by Karen Rock
Acid burned her gut. If the preacher was her unsub, he was capable of anything. He wouldn’t hesitate to harm these women to save his disgusting, pathetic life.
“I’ve got a search warrant. Drop your weapon. Now!”
“Pastor?” A towheaded young boy darted to the preacher and flung his arms around his elder’s legs.
“Drop it!” Katherine bellowed, alarm bells ringing in her head. Did he also prey on minors?
“Okay. Okay. Just don’t shoot.” Frank slowly lowered his rifle, scowling.
“Put your hands up!”
He and the child raised their arms overhead.
“What’s your name?” Katherine softened her voice and gave the child a faint smile.
“Jeremy,” the boy answered.
A breeze streamed the faint scent of manure and newly turned earth beneath her nose. “Jeremy. Is your mother here?”
The boy nodded, eyes wide.
“Go to her, now, please.”
“Don’t hurt pastor!” he sobbed, then bolted for one of the beckoning women. Both wore long white nightgowns and they’d pulled back their hair in single French braids.
Was this some sort of sick cult?
“We won’t harm him,” she promised, very much wishing otherwise. “Hands flat against the hood of your truck, Jeb. Or should I say Frank?”
The women gasped, and the preacher didn’t move, belligerent. Did he have another weapon? Were either of the women armed? Would they defend him? She’d studied similar stories…the effects of Stockholm syndrome.
“What’s this about? Am I under arrest?”
“Not yet. Hands on the hood of your vehicle, feet spread.”
“Wicked woman,” he muttered, then splayed his fingers on the front of his truck.
Katherine’s skin crawled as she ran her hands over him, checking for other weapons. “Brittany Reins. You were last seen talking to her the night she disappeared.”
“Never heard of her.”
“He’s clean,” she said to the officers when she finished her search. “Then why did her cell phone ping on a tower just a few hundred yards from here the night she went missing? In fact, this is the last recorded location for her cell.”
The preacher’s eyes blazed with hellfire as he turned. “It’s a coincidence. I’ve never—”
His sputtering ground to a halt when the boy crept close to Katherine and pressed a cell phone in her hand. “Thou shalt not lie.” He frowned at the preacher, his eyes accusing.
The hairs on the back of Katherine’s neck rose as she turned the phone over in her hand. Rhinestone letters spelled out “Brittany” across the case, perfectly matching the description provided by her mother.
Fury rose, a red tide. Here it was at last. Proof positive that Brittany Reins was here, somewhere close, making the preacher the Last Call Killer. “Where are you hiding her?”
“I’m not.”
Her eyes darted around the ramshackle compound. What depraved secrets lurked? “Try again. This time the truth.”
“I am telling the truth.”
Changing tactics, she knelt to face Jeremy. “Where’d you get this?”
“I found it in Father’s truck. It was so pretty. I kept it, but I knew it was wrong to steal. I’m sorry, pastor!” cried the child.
“You’re forgiven, my son.”
“How’d Brittany Reins’s phone end up in your truck?”
The preacher heaved a sigh. “I offered her a ride home when her taxi didn’t show. I didn’t want her to walk home or hitchhike. Lots of dangerous people out there.”
Oh. That was rich. She clenched her fists to keep from decking the smart-ass. One thing was common in all serial killers: they always thought they were smarter than law enforcement. And maybe some were, but she was more determined, a pit bull. Once she bit down, she didn’t let go. “You brought her here.”
“No. We were almost to her house when she asked me to stop at a convenience store. She wanted to buy cigarettes and refused to listen to my Bible verse about vices. That’s the last I saw her.”
“Why didn’t you tell the authorities? Her picture’s been everywhere, in the downtown businesses, on TV, in the newspapers….”
“I have my reasons,” he muttered.
Frustrated, she turned to the sergeant. “Take him in. I’ll question him at the station.”
She ignored the preacher’s protests and ordered the rest of the squad to scour the property for Brittany. “And I want these women brought in and questioned, too.”
Minutes later, she started up her engine and raced back to the precinct. Was Brittany still alive?
Since no body had been dumped, posed for discovery, there was a chance they’d captured the Last Call Killer just in time.
Hope bloomed, and she waved when she passed Nash astride his parked Harley. He’d waited down the road, watching out for her—having her back even when she’d pushed him away.
Stubborn man.
She’d told him she didn’t need his protection, yet she loved that he’d offered it just the same. Loved that he cared.
Too much.
She gritted her teeth and forced thoughts of Nash to the back of her mind to keep for later. Time to focus on getting a confession out of the preacher.
Chapter Fourteen
“Let’s go over this again.” Katherine stared down her suspect, bone-tired and irritated at asking the same questions a gazillion times to no avail. Every time she blinked, it felt like she dragged her eyelids over sandpaper. “What time did you approach Brittany?”
The preacher’s eyes fled hers and darted around the cramped interrogation space. “One a.m., and she approached me for a ride.”
“And why would she do that?”
“I’d spoken to her before.”
