The Surviving Girls

by Katee Robert

  Careful, there. You’re thinking like a victim. This guy wants a piece of you? Let him come. You’ll put him in the ground the way you weren’t able to with Travis.

  The thought rang hollow. Lei was capable, but she wasn’t an international badass. She was only human, and humans made mistakes. Mistakes are something I’m good at.

  They ended up in the kitchen, and Saul instantly left his comfortable place on the cool tile floor to come to her. He always knew when her emotions were getting the best of her, even if she’d perfected her poker face a long time ago. Lei crouched down and wrapped her arms around him, giving herself five seconds to lean on him.

  Warmth. Comfort. A steady presence that calmed her racing thoughts.

  She inhaled deeply. His doggy smell was comforting even as she wrinkled her nose. “You need a bath.” Four, three, two, one. Move. She scratched him behind his ear and stood. “You might as well get some sleep, boy. We’re going to be a while.”

  Emma grabbed two cookies and tossed her one. “Let’s get started.”

  They headed for Emma’s office, which doubled as a secondary safe room. It had no windows, and they’d had a contractor come in from out of state to reinforce the walls with steel plates so no one could chop their way through. Emma had set up a network that couldn’t be cut from outside the room, and she had a phone line routed to both safe rooms—the only one in the house. The safe next to the couch held a small arsenal, their bugout bags, and two first-aid kits.

  The room wouldn’t hold up against an assault indefinitely, but it would keep them safe until reinforcements arrived.

  The actual safe room was upstairs, and they could access it from either of their closets. Someone would have to know it was there to find it, and even if they did, no one was getting inside that room with anything short of serious hardware.

  Emma dropped into the fancy chair in front of her computer setup. Three massive monitors were arranged on the sturdy desk, and she immediately started clicking through things fast enough to make Lei’s brain hurt.

  Hard to believe that when she was in Omega Delta Lambda, Emma’s major had been nutrition science. These days she spent as much of her time on the dark net as she did anywhere else. Her program made a big difference in helping find the lost ones—the people who up and disappeared one day. It cross-referenced their information with Jane and John Does that were reported over the years. The numbers on both sides of things were astronomical, so it would never have an end, but Lei suspected that was part of what drew Emma to the task in the first place.

  They both needed purpose.

  Emma put names to the ones who had been found. Lei found the ones who had been hidden.

  They were doing good work, though no one attached to their old lives saw it that way. Penance, Lei’s parents called it. Disturbed and disgusting, from Emma’s mother. It shouldn’t matter what they thought. It didn’t matter most days.

  Her friend cursed, and Lei spun to find her glaring at the monitors lining the wall adjacent to the desk. There were twelve of them—six on the right only lighting up when movement triggered the cameras sprinkled throughout the property, six on the left showing strategically placed cameras that were recording at all times.

  Lei recognized the battered old Jeep pulling up the driveway and sighed. Should have expected this. “You know he won’t leave until he sees that you’re okay.” Sheriff Bamford—Isaac, as he insisted they call him—wasn’t a bad guy as such things went, but he’d run Stillwater for the last fifteen years, and he took any threat against its citizens personally. They were all under his protection by virtue of being part of the town. He hadn’t known what to think of Emma and Lei when they first moved into this house, but once he realized they weren’t romantically involved, he’d developed something of a crush on Emma.

  Calling it a crush felt juvenile, but the description fit. Isaac orchestrated reasons to come out to the house to “check on” them regularly, and he always seemed to pop up when Lei went into town. She knew Stillwater’s gossip mill was to blame for that, and they found the sheriff’s interest in Emma as fascinating as the most recent season of whatever dating reality show was on TV. Attractive and in his late thirties, Isaac was one of the only eligible bachelors in the area, which meant speculation ran rampant about when Emma would finally settle in and make an honest man of him.

