by Dana Nussio
“Why did you do that?” She was surprised that she was able to make any sound at all as tightly as the vise around her lungs squeezed them. This was what Stevenson did to people who crossed him. If she’d had any doubts that at least two of them were going to die today, those were gone.
“Oh, that’s right, Trooper. I was being rude. You don’t know our friend. Please allow me to introduce Cory Fox. Like you and I, we met in court. Only he was in the defendant’s chair.”
“Defendant?”
“You probably called him FRIENDS 4-EVER.”
As dozens of conversations replayed in her thoughts, acid scrambled up from her stomach. FRIENDS 4-EVER had made the suspect list. Sure, he was the guy who talked about princesses all the time. What had been found at the murder scene? Tiaras. How had they missed it? If she hadn’t been so preoccupied with tracking BIG DADDY, would that screen name have been moved to the top?
Fox had managed to sit up then and was cradling his limp arm against his body. He shrieked as Stevenson pressed the gun barrel into his elbow.
“You said I wouldn’t want to hurt this guy. Let’s see how you feel about it now that you’ve guessed what he’s done.”
“Harper?” The word slipped from her lips in a squeak.
“Why don’t you ask him about the two girls first?”
Bile backed up in her throat.
“Sienna and Madison? What do you know about them?” she demanded of the man rolling on the ground. “Was it you?”
She ground out the words in the last question. It was several seconds before Fox answered in a whine.
“It was an accident.”
“You accidentally murdered two girls?”
He was shaking his head hard. “No. That’s not right. It was their fault. They came together. There shouldn’t have been two. And FUNNY GAL, she was...old.”
“You sick mother—” She managed to stop herself before saying what he really was, but just barely. Though this wasn’t the way she was trained to question a suspect, she didn’t care. This case was too personal for her. It always had been.
“You see?”
Stevenson was grinning when she lifted her gaze to meet his again. “You want to hurt him, too. He was one of my best clients at my company, at least for a while.”
“Clients?”
“Soleil provides a specialized form of entertainment to grateful customers.”
“Pornography? Human trafficking? On the Dark Web?” She waited for his confirmation though she already knew she was right.
“I’m just a businessman providing a service. Light sentences equal a built-in audience of grateful and loyal customers. A beautiful business model.”
Greed. That was what this whole mess—well, at least the part involving threats against Tony and her—had been about. Not right and wrong. Not human lives or even common decency. Just money.
“You’re as sick as he is.”
“No. I’m just rich.”
“Come on, Judge,” Fox called from the ground. “Please don’t revoke my probation. I’ve learned my lesson.”
Kelly could only stare at him. How could the guy be worried about his probation? Didn’t he see the gun? Did he believe that his broken arm was the only punishment he would receive for murder? Or that the judge would let him go after he’d risked his business? Just how deep had Fox fallen into the well of his fantasy world?
“You know it’s not that simple,” Stevenson said.
“I’ll say I fell when the doctors reset my arm. I promise. Just let me go, and I’ll—”
“I can’t do that, Cory.”
“But I promise I’ll stay out of the chat rooms. For real this time.”
Instead of answering, Stevenson jammed the gun barrel into Fox’s elbow again, causing him to scream and writhe on the ground.
Kelly cleared her throat, reaching inside for calm she didn’t have. “This...situation...can’t be good for business.”
She hated using sanitized words for repulsive crimes, but she had to use terms a sociopath with no sense of empathy would understand.
“Just like your investigation isn’t good for my business, so I needed to shut it down.” He shook his head, smiling. “I was right about you, Trooper. Beautiful and smart. Well, except for coming here alone. That was stupid. Still, it’s hard to blame Lazzaro for throwing his career away to tap all that.”
She shivered visibly then; she couldn’t help it. But she couldn’t think about Tony now. Couldn’t worry that she’d never get a chance to say goodbye to the man she loved enough to make this horrible mistake. Her time was running out, and she had to focus on what she came here to do.
“Tell me where Harper is.”
She watched Fox as she said it, but Stevenson answered for him.
“How do you know Cory even has her? Or still has her, anyway. Maybe you shouldn’t ask questions when you can’t survive knowing the answers.”
He must have expected her to recoil when he said those words, so close to the ones he’d written on that note stuffed in her mailbox, but she refused to give him the satisfaction. She straightened her shoulders and planted her hands on her thighs.
“You said she was alive.”
“No, I asked if you wanted to bring her home alive. I never said you would. Big difference.”
The judge was right about that. He’d made no such promise. She’d thrown herself out there as target practice for nothing. If she had to die now alongside a worthless human being like Fox, she would find out where he’d hidden Harper’s body first. She would figure out a way to leave clues about the location for the task force when they came for her. If they ever came.
“I still need to know where she is.”
“Sorry. I can’t help you. And even if I could, I still wouldn’t.”
