by Lisa Harris
“What if he found her again?”
It was the only explanation that fit the scenario. Whoever was after her had managed to track her down before they had. But surely out of all these people, someone would have noticed.
Jordan called Sam back. “Where are you?”
“We’re walking your way. I can see the two of you now,” Sam said.
“We’ve got a problem. We found the phone, but no sign of Zoe.”
“I’ll call it in, but keep looking. We need to find her.”
But what were their options now that there was no way to trace her?
Jordan caught sight of Michaels and Sam a few seconds later as they approached them on the crowded sidewalk.
“She’s not here,” Jordan said, holding up her phone. “We need a plan.”
“An AMBER Alert was just activated, and we finally got a photo of the girl. We’re sending it out to the officers searching the area—”
The crack of a gunshot ripped through the air. A woman behind Jordan screamed, followed by a dozen more screams that echoed around her while people scattered for cover in doorways and behind planters. Some ducked for cover behind trash cans while others ran into shops. Jordan pulled out her service weapon and scanned the street. They needed to find the source of the gunshot, but with all the noise on the street, she had no idea where it had come from. She turned back around, then froze.
Michaels lay on the ground, with blood pooling on the sidewalk beneath him.
“Michaels . . .”
Sam crouched down beside him, trying to stop the blood. “Did anyone see who did this? Garrett—call 911!”
Jordan studied the fleeing crowd and listened for the sound of more shots. With the surge in mass shootings across the country, officers were now trained to take immediate action and neutralize the shooter. The goal of an active shooter was to inflict as many casualties as quickly as possible. But so far she’d only heard the one shot.
Sam shouted at an officer who’d come running to help, “We need this area cordoned off, then see if you can come up with a witness who saw the shooter.”
“There!” Someone shouted on the other side of the street. “Up ahead. That’s him.”
Jordan caught sight of a fleeing figure in a rust-colored sweatshirt and ball cap.
“Sam . . .” Jordan grabbed Garrett’s arm. “Stay with Michaels. We’ll go after the suspect.”
More officers were already arriving at the scene as Jordan and Garrett sprinted down the street to where she’d seen the suspect turn and run. Not everyone had heard the gunshot, which meant there were still dozens of people milling around the streets, oblivious to what had happened. All she’d seen was the man’s hooded figure; she hadn’t seen a face. But there was one thing that was becoming apparent to her. This felt less like a random shooting in downtown Nashville, and more like a hit on Michaels.
Whoever shot him had planned this.
This was personal.
They kept running down the sidewalk, dodging startled pedestrians. Neon lights flashed above her, vying for her attention, but they were gaining on him. They followed him through a crowd coming out of a restaurant, then stopped on the other side.
Jordan struggled to catch her breath. “Where is he?” she asked Garrett.
“I don’t know. He was just here.”
In the busy streets he could escape anywhere. Down one of the darkened alleys, into one of the bars or restaurants. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
“I’ll call in the description we have,” Garrett said. “We’ll get every officer in the vicinity searching for him.”
She stopped on the sidewalk and tried to catch her breath. Her phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket.
“Jordan, it’s Nikki. We’ve got a problem.”
“You know about Michaels?”
“I just heard,” Nikki said, “but there’s something else. A woman just showed up at headquarters with her daughter, upset because she received an AMBER Alert that her daughter was missing.”
“What?”
“Zoe Granger’s standing right in front of me. She never made a 911 call, and she’s fine except for the fact that she lost her phone this afternoon. We need to find out what’s going on.”
Jordan felt her stomach drop, followed by a wave of nausea as she relayed the news to Garrett, then started back down the street toward Sam and Michaels. “It was a trap,” she said to Nikki. “The whole thing. The 911 call . . . the phone they knew we’d be able to track . . .”
Zoe had never been on that phone. There had been no missing girl.
“What do you mean?” Nikki asked.
“Someone wanted us here at the same place at the same time. Shooting Michaels was planned.”
The ambulance had just arrived by the time they got back. Paramedics were already working on Michaels.
“Sam?” Jordan said, stepping up beside him. “Please tell me he’s going to be okay.”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
More sirens screamed in the distance.
“I still don’t understand what’s going on,” Garrett said. “If this is someone who wants us to think they’re the Angel Abductor, why kill Michaels? That’s completely outside his pattern.”
Jordan struggled to make sense of the puzzle. “Maybe this isn’t related. Maybe all of this was simply a ruse to get him here.”
“He’s got a list a mile long of people he’s put away. It could be any one of them,” Garrett said.
“What we do know is if this is someone who worked with Wilcox, then he’s escalating,” Jordan said.
“So now he has a bone to pick with the police? Chloe’s murder and this whole debacle has to be related somehow, and yet I’m not seeing anything. Why lure us here? And why Michaels?”
Jordan felt a shiver run through her. “He could have taken out all of us. We were all right there. But maybe that’s exactly what he wants us to know.”
“If this is our abductor, he played games in the past. Framing Matthew Banks, shattering your car window and leaving a note . . .” Like her, Garrett was struggling to make sense of this. “So do we take Fisher out of the equation?”
