Before Sayer could react, the ranch house door slammed open. In the darkness, a large woman flew across the front porch, animal sounds on her lips. Her wavy black hair formed a tangled halo around her face that knotted into a snarl.
Sayer struggled to understand why the UVA psychologist was here. Could Alice Beaumont be Cricket Nelson?
That thought vanished when a gun glinted in the woman’s hands. Alice Beaumont aimed at Kyle.
Kyle tried to get his weapon up in time, but her third gunshot echoed through the trees and he curled into a ball.
Sayer swung her Glock upward.
Her training kicked in. In the same millisecond, Sayer’s finger slid to the trigger, her left hand came up to cup the base of her pistol, and she squared her shoulders and sighted on Beaumont.
Keening like a feral cat, Alice Beaumont ran at Kyle. Her wild face was spotlit by his headlamp as he watched her come. She aimed her gun again as she neared Kyle, who scrambled to lift his own pistol.
Sayer heard herself shout, “Freeze!” as Beaumont’s finger moved to the trigger. Only a few feet from Kyle, the woman would not miss this time.
Sayer pulled smoothly.
Bang! Bang!
Another shot went off just before hers.
Beaumont crashed to the ground, gun skittering away.
Kyle lay on his back, wide-eyed, unmoving.
Max and Kona sprinted up. Max held his gun on Beaumont as he knelt down to secure the injured woman. Blood spread across her chest, burbling from the gunshot wound. Her eyes fluttering, breath ragged.
“She’s still alive,” he said, his own breath quick with adrenaline.
Sayer hurried over to check on Kyle. “You okay?”
He stood slowly, brushed wet leaves off himself, and then stared over at the woman on the ground, eyes burning. “Yeah … I’m fine. Is she…?”
Max looked up and shook his head. “It’s a thoracic injury. Not good.”
“Let Max take care of her. Max,” Sayer barked, “you secure Beaumont. Keep her alive if you can. Kyle, you sure you’re okay?”
Kyle felt the bandage still wrapped around his head. “Yeah, that was close. But not a scratch.” He let out a bizarre half-hiccuping laugh.
Sayer had seen it before, mania after a close call.
Kyle just stood unmoving, staring at Alice Beaumont. Sayer knew he was trying to figure out if she was his long-lost sister. Rather than ask him in the heat of the moment, Sayer wanted to let him calm down first.
“Glad you’re okay,” Sayer said. “Why don’t you come with me to clear the house?”
He gave Beaumont another long, unreadable look, then nodded in agreement. They cautiously approached the abandoned house, guns up. Sayer kicked open the door. Her heart leaped to her throat at the sight of a small child curled into a ball on an old mattress.
They cleared the room quickly and both rushed to the girl.
“Sam, we’re with the FBI. You’re safe now,” Sayer said.
“Mommy?” she asked, clearly confused.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart.” Kyle spoke softly as he crouched down and held out his arms. “Your parents are waiting for you. Let’s get you out of here, okay? I’m a police officer and I can keep you safe.”
Shaky, with scared-child eyes, Sam Valdez got up and folded herself into Kyle’s arms.
Sayer nodded approvingly. “Why don’t you get her to the hospital? I’ll stay here with Max while we wait for an ambulance for Beaumont. We’ll meet you there as soon as we can.”
Kyle nodded, carefully standing up while still cradling the girl. He smiled at Sayer and hurried off toward the truck.
Sayer called Ezra to get an ambulance and evidence team on their way.
After hanging up, she took a long look around the room. Two sleeping bags. A camping stove and a crate of canned food. Gallon jugs of water lining the wall. Strange.
Shaking her head, she headed out to check on Max.
* * *
“What’s the damage?”
Max glanced up from Beaumont’s semiconscious body. “It actually looks better than I originally thought. Clean exit wound on her shoulder so it’s a through-and-through to the chest. I’ve got her stable and the bleeding under control but we won’t know how bad it is until they can take a look inside.”
Beaumont moaned and tried to say something.
“She’s already lost a lot of blood,” Max said. “She’s got to be Cricket Nelson, right?”
