“If this anonymous complaint turns out to be one of her brother’s former friends or girlfriends . . .” I shake my head. “But Cara probably wasn’t in any fit state to research it. She heard Emilia’s name and decided then and there.”
My phone rings, and I swear to fucking God—
Sterling yanks it out of my hands. “It’s Cass,” she reports, and accepts the call to speaker. “Kearney, you’ve got Ramirez, Sterling, Watts, and Holmes.”
“Emilia?” she asks immediately.
“. . . No.”
“Damn.” She takes a deep, shuddering breath, both inhalation and exhalation clearly audible over the line. “Caroline Tillerman is not at her apartment. Officers found several masks, white jumpsuits, both bloodied and clean, blonde wigs, both bloodied and clean, a box of white angel teddy bears . . . everything in her kit except a knife and a gun, but there are boxes of ammunition.”
“Do we know what she’s driving?”
“It’s a 2004 dark blue Honda CR-V. We found all eight of the files missing from CPS, and have agents and officers on the way to those houses to secure the families.”
“What about the address in Stafford?”
“The house is owned by Navy Lieutenant Commander DeShawm Douglass. He lives there with his wife, Octavia, and their nine-year-old daughter, Nichelle. There are no complaints or suspicions of abuse in the household, either in Stafford County or their previous residences.”
“Call SPD, get officers out there.”
“What are you thinking?” asks Watts.
“Cara just point-blank murdered a kid she was trying to save. She is freaking the fuck out, and if she tries to go to her apartment, she’ll see the police. Where do you go when there’s nowhere else to go?”
“I go home,” Holmes says slowly. “To my husband and daughter.”
“Pretend you’re twenty-three and single.”
“To my parents, then.”
“But her mother is dead and her father is in prison. That leaves the house in Stafford, where her father put her through absolute hell. The house where a man is living with his little girl, and she has checked every day to make sure there are no complaints.”
“There still isn’t a complaint,” Sterling points out.
“Do you think that matters anymore to the woman we heard on the phone?”
She shakes her head.
“Burnside is calling Stafford,” Cass reports. “He’ll give a courtesy call to NCIS after, given that the homeowner is a lieutenant commander. We think we may have identified Cara’s initial trigger.”
“What’s that?”
“A few months ago, her father hired a private investigator to find her. When that was successful, he sent her a letter, asking her to come see him. The letter’s still in her apartment, so we called the prison.”
“Did she go?”
“Yes. This, though: her father got remarried, and his wife is expecting a baby. She’s having a little girl in August.”
“You want to tell me how the hell a man in prison for whoring out his daughter gets conjugal visits?” Watts snarls.
“He doesn’t, but when there’s a friendly prison guard to smuggle out a sperm sample, new wife can go to a fertility clinic for implantation. Guard was fired but it was a done deed.”
“And the father who sold her again and again to his friends gets another little girl. I remember interviewing him after the arrest; he probably tracked her down and told her in person just to torture her. Bastard probably got off on getting to hurt her again. You’re right, that has to be our trigger.”
“We borrowed Blakey, Cuomo, and Kang’s teams so we’d have enough. Hanoverian signed off on it.”
“Her endgame is Stafford.” My heart beats a rapid tattoo. “She can’t help it.”
“How sure are you?”
“What do you do when you’re lost in the woods?” I ask softly.
Sterling takes a step closer to me, leaning into my side.
“You run home,” I remind her. “Everything is on fire and overwhelming, and she’s running home, but when she gets there, she’s going to remember all the ways she was hurt, she’s going to see that little girl, and she’s going to see herself.”
“Kearney, send the address to Eddison.”
“He’s still here at the office,” Cass says.
“He’s what?” Sterling and I ask together.
There’s a shuffle and a beep, and then we can hear Eddison’s tired grumble. “Where are we going?”
“Fill him in on the way, just get there,” Watts orders. “Ramirez, Sterling, go.”
“The regulations?” Sterling asks hesitantly.
