“I’m sorry, what?”
“As I’m sure Assistant Director Holt told you today”—he chuckled again—“it seems clear that someone is trying to get you fired.”
“My career has nothing to do with you,” Sayer said through her teeth.
“On the contrary,” he purred, “I’ve been quite looking forward to this interview and I don’t like that they are interfering with our time together.”
Our time together? Sayer wondered if he was displaying signs of de Clérambault’s syndrome—imagining a relationship with her that didn’t really exist. It was a dangerous delusion to trigger in a psychopath.
“They?” She immediately regretted asking the question. “This is not something you want to get involved with,” she quickly added.
“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong. You see, I’ve decided that I like talking to you. I don’t take kindly to anyone interfering with something I want. And so, I’ll fix this for you.”
“Let me be clear. I do not want your help, with this or anything else.” Sayer definitely did not want to find out how this man went about “fixing” things.
“Too late. I hope you have a restful evening, Sayer. Trust no one.” He chuckled again and then disconnected the video.
Sayer sat in the dark conference room, unsure what to make of Subject 037. If he knew about the inner workings of the Quantico Hearings, he clearly was someone connected to Congress.
A deep ache of exhaustion settled into her muscles. She had to find a way to ignore the political circus and focus on this case.
Rather than dwell on everything, she went to find her team.
“Ezra?” she called.
“I’m in here.” His faint voice filtered through the thin walls.
Sayer found him in the small office next door, unpacking his Go Bag onto a small cot.
“Heard you on the phone or something,” he said. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” Sayer waved him off, not wanting to explain. “You sleeping here instead of a cabin?”
“It seemed easier. Piper got me set up with a cot. I wasn’t sure I would be able to, you know, make it down the muddy path to the cabins.…”
“Ah,” Sayer said, heart aching for Ezra, whose life had changed so much. “Well, this looks comfy.”
“It’s fine.…” Ezra looked slightly wan, cheeks hollow. Being here was clearly taking a physical toll.
She tried to smile. “You doing okay?”
“Yeah. It just … hurts sometimes and I’m probably not resting enough. I’m going to crash soon.”
“Of course. Whatever you need. And you know you can take off anytime.”
“What, and leave this palatial suite! Hush, now.” He gave her a real smile.
“The park rangers are bringing us dinner soon. I hear it’s going to be chili. Want me to bring you some?”
Ezra shook his head. “Nah, I’ve got a sandwich left over from lunch. I’m going to eat, then fall sound asleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Sayer looked at the time. Just past 10:30. He was even more wiped out than she thought.
“All right, sleep well.”
She gently shut the door behind her and wondered if she should make him go home, but then decided that he was a grown man and, to be honest, she needed his help.
Mulling that over, she peeked in on Dana in the bone room.
The forensic anthropologist looked up from her computer and smiled.
“Hello! Did Holt tear you a new asshole?”
“Heh, no, just an update.” Not wanting to talk about Holt and Quantico, Sayer dramatically eyed the beer cooler. “You still planning to share that? The park rangers are bringing us some chili soon for a late dinner.”
“Hang on.” Dana finished typing with a flourish and shut the laptop with a click. “One opening salvo of a beer sandwich coming right up.”
She popped the caps off two bottles and slid one to Sayer.
“Cheers.”
They clinked bottles and both took a long swig.
Sayer savored the crisp lager cooling her burned throat. “Thanks, Dana. I think I needed to sit down for a minute.”
Dana’s eyes crinkled with a smile. “Yeah, though I know you. In twenty minutes you’ll be back up, pacing the room, rubbing a hole in your worry beads, obsessing over the case again. You need to learn how to relax.”
Sayer let out a harsh laugh.
Dana’s face grew serious. “I mean it, Sayer. If I’ve learned anything over the past ten years, it’s that we’ve all got to get a life.”
“Did you just tell me to get a life?” Sayer laughed again.
“You know what I mean. Our job is high pressure and we’re elbow-deep in death. I think we both focus on the victims so much that we forget that we need to make sure we live our own lives sometimes.” Her voice was tinged with sadness.
Sayer swallowed more beer and looked at her old friend. Dana was in her early fifties. Not old, but not young either. For some reason it had never occurred to Sayer that Dana had never married. Had no pets. No family that she knew of. Did Dana regret the decisions she had made?
Dana caught Sayer staring. “What … oh, you think I’m talking about myself?”
“You aren’t?”
“Me? No. Holy hell, Sayer, I’m not talking about settling down or having kids. All I mean is that we’ve got to occasionally connect with the actual living people around us. Take some happiness from life while we’re still around to enjoy it.”
“Ah, thus the beer sandwich.” Sayer held her bottle up for another cheers. “I think that was easier for me to do when Jake was around,” she said softly.
“Of course it was. Last time we spoke, you mentioned something was off about Jake’s death.… Do you want to talk about it?”
Sayer drained the beer, mulling over everything Holt had just implied. “You know the official story, that Jake was KIA on an undercover mission?”
