by Lisa Gardner
“In personal combat training, we get to spend a lot of time on our backs. It helps.”
He reached over and brushed her cheek. The contact was so unexpected, she flinched.
“A blade of grass,” he said calmly. “Stuck to your cheek. Don’t worry, honey. I’m not gonna attack you. I know you’re armed.”
“And if I wasn’t?”
“Why then, I’d roll you right here and now, of course. Being a testosterone-bound male who’s prone to that kind of brutish behavior.”
“I don’t mean it that way.”
“You don’t like touching much, do you? I mean, biting, flipping and beating the bejesus out of me aside.”
“I’m not … used to it. My family was never very demonstrative.”
He seemed to consider that. “If you don’t mind me saying, your father seems wound a bit tight.”
“My father is wound way tight. And my mother came from an upper-class family. As you can imagine, holidays were a gay, frolicking time in our home. You wouldn’t believe the boisterous outbreaks.”
“My family’s loud,” he volunteered casually. “Not big, but definitely demonstrative. My father still grabs my mother around the waist and tries to lure her into dark corners. As an adult, I appreciate their relationship. As a kid … Hell, we were scared to death not to announce ourselves before walking down a darkened hall.”
Kimberly smiled faintly. “You got an education?”
“Heavens, yes. It’s sweet, though, I suppose. My father’s a civil engineer who designs roads for the state. My mother teaches high school English. Who would’ve thought they’d be so happy?”
“Siblings?”
“One sister. Younger, of course. I terrorized her for most of our childhood. On the other hand, every time I fell asleep in the family room, she put makeup on my face and took pictures. So I guess it evens itself out. Plus, I’m the only man you’ll ever meet who understands just how hard it is to remove waterproof mascara. And I guess I’ll never run for political office. The photos alone would ruin me.”
“What does she do now?”
“Marybeth’s a kindergarten teacher, so in other words, she’s tougher than most cops. Has gotta be to keep all those little critters in line. Maybe when they fall asleep, she puts makeup on their faces, too. I’m too scared to ask.”
“You’re the only police officer in your family.”
“I have a cuz who’s a fireman. That’s pretty close.”
She smiled again. “They sound like fun.”
“They are,” he agreed, and she heard the genuine affection in his voice. “I mean, they could still use some good training and all. But as families go, they’re keepers. Do you miss your mother and sister?” he asked abruptly.
“Yes.”
“Should I shut up?”
“Would you obey me if I said yes?”
“No. I suppose I need some training, too. Besides, the stars are out. You should always talk when you’re lying beneath the stars.”
“I hadn’t heard that before,” Kimberly said, but she turned her face up toward the night sky, feeling the hot air against her face, and it did make it easier. “My family wasn’t happy. Not in the typical way. But we tried. I give us credit for that. We wanted to be happy, so we tried. I guess you could say we were earnest.”
“Your parents divorced?”
“Eventually. When we were teens. But the problems were way before that. The usual cop stuff. My father had a demanding job, worked long hours. And my mom … She’d been raised expecting something different. She would’ve done well with a banker, I think. Or even a doctor; the hours would’ve been just as bad, but at least her husband would’ve held a title with a certain level of decorum. My father, on the other hand, was an FBI profiler. He dealt in death, extreme violent death each and every day. I don’t think she ever got used to that. I don’t think she ever stopped finding it distasteful.”
“It’s a good job,” Mac said quietly.
She turned toward him, finding herself surprisingly serious. “I think so. I was always proud of him. Even when he had to leave in the middle of birthday parties or missed them altogether. His job sounded so larger-than-life to me. Like something a superhero would do. People got hurt. And my father went to save the day. I missed him, I’m sure I had tantrums, but mostly I remember feeling proud. My daddy was cool. For my sister, however, it was another story.”
“Older or younger?”
