Russo was from Massachusetts. Coincidence? Doubtful. If there was a connection, Sean would find it now that he had a nugget of evidence.
According to the article, at the trial Russo broke down and charged at Boylan screaming, “Why?” He was removed from the courthouse, charged with contempt of court, but it was later dropped by the judge.
Three weeks after Boylan went to prison, he was killed. He’d been erroneously placed with the general population instead of a special cellblock for child molesters. It seemed that violent criminals hated child predators, and when it got out that Boylan had a fondness for little girls, the inmates literally gutted him with a knife made from empty toothpaste tubes.
Sean could see why a man like Sergio would be drawn to a charismatic crime fighter like Senator Paxton. He could see that a man like Sergio, a widower who had lost his daughter to a vile predator like Boylan, would have a skewed sense of justice.
Sean saw Sergio Russo in a different, more tragic light. What he despised was how Paxton obviously manipulated the grieving father’s emotions to pull him into this vigilante justice game.
Another folder had numerous clippings, transcripts, and official records. Sean was about to bypass them when he saw the majority were dated seven years ago.
His vision sharpened and the room blackened around him as he skimmed the articles. They were from a variety of newspapers across the country, all related to Adam Scott and his eighteen-year-long career as a violent sexual predator.
Lucy’s name was never mentioned since she’d been a surviving rape victim, but Hans Vigo was quoted, as well as others Sean knew had been involved in the hunt for Adam Scott.
There were articles about Roger Morton, the man Paxton claimed to have killed, who provided detailed information about the women Scott had killed and what happened to their bodies. FBI documents were mixed with the newspapers, including Morton’s confession to helping Adam Scott cover up the murder of Monique Paxton.
PETERSON: Were you present when Adam Scott killed Monique Paxton?
MORTON: No.
PETERSON: When did you find out Adam killed Monique?
MORTON: He called me and said he needed help with something. I got to his house and she was dead. We got help from Trevor and that whiny snot Ullman and got rid of the body.
PETERSON: How?
Sean didn’t want to read anymore. He flipped through more files and saw a document marked “confidential” that made his skin crawl.
It was Lucy’s debriefing interview after her kidnapping and rape seven years ago.
Too late, Sean heard the key in the lock. He’d been so focused on the papers in front of him, he hadn’t heard Paxton enter the house or come up the stairs. He remained sitting at the desk, made no move to turn off the desk lamp, and waited until Paxton stepped into the room.
“You broke into my house?” Paxton said through clenched teeth.
Sean had to remain sitting or he would have attacked Paxton. His vision was sharp, focused, his hands steady. His heart beat fast, but steady. He was ready to fight. But if he touched Paxton, the senator would be dead.
“You have no right to these files,” Sean said quietly.
“You read them?” Paxton raised an eyebrow. He didn’t come closer.
“Not all. And I’m not going to.”
“You need to. You should know what that bastard did to my daughter. To all those other women. To Lucy.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“You think ignorance is the answer? Our minds sanitize the truth so we can cope. I don’t want the sanitized version of events. I wanted to know what he did to my daughter. That he strangled her while they had sex, then literally destroyed her body with acid he stole from the high school laboratory. Monique suffered at his hands. She shouldn’t suffer alone.”
“It helps you to know? You’re sick.”
“You want to know. I see it. You want to know what Lucy endured. My God, Sean, she suffered and then she fought back and killed him. I want to give her a medal. I had to know how he died, what he said, why he targeted my daughter. You know he picked Lucy because she looks like Monique. He said—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Sean’s arm shot out and all the papers went flying across the den.
Paxton pushed. “You want to know what drives me? You want to know why I can keep fighting when all I want to do is put a bullet in my head and join Monique? It’s because of Lucy. If she can endure, I can endure. If she can fight back, I can fight back.”
“It’s over. I’m not helping you. I’m done.”
He walked over and picked up all the FBI transcripts he could find, tearing the pages.