“No clue. Let’s worry about that once we have everyone taken care of. I’ll go direct the EMTs here from the road. Stay alert.”
Sayer found a nearby service road and called in her coordinates. While she waited, she replayed everything that had just happened.
Why the hell was Alice Beaumont here? There was only one possible explanation Sayer could come up with. Max was right. Alice Beaumont had to be Cricket Nelson.
Sayer just couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the idea of Beaumont as Cricket, but it did have some logic. Beaumont had inserted herself into the investigation, offering to profile for them. Not unusual for a serial killer. She had also insisted in her profile that the UNSUB was a lone male, maybe to throw them off?
She pictured the woman that they’d met at UVA. Dr. Alice Beaumont had seemed so confident, professional. Her transformation from that to a seemingly feral killer rattled Sayer. Because there was no doubt she meant to kill Kyle just now.
“I should know better,” she muttered to herself. What would it take for her to finally learn that psychopaths could fool even her as they shed personas like a snake shedding skin?
Maybe Subject 037 and Holt had been right when they told her to trust no one.
But something felt off.
She turned everything over in her mind.
Beaumont’s wild attack on Kyle, even though she had to know there was backup nearby. That didn’t fit with the cold, calculating killer who had kidnapped and held multiple women. Her attack here felt disorganized, off-kilter even. And the stuff in the house. A camping stove? Sleeping bags? Where was the pit?
“We’re missing something,” she said out loud.
Once the EMTs arrived and took over for Max, Sayer asked him to follow her inside the house.
“Take a minute and tell me what you see,” she said.
Max turned slowly in a circle. The musty house was spartan but dry. The beams of their headlamps created streaks of light in the dust across the floor. Other than the mattress and supplies, the place was empty.
“Well, I don’t see an entrance to the pit.” Max wiped raindrops from his face, leaving a thin streak of Beaumont’s blood across his cheek.
“Right, but what do you see?”
“A mattress. Camping supplies.”
“And what does this feel like to you?”
“Remote location. Supplies. It feels like someone going to ground.”
“Like a place to hide out for a while. And if it’s not here, where is the pit?” Sayer asked.
“Maybe it’s nearby?”
“Okay, but then why bring Sam here to hide out instead of going straight to the pit?”
“Yeah, I see what you mean. Though I can come up with a couple of pretty horrific reasons she would bring the girl here alone.”
“Sure, but there’s no evidence of any sexual assault on any of our victims.” Sayer pulled out her phone. “I think we need to talk to that girl. I’ll ride to the hospital in the ambulance with Beaumont. You stay and get the evidence team started, then I want you to run an area search. See if the entrance to the pit is nearby. Ezra is sending a Rockfish Gap uniform this way to help. Call me once everything’s in motion here.”
UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL, CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA
Sayer made sure they had an officer watching Alice Beaumont as the doctors wheeled her away to surgery, then she hurried to the hospital’s front desk.
“FBI Agent Altair.” She flashed her badge. “I’m looking for Sam Valdez.”
&nbs
p; The nurse looked up over thick reading glasses. “Who’s that, now?”
“Samantha Valdez. Small girl, two years old, should’ve just come in not too long ago with a Rockfish Gap policeman.…”
“I’m sorry, we’ve got a Hannah Valdez here, but no one named Sam Valdez has been admitted. Maybe go down to emergency triage?”
An unsettling hum of fear tickled Sayer’s spine as she hurried down to the ER.
“Nope, no kids’ve come in here in the past few hours. You sure they came to this hospital?” The triage nurse seemed vaguely annoyed, unwilling to even glance up from her computer screen.
“Would you call around and see if she’s checked in somewhere else?” Sayer asked.
The triage nurse finally looked up. “Oh, hey, you’re that agent from the news! I’m happy to call around. Give me one minute.”
Sayer sighed at her reaction, assuming that was about to happen a hell of a lot more often.
While the nurse called around, Sayer paced the waiting room. She tried calling Kyle’s cell phone but got no answer.
Was Kyle in an accident on the way down the mountain? But they would’ve seen him on their way down. What if Beaumont really did have a partner and he had gotten to Kyle and Sam?