  Lei could have told them it was a lost cause. Emma preferred her relationships through the safety of the computer screen. Lei didn’t ask too many questions about the semantics behind that because it wasn’t her business. They both had their own way of dealing with the crushing loneliness that breached their defenses in moments of weakness. They had each other, but there were still gaps that neither could fill for the other. Nor should they. They were already too codependent. Unhealthily so, according to the last therapist her mother had thrown their way.

  Lei had fired him after a month. After he went through what they had, he could talk shit about being unhealthily codependent.

  Emma clicked something that had her computers going blank and pushed to her feet. Her shapeless sweater covered her to just above her knees, and her knitted socks left only a sliver of black leggings showing, but she could have been wearing a paper bag and still look beautiful. It was something her friend used to know and capitalize on—she’d loved her curves and loved showing them off.

  But that was Before.

  Then again, Lei was hardly the same bright-eyed, naive coed she’d been Before, either.

  They met Isaac at the front door. He could have been pulled from the pages of a hiking magazine—all rugged good looks, broad shoulders, and close-cropped ginger beard. He was handsome enough, but Lei wasn’t remotely attracted to him—the only sign she really needed that he was a good guy.

  “Ladies. The Feds called me on their way out of town.” He stepped into the house and raised his eyebrows when Lei leaned against the wall and Emma took up a position in the doorway leading to the sitting room. “I take it this won’t be a long talk.” His voice sounded a bit like he’d gargled gravel. It made Lei think he must have been a smoker at some point in his life.

  Emma crossed her arms over her chest. “We have a lot of work to do.”

  Lei shot her friend a look. It was one thing not to be interested, but they didn’t need to piss Isaac off. He didn’t seem the petty type, but if he was so inclined, he could become a royal pain in the ass. “What Emma means is that talking with the Feds was exhausting, so we’re both tired. Is there something we can help you with, Sheriff?”

  His hazel eyes flicked from Emma to Lei and back again, and his voice softened. “I came by to make sure you were okay.”

  Lei and Emma both trained regularly in jujitsu, and she dragged Emma out to their makeshift shooting range on the property once a week. She didn’t know what kind of training was required for someone to be sheriff of a tiny town, but she’d wager they were better prepared than Isaac was. “We’re fine.”

  “Fine and dandy,” Emma quipped.

  Isaac cursed and yanked his hat off. “Even if you weren’t, you wouldn’t tell me, would you?”

  No. There was exactly one person Lei could rely on in this world, and she was standing in that room. Everyone else was expendable—and a potential enemy. Including Isaac. She wouldn’t tell him that, because it would hurt him, and it wasn’t personal. The frustration rolling off him in waves made her relent, despite herself. “There’s nothing to say, Isaac. Three girls died, and whoever did it has some kind of fascination with us. How do you think we’re doing?”

  He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I get it. I’m sorry. I didn’t think.” He straightened, layers of professionalism sliding into place like unruffling feathers. “If you want a security detail, let me know and I’ll get one of the boys out here. Doesn’t have to be in the house.” He paused, looking at each of them in turn. “You get in over your head, there’s no shame in calling for help. I’ll make sure someone’s close enough to ge
t here in time. You might not see it that way, but you’re one of us in Stillwater. We take care of our own.”

  Emma flinched as if he’d reached out and struck her. “Thank you.” Her words were stones dropped into a still pool, and Lei couldn’t help thinking they’d regret the resulting ripples.

  Paranoid. Without a doubt. She preferred it that way.

  Her long-held nightmare had returned, and this time it didn’t wear a face she recognized. Anyone could be the killer—except Travis Berkley. He was safely behind bars and would remain there for as long as she had any say in the matter. Lei didn’t care if she was eighty years old, she’d still be sitting in that courtroom and recounting her own personal horror story to ensure he stayed safely in that six-by-eight cell. If only he hadn’t dodged the goddamn death penalty.

  She blinked, realizing that Emma had ushered Isaac out onto the porch. Their soft good-byes were different, a change from Emma’s normally clipped tones. Lei shifted, trying to get a better look at them. Maybe I was wrong all along about her not being interested . . .