“Mandy was older. She was also … different. High-strung. Sensitive. A little wild. I think my first memory of her is her being yelled at for breaking something. She struggled with our parents. I mean, really, truly struggled. They were so by-the-book and she was so color-outside-the-lines. And life was harder for her in other ways. She took things to heart too much. One harsh word and she was wounded for days. One wrong look and she’d be devastated. She had nightmares, was prone to crying jags and had genuine fits. My father’s job terrified her. My parents’ divorce shattered her. And adulthood didn’t get much easier.”
“She sounds intense.”
“She was.” For a moment, Kimberly was silent. “You know what gets to me, though? You know what’s truly ironic?”
“What?”
“She needed us. She was exactly the kind of person that my father and I have sworn our lives to protect. She wasn’t tough. She made bad choices. She drank too much, she dated the wrong men, she believed anyone’s pack of lies. God, she desperately needed someone to save her from herself. And we didn’t do it. I spent so much of my childhood resenting her. Crying, complaining Mandy who was always upset about something. Now, I just wonder why we didn’t take better care of her. She was in our own family. How could we fail her so completely?”
Mac didn’t say anything. He touched her cheek again. Gently. With his thumb. She felt the slow rasp of his work-roughened skin all the way down to her jaw line. It made her shiver. Then it made her want to close her eyes, and arch her back like a cat.
“Another blade of grass?” she whispered.
“No,” he said softly.
She turned toward him then, knowing her eyes said too much, knowing she needed more armor, but helpless to find it now.
“They don’t believe you,” she said softly.
“I know.” His fingers traced along her jaw, lingered at the curve of her ear.
“My father’s good. Very good. But like all investigators, he’s meticulous. He’s going to start at the very beginning and have to work his way toward your conclusion. Maybe on another case it wouldn’t matter. But if you’re right, and there’s another girl already out there …”
“Clock’s ticking,” Mac murmured. The rough pads of his fingers returned along her jaw, then feathered down her neck. She could feel her chest rising and falling faster. As if she were running once more through the woods. Was she running toward something this time, or was she still running away?
“You’re very relaxed about all this,” she said brusquely.
“The case? Not really.” His fingers stopped moving. They rested at the base of her neck, his fingers bracing her collarbone and her skittering pulse. He was gazing at her with an intense look. A man about to kiss a woman? A cop obsessed with a difficult case? She was no good at this sort of thing. The Quincy women had a long history of being unlucky at love. In fact, the last man her mother and Mandy thought they had loved had killed them both. That was female intuition for you.
She wished suddenly that she didn’t think of her family so much. She wished suddenly that she really were an island, that she could be born again without any attachments, without any past. What would her life have become if her family hadn’t been murdered? Who would’ve Kimberly Quincy been then?
Kinder, softer, gentler? The kind of woman capable of kissing a handsome man under the stars? Maybe a woman actually capable of falling in love?
She turned her head away. Pulled her body away from his touch. It didn’t matter anymore. She suddenly hurt too much to look
him in the eye.
“You’re going to work this, aren’t you?” she asked, giving him her back.
“I did a little reading on Virginia this afternoon,” he said conversationally, as if she hadn’t just jerked away. “Did you know this state has over forty thousand square acres of beaches, mountains, rivers, lakes, bays, swamps, reservoirs, and caverns? We’re talking several major mountain ranges offering over a thousand miles of hiking trails. Two million acres of public land. Then we have the Chesapeake Bay, which is the largest coastal estuary in the United States. Plus, four thousand caverns and several reservoirs that have been formed by flooding complete towns. You want rare and ecologically sensitive? Virginia has rare and ecologically sensitive. You want dangerous? Virginia has dangerous. In short, Virginia is perfect for Eco-Killer, and hell yes, I’m definitely gonna pursue a few things.”
“You don’t have jurisdiction.”
“All’s fair in love and war. I called my supervisor. We both believe this is the first solid lead we’ve had in months. If I take off from the National Academy to do a little sidebar exploration, he’s not gonna cry any rivers. Besides, your father and NCIS are moving too slow. By the time they realize what we already know, the second girl will be long dead. I don’t want that, Kimberly. After all these years, I’m tired of being too late.”
