Soundbyte (-byte series Book 5)

by Cat Connor

  “Yep.”

  Kurt climbed the ladder and peered inside the ceiling. “Roomy. Proper floor. Looks like a store room.” He climbed inside. I followed him. As I reached the top, lights flickered on. “Power.”

  “Yay,” I replied. I didn’t have to stoop and nor did Kurt, the ceiling above him was a good six inches away. This room was functional. I wondered why it didn’t have proper stairs. Would’ve made an excellent upstairs bedroom or office.

  Boxes were stacked along one wall. Kurt moved. Dust puffed in small clouds where he stepped.

  “If Campbell was the bad guy then he would have sent her up here, otherwise she could have used the time to escape or make a phone call,” I said and began looking for a note or something to indicate what was going on and corroborate my thoughts on Campbell’s involvement.

  “And if they’d arrived to find a dead body he may have sent Doyle up here to keep her away from the scene downstairs,” Kurt said. It sounded as if he was with me on the Campbell being a good guy scenario.

  My eyes scoured the walls; she could’ve written something anywhere. Nothing that looked like a note caught my eye. Furniture was piled at one end of the room; a desk with chairs stacked on it, several empty bookcases, and an old rocking horse.

  The desk seemed a likely place. I pulled out the top desk drawer. Empty. The second drawer was jammed. But the third contained a notepad and a small well-used pencil.

  I patted my pockets looking for new latex gloves. Kurt threw me a pair and I pulled them on then lifted the notebook out of the drawer and flipped through it. The inner pages revealed a scrawled note.

  “Kurt, it was her. She writes ‘I am Maria Campbell née Doyle. Iain’s taking me to his cabin in the woods – he said I’m in danger. Someone killed the couple who are renting our house. Help me.’”

  “Someone killed … not Campbell killed them. That’s interesting. Makes the other car’s presence more intriguing,” Kurt said. He looked at the note. “That was written in a hurry.”

  “Née Doyle? She is referring to herself as married and to this as their house. Why were we not given this information up front?”

  “Good question. This case is full of questions.”

  “Would’ve been nice if she’d said where the cabin is,” I said. The pad felt odd in my hand. I flicked through it again. “Pages missing, but nothing else written anywhere. She could have taken some.”

  “You think she’ll try leaving notes?”

  “I hope so.”

  There was nothing else of interest in the attic. We took the pad with us. Lee and Sam were waiting at the bottom of the ladder with a plate of cookies.

  “Cookies?” I said.

  Sam grinned. “Nice neighborhood.”

  I took one. “These are good,” I declared between bites. “I love coconut.”

  Sam was right. This was a nice neighborhood full of older people. Retired. Cooking, baking, neighborly folk. When they found out what happened to Mrs. Southey and her friend Mr. Foster it was going to hit them hard.

  “Where’s Dylan, the cop?” Kurt said looking around.

  “Outside the front door,” Lee replied.

  We followed Kurt back down the hall to the front doorway and listened as he spoke to Dylan. “I think we should get support services in here before the coroner turns up to take the body. This is a close, neighborly place. I can get FBI victim assistance here, is that all right with you?”

  Dylan nodded. He was chewing a mouthful of cookie. He swallowed fast. “Yes, sir.”

  Kurt walked away and made a phone call.

  Twenty

  Fear

  We stayed in the area canvassing neighbors, hoping to get more information for almost two hours. During which time I’d asked Sandra to look for vehicles titled and registered to Campbell.

  My phone rang. It was a call back from Sandra.

  “Hey, got anything?”

  “There are no vehicles registered to Iain Campbell,” Sandra said.

  “Crap.”

  “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have vehicles. Could be that he uses a third party, a company for example.”

  “He’s not making this easy.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  I hung up.

  There were no reported sightings of the dark red car or the blue truck. We did know the truck was not the same car in which Campbell and Maria left Washington. A BOLO was out to locate his white rental car, which might hold some clues.

