As he stared at her, every molecule, every fiber of his being homed in on her, the sounds of traffic around him receding to a low-frequency hum. When she suddenly glanced in his direction, her dark gaze skimming over the line of parked cars, his heart jolted. His pulse drummed with anticipation, pounding in his brain.
She was so close. So temptingly close.
After all this time, after years of poring through old newspaper clippings, police reports, interviews, transcripts. After committing every minute detail to memory, she was finally within his sights again.
Althea Pritchard.
The FBI’s very own success story.
She was a poster child for the law enforcement community, a missing girl who had been safely recovered through the hard work and collaborative efforts of a task force headed by one of the Bureau’s top guns. Althea served as a glowing reminder that the good guys had prevailed, triumphing over evil. And three years ago, she had gone from being a victim of violent crime to a crime-fighting crusader. It had all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster.
The script he had in mind would not appeal to an audience looking for a typical happy ending.
But it would be brilliant. Unforgettable. A masterpiece.
Of that he was certain.
As Althea disappeared inside the office building, a smile crept across his face.
The stage had been set. The cast had been chosen.
Rehearsals were over.
Lights . . . Camera . . . Action!
Chapter 9
It was after seven when Damien returned to the office that evening.
The building was mostly deserted, the majority of personnel having already left for the day. He rode the elevator to the floor designated for the Violent Crimes and Major Offenders program, otherwise known as the VCMO squad. The “bull pen,” as it was called, was a large area with a series of connected desks, with groups of desks separated by cubicles.
He found Althea alone inside her cubicle. She had draped her suit jacket across the back of her chair and loosened her black, shoulder-length hair. One hand maneuvered the computer mouse while the other absently massaged her scalp. With her arm raised to her head, the pale silk of her blouse pulled taut across her firm, round breasts.
Damien’s mouth went dry.
He wished he could walk over to her, lean down, and brush his mouth against the warm, silky skin at the nape of her neck. He could almost hear a soft murmur of pleasure escaping her lips before she turned her head, offering her mouth for his hot, hungry kiss. He imagined lifting her slightly and settling her sweet, lush bottom on the edge of the desk, then stepping between her long legs. He imagined their tongues tangling erotically, their hands tearing impatiently at each other’s clothing—
“Oh good. You’re back.”
The sound of Althea’s voice broke into his fevered musings. He blinked, and realized that she was staring at him with a slightly quizzical expression.
Damien swore softly under his breath, scrubbing a hand over his face as if to erase the tormenting images from his mind. It was no use. The impressions, along with vivid memories of their lovemaking, were burned into his brain. He’d need a damn lobotomy to remove them.
“How did it go with Detective Mayhew?” Althea asked. “Was he in a sharing mood or what?”
Damien tugged his tie loose as he strode toward her cubicle. “We spent most of the afternoon out in the field, coordinating the ground search efforts and organizing uniforms to canvass the surrounding area and talk to potential witnesses.” He grimaced. “But given how isolated the Thorndike property is, it’s not very likely that anyone saw anything that night. It’s not as if they have neighbors.”
“A fact that definitely worked to the perp’s advantage,” Althea murmured.
Damien propped a shoulder against the cubicle wall. “We can always hope for a jogger to come forward, someone who may have wandered off the beaten path that night and wound up in the vicinity of the estate while the abduction was in progress.”
Althea snorted dubiously. “We should be so lucky. So what are they doing about the surveillance camera footage?”
“They’ve assigned a team of investigators to review sixty days’ worth of video footage. But they’ve already established that the hours between 5:18 P.M. on Friday and 2:30 P.M. on Sunday, when the Thorndikes returned home, can’t be retrieved.”
Althea nodded.
Damien could tell by her grim expression that she was thinking the same thing he was, that Claire Thorndike couldn’t have known that her decision to disable the security system in order to conceal the identity of her mystery date may have doomed her. Not only had she made it easier for a predator to enter her home and kidnap her, but not having any surveillance footage during that critical time frame would make it that much harder for them to track down a suspect.
“The police have set up a hotline to take tips from the public,” he continued. “As you might imagine, they’ve already received a ton of calls, reported sightings around the city of a teenage girl matching Claire’s description. Mayhew dispatched K-9 search teams to investigate some of these areas, but so far nothing has panned out. Before I left the station, dozens of volunteers from the community had shown up offering to organize a group search. They’re scheduled to meet at the old fire hall on Reisterstown Road at eight-thirty A.M. on Wednesday morning. This gives them more time to get the word out to the community and solicit more volunteers. Not only that, but the school principal has agreed to cancel school for the day to allow students to participate in the search efforts.”
“Mmm. Very generous of him.”
“Her,” Damien corrected. He sent her a chiding grin. “You disappoint me, Pritchard. I thought a feminist like you would be above making those types of gender assumptions.”
She grinned at him. “And I thought a progressive male like you would be above assuming a female agent is a feminist just because she wears a badge and carries a big gun.”
He arched a teasing brow. “So you’re not a feminist?”
“I don’t categorize myself as one.”
