The Last Move

by Mary Burton

  “Want to? No. But when is life ever about what you want?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The bait will be too enticing to resist. Get more flies with honey than vinegar.

  Salt Lake City, Utah

  Sunday, November 26, 12:10 p.m.

  Agent Kate Hayden, PhD, was violating hospital visiting hours as well as a direct order from her supervisor when she rolled up the sleeves of the white lab coat and crossed the polished lobby toward the visitor’s station. Overhead lights hummed as the distant elevator doors opened and a gurney disembarked.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket. The display read Agent Jerrod Ramsey. Her boss. The guy had radar. She silenced the phone and tucked it in her pocket.

  An older woman wearing a blue volunteer’s smock smiled and then made a sad, pouty face when she didn’t spot hospital identification clipped to Kate’s jacket. “Are you on staff?”

  Instead of answering the question, Kate said, “I left my cell phone and ID badge in the gift shop. They have the cutest sweaters, and I tried one on. I just got distracted. You’d be doing me a big favor if you’d let me sneak up there for just a minute.” Her practiced go-to smile usually worked. “I know exactly where I left it.”

  “I need to see identification.”

  She glanced at the woman’s name badge. “Delores, can you cut me a break? My attending will eat me alive if he finds out I left it.” The store was just up the escalator within sight of the information desk.

  “I don’t remember you.”

  “I’ll run up there very quickly and bring it back.” Kate allowed some real worry to leak into her expression. “I’m in a rush.”

  A tall, broad-shouldered man approached the front desk to ask a question, and the brief distraction gave Kate the opening to start walking. The woman’s answer was lost as Kate moved up the escalator and past the gift shop toward a second bank of elevators. As the doors of one opened, she slipped in behind two nurses dressed in scrubs and a man and woman in white lab coats. At each floor the doors opened and her fellow passengers got off, until finally she was alone.

  At the sixth floor, she exited the elevator, moved toward the lockdown unit, and pressed the intercom. “I’m Dr. Kate Hayden. I’d like to speak to a nurse.”

  “Step away from the doors.” The voice crackled from the speaker.

  The doors swung open, and a young nurse in scrubs appeared. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m here to see Sara Fletcher.”

  The nurse studied her. “Are you medical personnel?”

  “I’m a doctor.” PhD in linguistics, but that was semantics now.

  The nurse shook her head. “Morning visitation is over.”

  Kate held up her FBI badge. “I won’t be long. It’s important.”

  The nurse stood her ground in the open doorway. “Law enforcement has been here all morning. The poor girl is in critical care, exhausted, and she’s still not talking. I’ve strict orders from local police not to let anyone in.”

  This case was turning into a jurisdictional tug-of-war. And Kate had not helped when a local detective had questioned her methods as if she were a child. She’d called him a moron, and the working relationship had soured from there. Now he was trying to cut her out of the case. “Your job is to help her body heal. My job is to catch the guy who locked her in a box in his barn for thirty-four days.”

  The nurse’s gaze narrowed. “She needs rest.”

  “Her abductor needs to be caught.”

  The nurse hugged her clipboard close and leaned in toward Kate. “Did I see you on television? Were you the agent who found her?”

  “I was.”

  The nurse’s guard dropped for a split second, no doubt as the scene played in her head.

  Kate took advantage of the other woman’s distraction and stepped through the doors into the unit. She was short but moved very quickly when motivated. She walked toward the girl’s room.

  The nurse recovered and followed, and the automatic doors swung shut behind them. “Look, you really can’t see her now. If you don’t leave, I’ll call security. You might be FBI, but while that kid is here, I’m in charge.”

  Kate didn’t break stride. “Ever been in a wooden box the size of a coffin for a minute, an hour, or thirty-four days as in Sara’s case?”

  The nurse frowned. “I know it’s been horrible for her.”

  “Do any of us really know? I sure can’t say that I understand what she’s endured.”

  “We’re all devastated over the girl’s trauma.”