“What will you do?”
“First thing tomorrow morning, I’m meeting with a botanist from the U.S. Geological Survey team. Then I’ll take it from there.”
“Why are you meeting a botanist? You don’t have the leaf anymore.”
“I don’t have the original,” he said quietly. “But I might have scanned a copy.”
She turned sharply. “You copied evidence.”
“Yep.”
“What else?”
“Gonna run to Daddy?”
“You know me better than that!”
“I’m trying to.”
“You really are obsessed with this, you know. You could be wrong. This case could have no bearing on the Eco-Killer or those girls in Georgia. You missed your man the first time. Now you see what you want to see.”
“It’s possible.” He shrugged. “Does it matter? A girl is dead. A man did it. Whether he’s my guy or someone else’s guy, finding the son of a bitch will make the world a better place. Frankly, that’s good enough for me.”
Kimberly scowled. It was hard to argue with that kind of logic. She said abruptly, “I want to go with you.”
“Watson will have your hide.” Mac sat up, brushing the grass from his hands. “He’ll kick you out so far so fast, it’ll be days before you feel the bruise on your butt.”
“I can take personal leave. I’ll talk to one of the counselors. Plead emotional distress from finding a dead body.”
“Ah honey, you tell them you got emotional distress from finding a corpse, and they’ll kick you out for sure. This is the FBI Academy. You can’t handle a corpse, you’re in the wrong line of work.”
“It’s not his call. The counselor says yes, I get to go, simple as that.”
“And once he learns what you’re really doing?”
“I’m on leave. What I do in my personal time is my business. Watson has no authority over me.”
“You haven’t been in the FBI very long, have you, Kimberly?”
Kimberly’s chin came up. She understood his point. She agreed with his point, which was why her heart was pounding so hard in her chest. Pursuing this case would earn her her first political enemy. Let alone a less-than-stellar start to her career. She’d waited twenty-six years to become an FBI agent. Funny, how easy it seemed to throw it all away now.
“Kimberly,” Mac said abruptly as if reading her thoughts, “you know that this won’t bring your mother or sister back, don’t you? That no matter how many murderers you hunt down, none of it changes the fact that your family is still dead, and you still didn’t save them in time?”
“I’ve been to their graves, Mac. I know how dead they are.”
“And you’re just a rookie,” he continued relentlessly. “You know nothing about this guy, you’re not even fully trained. Your efforts probably won’t make one iota of difference. Think about that before you throw away your career.”
“I want to go.”
“Why?”
She finally smiled at him, though she knew the look must appear strained on her face. There was the million-dollar question. And honestly, there were so many answers she could give. That Watson had been right this morning, and nine weeks later she had no friendships or allegiances among her own classmates. In fact, the closest she’d come to feeling any loyalty was for a dead body she’d found in the woods.
Or that she did feel survivor’s guilt, and she was tired of holidays spent in fields of white crosses. Or that she had a morbid need to chase after death, having once felt its fingers brush across the nape of her neck. Or that she was her father’s daughter after all. No good with the living, desperately attached to the dead, particularly when the body bore such a startling resemblance to Mandy.
So many possible answers. She surprised herself then, by going with the one that was closest to the truth. “Because I want to.”
Mac stared at her a heartbeat longer, then suddenly, finally, nodded in the dark. “All right. Six A.M. Meet me in the front of Jefferson. Bring hiking gear.
“And Kimberly,” he added as they both rose. “Don’t forget your Glock.”
CHAPTER 17
Albany, Georgia
1:36 A.M.
Temperature: 85 degrees
Nora Ray’s mother was still watching TV. She slumped on their old brown sofa, wearing the same faded pink bathrobe she’d worn for the past three years. Her short dark hair stood up around her face, gray showing at the roots, where it would remain until Nora Ray’s grandmother visited again and forcefully took her daughter in hand. Otherwise, Abigail Watts rarely moved from the sofa. She sat perfectly hunched, mouth slightly agape, eyes fixed straight ahead. Some people turned to booze, Nora Ray thought. Her mother had Nick@Nite.
