No One But You

by Maureen Smith

  The two men exchanged tense, wary glances.

  “Asking these questions allows us to get into his psyche,” Althea continued. “What makes him tick? What’s his motive for kidnapping Claire? Does he want fifteen minutes of fame, or does he have an ax to grind? Is he just some nutcase out there who became obsessed with the news of my abduction all those years ago, or could he somehow be connected to Anthony Yusef—or one of us? If we can focus on answering these questions, maybe we can begin to narrow the scope of our investigation, narrow the range of suspects. And that could bring us closer to finding this son of a bitch before it’s too late.”

  Eddie nodded slowly. “You’re right, Althea,” he said gravely. “About everything. Truth be told, I’ve been in denial about this whole thing, because I didn’t want to accept the possibility that you could be in serious danger. I still don’t want to think about it, but that’s me reacting like a friend instead of an agent. That’s not only a disservice to you, but to Claire and her family. I’ve got a job to do. We all have a job to do. So let’s get to it.”

  Meeting adjourned, they rose from the conference table with the practiced efficiency of an elite team preparing for action. Reaching for the envelope and the note occupying the center of the table, Damien said, “I’m heading down to the lab to talk to the forensic guys about lending their resources to BPD. I’ll hand these off while I’m there.”

  “Thanks,” Eddie said. “And tell them to put a rush on it.”

  “Naturally.”

  “I assume we have to let Detective Mayhew know about the note,” Althea said.

  Damien grimaced. “We can’t keep him out of the loop on such an important development, especially now that a task force has been convened. But that leak in his department is going to be a problem. If we don’t keep this note out of the media, we all know it could set off a floodgate of copycats. We don’t have the time or manpower to pore through a bunch of notes sent by every nutcase out there who wants a piece of the action. Nor do we want to give the perp the satisfaction of having his poetry read on the airwaves. I say we let him sit and stew, wondering if we’ve received the note and wondering what we’re gonna do about it.”

  Eddie nodded. “You’re one hundred percent right about everything. But we can’t risk alienating the local boys by withholding evidence. So tell Mayhew about the note before the task force meets tomorrow, but make it clear to him that if it gets leaked to the press, we’re holding him personally responsible.” He smoothed down his silk tie as he started toward the door. “I’m going to call the folks in Richmond to let them know about Odem. Maybe they can make it to the post office before it closes. Think you’ll have those message transcripts by the end of the day?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at Althea.

  “I sure as hell hope so.” As she made to follow him from the room, Damien grasped her upper arm, gently but firmly detaining her. Althea turned and stared up at him questioningly as Eddie departed, leaving them alone.

  “What—”

  “Just for the record,” Damien said in a low, dangerously soft voice, “I don’t like this setup.”

  Althea frowned. “What setup?”

  “Your involvement in this case. I think it’s a bad idea. You said it yourself—there are too many similarities between you and Claire Thorndike to be ignored. That tells me this psycho, whoever he is, may be coming for you next.”

  Althea swallowed. “I’m aware of that,” she said evenly.

  “I don’t think you are.”

  She bristled. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Damien moved a fraction closer and Althea stepped back almost reflexively. His dark, intense gaze drilled into her, pinning her to the door she suddenly found herself against. Her pulse spiked, although she couldn’t tell whether it was from a burst of anger or Damien’s sudden nearness.

  “You’re a good agent, Althea. A damn good one. But I don’t think you’re being very smart about this situation. What part of ‘Your life may be in danger’ don’t you understand?”

  Her temper flared. “With all due respect, Damien, I graduated from the Academy just like you did. I took an oath to serve and protect just like you did. We put our lives on the line every day because that’s what we signed up for. I’m not going to stop doing my job just because some head case out there wants to frighten and intimidate me.”

  Damien scowled. “Maybe you should be frightened and intimidated. We don’t know what kind of lunatic we’re dealing with, Althea. We don’t know what he’s capable of. Your involvement in this case just plays right into his hands, and you’re a damn fool if you can’t see that!”

