by Cynthia Eden
No, he didn’t. And that was a huge problem. “Jonah just left to get a ride with the cops downstairs. Said he was heading back to the police station.”
“Stay with him, Tucker. Every step of the way, got it?”
“Got it.” He hung up and hurried downstairs. He threw open the door. The crowd had dispersed—people were finally going home for the night. About time. It’s nearing midnight. He saw the two officers he’d passed earlier, and they were still loading the confiscated computer equipment into their van. He jogged toward them. “Where’s Agent Loxley?”
They turned and frowned at him.
“The agent who told you to pack up all of this equipment,” he clarified because there had been a ton of local agents running around earlier. “Where is he?”
“Don’t know,” one of the officers replied. “Haven’t seen him.”
No, that didn’t make any sense. Jonah had just gone that way. Tucker yanked out his phone. He dialed Jonah. It rang once, twice—
I hear the phone. He turned away from the cops. Went to the side of the building, and right there, with its screen cracked, lay Jonah’s phone. It was still ringing, but Jonah was nowhere to be found.
Just the broken phone.
Tucker’s heart lurched in his chest.
We have a big fucking problem.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“THE VICTIM IS a woman,” Dr. Sofia Lopez said as she pointed toward the skull with a gloved hand. She bit her lower lip. “But, um, you both already know that, right?”
Right.
“Men tend to have heavier skulls,” Dr. Lopez added. “Thicker ones. They’re also generally bigger than female skulls.” Her gloved finger moved toward the eye socket. “And you can see the sex here, too. Women have an, um, the ridge here is sharper than for a man.”
“Any idea how old she was?” Bowen asked. He was right beside Macey, and his arm brushed against her.
“Oh, yeah, that was something else easy to see. It’s all in the teeth, you know.” Dr. Lopez flashed them a vague smile. “All of the teeth have erupted. Usually teeth finish erupting by around a person’s twenty-first birthday. This skull—I mean, this victim—she had a lot of dental work. She even still has her bar in place.” She indicated the bar that was attached just behind the bottom teeth.
Macey stared at the skull. The nails had been removed, and now gaping holes were left in the skull. It wasn’t white and gleaming, but brown. Almost stained? “Did he paint the skull?”
“Yeah, I think so, I chipped off some samples and I sent them in for testing,” the ME replied. Her face turned considering. “I think he did it to give the appearance of it being an old skull.”
“How did she die?” Bowen asked.
Dr. Lopez lifted the skull. “See this hole here?” She tapped it with her finger. “This didn’t come from a nail. Her skull was cracked.”
“Blow to the head,” Macey concluded.
The ME nodded. “That would have done it. That would have killed our vic.”
Macey glanced at Bowen. “Peter kept saying it was an accident.”
“What? You think the vic fell and hit her head?” His lips twisted. “Don’t buy it. He kept the skull. He was covering up his crime. He killed her.”
“And he might have killed more, right?” the doctor blurted.
Macey and Bowen both glanced back at her.
She swallowed. “I, um, I went ahead and got to work on Captain Henry Harwell. And I noticed something really interesting. Something you’ve got to see.” She put the skull back down on the exam table and hurried toward the line of storage lockers.
They weren’t in McKinley’s lab, but instead were in another space just down the hallway. When Macey had walked in, she’d seen the uniformed police officer standing in the hallway. He’d demanded to review their ID before allowing them inside.
Dr. Lopez opened the locker and pulled out the slab. She unzipped the body bag, and Macey saw Henry Harwell’s still face.
“I had him transferred in,” Dr. Lopez said. “Now look at this.” She turned his head sideways and Macey realized that the ME had shaved the hair around his wound.
“It’s exactly the same size,” Dr. Lopez said. “His wound matches the wound in the skull you gave me! Both are the exact same diameter. Both caused the exact same kind of damage, and I believe,” she added, eyes gleaming, “they were made with the exact same type of weapon.”
“A hammer,” Macey said.