“Fisher’s dead and whoever shot Michaels is clearly alive. And as for Fisher, all we really have is the confession of a fellow prisoner who’s also dead, and a few facts that line up.”
Sam looked toward the blinking blue light from one of the metro police cameras that could be found on most street corners downtown. “I’ll coordinate here from the scene. I want the two of you to return to the bureau. Work with Nikki and Jack to tap into the city’s security cameras and do whatever you need to do to figure out who’s behind this.”
27
2:46 p.m.
TBI Headquarters
Michaels was dead.
Garrett’s vision blurred as he stared at the computer screen where he’d been searching through video footage from metro police security cameras, trying to track down their shooter. He blinked a couple times, then rubbed his eyes. Several analysts were going over the video, but he’d hoped since he’d been at the scene when Michaels was shot, he might have an advantage in knowing what to look for. So far his attempts to find their shooter had failed.
Garrett let out a sharp sigh. An APB had been sent out to all law enforcement with a vague description they’d been able to compile from a couple of witnesses on their shooter. They were questioning potential witnesses and conducting an extensive canvassing of restaurants and stores around the location of the shooting. But so far they hadn’t been able to come up with anything solid.
Outside the bureau, a flag hung at half-mast, but there was no time to mourn at the moment. They needed to find out who had done this. He glanced up at the live press conference playing on the TV mounted in the corner of the room. They’d released a statement that had described Michaels as a hardworking, honest agent who had been dedicated both to his work and to his family. But that wasn’t going to br
ing Michaels back or help his wife and daughter move on without him.
“How’s it going?”
Garrett looked at Jordan, who’d been working with Nikki. “So far, nothing, but he’s got to be here somewhere. The preliminary investigation projects that Michaels was shot at fairly close range, but with the crowds, it makes it hard to see anything.”
Jordan sat down on the edge of the desk. “I just got a call from Rose Winters.”
“Really?” He leaned back in his chair. “Did she think of something that might help us?”
“I’m not sure. She seemed pretty shook up, actually,” Jordan said. “She received a threatening phone call that accused her brother of being involved in the abductions.”
“Any specifics?” Garrett asked, trying to put the pieces together.
“That’s all I know. She was too upset to talk on the phone, and asked us to come back by.”
“We could send an officer to take her statement,” he said, feeling as if they were already spread too thin.
“We could, but if there’s a possibility that someone’s out there with proof of what Fisher did, I’d like to talk with her in person.”
“Okay, then.” He grabbed his coat off the back of his chair. “Let’s go.”
Garrett walked up to Rose’s house with Jordan as a light snow began to fall. Now that the cold front had arrived, most people were bundled up indoors with their heaters turned up. Beyond the wind whipping through his coat and the occasional car rumbling past, the neighborhood was eerily quiet.
Jordan rang the doorbell. When no one had answered thirty seconds later, she rang it again.
“She should be home,” Jordan said. “I told her we were going to come by.”
Garrett felt an unwelcome shiver as he looked inside the front window, but the blinds were shut and he couldn’t see anything. Something felt wrong. This entire case seemed like one big game of smoke and mirrors. A game where their abductor had managed to stay in control of the situation by dropping false trails and fabricating evidence. Sorting through what was real and what wasn’t real had become a nightmare, and at this point, they didn’t even know for sure if their latest victims—Chloe Middleton and Abram Michaels—had died by the hand of the abductor who had originally killed Jessica Wright, or if they were looking at a copycat.
“Maybe I should try knocking,” Jordan said.
She reached for the screen door handle, and a split second too late, he saw the wire.
“Jordan!”
Garrett grabbed her hand and pulled her off the porch. They hit the dirt a second before the explosion shook the ground like an earthquake. Glass from the front window shattered, falling like rain, and the sky turned black from the smoke.
He pulled her against himself, covering their faces from the heat.
Twenty seconds later his ears were ringing as he stared at the burning house. Adrenaline pumped through him. If he hadn’t seen that wire, they’d both be dead.
“Jordan . . .” He reached out and wiped a streak of blood smeared across her cheek where something had scraped her. “Are you okay?”
“I think so.” She managed to sit up next to him, but he could tell she was shaking. “If you hadn’t pulled me away . . .”
It was something he’d rather not think about at the moment. Michaels was dead, and now he and Jordan had almost been killed. Whatever was going on, this was no coincidence.
“Let’s get up, but we need to move slowly. There’s glass everywhere.”
She stood up beside him, pulled out her phone, and called 911. He studied the burning house, quickly dismissing the urge to go inside. The heat from the fire was far too intense. If Rose or Maggie had been home, they would have answered the door. Unless for some reason they’d been unable to answer.
Jordan hung up the call. “Where’d you learn to look for something like that?”
“When I was on the police force, we had bomb technicians train us on explosive recognition and response. I was always glad I never had to use what I learned.”
“Until now.” She took his hand and frowned. “The fire department is on its way, but you’ve got a piece of glass in your hand. If you hold still . . .”
