by Cynthia Eden
That made sense. “If Peter Carter is the perp we’re after, then, yeah, he would have wanted the skull back. He could have been keeping tabs on the investigation. Could have seen the skull arrive and knew that he had to act. But you were there, so that threw everything off for him.”
She nodded. “And he had to flee the scene. He could have gone into the lab to retrieve the skull, but then he saw me and had to leave before he could get it.”
One option. “We need Peter Carter talking.”
She glanced at her watch. “That’s not going to be happening anytime soon.” Her lips twisted. “And my money says that Peter is going to lawyer up. Fast and hard.”
“Then let’s find evidence that talks for him.” He marched toward the exit and Macey fell into step with him. “Dr. Sofia Lopez arrived earlier, right?”
“Yes, but it’s nearly eleven p.m. She won’t be at the ME’s lab now.”
“Let’s get her there.” The sooner they found out the identity of their Jane Doe, the better. He shoved open the door and the crisp night air hit them.
Macey grabbed his arm. “Bowen!”
He whirled back toward her. “He hasn’t called anymore, Macey. No more taunts. No more games.” Bowen pointed back to the hospital. “Is it because he’s in there? Because you and Jonah put bullets in him?”
She swallowed. “Jonah is piecing those computers back together. If he can recover information from the hard drives—”
“Then we can have hard evidence. Fuck, yes, but we need that skull identified ASAP.”
“It doesn’t happen instantly, Bowen!” Frustration burst in her words. “If we can’t make a DNA or dental match, then we’re going to need facial reconstruction work. We’re talking about a process that can take days. Weeks.”
That was time they didn’t have.
Macey pulled out her phone and fired off a text. “I haven’t even talked to Dr. Lopez since she came to town. I made sure security was set up at the lab, but everything was happening so fast then, I didn’t get to discuss much with her.”
Her phone vibrated.
Macey read the text and then her head whipped up. “Dr. Lopez said she met with the mayor, and he set her up in a second lab at the ME’s building.” A surprised breath escaped her. “She’s at the lab now—and working on the skull.”
Fuck, yes. “Let’s go,” Bowen said.
* * *
“BE CAREFUL WITH THOSE!” Jonah barked as the officers picked up another hard drive. There had been five computers in the office and they were all beaten to hell and back.
At his sharp command, the two officers sent him disbelieving looks. “They’re already in pieces, man.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want them in any other pieces. No more damage. The more damage we have, the more corrupt the material will be.” And the harder it will be for me to recover anything. “Be careful with them,” he ordered curtly once more. “I need all of this equipment transferred to the police station.” And he’d be spending all night trying to retrieve the data.
The officers filed out. Jonah put his hands on his hips as he surveyed the area.
“You really think you’ll be able to pull anything off those machines?”
His shoulders stiffened at Tucker’s drawling voice. Jonah glanced over his shoulder. “I can try.”
Tucker stepped into the office. A considering expression was on his face. “You’re the computer whiz, right? You’re supposed to be able to do anything with tech.”
“Almost anything,” Jonah qualified. He didn’t want expectations too high. “I can’t work miracles.” He kept his hands loose at his sides.
Tucker’s bright gaze swept over him. “You fired the first shot tonight.”
And he’d already given statement after statement about that scene. There was always so much red tape at the FBI. Sometimes he wondered how anything got done. “Macey and I were under attack. I did what was necessary.”
“That your first shot in the field?”
“You know it was.” Jonah inclined his head toward the guy—the agent he’d known had never wanted him on the team. “Isn’t that why you campaigned to have Samantha keep me off the unit? Because you didn’t think I’d be able to handle the pressure of the job?”
Tucker didn’t deny the charges. He just raised one brow. “How would you know that?” He tapped his chin and took a step closer to Jonah. “You haven’t been using those tech skills to dip into confidential FBI files, have you? Peeking at files that you shouldn’t see?”
