LUCY: The Complete Lucy Kendall Series with Bonus Content (The Lucy Kendall Series Book 5)

by Stacy Green

  She ignored me and looked up at Todd. “I’m assuming his cell is off, so we can’t track it via GPS,” Frost said. “But I’ll take the number in case. Meanwhile, I’d like you to return to Detective Beckett’s car and wait. You’re a civilian, and this is a crime scene.” She titled her chin up and narrowed her eyes, ice cold and fringed with thick lashes. I wanted to yank them out one by one.

  Frost raised her voice against the miserable wind. “Detective Beckett. Are you related to Justin Beckett and this whole mess?”

  She should have made that connection in the first ten minutes. Mary probably chose this area because of its inexperienced police force. It’s what I would have done.

  I turned and walked away.

  Night fell before the search grid was fully set up. A crime scene van arrived, and technicians began picking through the snow as if they might actually find something useful. Trooper Evans, Todd’s friend from the Maryland State Police, showed up. Todd introduced me to him, but I only noticed he was short with a deep voice. Sitting in Todd’s car, my legs curled beneath me, I watched the scene as though I weren’t a part of it, pretending every second ticking by didn’t sound like a clock in my head.

  Then they found Chris’s phone. Tossed aside in the snow a few feet away from the blood and near the trees. Frost concentrated her grid around that, and the group continued to search.

  Frost loved being in charge. She paraded around the edge of the scene, pointing and constantly talking, either to another deputy or to one of the crime scene techs. Instead of looking miserable like the rest of the group forced to suffer the inclement weather, Frost strutted as if the frozen tundra of acreage was her personal catwalk. When Trooper Evans arrived, Frost drew herself up tall, her blunt chin leading the charge. I waited for her to lift her leg over the crime scene tape and decorate the snow, but Evans seemed smart enough to let her think she was in charge. He joined the search, along with Todd. Knowing he was out with the rest of the group gave me a shred of hope.

  “Are they checking hospitals?” Kelly’s voice drifted through my speaker, providing a small sense of comfort.

  “Yes. So far, he hasn’t shown up at any within a seventy-five mile radius. But they’ve got an APB out on him. As if that is going to help.”

  “Do you think he’s alive?” Kelly sounded as if she had to choke out the question.

  “I think he left here with her, alive. But that was hours ago.” If he hadn’t been severely injured and was somewhere inside away from the elements, I didn’t think Mary would have killed him. Not yet.

  “I can’t believe the wind blew hard enough to cover the tracks.”

  “Because you’ve never been out in the open country. Changes everything.” I stared out at the window, looking at the bright lights the CSIs had set up. Wind sent shimmering streams of snow over the scene, into the tech’s faces and equipment, and into the empty fields. The snow drifted away to the next place, white and silent, the only witness to Chris’s fate.

  “I shouldn’t have blown him off yesterday.” Guilt thickened Kelly’s voice. “He said you weren’t answering his calls, and he was going to go over to your place again. I talked him out of it and told him to leave you alone until you were ready. If I hadn’t, maybe he would have come over and somehow this would have turned out differently.”

  “It wouldn’t have.” Flashlights floated in the dark woods–searchers finding nothing. “I’d have ignored him.”

  “I don’t understand her. Why go to all this trouble?”

  “Because she’s no longer in control, and she’s desperate.” A thought clawed at my subconscious. I couldn’t allow myself to acknowledge it. “Chris represents things going wrong for her, and he practically asked her to do this. He handed himself over.” I turned the heat down a notch.

  “How could he think she’d just let him walk away?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he planned to kill her himself and just couldn’t do it. If I find them, I’ll be sure to ask.”

  “All right.” Kelly’s voice remained calm. “So you’re stuck waiting until the cops allow you to move on to the next step. So let’s do what we do.”

