Maybe he did. Maybe this really was all going to be over with very soon. With Lily taken care of, it would just be a matter of cleaning up a few loose ends, like Jesse Boyd and Will Miller. And, perhaps, Jonesy. Then life could go back to normal and the infuriating worrying could stop.
"So I stay up the block in my car all night long. This morning, this young guy shows up-one of the agents in the file you sent me. Cole."
Interesting that the younger agent would show up at his boss's house on a workday. Why hadn't Blackstone gone into the office?
"I try to inch a little closer. See his neighbors leave for work, both of 'em, and slip into the backyard on the right. Blackstone, the blond dude, and the woman are outside on the patio talking. The wall's real high, so I can't see 'em, but I hear their voices. All three of 'em."
"Could you hear what they were saying?"
"Nah, nothing specific. But a few minutes later, this other one shows up. Good-looking black woman wearing a dark pantsuit. Obviously another fed."
Special Agent Jackie Stokes. Her picture lay on the desk, part of the complete dossier on Blackstone's team.
"She tries the front, gets no answer, then comes around to the back. I edge as close as I can get, hoping to see or hear something when she goes in the gate."
He hesitated, probably for dramatic effect. Fool. There was no time for these games. Impatience sparked an angry prompt. "Well? Tell me the rest, now!"
"Okay, okay. The woman, she goes in, but she stops right there with the gate open. Then she kinda squeals. She calls out a name. A woman's name. I risked taking a peek, and I see her running toward the black-haired woman, giving her a big hug, the two of 'em sobbing their faces off."
"You can't mean…"
"Yep. That's exactly what I'm telling you. The name she calls out? I heard it clear as a bell. It's Lily."
"Good God."
It was true. Lily was back.
This validated everything, especially the sixth sense that had been whispering for months that she was out there somewhere. Everything that had been done had been worthwhile and the right thing to do. The confirmation should have felt good, but there would be no time to feel good until Lily Fletcher was dead and gone, for real this time.
The biggest surprise of all of this? Lily was with Wyatt Blackstone. No-nonsense, scrupulously honest Wyatt Blackstone, who, according to rumor, had let a number of other agents, and friends, go down when he'd seen some illicit behavior in the FBI crime lab.
Mr. Squeaky Clean was hiding a suspected serial killer. A woman who'd faked her own death.
Her lover? There had been no indication of that in any of the background checks.
Merely her protector, then? Her white knight?
This made things a little more difficult. Because while there were always people to be bought, bribes to be offered for a guard to look the other way while a suspect was being transported, there was no weak link in Blackstone's group. Not a one. Especially not the man himself.
If she was under his protection, Lily would be very difficult to get to.
There were two obvious options. Call in an anonymous tip to another FBI agent. Perhaps one who had an ax to grind against Blackstone-there were, reportedly, quite a few. That might kill two birds with one stone, resulting in Lily's arrest and Blackstone being tossed on his ear, stripped of his credentials, his title, his weapon.
A good choice. But also a risky one. Killing Lily while she was in federal custody had always been the last resort. A better one was getting at her now.
"You still there?" Jonesy asked.
"Sorry. Yes. Listen, you've done an excellent job. I just have one more for you to do."
"What's that?"
"I want you to stay there and try to get a photograph of Lily Fletcher. Do you think you can do that?"
"Might not be easy. That wall is high as shit."
"It's worth twice what I'm paying you now."
He whistled. "Double, huh?"
"That is generally what twice means."
Jonesy obviously didn't understand sarcasm. "Oh, sure. Okay, you got a deal. Gotta go."
The man hung up without another word, which was fine. Hopefully it meant he was returning immediately to do what he'd been asked to. Which meant a picture of Lily should soon be forthcoming. Even without a firm plan in mind, the photograph was a good idea. If Lily's looks had changed too drastically, she might not be recognizable even to someone who knew her well. Someone like, say, Jesse Boyd.