The doctor nodded. “Damn straight.” She rolled back her shoulders. “So maybe you do have your killer. Your Peter Carter killed this mystery woman and Captain Harwell. He could have killed them all!” Dr. Lopez added, as her voice hitched. “Maybe Harwell was his intended target all along, but he killed the others to throw you off his scent. He wanted you to think the murders were for another reason, when all along he was just working his way up to Harwell—”
“No.” Macey’s quiet voice cut through the other woman’s tumble of words.
The ME blinked.
Macey eased out a slow breath. “I know you followed Haddox’s crimes, Dr. Lopez.”
“I studied them extensively,” she said, her eyelids flickering. “I knew about Haddox, and I’ve studied other big serials, too. There’s so much to learn from them—”
“You don’t hunt down some of the most infamous serial killers in the US because you want their deaths to be cover for you.” No, there was much more at play. Macey shared a quick look with Bowen.
He cleared his throat. “These serial killers were hidden, well hidden. They were predators at their core. It would have been very hard to catch them unaware, and Peter Carter...to go and kill them just so that he could work his way up to Henry Harwell? That would have created unnecessary risk for him.”
The ME’s gaze dropped to Harwell’s body.
And Macey’s phone rang. The shrill cry caused Dr. Lopez to jump.
“Excuse me,” Macey murmured. She backed away as she saw that Tucker’s number appeared on the screen of her phone. She exited the lab space and nodded toward the uniformed officer who still stood guard. Macey put the phone to her ear. “Tucker? Is there news?”
“Jonah Loxley is missing.”
Those were the last words she’d expected. “What?”
“There are some things...shit, there’s some stuff you need to know, okay? Listen, where are you and Bowen right now?”
“We’re at the ME’s building with Dr. Lopez.”
“Get to the police station. I’m on my way there now.”
“Tucker, what happened?”
“Jonah walked out of the museum and vanished. All I found was his busted cell phone.”
Her heart lurched in her chest. “You think he was taken by our perp?”
She heard voices in the background.
“I’ve got an APB out for him now,” Tucker said. “I’ll tell you more at the station, okay? Meet me there in twenty minutes.”
He hung up.
She heard the lab door open. Her gaze swung to find Bowen standing in the doorway. She could see the concern in his gaze. “I—I need to talk with you.” Dr. Lopez was peeking over his shoulder. Macey cleared her throat. “Dr. Lopez, please update us right away when you learn new information.” But the ME couldn’t possibly stay there all night. “Did you get your room in town settled?”
“I did. I’m heading there now.” Wearily, the doctor rubbed at the back of her neck. “I just need to crash for a while, and then I’ll be back at it. Count on me calling you the minute I have news.” She eased around Bowen, then nodded to both him and Macey. “Thank you for bringing me onto this case. Thank you for trusting me with the job.”
Macey’s hand flew out and touched the other woman’s shoulder. “No, thank you for helping us. I know that you and Dr. McKinley are friends—”
“He’s been a mentor to me,” the ME replied, and for a moment, tears gleamed in her eyes. “He’s...he’s going to be okay, right?”
“Y
es.” She was certain of this. He would recover. “He spoke highly of you, Dr. Lopez. He said he trusted you to get this job done.”
Her shoulders straightened. “I will get it done.”
A few moments later, the cop escorted Dr. Lopez out of the lab and toward the waiting elevator. Macey and Bowen were left in the hallway. She walked over the tiled floor, her gaze drawn helplessly to the spot that had been marked by McKinley’s blood. Someone had done a very good job of cleaning the scene.
As soon as the elevator doors closed and Dr. Lopez was gone with her cop, Macey turned toward Bowen. “Jonah Loxley is missing.”
He shook his head, even as surprise had his eyes flaring.
“That was Tucker on the phone. He said Jonah left the museum and vanished. The only thing he found at the scene was Jonah’s cell phone.”
“Fuck.”
“Tucker wants us at the police station, right now.”
“He thinks the perp took Jonah?”