Impotent fury flooded her veins, and her hands fisted, though her target would gun her down before she ever reached him. It wouldn’t serve his purposes for the girl to be found, so he would never tell her what he knew. If he felt anything about that, it didn’t show as he withdrew his phone from his pocket. With the adept skill of a teenager, he typed something with only one thumb, still holding the gun in his other hand.
“Harper was no princess!”
Kelly jerked her head to look at Fox, whose outburst didn’t appear to be directed at her. He’d sat up again, and his eyes had taken on a faraway look. Stevenson was staring down at him as well, his jaw tight.
Was? Had he just given confirmation that the girl was dead? She could barely constrain herself from rushing over to him and shaking the rest of the information out of him.
“She isn’t my Aurora, either,” Fox continued in his conversation with himself. “She was just LITTLE BO PEEP. That’s all she was.”
He’d referred to the teen three times in the past tense, but one time he’d used the present. Was she dead or alive? And she didn’t know what the reference to “Aurora” was about, but LITTLE BO PEEP was familiar to her. It was Harper’s screen name, kept out of the media but added to their investigation report a few days before. She now had proof that Fox had at least taken Harper.
“Where is she, Cory?” She used her gentlest voice, the one she tried during suspect interviews when she hoped to get a confession. She had to this time. Their time was running out.
“Just tell us where you put her. It’ll be okay. She just wasn’t a...princess.”
The last she had to force out, but her words sounded strangely measured in her ears. Fox met her gaze as if he’d only now realized he wasn’t in the conversation alone. Did he believe she understood some part of his delusion?
“She’s—”
“Sorry, buddy, but you’re too much of a liability. Soleil can’t have more scrutiny. Or any more bodies. At least any that can be found.”
Before Kelly recognized what Steven
son had planned, he returned the gun to his captive’s temple and fired. Fox’s brain matter splattered over the grass and onto nearby trees, and his body collapsed in a heap for the last time. Whatever response he’d been giving, whether a true answer or just another riddle, died on the ground with him.
“No!”
Kelly leaped to her feet and rushed at Stevenson with an adrenaline that seemed to come from somewhere outside of her. Everything around them disappeared, leaving only his face. His lips moved, and his voice registered, but his words were like white noise. A message intended for someone else.
“You killed him!”
In what felt like a slow-motion sequence, he aimed and fired.
Her arm stung, at first in those tingles, like a foot that had fallen asleep. But as she kept coming toward him, while covering her arm with her hand, blood seeping between her fingers, dozens of needles seemed to be puncturing her skin in unison.
“Stop or I’ll shoot again!”
For some reason, his words penetrated this time. But by the time she froze, she was close enough that his gun brushed her chest. Fox’s body lay not five feet away, a dark red puddle forming around what was left of his head.
Stevenson pressed the barrel against her sternum, drawing her attention back to him.
“Now, look what you made me do. I had no intention of hurting you. At least not yet. Now get back on the ground. Over there.”
He pointed to a spot farther from the body. She shuffled over and lowered herself awkwardly. Even if she’d ever had a chance of overpowering him, that was gone now that she only had the use of one arm.
“Why would you kill him?”
“How can you even ask me why?” he said when she was seated. “You know you wanted to do it, too. You should just be grateful that I relieved the earth of a freak like him.”
She gritted her teeth so hard her jaw ached. “He knew where to find her body. And I know it probably isn’t true, but what if she’s alive? Now we’ll never find her.”
“That’s unfortunate, but we can’t have more loose ends. It’s just business. You understand.”
“No, I don’t understand.”
“That’s why you’re the one with skin blown off your arm, and I’m the one holding the gun.”
As she shifted her shoulder, the needle pricks she’d experienced before transformed into an almost unbearable fire. She lifted her hand away briefly and spread her fingers, congealed blood forming sticky weblike shapes between them.
“It’s just a surface wound. You’ll be fine. For now.”
Her gaze lowered to her hand, still pressed to her injured arm. Then she turned back to him and lifted her chin.
“Why didn’t you just kill me?”
“In due time, Trooper. I’m waiting for your boyfriend to get here to witness it. Then, if he cares about you at all, and I’m thinking he does, he’ll be ready to die right along with you.”
Kelly shook her head, refusing to believe that she could lead Tony into this trap. From the drawstring backpack he carried, Stevenson produced several nylon ties. Because it was too difficult to secure her injured arm behind her, he cuffed her wrists together in front of her.
“Can’t have you helping him out when he gets here.”
“He’s not coming. No one is. You were right. I’m a lousy cop. I came here without backup.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
He showed her his recent text messages. There was no name of the recipient at the top, but she recognized the number. Tony. Like in that message to her, the first text only featured a map. The second was just part of a message she recognized, and one Tony would find familiar as well.
Curiosity killed the cat...
Then he scrolled to the last words the man she loved would read about her before he had the chance to watch her die.
Come alone or INVISIBLE ME will vanish altogether.
Chapter 26
Tony parked his car a few hundred feet from the purple van and the black car. Sure, the map the texter had sent him showed the drive on the opposite side of the property, five acres over, but since the email he’d just received showed the same plot of land had two entrances, he opted for the element of surprise.
