeff Burnes escaped custody is the day he dropped off the face of the planet. We have BOLOs sent to every law-enforcement agency in the country and every marshal the department of justice employs looking for him. We’re reinterviewing victims’ families, your former coworkers, anybody who’s been connected to Jeff Burnes over the past five years. So far, that hasn’t turned up any new leads. The only thing we have is a possible connection between him and Miles Darien, thanks to your statement and his body in the morgue, but we’re still trying to prove they knew each other. Working in the governor’s office in Chicago would’ve given Miles direct access to details about your case, including those Chicago PD and the FBI had intentionally left out of the media. He could’ve just been trying to convince you he was the Carver’s protégé and confidant in order to make himself look better or to get Jeff Burnes’s attention through copycatting. Or maybe they really do have a relationship, and we haven’t seen it yet.”
“What do you believe?” She stared up at him as though the foundation of her entire world depended on him answering that question. Like she needed him to believe Miles Darien was, in fact, connected to her ex-fiancé, that the Carver was still out there targeting her, waiting for her to make a mistake. But the truth was, there were too many pieces of this puzzle missing for him to come to a conclusion.
“I believe in evidence and having all the facts. We’ve got two victims recovered from out in those woods, both of which have been confirmed as homicide through strangulation. Miles Darien attacked you twice with the same MO as the Carver, but in a different order, and your therapist, Dr. Henry Gruner, has alibis for both attacks on you and for the time Jodie Adler was killed.” A sinking sensation pooled in his gut. As of right now, the investigation behind these attacks was at a dead end. “Dr. Gruner might’ve been privy to the time and place you took that photograph, but he also filed a police report with Florence PD that his office had been broken into a couple weeks after that particular session of yours with him. I reviewed the report. His office had been trashed, his desk drawers rifled through. He kept his patient notes in a notebook taped to the underside of his desk, and somehow whoever’d broken in found them. His statement said that particular notebook was filled with both yours and Jodie Adler’s session notes, along with two other patients. We’ve got the names of the other women and details watching their houses in case this doesn’t end with Miles Darien.” Finn pushed away from the wall and stepped toward her. “I believe you’ve been through a lot these past few days, and that there’s nothing we can do to change any of it tonight.”
She lowered her gaze to the floor, disappointment clear in her expression. “You’re saying Miles probably lied to me about not killing Jodie Adler. He just wanted to get inside my head, to see if the possibility of the Carver closing in would increase my fear.”
“Manipulation is a cornerstone of psychopathic behavior. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time he got satisfaction from messing with his prey.” Though they hadn’t found any other missing victims in the area matching Jodie Adler’s or Camille’s appearances. Finn studied the changes in her expression, tried to read past the rigid guard she kept in place, but she’d gotten damn good at throwing up those walls she believed kept her safe from getting hurt. “Deputy Watson sent over Miles Darien’s autopsy report a little while ago. His DNA and fingerprints came back tied to a cold case that occurred back in Chicago last year. A female deputy US marshal who’d been bound, carved with the word mine on her chest and strangled. The FBI profilers believe that was his first kill. The Carver had been arrested a few weeks before, you’d been relocated and Miles Darien saw an opening to fill, a chance to make a name for himself before he decided to finish Jeff Burnes’s work with you.”
“Is that how he found me? Through the marshal? You’re saying they didn’t connect him to the case, even with fingerprints and DNA?” she asked. “Were they waiting for him to show up to the police station with a sign around his neck that said he was a murderer?”
“Records show the marshal logged on to the Warrant Information Network two hours after the Chicago investigators recovered her body in March. Just over a month after you’d been relocated to Florence.” Her frustration resonated through him, a violin string strung too tight and ready to snap. “As for tying him to the murder, neither Miles Darien’s fingerprints nor his DNA were in the system. Until now.”
The delicate muscles along her throat corded as she swallowed. “And the remains you found, the bones in the woods... Do you know who they belong to?”
“No ID yet,” he said. “But the medical examiner put time of death around a year ago. It’s impossible to get an exact date, but based on insect activity, weather conditions and the decomposition of his clothing and body tissues, she’s sure the victim was killed toward the end of February of last year. We wouldn’t have connected the investigations if it weren’t for the fact there was evidence of strangulation. Too much of a coincidence considering we found Jodie Adler’s body not far from where he’d been killed, and the fact you’d been relocated less than a quarter mile from the scene.”
“If he was killed in February, then Miles Darien couldn’t have killed him.” Her fingers played with the hem of her sweater, as though she needed the comfort, and it felt like the gravity holding him in place had vanished. “He
was still in Chicago, targeting that marshal.”
Finn narrowed his attention on her. “You’re right. With Jeff Burnes still in federal custody and Miles Darien occupied in Chicago, there’s no way either of them could’ve killed that victim around the time the medical examiner reported.”
Which meant the ME had gotten the timeline wrong, or there was a possibility the two homicides—Jodie Adler’s and their latest victim—weren’t connected. Only the MO and location said otherwise. Or had the US Marshals Service had the wrong suspect all along? A headache pulsed at the base of his skull. As a law-enforcement officer who went the extra mile in anticipating and preparing himself for every threat possible, this case pushed at his physical and mental limits like no other. Miles Darien was dead, but the Carver was still out there. Could there be another player in this dark, twisted game they hadn’t seen yet?
“Finn.” Her voice softened with the release of the tension around her collarbone. “I don’t know who’s behind this, but something is telling me they aren’t going to stop until they get what they want, and that scares me to death.” She stepped into him, notched her chin higher to stare up, and a sudden awareness of Camille’s proximity hit. Her tongue darted out from between her lips. “The only time I’ve felt safe these past few days is with you. You’re the only one I can trust. So will you...will you hold me while I fall asleep? Please.”
He closed the few inches of space between them and slipped his arms around her until her ear rested against his chest. Right where she belonged. Smoothing down her frizzed hair, he set his cheek on the crown of her head. “I’ll hold you as long as you want.”
“Okay.” That single word vibrated through him and settled in the empty space behind his sternum, a missing piece that’d been hurting for a long time. “But to be clear, I don’t mean here in the middle of the floor.”
The Witness Page 11