  “I’m not sure I know what I do anymore, Kel.” The woman who had moved fearlessly throughout the bowels of Philadelphia chasing monsters seemed like a fantasy. Had she ever been real, or just a figment of my imagination? I longed to be fearless and invincible just one more time. To finish this mess. But I couldn’t find anything to ignite the flame.

  “We find people who do bad things,” Kelly said. “This is no different. So first things first. Why Harford County?”

  “I don’t know.” I’d been asking the same question all day and still couldn’t come up with anything other than its remoteness. And possibly inept police force, but I supposed I might have been biased. “Can you get into his email by chance?”

  “Do you know the account and the password?”

  “No. But he doesn’t have his laptop.” An idea flickered, but I couldn’t voice it. Asking Kelly to go clear to Center City in her mental condition was out of the question.

  “If I thought I could get in and get it, I would,” she said, reading my mind. “But chatter is that ADA Hale already has the police at Chris’s. I’m sure they’ll take the laptop. And I honestly don’t think they’ll find anything useful. She’s too smart for that.”

  “So I’m back here, with no place to start.” The flashlights bounced again, glowing orbs shooting in and out of the trees. A fresh blast of wind pelted the car.

  “That’s not true,” Kelly said. “You know Chris, and we know how this woman works. If she takes him out of control, what’s her end game? Punishment? What’s she going to do in the meantime? Tell him family stories that have been handed down from generation to generation?”

  I jerked up from my slouch. Pain shot through my cramped back. “Chris said something about that a while ago. He said he didn’t know anything about her side of the family, and I got the impression he wished he did.”

  “Okay,” Kelly said. “Keep going.”

  “So if she took him, and he’s alive and able to talk, then he’s going to ask her about her life, her past. He’s going to try to get as many answers as he can in the time he’s got left. He’s smart enough to read her and stall her any way he can.” I didn’t give the implication of the words time to sink in.

  “Maybe that’s why he’s still alive, even now,” she said. “She–or someone with her–shoots him, he’s down. They move in for the final shot, and he appeals to her. So she decides to tell him. But why? She cut him out of her life years ago. If she wants revenge for messing things up now, just kill him.”

  “Because she doesn’t just kill.” I felt scummy, almost as if I’d snuck into someone’s house and hid in the closet while they were having sex. “She doesn’t get her kicks from that. She gets them from hurting people, from controlling them. Chris would be no different.”

  “And she gave birth to him.”

  “She was nothing more than a vessel,” I said. “But we’ll never find him if we don’t find a starting point. So far Chief Deputy Frost is just circling the obvious.”

  “Todd’s there,” Kelly said. “ADA Hale is probably on his way. This won’t be dropped. They’ll find something.”

  I hoped she was right, but the sight of Todd coming toward me with a grim expression brought a sickening sense of déjà vu. “I’ll call you back, Kel.”

  “Text me if anything comes up.”

  Feeling suffocated in the warm car, I opened the door and stepped into the bitter night. The wind had blown the clouds out, leaving the black sky and its millions of shining stars. “What is it?”

  Todd carried a plastic bag. Food, I realized. He went around to the driver’s side and got into the car. I took a few cold breaths to wake up my system and then returned to the heat.

  “Here.” Todd handed me a gas station sandwich. “Turkey and cheese. Figured everybody likes that,
right?”

  I wasn’t hungry, but since my last meal had been some time yesterday evening, I took the sandwich. “Sure.” I bit into the thick hoagie bun, the bread immediately sticking to my teeth. “The searchers haven’t found anything?”

  “Even the dogs are coming up empty,” Todd said. “The wind and snow are screwing their senses up, and it’s so cold they can’t stay out too long.”

  “They didn’t just fly away.”

  He shot me a look. “I realize that. Obviously they walked to a vehicle and left. Trooper Evans thinks it’s time to give up on the grid, but Frost insists on searching the acreage in case he was dumped somewhere. Which isn’t outside the realm of possibility.”

  I thought of Chris and me dumping Preacher’s body. The idea the same thing might have happened to Chris reeked of cruel karma. “What about the owner of the property or the realtor?”

