Once Shunned

by Blake Pierce

  Ryan blurted, “Because my information indicates that Special Agent Riley Paige is here working on the case.”

  Now the reporters really went crazy. They started yelling Riley’s name at him and at each other.

  One reporter shoved a microphone in his face and demanded …

  “Who are you?”

  Ryan felt completely overwhelmed now.

  “I—I’m Agent Paige’s husband,” he said. “Ryan Paige.”

  The reporters closed in tightly around him, and Ryan thought …

  Oh my God.

  Did I just make a really stupid mistake?

  Should he stop and explain that he was actually Riley’s ex-husband?

  No, he reminded himself. I’m here to win her back.

  And maybe this was playing out exactly as he needed it to.

  The reporter with the microphone in Ryan’s face harangued him louder than the rest.

  “Mr. Paige, I’ve got an anonymous source in the Connecticut Medical Examiner’s office. He says that the recent death of Vincent Cranston was actually a murder, and the authorities are covering it up. Also, that Cranston was killed in the same way as the victim in Wilburton—with an ice pick. Can you confirm that?”

  The sense of surprise in the other reporters was palpable. The reporter nearest to Ryan apparently knew something that rest of them hadn’t.

  “Is that true?” another reporter asked Ryan.

  “Are all three of these deaths connected?” yet another asked.

  “Is there a serial killer at large?”

  An odd feeling started to come over Ryan. He was starting to enjoy being the center of attention. It felt a lot like arguing a case in front of a courtroom.

  Just keep your cool, he told himself.

  Just do your stuff.

  With a surge of self-confidence, he yelled back …

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not at liberty to discuss any of that.”

  He flashed his most winning smile at a renewed onslaught of questions, and managed to quiet the reporters at least a little with an authoritative gesture he’d often used in the courtroom.

  Then he said …

  “But I’d be glad to answer other questions about Agent Riley Paige.”

  *

  Riley was sitting in a conference room with Bill, Jenn, and Special Agent Sturman, discussing the interrogation that had just taken place. Bruno Young’s public attorney had now arrived and was conferring with him privately back in the interrogation room.

  Agent Sturman struck Riley as perhaps overly enthusiastic.

  “I think we’ve got him,” Sturman said. “I think we’ve got our man.”

  “Maybe,” Riley said

  “What do you mean, maybe?” Sturman asked. “He threatened a junkie with an ice pick, and he tried to kill Agent Paige with it. Is it just a coincidence that he had an ice pick at all?”

  Riley stifled a sigh. Was she going to have to explain to this seasoned agent that coincidences were a fact of life in investigative work?

  She was relieved when Jenn spoke up.

  “Not necessarily. Ice picks are coming back into style as weapons. Gang members are using them a lot these days. They like them because they’re scary. They make them feel like gangsters of the old days. Maybe Young was telling the truth—that he was just trying to scare that junkie.”

  Then Bill said, “But Young certainly acted guilty. He seemed downright scared when we brought up Robin Scoville’s murder. Too bad he lawyered up before we could start leaning on him about Vincent Cranston and the fisherman at Wickenburg Reef this morning.”

  Riley shook her head and said, “Maybe he was just scared because he really hadn’t known anything about any of the murders until that very moment, and he thought he might get convicted for a crime he didn’t commit. That would be a scary possibility, especially to a convict out on parole.”

  Jenn drummed her fingers on the table and said, “You might be right. Still, do you remember what his wife told us? She said he comes and goes at all hours, sometimes disappears for a day or two. And just now, he didn’t even try to think of an alibi for where he’d been around dawn this morning.”

  Agent Sturman let out a grunt of discouragement.

  He said, “If it weren’t for that damned lawyer, maybe we could lean on him harder about his whereabouts. It’s going to take some serious work to try to track his past movements. If it’s even possible.”

  “At least we’ve got his ice pick,” Bill said. “If he killed anybody with it, forensics might still be able to find traces of blood on it. And if they can find blood, they’ll also find the victims’ DNA. Then we’d have him dead to rights.”

  Riley and her colleagues sat in silence for a few moments.

  Then Riley said, “Look, I felt like I got at least some sense of the killer at all three of the crime scenes. And Bruno Young doesn’t fit my impressions.”

  “Why not?” Agent Sturman asked.

  Riley was about to try to explain her doubts and feelings when there came a knock on the door.

  “Come in,” Sturman said.

  A young FBI employee stepped inside.

  He said nervously, “I’m looking for Special Agent Riley Paige.”

  Riley felt a tingle of alarm.

  Is something wrong at home? she wondered.

  “I’m Riley Paige,” she said.

  The employee said, “We’ve got a situation out at the front entrance. A man who says he’s your husband is talking to the press.”

  Riley squinted with confusion.

  “I’m not married,” she said.

  The employee shrugged and said, “Well, that’s what he keeps saying. Please come with me. Things are really getting out of hand.”

  As Riley got up and followed the employee out of the room, she wondered who might be calling himself her husband.

  Blaine, maybe?

  Surely Blaine wouldn’t do anything that ridiculous.