“Screw them. You’re the best chance of talking her down, just make sure Kearney makes the arrest. Give me your keys, take mine; I’ve got the lights.” She holds out her hand. Sterling takes the keys from me and drops them in Watts’s hand, scooping up the ring for the SUV.
Sterling had a reputation at the Denver field office for making seasoned agents cry when she drove. Never caused an accident, never incurred damage, but you spend the entire trip praying. Sounds like just what we need. As she peels rubber getting us down the street, I brace myself by my legs, much as I envision sailors must during hurricanes.
“Please let us get there,” I whisper. “Por favor.”
27
The Douglasses’ house is painted with flashing red and blue lights when we squeal in. Eddison, standing at the front door with a uniform, checks his watch and shudders.
“She got here first, probably came straight from Chantilly,” he tells us. “Mother is inside. Father’s on his way to the hospital, but the mother refuses to leave until her daughter’s safe.”
“The mother’s okay?”
“Shot in the arm, a through and through on her side. The paramedics have her bandaged up and they’re keeping an eye on her. Kearney’s with her. Police are organizing traffic stops and a search back into the woods, FBI is sending more agents to help, and if it becomes a search and rescue, the Marines have offered aid out of Quantico.”
“Let’s go inside. I need to talk to Mrs. Douglass.”
Mrs. Douglass is in her kitchen, both hands wrapped around a glass of water. She’s mostly listening to Cass, standing at her side, but she keeps looking out the bay window of the breakfast nook like she’ll see her daughter coming down the street. She just saw her husband shot down and her daughter grabbed, and God, I want to be gentle with her, but we don’t have time.
“Mrs. Douglass, my name is Mercedes Ramirez, I’m an agent with the FBI. Are there any places for the neighborhood kids to play? Anything that’s been here for a while?”
She stares at me. “Sorry?”
“The woman who took your daughter used to live here. Not just in the neighborhood, in this very house. She’s not going to get out of Stafford, so is there any place where the kids gather? Something they maybe think is a secret from their parents?”
“Um . . . no, I don’t think . . .” She glances at the papers stuck to the door of the fridge and flinches. “There’s a tree house! Nichelle drew a picture of it. She and the girls next door found it a few weeks ago. Said it was falling apart, and I . . . I scolded her for going so far back into the woods.”
“Did they tell you where?”
“No, just that it was far back.”
“You said the girls next door? Which side?”
She points, and I run out of the house to go pound on the door, Eddison sticking close behind me. The door is opened by a round-faced man in a bathrobe. “What’s going on?” he demands. “Are the Douglasses okay?”
“Sir, are your daughters home?”
“Yes, but what—”
“Someone took Nichelle Douglass,” I tell him bluntly, “and we think the woman may be taking her back to a tree house your daughters found with Nichelle.”
“We’re not allowed to go there anymore!” pipes up a girl from down the hall. She slips up behind her father and looks at
us with wide eyes. “Mrs. Douglass said it was too far.”
“I’m not going to yell at you for it, mija,” I say, crouching down closer to eye level. “I just need to know where it is. Can you tell us how to get there?”
She chews anxiously on her lip. “Is Nichelle okay?”
“We’re trying to find her. But we need your help.”
“Wait.” She races up the stairs, and back down again only a moment later with a piece of paper in her hand. “I made a map.” She shoves it into my hands so hard it crinkles, and she smooths it out before pointing. “Go straight back and cross the creek, and then there’s a weird rock thing. Go right until the tire stack. Then turn left and go straight for a really long time and the tree house is there. But you can’t go up the ladder because the nails are rusty and Mrs. Douglass says that’s how we get tetanus.”
“This is perfect, sweetheart, thank you.” I straighten up, handing the map to her father. “You’ll want to stay inside for a while. There are more agents and officers on the way.”
“Of course. I hope . . .” He swallows hard and pulls his daughter back into his side. “I hope you find her safe.”
Cass meets us between the houses. “Hanoverian’s here, he’s staying with Mrs. Douglass. Where are we going?”
“We need larger flashlights, and we’re going into the woods.”
