Pitch Black

by Parrish, Leslie

  Rather than making her feel better, the attorney’s words made her feel worse. As if she owed Jimmy something. Hell, maybe she did. She just didn’t know. “I’ll try. Maybe later today?”

  “Very well,” he said. “You should call and let the prison know you’re coming, since it’s a Sunday and there aren’t a lot of administrative people here.”

  “All right. Thank you, Mr. Carter,” she said, hanging up.

  The officer, who had been watching her closely, asked, “Everything okay, miss?”

  She rubbed her temple. “I’m not sure.”

  Not at all sure. One thing she did know: She wanted Alec’s opinion. She quickly dialed his number, but got only his voice mail. She left him a detailed message about what had happened, asking him to call back.

  “Damn it,” she muttered as soon as she’d hung up, heading to the waiting room to think things over. Sam wanted to read Jimmy’s letters. More so with every passing minute. The wording had been too precise to be completely coincidental. Whoever Jimmy’s contacts were on the inside of that prison, they seemed to actually be aware of what was happening out here.

  Maybe because one of them had contact with the Professor? Was it possible?

  It could be.

  Alec and the others could be another couple of hours. She was doing nothing but worrying in a hospital waiting room. Rather than wasting time with the trip when they returned, she should go and be back here with the documents before their arrival.

  But she couldn’t. She certainly wasn’t stupid enough to leave by herself, and didn’t have a car to do so, anyway.

  “Hey, ma’am, just wanted to let you know I’m heading out of here,” a voice said. “Officer Gilbert will stay in position at your friend’s door until the FBI agents return.”

  Seeing the detective, to whom she had been briefly introduced earlier, Sam had a sudden thought. “Are you still on duty, or are you going home?”

  “Gonna be working all day. Never-ending paperwork.”

  She hesitated, not wanting to put him out. Then, knowing it could be important, she bit the bullet and asked, “Is there any chance you could give me a ride somewhere?”

  Chapter 17

  To everyone’s surprise, just as they reached the college, Wyatt called Jackie Stokes and told them he was on his way. No explanation about where he’d been, no questions about the case, just a few terse words. He was in town and would come straight to the campus to meet them. And he wanted the team all together when he did so.

  He obviously had been very close. They had barely opened the boxes of file folders, where the elderly professor in charge said the archived registration forms and book sale receipts should be, when Wyatt showed up.

  He had also obviously not been kidding about everyone being together, because he was not alone. As their boss walked into the empty lecture hall they were using, Brandon Cole walked beside him. Their somber expressions said this was bad. Very bad.

  Brandon’s hair was disheveled, and he wore faded jeans and an MIT sweatshirt, as though he’d yanked on the first thing he could find. His eyes were suspiciously bright, his shoulders slumped.

  Wyatt was in even worse shape. The man’s white dress shirt was wrinkled, untucked, and smeared with dirt. His usually crisp pants actually had a tear, and his shoes were caked with mud.

  Worst of all was his demeanor. His boss seemed to have aged a decade since last night. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and his stubbled face was gouged with both anger and grief.

  This isn’t just bad.

  Rising to ask what had happened, Alec heard his cell phone ring. He glanced at it, saw Sam’s name, but, knowing she was safe at the hospital, didn’t answer. He quickly punched the power button, cutting the noise midring. Because the tension on Wyatt Blackstone’s face said he had something to say and that he wanted to say it only once.

  “Oh, no,” he whispered under his breath, suddenly having an awful suspicion.

  Wyatt confirmed that suspicion with four baldly spoken words.

  “Lily Fletcher is dead.”

  Jackie let out a shocked cry; Mulrooney lowered himself onto the seat he’d just vacated. Taggert snapped an obscenity, stalked to a corner of the room, and slammed his palm against the wall.

  Alec just stood there. This was painful for him, even after knowing Lily for only a week. For the rest of the team, who had worked with her day in and day out for months? With what he’d gone through in Atlanta, he knew they were in for an awful time.