If Cory Fox was holding Kelly, the guy would have nothing to lose. This might be their only chance to make it out alive.
He paused to send a text to Dawson, forwarding both maps.
Kelly’s here. I’m going in. Send backup. Sorry.
Because an immediate return message would come with an order for him to wait for backup, he silenced the phone and stuffed it in his pocket. He couldn’t wait. Kelly might be out of time. He pulled on his FBI Kevlar vest, tightened the straps and buckled his hip holster. When he was finished, he readied his weapon and quietly opened the door.
He made his way along the perimeter of the house, pausing every few feet to listen for voices. The eerily familiar scent of a discharged weapon filled his nostrils, but he had to be imagining that. The silence amplified the sound of each step. He might as well have announced his arrival with a fireworks display.
When he reached the end of the building, he pressed his back to the wall and leaned around to get a peek. His breath hitched. Kelly sat on the ground, bleeding. A stocky older guy held a pistol to her head. How could he be at the same time desperate to gather her in his arms and furious enough to shake her for taking such a stupid risk? Without him.
He shifted back out of sight, swallowing the fear that he would never have the chance to do either of those things again. But as he prepared himself to engage with the suspect, he had the disconcerting sense that he’d been caught. The shout coming from around the corner confirmed it.
“Come out, come out, Special Agent Lazzaro. We’ve been waiting for you.”
He slowly spun and stepped out from behind the building, planting his feet in a wide stance and aiming his weapon at the suspect, not thirty feet away. One he could have easily picked out in a crowded courtroom, let alone a regular police lineup.
“Judge Stevenson? What the hell?”
“At least one of you has a good memory. The trooper here didn’t even recognize me at first.”
“Maybe that’s because she hasn’t testified in your court as often as I have.” He’d never been a fan of the minimum-sentence judge, but this he never could have predicted.
“She remembered eventually.”
Tony longed to smack the smile off the judge’s face.
Kelly looked like she’d been crying, her red-rimmed eyes contrasting with her unnaturally pale skin. Her hands were bound in front of her, and blood was congealing on her bare arm and plastering the short sleeve of her blouse to her skin. It was probably a surface wound, but he had to force himself to stand still rather than to rush to her and make sure.
As Stevenson combed his weapon through Kelly’s hair in almost a caress, Tony’s hands twitched against the metal of his Glock. Could he get off a shot without risking her life?
“But unless you arrived here in an Indy car, you were already on your way here when you received my text. Your girlfriend must have given you a heads-up after all.”
“No. She didn’t.”
Stevenson raised one of those bushy eyebrows behind his crooked glasses. “Then how did you find out?”
“From the rest of the task force. They’re all coming after you.”
Tony considered for a second. Maybe it was better that the judge didn’t believe him that the cavalry was on its way. Before he could backtrack on what he’d said before, Kelly shook her head, her eyes pleading.
“Run, Tony. You have to find Harper. He’s already said that both of us are going to—”
The old man whacked the gun barrel against her open wound on her arm, her bound hands jerking as she was unable to shield the bloody mess. Her wail nearly dropped Tony
to his knees. He didn’t need her to complete her warning, anyway. The judge’s weapon gave him a powerful hint of what he had planned.
Over his dead body. Literally.
Kelly had kept the suspect talking long enough for him to arrive, but there was nothing to prevent him from ending them now. Nothing except Stevenson’s widely known ego. He had to keep him talking about his crimes long enough for backup to arrive.
“You still haven’t said what’s going on here. And where’s Cory Fox?”
Neither answered, but he followed their gazes to a spot just outside the woods. A body lay crumpled on the ground, one side of the head blown away.
Puzzle pieces shifted in his thoughts. He tested them for shape and size, for tabs and slots, turning and adjusting them until they fit into place. He didn’t need all the answers. Just enough for now.
“Fox, I presume.”
“I always knew you were a smart guy, Special Agent.”
“And he was bad for business,” Tony said. “Just like Kelly and me.”
He didn’t pose it as a question. There’d been so many hints of a larger local operation. Now, probably too late, he could trace those suspicions back to one common denominator: the judge who presided over so many similar cases.
“What did the notes say, Judge?” he continued. “‘Don’t ask questions’ and ‘Curiosity killed...’ You had to protect your online business. You couldn’t let anyone mess that up.”
Stevenson smiled. “You have all these theories, Special Agent, but you’re also smart enough to know that I can’t let you keep that gun. Or do we need to end this right now?”
“I guess we’re in no hurry.” In fact, the suspect’s threat gave him hope that they’d be able to stall a while longer. Stevenson still wanted to brag about his accomplishments, and Tony was happy to be part of his audience.
“Don’t give it up, Tony,” Kelly pleaded. “You can still...”
Tony shook his head when the judge raised the hand holding his weapon above her again.
“I’ll drop it, but only if you don’t hit her again.”
“You’re so cute. Look at you, making demands when you don’t hold any of the cards.”