“The official story? Implying that there’s an unofficial story.…”
“Yeah. The short version is that I don’t think Jake was killed in action. I at least know for sure he wasn’t shot, which is what the official report said. Somehow, Jake drowned. Someone put pressure on Holt to change the autopsy result. And I can’t find any information about the mission he was on. I’ve been looking into it and all I’ve got is an autopsy report showing cause of death and a stack of papers so redacted that they look like they were printed on black paper.”
“What does Holt say?”
“Holt doesn’t know shit other than he was onto something big within the Bureau.” Sayer got up to get a second beer. “One more?” she held one up for Dana.
“Please.”
Sayer slid back into her seat and handed Dana a beer.
“So wait, Holt doesn’t know what really happened?”
“No, my impression is that someone higher up told her to cover up the autopsy report, but that was all she was told. She has no idea how he died. And now she thinks that whatever he was working on is connected to the Quantico Hearings.”
“Holy hell. Even Holt doesn’t know? You’re still digging into it, though, right?”
“Of course I am, but I’ve been digging for months now and haven’t found a single lead. Someone obviously doesn’t want me to find anything.…” Sayer glanced over at the bones. “Oh, hey, did you hear what Max and I figured out about Jillian Watts? We think the UNSUB forced her to kill those other women by threatening Grace’s life. And, based on what the journal said about killing to protect, we think the cases might be connected.”
Dana looked up at the clock. “I take it back.”
“You take what back?”
“I said you’d be back to obsessing over the case in twenty minutes, but you didn’t even make it ten,” Dana said.
“Har, har. I’m just not in the mood to talk about Jake right now. But you’re right, let’s try to talk about something other than the case. For a few minutes, at least.”
“Hmm, let’s see … you could talk about psychopathic brains, or I could tell you the latest on the genocide in the eastern Congo.” Dana said it lightly, but Sayer could tell she was also serious. Both women understood that it was impossible to venture deep into the well of human darkness and emerge somehow undamaged, somehow still whole.
THE PIT
Hannah Valdez lay curled on the cot in her room. She cradled her smashed finger, her entire body shaking from the pain.
Tears stained her cheeks, though she made no sound. Her mind felt blank, overwhelmed by everything.
“Sam,” she whispered, trying to focus on anything but here. She forced herself to picture her life before this.
Had it only been a few days? A few weeks? And already she felt so distant from her previous life. Her days doing aikido, going to class, taking care of Sam, dining with Zoe, felt like a movie she’d once watched.
She forced herself to sit up and look down at her finger. It was swollen and purple.
The pain was awful, but even worse was her shattered sense of hope. Until that moment, she had convinced herself that this was nothing more than a nightmare that would be over soon. Somehow, she had believed that this couldn’t possibly be real. But now her finger was proof. Was she going to die here?
“Stop it!” Hannah said loudly. She had to take action. Do something. But every time she moved, her finger screamed in agony, wiping her mind clear of anything but the pain.
“So fix your finger.”
Hannah examined her clothing. The cotton wrap was thin and the end looked slightly tattered. With her right hand, she lifted it to her mouth and bit down. She pulled sharply and a strip of cloth tore away.
She lay the strip of cotton on her knees and gingerly placed her broken pinkie on top. Moaning, she pulled the wrapping up and over, then wound it around her pinkie and ring finger, binding them together.
Ignoring the wave of nausea, she fumblingly tied off the wrapping and pulled it tight with her teeth. The final pull sent her over the edge and she gagged. But it was done.
The finger still hurt, but she could at least move her left hand without almost passing out.
“Progress,” she whispered, and lay back down to try and get some sleep. She would need it if she was going to figure out a way to get out of this place.
It felt like only a few moments after she closed her eyes that she woke to the sound of a key sliding into the lock.
SOUTHERN RANGER STATION, SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK, VA
Max and Piper eventually joined Sayer and Dana in the conference room and they shared the chili and beer. They discussed the new theory about Jillian, trying to find a way to use that as a lead, but came up empty-handed. By midnight they were all exhausted and Piper led them to their cabins. The rain began again as they made their way down the short muddy path.
When she got to the cabin assigned to her, Sayer dropped her overnight bag and looked around the single room with a sigh. The scent of industrial pine cleaner made her cringe. The pale green linoleum floors were scarred by years of use. A forest-green wool blanket stretched over a narrow cot in one corner. The fluorescent light flickered, creating a faint strobe effect.
The bare bathroom was nothing more than an open-stalled shower and a composting toilet.
Sayer turned on the water for a quick rinse, but changed her mind when she realized that there was no warm water. Instead she washed her blistered knuckles and simply pulled on her pajamas.
Running her hands over still-singed curls, she wandered to the door to double-check that it was locked.
Out of habit, Sayer pulled out her files on Jake. Nearly every night she combed through the files, hoping something new about her fiancé’s death would jump out at her. Holt had given Sayer the original autopsy report and the name of the operation he was on, but then she’d hit a wall. No one seemed to have heard of the operation, so she didn’t even know who he was with when he died.
Files in hand, she plopped on the cot and winced. It felt more like a board than a mattress. Something about the sparse cabin and the heavy rain echoed the disastrous trip she and Jake had taken to the Ozarks long ago. She closed her eyes and let herself remember.
