Once Pined

by Blake Pierce

  As much as she was enjoying her hot tea and granola, waiting for the news was making her grumpy.

  When is that paper going to get here? she wondered, looking at the kitchen clock.

  The delivery seemed to be getting later and later these days. Of course, she wouldn’t have this trouble with a digital subscription. But she didn’t like to read the news on her computer. She liked to settle down in a comfortable chair and enjoy the old-fashioned feel of a newspaper in her hands. She even liked the way the newsprint sometimes stuck to her fingers.

  But the paper was already a quarter of an hour late. If things got much worse, she’d have to call in and complain. She hated to do that. It always left a bad taste in her mouth.

  Anyway, the newspaper was really the only way she had of finding out about Cody. She couldn’t very well call the Signet Rehabilitation Center to ask about him. That would cause too much suspicion. Besides, as far as the staff there was concerned, she was already in Mexico with her husband, with no plans ever to return.

  Or rather, Hallie Stillians was in Mexico. It felt a bit sad that she’d never get to be Hallie Stillians ever again. She’d gotten rather attached to that particular alias. It had been sweet of the staff at Signet Rehab to surprise her with a cake on her last day there.

  She smiled as she remembered. The cake had been colorfully decorated with sombreros and a message:

  Buen Viaje, Hallie and Rupert!

  Rupert had been the name of her imaginary husband. She was going to miss talking so fondly about him.

  She finished her granola and kept sipping her delicious homemade tea, made from an old family recipe—a different recipe from the one she’d shared with Cody, and of course minus the special ingredients she’d added for him.

  She idly began to sing …

  Far from home,

  So far from home—

  This little baby’s far from home.

  You pine away

  From day to day

  Too sad to laugh, too sad to play.

  How Cody had loved that song! So had all the other patients. And many more patients in the future were sure to love it just as much. That thought warmed her heart.

  Just then she heard a thump at the front door. She hurried to open it and look outside. Lying on the cold stoop was the morning newspaper. Trembling with excitement, she picked up the paper, rushed back to the kitchen, and opened it to the death notices.

  Sure enough, there it was:

  SEATTLE — Cody Woods, 49, of Seattle …

  She stopped for a moment right there. That was odd. She could have sworn that he’d told her he was fifty. Then she read the rest …

  … at the South Hills Hospital, Seattle, Wash.; Sutton-Brinks Funeral Home and Cremation Services, Seattle.

  That was all. It was terse, even for a simple death notice.

  She hoped that there would be a nice obituary in the next few days. But she was worried that maybe there wouldn’t be. Who was going to write it, after all?

  He’d been all alone in the world, at least as far as she knew. One wife was dead, another had left him, and his two children wouldn’t speak to him. He’d said barely a word to her about anybody else—friends, relatives, business colleagues.

  Who cares? she wondered.

  She felt a familiar bitter rage rising in her throat.

  Rage against all the people in Cody Woods’ life who didn’t care whether he lived or died.

  Rage against the smiling staff at Signet Rehab, pretending that they liked and would miss Hallie Stillians.

  Rage against people everywhere, with their lies and secrets and meanness.

  As she often did, she imagined herself soaring over the world upon black wings, wreaking death and destruction upon the wicked.

  And everybody was wicked.

  Everybody deserved to die.

  Even Cody Woods himself had been wicked and deserved to die.

  Because what kind of man had he been, really, to leave the world with no one to love him?

  A terrible man, surely.

  Terrible and hateful.

  “Serves him right,” she growled.

  Then she snapped out of her anger. She felt ashamed to have said such a thing aloud. She didn’t mean it, after all. She reminded herself that she felt nothing but love and goodwill toward absolutely everybody.

  Besides, it was almost time to go to work. Today she was going to be Judy Brubaker.

  Looking in the mirror, she carefully made sure that the auburn wig was properly aligned and that the soft bangs hung naturally over her forehead. It was an expensive wig and no one had ever caught on that it wasn’t her own hair. Beneath the wig, Hallie Stillians’ short blond hair had been dyed dark brown and trimmed into a different style.

  No sign of Hallie remained, not in her wardrobe and not in her mannerisms.

  She picked up a pair of stylish reading glasses and hung them on a sparkly cord around her neck.

  She smiled with satisfaction. It was smart to invest in the proper accessories, and Judy Brubaker deserved the best.

  Everybody loved Judy Brubaker.

  And everybody loved that song that Judy Brubaker often sang—a song she sang aloud as she dressed for work …

  No need to weep,

  Dream long and deep.

  Give yourself to slumber’s sweep.

  No more sighs,

  Just close your eyes

  And you will go home in your sleep.

  She was overflowing with peace, enough peace to share with all the world. She’d given peace to Cody Woods.

  And soon she’d give peace to someone else who needed it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Riley’s heart pounded and her lungs burned from breathing hard and fast. A familiar tune was stuck in her head.

  “Follow the yellow brick road …”

  As tired and winded as she was, Riley couldn’t help but be amused. It was a cold early morning, and she was running the six-mile outdoor obstacle course at Quantico. The course was nicknamed, of all things, the Yellow Brick Road.