“Stop!” Paxton shouted.
“You don’t get to keep these. No one does.”
“You’re no saint, stop acting self-righteous.”
“Let the chips fall, Senator.”
“All I have to do is make one call to the FBI Special Agent-in-Charge in Boston and you will be arrested. You know that.”
“I don’t care anymore.” He did care. He didn’t want to leave the country to avoid arrest and he didn’t want to go to prison. Not for what he’d done—something that shouldn’t have been a crime to begin with. But he wasn’t working with this twisted bastard.
“You do care. You’ll lose her.”
Sean’s jaw tightened.
“I love Lucy like a daughter, but I will tell her the truth about how she got into Quantico. I lied to you.”
Sean had suspected as much, but he didn’t know if he could believe Paxton now.
“I tried to pull strings to get her in, but I didn’t have to. One of the panelists, the one I knew would vote for Lucy because he’s a close friend, gave me the heads-up that she was being declined—again, based on a psych profile. I called Hans Vigo and asked him what I could do to get her in. I was willing to pull any string. You know what he said? ‘It’s already taken care of.’”
Paxton sneered and shook his head. Sean was standing in the middle of the office, half-torn papers scrunched in his fists. “Lucy has a lot of friends. But she also has enemies. It would benefit you to find out who they are.”
“I’m not interfering with Lucy’s career.”
“You already have!” Paxton walked around to the back of the desk. “If you don’t want Lucy to know that her friend and mentor Hans Vigo rewrote the psych report so that she could get into the Academy, I’d suggest you sit down and we get to work to find out who has my locket. Because Lucy won’t be the only one to suffer. I would hate to see Dr. Vigo’s stellar career destroyed because of one act of clandestine kindness.”
How could he betray Hans? Did Dillon and Kate, Hans’s closest friends, know? Sean couldn’t be party to damaging their careers, but he wished he didn’t know. He didn’t want to keep this secret from Lucy, but he didn’t have much choice.
In the corner of the office Paxton had a shredder. Sean walked over and shredded the file on Lucy. He wasn’t going to read it, and Paxton would never read it again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Kate made grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches at nine that night. “Since I cooked—and I hate cooking,” Kate said, “do I get some of your ice cream?”
Lucy pretended to think about it, then smiled. “Don’t eat it all.”
Kate made a beeline for the freezer. “Before dinner?” Lucy called.
“You might change your mind.” She grabbed a spoon, and like Lucy, ate right out of the container. “Oh, God, this is orgasmic.” Her eyes flew open and she stared at Lucy. “Sorry.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Why apologize? It is orgasmic.” She was twenty-five, and yet sometimes her family still treated her like a child. Kate wasn’t the worst, though, and Lucy loved her sister-in-law as if she were her flesh-and-blood sister.
Kate’s phone rang while she was eating the second bite. She glanced at the caller ID. “I swear, when I get two minutes someone needs me.”
“Donovan,” she snapped when she answer
ed.
Lucy stood and stretched. Her muscles ached from not only the crash, but from sitting on the couch for so long.
“Rachel,” Kate said, “I’m going to put you on speaker, okay? I don’t want to have to repeat all this to Lucy.” She put her cell phone on speaker and put the phone on top of the piles of papers on the coffee table.
By way of introduction, Kate said, “Special Agent Rachel Burrows, meet analyst Lucy Kincaid. Rachel is in Richmond and just finished interviewing Amy Carson, the girl Jocelyn Taylor reunited with her mother.”
“Hi, Lucy,” Rachel said. “What Agent Donovan didn’t say was that she was my cyber crimes instructor at Quantico and my advisor.”
“That was my first year teaching at the Academy,” Kate said. “You know what’s scary? How many agents I meet now who I taught at some point over the last seven years. It makes me feel old.”
“You are forty,” Lucy teased.
“You are a cruel, cruel woman.” To Rachel, Kate said, “What do you have?”