“You gave her a pamphlet.” Katherine recalled seeing it beside Brittany’s phone when they’d searched her apartment.
“I seek to enlighten my flock.” The preacher peered at her, his expression as empty as a hunting shark’s. “Women must be warned.”
Katherine met his gaze head-on. Her voice was calm, but her hands clenched tightly in her lap. She wanted off this aggravating merry-go-round of questioning. It’d gotten her nowhere so far. “Of what?”
“Be careful who you trust; the devil was once an angel.” He turned a clear plastic cup between his hands, watching the light move on the surface of the water.
“And which are you? Devil or angel?”
He drained his drink. “I’m a vessel whom God has chosen to deliver his message.”
Yeah. Not even a little creepy.
Every word he spoke deepened her conviction she’d caught her unsub. She clasped her hands at the back of her neck to keep them still.
“And punishments?”
He shot a quick glance up at her and nodded. The preacher’s face appeared older than it did when they’d first arrived, dragged down around the edges. This conversation was taking a toll on him, too. Was he starting to crack? In the background, a coffee machine sputtered on a credenza beneath a two-way mirror.
His molded chair creaked as he shifted in it. “The Lord died for my sins.”
“Who else died for your sins? Layla Pierce?” Katherine shoved a picture of the young woman at him and carefully watched his face for a reaction. “Becca Waterson?” She slid across more photos. “Vivienne Tourneau? Jennifer Grendel? Mackenzie Payne? Shelby Miller?”
“She was an adulteress.” The preacher tapped Vivienne’s picture and curled his nose as though smelling something bad.
There it was. His dislike of women on full display.
“How do you know?”
The preacher half smiled; not at Katherine, at whatever he was seeing. Memories of torturing Vivienne bringing him pleasure? “I see all.”
Goosebumps rose on her arms. “How long have you been preaching downtown?”
“Six months.”
“Why’d you leave Alabama?”
He tensed, digging his elbows into the tabletop. Whatever they circled, he wasn’t happy being this close to it. “My mother passed away, and I inherited my family’s property. Divine intervention called me home to reach those who must be saved.”
“What about those you can’t save?”
The chain attached to the preacher’s wrist cuffs rattled as he pressed his palms and fingers together. Pious. “I ask the Lord to take them.”
“Is that before or after you kill them?” Her question bounced off the interrogation room’s cement-block walls
“Killing is a sin.” The preacher’s voice pulled tighter.
She left it: he was holding himself together by his fingernails, and she didn’t want him lawyering up if she pushed too hard. She crossed the room, poured them each a cup of coffee, then returned, the hot ceramic mug burning her fingers. “Lying’s a sin, too, but you seem comfortable with it.”
“Righteous lies,” he countered. “The truthful lip shall be established forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment.”
“Proverbs 12:19.” The edge on her voice made his elbows dig in harder.
“How do you…?”
“Catholic grade school, before I transferred to Wheaton Prep. You’ve heard of Wheaton Prep, right?” She sipped her coffee, nonchalant. As if it wasn’t a loaded question, one whose answer might blow her apart.
The preacher’s head lifted, and he gave her a whole new kind of wary look. “No.”
She was less and less in the mood for bullshit. Why hide his knowledge unless…unless he’d started his killing spree there, twelve years ago, with Summer?
“Right.” She leaned over and gave his cup of coffee a shove so it slid toward Frank. A curl of pungent steam rose to the light. “Try again. It’s the biggest private school in the area, and you grew up only a mile from it. In fact, your property abuts it.”
“My mother never let me associate with the students.”
Katherine clasped her hands beneath the table, digging her nails into her palms to maintain her bland expression. Was she sitting across from Summer’s abductor? “Why’s that?”
“Loose morals. Corruption. Depraved, licentious behavior.” The preacher pressed his lips together and bowed his head over his clasped hands.
“Did you walk those woods as a young man?”
The preacher mumbled a prayer, one of a twenty-minute string he’d uttered off and on throughout the interrogation.
Katherine’s back teeth ground together. She’d been questioning him for nearly four hours and gotten nowhere. And where were the women from his compound? She’d asked to be notified when they arrived.
A knock on the door jolted her from her seat. Had they found Brittany? The preacher rolled his eyes up to watch her as she hurried to the door. Time to put her suspect on ice. Maybe some isolation would loosen his lips.
“Need anything?” she asked him, forcing herself to not reveal her disgust or disdain. Interrogation was all about building rapport. Spending hours cooped up with a man who might have attacked her long ago, who’d stolen women like her friend Summer, pushed her to her limit, though. Strained it, too, if she were honest. This hadn’t been her best interview. Not by a long shot. Not when her nerves felt like exposed wire beneath her skin, leaving her disoriented and jittery.
“Tea? I’m not much of a coffee drinker.”
She nodded and slipped outside.
“Can someone get 2A some tea?” she called, and a young officer instantly hustled off to make it. Her wide eyes tracked him as he disappeared into the break room. Since the raid, she’d detected a thaw in her colleagues. Gone were the sidelong looks and the sudden silences when she entered a room. Had they finally begun to accept her?