He wasn’t going to bother answering that. “For years, whispers followed you around.” He knew all about Tucker Frost. “Reports claimed that maybe, just maybe, you’d been involved in the murders your brother committed.”
Tucker’s jaw locked.
“But you were still first pick for Samantha Dark’s team. Why was that?” It was a question that had nagged at him because he’d been busting his ass to prove himself at the Bureau. He’d busted his ass, and Tucker Frost had basically flown to the top of the class.
“Samantha wanted me on the team because I stared at the monsters, and I didn’t flinch.”
The monster had been Tucker’s own brother.
Tucker’s eyes swept over him as the other agent said, “When it came down to making a choice, I made that choice. I pulled the trigger and I killed my own brother rather than let him hurt an innocent woman.”
A woman that Tucker loved. Yes, Jonah knew all about that story. And about the fact that Tucker had recently reunited with that woman. Too bad that reunion had caused a wake of bloodshed in New Orleans.
“Then I turned my damn life around,” Tucker added, voice tight. “I made it my mission to hunt others like my brother. The ones who hid behind charming smiles but were really the worst monsters of their kind. I hunted them, I stopped them and I never let emotion get in the way. You can’t, not with this job. If the cases get to you, they will wreck you. They can’t become personal. You can’t let them. If you do, you’ll find yourself with a fast trip to see the Bureau shrink.”
Jonah swallowed. “You don’t think I can handle the pressure of the job?”
“You shot a man tonight, and your hands are dead steady.”
Jonah lifted his hands. They weren’t shaking.
“That tells me that two things could be happening. One, you’ve got fucking ice in your veins. You’ve locked down your emotions and you won’t let the job get to you because nothing gets to you.”
“Is that a bad thing?” An agent should be clearheaded. An agent should get the job done. “I saw Agent Murphy—Bowen killed a man, and the guy is carrying on like it’s business as usual.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Could have fooled me,” Jonah muttered.
“He has,” Tucker assured him flatly. “I know Bowen. I’ve been in the field with him again and again. He shuts down when he has to make the bad choices but Bowen deals with the aftermath. He knows the aftermath is brutal and ugly and that the guilt and second-guessing don’t stop. He shoulders that burden, and he only lets those close to him even see that he’s carrying it.”
His inner circle. Right. Jonah knew that was a circle that he wasn’t a part of, not yet. “Let me get this straight, you’re riding my ass right now because my hands aren’t shaking? But it’s totally cool with you that Bowen fired and never hesitated?” Such bullshit.
A faint half smile curved Tucker’s lips. Jonah didn’t like that smile. To be honest, he didn’t much like Tucker, either. He fought to keep me off this team. “Maybe I’m not being fair. Could be that I don’t know you well enough yet. Maybe you are like Bowen. You lock down tight and only let the ones closest to you see your pain.”
Bowen felt pain? That was news to him.
“It’s so important in this job...to be able to fucking empathize. With the victims. With the families. You have to be able to understand pain.”
The guy thought he didn’t know about pain? Bullshit.
“But p
erhaps there is another option at play with you. Maybe the crash just hasn’t hit you yet. It hasn’t fully settled into your head that you were seconds away from dying tonight. You fired wildly when he came at you, and that’s why you only clipped him in the shoulder. If Peter Carter hadn’t been desperate and frantic with fear, the scene could have gone down different, and that truth hasn’t really struck you yet. You don’t realize that death was breathing down your neck, but it was. And if Macey Night hadn’t fired her shot to take down Carter—that’s down and not out, because Macey, she’s the kind that always tries to save people, even when they don’t deserve it—if she hadn’t fired, you would have just stood there and watched Carter blow his own brains out.”
Jonah flinched. “You don’t know...”
“Isn’t that what you did before?” Tucker pushed.
It was just the two of them in that office, and the tension that he’d always felt when Tucker was around, it was boiling to the surface.