  Then she felt a jolt as it occurred to her …

  Oh my God! It’s Ryan!

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  As Riley followed the young FBI employee down the hall toward the front entrance, her mind was racing with questions.

  “How bad is it?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Really bad,” he replied. “Your husband—”

  Riley interrupted, “He’s not my husband.”

  “Well, whoever he is, he seems to have told the reporters that Vincent Cranston was murdered, and that there’s a serial killer at large.”

  Riley could hardly believe her ears.

  She said, “But Ryan doesn’t even know anything about the case!”

  The employee said, “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s what he said. And now it’s what a lot of reporters believe.”

  Riley and the young man stepped out through the front entrance.

  For a moment, Riley stopped and stared.

  She saw that considerably more reporters were now gathered out here. Even worse, some of them had TV cameras. Worse still, they were clustered tightly around her ex-husband.

  Even worse, Ryan appeared to be thoroughly enjoying himself …

  Like he’s holding court.

  Riley charged forward and grabbed him by the arm.

  “Come with me,” she ordered.

  As she tried to pull Ryan away from the reporters, they started clamoring …

  “Are you Riley Paige?”

  “What can you tell us about Vincent Cranston’s murder?”

  “Is it true that his killer has also murdered two other people?”

  Ignoring the questions and hoping not to be caught by the TV cameras, Riley shoved Ryan through the door and into the building.

  Fortunately, a couple of security guards were stationed just inside, and they kept the reporters from entering.

  Ryan seemed shocked and surprised as she dragged him into the building.

  “You don’t act very glad to see me,” he said.

  Rile
y didn’t bother to reply. As they continued down the hallway, she looked around for a place where they could talk in private. They passed the open door of the conference room, where Bill, Jenn, and Agent Sturman sat staring at them.

  Sturman got to his feet and called out to her, “Agent Paige, where are you going?”

  Riley jerked Ryan to a halt.

  Good question, she thought.

  She asked Sturman, “Is the interrogation room free?”

  “As far as I know,” Sturman said.

  Dragging Ryan by the arm again, Riley called back to Sturman …

  “That’s where you can find us.”

  She roughly escorted Ryan to the little room and shoved him inside, then shut the door behind them.

  “Sit,” she said sharply to Ryan.

  His mouth hanging open, Ryan sat down in the same chair where Bruno Young had been sitting just a little while ago. Riley paced back and forth in front of the table, trying to bring her anger under control.

  “First things first,” she said. “How did you know I was in Connecticut?”

  Ryan knitted his brow with worry.

  “Oh, Riley, I don’t know if I should tell you that.”

  “You’d damn well better,” Riley snarled.

  Ryan sighed deeply and said, “OK, if you must know, Jilly told me.”

  Riley was aghast now.

  “Jilly?” she said.

  “Don’t be mad at her,” Ryan said. “She meant well. I think she wants us to get back together.”

  Riley doubted that very much. Ryan had bitterly disappointed Jilly in the past. Jilly had never forgiven him for treating her like a true daughter for a time, then bailing on her like he always did with his family.

  She asked, “Why did you even call the kids?”

  Ryan smiled that familiar rakish smile of his.

  “Come on, Riley,” he said. “You know how much I love the kids. I always try to stay in touch.”

  Riley felt a flash of anxiety. Ryan seemed to be genuinely out of touch with reality. He seemed to have convinced himself that he’d been acting out of the best intentions. She wondered—how much harm had his delusions caused just now?

  Riley asked, “How did you know Vincent Cranston was murdered?”

  “I didn’t know,” Ryan said.

  “You must have known,” Riley said. “It’s what you told them, isn’t it?”

  Ryan looked confused by the question.

  “No, I didn’t tell them anything like that,” he said. “I’ve never even heard of Vincent Cranston.”

  “You must have said something about him,” Riley said. “What was it?”

  “Well, a reporter got in my face and said something like …”

  Ryan seemed to think for a moment.

  Then he said, “Oh, yeah. He said he had a source with the medical examiner’s office who said Cranston was murdered, and it was being covered up. He wanted to know if I could confirm that.”

  “So what did you tell him?” Riley asked, dreading the answer she was likely to get.

  Ryan shrugged and said, “I told him I wasn’t at liberty to discuss it.”

  Riley let out a groan of despair.

  She knew that, as far as all the reporters were concerned, Ryan had as much as confirmed that Cranston had been murdered.

  “What’s the matter?” Ryan asked with a nervous look. “It was the right thing to say, wasn’t it?”

  “No, it wasn’t!” Riley said. “You should have said, ‘I don’t know.’ Better yet, you shouldn’t have said anything at all.”

  Ryan thought for a moment and then shrugged.

  “Well, anyway, don’t worry,” he said. “I changed the subject right away.”

  “What did you tell them?” Riley asked, her dread rising by the second.

  Ryan smiled again.

  “Just what it’s like to be married to the great Riley Paige,” he said. “I had them eating out of my hand, Riley. I was just starting to tell them about how you had to rescue April and me from that crazy killer last November. Remember that?”

  Of course I remember, Riley thought.