She whistles at one of the uniforms, and in short order we’re running into the trees with heavy Maglites and the promise of backup as soon as it arrives. We should wait for it, but one look at my face, and Eddison decides to let us go ahead. Guns drawn and aimed at the ground, we keep the flashlights low as we jog two by two.
It’s not the same as the woods back home, where the trees were spindly and needled and stabbed the sky. These are broader, the branches less keen to smack and cling. We don’t talk, our huffing breaths filling the space. The noise from in front of the houses floats back, strange snippets of conversation without words. We splash through the creek, shallow but too wide to jump, and ignore the discomfort of squelching in our shoes as we look out for the rock pile the girl mentioned. We’ve crossed probably a mile before we see it, and we take a right. The tire stack comes up pretty quickly.
Go straight for a really long time, she said, and given how far we’ve come already, I’m a little worried. We pick up the pace, Eddison and I in the lead, angled in opposite directions so we can have a shred of warning if Cara tries to sneak up on us.
Two miles later, we can hear someone screaming, and another voice yelling. We’re flat-out running now, and finally we can see a clearing up ahead. We slow down as much as we dare, trying to be quiet, but there are old branches all around it like a noise trap.
“Don’t come any closer!” the woman in white yells, grabbing Nichelle by the neck and cutting her off midscream. Her gun sways back and forth next to Nichelle’s face.
Turning off the flashlight, I slide it through the loops on the back of my pants.
Eddison sighs but nods, then motions for Sterling and Cass to each go around a different side. He settles into a crouch behind one of the trees so I can move past him.
“Cara,” I call. “Cara, it’s Mercedes. I know you don’t want to hurt Nichelle.”
“I’m making her safe!” she cries, voice still muffled by the plain white mask. “They’ll hurt her. They always hurt her.”
“Like your father hurt you,” I agree, stepping into the clearing. Her gun comes up to point at me, but I don’t try to get too close. “I know his new wife is having a little girl. Cara, I promise you, he is never going to get the chance to hurt that baby girl.”
“I’m keeping her safe,” she insists.
“Cara, can you take off the mask? Let me see your face, sweetheart, I want to make sure you’re okay.”
She hesitates, but then she steps behind Nichelle, using her as a shield so she can reach up with the hand holding the gun and push back the mask. It falls to the ground, taking the long silver-blonde wig with it. Her natural hair is a slightly dirtier blonde, dark and damp with sweat where it’s pulled back into a tight braid. This young woman, with her wide cheekbones and filled-in face, doesn’t look much like the broken girl in the photos in the file. She looks healthy, and it’s hard to connect her cheerful presence at the CPS office with the child who cried whenever I left her hospital room.
Until she looks up at me, and I recognize the fear.
“There you are, sweetheart. Are you and Nichelle okay?”
The little girl looks at me disbelievingly, tears tracking down her face. I wish I could wink or smile or something, anything to reassure her, but I can’t, not with Cara looking at me.
Cara’s crying, too, and she shakes her head. “I can’t let them hurt her.”
“Then let me take her, Cara. You know I won’t hurt her.”
The gun is abruptly aimed at me again. “You were supposed to keep Emilia safe, but you let her go to that woman! That woman murdered a little boy!”
“No, Cara, she didn’t. Her brother attacked her when he was high. She defended herself. He wouldn’t have died from the gunshot, it was too minor. The drugs he was on reacted badly with the anesthesia. He died because of the drugs, sweetheart. She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“No. No, you’re lying!”
“I’ve never lied to you, Cara. Let Nichelle come to me. I’ll keep her safe.”
“No one can keep us safe,” she says gravely. “The world isn’t safe, Mercedes. It never has been.” Her Tidewater drawl, practically nonexistent when she spoke to us in the office, is thick now in her distress.
“But we’re here, Cara. Look at us, you and me. Our fathers hurt us so badly, but we survived. We’re helping other kids. You did so good, sweetheart, you worked so hard to get these kids safe. Sarah? Sarah Carter? She’s so relieved, Cara, she’s safe now. And you did that.”
