Chapter
28
I AM NOT dead, which is surprising, considering. I’m sore and bruised. My head is full of cottony water and my ears won’t pop. A shoulder feels scraped raw. But I am alive.
I hide until nightfall, in case he braves the waterfall and tracks me downstream.
The bank of the river is muddy and dank, but overgrown. Things crawl from the muck, their feathery touches tracing over my body, but I lie perfectly still, knowing the slightest movement could mean my last breath.
After what seems like hours crouched in the mud, I feel certain I am safe. For the time being. I travel downriver, careful to keep to the rushes in case they are looking for me, but once again, they will assume I am dead. Who could have lived through that fall?
It is a miracle. I am a miracle. Still walking, still talking. Still sane, after all these years.
My painfully empty stomach finally drives me away from my hiding place. I am thirsty and hungry and covered in mosquito bites and leeches. The sun sinks away into the tall grasses and the river comes alive, fish rising to the surface to snatch their dinner from the eddy pools, the moon bringing her favorite creatures to life. An owl hoots three times, and I shiver. Three hoots means death is coming.
With Adrian on my trail, I know she is right.
Three miles downstream now, and the river banks sharply to the left. I know it is time to reenter the world. There is a trailer park a few miles inland. I find clothes hanging on a line that look like they will fit me. It is not the first time I’ve helped myself to some clothes, nor will it be the last. It happens when you have nothing, and until I can get to D.C., to the woman I was told could help, who I can trust, I won’t be rolling in cash.
I tear off my muddy, torn jeans and waterlogged shirt, use a towel to wipe the dirt from my body and hair, slip into a too-small red T-shirt with Munich printed on it in raised white lettering, pull on a pair of fatigue green cargo pants. I leave my clothes behind in recompense—the woman who lives here might be a firm hand with a needle and can tidy up the mess I’ve made of mine. I can’t give up my boots, but they’re meant for hard times. I slip them back on my feet; they are old friends, worn but broken in, my favorites.
I’ve spent years trying to make them believe I am dead and gone, lost into the wilds, but now that he has seen me in the flesh, nine long years after I made my escape, all hope is lost. He will be hunting me, won’t quit until he sees my lifeless body into the ground. It may not be today, or next week, or next month, but he will not stop. Unless I stop him.
You will ask why I did not return to my family when I found my freedom. To tell them the child they buried was not their own.
You are right to ask. It makes little sense to someone who has not experienced the horrors I have. It is shame, prideful shame, that keeps me from them. To look Mother in the eye and admit how sullied I am, to see the confirmation of all she believed about me come to fruition? To see Father cringe when he looks at me, wincing at the thought of what I have endured? To have them whisper about me in the night? They were not kind people to start with. Oh, does this surprise you? It is hard to imagine having anything but pity for people who lose their children. But I will tell you the truth. This happens to good parents, and to bad.
I chose not to return, not to let them know I still lived. Hate me if you will. But I know my family, and I know that the idea of an angel child, sitting on a branch in some heavenly tree gazing down at them adoringly, fits their narrative much, much better than the rotten, tainted thing they would see me as if they knew the whole truth.
I breathe deeply, tie off the belt at the waist of the khakis. Shirt: too small. Pants: too large. Boots: just right. Goldilocks strikes again.
Yes, I hear the bitterness in my tone, too. This is what the thought of those people does to me. All of them. The ones who were supposed to care for me, and the ones who hurt me.
Love.
It comes in all forms.
The only real parent I’ve known lies dead in a stainless-steel drawer, unable to protect me any longer.
I march toward the road, toward the town, toward an uncertain life.
He trusted her. I must, as well.
Chapter
29
1989
McLean, Virginia
HE DISCOVERED EDEN by accident. Or, as Curtis loved to say, Eden discovered him.