Because he was, of course, option two. Jesse was desperate to avoid going back to prison. The man seethed with hatred and rage toward the woman he felt had helped send him there.
By now, he should also be in something of a panic about his personal safety. The seed had been planted. Boyd had to be wondering if his victim's aunt would come gunning for him now that she knew he was free.
Hmm. There might be a way to make that more plausible, more frightening. A way to convince Boyd his nemesis was coming after him, going through whomever she had to in order to gain her revenge. Starting, perhaps, with the man who'd given Boyd the false alibi?
"Will Miller." His address and phone number were a few key clicks away.
How frightening would it be for Boyd to hear his anonymous alibi had been murdered? For a man like Boyd? A coward? Probably utterly terrifying. And a frightened man was a desperate man. In that state, he would practically be a lethal weapon.
It merely remained to point that weapon in the right direction, and see if he could get past the protective circle Wyatt Blackstone had placed around his vulnerable young lady friend.
Jackie Stokes was one of the most coolheaded, intelligent people Wyatt knew. So for her to have to sit in a chair and put her head between her knees to keep herself from passing out said a lot about how she was taking Lily's miraculous reappearance. So far, she'd been focused on her happiness. But he knew her well enough to know the questions would begin firing out of her mouth any second now.
"I can't effing believe this; I just can't. This only happens in movies, doesn't it? Is this for real?"
"I'm so sorry, Jackie," Lily said. Her voice was tremulous, as if she, too, knew Jackie would transition from shock to raging curiosity any second now. She sat close to the other woman, one slim hand on Jackie's shoulder, repeating the apologies he knew came straight from her heart. "I can't tell you how sorry I am to have put you through such pain. I know you mourned for me, grieved for me."
The words gave Jackie something else to focus on, and she shot straight up in her chair. On came the curiosity, and some of the anger he'd anticipated.
"You know. You know that. How do you know that?" She glanced up at Wyatt and Brandon, her dark eyes accusing. "Because they told you?" Rising to her feet, she stalked toward Wyatt, sticking her index finger out. "How long have you known? How long have you kept this from the rest of us?"
He didn't even try to downplay it. "Since the night of the funeral."
"The funeral," she whispered. "Lily's funeral." She closed her eyes briefly, obviously remembering that day, that whole vivid time. When she reopened them, he noticed some of the fire had left them, but not that obvious need to know the truth.
"And you?" she asked Brandon.
"The same," he said.
"Seven and a half months. You've known all this time." • She slowly turned and looked at Lily, walking over and brushing her fingers in the soft black hair. Apparently noticing the scars on her head, she bent over and, like she probably did with her own kids, gently brushed her lips over the top of Lily's damaged ear, as if wanting to kiss away the pain. "My God, what did he do to you, child? What did that madman do?"
Jackie had reached the right conclusion, her quick mind filling in the pieces without needing them all laid out for her.
"Did he have you that whole time? Between the night you disappeared and the night of your, uh, funeral?"
Lily nodded once, and tears rose to Jackie's eyes, spilling from them onto her pretty
cheeks. The woman was about as strong as they came: the one place she was vulnerable was when someone she loved got hurt.
She slowly returned to her chair. "Okay. Tell me everything."
Wyatt began, going over every detail he could recall, from the minute he'd picked up the phone and heard Lily's voice, until this very morning. Brandon added bits here and there, reiterating, as often as he could, that they hadn't involved anyone else on the team strictly for the agents' own good, because the others all had more to lose.
Lily spoke only once, to set the record straight. "I asked them not to tell a single soul, Jackie. I wasn't…" She swallowed hard, twisting her hands in her lap. "I wasn't well for a time. Physically or emotionally. Please, don't blame Wyatt and Brandon-they were only doing what I asked them to."
Jackie dropped an arm over Lily's slim shoulders and tugged her to sit even closer. "Honey, with what you went through, I'm still shocked, and very grateful, that you had the ability to call Wyatt."
"Me, too," said Wyatt.