“Good. ’Cause I’m not a progressive male. I’ve never been too crazy about the idea of women fighting in wars, I think a female presidential candidate should wear a skirt every once in a while, and I happen to like pulling out chairs and opening doors for women.”
“Yeah, I noticed that,” Althea said, her dark eyes glittering with mirth. “I was going to tell you that while I certainly appreciate the gesture, it’s really not necessary. We’re going to be spending a lot of time on the road together. I don’t want you to feel obligated to open the car door for me every time we go somewhere.”
Damien’s mouth twitched. “I never do anything out of a sense of obligation. I do things because I want to. I like opening doors for you. What’s the problem?”
She laughed, shaking her head in helpless defeat. “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. I’m being silly. It’s just that I don’t know what to do with myself—with my hands—while I’m waiting for you to come around and open the door for me. I feel . . . I don’t know. Like I’m not in control.”
He grinned at her. “God forbid you should surrender control for five whole seconds.” His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are you sure you aren’t a feminist?” Althea shot him a baleful look, and he laughed. “Tell you what. Why don’t you just fold your hands neatly in your lap, and I’ll make every effort to get to your side as quickly as possible. How does that sound?”
She regarded him in mild amusement. “This whole chivalry thing is really important to you, isn’t it?”
He chuckled. “My mama raised three gentlemen. What can I say?”
Althea smiled softly. “You’re really something else, Damien Wade.”
He inclined his head. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
Their gazes held. The moment stretched into two.
Althea was the first to glance away, looking unsettled. “
I take it that Detective Mayhew hasn’t had a chance to check out Claire’s computer yet.”
“He’s got someone working on it. He says he should know more by tomorrow morning. What’ve you got for me?”
“Pull up a seat,” she offered.
Damien grabbed the empty visitor chair in a corner of the cubicle and nimbly straddled it. Glancing at Althea’s computer screen, he saw that she’d been reading through Claire Thorndike’s MyDomain page.
Following the direction of his gaze, Althea said, “Claire had a lot of friends, and not just the kids she went to school with. She made new friends online and met different people from around the world. It took me more than two hours just to read through all the comments and messages that had been left for her.”
“Find anything interesting?”
“Potentially.” Althea turned back to the computer, and Damien slid his chair across the floor, pulling up beside her. Her tantalizing scent teased his nostrils—soap mingled with a hint of the maddeningly seductive fragrance she wore.
With a supreme effort, he forced himself to ignore his raging libido and concentrate on what she was telling him.
“Joshua Reed, handsome captain of the swim team and Claire’s philandering ex-boyfriend, told the police he hadn’t spoken to Claire in three months, right?”
Damien nodded. “Right.”
Althea pointed to the screen with a manicured fingertip. “As recently as a week ago, the two of them were sending messages to each other. Josh initiated the contact, leaving a comment on her page about some cool photos of herself she’d recently uploaded. When Claire didn’t immediately respond, he sent her a private message a day later asking her how long she planned to ignore him. He apologized for the way he had hurt her and said he’d made a huge mistake.”
Damien skimmed the message in question, frowning when he reached the last line. “What does MUSM stand for?”
“Miss you so much.” Althea grinned at him. “Don’t do much text messaging, do you?”
He chuckled. “Nah,” he drawled. “My daughter, India, does enough of that for both of us.”
“Well, you’d better get with the times, Pops,” Althea said teasingly. “Chat-speak is the way of the future. Pretty soon everyone will be communicating in this language. All of our briefings and reports will be written in chat-speak, complete with smiley faces and the full range of emoticons.”
Damien gave a mock shudder, feeling very much like a relic. “God, I sure as hell hope not.”
Althea laughed, patting his hand consolingly. “Don’t worry. If it ever comes to that, I can be your translator.”
Damien smiled. “I’m gonna hold you to that,” he said, resisting the urge to capture her hand and lace their fingers together. “How did Claire respond to Josh’s apology?”
A rueful grin curved Althea’s lips. “She basically told him to go to hell. She said he blew his chance to be with a real woman, and as far as she was concerned, he and his new girlfriend—aka ‘the skank’—could kiss her lily-white ass.”
Damien grimaced. “Ouch.”
Althea snickered. “Tell me about it. Gee, you think Spencer was exaggerating when he said his daughter isn’t a very forgiving person?”
“Obviously not. Please tell me Josh had the good sense to walk away with his manhood still intact.”
“Nope.” With two clicks of the mouse, Althea pulled up another message. “He fired back at her, blaming her for their breakup, saying she was self-absorbed and always put her own needs above his. He predicted that by the time their senior prom rolled around, she would regret letting him go. To which Claire responded: YGTBKM. SWL.”
“Translation?”
“‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Screaming with laughter.’”
Damien shook his head, smiling grimly. “Double ouch. Damn.”
Althea looked unsettled. “Here’s what Josh wrote back.”
Damien peered at the screen. WSAT.
He frowned. This time he took an educated guess on the translation: We’ll see about that.
He met Althea’s gaze. “You think he was threatening her?”