  Althea narrowed her eyes and tipped her head back. “As I already told Balducci when he shared his concerns with me, if this case is in any way related to what happened to me eight years ago, the Unsub is going to involve me whether I’m helping with the case or not. Rather than hiding in a corner like some coward, I’d rather be on the front lines of battle trying to catch this bastard. And that’s what I intend to do, whether you like it or not.”

  Damien clenched his jaw, his expression hardening. “I don’t have time to hold your hand or look after you. Just so we’re clear.”

  Her chin lifted in defiance. “I never asked you to do those things. And just so we’re clear,” she said, coldly mocking him, “just because we spent one meaningless night together doesn’t mean you have a say in anything I do. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. I’ve moved on since Friday night. If you can’t do the same, maybe you should ask to be reassigned.”

  His nostrils flared. Something dark and dangerous flashed in his eyes.

  Without another word he brushed past her, yanked the door open, and stormed out of the room, leaving her more shaken than she cared to admit.

  Chapter 16

  Damien spent the rest of the day out of the office. After dropping off the kidnapper’s note and speaking with one of the Bureau’s forensic examiners, he struck off for Solomon’s Island, using the thirty-minute drive to clear his head and get his mind back on the investigation—where it belonged.

  He arrived at Patrick Farris’s small clapboard house along the river, hoping to catch the retired physician off guard. But Farris wasn’t home.

  He found one of his neighbors mending a net inside a tiny fishing boat docked at the pier. As Damien approached, the man stared at him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. Damien identified himself, flashing his credentials and watching as the man’s eyes widened with surprise and a touch of alarm.

  “Is he in some kind of trouble?”

  “Not at all,” Damien said smoothly. “I just wanted to ask him some questions about a case I’m working on. Nothing urgent.”

  The neighbor informed him that Farris was out of town visiting his son and daughter-in-law, who’d just welcomed their second child into the family.

  “Does Dr. Farris live here alone?” Damien asked casually.

  “Yep. Well, his son stays with him from time to time.”

  “The one from—”

  “No, not the one who lives in Virginia. That’s Kyle. I’m talking about his other son. The younger one—Corbin.”

  Corbin Farris. Damien made a mental note to run the name through the system as soon as he returned to the office. He also filed away the fact that Farris’s oldest son lived in Virginia, where the note had been mailed from. He’d check him out as well. Couldn’t hurt.

  “Are Dr. Farris and Corbin pretty close?” he asked, keeping his tone casual.

  “You could say that. They spend a lot of time together when Corbin is here, go fishing and sailing a lot. My sense is that Corbin likes to keep to himself. Even when he goes into town, he doesn’t interact much with the locals. Just goes about his business. His father says the boy never really recovered from his mother’s death. Breast cancer, poor thing.” The man shook his head mournfully, and Damien offered his condolences.

  He made small talk for a few minutes, then handed the frie
ndly neighbor his card and asked him to call when Patrick Farris returned from his visit. The man agreed, albeit warily, and Damien thanked him for his time and headed back to Baltimore, deciding that his trip to the remote waterfront fishing village hadn’t been a total bust after all.

  He made use of his time on the road, checking voice mail messages and returning phone calls pertaining to other active cases. When he got back to the office, he ran the names of Kyle and Corbin Farris through the database to see if they, like their father, had criminal histories. Within an hour he had his answer. Both men were clean. But that didn’t mean they should be eliminated as possible suspects. On the contrary. What Damien had learned from the neighbor about Corbin Farris had piqued his curiosity; it was a thread he intended to follow. To that end, he accessed Motor Vehicle Administration records, pulling up photographs of Patrick Farris and his two sons. He printed out the photos, then faxed them over to the SAC in Richmond with a brief, self-explanatory note: Persons of interest pursuant to Thorndike case. Linked to Virginia area.

  Shortly afterward Damien left the office, deciding to help with the ground search efforts although he knew, instinctively, that Claire Thorndike would not be found anywhere near her northwestern Baltimore home.