"Don't you ever apologize, to me or to anyone else, for doing what you had to in order to stay alive and get well. Just in case you're worried about it, everybody else on the team is going to feel exactly the same way." Jackie hugged Lily again, as if she wanted to keep her close. "I'm so glad you're alive."
After that, Lily remained silent, as if it was better to just hear her story succinctly told by someone else than to have to repeat all the ugly details herself. Wyatt tried to gloss over some of them, like the extent of her injuries, and some of the more brutal methods her kidnapper had used, but Jackie's glassy eyes said she wasn't fooled.
Finally, when he was through, Jackie blinked those tears away and thought for a long, silent moment. Then, instead of getting sentimental or dwelling on her disappointment that they hadn't called her, that sharp mind went right where he most needed it to go. "How much have you got on this Lovesprettyboys? Where does the investigation stand now and what are we going to do?"
Relieved, and glad Brandon had talked him into bringing Jackie into this, he answered, "I thought we had a good shot at finding him." He waved toward the laptop, where the audio file from the convention workshop still droned on at a low volume, completely forgotten in the reunion. Explaining what they'd been doing, he added, "It's still possible he was there, and that she'll hear him. We'll get back to that shortly."
She frowned. "Meantime, while she's listening to tapes from a bunch of plastic surgeons, recorded two years ago, this psychopath is out there setting her up to take the fall for another murder?"
"Hey, it'd almost be better if he was. Now that she's with us, at least she's got an alibi," Brandon said. As soon as the words left his mouth, he winced, realizing how they'd sounded. "Not that I, uh, wish anyone murdered. Especially not as viciously as this guy's killing them. The sick bastards deserve to be locked up, not chopped up."
"As always, Brandon, your eloquence astounds," Wyatt murmured.
Lily's lips quirked and she glanced at him sideways, through half-lowered lashes. Their eyes locked and they shared a brief moment of amusement that was completely out of place, but still felt right. Like everything about them felt right lately. Everything except the very idea that someone out there wanted to hurt her. Again.
He tore his gaze away, needing to keep his focus, not get distracted by thoughts of what was happening between them. Lily was in danger, with enemies closing in on all sides. The last thing she needed was him losing his impartiality, letting his personal feelings make him careless.
"I have another idea," Jackie said. "Let's say this scumbag really is a doctor, and he was at that convention. We know the unsub stayed at the shack, hiding out for the first couple of days, until he knew they weren't on to his real identity, right, Lily?"
"Time seemed a little fuzzy to me," Lily admitted, "but I'm pretty sure he did, yes. He was muttering, over and over, about how he couldn't go home, he could never go home, that they'd be looking for him. Then one day, he disappeared. He came back in a good mood, telling me he'd gotten away with it completely." Her voice shook as she added, "And that meant he had lots of time to pay me back for inconveniencing him."
"Sick motherfucker," Jackie muttered. But she quickly returned to her point. "Okay, back to this convention. How about if we get a list of the male attendees? We exclude everyone whose alibi is unshakable-anyone on surveillance video during the time of the attack, or checking out of the hotel Sunday morning."
"We've already done that," Wyatt said. "And done background investigations on the rest."
"Okay, good. From the rest, we narrow down the ones who are local, say within a hundred miles of Richmond. There can't be that many, maybe a few dozen? We call their offices, say we're calling from an insurance company, doing an audit or something. Ask whether the doctor treated patients on the Monday after the convention."
"If he did, then it's a pretty good bet he's not our guy," Brandon said, sounding impressed with the idea. "So we look a little closer at any of them who weren't in that day."
The idea certainly wasn't perfect, and had a number of holes, like the fact that Lily's memory could be faulty. But it was something, another angle, at least. At this point, Wyatt was willing to try anything. "Brandon, do you have that list with you?"
"Nope, but I can get into it remotely," he said, turning in his chair to swivel his laptop around. "As long as numb-nuts hasn't changed my passwords or anything to get even with me for not bowing down after his summons."