  Her friend closed the door and locked it. When she turned around, resolution firmed the lines of her face. “Let’s get to work.”

  Or maybe Emma was just doing what needed to be done to get him the hell out of here.

  CHAPTER SIX

  California State Prison looked like every other prison Dante had ever had cause to visit. Massive fence overlooked by watchtowers. Everything vaguely dusty, as if it was a place time had forgotten, and as beige as if the color had been slowly leached from it.

  Dante parked but made no move to get out of the car. He drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel, turning over the facts the same way he had on the flight down here. They had plenty of evidence, but nothing resembling a suspect. Detective Smith and his people were interviewing friends and known associates of the girls, but if this was a love letter to Travis Berkley, the sorority had more significance than the identities of the victims.

  He hated that.

  Three girls were dead. They should be at the center of this all, rather than a footnote in a tragedy that started twelve years ago.

  “Prisons creep me out.”

  He glanced at Clarke, finding her peering out the windshield at the tall stone walls surrounding them. Two men watched from each of the towers. She shuddered narrow shoulders. “You ever feel like one of these days, we’ll go interview a monster and they’ll decide we’re more suited to being locked up, too?”

  Dante chewed on that for a moment. “We’re the good guys.”

  “Roll in the shit long enough and you’re no different from the pigs.”

  He leaned back and looked at her—really looked at her. “This one’s getting to you more than the others. Why?”

  “It’s getting to you, too. You haven’t said more than a word since we booked the tickets. You’re not the chattiest of assholes, but you don’t do the silent thing unless you’re worried.” She dug through her purse and yanked a hair tie out to pull her red curls back from her face.

  Damn it, she’s right. He rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth, but there was no overriding the bad taste this whole thing left. “I read the news articles from back when the Sorority Row Murders happened. I hadn’t realized how beloved Berkley was.” It defied comprehension that not only had Lei and Emma gone through that horror show but that initially they’d also been met with disbelief and downright amusement when they’d accused Berkley. That monster had almost walked free by virtue of his family, money, and reputation. Judging from Britton’s profile, if Berkley had gone free, he would have tracked down Lei and Emma and finished the job.

  Similar to what someone was doing now.

  He kept picturing Lei, the way her lips tightened when he’d delivered the news. That was it. The only reaction she’d allowed. Dante didn’t have the same hang-ups some men did about pretty women being fragile—he was partnered with Clarke, after all—but Lei was a civilian. She didn’t have to spend every day peering into the darkness to get a better look at the monsters who moved within it.

  She didn’t have to, but she’d chosen to.

  What kind of woman survives a massacre and spends her life hunting dead bodies?

  He didn’t have an immediate answer to that, and it intrigued him more than it probably should have. Lei would have been more than entitled to break down in shock—to cry—but she’d just nodded as if she’d expected something like this to happen all along. “Those women deserve better.”

  “Those women . . . or Lei?” She held up her hands when he shot her a look. “Come on, Dante. Give me a little credit here. I’m a fucking FBI agent. You and Ms. Zhang’s chemistry sparked hot enough that I was about to go looking for a fire extinguisher.” She reached for the door. “I’m not exactly a stickler for the rules—”

  “No shit, really?”

  “Shut up.” She waited until they strode through the main entrance to continue. “The kill count surpassed twenty last time something like this happened, and even if it’s playing out differently now, we can’t afford for either of us to be distracted. Your attraction to that woman is a distraction.”

  “It’s nothing.” The words tasted like a lie, but he didn’t correct them. He might admire the hell out of Lei Zhang, and she might be one of the strongest and most beautiful women he’d ever seen, but finding the unsub was more important than anything else. It had to be.

  “If you say so.”