  Riley had been hounded by a psychopath seeking revenge because she had killed his girlfriend in an arrest many years before. The man had threatened Riley’s family, so she had hidden April in a safe motel room guarded by FBI agents. Then Ryan had gotten the smart idea that April would be happier in a nice rented house in Chincoteague and had taken her there—where, of course, the killer had found it easy to find them both. She’d never told Ryan that the criminal mastermind Shane Hatcher had actually been the one who stopped the killer and tied him up so Riley could free her family.

  If Hatcher hadn’t arrived when he had …

  She couldn’t bear to think about what would have happened before she could have gotten there herself.

  She said to Ryan, “Did you tell them you damn near got both you and April killed?”

  Ryan said, “I didn’t get a chance to tell them much of anything before you came out and broke things up. Riley, I had no idea how well-known you are. You really should exploit that to your advantage. I could help with that. You know what they say—there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

  Riley grumbled, “In your line of work, maybe. In my line of work, there’s no such thing as good publicity. It’s essential for me to be able to operate under the radar. And it’s essential to keep some information out of the media. People’s lives are at stake. Do you have any idea how much damage you did just now?”

  “No, I don’t know,” Ryan said. “Maybe if you’d talked to me more, I’d know more about your work. Whose fault is that?”

  Riley felt stung. It was true that Riley had tried to keep the grim facts of her FBI work to herself, to protect her family from them. Had she maybe carried her reticence too far?

  But then she caught on to what was happening.

  Stop it, she scolded herself. Don’t let him manipulate you—again.

  Ryan looked around uneasily.

  “I don’t like this room,” he said. “I feel like one of your suspects. Am I being interrogated or something? I didn’t do anything illegal, did I?”

  Riley growled, “You’re the lawyer, Ryan. You tell me. How about stalking? Because this sure feels like it.”

  Ryan’s eyes fell on the two-way mirror.

  “Is someone watching?” he said. “Is someone listening?”

  Riley found herself wondering the same thing. She’d just told her colleagues she was coming here. Had they followed and gathered around that mirror to watch and listen? Or were they still back in the conference room discussing the case? She didn’t know, and she realized that she really didn’t care very much. She was glad to have something that might impress Ryan with the seriousness of the situation. Maybe he needed to feel a little paranoid.

  Riley crossed her arms and demanded …

  “Tell me right now. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Riley, I just want to put things right between us. I didn’t like how we left things the last time we were together.”

  Riley bit her tongue to keep from saying …

  “Do you mean with you drunk and crying?”

  Ryan leaned on the table with his chin in his hands, gazing at Riley as casually as if he were sitting at a kitchen table.

  He said wistfully, “Do you know what our problem was, Riley?”

  Riley’s mind boggled …

  Where do I even begin?

  Ryan continued, “We never made plans for all the changes we’d have to face. Because, you know, life is all about changes. We let ourselves get into a rut. We never faced the future.”

  Riley’s mouth hung open with disbelief.

  She said, “No, our problem was that I couldn’t count on you—for anything at all.”

  Ryan said, “Riley, how many times do I have to tell you, I can change?”

  Riley stifled a gasp.

  “And how many times are you going to disappointment me
and the girls? We’ve had enough, Ryan—all three of us. All four of us, if you count Gabriela.”

  Ryan leaned back in his chair and said, “You don’t get it, do you? Our problem is the future. I mean here I am, between careers …”

  Riley interrupted, “Between careers? You got thrown out of your own firm! And for good reason!”

  Ryan continued as if he hadn’t heard her.

  “And what about you? You can’t spend the rest of your life playing the hero. It was fine when you were younger. But you can’t keep risking your life forever. You’ll have to stop sometime for the sake of the people who love you. Your luck will run out, and then where will we all be?”

  Riley felt stung again. Ryan had hit another nerve—the hardships her career had caused her family.

  Don’t let him get to you, she told herself again.

  Ryan said, “Let’s start from scratch, make things like the old days. We were a great team, remember?”

  Then he snapped his fingers and said …

  “Hey, I’ve got a great idea. With your fame and all your past adventures, you ought to write a book. Of course, you’d need my help. I’ve done a lot of writing, you know, doing my kind of work. I’m good at it. Between the two of us, we could write a surefire bestseller. I’d never have to work in a law office again. And you’d never have to go out into the field.”

  Riley could hear a change in Ryan’s voice as he kept babbling. It grew fainter, sounded farther and farther away, as if Ryan knew how farfetched his fantasies of reconciliation were getting, knew how pathetic he really was really sounding.

  I hope he doesn’t cry again, she thought. I can’t deal with that right now.

  Then she realized her own throat was tight and her eyes were stinging.

  She was on the verge of crying herself.

  It’s time to put a stop to this, she thought.

  “Ryan, I don’t have time for this,” she said. “And neither do you. I’ve got a family to raise—a new family, with a new man. And you—well, you’ve got to pick up the pieces of your own life. I can’t do that for you. No one can. You’ve got to find the strength to do it yourself.”

  Try as she might to feel otherwise, her heart went out to him. She wanted so much to reach across the table and take him by the hand or touch him on the shoulder …