  Instead of going back to DC, we decided to set up a base in a motel. All we knew was that Campbell was headed to a cabin, it could be anywhere, or nowhere. Sandra was searching public records looking for his cabin. Meanwhile, we needed a direction.

  Without knowing why, ‘west’ popped into my head.

  West.

  Not a song, just a word. Nice to have something simple for a change.

  “Hey, anyone seen Noel?” I called across the front lawn to Sam and Lee who were climbing into their car.

  “Nope,” Sam replied. Lee looked back to where his car should’ve been. “He didn’t say anything.”

  “Great, now we have a runaway NCIS agent,” I muttered. Only Kurt could hear me. “Can we go save this woman now, please?”

  “After you,” Kurt said with a smile. He held the passenger door open for me. I looked around for Noel, one last time. He was in the wind.

  I climbed in. Kurt pressed the door shut. Impatient, I found myself tapping on the armrest and muttering, “T-t-t-today people, today.”

  Kurt eased into the driver’s seat, glanced at me, and then pulled his seat belt across his body. Everything seemed to take so fuc’n long. I watched with pent-up annoyance as he clicked the locking mechanism into place. Adjusted the rearview mirror. Fiddled with the wing mirrors. Moved the seat back. Good grief! He was the last person to drive the car so surely nothing had changed. My fingers tapped.

  Now’s good. I glared at the road in front of us. T-t-today, people.

  “You all right?” Kurt said, pulling away from the curb. I caught his eye in the edge of the rearview mirror and looked away.

  “I’m okay.”

  “You seem agitated.”

  I didn’t reply. His simple observation made me want to scream. Scream. Of course I was agitated. There was a dead old lady and a dead old man; a man claiming to be helping keep a missing woman safe; and a dark red car indicating that someone else was at the scene of the deaths, as did the note left by Maria who is married to Campbell. Also Brown isn’t Brown. There are four dead people in one family and I have no answers. None.

  What the hell was I going to tell the one surviving member of the Bleich family when Misha brought him home? Sorry? We did our best but the Unsub who killed your family was just too clever? I’m sure we’ll catch him sometime? Meanwhile we were chasing an abducted woman all over northern Virginia instead of investigating the deaths of your entire family.

  Where the hell is the justice?

  God sucks.

  And just like that he and I were back to not speaking.

  I settled into the seat. Best to keep my borderline rage to myself. Kurt may not view it as helpful to the case. Dark clouds rolled across the grey sky. Lightning shot from the center of the blackest cloud bank, filling the sky with an eerie white glow. The storm erupted.

  Thinking time was what I needed. And where the hell did Noel disappear to? Who does that? Who begs in on an investigation then just leaves? That’s not right. Sure he’s kept things from me in the past, but not while working with us on something. Odd behavior. Odd indeed.

  I leaned my head on the window and thought. My eyes closed. All distractions floated off into the blurry distance. The one face I saw made zero sense. It wasn’t Mac. There was no butterfly. I was looking straight into the eyes of Christopher Chance and recalling what Lee told me about the actor behind the character. As irrelevant as it seemed, I knew the twisted way my subconscious worked. I went with it. Hell, if Christopher Chance is all I have,
then he’d best be good enough.

  Blue eyes stared back into mine. The expression I saw was interest, not confusion, or concern.

  Interest. He knew something and I needed to know what he knew. Somewhere beyond the scene that immersed me, I could just detect reality. Like a half-open door you catch sight of in your peripheral vision. I kicked it shut. The world disappeared with a bang. Chance stood his ground.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “Christopher Chance,” he replied.

  “Really?”

  A grin blasted across his face then disappeared. “Nah, I’m an actor.”

  I swallowed. “And you’re here because?”

  “Because you have a warped imagination and you think I know something about one of the men involved in this case.”

  “Do you?”

  “I might.”

  “Do you?” I repeated.

  “What do you think?”

