The Search

by Nora Roberts

  could go under.”

  “That answers the top question. You haven’t found him yet. Do you want anything?” Fiona asked them. “Coffee? Something cold?”

  “Let’s just sit down. We’re going to tell you as much as we can.” Tawney sat and, leaning forward, linked his hands on his knees. “We know he was in Portland on January fifth because he sold his car to a used-car lot on that date. There’s no other vehicle registered in his name, but we’re checking on purchases in the Portland area on or around that date.”

  “He could have bought something from a private seller. Not bothered to register it.” Simon shrugged. “Or had fake ID. Hell, he could’ve taken a bus to anywhere and bought a car off Craigslist.”

  “You’re right, but we check, and we keep checking. He needs transportation. He needs lodging. He needs to buy gas and food. We’re going to turn over every stone and use every means at our disposal. That includes Perry.”

  “We spoke with him earlier today,” Mantz continued. “We know he and Eckle communicated, using a third party to smuggle letters in and out.”

  “Who?” Simon demanded.

  “The minister Perry bullshitted at the prison. The minister took Perry’s letters out and mailed them—they were to different names, different locations,” Tawney explained. “Perry claimed they were to members of a prayer group his sister belonged to, and the minister swallowed it. He brought Perry the responses, mailed to him, again from different names and locations.”

  “So much for maximum security,” Simon muttered.

  “Perry managed to get a letter out a few days after Kellworth’s body was found, but there’s been no correspondence to him for over three weeks.”

  “Eckle’s distancing himself ?” Fiona glanced from agent to agent. “Is that what you think?”

  “It plays. Eckle’s gone off script now,” Tawney added. “And that’s something Perry’s not pleased about. Now that he knows we’ve identified Eckle and we’re focused on him, Perry’s not pleased about that either.”

  “You told him?” Simon interrupted. “So he’ll have a chance to confirm the damn news story with his pen pal?”

  “Short of ESP, Perry’s not getting any more messages out or in,” Mantz insisted. “We’ve blocked his conduit. He’s been locked down, and now he’ll remain locked down until we have Eckle in custody. Eckle’s not living up to his standards, and Perry’s feeling the squeeze of losing some of the privileges he gained through good behavior.”

  “You think he’s going to tell you, if he knows, how to find this Eckle?” Fiona demanded. “Why would he?”

  “He wants to cut the cord there, Fee. He’s not happy his protégé is making mistakes, going his own way. Perry knows, because we made sure he knows, those mistakes will make it impossible for Eckle to get to you.” Tawney waited a beat. “You’re still his one failure, and the reason he’s in prison. He still thinks about you.”

  “That’s not particularly good news.”

  “We don’t have much to bargain with. Perry knows he’s in prison for life. He’s never getting out. Eventually, his pride will push him into telling us what we need, or we’ll take Eckle without him.”

  “Eventually.”

  “He’s offered us information. He’s careful enough to couch it as observations, speculations, theories, but he’s ready to turn on Eckle with the right incentive.”

  “What does he want?” She already knew. In her gut she already knew.

  “He wants to speak with you. Face-to-face. You can’t say anything I haven’t already thought,” Tawney said as Simon surged to his feet. “Nothing I haven’t already said to myself.”

  “You’d put her through that, ask her to sit down with the man who tried to kill her so maybe he might toss you a few crumbs?”

  “It’s up to her. It’s up to you,” Tawney said to Fiona. “I don’t like it. I don’t like asking you to make this decision. I don’t like giving him squat.”

  “Then don’t,” Simon snapped.

  “There are plenty of reasons not to do it. He may lie. He may get what he wants and claim he knows nothing after all, or give us information that sends us in the wrong direction. But I don’t think he will.”

  “It’s your job to stop this bastard. Not hers.”

  Mantz shot him a single hard look. “We’re doing our job, Mr. Doyle.”

  “From where I’m standing, you’re asking her to do it.”

  “She’s the key. She’s what Perry wants, what he’s wanted for eight years. The reason he recruited Eckle, and she’s the reason he’ll betray him.”

  “Stop talking around me,” Fiona murmured. “Just stop. If I say no, he’ll shut down.”

  “Fiona.”

  “Just wait.” She reached up for Simon’s hand, felt the anger through his skin as clearly as she heard it in his voice. “Wait. He’ll say nothing. He’ll hold out for weeks, maybe months. He’s capable of that. He’ll wait until there’s another. At least one more, so I’ll know she’s dead because I wouldn’t face him.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “It’s how I’d feel.” She squeezed Simon’s hand, hard. “He took Greg to hurt me, and he could do this. He’d like to do it. He expects me to say no. He probably hopes I do until someone else is dead. It would appeal to him. That’s what you think, too.”