  Wyatt gave everyone a minute to regain focus; then he explained. Since Alec had known about the mission with the other CAT, he didn’t need as much backstory as the others. But when it came to what, exactly, had happened last night, he was all ears.

  “Why the fuck wasn’t she protected?” Taggert asked after Wyatt told them about the sting.

  “She was supposed to be. The agent in charge assured me she would stay in the surveillance van. Unfortunately, they were all tricked.”

  “By?” Alec asked.

  “The unsub hired a vagrant to scope out the house while he watched from a few streets away. When he realized it was a trap, he tried to flee the scene. Apparently his accomplice was too smart for him, anticipated a setup of his own, and stole the car keys so he couldn’t be left behind.”

  “So the real target panicked,” Brandon said, his voice barely more than a whisper. Having shared an office with Lily, he had probably been the closest to her. “He had no other means of escape.”

  And then he spotted the FBI van nearby.

  “Apparently Lily and the surveillance specialist assumed everything was under control, the suspect in custody,” Wyatt said. “The other agent stepped out of the van and was shot down immediately.”

  “And Lily?” Jackie asked, her voice tremulous and her eyes full of tears. The first time he’d ever seen any sign of weakness in the strong woman. Considering the sheer awfulness of it, he couldn’t blame her.

  Wyatt didn’t answer directly. “The agent in charge called me at one o’clock this morning, just as I got back to D.C.” His eyes gleamed with suppressed rage. “Why he waited three hours to call me, I don’t know. I caught a chopper ride down to Williamsburg. They had put out an APB on the van.”

  “And Lily?” Jackie repeated, sounding agonized at having to wait for the rest of it.

  Wyatt’s head dropped forward. His voice low, he told them the rest. “The van was spotted on Route 17, between Newport News and Yorktown a couple of hours after the ambush, driving erratically, weaving in and out of traffic. Police pursued, but the vehicle crashed off the Route 17 bridge into the York River, right at the mouth of the bay.”

  Good God. Alec had driven that bridge when stationed in Richmond. It was pretty damn high.

  “They were pulling the van up when I hit town,” Wyatt explained.

  “Was she . . . Had she drowned?” Jackie asked.

  “They still hadn’t found either body by the time I left. The back door was open; both of them must have washed out. They’re still looking in the river, but they might have been swept into the Chesapeake.” His shoulders slumped and he shook his head, as if processing this whole thing for himself for the first time. “I thought I should fly up here and let you all know what happened before you heard it from someone else.”

  Stokes rose shakily to her feet. “If there’s no body, maybe she’s all right. What are we doing here? We should be down there helping with the search!”

  Wyatt put a hand on the woman’s shoulder, steadying her, maybe even steadying himself. “Jackie, the interior was soaked with blood.”

  “The other agent . . .”

  “No,” he insisted, killing her hopes. All their hopes. “He was shot outside the vehicle, but there was a large blood-stain soaked into the carpet inside, as if someone had been lying there for a long time. It was Lily’s blood type.”

  “God,” Taggert whispered. “I can’t believe this.”

  “He shot her, carjacked her.” Wyatt’s
voice filled with audible, barely controlled rage. “And then he let her bleed to death in the back while he tried to evade the police.”

  “Fucking bastard,” Brandon said as he covered his eyes with one hand.

  “Even if there were some slim chance she was still alive despite the blood loss, she would never have survived the crash and couldn’t possibly have swum to safety.”

  Everyone fell silent, thinking about it. Remembering Lily’s shyness, her sweet smile. The way she always seemed just a little sad.

  Emitting a strangled sob, Jackie stalked out of the room, followed by Brandon.

  Wyatt watched them go, then blew out a heavy, shaken breath. “I need to go home, shower, and change. Update me by phone if you find anything.” He leveled an even stare on the three of them, Alec, Kyle, and Dean, adding, “We still have a job to do. The Professor isn’t going to take a day off to grieve, and neither can we.”

