Max stared straight ahead, jaw clenched. “They scrambled a team in the middle of the night? I thought we were short-staffed right now.”
“I can be persuasive when I want,” Sayer growled.
Much to her surprise, Kona nosed Sayer in response to her growling in a gesture of support.
“You bringing Kona in with us?” Sayer asked.
“Nah, closed spaces like that mean she can’t really follow scent. Whoever is in there, no way I want to risk her getting caught in the crossfire. She can stay in the car.”
When they pulled up, five Albemarle Sheriff’s Department officers were already waiting outside a squat house, hunched against the drizzle. Low clouds hung in the sky above them.
Sayer gathered everyone without ceremony. “Two of you go around back. You three”—she pointed to three sheriff’s officers—“enter with us from the front to clear the house. We’re going in hot. We have no clue who is here, but remember that there’s the possibility of hostages. If you see any sign of anyone, back the hell out and get me.”
Sayer stared up at the dark house. Despite the carved wooden sign that read HOME SWEET HOME in the front window, Sayer had the unshakable feeling that this place was off somehow.
“So, Kyle lives at his parents’ old house?” She spoke quietly.
“Uh-hmm.” Max unsnapped his holster. “He moved to an apartment down in Charlottesville while he went to UVA, but when he joined the police force here he moved back in with his dad.”
Sayer waved the two officers around the back of the house. She took a deep breath, trying to calm the murderous rage burning at her core. She needed to find Sam Valdez and she said a silent prayer to no one in particular that the girl would be here. With one more calming breath, she drew her gun and gave Max a sharp nod.
He nodded back.
Max surged forward onto the porch, kicking the door just below the lock.
The wood splintered and he shoved the door inward and backed away. Sayer led everyone in like a pack of wolves on the hunt. They swarmed together, low and smooth, guns at the ready.
“Clear down!” Max shouted, loud enough for everyone to hear.
They climbed the stairs and broke off into each room.
Sayer felt slight disappointment at the chorus of clears from the sheriff’s deputies. She hadn’t really expected Kyle and Sam to be here, but she’d still held a flicker of hope that they could find Sam to just end this all now.
She entered the master bedroom and swept her gun in a circuit. She pulled open the closet. Pulled aside the shower curtain.
“Clear upstairs!” she shouted.
The alert status shifted down a notch and Sayer let herself take a real look at the house.
Orange shag carpet. Avocado-green counters in the master bath. Small fiberglass shower with a thin ring of black mildew around the drain.
“Place hasn’t been touched in decades,” Max said as he entered the master bedroom.
“No joke. It looks like all of Mr. Nelson’s stuff is still in here. I guess Kyle stayed in his old room?”
Sayer peeked into what she assumed was Kyle’s bedroom.
“My god, look at this.” She pulled on gloves and then picked up an old baseball mitt off the small dresser. “It looks like he hasn’t changed his room either. That’s a little weird.”
She took in the wall of drawings over the twin bed. The pencil sketches all featured strangely contorted animals stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster. Max had been right, Kyle was quite the artist.
“These’re kind of creepy.”
“Yeah, those are the mash-ups I mentioned. The kids at school loved them.”
Sayer’s eye caught on a stack of letters. She carefully unfolded one and read it out loud.
“Dear Mom, I still miss you so much. I wish I could talk to you about what’s happening here. Classes are going well this semester though I wish I’d taken biology.…” She looked at the date. “He wrote letters to his dead mother … while he was in college.”
“Yikes, that’s pretty sad.” Max rifled through the drawers. He held up a soldering iron and a tangle of wires. “Nothing here but regular kid stuff. I’ll grab Kona to do a sweep around the house,” he said, then headed back downstairs.
As the adrenaline of their entry wore off a bit, a musty, rotting smell permeated Sayer’s senses. Despite the trappings of a cozy family home, a deep current of unease ran beneath the surface of this house.