  “I do,” Tawney confirmed. “He can wait, and the waiting gives him more time to think. He considers us inferior. We wouldn’t have caught him but for a fluke, so he’d calculate Eckle may have time for one or two more.”

  “There wouldn’t have been a fluke if he hadn’t killed Greg. He wouldn’t have been driven to kill Greg if I hadn’t gotten away. So it comes back to me. You need to make the arrangements. I want to do this as soon as possible.”

  “Goddamn it, Fiona.”

  “We need a minute.”

  “We’ll be outside,” Tawney told her.

  “I need to do this,” she said to Simon when they were alone.

  “The fuck you do.”

  “You didn’t know me when Greg was killed. You wouldn’t have known me in those weeks, months even, afterward. I shattered. My broods? They’re a shadow of it. They’re nothing compared to the guilt, the grief, the depression, the despair.”

  She took both his hands now, hoping to transmit her need through his rage.

  “I had help through it. The counseling, sure, but it was friends and family that pulled me out. And Agent Tawney. I could call him, day or night, talk to him when I couldn’t talk to my mother, my father, Syl, anyone else. Because he knew. He wouldn’t ask me if he didn’t believe. That’s one.”

  She took a breath, steadied herself. “If I don’t do this, don’t try, and someone else dies, I think it’ll break something inside me. He’ll have won after all. He didn’t win when he took me. He didn’t win when he killed Greg. But, Simon, God, you can only take so many beatings and get up again. That’s two.

  “Last. I want to look him in the eye. I want to see him in prison and know he’s there because of me. He wants to use me, he wants to manipulate me.”

  She shook her head, the gesture as fierce as the sudden fury that lit her face. “Fuck him. I’ll use him. Maybe, I hope to God, he’ll tell them something that leads them to Eckle. I hope to God. But whether he does or not, I’ll have used him, and done what I needed to do to live with whatever happens after. I’ll be the one who wins. I’ll be the one who beats his sorry, motherfucking ass again. And when it’s done, he’ll know that.”

  He pulled away, walked to the window, stared out, then walked back to look down at her. “I love you.”

  Knocked sideways, she lowered to the arm of the couch. “Oh my God.”

  “I’m so pissed off at you right now. I don’t think I’ve ever been more pissed at anyone in my life. And I’ve been pissed at plenty.”

  “Okay. I’m really trying to keep up, but with my head spinning it’s hard to focus. You’re pissed off because you love me?”

>   “That’s a factor, but not the main thrust. I’m pissed off because you’re going to do this, because you, being you, have to do it. I’m pissed off because short of tying you to the bed, I can’t stop you.”

  “You’re wrong. You could. You’re the only one who could.”

  “Don’t give me the opening,” Simon warned. “I’m pissed at you. And I think you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever known, and my mother sets a damn high standard for amazing. If you cry,” he said when she teared up, “I swear to God . . .”

  “I’m having a hell of a day. Give me a break.” She got to her feet. “You don’t say what you don’t mean.”

  “Goddamn right. What’s the point?”

  “Tact, diplomacy, but we won’t get into that. Simon.” Needing to touch, she ran her hands over his chest. “Simon. Everything you just said to me—all of it—there’s nothing you could have said or done that could have made me feel better or stronger or more able to do what I need to do.”

  “Great.” A few grains of bitterness came through. “Glad I could help.”

  “Would you tell me again?”

  “Which part?”

  She rapped a fist on his chest. “Don’t be an ass.”

  “I love you.”

  “Good, because I love you. So we’re balanced. Simon.” She laid her hands on his cheeks, and when she kissed him it was strong and sweet. “Try not to worry. He’s going to try to mess with my head. It’s the only power he has now. And he can’t because I’m going in armed with something he’ll never have, and never understand. When I do what I need to do, and walk away from him, I know I’m coming back here. I know you’ll be here, and you love me.”

  “You want me to buy that?”

  “I’m not selling it. I’m giving it, and it’s truth. Let’s go out and make this deal. I want it done and over, so I can come back to the good part.”

  They walked outside. “How soon can we go?” Fiona asked.

  Tawney took a moment to study her face. “We’re cleared for tomorrow morning. Agent Mantz and I will see about getting a hotel here on Orcas, and we’ll fly out of Sea-Tac at nine-fifteen. We’ll escort you all the way, Fee. There and back, and be with you throughout the session with Perry. We’ll have her home by midafternoon,” he said to Simon.

  Over and done and back, Fiona told herself. “I’ll have someone cover my classes tomorrow morning and afternoon. You don’t need a hotel. You can stay at my place. It’s there, it’s empty,” she added before Tawney could decline. “And it’ll save you some time.”

  “We appreciate that.”

  “I’ll get the keys.”

  Simon waited until Fiona went back inside. “If he screws her up, you’ll pay for it.”