“Sure as hell sounds like it. Although it’s hard to say whether he was threatening her with the prospect of having to attend the prom without him—”
“Or threatening to get back at her for breaking up with him.” Damien’s frown deepened. “He has an alibi for Friday night,” he murmured, thinking aloud.
“Right. He was at the movies with Brandi, the new girlfriend, then he allegedly spent the night at her house. But what if the alibi is bogus? What if Josh asked Brandi to lie for him? What if he really went to the movies with her but dropped her off afterward and headed to Claire’s house?”
Damien said nothing for a moment, turning over the theory in his mind. He knew it was entirely plausible that Josh Reed was responsible for Claire Thorndike’s disappearance. It was standard protocol for investigators to look closely at the husband or boyfriend whenever a female victim was involved. Josh might have driven to Claire’s house that night intending to reason with her, perhaps hoping that she would give him a second chance if he appealed to her in person. But if Claire still refused him—or “screamed with laughter” in his face—he may have become desperate, even enraged. Enraged enough to lash out at her. To kill her. Damien had seen enough crime of passion cases in his seven-year career with the Bureau to know that nothing was beyond the realm of possibility when it came to scorned lovers. But his gut instinct told him that while Josh Reed may have been a lousy boyfriend to Claire and an insensitive jerk after the fact, he hadn’t harmed her.
Damien glanced at the computer screen, at Claire’s brightly decorated MyDomain page. The date of Josh’s last message to her was October 1. Just two days before she disappeared.
“If he has nothing to hide,” Althea speculated, “then why did he lie to the police about the last time he’d spoken to Claire? Why did he tell them it was three months ago when he just e-mailed her last week?”
“Maybe he thinks online communication isn’t the same thing as actually speaking to a person,” Damien suggested.
Althea gave him a look. “Semantics. And even if that were the case, he could have at least mentioned his recent e-mail exchange with Claire.”
“Maybe he was embarrassed. She was pretty hard on him. Or maybe he didn’t want the police to know he and Claire had traded insults just a few days before she went missing, because he didn’t want to give them any reason to suspect him—as we’re doing now.”
Althea frowned, shaking her head. “The bottom line is that he lied to the police. And we’ve both been trained to suspect anyone who lies when questioned by the police.”
Damien inclined his head, conceding the point. “You’re forgetting one thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
Damien clasped his hands together over the back of his chair. “We’ve been operating under the assumption that Claire invited someone over to her house on Friday night. If Josh went over there and saw another guy with her, I’m pretty damn sure he would have told the police—if for no other reason than to take the focus off himself.”
Althea pursed her lips thoughtfully. “That’s very true. But what if the mystery date hadn’t arrived yet? What if Josh got there first and took Claire? Then we’re looking at the possibility that someone out there may have arrived at the house afterward, realized that something was amiss, panicked, and left without calling the police.”
Damien nodded. “Or he may have thought Claire simply got cold feet and decided not to let him into the house. He saw her car in the driveway, saw lights on inside, and figured she was home. Unless he actually entered the house to search for her, he had no way of knowing anything was wrong, therefore he wouldn’t have had a reason to call the police.” He paused. “Especially if he wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place.”
Althea stared at him, comprehension dawning. “Because he’s an older man. Or he’s married. Or both.”<
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“Exactly.”
Althea swiveled away from the desk to face him. “What if Claire were having an affair with one of her father’s business associates? What if she fell in love with him and asked him to leave his wife, but he refused? So what if she retaliated by threatening to tell her father about the affair, which caused the guy to panic and kill her?”
“It’s possible. Hell, anything’s possible. That said, I don’t think Josh had anything to do with Claire’s disappearance.”
Althea frowned. “He’s got motive and opportunity. This might be a classic case of ‘If I can’t have you, no one will.’ I’m sure he knew that Mr. and Mrs. Thorndike would be out of town this weekend on their annual ski trip. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he reached out to Claire a week before she disappeared. And I’m not ready to let him off the hook for lying to the police. What is he hiding?”
Damien hummed a thoughtful note. “Tell you what. How about we pay him a visit tomorrow afternoon, see if we can get some straight answers out of him?”
Althea nodded. “I think that’s a great idea. I also think we should talk to Heather Warner. She’s Claire’s best friend—she has to know more than she’s telling anyone.”
“I agree. Which is why I think you should speak to her alone. If she feels more comfortable being interviewed by a woman, she might open up to you.”
“You’ve got a point.”
“I say we divvy it up. I’ll talk to Josh. You talk to Heather.”
“Works for me.”
“Good.” Damien hitched his chin toward the computer screen. “Did you come across any other red flags?”
“Possibly. As I said earlier, it took me some time to read through all the comments and messages on Claire’s page.” Althea paused. “How familiar are you with MyDomain?”
Damien scowled. “Familiar enough,” he said darkly. “India keeps begging me to let her have a page. Her mother agreed to it, but I’ve adamantly refused. I don’t trust these social networking sites, and I sure as hell don’t like the idea of some pervert viewing online photos of my daughter and sending messages to her. I told India she’s too damn young to have a MyDomain page, and the only ‘social networking’ she needs to be doing is at school.”
No One But You Page 10