  It had been called that by the US Marines who had built it. The Marines had placed yellow bricks to mark every mile. FBI trainees who survived the course were given a yellow brick as their reward.

  Riley had won her yellow brick years ago. But every now and then, she ran the course again, just to make sure that she was still up to it. After the emotional stress of the last couple of days, Riley needed some full-on physical exertion to clear her head.

  So far, she had overcome a series of daunting obstacles and had passed three yellow bricks along the way. She had climbed over makeshift walls, pulled herself over hurdles, and leaped through simulated windows. Just a moment ago she had pulled herself up a sheer rock face by a rope, and now she was lowering herself back down again.

  When she hit the ground, she looked up and saw Lucy Vargas, a bright young agent she enjoyed working and training with. Lucy had been glad to be Riley’s workout partner this morning. She stood panting at the top of the rock face, looking down at Riley.

  Riley called up to her, “Can’t keep up with an old fart like me?”

  Lucy laughed. “I’m taking it slow. I don’t want you to overdo it—not at your age.”

  “Hey, don’t hold back on my account,” Riley yelled back. “Give it all you’ve got.”

  Riley was forty, but she had never let her physical training lapse. Being able to move fast and strike hard could be crucial when battling human monsters. Sheer physical force had saved lives, including her own, more than once.

  Even so, she wasn’t happy when she looked ahead and saw the next obstacle—a shallow pool of freezing cold, muddy water with barbed wire hanging over it.

  Things were about to get tough.

  She was well bundled for winter weather and was wearing a waterproof parka. But even so, the crawl through the mud was going to leave her soaked and freezing.

  Here goes nothing, she thought.

  She threw herself
forward into the mud. The icy water sent a severe shock through her whole body. Still, she forced herself to start crawling, and she flattened herself as she felt the barbed wire scrape her back slightly.

  A gnawing numbness kicked in, triggering an unwanted memory.

  Riley was in a pitch-dark crawlspace under a house. She had just escaped a cage where she had been held and tormented by a psychopath with a propane torch. In the darkness, she’d lost track of how long she’d been in captivity.

  But she’d managed to force the cage door open, and now she was crawling blindly in search of a way out. It had rained recently, and the mud underneath her was sticky, cold, and deep.

  As her body grew ever more numb from the cold, a deep despair crept through her. She was weak from sleeplessness and hunger.

  I can’t make it, she thought.

  She had to force such ideas out of her mind. She had to keep crawling and searching. If she didn’t get out, he’d eventually kill her—just as he’d killed his other victims.

  “Riley, are you OK?”

  Lucy’s voice snapped Riley out of her memory of one of her most harrowing cases. It was an ordeal that she would never forget, especially because her daughter later became a captive to the same psychopath. She wondered if she would ever be entirely free of the flashbacks.

  And would April ever be free of those devastating memories?

  Riley was back in the present again, and she realized that she’d crawled to a halt under the barbed wire. Lucy was right behind her, waiting her for her to finish this obstacle.

  “I’m OK,” Riley called back. “Sorry to hold you up.”

  She forced herself to start crawling again. At the water’s edge, she scrambled to her feet and gathered her wits and her energy. Then she took off down the wooded trail, certain that Lucy wasn’t far behind her. She knew that her next task would be to climb across a rough hanging cargo net. After that, she still had almost two miles to go, and more than a few really tough obstacles to overcome.

  *

  At the end of the six-mile course, Riley and Lucy stumbled along arm-in-arm, panting and laughing and congratulating each other over their triumph. Riley was surprised to find her longtime partner waiting for her where the trail ended. Bill Jeffreys was a strong, sturdy man of about Riley’s age.

  “Bill!” Riley said, still gasping for breath. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came looking for you,” he said. “They told me I could find you here. I hardly believed you wanted to do this—and in the dead of winter, too! What are you, some kind of masochist?”

  Riley and Lucy both laughed.

  Lucy said, “Maybe I’m the masochist. I hope I can run the Yellow Brick Road like Riley can when I’m her ripe old age.”

  Teasingly, Riley said to Bill, “Hey, I’m ready for another go at it. Want to join me?”

  Bill shook his head and chuckled.

  “Huh-uh,” he said. “I’ve still got my old Yellow Brick at home, and I use it as a doorstop. One’s enough for me. I’m thinking about going for a Green Brick, though. Want to join me for that?”

  Riley laughed again. The so-called “Green Brick” was a joke around the FBI—an award given to anyone who could smoke thirty-five cigars on thirty-five successive nights.

  “I’ll pass,” she said.

  Bill’s expression suddenly turned serious.

  “I’m on a new case, Riley,” he said. “And I need you to work with me on it. I hope you’re OK with this. I know it’s really soon after our last case.”

  Bill was right. To Riley, it seemed like only yesterday when they’d apprehended Orin Rhodes.

  “You know I’ve just brought Jilly home. I’m trying to get her settled into her new life. New school … new everything.”

  “How is she doing?” Bill asked.

