Her Dark Web Defender

by Dana Nussio

  Even then, the thought of it gripped her chest and stole her breath.

  “He was playing you.”

  “You don’t know that. I couldn’t take that chance. I also couldn’t risk not going when there was even the slightest possibility that he might have Harper. That she might be alive.”

  “So, like I said, you made a choice.”

  He paused long enough to withdraw his weapon and ask for her to wait again while he did an initial scan to ensure the barn was empty. He waved her in.

  “You made damn sure that I didn’t get to choose. It’s just like—”

  “Now, you stop right there.” She marched right up to him for the face-off he deserved. “I might have kept something from you for your own safety, but it was nothing like what Laurel did to you. How can you even compare the two things? I didn’t betray you. I was protecting you.”

  He turned away from her to holster his weapon and walked along the outside wall of the barn, which was barely a building at all anymore. Tall grass had reclaimed the dirt floor in the open area and between the horse stalls. The sky shone through several spots in the roof and the side walls. When he appeared convinced that the building was empty as well, he crossed back to her.

  “Just like she did, you made your choice, and you took away mine.”

  “So that’s it, isn’t it? You’ve steered clear of relationships because you’re terrified someone else will betray you. Now you’re determined to see what I did as your self-fulfilling prophesy. It’s your way of ensuring that no one will ever get close enough to hurt you again. Well, good job. You win.”

  Her eyes burning, she hurried toward the door, but when she reached it, she stopped. Questions that had played at the edges of her consciousness the past hour pushed closer, demanding answers. She spun to face him.

  “Tell me, Tony, when exactly did Dawson tell you I was being transferred?”

  “It was earlier.”

  “Earlier as in today? Yesterday? Last week?”

  “It was yesterday.”

  “And why did he tell you first? Is it because you asked for my reassignment?”

  He blew out a breath and lowered his head. “Yes.”

  His words were worse even than Stevenson’s blow to her head. Starker in their cruelty.

  “How could you!”

  This time, he held out his hands, palms-up. “It was for your own good.”

  “I’m a big girl. Don’t you think I should be able to determine what was for my own good?”

  “Apparently not.”

  Heat rushed to her extremities, singeing her elbow, which already felt like it had been charred. She wanted to argue, but her jaw was clenched so tight she couldn’t open it.

  “You were too close to the cases. I knew it from the start, though I wasn’t sure why. I should have asked for you to be transferred weeks ago.”

  She lifted her chin and stared him down. “How dare you. I told you those things in confidence. I even let them go.”

  “You haven’t let anything go. You might have ruled out BIG DADDY, but you’re still chasing ghosts. What you haven’t figured out is that the root of your fear is inside you.”

  “Well, thank you for your analysis, Dr. Freud.” She fisted her hands and winced when the arm in the sling protested. “Wait. Stevenson said you got here too fast to have been responding to only his text. How did you know I was going here because we both know I didn’t tell you?”

  He stared at the ground. “I tracked your phone.”

  Her hand automatically went to the waistband of her slacks, where she’d tucked her cell after Eric retrieved it from her car. “How did you...?”

  “Companions Connect.”

  “What? When?” Her fingers fumbled as she held the phone in one hand, and she had to type in her passcode twice. Once inside, she flipped through the apps to one that permitted the phone owner to allow certain friends to see her location. She clicked on it. His name was the only one on the list.

  “That’s what you did when I gave you the code to look up some information? You tracked me? I can’t believe you did that.”

  This time Kelly struck out ahead of Tony toward the third building they’d been assigned to examine before the other search teams arrived. Nothing he said could make his actions right. Anyway, the skeleton of a storage shed wouldn’t require someone with a weapon to clear it first. She could see right through the structure, from one side to the other.

  She’d already entered what was once its door when he rested a hand on her shoulder. Whirling around cost her in both pain and dizziness, but at least it knocked his hand away. An hour before she’d been terrified that she would lose him, and now she didn’t want him to touch her.

  Tony drew his brows together, but he lowered his hand to his side.

  “It was just a precaution. I never planned to use it. You were in danger, and we still didn’t know who we could trust. I would only use the app if he came after you. And he did.”

  “You can tell yourself it was just to be safe, but the truth is you spied on me because you didn’t trust me not to go rogue.”

  To avoid seeing that knowing look on his face and being forced to consider that she’d done exactly that, she stepped through the nest of overgrown weeds, past rusted rakes and shovels. Beyond the two handles of an old wheelbarrow that stuck out in warning of yet another obstacle, she turned back to him, pulled out her phone and tapped its face.

  “If it really was for my protection, then when did you launch the app to find my location? After the task force had information on Fox? The truth.”

  He shook his head.

  “Then when was it?”

  “It was when you first left. Something about your story didn’t sit right with me.”

  “And as someone trained to know when people are lying, you had to check it out. Only this time, it meant checking up on your girlfriend.”