  Tawney nodded. “Understood.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Normally, though opportunities to travel were few and far between, Fiona liked to fly. She enjoyed the ritual, the people-watching, the sensations, the anticipation of leaving one place and hurtling through the air to another.

  But in this case, the flight was simply one more necessary part of a means to an end, just something to get through.

  She’d thought carefully about what to wear, and hadn’t been able to figure out why her appearance, her presentation, took on such importance.

  She considered and rejected a suit as too formal and studied. She contemplated jeans, her usual and most comfortable choice, but decided they were too casual. In the end, she decided on black pants, a crisp white shirt and added a jacket in strong blue.

  Simple, serious and businesslike.

  And that, she realized when she sat between Tawney and Mantz on the plane, had been the importance. What she wore, how she presented herself indicated tone.

  Perry thought he was in charge, she reasoned. Though he currently resided in a maximum-security prison, he’d made a strong bid for alpha position.

  He had something they wanted, something they needed, so that gave him power—power she intended to countermand.

  The clothes would help remind her—and him—at the end of the day, she’d be the one walking out, going back to her life, to freedom.

  He’d be the one going back to a cell.

  Nothing he had to trade changed that. And that, she reminded herself, was her power. That was her control.

  “I want to go over some of the procedure with you.” Tawney shifted toward her. “You’ll go through security, and there’ll be some paperwork.”

  She knew by the way he studied her face he wondered if her nerve would falter. “There always is.”

  “We’ll be escorted to an interview room rather than the visitation area. Perry will already be there. He’ll be secured with wrist and ankle shackles, Fee. You will never, not for one second, be alone with him. He won’t be able to touch you.”

  “I’m not afraid of him.” That, at least, was true. “I’m not afraid of that. I’m afraid all this might be for nothing. He’ll get what he wants, get his rocks off on that, and not tell you anything that can help. I hate giving him the satisfaction of being in the same room with me, looking at me. But at the same time I’m getting the satisfaction of doing the same. And knowing I’ll walk away, go home—and he won’t.”

  “Good. You keep that in your head. Keep it front and center, and know that if you want to break it off, at any time, it’s over. It’s your call, Fee. All the way.”

  He patted her hand as they shimmied through some choppy air.

  “He’s refused to have his lawyer there, he made a point of it. He thinks he’s in charge, in control.”

  “Yes, I was just thinking about exactly that. Let him believe whatever he wants. Let him get a good long look at me.” Her voice hardened, edged with challenge. The turbulence, she thought, was all outside.

  “He’s not going to see someone who’s afraid or subservient. And later today, I’ll be playing with my dogs. I’ll eat pizza and have some wine, and tonight, I’ll be sleeping with the man I love. He’ll go back to his cell. I don’t give a damn what he thinks, as long as he tells you what you need to know.”

  “Don’t give him anything he can use against you,” Mantz added. “No names, no locations, no routines. As much as you can, keep your reactions steady. He’ll play you if he can, either to scare you or make you angry—anything to get under your skin. We’ll be in the room the entire time, and so will a guard. The entire session will be monitored.”

  She let their reassurances, their instructions slide over her. No one, not even Tawney, could know what she felt. No one, she thought, could know that in some dark, closed part of herself she reveled in the idea of seeing him again, of seeing him restrained, as she’d once been. When she faced him again, she’d do it for herself, for Greg, for every woman whose life he’d taken.

  He couldn’t know he’d given that dark, closed part of herself a reason to celebrate.

  How could he, when she hadn’t known it herself ?

  She considered it all a journey. The early morning ferry, the plane, the drive. Every leg brought her the comfort that she’d traveled farther and farther from home. That Perry would never know or see what she knew and saw every single day.

  Southeastern Washington wasn’t just a trip away, but almost another world. These weren’t the fields and hills of home, the villages busy with tourists and familiar faces, the sounds and the sea. These weren’t her streams and woods and deep green shadows.

  The red brick and thick stone of the penitentiary struck her as formidable and intimidating. The square, squat, unadorned block of the Intensive Management Unit that housed him added stark and cold. And that dark place inside her hoped his life had been, would continue to be, equally stark, equally cold.

  Every length of iron, every foot of steel added to her comfort, and her secret celebration.

  He believed he’d caused her pain and distress by bargaining for this meeting, she thought, but he’d done her an enormous favor.

  Every time she thought of Perry now, she’d think
of the walls, the bars, the guards, the guns.

  She submitted to the security, the search, the paperwork, and thought Perry would never know that by forcing her to open this door he would help her, finally, to close it—lock off even that tiny chink she’d never been able to shut out.

  When she walked into the room where he waited, she was ready.

  It pleased her she’d worn that deliberate touch of bold color, that she’d worked her hair into a complicated braid and had been meticulous with her makeup. Because she knew he studied her when she came in, knew he took in those details.