  If she’s found at all, he thought, a dark thought that matched his even darker mood.

  Already dressed in the jeans and boots he’d put on that morning, he spent the next several hours tramping through grassy terrain alongside hundreds of other law enforcement personnel, the air fogged with their breath, electric with their tension and the noise of helicopter blades pounding above. When a cold drizzle began to fall around eight-thirty, they called the ground search for the night and told everyone to regroup at the old fire hall at eight-thirty A.M. tomorrow. Chilled to the bone, wet and exhausted, the officers and deputies and patrolmen had trudged back to their waiting vehicles, eager to return to the warmth of their homes and families, yet disheartened that their efforts had yielded no clues into the missing girl’s whereabouts.

  During those adrenaline-charged hours, Damien had been too focused on his task, on the investigation, to dwell on thoughts of his heated argument with Althea. But as he drove home that night, bone-weary and frustrated from the lack of progress they’d made that day, his thoughts strayed inexorably to Althea.

  Her caustic parting words hammered at his brain, taunting him with the singular refrain: Just because we spent one meaningless night together doesn’t mean you have a say in anything I do.

  He didn’t know what ate at him more. The fact that she’d stubbornly refused to remove herself from the case or the fact that she’d referred to the most incredible night of his life as meaningless.

  Meaningless?

  Damien scowled blackly, charging through a yellow light just as it clicked to red.

  It shouldn’t have bothered him so damn much. After all, Althea was right. They didn’t really know each other. They were two strangers who had been drawn to each other by mutual desire, a fierce, irresistible attraction. Now that they had been paired together on what could be the biggest case of their lives, they needed to be focused on the task at hand. Obviously Althea understood that better than he did. I’ve moved on since Friday night, she’d told him. The fact that he couldn’t seem to do the same left him feeling surly and frustrated, filled with self-loathing for his own weakness.

  He’d never been this hung up on a woman before. Not even in college when he first started going out with Angelique, the beautiful, popular journalism major practically every guy on campus wanted to date—or screw, depending on who you asked. She’d been attracted to Damien because he hadn’t given her the time of day—literally. When she’d strolled up to him after class one morning and asked him for the time, he’d raised a brow at the slim gold watch peeking beneath the cuff of her tight sweater and asked, “Something wrong with your watch?”

  Angelique had laughed, claiming she’d forgotten she was wearing one, even though they both knew better. Years later, when Damien reflected on that encounter, he realized that Angelique had started off their relationship with a lie, albeit a small white one. She’d pursued him aggressively that semester, inviting him to lunch and dinner, to the movies and concerts, even to her dorm room for an all-night study session, which would include cramming for midterms followed by a series of “pleasurable stress-relieving activities.” Although Damien found her sexy and beautiful—he wasn’t blind—he knew she wasn’t his type. As an introvert—some called him shy—he’d never been attracted to self-absorbed, high-maintenance women, and his instincts told him Angelique Navarro fit this bill to a tee. But the more he turned her down, the more relentless she became. He was a challenge for her, one she’d set her sights on winning.

  And after a while, she began to grow on him. He found himself noticing just how smart she was, how charming she could be, and the bond she shared with her large family reminded him of his own close-knit relationship with his mother and his two older brothers. So when he found Angelique sobbing quietly in a corner one morning after class, and she told him her grandmother had just died—a woman who’d helped raise her—Damien’s heart had melted with compassion. He’d skipped classes for the rest of the day to keep her company, to console her through the first wave of grief. They made love that night, and by the time he accompanied her to her grandmother’s funeral three days later, they were officially an item.

  At the height of his relationship with Angelique, when he still viewed her flaws through rose-colored glasses and her come-hither smile could still induce butterflies in his stomach, he’d never felt as dangerously unbalanced as he did now.

  Over a woman who’d pretty much just told him to go to hell.

  Damien swore under his breath, disgusted with himself for giving a damn.