“He didn’t say, but what else could he think? This killer went after a cop, he went after the ME and now he’s taken an FBI agent.” He’d been taunting Bowen all along, and she’d feared he’d be the one attacked by the killer. Her hands were clammy. “He took one of our own.” The fact that Jonah was missing—that proved that Peter Carter couldn’t be the perp they were after. Had he killed his girlfriend? Yes, she believed he had.
But the man they were after...
He was still hunting.
He wasn’t in some hospital bed, under police guard.
He was somewhere in Gatlinburg, and he had new prey.
* * *
MACEY FELT AS if she were running on empty. She and Bowen rushed into the police station, and they found Tucker waiting on them. He gave a jerking motion of his hand and they filed into the conference room. As soon as the door closed behind them...
“Samantha Dark is on her way to Gatlinburg,” he announced flatly. “She’s going to be joining us for this investigation, but she’s actually been working on the case all along.” His gaze swept between them. “Samantha found...glitches, I guess you could say, in the FBI’s personnel files.”
“Glitches?” Bowen repeated as his brows shot up. “What kind of glitches?”
Tucker crossed his arms over his chest. “It was your file that was the red flag. Someone accessed it illegally. Dug into the reports on your talks with the FBI shrink, revealed the case history you had with Arnold Shaw—”
“In other words, someone ripped into my life.”
Bowen inclined his head. “Not just someone... The hack has been traced back to Jonah Loxley.”
Macey took a quick step back, shocked to her core. “What?” But then, before he could respond, Macey shook her head in denial. “There’s a mistake here. He wouldn’t do that—”
“No mistake. She thought he might be the patsy for someone else—that was her first suspicion, so Samantha pulled in a whole team of cyber analysts. They traced the hacks back to Jonah Loxley’s home. And these hacks? They’ve been going on for months. Ever since Samantha created her team.”
She could hear a dull ringing in her ears. But I trusted him. He was my friend.
She’d trusted him, the same way she’d trusted Daniel Haddox.
“Jonah hacked into the files of everyone on Samantha’s team,” Tucker said grimly. “And by the guy’s own confession to me, he’s been developing a program that will help him to track and identify serial killers, to find them when they’re hiding.”
Bowen swore. “Hiding...just like the Doctor. Like the Pyro.”
“They could have been test runs,” Tucker said.
Macey could only stare at them both, in shock. “You’re not serious.” Hacking into computer files at the Bureau was one thing, but what they seemed to be suggesting... “This is bullshit! He’s one of us! He’s missing now—”
“He’s missing.” Tucker nodded. “He went missing right after I threw my suspicions at him. Less than five minutes later, the guy went AWOL. That timing, it’s a little too convenient for me.”
It might be convenient, but that didn’t mean Jonah was a killer. “He is one of us,” she snapped. “I’ve been friends with him for a long time. He busted his ass to get on this team. He wanted to prove—” But she broke off because she realized her words weren’t going to help Jonah.
They’d only be another nail in his coffin.
But Bowen knew exactly what she’d planned to say. “He wanted to prove that he was a good profiler, right? That he could find the killers better than the rest of us. Us being the ones who’d originally been picked for Samantha’s team.”
Macey swallowed. “We need to find him. That’s our priority. We find him. We make sure he’s safe, then we can get answers to our questions.”
“You were the closest one to him, Macey.” Tucker began to pace. “You didn’t see any red flags? Anything that might make you think—”
“Think what?” she snapped back. “That he’s some kind of killer? No, no, I didn’t think that. I’ve never thought that.” She still couldn’t. They were just talking about suspicions, not facts. Not yet. “He wants to help people, same as we do.”
“He hacked into our files, Macey. He did that. The evidence is conclusive.”
“And we can question him about that, after we find him.” She shook her head. “Look, let’s focus here. We need security footage. I saw cameras all around the oddities museum. Let’s tap into them and see what happened.”
“Already working on that,” Tucker assured her. “But Jonah’s phone was found on the side of the building. The sides and the back—there are no cameras there.”