  Message received. After one more moment of silence, all three of them returned to their places around the table and began removing files from the box, one by one.

  Without another word, Wyatt Blackstone slipped from the room, leaving them to it.

  Sam liked Detective Myers, who had been on the Baltimore PD for two decades. He talked only a little, asked no obtrusive questions, and showed no sign that he resented driving her to the prison. A perfect escort.

  She still hadn’t talked to Alec. She had tried him again, leaving a message about her field trip, stressing that she had an armed escort. Hopefully by the time she heard from him, this brief errand would be finished and she would be on her way back to the hospital.

  As they neared the prison, Sam remembered she had promised to let them know what she was doing, and dialed the number from which Mr. Carter had called her. A male employee answered. When she asked if the attorney was there, he put her on hold for several long moments.

  Finally, the guard came back on the line. “He’s waiting for you,” he said. “We’ll leave word at the gate. When you get here, follow the signs to the administrative parking lot. There’s an entrance directly into the main offices; park there and he’ll meet you at the door.”

  Thanking the man, she relayed the directions to Myers.

  “You must be a big shot,” he said with a wry grin. “I’ve never been invited to the superspecial parking lot.”

  “I’d gladly forgo the privilege if it means I never have to come to this place again.”

  They reached the complex probably no more than an hour after Carter’s initial call, the light Sunday-morning traffic helping to shorten the trip. As promised, the guard at the gate had been expecting them and directed them onto a private drive leading to the reserved lot. In it, two cars stood close to a door marked RESTRICTED ACCESS: AUTHORIZED ADMINISTRATIVE PERSONNEL ONLY.

  “Guess that’s us,” Myers said as he parked.

  Having been here yesterday, in the visitors’ lot, where there was much more activity, Sam found the emptiness strange. Myers apparently felt the same, because he stuck close as he walked her to the thick metal door marked STAFF ENTRANCE.

  Though they’d been told Carter would be waiting for them, no one was in sight. Myers tested the handle, to no avail, then glanced at her. “What do we do now?”

  She cupped her hands around her eyes, peering through the small, barred window, and saw movement. “There he is.”

  The door opened. But to her surprise, they were greeted by the warden, rather than Dale Carter. “Yes?”

  “Sorry to disturb you,” she said, still flustered around the man after yesterday. “We’re supposed to be meeting Mr. Carter.”

  The unsmiling warden stared at her, then at Myers. His frown deepening, he mumbled, “Who are you?”

  He flashed his badge. “Detective Myers, Baltimore PD. I’m escorting Mrs. Dalton.”

  “This door is for authorized personnel only.”

  Jeez, the guy was a stickler for rules.

  “We were told to come this way,” Myers said. He crossed his arms over his chest and raised a brow, as if challenging the warden to make them go around to the public entrance.

  “Fine, fine,” Connolly said, not sounding happy about it. He stepped back and ushered them in, quickly shutting the door.

  They stood in a small, private alcove just outside the warden’s office. Obviously the man’s job came with perks like an excellent parking place.

  Unlike yesterday, when there had been at least some activity, despite the weekend hours, today this part of the building was practically deserted. Their footsteps were the only sounds, and they seemed to echo down the empty corridor, underscoring the feeling of abandonment. Certainly, in other parts of the huge building, there were hundreds of people—guards and inmates. But it appeared the admin staff got Sundays off. At least, everyone except the warden.

  “Now, what is this all about?” he asked.

  “Dale Carter called me this morning and asked me to come down here to pick up something left for me by Jimmy Flynt.”

  The man’s head jerked. “Flynt?”

  “Yes. An envelope with my name on it.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed; he appeared puzzled. “I’m confused. I thought you no longer wanted to receive mail from Flynt.”

  “This isn’t typical mail,” she explained. “Mr. Carter said it was a packet.”

  “I knew nothing about it.” Turning abruptly, he said over his shoulder, “We’ll get to the bottom of this. Come with me, please.”

