by Susan Harper
“It’s okay. I understand,” Felicity said. She paused for a moment before continuing, “I was hoping I could see Brian before heading back to the station, if that was—”
“Miss Overton, right now, that is not a good idea. Brian is being taken to the Newnan morgue to be examined by a forensic pathologist. We need to get you, Jack, and Jefferson back to the Senoia station with the others where we can keep an eye on all of you,” Agent Ryan said. “You are all still in danger.”
“I understand,” she said. “I just want this to be over with sooner rather than later.”
“Believe me, so do I,” he said. “I will see you at the station, Miss Overton. Stay vigilant and stay safe.”
Jack had wandered over to them with a sad look about him. “How are you holding up?” he asked her.
“I’m angry,” Felicity responded and stood. “Really angry.”
“Good,” Jack said as Jefferson stood up as well. “Because so am I. You need to channel that. This ends today.”
“Yeah,” Jefferson agreed. “Let’s get back to the station. We have a lot of work to do. For Brian.”
Felicity nodded. “For Brian.”
Chapter 10
It was a long ride back to the station from Grady Hospital in Atlanta. Felicity had attempted to hide in the third row seating of the FBI van to sit alone, but Jack and Jefferson had both climbed back there with her, leaving the two bucket seats in front of them empty. A part of her was glad to have them on either side of her. As far as grief was concerned, she felt as though she had skipped right past the denial stage; she was positively seething with righteous fury.
Jack and Jefferson kept looking at her with these sympathetic eyes. In her anger, she wanted to shout at them both. She wanted to remind them that they had both hated Brian at one point. That they had both been so hung up on her that they had not ever bothered to get to know the man she had grown to love, but she would not allow herself to say those things. She knew they were only thoughts of anger. In more recent days, both Jack and Jefferson had made an effort to get to know the real Brian. And Brian had reciprocated the notion. It would not be fair to bring up old conflicts just because she wanted to hurt someone to make herself feel a little better.
Eventually they arrived outside of the Senoia police station. There were now cameras everywhere. The local media had clearly caught on to the fact that the FBI had been called in to deal with a serial killer. As Felicity and her friends exited the vehicle, the cameras turned in her direction. Her cheeks turned red, and she looked at her feet. She could hear whispers of, “Are the FBI bringing in the Senoia Nancy Drew?” Yes, Felicity was sure that would make great headlines for these vultures. I can’t believe I almost went into investigative journalism, she thought as a camera was shoved in her face.
“Miss Overton, are you helping with the FBI’s current investigation?” a reporter asked, and Jefferson put himself between them.
“Back off,” Jefferson snarled as the agents who had been riding up front in the van pushed their way through the crowd, allowing Felicity and the guys to follow. Felicity appreciated being separated from the journalists. Normally she had only ever dealt with journalists after solving a case, not in the middle of one. Post-case interviews were lovely. They brought business to her shop, and it was a bit of a pride game with her, but this was just obnoxious. She didn’t feel like speaking with any of these people, especially not right after hearing about Brian.
Agent Ryan was standing at the front door, which he opened to allow Felicity and the others to enter. “We will have a press briefing shortly!” Agent Ryan called out to the swarm to calm them. “Honestly!” he huffed as the others entered. “Who let this leak? I’m going to have someone’s job! We don’t want our unidentified suspect to—” His words were overshadowed by Felicity’s heavy thoughts.
Her fiancé was dead, and her closest group of friends were on the killer’s hit list. Agent Ryan kindly escorted them back to the chief’s office where the rest of her friends were waiting. Felicity looked down, avoiding eye contact with them all. She was sure that they had already caught wind of Brian by now. “Felicity?” Brittany beckoned, but Felicity ignored her and sat herself down in a chair.
Felicity glanced around the room as Agent Ryan closed the door behind them. “Where’s Autumn?” Felicity asked, a slight panic in her voice.
“She’s in the bathroom,” Monte said. “With a police escort. She’s fine.”
“Police or FBI?” Agent Ryan demanded.