  “You know Sara’s skin is so raw because of the constant pressure of the wood scraping against her. She can’t tolerate light thanks to the perpetual darkness. She can’t walk because her muscles have atrophied so badly she’ll need months of PT. And the STD she has came from repeated—”

  The nurse moved in front of her. “I’m aware of her injuries.”

  Kate straightened herself to her full five foot two inches. “Have you heard about the other girls this monster locked in boxes? We found other coffins buried in shallow graves on his property.”

  Some of the nurse’s fire cooled. “There were others?”

  “Four others. Those girls weren’t lucky.” She glanced around and dropped her voice. “One victim didn’t fit in her box. Want to guess how he got her to fit? He broke her legs.”

  The nurse drew in a sudden breath. “My God.”

  “He’s going to do it again.” She hoped the image of the girl, legs broken and suffering in a dark box, haunted this woman for a long time. It tormented her. “I just need to ask her one question.”

  The nurse’s lips flattened. “She’s not talking to anyone.”

  “Is she awake?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’ll be fine.” Kate didn’t bother with a thank-you as she moved past the nurse and down the hallway still decorated with paper Thanksgiving turkeys. When she reached room 602, she didn’t knock but slowly opened the door to the dimly lit room.

  Eighteen-year-old Sara Fletcher lay in her bed, a television remote gripped in her hands as she stared at the muted television screen. The girl was channel surfing, clicking from network to network without giving herself a second to see what was playing. The room was filled with flowers and Mylar balloons featuring Wonder Woman, who apparently had been a favorite of the girl when she was younger.

  “Sara.”

  The girl gripped the remote. Sharp blue eyes locked onto Kate with the leeriness of an animal caught in a trap. Even if the girl could run, her muscles still wouldn’t support her weight.

  Sara Fletcher had long blond hair that framed a thin pale face with angled cheekbones and a pointed chin. She’d lost twenty-six pounds of fat and muscle during her ordeal, and it would take weeks, perhaps months, before her body recovered.

  Kate stood still, giving Sara a moment to study her in the dimly lit room. Seconds ticked by, and though her suspicion didn’t abate, some of her tension eased.

  Kate closed the door behind her. “You recognize me, don’t you? I’m Dr. Kate Hayden. I’m a profiler with the FBI. I found you.”

  Tears glistened and her chin trembled.

  Kate held up her badge as she moved slowly toward the bed. “I know I don’t look the part.” The white coat billowed around her small frame but covered jeans still coated in mud from the crime-scene search.

  The girl studied the badge. She’d trusted a stranger once, and it had cost her dearly. Good. She was wary. That meant she was smart, and her chances of surviving this mentally were better.

  “I recognize the look on your face.” Kate wasn’t adept at levity but understood it had its place. “It’s a ‘you don’t look like an agent’ glare. I get it a lot.” She was 101 pounds soaking wet, as her mother used to say. Her light-brown hair was curly and stayed scraped back in a ponytail most of the time. “Operation code names for me have run the gamut in the eight years I’ve been at this. Smurf, Munchkin, and my favorite, the Lollipop Kid.”


  Beyond the odd monikers, she had a few lame jokes but right now couldn’t recall a single one as the guilt of not finding this kid faster pressed against her chest. The girl stared at her, silent, but suddenly observant.

  “People think when you’re small you aren’t smart or aggressive. But we can be the toughest of the tough, right?”

  Sara nibbled her chapped lip and stared back at the television.

  “We acted on an anonymous tip that led us to the abandoned Anderson farm.” The Anderson name carried weight in this county, and when the tip first came in, it had been discounted. Another two days passed before the local authorities had called the FBI.

  Kate had traveled to the farmhouse within hours of being contacted. She’d quickly found Sara’s box, and as she pried out the nails hammered into the lid, she’d heard the girl’s faint cry for help. She’d felt exhilaration, anger, and sadness as she opened the lid and discovered the painfully thin, pale, and frightened girl. Sara hadn’t been able to give Kate the name of her abductor before paramedics had taken the girl away in the ambulance. Kate was left to study the surrounding property and the abandoned wooden outbuildings, now graying and tumbling under decades of abuse from the harsh Utah winters. With the use of ground-penetrating radar, they’d found the location of other graves.