  My thoughts needed to stay within the confines of my skull because I thought he was shaping up to be an infuriating sonofabitch and that wasn’t helpful.

  “Are we going to do this all day, or are you going to tell me?”

  He smiled. It was boyish. I liked it and that annoyed me on a whole new level. But his charm was not going to sway me from my course, after all this was my fantasy.

  “Tell me, please.”

  “Campbell is military. Or I should say he was on active military service.”

  Searching my memory banks I struggled with the military aspect. Why does everything that turns ugly always have a military connection?

  “Was?”

  “He’s not active military now.”

  “You were army, was he?”

  “Yes, he served in Desert Storm.”

  “And you know him?”

  He shook his head. “I know he was army and I know he served about the time I did.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. Now, you have to find out why he’s involved and who is after them.”

  “I will.” I thought of something else as his blue eyes began to fade. “One more thing … why am I talking to you and not my dead husband?”

  Chance took one step forward. He was an inch from my face and he melted. His hair dripped blonde streaks, beneath the blond I saw familiar black. His eyes darkened, leaving the light blue behind, as flecks of gold and brown swam in hazel eyes. His height and body shape remained the same. Mac’s hazel eyes smiled and his lips touched mine. “I thought you didn’t want me around anymore,” he whispered. “But I didn’t want to go yet.”

  There was no bullet hole in his forehead. Maybe Sean was right and I aimed high or you can’t shoot ghosts after all.

  “But Chance?”

  “Every girl deserves a Christopher Chance rescue …”

  I smiled. He quoted me from another time and another place.

  “Not me, dude. As Lee once said, I am a human target.”

  Mac faded to nothing before my eyes. Moments later, I was pulling my cell phone free of my belt and calling Sandra.

  “Hey, it’s me. The ex-boyfriend, Iain Campbell. He might be Maria’s estranged husband, not an ex-boyfriend. Also, check out his service record. Army. He was Army. I want to know why he left and everything else about him,”

  “Sure, on it now.”

  I loved that she didn’t ask how I knew. I heard her nails tapping on the computer keys and waited. Sandra was good and she was quick.

  She sighed. “We have an interesting situation. His service record is incomplete.”

  “Incomplete?”

  “He was army. He served in Desert Storm. He was stationed in Germany. We even have a posting back to Virginia. But after nineteen-ninety-three there is nothing.”

  “Discharge paperwork?”

  “Nothing. The rest of his file is confidential.”

  “He never left the army.” A cold river of blackened foreboding stormed through me searching for a culvert to take it straight to hell. Not active military service. Another joint task force or did he jump right over from the army to CIA? “See if Caine can work his magic on the file. We need to know what he was involved in and why his record is confidential.”

  Sandra hung up after assuring me she’d call me back as soon as she found something. She rocked. She was the best Delta support person ever.

  I’d have to be dead to not feel Kurt’s brewing questions. I smiled at him. “Go ahead, ask.”

  “I get you can see things … but you appeared to be sleeping and now you know our man was army and where he saw action. How?”

  His question was valid but didn’t make it any easier for me to answer. It was Kurt. The man who saved my life and helped me recover my memory. I could tell him even though I didn’t want to hear my words once they escaped the safety of my skull. They sounded a little insane.

  “Christopher Chance told me.” I watched the words sparkle and glow as they floated in the air just above the dashboard.

  “Who the hell is he?” The words fell from his mouth right before a sudden dawning. “Oh, that canceled TV show you liked. Human Target.” He paused for a second. I could imagine the hamsters running on the wheels in his head trying to keep that light going. “You’ve moved on from talking to the dead?”

  “Not quite. He turned into Mac at the end of our conversation.”

  “And none of this bothers you?”

  Of course it bothers me. “Nope.”

  “I saw that show a few times. If Guerrero turns up and wants to tell you something – we could be in a power of trouble, and you better listen,” Kurt said.