“Police?” Monte questioned as though he wondered why it mattered.
Ryan cussed under his breath and darted out of the room, down the hall toward the bathroom. Felicity stood up and slammed her fists down on the table. She saw the last letter sent by the killer through Whitney and held it up. “He’s going in order!” she exclaimed, waving the list of past and future victims around in a panic. “And after Brian is Autumn!”
Agent Ryan came bolting back into the room. His eyes were wide. “Autumn is gone!”
Felicity shoved the laminated sheet of paper into Agent Ryan’s hands. “Yes, because she was next on the list!”
Agent Ryan looked at the paper with Felicity’s friends’ faces printed on it along with the criminals she had put away. It was true. The killer was attacking victims in the order he had put them on the page for them to follow. It seemed so obvious now. Agent Ryan immediately sent out agents as well as local police to scour the nearby area. He essentially ordered that downtown Senoia be put on lockdown, putting up roadblocks all over the small town.
While the rest of Ryan’s agents worked on locating Autumn, Agent Ryan remained behind with Felicity and her remaining friends. “Did the killer leave a clue with Brian like he did with Whitney?” Felicity asked, trying hard not to imagine how Brian had been found.
“No,” Agent Ryan said. “Nothing with the body or the casket. That’s not his game, though. He’s playing you. He would have left something because he wants you to play his game with him. He wants to prove that you can’t handle it.”
“Do you have any idea at all what kind of persona we’re looking for?” Dawn asked. “Anything at all?”
“Yes,” Agent Ryan said, turning to close the door to the office so that they could speak more privately. “My team and I are almost certain that the killer is law enforcement. FBI, NCIS, or local Senoia police. The third is most likely because of how personal these kills are. It’s unlikely that he works for a federal organization.”
Jack bucked up slightly. “You’re telling me that one of my fellow officers is behind this?”
“Yes,” Agent Ryan said. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Almost certainly a Senoia officer.”
“It would have to have been someone who knew about mine and Autumn’s little secret coding system that we used during elementary and middle school,” Felicity said, and then her face turned red. “Patrick.”
Jack turned and glared at Felicity. “Excuse me? Did you just accuse my partner of orchestrating all of this?”
“I hate to say it, Jack, but it makes a lot of sense,” Veronica said. “All of you guys went to school together. You were in the same classes. You, Autumn, Felicity, and Patrick were in the same grade. Patrick also got really hurt last year during one of Felicity’s cases—Frankie shot him and nearly killed him. Maybe he was appreciative of Felicity’s work?”
“And then when Whitney mocked the Senoia police, he turned into the revenge killer,” Dawn said.
“No!” Jack shouted. “Patrick’s no killer.”
“Wait… He left the hospital before we did,” Felicity said. “Did he and Steven ever come back?”
“No,” Agent Ryan said. “I’ll send out an alert.” He stepped into the hall.
Jack glared at his friends. “Patrick’s not our suspect.”
“I don’t believe Patrick could have done this,” Felicity said. “But he is certainly one of many suspects, Jack. Everyone who works at this station is a suspect.�
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“Felicity—” Jack started to protest, but Agent Ryan’s entrance caused him to pause.
“Okay, I’ve got some people out looking for Patrick and Steven,” Agent Ryan said.
“I just had a thought,” Felicity said. “I have some yearbooks from elementary and middle school that Autumn wrote in using that goofy coding system we created. Maybe the yearbooks could help if the killer sends us another letter? Autumn and I were just barely able to decode that last one from memory, and I’m sure that the killer left us another clue somewhere. When we find it, we need to be ready. Maybe we can create a key to help us read the code?”
“Okay,” Agent Ryan said. “Come with me, and we’ll go get your yearbooks and bring them back here. I’ll make sure some of my top agents stay here with your friends.”
“I’ll go with you,” Jack said, rising.
“Me too,” Jefferson started to say.
“Two is enough,” Agent Ryan said. “I don’t have a large van, and my backseats are filled with boxes of paperwork. Let’s go.”