  They went through security with little fuss and met the warden on the other side. Geoffrey Franklin had been in charge of California State Prison for thirty years, and he looked like he could go another thirty without a problem. His close-cropped gray hair, combined with the set of his shoulders and the purposeful way he moved, had Dante marking him as former military. Franklin nodded as if they’d said something and turned. “This way.”

  Dante fell into step next to him, leaving Clarke to bring up the back. She preferred to let him do the talking—he preferred it, too. Even when she wasn’t going out of her way to play bad cop, oftentimes Clarke rubbed people—especially men—the wrong way. “Berkley’s in solitary?”

  “Usually. He doesn’t play well with others.” Franklin’s gruff tone spoke of how much he liked that.

  “Fights?” It didn’t fit the profile of the guy he’d read about up to this point, but prison changed people—usually for the worse.

  Franklin shook his head. “Nothing like that. He likes games. He riles up one inmate and sets them on another. Nothing we can officially trace back to him, but when he gets tired of the games, he’ll do something to cross the line and get back into solitary. It’s a pattern that’s repeated itself regularly since he showed up here.”

  That sounded more like what he’d expected.

  Travis Berkley was pure predator, and being in prison and surrounded by other predators wouldn’t be enough to force him to change his nature. If anything, prison sharpened those instincts. “Is there someone he’s interacted with named Trevor?” A long shot, but he had to ask.

  Franklin frowned. “Name’s not familiar, which only means he wasn’t cell mates with this guy. I can talk to the guards. They’d know better than I would.”

  “Appreciate it.” Sometimes serial killers gained fans through the media, and sometimes they influenced other inmates to do their bidding. Unlikely given Berkley’s profile, but stranger things had happened. “We’ll need access to his mail.”

  “I’ll have my guy put it together for you. We check it all before it gets into Berkley’s hands, and my guys personally went through it a second time after your call yesterday.” Franklin’s lip actually curled. “There’s a large amount of it.”

  Unsurprising. Serial killers held a kind of fascination for society. For most people, it was a morbid feeling that intrigued them even as they were horrified. A real-life scary movie—something they could research and read about and share with their friends.

  For others, the fascination went much deeper. They wrote. T
here was a whole subset of people who fantasized about killers romantically. From Travis’s pictures, Dante imagined he got a whole hell of a lot of mail of that variety.

  Franklin led them to a door. “He’s in there. Question him as long as you need to, and knock when you’re finished. I’ll be in my office if you want to talk further.”

  “Thank you.” He waited for Franklin to walk away before turning to Clarke. “You want in the room or out?”

  “In,” she responded promptly. “If he focuses on me, that will free you up to ask questions that might get something resembling an honest response.”

  “You know better.” They were mostly here for the mail. Britton had pegged Travis as a sadistic sociopath. He had a borderline-genius IQ, and he liked to play games. The only reason he’d talk at this point was because he was bored out of his damn mind. That still didn’t mean they’d get anything useful. “Let’s do this.”

  Dante let Clarke go first and followed her into the room. Travis Berkley looked up and smiled when he caught sight of them. “The FBI. Lucky me.”

  He really was a handsome bastard. Even sitting there, dressed in orange and handcuffed to both the table and the floor, Berkley looked exactly like what he had been before he murdered twenty-one girls in cold blood—the star football player who was well liked by everyone and spent weekends on his family’s yacht. His blond hair was a little shaggier than it had been in his pictures, and his shoulders and body were corded with more muscle, but those amused blue eyes were the same.

  A pretty college girl wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Lei hadn’t stood a chance.

  It was hard to picture the woman he’d met the day before being tempted by something as superficial as good looks, but twelve years was a long time. Dante took a seat next to Clarke.

  Berkley flicked a glance over her and focused on Dante. “You look suitably glowering. Who died and brought the Feds to my door?” Something like lust flickered across his face. “Was it Lei?”

  Dante caught himself leaning forward and forced his posture to relax. The hungry way the man said Lei’s name had him clenching his fists beneath the table. “You get a lot of fan mail, huh?”