The longer she waited, the more sure she was that something was seriously wrong.
She dialed Ezra. “Ez, Kyle Nelson hasn’t shown up at the ER with Sam Valdez.”
“What? Where are they?”
“Not here.” The nurse waved Sayer over. “Hang on.” She went to the triage desk.
“There’s no Sam Valdez at any of the area hospitals. No two-year-old girls admitted recently at all.”
“Thanks.” Sayer got back on the phone. “You hear that, Ezra?”
“I did. So where did they go? Hang on, let me patch in to the local dispatch and see if there were any reported accidents in the last hour.”
Sayer listened to computer keys clacking away.
“Nope, nothing reported. I’ll send a few cruisers up from Charlottesville to check any possible routes just in case.”
“All right, Ezra, thanks.” She clicked off and called Max at Dark Hollow to fill him in.
“Want me to come down to the hospital?” Max asked. “I’ve got the evidence-recovery team and area search all set up here.”
“No, I’m going to check in with Beaumont’s doctor and then I’ll meet you up at the ranger station.”
“All right, Sayer. You have any clue what’s going on? You think maybe Beaumont has a partner that got to them?”
“I don’t know, but we’re sure going to find out.” Sayer hung up and went to find Beaumont’s doctor. After a quick update, she paused at the hospital exit. The rain had picked back up and she was about to be, yet again, soaked to the bone. Ignoring the cold water trickling in around the edges of her hood, she ran across the parking lot to the cruiser waiting to take her up to the ranger station.
This was the second damn time she’d lost Sam Valdez in a single day. This whole case was really starting to piss her off.
SOUTHERN RANGER STATION, SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK, VA
Max, Ezra, and Dana all looked slightly pale when Sayer stomped into the conference room.
“Still no word on Kyle and Sam?” she asked.
“Not a peep,” Ezra said. “Locals are canvassing the area.”
“I left the evidence team and a Rockfish Gap officer poking around up in Dark Hollow,” Max said. “Nothing so far. What’s the word on Beaumont’s injuries?”
“You were right, a single through-and-through that nicked her lung but missed everything vital.” Sayer sat down and rubbed her temples. “Whatever magic you did out there saved her life. She’s in surgery now and looks like she’ll survive.”
“Did they say when she might be conscious enough to talk to us? ’Cause I’d like to ask her a few questions,” Max said darkly.
“Hard to tell. Once they have her stable she might be able to talk. They’ll call if there’s any change.” Sayer let out a long breath. “So, let’s tackle the obvious question first. Is Alice Beaumont Cricket Nelson? Max, you’re the only one that knew her here. What do you think? Could Beaumont be Cricket?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? I mean, I sat in her office not ten feet from her while she gave us her profile. How could I not recognize her?”
“Well, Beaumont did just try to kill Kyle right in front of us. And we think Cricket Nelson is our UNSUB, so … unless Cricket Nelson and Alice Beaumont are working together…”
Max closed his eyes. “Cricket was kind of twiggy and had blond hair. But she was tall just like Alice Beaumont. Add fifty pounds and black hair dye … yeah, she could be.”
“People can change a lot in seventeen years,” Sayer said.
“And I missed it.…” Max rubbed the stubble just starting to show on his chin.
“Oh, I know how to find out. Give me half a second.…” Ezra began typing away. “Ta-da!” He pointed to his computer. “I ran Beaumont and Cricket through our facial comparison program and I can definitively say that, yes, Alice Beaumont and Cricket Nelson are in fact the same person.”
Sayer walked over to Ezra’s computer, which showed the old photo of Cricket from her missing persons file in a side-by-side comparison to Alice Beaumont’s official UVA photograph.
“See how the proportions are exactly the same? With black hair and some extra weight, she looks really different, but there’s no doubt about it.”
“So we finally know where Cricket went all those years ago,” Sayer said.
“She must’ve fabricated a new identity and gone off to college under her new name. Sorry I missed it, Sayer.” Ezra looked like he might tear up.
“What? Don’t beat yourself up, Ez. We all miss stuff sometimes. Hell, I let Beaumont grab Sam Valdez right in front of me, and Max didn’t even realize he was sitting in the same room as Cricket Nelson.”
