Drawn

by Cecilia Gray

  DRAWN

  by

  Cecilia Gray

  This is an Advanced Reading Copy.

  Please be aware that the editing and proofreading of this manuscript have not yet been completed.

  Errors and other typos will be corrected in the final version.

  Thank you for your understanding…and for reading!

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  Comic Book Illustrations by Sherry Leak

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead, or places, events, or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are products of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Copyright 2013 by Cecilia Gray

  Cover Design ~ I Do Book Covers

  Formatting ~ Polgarus Studio

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written consent from the author/publisher.

  Published by Gray Life, LLC

  READ. LEARN. LIVE. REPEAT.

  * * *

  Praise for Cecilia Gray’s Novels

  “A compelling mix of action, drama and love.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) (Best of 2012)

  “Gray’s characters are so full of life, hope and dreams, it’s a pleasure to read about them.” —Schenni’s Book Nook

  “Captures your attention from the first page.” —Ed and Em’s Reviews

  “Cecilia has a talent for instilling warmth and weight into her characters.” —Romancing the Book

  “Will have you captivated from beginning to end.” —Can’t Put It Down Reviews

  The Couldn’t-Have-Done-It-Without-You Page

  jen

  veronica

  whitney

  shelley

  dad

  ingrid

  heidi

  sophie

  rach

  mary

  mike

  ellen

  I

  FBI Field Office, Atlanta, Georgia

  I’ve studied Chelsea since the FBI teamed us up when I was twelve. She has a move…classic Chelsea. She turns the doorknob and her body stiffens, a metal rod shoved down her spine. As she sets a high heel inside the interrogation room, her southern accent and soft manners are buried beneath a terrifyingly sleek, blond exterior in a perfectly pressed pinstriped suit.

  Four years of practice, two custom-cut suits of my own, and I still look epileptic when I try to project that sense of total control. Of I’ve got this. Even though I don’t have her drawl and my posture’s not bad.

  I follow Chelsea, stiff as can be, into the room with the bright white walls. Our sicko suspect glances up from the steel table in its center. I flinch at his chilling stare. Flinching already, see. A slow smile bulges his cheeks as he studies me. Attention from a guy in an orange jumpsuit sitting at a steel table—to which he is handcuffed—is what Chelsea would officially term an undesirable outcome. More undesirable—me showing I care. Like she always says, “Don’t let ’em see you sweat, hon.”

  No way am I giving this psycho the satisfaction. I suppress a shiver as the air conditioning kicks on with a groan. Tiny goosebumps break out on my forearms, raising the fine hairs to attention. Can’t rub myself warm—that’s a tell. Instead, when Chelsea slides into one of the fold-out metal chairs across from him, I follow her lead and take comfort in her giraffe-like posture in the chair next to mine.

  Chelsea tosses a manila folder so that its contents spill across the table. The file details his alleged heinous crimes, the FBI’s efforts to track him, and the blood evidence in his garage that matches that of the latest missing girl—Georgia State art major, vegetarian, and more important to the suits, daughter of a local bigwig. Funny, the things you remember from a file when they have nothing to do with the case, like how she specialized in collages. They’d found cut-up pieces of magazines littered across the desk and floor of her dorm room. The pieces trailed into the hall like flower petals down a church aisle.

  The strewn high-gloss photos of his suspected victims—his own personal collage of the young, female, and carved—don’t solicit a cringe from him when I can barely hold down my water and I’ve been staring at them for weeks. My gaze flickers to the one-way mirror—a silent promise: We’re gonna nail this freak.

  “I’m FBI Agent Chelsea Tanner. This is my partner. How are you this evening?”

  This is normally when a suspect will ask, with understandable outrage, why I’m party to the interrogation because aren’t I, at almost sixteen, too young to be in the FBI? Pinstriped suit or not, I look my age, maybe even a year or two younger because I’ve always been small—childhood malnutrition will do that to a girl.

  It’s the suspects who don’t care that I’m in the room who worry me. Like this guy, whose pale eyes flicker to my throat.

  I fight the urge to shift, even to clench my fingers tight into a fist. I don’t blink.

  “Fine weather we’re having this winter.” Chelsea manages not to smirk at our sitting in a windowless room. Her face is unbreakable. “These are perfect skies for a getaway. Do you have plans for the weekend?”

  When he doesn’t answer, she shares our itinerary—a leisurely drive to Savannah to visit her mother at their family wintering home. Yes, that’s a thing. The trip always involves mint juleps and wide-brimmed hats, not that Chelsea shares the finer details. A genteel background rarely earns cred with criminals.

  She chit-chats as if he’s not imagining the slice of his boning knife into my neck. The careful incision he would carve against the clavicle, removing the flat bone from the ligaments attached to the shoulder. I don’t need my unique magic to know what’s on his mind. Some things in the case file stick for a reason.

  My bone structure fascinates him. His gaze caresses my cheekbones, roams over the bridge of my nose, dips into the hollow of my neck, and brushes the stray dark corkscrew curls that drape over my sternum.