Jack and Felicity followed Agent Ryan out to the parking lot, taking a back exit to avoid the cameras. They headed straight for Felicity’s home, arriving in only a few short minutes. When they entered through the front door, Felicity paused. This had been Brian’s home long before it had been hers. Now it was filled with so many memories that they had made in a short period of time.
The place no longer looked like a professional’s bachelor pad. It looked like the home of a married couple, or soon to be married couple. They had painted. She had hung up pictures of the two of them. They had bought furniture together. A lot of heart and soul had gone into making this place a home for the two of them. She couldn’t move from the entryway. It hurt her to be there. Jack put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m really sorry, Felicity,” Jack said reassuringly.
“Let’s just get the yearbooks and go,” Felicity said and headed toward a spare bedroom where only a handful of boxes remained. She had almost finished moving in. There were exactly four small boxes left in the room. One of the boxes was labelled “books,” and she was fairly certain that this would be where her yearbooks were. She had yet to come across them during her unpacking, so she was sure this was it.
She opened the box, and sure enough, she found them. She grabbed her fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh grade yearbooks. “This should do it,” she said, and with that, they left the home behind.
Felicity was not sure what she was expecting exactly, but she was relieved to see that no one else had gone missing during their brief absence. She laid out the yearbooks on the table and flipped toward the back where everyone always signed. “See?” Felicity said. “Autumn did sign some of my yearbooks this way.”
“Not this one,” Dawn said, brushing aside seventh grade. “Looks like you two grew out of that come seventh grade.”
“Okay, so just fourth to sixth grade,” Felicity said. “We can try to figure out what all the symbols represent, which ones represent which numbers and letters. That way when our killer sends us another letter, we can be ready.”
The two agents that had remained behind as guards sat down at the table with Felicity and the others, as did Agent Ryan. “Wait a minute,” Agent Toft said and spun one of the yearbooks to face Felicity. “Your friend wrote a key in your fifth-grade yearbook.”
“Perfect!” Felicity said. “Now we don’t have to try to figure it out!” Agent Ryan quickly made a few copies of the page for everyone to have.
“That might be how the killer got a hold of the lingo,” Veronica suggested. “Maybe Autumn shared the key with some other students in your class in fifth grade?”
“She did!” Felicity said, recalling all the way back to fifth grade how cool the two of them thought they were for creating their own secret written language. Autumn had decided to share the coding system with a few other classmates by scribbling it down in their yearbooks to study over the summer.
Agent Ryan flipped to the class pages. “Our killer could have been in your fifth-grade class then,” he said. They ran the names of Felicity’s fifth grade classmates, but none of them now worked at the Senoia police station.
Veronica seemed to be thinking. She took the fifth-grade yearbook and began flipping through it. “Now is not the time to be looking up old, embarrassing photos of Felicity,” Jefferson said.
“Shut up, Jefferson,” Veronica retorted. “That’s not what I’m doing. I’m looking to see if Autumn was in any clubs.”
“Of course,” Agent Ryan said. “She could have signed the yearbook the same way as she did for one of her classmates, with the coding system and the key.”
“Give me just a second, I’m looking,” Veronica said.
“Agent Ryan!” an agent popped his head in the room. “A moment?”
“Of course,” Agent Ryan said and turned to Veronica for a moment. “Keep looking!” He left the room.
“Oh…” Veronica said. “Look who was in chorus in elementary school.” Veronica slammed the yearbook down on the chorus club page. There was a toothless Autumn smiling in the group shot. Veronica pointed at a young boy standing beside her. “And look who is standing right beside her. A little fourth grader singing with the big shot fifth graders—Steven Sanders.”
Chapter 11
“Officer Sanders!” Felicity exclaimed. “That man… He even drove me home the night before that UPS delivery. I was alone in a car with him!” Felicity felt sick. “He offered his condolences after burying Brian alive!” She shook with anger. “It makes sense. He even reminded me that we went to elementary school together. Autumn probably wrote the little code in his yearbook like she did mine. He probably remembered us using the code from elementary school to pass notes back and forth. This was all a game to him!”