It shouldn’t matter, but it did.
“Katherine!” She whirled around at a familiar voice. One she loved.
“Nash.” Her hand automatically rose to smooth back her hair. For some crazy reason, tears stung her eyes. How she needed him.
And how strange that the feeling no longer scared her. “Let’s talk in my office.”
The moment the door shut behind them, she burrowed into his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist, clinging to him. Her knotted muscles relaxed for the first time in hours. How good he felt. Solid and steadfast. With him, she could drop the leaden weight of her professional persona and just be. Her lungs expanded in a long, easy breath.
He tipped up her chin and her knees dipped at the tender expression in his deep brown eyes. “You okay?”
“Better now.” She breathed in his sandalwood aftershave and the crisp cotton of his T-shirt. “I haven’t gotten a confession, but at least he hasn’t lawyered up.”
“I think I know why.” Nash led her to a chair, pulled it out, then grabbed a seat opposite her. “I spoke to the women at the compound.”
“How?”
“I found them sneaking through the woods alongside the road after you left.”
“I ordered the officers to bring them in!” Katherine felt the blood rise in her chest, washing hot up her neck.
“They escaped through a cellar door when the detectives instructed them to gather their belongings.”
No wonder she hadn’t heard word of them. Nash had come through when others hadn’t…a partner she could count on. As Captain Harris said, Nash was a good man to have in a foxhole. And in life. Did she dare trust her instincts and confess her feelings? What if he didn’t return them?
She didn’t know if she could bear more rejection.
On the other hand, a life without Nash would be even more unbearable.
She had to try.
When the time was right…
She lassoed her runaway thoughts and focused. “Where are they?”
“Here. I convinced them to follow me in.”
“Why were they running? I’d have thought they’d want the police’s help.”
“They insist the preacher saved them.”
“By kidnapping them? Holding them prisoner?”
“They’re running from the law. One confessed she’s wanted in Alabama for kidnapping her child from an abusive husband. She ran from the state with the help of their local preacher. Another needed to escape a spouse making death threats. Seems Frank assisted women in similar predicaments. In fact, the women claim the preacher helped them all start over. That’s why he relocated and changed his name.”
“This doesn’t fit my profile,” Katherine said through numb lips.
Nash leaned forward. “If they’re telling the truth, and I believe they are, it sounds like he cares about their well-being. Even risked his own to rescue them.”
“He’s still the one who found Brittany’s body.”
Nash nodded slowly. “Killers sometimes insert themselves into investigations.”
“And he had Brittany’s phone.”
“But our unsub always tosses the victim’s phones at the scene of the abduction. He’s tech-savvy enough to know we’ll track its location, and he’s meticulous.”
“Maybe Father Frank got sloppy this time.” Her voice sounded unconvincing, even to her own ears. How to reconcile the different versions of the man? Which identity was the real one? She shoved back her chair and stood.
“The woman who kidnapped her child is afraid of being extradited to Alabama.” Nash joined her at the door and smoothed down one of her suit’s lapels. “I told her I knew the agent in charge and that she’s a caring, sensitive professional who’ll treat them fairly.”
“Caring, sensitive, and professional?” She rose on her tiptoes, and her nose brushed his dimpled chin.
“And a freak in the sheets.”
Despite everything, a laugh busted out of her. “You sure know how to sweet-talk a lady.”
He palmed her waist. “My lady,” he growled just before capturing her lips in a heart-pounding kiss. Their breaths shortened and synchronized, mingling in the quiet space. Outside, the distant tap of fingers on keyboards, conversing voices, and ringing phones droned on, reality intruding.
“Nash,” she whispered when his mouth slid off hers to nibble her jaw in a heated path. “I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll stick around until you’re finished.”
“It could be hours.”
He shrugged. “I have to study for my test anyway. What better place than at a precinct?”
“The state approved your application?”
Pride firmed his jaw and lit his eyes to amber. “They emailed my admission ticket a few minutes ago.”
“I’m so happy for you.”
“Celebrate with me. Tonight. After you finish. I have the night off.”
“I’ve got too much on my mind. What if I’m wrong about the preacher? What if something happens to Brittany because—because I’m failing.” Her voice caught and her throat ached, as if she’d gargled crushed glass.
“You’re doing everything you can.” He cupped her face between his large palms. “One night out won’t change that, and it’d do you good. You need downtime, too.”
She rubbed her gritty eyes. “I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“I’ll wait.”
She squeezed his arm. “You don’t mind?”
“Never. You’re worth it.”
“Nash, I—I—think I—”
A knock on the door broke them apart. It eased open a crack, and a young detective ducked his head inside. “Sergeant was asking where you wanted the women held?”
“Separate them. Five A and B. I’ll be right there.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You were saying?” Nash’s piercing eyes searched hers once they were alone again.
She ducked her head, shocked at how close she’d come to blurting out her feelings. “I’d better go.”
“That’s not what you were going to say.”