  Don’t move. Don’t blink. Don’t even breathe.

  “Savannah’s so beautiful this time of year. Any time of year. I go as often as I can. Don’t you think you should make time for family?” The word rolls off her tongue in three syllables, a rare ray of southern shining through her otherwise stiff facade.

  Fah. Mil. Lee.

  He closes his eyes as though in prayer. When he opens them, his pupils dilate to nearly black and he rubs his thumbs over his knuckles. He does not take the bait.

  Come on, Chelsea. You work your magic and I’ll work mine.

  That’s our deal. She gets them talking. I make them spill their guts.

  “Family’s important,” she says. “Would you like to share your weekend with someone important? Someone you want to get away with? Maybe find a little privacy?”

  He angles his body sideways and his handcuffs clang against the table. Those translucentI don’t miss how transcu eyes may as well be raking across my soul as he licks his dry, cracked lips. “Yes, ma’am. I sure can think of someone special.”

  Halleluiah, he’s talking. Not that what he’s saying is any comfort because I’m the special in this case and to this guy special means dead. Chelsea’s jaw tightens, a brief collapse of her manufactured smile. She knows what she needs to do now. I know it, too, though that’s not even close to liking it.

  She clears her throat and sits a little taller. “I want to help you get home. But I need my coffee first. Lord, it’s barely a respectable hour. You mind?”

  He draws his lower lip into his
mouth, biting down softly with his two front teeth, a split of pink flesh peeking through the gap between them.

  A tremor rattles the back of my teeth. If I don’t get ahold of myself, the tremor will turn into shakes, and Chelsea will pull me from the room. Then the missing girl is as good as disappeared. I’m not naïve enough to believe she’s alive. At least I can give her family something to make up for the fact that she’ll never make another collage or graduate from college or kiss another boy or girl or anyone—all these ideas of a life I’ve pasted together, an image of life I’ve created from television shows and books and songs.

  What life is like for other people.

  We give a voice to the dead. That’s how Chelsea explained the job to me back when I was thirteen. We give a voice to people who have had theirs taken away.

  I need to hold it together.

  I focus on the suspect’s nose hairs. Each individual wiry curl against the flared nasal cavity. Focus there, not on his eyes, not on the way his fingers claw at his cuffs as if he’s imagining my face.

  The right thing at the right time. That’s what Chelsea says we have to do.

  Not the easy thing. The right thing.

  Which means tamping down my instinct for self-preservation. Besides, she won’t leave me. Not really. She’s baiting like we do. She won’t leave. She never has.

  “I’ll only be a moment.” Beneath the table, Chelsea’s hand squeezes my knee real quick.

  He scoots up so his butt dangles off the edge of the seat. “A minute or two is fine, ma’am. Just fine.”

  She stands. “May I bring you a cup of coffee?”

  “Why, thank you, ma’am. Black, no cream. No sugar, neither. Take my coffee plain, I do. I only like my tea sweet.” His lips glisten as they purse together. “You take your time now, take your time, ma’am.”

  Serial killers are unfailingly polite. That’s a question you never get in Trivial Pursuit.

  Chelsea gathers the file in her arms. She delays walking out, shifting the papers, shuffling them front to back. Making him anxious and eager and maybe a little desperate. “Do you prefer sweet tea over coffee? I could step out and get some.”

  “Why, that’s downright cordial of you. Yes, ma’am, I’d appreciate that. You take your time. Don’t hurry back now. We’ll be fine.” He leers at me. “You’re a pretty young thing. Anyone ever tell you your skin is the color of freshly brewed sweet tea? So sweet.”

  I bite back a gag because this is good. This is what we do. What we want. He’s talking on his own without prodding.

  Chelsea senses it, too, because she leans over the table to strike. “Where did you dump her body?”

  I cough.

  I imagine the sound waves from my throat twisting through the air, wrapping around his brain, and squeezing out his thoughts.

  “The bottom of Durham Lake.”

  Ha! Gotcha. Goose!

  Chelsea yanks me to my feet by the back of my collar. My chair squeaks against the linoleum as we bolt from the room so fast I barely catch his eyes widening before he snarls in protest and pulls at the cuffs. She releases me once we’re in the hall and locks the door to the interrogation room with a definitive click. His shrieks seep under the door and echo down the hall. They crescendo into a bellow that rips from his throat. The sweet sound of victory.

  Her palms cup my cheeks and smooth back my hair. “How’s my truth wrangler?”

  I give her a thumbs-up.

  “You take a breather now, y’hear? Returning in T minus three.” She flashes her palm with three outstretched fingers and hustles down the hall, heels clicking with each swing of her hips.

  Now that it’s over and I’m alone in the hall with his wails, the nausea hits. I escape to the bathroom, kick open a stall, and plop down on an icy toilet seat. My stomach convulses. No. I do not want to black out or throw up. Or worse, both, and get vomit in my hair—like I did with the Sentinel-dubbed Halloween Horror. My first case with toddlers.