Her nails were biting into her palms.
A knock sounded at the door. “Come in,” Tucker called.
Officer Tanner O’Neil—with dark circles beneath his eyes and stubble grazing his cheeks—appeared in the doorway. “I—I heard about the skull you found today.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I think I may know who your mystery woman is.”
They all surged toward him.
He licked his lips. “I saw Henry with her once. The guy acted like he was wild for her, but said she wanted to keep things secret.”
“What’s her name?” Bowen demanded.
“Susannah. Susannah Kaiser. She looked like she was in her early twenties. Blond hair. Pretty smile.” He swallowed. “She left town...or, I thought she did...back before summer started. Henry didn’t talk about her after that. Said she hadn’t chosen him and that was all there was to it.”
Maybe she had, though. Maybe she’d chosen him and Peter Carter hadn’t been able to live with that choice.
“We need every bit of intel we can get on Susannah,” Bowen said. His body was tight with tension. “Her family, her friends. Anyone who was close to her—we need to know who those people are.”
Tanner nodded. “I can get that for you.” But he hesitated. “I heard the cops talking... Was Henry killed because of her? Did that guy at the museum kill him?”
“We need to talk with Susannah’s family,” Bowen said again. “The more information we learn about her, the more we’ll understand her killer.”
Tanner nodded and hurried away.
“We need to take a step back here,” Macey said, striving to keep her voice flat. “Look, I get that the hacks at the FBI look bad—they are bad. But we can’t overlook the possibility that the perp we’re after here has taken Jonah. I mean, doesn’t Jonah fit this guy’s MO perfectly? What if he knows Jonah broke the rules at the FBI? You said Jonah disappeared after you confronted him, right?”
Tucker nodded.
“Maybe our perp thinks Jonah did something wrong. He loves guilt so much.” She rocked forward onto the balls of her feet. “Are we sure there wasn’t any surveillance equipment at the museum? If this guy was after Peter Carter, if he knew what Peter Carter had done, then it only stands to reason that he was watching him, too.”
Bowen moved closer. “If he was watching Carter, then the surveilla
nce equipment could still have been operating. He could have heard your accusations against Jonah. Maybe he thought the guy was guilty—or hell, maybe he just thought Jonah would make for a good fall guy.”
“Crime scene techs are still searching the museum,” Tucker said. “If they find anything...”
Then they’d know the killer had been watching.
“The techs swept Henry’s office,” Tucker added. “They didn’t find anything. And we don’t have any report of equipment being found at Haddox’s place, either. Could be that the guy removed the devices after his kills.”
Because the guy was very good at covering his ass. “He isn’t just going to let Jonah go. If our perp took him, it’s just another game,” Macey said. “He will kill him.”
* * *
HE WAS SURROUNDED by darkness. And his head fucking hurt.
Jonah twisted his body. His hands were bound behind his back. He was trapped, fucking tied up like an animal. His knees rapped into metal and he felt the rope bite into his ankles.
He was...moving. He could feel it. A steady roll beneath him and the crunch of gravel?
I’m in the trunk. In the fucking trunk.
He’d been at the museum, pissed and scared because he’d realized his hacks had been found at the FBI. That was the only explanation for Tucker being in his face all of a sudden. Samantha Dark must have found out what he’d done, and she’d sent her bulldog agent to interrogate him. Everything he’d wanted had been exploding in his face. Then—
Then I don’t remember. But my head fucking hurts.
The car stopped moving. He heard a door slam. Were those footsteps, walking on the gravel? He tensed and then he heard the groan of the trunk as it opened.
Light didn’t pour in. It was too dark outside for light but he strained anyway, trying to see the face of the bastard who’d taken him.
“I admired your work, Agent Loxley.”
He blinked, surprise shoving through him.
“It’s such a pity...that I’m going to have to kill you now.”
* * *
DAWN HAD FINALLY COME. They’d searched for hours, they’d scoured security footage from every business near the museum, but they hadn’t found Jonah.