Adrian was in love with his newfound power. He loved killing. Loved it so much that a year after the incident at the construction site in McLean, he’d already taken four more lives. He was very careful, had been preying on the homeless who wandered the dark night streets of D.C. Off the Key Bridge into Georgetown, under the Whitehurst Freeway, there was a parking lot across from a bar called Chadwicks. D.C.’s homeless crowded in the back of the lot, near the river, away from the streetlights, under the shadow of the bridge. They had a full-blown camp, and Adrian found he could move among them without too much trouble, passing out blankets and water, magazines and candy bars and greasy fast food bags. They liked him all right. He liked himself, too. He was becoming a regular philanthropist.
His knew his size was an issue; he stuck out and was easily remembered, but there was nothing he could do about that. Better to be their friend. There was less chance of them turning on him if he was found out. He was very careful no one would match the sweet high schooler who brought them some much-needed things out of the goodness of his own heart with the vicious killer dropping bodies in the Potomac.
Even when the police came calling to do a welfare check and talked to everyone about the rise in homeless deaths, he played it perfectly. He’d gone up to one of the cops who’d been eyeing him and asked if he was safe being down here. The cop had shrugged and said, “You’re a big kid, but best be careful, just in case.”
A big kid.
Yes, he was.
Life was good. During the day, he was an average senior, making decent enough grades to stay off the radar, hanging with Doug in Georgetown, even venturing on a few dates. He doubled with Doug to the Homecoming dance, managed to get through having his cock sucked in the parking lot behind the school by a stoned blonde with a nose ring who wanted him to call her Candy, though her real name was something like Elizabeth. What he wanted to do was put his hands around her neck and squeeze the life out of her perfect body, but he restrained himself. Doug wouldn’t have approved if he’d dragged his date back to the dance dead. And his only real friend’s approval meant the world to him.
The days were long, and boring, and uneventful. But after midnight, he became his true self. He almost felt as if he was becoming a vampire, feeding on the blood of his victims, becoming strong and capable. Of course, he hated blood. It was messy, and too easily transferred between people. He’d tried stabbing and cutting, but it didn’t give him the same rush. Looking into someone’s eyes as they realized what was happening didn’t do it for him, especially the resignation he’d seen from some of the homeless, who almost seemed grateful to him for ending their suffering.
No, it was the struggle he craved. The spastic, panicky movements of arms and legs, the chest heaving, hands ripping at his forearms, feet kicking his shins. The struggle was his thing, what he sought.
He’d had his final growth spurt; at his school physical, the doctor had measured him at six foot six and suggested he go out for football. He was seventeen, huge and strong, and not afraid of anything. He had to keep up appearances, being his usual quiet, deferential self. But inside he was on fire. Inside, he was a god.
Under cover of his advanced biology class, he spent some time in the library learning about the process of dying. They said when the heart stops, the brain has two to three minutes of continued activity while the body shuts itself down, so he was always careful to speak to his victims afterward. To thank them for their sacrifice. To assure them their death had not been in va
in. He’d always been a polite boy; there was no reason to devolve into a raving maniac at the end the way he’d done with Frank and the nameless defaulter. He felt bad sometimes for Frank, but he never felt sorry for the other man. Neither a borrower nor a lender be, dude.
It was late April toward the end of his senior year when he discovered the garrote.
He read about it in a book—one of his dad’s spy thrillers—and decided it might be worth a try. It seemed...elegant. Sophisticated. Grown-up. Sheer brute force had gotten him by until now. If he was going to continue on this path, he needed something a little more seemly.
He knew using a device was more dangerous than his own hands, so he was careful when he bought the materials—borrowing Doug’s car to drive to Bethesda to buy the wire from a hardware store, getting a child’s jump rope at a sports store in Falls Church. He fashioned the garrote, admired his work, then tested it out on one of his old stuffed teddy bears, shoved away in the corner of his closet, forgotten and unloved.
One good twist and the bear’s head was sliced clean off.
Smiling, on top of the world, he went to his favorite testing grounds under the Whitehurst Freeway for the first attempt. He chose a young guy with a brain full of cats—he’d be strong, but no one was going to miss him. He’d already been talking about moving south, to warmer climes, and the other homeless wanted him gone. Even the forgotten didn’t like being around crazy.