“Because I know the stories about you, too,” Tucker said quietly as his watchful gaze swept over Jonah. “I know that your father used a gun on your brother and your sister. I know that he turned that gun on your mother.”
Jonah’s hands clenched into fists.
“And then I know that you were in the room the whole time. You watched while he finally turned that gun on himself.”
The sound of Jonah’s pounding heartbeat filled his own ears.
“The only one to survive,” Tucker murmured. “That was you, right? You made it out, but the rest of your family didn’t. You stood there, and they all died.”
“I was...eleven. What did you want me to do?” His voice was too rough. Too ragged. He needed to fix that. He needed to control that. Control.
“You’re not eleven anymore. Yet you just watched a man nearly kill himself, the same way your father did, and you have no reaction?” Tucker’s hard gaze swept over him. “That shit worries me. That shit is the reason I’m—how did you put it?—‘riding your ass’ right now. Because your reaction isn’t adding up for me.”
“You don’t need to worry about me.” Jonah forced his hands to unclench, but he couldn’t stop his heart from racing. “You’ve doubted me the entire time.” Maybe the gloves needed to come off. No more lying. Clear the damn air.
Again, Tucker didn’t deny the accusation. He wasn’t the type to deny. Or to lie. But he was sure as fuck apparently the type to judge.
“I’m not some ex-SEAL like you are,” Jonah snarled. “I haven’t spent my life running into battle.” Or killing. “I lost my whole family on the worst night of my life. And I wondered why. Why did it happen? Why did everything go so horribly wrong? Why did I lose them and why—why the fucking hell—was I left standing? I asked myself that every day. I asked myself that every single time I went to see a shrink. Because when I was a kid, being bumped from foster home to foster home because everyone thought I must be tainted, they made me see a shrink. Made me talk about that night over and over until it was burning in my head.”
Tucker just watched him.
“I don’t judge you because of what your brother did. How the fuck dare you stand there and judge me?”
But Tucker shook his head. “Not judging you. Never said you were guilty of anything. But I did say you’re acting as if nothing happened. And that’s not good. I need to know that my agents are sound—that their pasts won’t wreck them on a case.”
“I’m not wrecked,” he gritted out. “I’m doing my job, and you need to stop pushing me.” Was the guy just testing him? Jonah thought Tucker was, and he was going to pass this test, just like he’d passed all of the others thrown into his path over the years. “I deserve to be here.”
Tucker moved to stand right in front of him. “You were closer to the perp than Macey. I saw the crime scene. You should have shot first. You hesitated. You can’t do that again. Not when another agent’s life is on the line.”
Jonah swallowed. “You have to get past this grudge you have against me.”
“You’ve spent the last five years behind a computer. You haven’t gotten enough fieldwork experience. I might sound like a grade-A bastard, but it’s because I’m putting the team first. You have to be able to count on the man or woman at your side. Hesitations cost lives. Simple fact.”
Jonah’s spine was so stiff and straight that it hurt. “I can contribute to this team. Macey knows that—Macey trusts me.”
“I get that Macey went to bat for you, but I also know why. You were helping her track Haddox, weren’t you?”
He had to tread carefully. “I was helping her look for patterns. Patterns are the key, you see. You might not even know that a killer was hunting, not until you looked at the patterns in an area.”
Tucker blinked and then his whole expression seemed to lock down. “That’s how you find where serials are hunting.”
“Yes!” Maybe the guy did get it. “You don’t even need all the boots on the ground.” That was old-school thinking. “We can analyze from missing persons’ reports. NamUS. We can look at the times of the year when the disappearances occur. I’ve even made a program that can predict victim-type based on previous disappearances and—”
“Have you used this program of yours on any serials out there now?” Tucker’s voice was too flat. His face was blank, and no emotion showed in his eyes.
And he was talking about me not responding the right way.