She made a small circuit of the upstairs, rifling through all the typical hiding places.
OUTSIDE THE NELSON HOUSE, ROCKFISH GAP, VA
While Sayer looked around upstairs, Max headed out to the truck to grab Kona. Might as well let her do a sweep, see if she alerted on anything.
At the sight of Max approaching the truck, Kona’s tail thumped loudly on the seat, sending up a cloud of dust.
“Hey, girl, you ready to do a quick search?” Her ears came forward, tail thumping more quickly.
Max would swear her mouth fell open in a canine smile every time she was on duty.
He pulled on her work harness and led her to the porch. The front door hung open and the sheriff’s deputies milled around inside, checking for evidence of recent activity.
Without giving her a direction, Max said, “Go find, Kona!” letting her decide where to start.
The dog raised her head, nose working the air. She looked sharply left and let out a low woof, jumping off the porch. Max followed her as she made a beeline around the side of the house toward a small wooden shed out back.
A deputy had cleared the shed, but Max put his hand on his gun as they approached the squat building.
Kona let out another sharp alert and Max unsnapped his holster again as he gently swung open the old door. He couldn’t tell if she was giving her cadaver alert or her live alert.
The hinges swung smoothly open and Kona charged forward, tail straight out behind her. She vanished into the darkness of the shed while Kyle fumbled for a light switch.
He finally found one and the florescent lights flickered to life. Kona nosed along the base of the back wall. The small space was cramped with old wooden shelving and a sawdust-covered worktable piled high with power tools. A reciprocating saw. Piles of scrap metal. Soldering iron. Reels of electrical wiring.
Max turned his attention to the back wall. An old metal shelving unit sat mostly empty, covered with a thin layer of dust.
“What do you smell, Kona?”
He crouched down, shining his flashlight along the base of the wall behind the shelving unit.
A thick crack ran along the edge.
Heart pounding, Max stood and pulled aside the shelving unit.
“My god,” he muttered to himself.
SOUTHERN RANGER STATION, SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK, VA
Ezra sat at his computer trying to decide which file to open first. Quantico had just sent him the text fragments they were able to pull from the Ekhidna journal Dana’s team had found in the cave. But he also had all the files he had gathered about Alice Beaumont née Cricket Nelson.
“What’s our first priority? Finding Sam,” he said to himself. “So focus on Beaumont first.”
He began poring over Alice Beaumont’s history. With every file he opened, he felt slightly more sick to his stomach. Now that he knew Beaumont was Cricket Nelson, Beaumont’s childhood history looked flimsy as hell.
How had he missed the red flags? What if he really wasn’t ready to be back at work? What if he would never be able to do his job well again?
Shaking off that thought, he pulled up the records that the university had sent over. He asked UVA for everything they had on Beaumont and he was sure as hell not going to miss anything this time. He clicked on the link to her calendar, where he could look at everything she had planned over the past few months. Ezra scanned her schedule until he came to the last entry.
He stared at the time and date, mouth dry.
“This can’t be right.”
<
br /> “Any word?” Dana’s voice behind him made Ezra jump. “Whoa, sorry to startle you. Is everyone okay?”
Ezra let out a short breath. “Yeah. No sign of Piper or anyone down at the Nelson house. They’re looking around a bit before they head back.”
“Glad everyone is safe.” Dana sat down next to Ezra. “So why do you look like someone just pissed in your cornflakes?”
“I just can’t believe I missed Beaumont’s fake background. I mean, that’s my damn job. If I’d seen that she was really Cricket, maybe Sam would be home safe right now.”
“Hey.” Dana put her hand on Ezra’s shoulder. “You can’t take on that kind of thing. We’re all doing our best here, and none of us are perfect.”
“What if I’m not able to do my job anymore?” Ezra’s voice cracked. He gestured at his legs.
“If I’m not mistaken, your work was pivotal in solving the last case you and Sayer worked together.”