  Jackie Earle Haley played the perfect Guerrero. “If Guerrero shows up, we’re way past listening.”

  My phone rang. I answered it. Any interruption was welcome.

  “Caine has gone to O’Hare, we need the Director to wield some weight to open the file,” Sandra said.

  “Thanks.” I hung up and muttered to Kurt. “Who does this guy think he is? Jack Reacher?”

  Kurt laughed. “That’s all we need, to be tracking a Jack Reacher wannabe gone to the dark side.”

  “It scares me that you think Reacher is the light side.”

  “Scares me that you might end up talking to him.”

  All conversation stopped while I considered his comment.

  It was legitimate.

  Kurt was watching me with a thoughtful expression. I waited, expecting his next comment to be interesting.

  “You don’t know the meaning of fear do you?” Kurt continued. I frowned and shook my head. I’ve been plenty scared on and off during my life and more so since becoming a parent, but for me fear was something that told me I was alive.

  A grin spread across his face. “Fuck everything and run.”

  I smiled back. “Seems about right.”

  I understood what he meant. I just couldn’t seem to translate it into something that would deter me. It’s not as if I hadn’t wanted to run many, many times.

  In fact, so often it became a too-many-to-count situation.

  Yet here I am.

  Recently I’d experienced such a moment – a powerful urge to run – and it stuck with me. I felt it climbing around the walls in my mind, the partitioned walls that stopped the thought from becoming action. I had to stop it because of the shit storm that would ensue if I acted upon it. I’d be running forever. And I know I can’t outrun myself.

  “You okay?” Kurt said, his hand brushed my shoulder.

  “Sure.”

  “Nuh uh, not buying. Something you want to share?”

  “Nope.”

  “Conway?” His voice softened. “Ellie?”

  “No.” I gave my best impersonation of a smile. “Leave it.”

  That indiscriminate thought climbed higher. I watched as its long fingers clung to the top of the wall, nails visible on the other side. If it climbed much further it would find daylight. I took a deep breath and willed it back down. But it stayed, clinging to the wall. Determined. Impuls
ive. Terrifying. But it wasn’t terrifying, not really. Because I knew I could do it. I could run. I could run away from it all. I looked out the window.

  Trees, concrete, traffic, and overlaid over the landscape was Kurt’s reflection. He wasn’t helping. I reached forward and pressed the power button for the radio. Music would help.

  Grasping at straws is what I do best.

  Kevin Costner and Modern West filled the car with ‘Maria Nay.’

  Oh, for God’s sake, not again! I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw ached.

  “Can you hear that?” I said. Knowing full well how it sounded.

  “The song? Sure. Am I not supposed to?”

  “I’ve been hearing it for days. It’s the song that Campbell sent me.”

  “Conway, you’re special,” he replied. “So what does it mean, now that we can both hear it?”

  “It’s got something to do with the case. With Maria. It can’t just be the vehicle Campbell chose to hide that cipher in, that’s way beyond weird.”

  “That is stranger than I’d expect from you. What do you think the relevance of the song is?”

  “It’s possible that Maria Doyle has something to do with the situation. We think we know that she’s not the captive we thought she was. But what if Campbell is being played. What if …”

  “Something altogether different is going on and she is involved on some level?”

  “That could be it … it has something to do with whoever killed that couple but how it all links to our original case, I do not know. I just know it does. Proving it may well provide extra entertainment, but I do think there is a strong link.”

  The song ended. I waited for my mind to mirror the song and replay it. Nothing happened. Did figuring out that Maria and the mystery man were involved with the Bleich case mean I wouldn’t be subjected to Maria Nay again? I didn’t dare hope.

  “If she’s involved then why the note?” Kurt said.

  “Because she doesn’t want anyone knowing. Chances of getting caught?”

  “Quite high, she’s related to some weighty folk.”

  “But if you’re the victim and you’re caught …”

  “Nothing will happen.”

  We both thought about that for a bit.