“Just practice runs, nothing substantial, not yet.” But he planned to take his program to Samantha Dark as soon as this case was tied up. Now that he was on the team, Jonah knew it was time to take things to the next level—
“Because I can’t help but notice, we have a perp here who has been hunting serials. He took out Daniel Haddox. He took out Patrick Remus. He found Curtis Zale. He used profiling tricks and he predicted where they would be. Sounds a whole fucking lot like the program you’re discussing.” His head tilted. “We already thought the guy had a background in law enforcement.”
“Wait! Wait!” Jonah laughed and the sound was raw to his own ears. “You aren’t serious.” Anger began to stir in him when Tucker just stared back at him. “You think I’m involved in this? That I’m a killer?” He’d gone from not having the right reaction after a shooting to being a killer? Was that jerk for real?
“I think I’m not exactly sure when you arrived in Gatlinburg. We came separately, and all I know is that you got to the cabin that had been booked for us sometime before dawn.”
“I was in the area,” he snapped. “I drove over myself because I’d just finished some vacation time. I was in Asheville—”
“That’s damn close. So close that you could have gone to Daniel Haddox’s home on a quick trip from Asheville. So close that you could have come here and taken Patrick Remus. So close—”
Jonah surged toward him, standing toe to toe. “This is bullshit. I’m a fucking FBI agent! I’m on your team, and you’re going to throw this crap at me?” He shook his head in disgust. “I wanted to prove myself to you. Wanted to show you that I could do the job, and now you’re suspecting me...because what? Because I have a shitty past and you think I might fit your profile? I was in Asheville because that’s where my family’s home is—not my real family, because as you pointed out, they’re all dead. But the last foster family I wound up with? I stayed with them...my foster mother is still in Asheville and I try to visit her every now and then.”
“So that would make you very familiar with this area.”
Yes, he was familiar with it. So what? “I created my program because I wanted to stop predators. I wanted to hunt the killers, not be one of them.” He shouldered around the other agent. “Now, I’m going back to the police station with the cops out there. I’ll be finding material on the computers that connects us to the real killer.” In the doorway, he stopped, and his hands flew up to grab the door frame.
“They’re shaking now,” Tucker said.
Jonah fired a glance over his shoulder. “Becau
se I’m pissed off. I thought you were going to accept me. I thought the whole team would. Isn’t that the point of our unit? We’ve all got ties to killers. I’m freaking FBI. And you dare to suspect one of your own?” He was done. Done. He marched away without giving Tucker a chance to respond.
Tucker Frost could go screw himself. Jonah had a job to do. He’d do it. He’d prove exactly who was guilty.
* * *
TUCKER WAITED UNTIL Jonah had stormed away. Then he pulled out his phone and called Samantha Dark. He knew it was the middle of the night, but that didn’t matter. Samantha would be waiting for his call. After all, she was the one who’d tipped him off about Jonah moments before he’d walked into that office. If it hadn’t been for her call, he never would have pursued his line of questioning with the other agent.
She answered on the second ring. “Well?”
“You’re sure the leaks in the office go back to him?”
“I’ve got five techs working on this.” Her voice was weary but firm. “He’s been slipping into personnel files here. He wanted to know more about our team. That raises every red flag I’ve got.”
Especially since their perp knew so much about Bowen’s life.
“Jonah said he made a program to track serials,” Tucker told her. “But he told me that he’d only used it on practice runs.” He wanted to be fucking wrong. He wanted Samantha to be wrong. What practice runs? Who was his guinea pig? Was it Daniel Haddox? Patrick Remus? Why hadn’t Jonah told him?
There was a moment of silence on the line, and then Samantha announced, “We need to notify Macey and Bowen about the discovery of the personnel leaks at the FBI. And I’m getting on the jet and coming to Gatlinburg tonight.” Tension crackled in every word. “I want you to stay close to Jonah, understand? We could be wrong, but it’s not adding up.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Maybe he’s not involved in the crimes,” Samantha said. “I still need to know why he thinks he can sneak into confidential records for other agents. He has no business doing that.”