  He’d been bent over, examining some rotting hoses next to what had once been the wall, but he straightened suddenly, his gaze searching hers. They hadn’t put labels on their relationship before, and now she was only doing it to hurt him.

  “Don’t you get it? I wanted to protect you because, well, I’m in love with you.”

  Kelly tried to swallow past the sudden thickness in her throat. Until then, she hadn’t realized how much she’d longed to hear him say those words. Now that they’d filled her ears with sound, they rang hollow.

  “Is that how you loved your ex-wife, too? By checking up on her and tracking her whereabouts? Because that sounds like control to me.”

  She was only saying these things to hurt him, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “I’ve heard all about her betrayal, but that’s only one side of the story. Maybe you need to admit that there might be two sides to it?”

  He flinched as if she’d struck tender flesh. The instinct to take it all back struck her fast and hard. Had she even meant anything she’d said? Then his shoulders pushed back, and he trapped her with his stare.

  “And maybe you need to get over everything that happened with Emily. Do you really believe you’ll be able to make up for your mistakes by chasing down every missing victim now? I’m sorry to tell you that you won’t be able to find them all. Even when you try, you’ll learn that some will be recoveries instead of rescues.”

  He stared her down as if he was finished, but as she turned away, he added a parting comment.

  “When you’re unable to save one, will you use that as another excuse to never allow yourself to trust anyone, just like you’ve used Emily’s abduction? You like to say you blame yourself, but that’s not true. You blame everyone and everything for your inability to move on from the past instead of stepping up and taking responsibility for your own life.”

  At first Kelly could only stare at him, his comment searing in both its truth and its
cruelty. When she found her voice, she returned fire in their war of words that would have no victors, only casualties.

  “Well, it’s good that I knew better than to trust you. Looks like I’m getting away from you just in time.”

  Then she rushed out of the final storage building, away from him, his hateful words and the disloyal part of her that questioned her certainty that he was wrong.

  She picked her way through the minefield of discarded tools and broken equipment, blinking back tears she couldn’t afford to cry there or anywhere. Not when it would confirm that Dawson was right to pull her from the investigation without even talking with her. She only lost her balance once because of her bandaged arm, but she regained it and kept going.

  When she reached the cabin again, she opened the door with her gloved hand, slid inside and closed it behind her. Only a few more hours, or maybe several, and they would file their reports, allowing her to return to her life before the task force. Then she could pretend she hadn’t messed up by getting to know Tony Lazzaro. And she could tell herself that loving him hadn’t been the biggest mistake of all.

  Chapter 28

  Tony waited as long as he could before hurrying after Kelly back to the cabin, which was about a full minute if the clock was generous. He caught sight of Dawson on the way across the field, pointing to the cabin to indicate where Kelly had gone and gave a thumbs-up. Hopefully that would be enough to keep the admin special agent from catching up with her before he did.

  What right did she have to run away when she was the one who’d just said unforgivable things? Well, at least he wasn’t the only one. How could she say that he’d been trying to control her when he’d tracked her phone only to protect her? That she’d crossed the line by dragging his ex into the conversation proved just how wrong he could have been about a person.

  Could she have been, even in the smallest way, right? At least about his decision to track her phone? No, he refused to believe that. Accepting it would rob him of his righteous indignation, and there was no way he would let go of that.

  At the cabin, he paused long enough to slip on a fresh pair of gloves and then turned the knob. She was standing inside the bedroom, staring down at the unmade bed. Was she crying? Had he made her cry?

  “Kelly?”

  Slowly she turned around. Her face was dry, but her lashes were as damp as they’d been that last time that they’d made love. He tightened his jaw and gave the thought a push. It had been the last time, all right.

  “What do you want now?” she asked.

  “You can’t just hide in here.”

  “I’m not hiding.” She gestured toward the glove she’d somehow managed to get on her free hand. “I wanted to check this place one more time.”

  They both knew she was lying, so he could find no reason to point it out. If she could act as if everything was fine, he could play along, too.

  She crossed to the threadbare sofa and pointed to the end table that was propped up with a brick. “Not only is there no TV and no power here, this place has no books, no magazines, no puzzles.”

  “You’re right. He could have survived here a few months off the grid, but what would he have done here besides play in the woods?”

  He swallowed as Kelly’s gaze shifted to the door. Fox could have kept busy for a while out there, burying at least one body that they knew of.

  Tony pursed his lips, considering. “I don’t know. Maybe, in addition to chat rooms, he had a thing for bird-watching.”

  “See any binoculars or bird-identification books?”

  “No. But he had to do something here. We’re overlooking something.” He crossed to the back wall and started knocking on it. “Maybe there were secret shelves that hid the guy’s creepy magazines.”

  “Or there could be a hole in the ground outside or a well. Something.” She was working her way down the front wall, knocking like he’d been doing.

  “Why don’t you try the dividing wall to the bedroom?”