“Yeah, but … I don’t know.” Ezra pointed to his computer. “I’ve just found a discrepancy in Beaumont’s schedule. I can’t tell if I’m losing it, because this doesn’t make any sense.”
“Let me take a look.”
“Last entry,” Ezra said. “See the time?”
Dana read with wide eyes. “Well, shit. There’s got to be a logical explanation for this. Let’s figure it out together.”
UPSTAIRS, THE NELSON HOUSE, ROCKFISH GAP, VA
Sayer saved Cricket’s childhood room for last in her inspection of the Nelson house. Rainbow sheets. Wall of posters from pop stars Sayer vaguely remembered. Coldplay. Gorillaz. Death Cab for Cutie. But no trophies or photos of Cricket with her friends. It felt almost like a staged version of a normal teenager’s room.
She stood in the middle, trying to reconcile everything here with what she knew about Cricket Nelson the kidnapper and killer. How had this seemingly normal young woman turned into a murderer?
Sayer’s phone buzzed with a text from Adi. She read the text, unable to ignore the fact that she was surrounded by the detritus of Cricket Nelson’s when she was the same age as Adi.
Made it home.
Hannah was sleeping when we left. Think she’ll be okay but hope you find Sam.
Didn’t find much more on Ekhidna. Mother of all monsters. Ekhidna’s kids: Cerberus, the Hydra, the Sphinx, Chimera, the Gorgon, Scylla, and some others I’ve never heard of.
Still not sure what the second word Hannah saw was. Mirage is my best guess.
That’s it so far. Will keep digging. Xoxo.
A faint smile flickered on Sayer’s lips.
“Uh, Sayer,” Max called up. “We’ve got something out back.”
The tone of Max’s voice swept away the smile. Sayer hurried outside to the shed, where she found Max crouching in front of an open half door set into the back wall. “Look what Kona found. It was hidden behind these shelves. Doesn’t look like anyone has gone in here in years. I would’ve never even noticed it if Kona hadn’t alerted.”
“See anything inside?”
“Yeah, there’s stairs down.…”
Sayer sighed. After her last case, she hated subterranean spaces with a burning passion.
“I’ll check it out.” She pulled her gun and flashlight from her belt and practically crawled through the door to cautiously make her way down the narrow stairs. They went on much longer than she expected, finally dumping her into a small room. Bare concrete floor and tall cinder-block walls made the space feel like an oubliette, one of the old medieval pit dungeons only accessible from a hole at the top.
“It’s clear. Come on down,” she called up to Max as she holstered her gun.
While he climbed carefully down, Sayer turned slowly. The flashlight danced along the raw cinder blocks until she came to a plywood door covered with peeling blue paint.
“Well, this has a lovely little torture-chamber vibe, doesn’t it?” Max said lightly, but Sayer could hear the disgust in his voice.
“Check it out.” She played the flashlight over a small desk in the corner. The wall above the desk was cluttered with photos and index cards taped to a large map. Then she focused the beam on the blue door.
A window at the top might have allowed someone to peek through to whatever was on the other side, but it was covered with grime.
She raised her chin toward the door for Max to approach first. He swung it open as Sayer stepped forward.
They both stopped short, instinctively not wanting to enter the horrifying room revealed by Sayer’s flashlight. Scratches marred the walls of the small chamber. A rumpled straitjacket lay in one corner. A rusted chain was bolted to the wall. At the end, an ankle shackle lay open on the damp floor above a small drain.
Steeling herself, Sayer entered the room, hunching over to make sure her hair didn’t touch the low ceiling. She crouched next to the rotting straitjacket to get a better look.
“This straitjacket’s just like the ones we found in the bone cave.”
“Uh-hmm,” Max said, throat tight.
Sayer and Max both knew exactly what that shackle and straitjacket meant. This was no innocent storage space. A human being had once been held here.