They’d only been dating a few weeks and the idea of a trip to the mountains sounded so romantic. But the cabin they’d rented was barely one step above a lean-to, with nothing but a single lantern and an old moth-eaten mattress. They’d awkwardly fallen asleep next to each other, unsure of the boundaries of their new relationship. But when a storm rolled in, the roof acted like a catchment, creating a waterfall into the cabin’s interior. After half an hour frantically trying to stop the water from pouring into the cabin, they both started laughing. Overcome by the absurdity of it all, they collapsed together, soaked, half dressed, onto the mattress. Their physical connection felt unlike anything she’d ever experienced. That was the first time it occurred to Sayer that Jake might be more than a fling.
The memory crept from a dark corner of Sayer’s brain to twist the dagger of grief that permanently lived in her heart.
With that memory awakening feelings she wanted to ignore, Sayer couldn’t bring herself to read the Jake files for the thousandth time. Instead, she forced herself to picture the women they had pulled from the cave. The two beaten women had died horrible deaths, but she would try to remember them alive, smiling. Was Hannah Valdez now in the same place where they had been? Was their UNSUB threatening Grace Watts? Was Jillian Watts about to kill again?
Sayer had seen plenty of horrific things, but forcing a mother to kill for her child was beyond anything she could’ve imagined. Sometimes Sayer wished she were a psychopath herself. How nice it must be to never worry, never feel fear, never experience that dark ache that lived inside her chest.
Instead of muting her emotions, Sayer let horrific images of trapped women churn through her mind. With the roaring sound of rain on the tin roof overhead, Sayer was about to drift off when her phone rang.
She bolted up. The display read Nana and she momentarily thought about ignoring it, but she’d learned the hard way that it is never a good idea to ignore Sophia McDuff. Plus it was well after midnight. Nana would never call this late without good cause.
“I’m calling for two reasons.” Nana didn’t even bother with a greeting.
“Uh-oh. Did I forget someone’s birthday?”
“No, no, something much more important than that.”
Sayer’s heart skipped a beat. Was Nana sick? Or her sister? Her nephew?
“Adi will be calling you tomorrow to ask if you will legally adopt her.”
“If I’ll, uh … what?” Sayer stammered.
“This is why I called to talk to you before she does. ‘I, uh, what’ is not what that young woman needs to hear from you. She needs you to be her rock, her stability, while she rebuilds her life.”
Adi had survived the death of her family and being kidnapped and tortured by a serial killer. She was a survivor, but Nana was right, she also needed someone to be there for her. “She needs a nana,” Sayer said, exhaustion flattening her voice.
“Damn straight she needs someone like me. And it’s your job to be that person now. You’ve got serious commitment issues, Sayer, and you need to get over that whiny crap so you can stand up and do the right thing.”
“I don’t have commitment issues. I was engaged.…” As she said it, Sayer could hear the petulance in her voice and cringed. Something about talking to her nana turned her back into a whining teenager.
“You were engaged four years ago,” Nana interrupted. “Now you live half out of boxes in a barren apartment. You won’t even commit to an apartment, Sayer. But you took Adi in and that’s the kind of thing that you follow through on.”
“I know. Whew, that just feels big. But of course I’ll do it.”
“The best things in life should scare you,” Nana said matter-of-factly.
Sayer took a deep breath. “You’re totally right. Thank you for calling me tonight so I don�
�t act like a total jerk while I’m talking to her.”
“That’s what nanas are for, to weed out the jerky. On to the second thing, the hearings aren’t going well.”
“The hearings … like the closed congressional hearings about Quantico?”
“Yes, of course those hearings.”
“And how, exactly, do you know what’s going on in the closed Quantico Hearings?”
Nana let out a high musical laugh. “Congressional spouses stick together. Charles might be dead, but my old friends aren’t.” Wife of a former senator, Sophia McDuff pretended like she wasn’t involved in politics, but she was still a power player behind the scenes in Washington. “Corey called me last night to warn me that someone on that committee is trying to destroy your career.”
Sayer thought about everything Holt had told her. “So I’ve been told. It might not go well for me, Nana. Did you get any details? Any sense of who is targeting me?”
“No, just that they are on the attack. Not really sure who ‘they’ are, beyond Senator DeWitt, but he’s so corrupt he could be bought off with a wad of used chewing gum.”
“All right, thanks, Nana. I guess I need to figure out what that’s all about. But not tonight. Right now I’ve got some people to find, including a missing little girl.”
“You okay there?” Nana was worried about her back at work after being shot.
“I’m good. Just a long day. We’re making progress, but right now I have no idea who to trust. Everyone keeps telling me to trust no one.”
“You know that’s bullshit. Trust your gut, Sayer.”
“Yeah. The same gut that missed the fact that my friend and coworker was a serial killer? My gut that missed the fact that Jake’s death wasn’t what it seemed? That gut?”
“Oh, quit the pity party. You’re the one who eventually brought down the killer inside the FBI, and you are investigating Jake’s death. Which is why I say, trust your gut. Are the people you’re not sure about good guys or not?”
Sayer thought about Max. “Well, one of them clearly loves his dog … which perhaps irrationally leads me to believe that he’s a good guy despite a history of deception.”
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