Latent Danger

by Lori Ryan

  He let the thought hang. No one in that room right now needed to be told what was on the line. Zach walked out and joined Ronan and Shauna in the observation room. The whole scene was being recorded, but the lawyer was smart. He coached them on covering their mouths as they spoke in low tones.

  There was no missing the argument, though. Whatever they were talking about, Sawyer’s dad looked like he was lighting into the boy. His mother just looked stunned.

  “They’re going to walk,” Shauna said, shock lacing her voice.

  “No,” Zach said, but there was surprise in it, not any true measure of denial. He knew she was right, but that didn’t make it any easier to believe.

  When he’d walked out of the interrogation room, he’d thought the boy’s parents and lawyers would talk some sense into him. That they’d get him to do the right thing if for no other reason than to save his ass. Even if they didn’t care if Carrie got home or not, they had to know this would go much better on him if she was saved.

  They watched in silence as the lawyer motioned for Zach to come back in. He clenched his teeth as he reentered the room.

  “I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to hold my client as you’d hoped, detective.”

  Normally, Zach might throw back a retort, letting the guy know he planned to hold the guy the seventy-two hours he was allowed. Something in the lawyer’s smug look told him to hold his tongue.

  The lawyer slid over a piece of paper. “These are two classmates who will swear they were with Sawyer when he sent the post about Adrienne to the Facebook group. They all went out to eat after that and the boys will be able to testify they saw Adrienne sleeping in the clubhouse when they left. Alive and well.”

  Zach shrugged. “So Sawyer came back after and killed her.”

  The lawyer shook his head before Zach even finished his statement. “The boys dropped Sawyer off at ten and watched him go into his house. His parents will testify he was home the rest of the night with them.”

  Zach nodded and left the room without a word. He’d blown it. He’d shown their whole hand in that interview room and now Sawyer had made up an alibi to cover everything.

  He didn’t wait to see what Shauna and Ronan had to say. He went down the hall, headed for the john. He knew his partner would be on top of things. Ronan would get Cal or Jarrod or someone else watching the boy to see if Sawyer led them to Carrie. Ronan would push to get the DNA tests as quickly as possible. Zach could rely on Ronan and Shauna while he blew off steam for a few minutes.

  Or an hour.

  The slam of the bathroom door against the wall gave a satisfying crash. The captain would be on his ass over that, but damn, their prime suspect was about to walk out the door. Zach had miscalculated. He’d put every piece of their case on the table at once instead of locking Sawyer into a statement and then tearing it apart with the evidence they had. Trapping him in lies. He’d thought as soon as Sawyer’s parents saw what he was up against, as soon as they came to realize their kid’s dick had been in that girl the day she died, they’d press the kid to come clean.

  He should have known better. He’d been to the school, heard about the family and the way they coddled their son, the way they threw their status and money around. He should have known they wouldn’t do right by Adrienne. But wouldn’t they want to convince him to reveal where Carrie was to try to shave time off his sentence or avoid facing more serious charges?

  Apparently not. Jaw clenched, teeth grinding, Zach focused on his breathing. Shit. He’d just blown that interrogation.

  The door opened behind him and Zach turned to see Shauna sauntering into the men’s room. She settled one hip on a sink and looked around.

  Her wrinkled nose said it all, but she confirmed her assessment in case he missed it. “This place is a dump. The women’s room at least has a fresh coat of paint.”

  Zach was blasted with the insane—completely, utterly insane—urge to thread his fingers through her hair and haul her to him. To let the scent of her, the feel of her body against his, soothe his anger. Kissing Shauna, having her soft curves pressed chest-to-chest, thigh-to-thigh against him would go a damned long way toward alleviating the agitation tearing through him.

  He stepped backward. Distance wasn’t just his best friend right now, it’d become a necessity. His response to this woman wasn’t right. He needed to get control and get it fast.

  He blew out a huffed breath and ran a hand through his hair before dropping his hand. It was too damned close to what he’d hoped to do with her only a moment before. “Something I can help you with, Shauna?”

  Her brows quirked but she leveled him with those eyes. “I’d have handled that questioning the same way you did. This isn’t on you.”

  “Cool. Great. Thanks.” He was being an ass. He knew it. But he couldn’t risk her catching onto the effect she had on him.

  Pushing her away before she realized he was in way over his head as far as she was concerned was a good plan. A solid plan. Because right now his feelings were all over the damned map with her. And she’d told him flat out she wasn’t interested in even mentioning their past, much less repeating it.

  “You’re an ass.”

  “I am.” He couldn’t argue with her. She was one hundred percent right.

  Her face softened in a way he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen with her. Shauna was tough. She always kept a protective air wrapped around her. She didn’t let emotion show easily. But right at the moment, she looked for all the world like she might be the one to close the gap between them.

  Only it didn’t look like she would close the gap to haul him against her and kiss him. No, she looked more like she was ready to start giving out hugs. And damned, if that didn’t sound almost as good.

  He took another step back and crossed his arms.

  She didn’t move any closer. “This wasn’t your fault, Zach. If you had gone in and started asking him where he was the night she died, we would have ended up with the same story. He was smart enough to lock in an alibi no matter how you presented what we had. We have to work the case, just like always. We’ll get him.”