“I tried Agent Armstrong and he was in a meeting, so he told me to call you. I spoke with Amy and her mother, but there was something odd going on.”
“Odd?”
“They wanted to get rid of me. Their answers were short and clipped. I have all the details—how Ivy Harris pulled Amy off the streets and got her off drugs, how she wouldn’t let Amy turn tricks anymore as a condition of living in the house. You’d think this girl was a saint the way Amy and even the mother talked about her.”
“Did they deny she was a prostitute?” Kate asked.
“No, they were very upfront about that. And I pushed a bit, and Amy admitted that Ivy was volatile. She had no tolerance for drugs, and when she caught one of the other girls using she tossed the house completely until she found every hidden pill, every hidden bottle of alcohol, and tossed everything down the sink. But in the process, she broke a few things, and Amy said the rampage had scared her. Part of that, I think, was that some of the hidden drugs were hers, though she didn’t explicitly say.”
“Did she have any specific information about the other girls in the house?”
“That’s when she clammed up. She was upset about the murders—very upset—but didn’t want to talk about the other girls. I have names—first names, anyway—Mina, Kerry, and Bryn.”
Lucy wrote them down. She said, “Did she have any idea where they might have gone after the fire? Has she been in contact with them since she left DC?”
“You jumped to the end of my story!” Rachel said. “Yes, she was in contact with Kerry, and get this—Kerry showed up at Amy’s house late Tuesday night.”
“You didn’t leave her there, did you?” Lucy asked. “She could bolt.”
“That’s why I’m sitting in my car outside of the house calling you guys. When I was talking to Amy, I asked about Hannah or Sara Edmonds, and Kerry came out of the kitchen, where she had apparently overheard everything I had said. She was freaked. Wanted to know how we found out. At first I thought it was a big scam—she wasn’t at all concerned about her culpability in leaving the arson fire, but was very concerned about Ivy’s safety. She has no identification and refuses to tell me her last name or where she’s from. Says she’s nineteen and met Ivy three years ago, before they moved into the house on Hawthorne. They were both working the streets. I asked her about Wendy James, she said that Wendy and Ivy knew each other and had a big falling-out. She definitely knows more, but she’s hedging. I think she’s going to bolt, not from us, but to go back to DC and help her friend.”
“Does she know that someone is killing her friends?” Kate said. “That she could be in deeper trouble here?”
“Yes. Amy’s mother doesn’t want her to go. When I asked how Kerry ended up in Richmond, the mom said she called, told Amy what happened, and Amy invited her to come down. The mom says Ivy saved Amy’s life, she wanted to help. But Kerry hasn’t been able to reach Ivy, and she’s been on edge.”
“I need to talk to her,” Lucy said. Then she glanced at Kate, realizing she’d probably overstepped again.
“We need to bring her back to DC,” Kate said. “Protective custody. If she doesn’t come voluntarily, arrest her.”
“On what grounds?”
“Obstruction of justice.”
“Can I talk to her first?” Lucy asked Kate. “She has info we need now, not tomorrow morning after she’s processed and debriefed. The killer isn’t going to stop until he’s done.”
Kate didn’t say anything for a minute.
Rachel said, “You still there?”
“Yes,” Kate said. “I’m thinking. Okay, go back to the door and ask if she’s willing to talk to us. I’ll assess the conversation and decide if we should bring her up. Call us back as soon as she agrees.”
“Got it.”
Rachel hung up. Lucy said, “If she knows Wendy and Ivy, and has lived with Ivy for three years, what do you bet she knows exactly what they were up to?”
“I’m sure you’re right, but we’re in no position to offer immunity.”
“She wants to help Ivy—she’ll talk to us.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Lucy grabbed her own cell phone, then before dialing realized she should run her idea by Kate first. “I want to call Hans and ask him to listen in. He’ll be able to assess the situation impartially.”
“Is what Noah said about you being biased still bothering you?”