  Upstairs at the farmhouse, Kate had discovered fast-food wrappers, receipts, stacks of newspapers, and Sara’s purse. A rumpled hardware store credit card receipt for lumber, nails, and duct tape had yielded the name of Raymond Drexler Jr., a cousin to the Anderson family. Surveillance cameras from the hardware store had shown Drexler buying supplies. A background search of Drexler turned up mug shots, arrest records, and mental-health records for a man addicted to stalking.

  Today, she didn’t have all the answers. But she had Drexler’s name and a picture that she hoped Sara would identify as her abductor.

  She moved to the side of the bed but didn’t pull up a chair. She respected Sara’s personal space. “We haven’t caught the guy yet.”

  Sara tightened her hold on the remote and turned up the volume of the television. She surfed faster, turning the channels into an unrecognizable blur.

  This kind of avoidance was expected, and Kate didn’t fault the girl, but she needed a suspect identification. If they couldn’t communicate with words, then actions would have to do. She slowly crossed to the television and unplugged it.

  Silence crackled in the room. Sara’s brow knotted, a hoarse moan escaped her lips, and she tossed the remote at Kate. When it hit the floor, the back panel opened and batteries tumbled free.

  Kate picked up the pieces and carefully reassembled them. “I need your full attention now, Sara.”

  Sara frowned, dropping her gaze to the blanket. Pale, thin fingers, with nails still brutally short and jagged from scratching at wood, rubbed a dirty, inexpensive Wonder Woman bracelet she’d been wearing since the day she’d been taken.

  The bracelet’s red, yellow, and blue paint and the W were worn down. When rescue crews had tried to remove the bracelet, the girl had howled and fought. The trinket wasn’t expensive and had been a gag gift at a girlfriend’s eighteenth come-as-a-sexy-superhero birthday party. But this insignificant bauble had been with the girl through the entire ordeal, and rubbing it had become a self-soothing technique that allowed Sara to cling to sanity. Kate had been the one who intervened with the rescue crew and told them to leave the bracelet alone.

  “I’ve four pictures I’d like you to look at,” Kate said.

  She removed the pictures from her coat pocket, but kept them pressed to her chest. “All I want for you to do is look at the pictures. If you recognize one of the individuals just point, nod, blink, or grunt.”

  The girl’s gaze remained downcast. Her hand trembled as she picked at an already threadbare spot on the blanket.

  “He cannot hurt you anymore,” Kate said. “Now it’s my turn to go after him and make him pay. He needs to be locked in a small prison cell for the rest of his life. Will you help me?”

  Sara stared into Kate’s eyes as if searching for a lifeline. Her bloodshot eyes were dry, no hint of tears.

  One by one, Kate laid the mug shots beside the girl on the bed as if dealing cards. She was also careful not to look at the pictures, fearing a glimmer or linger would prejudice identification. She didn’t want the girl to parrot her thoughts. She wanted a legitimate ID.

  “You need to look at the pictures.” Kate checked her watch. “I shamed a nurse into letting me into this room, but she’s going to shake it off soon, decide I’m trouble, and insist I leave. I’m breaking a few dozen rules just by being here.”

  Sara studied Kate.

  “I know it won’t be easy,” Kate coaxed. “But you have to look. Point to any picture you recognize, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  The girl’s blue eyes were wild with fear, but also rage. She was in there somewhere.

  “I’ll make him pay,” Kate whispered.

  Sara’s brow furrowed before she scanned the pictures.

  Immediately she locked onto the third image on the left. A sob caught in her throat as she reached for the picture. Slowly she brought the image closer, staring at the face of the man with the black beard and shoulder-length hair.

  Sara swallowed, then crushed the image in her hand, squeezing until her knuckles whitened.

  Kate gently laid her hand over Sara’s fist and slowly unfurled her fingers. She took the crumbled image and smoothed it out. “I need you to tell me he’s the guy who took you.”

  Sara closed her eyes. She nodded.

  Kate studied the crinkled image. “You’re sure?”

  Another nod.

  She’d identified Raymond Drexler Jr.

  “You’re sure?”