  The words hung heavily between them

  “We need to get his classmates in here and question them.” Zach dropped his arms, letting the anger drain from him.

  Shauna nodded. “You know, the alibi might help us. The kids claim they left Adrienne on Sawyer’s couch. Let’s see if we can get a warrant to search his house and the clubhouse.” They hadn’t been able to convince the assistant DA to seek more than the warrant for the DNA based on the Facebook post, but Shauna was right. Placing Sawyer with Adrienne in the clubhouse right before her death might be enough. The alibi Sawyer had given them might turn against him.

  Zach nodded. “That’s good thinking.”

  “Let’s get to work,” she said as she brushed past Zach and left the room.

  Her message was clear. She was finished coddling him. There wasn’t time for him to piss and moan in the bathroom. They had work to do.

  Zach followed Shauna down the hall.

  They had teams out looking for Carrie and there were volunteers combing the areas she might have been in and the area where Adrienne’s body had been found, but it wasn’t enough. If they could get Sawyer to admit to killing Adrienne, they might be able to get him to lead them to Carrie. If Carrie was still alive, her time could easily be running out.

  Chapter Eleven

  Shauna opened the door to her small condo, tossing her keys on the entrance table. She opened the closet, pressed her hand to the handle of the small safe inside, and locked her service revolver and badge inside. She had other weapons, ones that weren’t secured since she didn’t have children in the house. These were located in several places around the house. But her service weapon and badge were always secured.

  She wouldn’t leave them in the lockbox long this evening. A look at her watch told her it was nearly six o’clock. They hadn’t gotten a whole lot more accomplished, but they hadn’t
wanted to stop, either. Not while there was even a slim chance Carrie might still be out there. She was home only for a quick shower and power nap, and to grab clothes so she could change at the station for the next few days.

  They had spent much of the rest of the day trying to track any student who could poke holes in the story Sawyer and his friends had given them. So far, they’d turned up nothing. The press, on the other hand, had made the connection to the Marsh Killings.

  Ray Lansing’s headline that morning had screamed Marsh Killer Returned, Teen Girls Targeted!

  So, they would keep interviewing. This was the part of an investigation that sucked. It was dry work, looking into backgrounds of every employee at the school, especially the new ones. Looking at students and parents, board members. Anyone who might have come into contact with both girls. The list was too damned long.

  And they still had no idea how this could tie into the crimes from thirty years ago. Her teammates at the cold case division were scouring through reports, talking to people that had been interviewed years before. There were few witnesses to the girls’ disappearances back then. One girl had gone out for a jog and hadn’t come home. The other was walking home from school and hadn’t made it. Another was hanging out at a party with friends in the woods and wandered away from the group. No one had been able to offer any insight into what might have happened, other than the fact that there were never signs of a struggle found. No location that they could point to and say, “the girl was taken here.”

  Shauna focused her thoughts on the thirty-year gap. Obviously, Sawyer wasn’t their original killer. “The father? An uncle or grandfather?” Shauna said aloud as she turned the water on in her shower. She liked it hotter than most and found ideas often came to her as she stood under the spray.

  “Could someone in Sawyer’s family have been involved in the original killings?”

  She shook off the thought as she poured shampoo into her palm and began to lather her hair. It didn’t make sense. They had looked already and no one in Sawyer’s immediate family had been incapacitated in any way for the long stretch of time between the murders. It simply didn’t make sense for their killer to have stopped for that long without something external stopping them.

  “This killer doesn’t stop voluntarily,” she murmured as she rinsed and put conditioner in her hair, then began lathering her body with vanilla scented gel. She might wear pants and practical shoes to work, but Shauna loved smelling good.

  When a killer behaves like this one, taking joy in the act, doing it again and again, they aren’t capable of stopping on their own.

  Unless the killer hadn’t stopped.

  “Travel?” It was a possibility. Sawyer’s father might travel for work. Was it possible he had been committing these killings someplace else? If he was killing women in small towns across the United States, the crimes wouldn’t necessarily get into the national database. It was always hit or miss if a crime ended up in a linked, searchable database, but with small towns, it was more miss than hit.

  “Why come back to his own backyard now?” As she said the words, she wondered if she wasn’t spot on. Could Sawyer have slept with the girl and left her in his clubhouse as he and his friends said they had? The dad wanders out and finds her and isn’t able to resist?

  Shauna finished rinsing and shut off the shower. She wanted to talk to Zach and see what he thought.

  Who was she kidding? She wanted to talk to Zach, period.

  The old attraction was still there, alive and kicking. If not a little stronger, in fact. The man was hotter than she remembered. He’d been just out of the military when they were together. Wasn’t a cop back then. Now, there was a maturity to him that made him all the more attractive and he hadn’t lost the tight, hard muscled body he’d had. He seemed to be in even better shape now.

  What made it so hard to resist him was that he also seemed to have matured into a man who cared about others as he hadn’t back then. He seemed to carry a sense of honor and duty, a drive to bring Carrie home and to find justice for Adrienne that Shauna couldn’t help but be attracted to.