"Anspaugh. Man, oh man, he's gonna run this all the way into the end zone to try to get his career back on track." Jackie sounded completely disgusted.
"He really hates me."
"Yes and no. I think part of the problem is he felt anything but hatred for you once. Now his feelings are all screwed up." She wrinkled her nose in distaste. "I swear, watching him search through your stuff yesterday, I wasn't sure whether he was gonna smash your old coffee mug, or put his mouth on it, just so his lips could touch something yours had."
"Excuse me while I vomit," Brandon mumbled, though he remained focused on the laptop screen.
On the laptop, the audio file continued to play, the volume turned down, mere background noise. Wyatt was about to tell the younger man to turn it off when Jackie announced, "I think it's pretty obvious that Lily needs to just hide out here, lay low, not let anybody know she's alive yet."
"That's impossible," Lily said, shaking her head.
"Why? It's gone on this long. What's another week or two, so we can find the real killer and keep you from getting hauled in for questioning? Or worse?"
"You know why." Lily wrapped her arms around herself, looking at all three of them, as if wondering how they could have forgotten what had brought her out of hiding in the first place.
Wyatt hadn't forgotten. Of course he hadn't.
"Jesse Boyd is out there walking the streets. The DA is not going to refile that case and have him rearrested unless he knows he has a shot at winning. And because of whatever happened with the other evidence, I am the only shot he has left."
Her testimony was the only shot because the other physical evidence had been tossed out. The DNA, the fibers on her nephew's clothes that had come from the rug in Boyd's van, the boy's hair found on one of Boyd's shirts, a spot of his blood on Boyd's shoe. All excluded. All because of him.
He abruptly rose, not even able to look at her any longer. He'd have to tell her someday. When the time was right, he would admit it was his fault and apologize from the very depths of his heart. Right now, though, he just couldn't stand to do it. Seeing that look of devastation, of betrayal, on Lily's face was something he simply couldn't bear right now.
About to walk into the house, knowing he couldn't put off going into work and dealing with Crandall for much longer, he paused when Jackie said, "Okay, then.
If the world's going to find out Lily's alive, we have to act as fast as we can to clear up the lily murders and remove her from suspicion. We've got to find somet
hing that clears her in those cases while we're also trying to find the unsub."
"I know," he said. "Brandon's been working on the victims' computer hard drives when he can, tracing IPs in the communications between killer and victim."
"And I bet those IPs aren't in Maine. It should be easy to prove Lily didn't send the e-mails to lure them in."
Having thought of that, he shook his head. "Anspaugh won't go for it. Once he finds out where Lily's been, that she has almost no witnesses to confirm her location for most of the summer, he'll decide she left the area to e-mail her victims. Just like the Professor did last winter."
"It only takes one," Jackie insisted. "One message sent from another geographical area when we can prove Lily was in Maine."
"Then he'll claim she used her computer expertise to fake the IP."
Jackie blew out an irritated breath. "Come on, you know we can prove she's innocent."
She was right; he was just being pessimistic, still too focused on the damned evidence in the Boyd case. "I know; of course we can. We will. I would just prefer to do it before she gets arrested." And before Lily was put in a cell where somebody with a long reach and a lot of money might be able to get to her. Wyatt had too much experience with the criminal-justice system, with courts and prison security, to trust them entirely. Especially not with the safety of someone he cared about.
A lot.
"We have to bring the others in, you know, get them working on this-"
"Quiet!" Lily, who had been listening in silence, launched herself from her chair. She yanked the laptop right out from Brandon's typing fingers and spun it toward herself. And just like last week, she leaned close to the speakers, her frightened face a mask of concentration.
That audio file had been droning on in the background. Lily hadn't been intently listening to his conversation with Jackie; she'd been listening to the medical workshop they'd started on nearly two hours ago.
"You heard him again?" Wyatt asked.
She nodded once. "Yes, and it's the same situation as before. He's on there not as a speaker but someone in the audience." She found the volume button on the front of the laptop and jabbed it a half-dozen times.
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