  She opened her eyes and mouthed, “Yes.”

  Kate collected all the pictures and tucked them in her pocket. “Good work, Sara. I’ll nail him.”

  A quiet desperation deepened the lines in Sara’s forehead and around her mouth. She was eighteen but looked decades older.

  “I’ll catch him. I promise you.” Promises were tricky, and Kate didn’t make them often. But she would hunt this piece of garbage to the ends of the earth.

  Kate wished she could tell Sara her demons would vanish when Drexler was caught and convicted. “I’m not going to kid you. Catching him will help, and it’ll save other girls. But it won’t make your nightmares disappear completely. Time will fade some of the memories, but nothing in this lifetime will ever purge those thirty-four days.”

  Sara’s frown softened.

  Kate knew the nurses, doctors, and cops were telling the girl she was safe now. They were doing everything they could to reassure her. Of course, physically she was safe. Her body would eventually heal. However, the psychological part of the equation was a different matter. Her life would never be what it had been. The old Sara was dead.

  “I’m very proud of you, Sara. To survive what you did . . . well, you’re amazing. You’re Wonder Woman.”

  The first, very faint flickers of hope crossed the girl’s gaze before a fresh frown scattered them.

  Kate mentally distanced herself from the crushing sadness that always stalked her. “I’ll be posting this man’s face in every department in the country. It won’t be long. In the meantime, you’re safe here. It’s a lockdown unit. No one gets in.”

  The girl glanced toward the door.

  “I got in, yes. I not only have a badge, but I’m short and also very charming when I try.”

  A brow raised.

  Good, she understood sarcasm. More signs of life. “Ah, you must remember how delightful I was with your rescue squad driver?” The attendant, after trying to remove the bracelet, had tried to take a picture of Sara, likely to sell to the media. Kate had snatched his phone away and ground it into the mud with her foot. “I think he called me a tiny-ass bitch.”

  The girl’s lips twitched. A year ago the poor kid might have smiled or even laughed at
the self-deprecating comment.

  Kate plugged the television cord back into the socket and handed the girl the television remote. “I’ll call you when we have him.”

  Sara grabbed Kate’s wrist in a surprising grip. Kate stopped. Time stretched as she stared into the girl’s eyes, so full of wrenching pain. Sara pulled off the Wonder Woman bracelet, and with trembling fingers she slid it onto Kate’s wrist.

  Kate reverently touched the bracelet, needing a second before she could steady her voice. “Are you sure?”

  The girl nodded.

  “I like it. In fact, it rather works for me.” Kate tapped her finger on the worn W. “But when I catch this guy, I’m bringing it back to you, and you can decide what happens to it next.”

  The girl’s nod was almost imperceptible as she relaxed back against the pillows and turned on the television. She switched the channels again.

  Kate left her room and made her way off the wing and down the elevator. Outside, she spotted her partner leaning against an unmarked blue four-door FBI vehicle. Agent Michael Nevada stood several inches over six feet. He had broad shoulders, a bare-knuckle brawler’s hands, and a perpetual scowl. He was handy to have when her five feet didn’t intimidate skeptical cops and streetwise criminals. Words had power, but sometimes it could only take you so far.

  Nevada pushed away from the car. “You made it past the nurses, I see?”

  “The Lollipop Kid rides again.” She shrugged off the white coat, balled it up, and shoved it in a backpack resting on the pavement beside him. “Thanks for distracting the woman at reception.”

  He tossed her the FBI jacket she’d left with him. “Did Sara make an identification?”

  Kate handed him the wrinkled picture. “Raymond Drexler.”

  Nevada flicked the edge of the picture. “So, you were right?”

  “Yes.”

  Nevada grunted when emotions got the better of him. “I’m looking forward to finding this guy.”

  “Damn right.”

  He grinned. “I’d do this part of the job for free.”

  As she glanced at her phone to check email, the display flashed an unknown name. Area code was San Antonio, Texas. Her mother lived there, which was reason enough to answer instead of letting it go to voicemail. She also realized she’d missed three calls while the phone was muted. “Dr. Kate Hayden.”