  I reach into my suit jacket’s pocket. The edge of my gold cuff bracelet catches against the fabric as I fumble for a charcoal pencil from my permastash. The one I pull out is worn down to a nub. I cup it beneath my nose and inhale its grounding, earthy scent until a veil of calm slips over my skin. Until gulps of breath turn into soft rushes of air.

  The reflective white surface of the stall beckons. A blank canvas. My fingertips tighten around the charcoal nub as an image renders itself in my mind: Me. A sleek catsuit. A heroic pose. I could leave my mark, quick and easy. A line drawn here, another curve there, and a series of strokes becomes something else.

  Chelsea’s boss found a whole drawer full of my superhero drawings stuffed in my office desk last week. He confiscated them and I haven’t seen them since. Maybe they’d confiscate the whole bathroom stall if I drew on it.

  Instead, I take another calming whiff of the pencil until I’m copacetic. As cool as Catwoman. Back into the corridor, where I wait for Chelsea with toe-tapping impatience, leaned up against the wall. It’s quiet now, they moved him quick. So quiet I hear when my stomach grumbles—as usual, we worked clear through dinner into the night. Chelsea sometimes gets so hopped up on a case she’ll even let us get drive-through on the way home. Maybe even a milkshake to split. I’ll want strawberry. Her—chocolate. We’ll settle on vanilla. It’s what we do.

  A moment later, the door to the prep room where agents can eavesdrop on our interrogation flies open. Five suits, two wearing sunglasses indoors—those ones I don’t get—barrel out in a line worthy of the drill team. I crane my neck as they disappear around the corner to get divers or a warrant to dredge the lake.

  Let her really be at Durham Lake.

  I don’t always succeed in interrogations, because I can’t make people tell the truth. I can only make them say what they’re thinking, whichever thought happens to be flying through their minds when my voice wave hits and only if they choose to speak within its five-second life span. A nice little loophole for those state and federal polygraph laws the Bureau likes to circumvent.

  Chelsea’s the one who has to direct our suspects’ thoughts, or they might as easily confess how much they need to use the bathroom rather than what they did and to whom. Sometimes suspects don’t talk. Sometimes they talk, but they’re thinking you’re a leprechaun and they’re a unicorn, and you should chase rainbows together. Even so, Chelsea and I have an 87 percent close rate on our cases, better than anyone else in the department. Durham Lake—pretty specific. Not a bad outcome for a month’s work.

  Chelsea veers out the door next. Her shoulders now slope with the hint of southern bombshell she smothers at work. “Let’s git going back to the house. I could use a drink after that. Sumpthin’ much more useful than coffee.” She narrows her eyes. “Kool-Aid for you. Well … maybe a chocolate milkshake? You hungry? Did you see the time? It’s half past nine.”

  “How can you think about food?” I tsk. “We need to charge in, guns blazing.”

  She grins. “Don’t be all dramatic, now.”

  My statement would have been serious four years ago—back when I knew nothing about anything. Now I know a confession doesn’t mean a dramatic rescue. Most of the time it means a report and a lawyer and a judge before the authorities show up on site, assuming they’ve assembled the manpower. Still, I say what I say and she tells me not to be dramatic. It’s what we do.

  I drop the smile, turn serious. “Should we wait around? They might need a full confession. There wasn’t enough blood evidence in his garage to prove she died on site. Physical evidence might be compromised from the lake.”

  “Let the leads make the case. They should earn their keep somehow, don’t you think?” She knuckles my shoulder.

  The clicking of the suit’s shoes echo down the hall as one of them—the tall, gangly one, no sunglasses—makes his way back toward us, this time holding a briefcase.

  “Oooh, busted,” I say.

  She holds her finger over her lips but winks.

&nbs
p; The suit stops at the prep room door. “Agent Tanner.”

  “We’re on our way.” Her hand is at my shoulder blades.

  “Agent Tanner, a moment, please.”

  Chelsea drops her hands to her sides, twists her mouth, and mutters under her breath. “We have handed over that guy on a platter. Does he want garnish? I’ll be back in a sec, hon.”

  “Agent Tanner. Bring her.” The suit crooks his finger at me.

  Chelsea hesitates a second, but then her hand is back at my shoulder blades, guiding me down the hall. Looks like we’re going for round two. I psych myself for the next phase of interrogations. It’s harder once the suspect is onto my voice, but Chelsea and I have our strategies.

  The suit opens the door wide as Chelsea steps under his arm to enter the prep room. I follow, ducking underneath his elbow.

  The room is the size of a closet, with recording equipment lining three walls and a long rectangular mirror on the fourth. On the other side of that mirror, the steel table is empty, but looking at the cold metal and remembering who sat there still makes me shiver. The suit sets down a briefcase on a fold-out table, opens it, and pulls out my confiscated superhero comic drawings, which he fans out on the flat surface.

  I blink, not quite believing what I see. What do my comic sketches have to do with this guy? With anything?

  “Did you do these?” he asks.