Adrian followed him out of the lot, down to the river and waited until the guy finished taking a leak to jump him.
The garrote worked perfectly. He was able to relax the pressure a few times, let him start to breathe again, which was ideal. Before, if he’d let his arms go slack, his prey could slip out, run away. No more. He took his time. It was fifteen minutes of sheer, heady bliss. When it was over, satiated and happy, he slid the body into the water in a good solid current, knowing it would be days before it was found.
This newfound toy consumed all of Adrian’s thoughts. He was edgy, and distracted, always on the lookout for the next neck to wrap his wire around. His grades started to slip—who could do homework when you held life in your very hands? His dad was questioning his comings and goings. Even Doug started drifting away. He had become obsessed with going into the marines to impress Candy Elizabeth, who’d smartly moved her oral attentions to a boy who didn’t make her feel like a lamb about to go to the slaughter. He still hung out with Adrian, but there was an invisible wedge between them. As if Doug sensed the strength of the man below the surface, and couldn’t reconcile that person with his old friend.
Alone, Adrian became the night. He couldn’t help himself. He was going down the rat hole, his stack of bodies growing. But the perfect kill eluded him. His pursuit became more and more frantic. Toward the end of May, even the homeless shut him out, realizing something wasn’t quite right about the big blond-haired kid who’d been hanging around a lot more lately.
Discouraged, he was sitting on a bench on the National Mall, watching the flags surrounding the Washington Monument flip and snap in the breeze, when she walked by.
The one.
Not the next one, but the one who was going to be his perfect kill. He’d take her down, then lie back for a while. Take the summer off. He needed to get himself back under some semblance of control.
He didn’t hesitate. He stood and followed, watching how her ass moved beneath the thin cotton of her skirt, her slender ankles shifting and moving in worn espadrilles, the muscles in her thighs tightening and lengthening with each step. She was young, an intern on the Hill, maybe. A dangerous victim. He felt the familiar tingle in his groin. He felt the blood rushing through his veins, and knew he was powerless to stop things now.
It was twilight, the sun fighting to hang on in the west, and he decided to take her right there in the middle of the Mall, with all the people around. The softball teams finishing their games and settling in with a beer or three, the congressional staffers walking down to the Metro, the tourists soaking in the last bit of the city before night set in. He could do it. He could grab her and pull her into the sculpture garden by the Hirschhorn Museum. No one would be there now, after museum hours, and he knew the lone camera that watched over the gardens was placed at the entrance. He would go over the wall to the downward path, yank her right over the edge.
His pulse raced, and his breath came short. He stalked her, waiting for the moment she’d be his.
In the shadow of the gardens, where no one could see them, he took three swift steps, pulled her behind the wall and wrapped the wire around her delicate white throat.
She was light and graceful in his arms, and in his frenzy of adrenaline, he’d pulled the garrote too tight. She didn’t fight, didn’t struggle. She went limp.
Caught off guard, he relaxed his grip.
And a voice commanded, “Let her go, Adrian.”
Startled, he gasped and dropped the girl in a heap on the ground. She lay unmoving, and he searched for the owner of the voice, legs poised to sprint him away from the scene.
A woman of unsurpassed beauty stepped out of the shadows.
In the space of a heartbeat, she stared into his eyes, and he was mesmerized. Frozen. Her eyes were green, the color of moss, and wide-open. There was no fear. She wasn’t afraid of him at all. Her reaction confused him. He didn’t know what to do.
He wondered then if she was an angel. If something had happened to him, and he’d died.
But the birds were chirping, and he could hear the shouts and traffic. He was not dead. The calm was an illusion.
The only sane thing for him to do was to pounce on her, swing the silver wire around her neck, bunch his fists and turn her away, hard and fast, yanking the twin dowels close. She’d witnessed him attack a woman. She could put him behind bars forever.