  When his phone rang, he dug it out of his back pocket, pressed Talk, and growled, “Wade.”

  There was a brief pause, followed by a low, rumbling chuckle on the other end. “Bad day at the office?”

  It was his older brother Garrison.

  “You could say that,” Damien muttered, but with a little less rancor than before. “When’d you get back from the conference in San Antonio?”

  “This afternoon. Imani dropped the kids off at Ma’s house, picked me up from the airport, and took me out to dinner. We just got back, so I thought I’d call and check up on you, Little Man.”

  Although only six years older than Damien, Garrison was the only father figure he’d ever known. Damien was only four years old when their father, a retired cop, left home after a long, torturous battle with depression. It was Garrison, not their eldest brother Reggie, who’d stepped up to the plate to fill their father’s shoes, forced into manhood by circumstances beyond his control or comprehension. When their schoolteacher mother was too tired after a long, stressful day or was busy grading a mountain of papers in the evenings, it was Garrison who’d looked after Damien, checking his homework, rationing his snacks before dinner, and supervising his bath time. It was Garrison who’d taught him how to throw a mean left hook, then had kicked his ass when he got suspended from school for fighting. It was Garrison who’d taught him about the birds and the bees, then bought him a pack of condoms when he turned fifteen and decided he’d met the one, a pretty mall rat with a mouthful of braces who had eagerly facilitated his passage into manhood. And it was Garrison who’d been his sounding board and kept him sane—and nonhomicidal—during the lowest periods of his rocky, ill-fated marriage.

  For as long as Damien could remember, his brother had always been there for him, a source of strength, guidance, and support. In many ways, Damien owed him his life. Which was why Garrison was the only one who could get away with calling him “Little Man.”

  Damien said now, “Before you ask about the abduction case—which I know is part of the reason you called—I have to ask about our girl. Did you get a chance to see Korrine while you were in San Antonio?”

  Garrison laughed. “How’d I know that
would be the first thing out of your mouth? Of course I saw Korrine while I was there. You know she’s still on maternity leave.”

  “Yeah, I heard. How’s she doing?”

  “She’s doing great, and her daughter Kaia is beautiful. She looks just like Korrine. They had me over to their ranch for dinner. Man, they’ve got an incredible piece of land out there. Rafe and I got to talking after dinner, and let me tell you, he had me seriously thinking about taking some of those acres off his hands and building a nice big home out there.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  Damien snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, right. Like you and Imani would ever relocate to Texas. Even if she agreed to leave her family—which is highly unlikely—you know Ma would be heartbroken if you left her.”

  “I know, I know. She’s always talking about how good it is to have all her boys together again now that Reggie moved back home.”

  Damien grinned. “That’s right, man, so you can’t break up the family. Sorry.”

  Garrison chuckled softly. “Maybe when Imani and I retire. I’m not lying when I tell you how beautiful and peaceful it is down there. God’s country. You’ll see what I’m talking about. Rafe and Korrine invited all of us down to the ranch next summer. Korrine said we have to introduce Little G and Kaia to each other—I think she’s already planning their wedding.”

  Damien laughed, thinking fondly of the woman who’d taken him under her wing when he joined the FBI seven years ago. Although Korrine Friday had only been with the Bureau a year longer, she’d willingly shown Damien the ropes, sharing a wealth of knowledge that, combined with his brother’s mentoring, had helped Damien become the agent he was today. Back then, he’d sometimes wondered if a relationship could have developed between them if he wasn’t married, and if Korrine wasn’t married to the job. A consummate professional, she’d always kept things strictly platonic between them, respecting his marriage and sharing his conviction that business and pleasure should never mix—qualities that made him admire and appreciate her even more. Although he’d teased her about deserting him when she was transferred to San Antonio three years ago, no one was happier than Damien when he found out that she’d met and fallen in love with Rafe Santiago, her new squad supervisor. Sometimes it’s okay to bend our own rules a little, she’d smilingly confided to Damien at her wedding.