Nora Ray still remembered the days when her mother had been beautiful. Abigail had risen at six every morning, fixing her hair in hot rollers and doing her makeup while her hair set. By the time Nora Ray and Mary Lynn made it downstairs for breakfast, their mother would be bustling around the kitchen in a nice floral dress, pouring coffee for their father, setting out cereal for them, and prattling away cheerfully until seven-oh-five on the dot, at which point she would grab her purse and head to work. She had been a secretary at a law firm back then. Not great money, but she’d enjoyed the job and the two partners who ran the place. Plus, it gave her an aura of prestige in the tiny blue-collar neighborhood where they lived. Working at a law firm … Now, that was respectable work.
Nora Ray’s mother hadn’t been to the office now in years. Nora Ray didn’t even know if she’d ever officially quit. More likely she’d walked out one day after getting a call from the police, and she’d never been back since.
The lawyers had been nice about it. They’d volunteered their services for a trial that never happened in a case where the perpetrator was never caught. They kept Abigail on the payroll for a while. Then they put her on a leave of absence. And now? Nora Ray couldn’t believe her mom still had a job after three years. No one was that nice. No one’s life stayed frozen for that long a period of time.
Except, of course, for Nora Ray’s family. They lived in a time warp. Mary Lynn’s room, painted sunshine yellow and lined with blue ribbons and horse trophies, remained exactly the same day after day. The last pair of dirty jeans she’d tossed in the corner were still waiting for an eighteen-year-old girl to come home and throw them in the wash. Her hairbrush, filled with long strands of brunette hair, sat on top of her dresser. A tube of pink lip gloss was half-opened next to the brush. Ditto the tube of mascara.
And still taped to the mirror above the dresser was the letter from Albany State University. We are proud to inform you that Mary Lyn
n Watts has been formally accepted into the freshman class of 2000 …
Mary Lynn had wanted to study veterinary sciences. Someday she could work full-time saving the horses she loved so much. Nora Ray was going to become a lawyer. Then they would buy farms side by side in the country, where they could ride horses together every morning before reporting to their high-paying and no doubt highly rewarding jobs. That’s what they had talked about that summer. Giggled about, really. Especially that last night, when it had been so friggin’ hot, they had decided to head out for ice cream.
In the beginning, right after Nora Ray came home and Mary Lynn didn’t, things had been different. People stopped by, for one thing. The women brought casseroles and cookies and pies. The men showed up with lawn mowers and hammers, wordlessly attending to small details around the house. Their little home had hummed with activity, everyone trying to be solicitous, everyone wanting to make sure that Nora Ray and her family were all right.
Her mother had still showered and put on clothes in those days. Bereft of a daughter, she at least clung to the skeletal fabric of everyday life. She got up, put her hair in rollers, and started the pot of coffee.
Her father had been the worst back then. Roaming from room to room while constantly flexing his big, work-callused hands, a dazed look in his eyes. He was the man who was supposed to be able to fix anything. He’d built their deck one summer. He did odd jobs around the neighborhood to help pay for Mary Lynn’s horse camp. He painted their house like clockwork every three years and kept it the neatest one on the block.
Big Joe could do anything. Everyone said that. Until that day in July.
Eventually people stopped coming by so much. Food no longer magically appeared in the kitchen. Their lawn was no longer mowed every Sunday. Nora Ray’s mom stopped getting dressed. And her father returned to his job at Home Depot, coming home every night to join her mother on the couch, where they would sit like zombies in front of a score of mindless comedies, the TV spraying their faces with brightly colored images deep into the night.
While weeds took over their lawn. And their front porch sagged with neglect. And Nora Ray learned how to cook her mother’s casseroles while her own dreams of law school drifted further and further away.