  “Can’t reach them.” Todd took a large bite, barely chewed, and then took a drink of water. “ADA Hale’s on his way.”

  “Good.” I’d only met the assistant district attorney once, but I got the impression he knew how to get things done. He wouldn’t appreciate Frost’s star seeking. “What about the sheriff? Who does Frost answer to? Don’t they have an investigative branch?”

  “She claimed she called their Major Case detective,” Todd’s derisive tone didn’t help my confidence in the deputy. “Trooper Evans is going to call the sheriff himself just to make sure.” He cleared his throat. “But it’s probably not going to matter. ADA Hale’s bringing the FBI.”

  “What?” I shouldn’t have been surprised. Mary had become the FBI’s case even before Chris’s disappearance. But I didn’t want them snooping around me.

  “ADA Hale had a police tech go with him to Chris’s apartment,” Todd said. “They found his computer and got into the email.” Kelly had been right. Thank God I hadn’t asked her to go over there. “ADA Hale believes it was definitely Mary communicating, because she mentioned things only she would know.”

  “Did they get a location?”

  “The local FBI office is working on it, but so far nothing.”

  I tried to tell myself my reaction was based on surprise, but I recognized the stirrings of jealousy. Chris hadn’t shared any of this with me. “What things did she say? They actually had a real conversation?”

  “Apparently. I didn’t ask. But ADA Hale said he would tell you and me everything he knew when he got here.”

  “Thank God he’s not shutting me out.” Whatever thread of sanity I possessed would have snapped if that happened.

  Todd finished his sandwich. “Why would he do that?”

  “Because Chris’s life has gone to shit since he met me.”

  “Depends on how you look at it,” Todd said. “And no one forced him to make this decision. This is his bad choice.”

  His tone reminded me how much he didn’t care for Chris. “Thank you for being here. For staying out in this weather. I know you’re doing it for me, and I really appreciate it.”

  He turned to face me, his eyes bright. His plain face seemed sharper somehow, his almond-shaped eyes more unique, the crooked slope of his nose endearing. “I am doing this for you. And only you.”

  The back of my neck heated up. Uncomfortable silence settled between us, and I twisted to stare back at the woods, the ghostlike flashlights still dancing.

  “You know,” Todd said. “When my father introduced me to Mary, I was just a kid. Still using training wheels. I was scared of her because she was tall and imposing. But I had no idea what kind of evil had walked into our lives.”

  He rarely talked about his memories of her. Our conversations were centered on her specific actions and their impact on Justin. Todd always pretended Mary’s presence in his life never affected him personally, and I never pushed.

  “Most people never do,” I said. “A few can sense it. They can tell something’s off about a person, but they rarely allow their minds to jump to the worst conclusions.”

  “I suppose,” Todd said. “When everything happened with Justin, I knew she’d been involved. I just couldn’t prove it, and I didn’t know how.” He balled up the wrapper from the sandwich and shoved it back into the container. “If I’d had the courage to speak my mind, how differently would this have turned out?”

  “You can’t think that way,” I said, the ultimate hypocrite. “It will eat you alive, and it serves no purpose here. The only thing you can do is focus on what’s happening right now.”

  “Is that how you get through the days?” He spoke in a hushed whisper, as if we were sharing the deepest secrets of our souls, as if maybe the tone of his voice would lull me into making a mistake.

  I changed the subject. “So Kelly is right.”

  “How so?” He smiled warily, admitting defeat–at least for now.

  “Remember in the message, Chris talked about how he didn’t know anything about her side of the family, or her? That’s why he’s still alive. Or was. She’s telling him what he wants to know before she kills him.”

  Just like I did with Riley.

  The teenager’s terror-stricken face flashed in front of me, as vivid as if she’d just walked in front of the car. I gasped and nearly choked on the sandwich.

  “Jesus, you all right?” Todd reached to pat my back, but I blocked his arm. I couldn’t stand his touch right now.