  Sam exchanged a look with Myers, realizing he, too, felt like a schoolkid with the principal. But they both followed the man, who led them through a door to his secretary’s office, where Sam had waited out the interview yesterday.

  “I apologize for the mess,” he said with an expansive wave of his hand. Furniture had been pushed to the side, plastic covering most of it, and a large drop cloth had been spread across the floor. He gestured toward a brown stain on the ceiling. “We had a leak. I have a man working on it. I’m overseeing, which is why I’m here on a Sunday morning rather than at church.”

  “It’s fine,” Sam said. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I just need to sign for the package and we’ll be on our way.”

  Again came that frown. “As I said, I am completely unaware of this situation. You say Dale Carter told you to meet him here.”

  “Yes. He called me not two hours ago. Said Jimmy Flynt had died, that he’d left me a package, and I should come get it.”

  At that, the warden’s jaw dropped in shock. “What? James Flynt is dead?”

  Sam froze. How could the warden not know one of his own prisoners had died? Sure, the place was big, but the death of an inmate seemed like something the head guy should know about.

  “How dare they not inform me?” The angry man strode through the receptionist’s area into his own office, heading for his phone. He yanked the receiver and began barking at someone, leaving Sam and Myers standing in the reception area, utterly confused.

  “This seem normal to you?” the detective asked.

  Sam shook her head slowly.

  “This lawyer. How well do you know him?”

  “Not well,” she murmured.

  Not well at all.

  Sam gripped the edge of the closest bookcase, shocked by a sudden, awful possibility.

  “And he called you directly, this Carter guy. Told you to come here.” Myers unbuttoned his coat, revealing the service pistol strapped to his hip. “I don’t like this.”

  “I don’t either,” she whispered, eyeing the door, still open to that long, deserted corridor, where anyone could be lurking. “I need to call Alec.”

  She reached for her phone. But she hadn’t even touched it when a muffled pffft sound split the morning.

  She didn’t even realize it had been a gunshot until Myers dropped like a stone.

  After Wyatt left, Taggert and Mulrooney had buried themselves in the work, each lost in his own thoughts. They’d managed to shove aside their emotional reaction to Lily’s de
ath for a little while, but something like that couldn’t be held at bay for long. Soon they were both muttering worried questions about Lily as well as Jackie and Brandon, needing to know more, needing more than a few minutes to grieve, despite the case.

  Assuring them he was fine to continue going through the stack of files—damn this stuffy institution that archived actual paper rather than just keeping a computerized version—Alec waved them off. “Why don’t you take a break? I’ll dig through this last box.”

  Taggert nodded; then both men departed to find the others.

  It figured that the box they needed would be the last one they looked in. Almost immediately after opening it, Alec spotted the right file and tugged it out. It was thick, stuffed with registration forms filled out by each attendee of the event, and there were at least two hundred.

  “Damn it,” he muttered as he thumbed a few pages. This was a waste of time. He needed to bring the folder to the hospital and ask Sam if she remembered any of these guys, anyone who acted strangely, asked a lot of questions, paid her personal attention.

  Sam. She had called as Wyatt was walking in and he’d totally forgotten. Turning his phone on, he dialed his voice mail, doodling idly on a yellow legal pad as the call connected. Two messages. Shit.

  When he heard the first one, he froze in disbelief. Jimmy Flynt dead? Talk about timing. The guy had looked pretty bad yesterday, but they certainly hadn’t left that hospital thinking he was breathing his final breaths.

  “So call me when you get this, would you? I’d like to try to get down there; obviously I can’t go alone.”

  Damn right.

  He waited for the second message, surprised to hear Sam’s voice again. “It’s me. Look, I’m going to go ahead down to the prison.”

  He almost dropped the pen.

  “Before you panic, Detective Myers is escorting me.”

  So she wasn’t taking chances. He had hoped she’d stay put until he returned, but he did see where she was coming from, especially when she said, “I saw no point in wasting a couple of hours after you return. This way, I’ll be back with the letters close to when you are and we save some time.”