“Patrick!” Jack suddenly shrieked, looking extremely worried. “He left the hospital with that lunatic!”
Agent Ryan reentered the room with a worried expression. “We know who the killer is,” he began.
“Steven Sanders,” Veronica said. “One step ahead of you, buddy.”
“You found the connection in the yearbooks?” Agent Ryan asked.
“Yeah,” Veronica said. “He and Autumn had chorus together. How did you figure it out?”
“He killed his partner,” Agent Ryan said. “His partner was found dead this morning at his home. He needed his partner out sick so that he would be free to move in on each of you without anyone noticing.”
“Patrick!” Jack demanded.
“He’s fine,” Agent Ryan said. “He’s the reason we knew to go check on Steven’s partner. Steven attacked Patrick after they left the hospital while driving down an empty road near Coweta. We just sent someone to pick Patrick up. When Steven couldn’t overpower him, he shoved Patrick out of their moving patrol car. He’s got road burn, but other than that, Patrick is fine. Somehow, Steven also managed to steal his shoes…”
“Steal his shoes?” Jack questioned.
“Yeah. It slowed Patrick down a bit getting to a phone. We need to find Autumn now. Since Patrick got away, Steven will probably assume we know his identity at this point,” Agent Ryan said. “If Steven decides to stop playing his game, he might just kill Autumn and ditch town.”
“He didn’t send us a clue this time!” Felicity cried. “How are we supposed to find out where he took Autumn? How are we supposed to play his stupid little game if he doesn’t play by his own rules?”
“Let’s see, what do we know… He was a missionary killer. He admired you, Felicity. Probably obsessively. He probably watched you very closely. Knew your movements. Your friends too. He went after the convicts in a desperate attempt to impress you, most likely,” Agent Ryan began.
“Until my sister struck a nerve with him,” Brittany said. “He changed his MO after Whitney pointed out that Felicity was an embarrassment to the Senoia Police Force.”
“Which made him go to revenge killer,” Agent Ryan said. “He decided to start targetin
g Felicity’s friends, and he has turned it into a game. Both his attempt to kill Whitney and his success in killing Brian required him not to be present during their deaths. It was on a timetable.”
“So…so long as he doesn’t panic from Patrick’s escape, Autumn might still be alive?” Felicity asked. “But she’s on a timetable just like Whitney and Brian were. We have to find her fast.”
“But why not send us a clue this time?” Monte asked.
“Maybe he did…and we’re just missing it?” Agent Ryan suggested. “I’ll go with a team back to the crime scene. Surely we missed something! Maybe he simply placed the note near the crime scene instead of on the body this time?”
“You’re just going to leave us all here? Your teams are spread thin,” Jefferson said. “And half of the Senoia police are out looking for Steven and Autumn.”
Agent Ryan handed his personal handgun to Jack. “All of you stay in this room,” he said. “There are still police here at the station. Do not leave this room.”
And with that, Agent Ryan departed, leaving Felicity and her friends behind.
Chapter 12
Felicity spun around and crossed her arms, a childish pout appearing on her face as she dropped back into her seat. She never liked the local police telling her what she could or could not do, so she certainly didn’t care for Agent Ryan ordering her to stay put. Especially not when Autumn, her best friend, was missing.
“What can we do?” Dawn asked, obviously picking up on Felicity’s frustrations. “Is there anything that we can do to help?”
“I don’t get it,” Felicity said. “After he evolved into revenge style killing, he developed a very specific methodology.”
“The cryptic notes,” Jefferson said.
“Exactly,” Felicity groaned. “He gave us a note to help us find Whitney. He didn’t like that it was taking so long, so he toyed with us by leaving the video in the safe house. Then he left a note about Brian with Whitney. He was developing a pattern. Why didn’t he leave something with Brian to help us find Autumn? Why stop playing the game? Why no note?”