They spoke in hushed tones, out of reverence for the people who had suffered in this room. Sayer did one more sweep of the small dungeon before retreating back out to the main chamber.
She straightened up, grateful to be out of the cramped space. She reluctantly approached the desk in the corner and shone her flashlight on the fading map. “This is a map of the entire Appalachian Trail.”
Six blurry photos of hikers were pinned up around the old map. They were candids, the subjects clearly unaware that they were being photographed. A young woman with dreadlocks and tattered hiking gear. A middle-aged man decked out in a fancy jacket and expensive backpack. An elderly man with steel-gray hair and mirrored sunglasses. Beneath each photo, a small index card had a name and date.
“Six pictures … all hikers, it looks like,” Sayer said.
“You think these are our skeletons?” Max leaned in get a better look. “Lucinda Washington, December fourteenth, 1997.”
“Timothy O’Doyle, July ninth, 2000,” Sayer read another, and then looked at the map. Colored pins marked locations along the Appalachian Trail as far north as Pennsylvania and all the way south to Georgia. “I bet we’ll be able to match our six skeletons to hikers that went missing along the trail. Look how widely distributed they are. No wonder no one connected them.”
Max looked around the chamber. “How could Kyle not know about this? I mean, I guess the entrance was pretty well hidden, but still.”
Sayer didn’t answer, processing everything.
“I have no idea, but let’s get the evidence team down here.” Sayer took a few photos of the map with her phone and was ready to get the hell out.
Back up the stairs, rain fell in a steady rhythm on the roof of the shed. Sayer gratefully stepped out into the cold downpour, letting it wash away the fetor of death.
SOUTHERN RANGER STATION, SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK, VA
Back in the conference room, Sayer stood at the head of the table, mind spinning in high gear.
Max paced next to the table, clearly too riled up to sit. Unlike Sayer’s broad-ranging pace, Max walked in a tight arc around Kona, who sat watching him closely. “There’s no way a twelve-year-old girl built that dungeon beneath the shed.”
Like Kona, Dana and Ezra watched Max pace.
“Uh, Sayer,” Ezra said tentatively. “I don’t mean to add to the confusion, but I think there might be a problem with our DNA results.”
Sayer felt slightly sick at the look on Ezra’s face. What else could possibly go wrong on this case?
“As in a we-fucked-up-somehow problem?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
Sayer closed her eyes. A DNA mistake from the Quantico lab right now could cost dozens of agents their jobs. “What did we get wrong?”
“Not so much wrong as impossible,” Ezra s
aid.
“Explain, please,” Sayer said curtly.
Ezra handed her a sheet of paper. “I got Beaumont’s schedule from the university. Turns out that she volunteers regularly at the Children’s Hospital down at UVA”
“Okay.…” Sayer glanced down at the list of dates and times. “These are in the middle of the night.”
“Yeah, apparently she volunteered to sit with kids in recovery at the cancer ward. You know, the parents get exhausted after a few days of around-the-clock with a kid after a major surgery. But they want someone there full-time. Nurses can’t just sit with one patient, so Beaumont would take over and basically just be there for the kid in case the kid needs anything or gets scared.”
“That doesn’t exactly sound like the kind of thing a serial killer would do,” Max said.
“No kidding. But it does jibe with the fact that she offered to be a bone marrow donor. What matters here, check out her last visit.” Ezra tapped the page in Sayer’s hand.
She read to the bottom. “Two to five A.M.… wait, that’s…”
“Yeah.…” Ezra trailed off.
“That’s the same time she was here attacking you and Dana,” Sayer continued. “We know she was here because we got her DNA from underneath your fingernails.” She looked over at Ezra. “That was, what, four or four-thirty in the morning?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Okay.” Sayer shrugged. “So this schedule is just wrong. Maybe she just didn’t go in this morning?” She looked at Ezra and Dana, who both had their mouths pressed into white lines.
Sayer’s stomach flip-flopped. “Only it isn’t wrong, is it?”
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