  “She’s erratic, but she’s really trying. She’s so happy to be part of a family. I think she’s going to need a lot of help.”

  “And April?”

  “She’s absolutely great. I’m still blown away by how fighting with Rhodes made her feel stronger. And she’s already very fond of Jilly.”

  After a pause, she asked, “What kind of case have you got, Bill?”

  Bill was silent for a moment.

  “I’m on my way to meet with the chief about it,” he said. “I really do need your help, Riley.”

  Riley looked directly at her friend and partner. His expression was one of deep distress. When he’d said he needed her help, he’d really meant it. Riley wondered why.

  “Let me take a shower and get into some dry clothes,” she said. “I’ll meet you at headquarters right away.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Team Chief Brent Meredith wasn’t a man to waste time with niceties. Riley knew that from experience. So when she walked into his office after her run, she didn’t expect small talk—no polite questions about health and home and family. He could be kindly and warm, but those moments were rare. Today, he was going to get right down to business, and his business was always urgent.

  Bill had already arrived. He still looked extremely anxious. She hoped she would soon understand why.

  As soon as Riley sat down, Meredith leaned over his desk toward her, his broad, angular African-American face as daunting as ever.

  “First things first, Agent Paige,” he said.

  Riley waited for him to say something else—to ask a question or give an order. Instead, he simply stared at her.

  It only took Riley a moment to understand what Meredith was getting at.

  Meredith was taking care not to ask his question aloud. Riley appreciated his discretion. A killer was still on the loose, and his name was Shane Hatcher. He’d escaped from Sing Sing, and Riley’s most recent assignment had been to bring Hatcher in.

  She’d failed. Actually, she hadn’t really tried, and now other FBI agents were assigned to apprehend Hatcher. So far they’d had no success.

  Shane Hatcher was a criminal genius who had become a respected expert in criminology during his long years in prison. So Riley had sometimes visited him in prison to get advice on her cases. She knew him well enough to feel sure that he wasn’t a danger to society right now. Hatcher had a weird but strict moral code. He’d killed one man since his escape—an old enemy who was himself a dangerous criminal. Riley felt certain that he wouldn’t kill anybody else.

  Right now, Riley understood that Meredith needed to know whether she’d heard from Hatcher. It was a high-profile case, and it seemed that Hatcher was quickly becoming something of an urban legend—a famed criminal mastermind capable of just about anything.

  She appreciated Meredith’s discretion in not asking his question out loud. But the simple truth was, Riley knew nothing about Hatcher’s current activities or his whereabouts.

  “There’s nothing new, sir,” she said in reply to Meredith’s unspoken question.

  Meredith nodded and seemed to relax a little.

  “All right, then,” Meredith said. “I’ll get right to the point. I’m sending Agent Jeffreys to Seattle on a case. He wants you as a partner. I need to know whether you’re available to go with him.”

  Riley needed to say no. She had so much to deal with in her life right now that taking on an assignment in a distant city seemed out of the question. She still had occasional returns of the PTSD she had suffered since being held captive by a sadistic criminal. Her daughter, April, had suffered at the same man’s hands, and now April had her own demons to deal with. And now Riley had a new daughter who had been through her own terrible traumas.

  If she could just stay put for a while and teach a few classes at the Academy, maybe she could get her life stabilized.

  “I can’t do it,” Riley said. “Not right now.”

  She turned toward Bill.

  “You know what I’m dealing with,” she said.

  “I know, I was just hoping …” he said, with an imploring expression in his eyes.

  It was time to find out what was the mat
ter.

  “What’s the case?” Riley asked.

  “There have been at least two poisonings in Seattle,” Meredith said. “It appears to be a serial case.”

  At that moment, Riley understood why Bill was feeling shaken. When he was still a boy, his mother had been poisoned to death. Riley didn’t know any of the details, but she did know that her murder had been one of the reasons he had become an FBI agent. It had haunted him for years. This case opened up old wounds for him.

  So when he’d told her he needed her on the case, he’d really meant it.

  Meredith continued, “So far, we know of two victims—a man and a woman. There may have been others, and there may be others still to come.”

  “Why are we being called in?” Riley asked. “There’s an FBI field office right there in Seattle. Can’t they handle it?”

  Meredith shook his head.

  “The situation there is pretty dysfunctional. It seems that the local FBI and the local police can’t agree on anything about this case. That’s why you’re needed, whether you’re wanted or not. Can I count on you, Agent Paige?”

  Suddenly, Riley’s decision seemed perfectly clear. In spite of her personal problems, she was really needed on this job.

  “Count me in,” she finally said.

  Bill nodded and breathed an audible sigh of relief and gratitude.

  “Good,” Meredith said. “You’ll both fly out to Seattle tomorrow morning.”

  Meredith drummed his fingers on the table for a moment.

  “But don’t expect a cozy welcome,” he added. “Neither the cops nor the Feds will be happy to see you.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Riley dreaded taking Jilly to her first day at her new school almost as much as she’d dreaded some cases. The teenager was looking rather grim, and Riley wondered if she might even might make a scene at the last moment.