She slowly pulled out the thin shard.
“Ouch,” he said.
She held up the glass, then wrapped her scarf around the wound. “You’re going to need stitches.”
“I’m fine,” he countered.
“Don’t be stubborn. You’re not fine.”
“And you are?” he asked, closing his fingers around her hands that were still shaking. “Because someone just tried to kill us.”
“I know.”
“You think it was Rose?”
“It makes sense,” she said. “Rose is the one who asked us to come.”
Sirens wailed in the background. The snow had begun to fall harder, but he could still feel the heat from the house.
“So we have two options,” he said. “Rose wanted us dead and lured us here, or someone else used Rose to lure us here.”
“Which means if she’s innocent, she could be inside,” Jordan said. “Maybe someone didn’t want her to tell us what she figured out.”
“Like who’s been murdering young girls? But we still don’t have enough information.”
Garrett glanced back at the house as a fire engine pulled up along the curb, its sirens competing with the crackling of the fire. The firefighters moved into position to extinguish the orange flames eating at the structure. Smoke billowed above the roof. A pair of patrol cars pulled in behind the large truck, and a couple of neighbors who’d decided to brave the cold stood at the end of their drives trying to figure out what had just happened. He still had no idea.
Thirty minutes later, the house—now cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape—smoldered beneath the still-falling snow. While they’d waited for the firefighters to put out the fire and secure the house, Garrett had directed several of the officers to help them canvass the neighborhood, but so far no one knew much about Rose Winters.
The fire chief called to them as they were finishing up an interview with one of the neighbors. “You told us to let you know if we found anything.”
“Did you?” Garrett asked.
“Oh, yeah. We’ll still need to do a thorough investigation, but I think you’re going to want to look inside.”
Garrett and Jordan headed back toward the house with the chief. “Can you tell what caused the explosion?”
“The house was wired with an IED and set to explode as soon as someone opened the screen door,” the chief said. “We found wiring inside along with a trigger, so when the door was opened, a surge detonated an accelerant, which in turn caused the explosion.”
“What kind of person is knowledgeable enough to rig a house to explode?” Jordan asked.
“That’s hard to answer,” the chief said. “But what I do know is that with the internet, information that wouldn’t have been possible for most people to even imagine a few years ago is now readily available.” He nodded toward the house. “I’ll take you inside, but you’ll have to be careful. Thankfully, the fire ended up being pretty localized, but the place is full of broken glass and some of the metal is still hot.”
“Was there anyone inside?” Garrett asked as they headed through the front door of the house.
“We’ve got one body in the living room, though my guess is they didn’t die in the explosion. They were shot.”
Five seconds later, they were standing over the charred body.
“We don’t have an ID yet—”
“Her name’s Maggie,” Jordan said, glancing at the fire chief. “She worked for the homeowner as a caregiver and housekeeper. Are you sure there isn’t another body?”
“We’ve done a thorough check and didn’t find anyone else, but there’s something else we found that you’re going to want to see.”
Garrett and Jordan followed the chief down the hallway to a room at the far end, then stepped inside. He
felt his blood run cold.
This was his room.
The Angel Abductor.
Rose’s statement that she wasn’t close to her half brother had clearly been a lie. The room had been damaged by both smoke and water, but most of the contents hadn’t burned.
“Garrett . . .” Jordan stepped up next to him, clearly as shocked as he was. “She—and Maggie—had to have known about all of this.”
A soggy bulletin board taking up a large portion of the back wall was covered with dozens of surveillance photos, lined up in neat rows against it. Garrett felt a shiver run down his spine. All the abducted girls were there. Jessica Wright . . . Becky Collier . . . Julia Kerrigan . . . Bailey McKnight . . . Sarah Boyd . . .
“Amanda Love is here,” Jordan said. “He took her as well.”
And that wasn’t all. A second board held random black-and-white surveillance shots of each officer who had been involved in working the case. Jordan, Michaels, Sam, Nikki, Jack, and himself.
He stepped up to the board and stared at the photo of him leaving his dingy law office. Sam kissing his wife goodbye in front of their house. Michaels buying lunch at a local deli. There was even one of Jordan in the parking garage when her back window had been shattered . . .
How had they not seen this coming?
“Garrett . . . look at this.”
Newspaper articles had been precisely cut out and pasted in a scrapbook. The edges of some of them were charred, but not enough that they couldn’t tell what they were. Dozens of articles about the abductions, starting back in 2002 when Jessica Wright had been killed, then later when the media had begun to call him the Angel Abductor. Article after article from each case, through the most recent, the kidnapping and murder of Chloe Middleton.
But that wasn’t all. There were half a dozen different identities, driver’s licenses, passports, credit cards—all with Fisher’s photo.
“Robert Wilcox . . . Jason Fisher . . . ,” she said. “It was him.”
“He could become whoever he wanted to.” Garrett pointed to a police badge with his gloved hand and caught the horror in Jordan’s eyes. “Nikki was right. This is how he did it. He lured them into his car with some kind of story they bought.”