  And that pissed her off. It wasn’t like she was going to do a damned thing about it. Shauna wasn’t stupid. Or crazy. She wouldn’t go down a path she knew would only lead to heartache.

  Still, she wrapped herself in a towel and dialed the number Zach had given her. She had Ronan’s number, too, and could have just as easily called him. She didn’t.

  “You okay?”

  Shauna blinked and pulled the phone away from her ear. Why would he answer the phone that way.

  “Shauna! Are you okay? Is something wrong? Talk to me!”

  “Yeah,” she said, putting the phone back to her ear. “Why would you think anything’s wrong?”

  “Sorry. I just thought if you were calling me so soon after we last saw each other, something might be wrong, and then you didn’t say anything.” There was silence for a beat, then, “what’s up?”

  “I just wanted to talk over a theory with you. I was showering.”

  A soft choking sound came through the phone, then Zach cleared his throat. “Yeah? What’s your theory?”

  “What if there’s a family member who found Adrienne at Sawyer’s clubhouse after he slept with her and left her doped up and vulnerable? Maybe the father, an uncle, or grandfather who took advantage of her presence?”

  “Why would that person have been inactive for so long?” He asked the question she had asked herself. It was what any good investigator would ask.

  “What if he wasn’t? Inactive, I mean. What if this person travels?”

  Zach was quiet for another minute and she realized he was very different from the man she’d known years before. The old Zach didn’t ever stop to think. He simply acted, spoke, did whatever he wanted. The new Zach didn’t seem to do that.

  Shauna shook her head. Thinking of him as a new man wasn’t a good idea.

  “The grandfather lives with them. He lived on his own up until a few years ago,” Zach said.

  “Maybe he was traveling before that for business, or just to satisfy his urges, and he’s too old to travel now but hasn’t been able to resist?”

  Zach grunted his agreement. “It’s worth looking at him. I’ll find out if either the grandfather or father travel extensively, or used to travel but have stopped. You get any sleep?”

  “Not yet,” Shauna said. “I’ll get dressed and head back in.”

  “No,” Zach barked, then gentled his tone. “Rest for thirty. You’ll need it. We’ve got the District Attorney getting us a search warrant for Sawyer’s home and clubhouse. I’ll call you as soon as we have it in hand so you can meet us there.”

  Shauna shook her head. She doubted very much that either he or Ronan was resting at all. She sure as hell didn’t plan to either. Not until Carrie came home. One way or another.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was probably a little twisted that executing this particular warrant gave Shauna more of a rush than usual. They had held Sawyer for the rape of Adrienne Edwards even though he had provided an alibi for her murder. The lawyer was trying to get the kid released, though. It remained to be seen if they’d succeed.

  When she’d last seen him, Sawyer had the look of a kid who’d never had anyone say no to him, and it hadn’t seemed to occur to him yet that he wasn’t going to walk away from this free and clear. Shauna was glad he’d had that arrogance. It was probably what led Sawyer to keep the GHB they found in the clubhouse. He hadn’t even tried very hard to hide it. The bottle was tucked under the couch cushions and Shauna hoped like hell there were fingerprints matching Sawyer’s on it.

  Another partner from the firm representing Sawyer arrived in record time, but there was nothing he could do to stop the search. They had a valid warrant signed by a judge who was a known stickler for having cause to issue one. If Judge Williams signed a warrant, you could bet there was cause.

  Zach came to stand next to her, arms crossed as they watched
the scene. “You see who’s come to watch?” He nodded toward the main house where another set of officers was executing their own search.

  “The grandfather.” Shauna nodded as she looked up to where a tall older man stood, braced on a cane on the back patio of the large home. “I wonder what the cane is for.”

  “Stroke,” Zach said. “I got more information on him when we were on our way here. I’ll show you the full report later. Had a stroke four years ago and came to live with his daughter and son-in-law then.”

  “Where was he living before that?” Shauna asked, tone low so no one they didn’t want overhearing would get any information from their conversation.

  “Two towns over, but he traveled some for the family business.” They were all aware the family business was extensive. They had several companies that seemed to deal in buying and selling other companies, and in things as varied as pharmaceuticals to oil. The depth of their business interests was indicative of a family who’d held money and status for generations. “I’ve got people contacting local law enforcement in the towns he traveled to but so far, no crimes match ours.”

  She cursed under her breath. “Maybe on his way to or from places, he’s stopping off?”

  “If he is, there’s no record of it. He used a private plane, but I would guess they have to log wherever they go and if they deviate, there would be a record of that.”

  Shauna nodded. “And the father?”

  “Travels a little for business, but not much. It looks like most of the business is in the wife’s family. He has some investments and things, but he seems to mostly leave things to her side of the family. He didn’t take over when the grandfather retired. A cousin of his wife ended up taking over the grandfather’s spot on the board and running things. When he travels for pleasure, it’s with the wife.”

  “Doesn’t mean he can’t slip away to kill someone.” Shauna began working her way back into the clubhouse and Zach followed. The officers conducting the search with them had all huddled together in a group in the living area.