He took a step toward her, but something told him to stop. He waited a heartbeat while she approached him. She took the garrote from his hands and smiled. Then she leaned toward him, breath warm and soft, like a ripe peach, and kissed him. Her lips were soft and gentle, her tongue slick. She kissed him for what felt like a very long time, the unmoving girl at their feet, and then she pulled back and squeezed his hand, those moss-green eyes locked on his.
Her voice was like honey when she finally spoke again.
“My name is Curtis Lott. I’ve been watching you for a very long time.”
Chapter
30
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Washington, D.C.
THE BRUTISH, DIRTY cream concrete edifice of the Hoover Building gave the first clue to its coming demise. The FBI was planning to move its headquarters away from the crumbling building that had housed and protected them since 1975, but for the time being, the bureaucratic machine was moving at a glacial pace, and Headquarters remained on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The spacious marble lobby was significantly more impressive. A very subdued young agent was waiting for Sam and Xander when they arrived. He got them signed in, through the metal detectors and in the elevator for the quick ride up three floors, then led them through the winding halls into an empty conference room. With a nod toward the water and coffee service on the table by the window, he left them alone.
Xander wasn’t talking to Sam. It had taken her an hour on the road to convince him to take her back to D.C. instead of bundling her off to his cabin in the Maryland mountains and hiding her in his closet. They’d gone round and round—he could keep her safe; she would be protected. She didn’t need protecting; she was a big girl who’d faced much worse. He’d mumbled something about her falling into trouble headfirst, which got on her last nerve, and they’d been inches from having a knock-down, drag-out, hurt-each-other-with-nonretractable-words fight when Fletcher called and interrupted. They’d retreated to their corners, glaring at each other while she’d answered the call.
“Yo
u need to head directly to FBI Headquarters. We’re going to be debriefed on Timothy Savage and the Kaylie Rousch case.”
That’s all he’d tell her over the phone, and she spent the second hour of the drive in awkward silence, feeling the hollowness of her victory over Xander’s objections, and fretting about what was going on. Xander hadn’t done anything more than grunt noncommittally since the George Washington Bridge, and she felt it was important to fix things.
But before she had a chance, the doors to the conference room opened and people started streaming in. Fletcher entered first, and he introduced them to Agent Rob Thurber and Agent Jordan Blake. They all shook hands, Thurber quick and hard, Blake no less intense but softer. She was a pretty girl, probably ten years Sam’s junior, brown hair pulled back in a high ponytail, very focused. Thurber was older and struck Sam as a bit uptight. They complemented each other, yin and yang.
Last through the door was a man Sam knew well, tall and intense, with black hair and the greenest eyes she’d ever seen. Supervisory Special Agent Dr. John Baldwin, head of the FBI’s elite Behavioral Analysis Unit II team, and her best friend’s fiancé. The man who’d recently implored her to come work for the FBI.
He looked completely whipped, his hair standing on end, his clothes rumpled. But his smile was genuine. “Sorry I’m late. Hope I didn’t hold you up. Hi, Sam.”
She ignored the pointed look from Xander, rushed across the room to hug him. He hadn’t shaved and his beard scratched her cheek when he leaned down to hug her back.
“Baldwin! What are you doing here? Is Taylor with you?”
“No, Taylor’s back in Nashville. As to why I’m here—it’s a long story. I’m just consulting on this case. Rob will fill you in. Why don’t we get started, and we can catch up after?”
Sam squeezed his arm. “Of course. But before we do, I want you to meet Alexander Whitfield.”
Baldwin shook Xander’s hand and Sam watched the two men size each other up. Taylor had met Xander on a weekend trip, but Baldwin hadn’t been with her; this was their first face-to-face. Xander was a bit shorter than Baldwin’s six foot four, but he looked just as menacing, just as tough. These were two smart, capable, deadly men. She caught their body language, friendly enough, but slightly tense, as if Baldwin was warning Xander not to mess things up. She smiled. It was nice having a pseudo big brother to watch out for her. She knew once they got past the small problem of Baldwin wanting her to work for the FBI, the two men would get along famously—they were of the same mind on many things. And they both had their own version of the rules. Mavericks.
When Shadows Fall Page 14