“Uh, thanks,” Max said.
“What I mean is, we need to focus on what’s next. Now that we know our psychology professor is in fact Cricket, the second big question is, where the hell are Kyle and Sam?”
“Could Cricket have a partner?” Max asked. “Maybe her partner grabbed them on the way down the mountain? Hannah did think it was a man while she was down in the pit.”
“What about Kyle? Is it possible he was working with his sister all along?” Dana asked.
“I don’t think so. Kyle did get shot in the head,” Sayer said.
“Yeah, true,” Max said. “If that was a diversion, well, you don’t try to throw off suspicion by shooting your partner in the head. That shot could’ve easily shattered his skull. Anyway, I saw the look on her face up there in Dark Hollow. She sure as hell meant to kill Kyle.”
“Uhhh, Sayer,” Ezra said. “As much as I hate to say it out loud, I haven’t heard from Piper in a while.”
“Kyle said she was called away to deal with some campsite evacuation up north.” Even as Sayer said the words, her stomach dropped. “There was no flooding, was there?”
“Hang on, I can access the park rangers’ assignments. If she was called out for something, it’ll be in here.” He quickly read, and then gave Sayer an apologetic look. “There’s some flooding reported in the park, but no campsite needing evacuation.… I haven’t heard a peep from her since your birthday party.”
“Jesus,” Max muttered. “Piper? Really?”
Sayer leaned back in her chair, staring at the ceiling and letting the possibility of Piper as Cricket’s partner sink in. She pictured the hulking ranger rushing to the bone cave right after someone tried to set them on fire. Her coming in with donuts right after Ezra and Dana were attacked in the night.
“All right.” She sat back up. “Let’s not jump to any conclusions, but I think we need to accept the possibility that Piper is working with Cricket. Why else would she lie about the flooding?”
Ezra, Max, and Dana looked at each other.
“But she’s so … I mean … P
iper likes plants,” Ezra finally said.
Sayer rubbed her left shoulder. Steel bands crept from her scar along her back and neck. Anger tipped from fiery into pure fatigue and she couldn’t even muster disbelief at the idea that the rumpled park ranger was partnered with a serial killer. “True, but we all know that serial killers are good at hiding who they are. Something has obviously happened to Kyle and Sam. If it’s not a partner, what else could have happened? Ezra, dig into Piper’s past. See if there’s anything to suggest she’s involved.”
“Already on it,” Ezra said.
Sayer leaned forward and put her forehead on the table. It was almost midnight and they had been going since four that morning. Maybe it was time for them to take a break. Try to get some sleep.
Before she could continue the thought, Sayer’s phone buzzed. She read the incoming text.
“It’s local 911 dispatch. I guess word’s gotten around Rockfish Gap that Kyle is missing. A neighbor just called saying that they saw someone enter his house not too long ago. Let’s go check it out. Ezra, while we head down to Kyle Nelson’s house, you dig into Piper. See if she owns land near the park, I don’t know. Anything that can lead us to her. Dana, you keep trying to ID the rest of the skeletons. Maybe their ID will help us somehow.” Sayer rubbed her eyes, which were burning with exhaustion. “All I care about right now is finding that little girl. Let’s make it happen.”
ROAD TO THE NELSON HOUSE, ROCKFISH GAP, VA
While Max drove them toward Kyle’s house, Sayer called every law enforcement department in a fifty-mile radius to fill them in on Piper’s potential involvement.
She hung up and scowled out at the incessant rain.
“Who would be at the Nelson place?” Max asked.
“No clue. Maybe Piper wasn’t sure where else to go and took Kyle and Sam there after she kidnapped them? We do have this whole side of the mountains crawling with law enforcement. I’ve got a few uniforms from the Albemarle County Sheriff’s Department meeting us there just in case. That’s the county sheriff, so they don’t have any connection to the Nelsons or Piper. Until I know what the hell is going on here, I don’t want any locals involved. I’ve also got an evidence team on their way from Quantico. If Piper was here, they need to scour this house top to bottom.”
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