  “Fine. Wrong pipe.”

  Through stinging eyes, I saw Deputy Roberts looming toward us. He walked with purpose, his steps wide and his gait fast. “They have something,” I whispered.

  Todd and I both exited the car as the deputy came within earshot. The grim set of his mouth and the creases around his eyes sent shivers of fear down my spine.

  He stopped in front of me, so close I could smell the coffee he’d been drinking. “We found a hunting cabin.”

  8

  I waited for Roberts to spit out the rest of the information he was obviously chewing on.

  “It’s a female,” he said. “Probably under twenty. We haven’t touched her yet. The medical examiner’s on her way.”

  Todd cursed and kicked a chunk of snow. I ducked my head into my zipped collar, warming my face. The shivers attacking my body had nothing to do with the temperature. I spoke through the layer of clothing. “Is there any sign of Chris?”

  “There’s no one on the property,” Deputy Roberts said. “We’re still processing the scene.” He looked past me, into the bleak winter night. I thought about sidling up to him, letting my body heat mingle with his, allowing him to catch a whiff of my perfume. Appeal to the appreciation I saw in his eyes every time he looked at me. But Todd stood a foot away, talking on the phone to someone. I didn’t want him to see me stoop that low.

  “Will you please keep us updated?” I said. “I’m not sure how much you’ve been told about Mary Weston, but torturing and killing young girls is her specialty. I’d guess she’s at it again.”

  Roberts glanced back into the woods, his shoulders taut as if pulled up by imaginary strings. When he faced me again, the lines between his eyes were a little deeper, his face somehow stretched longer. “I’ve been on the job for a long time. Seen my fair share of killing. But nothing like this. Nothing.” He spit the last word out as though it would cleanse his memory.

  “She’s brutal. And she’s been doing this a long time.”

  Roberts’s pinched face made me wonder who he was thinking about. Daughter? Niece? “Once the medical examiner gets here, we’ll know more. I’ll talk to Deputy Frost about how much I can share with you.” He headed back towards the black woods, his strides long and steps deep.

  “I think they found something about Chris too.” I said to Todd as soon as he ended his call. “Roberts looked like he wanted to say more. He’s probably been told not to.”

  Todd’s grim face gave me no optimism. “ADA Hale and the FBI agent should be here in about an hour. If this is another victim of Mary’s, there’s going to be a jurisdictional pissing contest
.”

  “Chief Deputy Frost isn’t going to like that,” I said. “But Mary’s out of their league and beyond their resources. And the FBI has the right to take the case, don’t they?” My petty side hoped I had a front row seat to the conflict. Frost wouldn’t go down without a fight, but she needed to swallow her pride and let the FBI take over.

  “Since she’s crossed state lines, yes,” Todd said. “But the issue is proving it was Mary. Chris’s emails will probably help us with that.”

  “How much did he talk to her?”

  “Multiple conversations.” The sharp wind did nothing to soften Todd’s harsh voice. “I told you he’s not right.”

  Another stab of betrayal sliced my frozen skin. “That’s unfair. Why would he be right?”

  Todd looked away, toward the woods. He clearly didn’t know how to answer, and I had no interest in winning an argument. A deep ache, one that pervaded past the muscle and into the very fibers of the bone, settled over me. And the ache had nothing to do with the cold.

  “Get back in where it’s warm,” Todd said. “I’m going to talk to Frost and see what I can find out.”

  The warmth did nothing for the pain or the weariness in my head. The only other time I’d felt like this had been after my sister’s death. It lingered until her abuser showed up and tried to turn me into his next victim. Cracking his skull with a baseball bat had been wonderful shock therapy.

  I wondered what that said about me. My ability to stop that line of thinking and redirect to something more productive seemed to have vanished with killing Riley. Shame and confusion and bitter negativity dragged me into a bottomless pit with no way out I could see.

  But I had to find a way back because Chris needed my help.

  As had become my custom these past days, I closed my eyes and drifted off.