“It doesn’t bother me,” she lied.
“You are a shitty liar, Lucy.”
“I don’t want anything tainting this case. Hans is the best.”
“Call him. I’ll fill Noah in.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The attic room above the rectory was cool when Ivy climbed in through the window Father Paul had left unlatched for her. The heat wave might not have broken, but it had cracked enough that the evening was pleasant.
Sara was sleeping in the twin bed, curled into a ball, the blankets pulled around her neck. Ivy watched her sister, her heart overflowing with unconditional love.
She’d been ill-equipped to protect Sara from their father, but Ivy hoped she’d been spared the worst. Sara hadn’t talked about what happened in any detail. She didn’t have to.
Ivy had lived it.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow we will be free.
Marti had come through. Their IDs would be ready in the morning. It would take everything Ivy had stolen from Mrs. Neel, but Marti was even giving her a car to get to the border.
She retrieved a sleeping bag from the corner and unrolled it on the hardwood floor.
“Ivy?” Sara whispered.
“I’m sorry I woke you.”
“You didn’t. Sit with me.”
Ivy climbed onto the twin bed and sat up, her back against the wall. Sara turned on the small lamp next to the bed and leaned against her. Ivy played with the ends of her hair like she used to do when Sara was little. “I like Father Paul.”
“Me, too.”
“Why can’t we live here?”
“You know why. Other than the rules Father Paul is breaking just letting us stay here, eventually our father will find us. We need to disappear. I have some money, not a lot, but enough to get us into Canada.”
Sara didn’t say anything for so long, Ivy thought she’d fallen asleep. Ivy was drifting off herself when Sara whispered, “He started calling me Hannah.”
Ivy was instantly awake, her eyes open, glancing around the room almost expecting to find him here.
But her father wasn’t here. Not yet, anyway. He was in his fortress near the Pennsylvania border.
He would come, though. The FBI agent had talked to him, because that was the only way he could have known that Ivy had been diagnosed mentally ill.
Diagnosed by a quack doctor who lived on the mountain with her father and his followers. The same doctor who had given her drugs to make her compliant. So she couldn’t fight her father when she turned fourteen and took her rightful place in
his bed.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get you out sooner,” Ivy said, her voice cracking.
“I knew you would come. You promised you would be back, and you came.” She took Ivy’s hand. “I didn’t believe you until it happened. I’m sorry, Ivy. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Sara. You thought I was dead. I know what you were feeling, thinking. How could such a kind, wonderful man who picked wildflowers with me hurt me?” Ivy stopped before she made herself physically ill. Their father was a master at selling the act to the world both inside and outside the fortress. When she was a little girl, before their mother died, he made her believe they were special. That dreams could come true. That they lived in a fairy tale, in a castle, where God loved them best, where their daddy worked for God, saving people, helping them get to heaven. A dream where hope lived, all was good, and all good came from their daddy because he was specially blessed. And even after the car crash that killed her mother, she let herself believe him, because she desperately needed to.
She let him convince her that her mother tried to kill her and Sara when she crashed the truck. She didn’t want to believe the truth, because she didn’t understand it.
But maybe because of the seed her mother had planted in her mind that night, Ivy had doubts.
She had doubts because their older sister Naomi changed.
She had doubts when she found Naomi in his bed.
And she knew it was wrong when she read Naomi’s hidden diary and found out what their father was underneath his pretty face. What disturbed her, even before she knew it was wrong, was that Naomi had convinced herself that she was anointed and special, that their mother died because she was ignorant of the truth and normal course of human nature. Through Naomi’s diary, Ivy had learned what happened in their father’s bed. She learned that Naomi was grooming Ivy to assist with this “important responsibility.” All those sisterly words of wisdom about hair and clothing and perfumes and shaving were all because that’s what their father wanted.
And she learned that once Ivy gave in to the will of their father, she would be responsible for grooming Sara.
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