“Her stepfather was a bad man,” Cara says, the gun lowering slightly.
“He was. He hurt her. And you stopped him.”
Nichelle isn’t struggling, but she watches me, wheels turning in her head. When Cass steps on a dry branch, the crack hanging in the air, Nichelle shifts her weight, bringing her foot down on a smaller branch.
Oh, good girl, you brilliant, beautiful girl.
“Cara, I know you’re protecting Nichelle, but do you remember when I told you there were rules? I’m not allowed to put my gun away if any other gun is out. Do you remember?”
The blonde nods slowly. “Daddy’s friend. He had to put it down.”
“Exactly. I know you’re keeping her safe, Cara, but you’ve got a gun. I’m not allowed to put mine away.”
“But—”
“Don’t you want me to help you, Cara?”
She chose the name Caroline, but Cara is the name carved into her bones, bleeding through her scars. Cara is the name of the frightened girl, the one who wants comforting. The one who trusted me.
Cass and Sterling aren’t going to be able to get a shot on her from the sides, not without risking Nichelle. She has to put down the gun.
“I didn’t mean to hurt Emilia,” she sobs. “I was just trying to protect her.”
“I know. I know you were, she just didn’t understand. She was scared, Cara. And we do things, don’t we, when we’re scared? Put down the gun, sweetheart.”
Preferably before the helicopter I hear can get any closer and spook you.
But she hesitates too long, and the helicopter comes over the clearing, the searchlight blinding. I squint against it with long practice. Cara screams. “You’re trying to trick me!” she shrieks. “You lied to me!”
“Cara, I know you meant the best, but you killed people. There are consequences for that.”
Eddison, Sterling, and Cass all step into the clearing, guns up and leveled at Cara. They stay back, trying to let me keep working.
But I’ve lost her. She stares at me, tears bright in her eyes, her whole body trembling with emotion. “I’m helping them, Mercedes. Like y
ou helped me. Why . . . I thought you’d be proud of me. Why are you trying to stop me? Why?”
“Caroline Tillerman,” Eddison calls over the deafening thump of the copter blades. “Put down the gun. You are under arrest for the murders of Sandra and Daniel Wilkins, Melissa and Samuel Wong—”
Her face twisted in fury, Cara lunges forward, half-tripping over the resistant Nichelle, and fires. Eddison drops to the ground with a grunt.
Suddenly there’s a crack and a black and red rose blooms in Cara’s forehead. She takes a breath, tries to take a second, and tips backward to the ground as Nichelle struggles away from her.
I glance to Sterling and Cass, but they’re both looking at me.
Dios mío. That was me.
That was my shot.
Sterling races forward to grab Nichelle, kicking the gun away and holding the girl so she can’t see. Cara’s sprawled across the ground, her eyes wide and startled, mouth open with shock.
A groan behind me makes me spin. Eddison. “Mercedes.”
I drop down beside him. He’s curled around his left leg, both hands clenched around as much of his lower thigh as he can manage. Blood seeps out, thick and dark, between his fingers. Holstering my gun, so much heavier than I remember it ever being, I yank off my blouse, buttons flying, and start wrapping it around the wound.
“You know,” he manages through gritted teeth, “now they’re really going to think we’re sleeping together.”
I yank the first knot tight over the bullet hole, and he growls.
“How is he?” asks Sterling, her voice shaking.
“He’ll need to get lifted out. The copter can’t land and he can’t hike it. That’s way too far to carry him.”
“Is that your way of calling me fat?”
“It’s my way of saying make one more joke and I will leave you to Priya’s tender mercy.”
That asshole actually grins at me. “I was a model of restraint when she got hurt.”
“That doesn’t mean she will be.”
He grimaces against a throbbing wave of pain, the muscles twitching under my hands. “Point.” A Marine in full gear rappels down from the hovering helicopter. “Anyone hurt?” he bellows.
The Summer Children (The Collector Series Book 3) Page 24