  She nodded and took a diagonal path from the front door to that wall. If either of them had been talking, they might have missed it, but the squeak of one of the wood planks sounded strange, even for a place with more noises than a haunted house.

  “What was that?”

  Kelly asked the question, but she was already struggling down to the floor where the filthy rug covered the spot in front of the sofa.

  “There’s got to be something down there.” He crouched at the end of the rug and started rolling. “A trap door. A storage area.”

  But nothing was there.

  “Do you think we’re hearing things?” she asked.

  “Both of us? No.”

  Leaving the carpet rolled, they took turns walking across the floor in different paths, trying to recreate the sound from earlier. Outside, rumbling engines and barking announced the arrival of the search teams.

  “Maybe it was just wishful thinking,” he admitted finally.

  “I was naive to think Harper would be okay after Fox confessed to killing Sienna and Madison. I just had to hope...”

  “Yeah, me, too.” He had hoped, but it was looking more and more like another victim had been lost on his watch.

  “I just kept thinking he would have left some clue. Something that would jump out at me. Something... Wait.” She held her palms flat in a startled gesture, though one was trapped in a sling at her side.

  And suddenly that something that neither of them had remarked on earlier leaped out to announce itself to them both.

  “The pantry,” they called out in unison.

  They rushed into the kitchen and Tony crouched just outside the open pantry door.

  “Here. Let me.”

  Inside the storage area that Fox had left oddly empty, he started knocking on different spots as they had on the front wall. Kelly squeezed in next to him and started pushing down on the floor with her good hand.

  Just when he was ready to conclude that they were wrong again, the flooring made a cracking sound and a whole section popped up. His gaze flicked to Kelly’s before he slid his gloved fingers beneath it and lifted it a few inches. The rest required more wiggling and tilting, but finally he was able to remove the whole section that measured three feet by three feet.

  “Well, that explains why the pantry had no lower shelves. What’s in there? A storage compartment?” Kelly leaned closer and used her phone flashlight to get a better look. “No way!”

  The illumination showed not a confined area at all but a narrow staircase. At the bottom was a steel door to a cellar, a sizable silver padlock laced through its security hasp.

  “We need to call the others,” Kelly told him when he lowered his foot to the first step.

  “You’re right.”

  Even if it was the last thing he wanted to do. He lifted his foot again, but as he started to back out, a sound reverberated in his ears. He came up so quickly that he nearly knocked her over. It might have been wishful listening, or his ears might have been playing tricks on him, but he could have sworn he’d heard muffled crying.

  “Did you hear that?”

  She shook her head. Had he only imagined it?

  “She’s down there.” He said it as if that could somehow make it true.

  “She has to be. You going to get Dawson?”

  So why couldn’t he move? He was faster than Kelly, at least right now. He should have been the one to go, but he was frozen there next to the opening. Was it that the life-or-death answers lay behind that locked door, and, like Kelly, he was too close to the case, too invested in those answers?

  Kelly’s gaze narrowed, but then she rushed to the door and threw it open. Once she stepped out on the porch, she stopped.

  “Over here. We found something.”

  After several muffled voices responded to her shout, she called out again.

 
“We need bolt cutters. And bring a stretcher.”

  * * *

  Kelly directed her phone flashlight down toward the open door through which Tony, Dawson and a male EMT had disappeared with their flashlights several seconds, or minutes, before. The broken lock had been discarded on the ground at the bottom of the stairs, and the long-handled bolt cutter they’d used to break off the lock lay propped against the wall.

  It was all she could do not to rush down there to find out what was going on beyond that door, but she got it. She was hurt, and there was no reason for her to be down there when it was crowded, and she would just be risking further injury as well as getting in the way.

  Finally, Dawson appeared at the opening.

  “Do you think you can make it down here, Trooper Roberts?”

  “But I thought you said—What do you need me to do? Is Harper down there? Is she, uh...?”

  Then he smiled. “We think she’s okay. I just asked her if she might be more comfortable talking to a female—”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  Getting there was more difficult than it looked, and she had to swallow a cry when she bumped her arm on the way down, but she made it to the bottom of the stairs and stepped inside the room.

  At first, she didn’t see Harper at all, the space overwhelming in its contrast to the stark setting upstairs. It looked as if a fashion doll’s house had exploded, covering the paneled walls with hot pink and glitter. She blinked several times to allow her eyes to adjust to the brightness from several battery-powered lanterns. They hadn’t found any tiaras upstairs, but in this room filled with pink tulle and lace, there were several, their rhinestones blinking whenever anyone’s movement refracted the light.

  “Kelly,” Tony said in a low tone, and then tilted his head in the direction of the single foam mattress in the middle of the floor.

  And there she was, curled into the corner, her dark hair a mass of tangles, her face tucked between her bent knees. Barefoot, she had on a pair of black leggings and a T-shirt that, from the filth on them, she’d been wearing for days.