Deadly Games

by Karen Rock

  “Maybe not. Guess you’ll just have to stick around and find out.” She winked and strode from the room. Phew. She’d nearly blurted out words—words with consequences she hadn’t fully thought through.

  “Agent Bowden?”

  She stopped and turned slowly.

  Nash’s handsome face and square shoulders were all business now. “Want me to check out the CCTV footage from the convenience store? The women mentioned Frank confessed to dropping Brittany there when you questioned him on the property.”

  “I’d appreciate it. Thanks.” She’d intended to ask a task force member to follow up on the lead, but once again Nash anticipated her needs.

  After she gave him the location, he marched away, his stride confident and purposeful. Hopefully, she wasn’t taking up precious study time. He needed to pass tomorrow’s civil service test and nail the interview, to earn the future he deserved. Would she be a part of it, considering he avoided commitment?

  She’d never settle for anything less than marriage. And a tracking device. Plus access to all her partner’s social media accounts with passwords…

  Not too much to ask, right?

  She grabbed a pad and pen and headed for the women in Five A and B. Later, she’d confront her feelings, her hang-ups, her insecurities, all while facing down her haunting past.

  * * * *

  Three hours later, Katherine stood outside interrogation room 5A’s two-way mirror and studied the praying minister.

  Was he a savior of women, their worst nightmare, or both? Many serial killers lived double lives with public personas masking depraved private selves.

  According to the women she’d finished interviewing, Father Frank was a candidate for sainthood. They assured her they left Alabama voluntarily and denied seeing Brittany. However, they couldn’t account for the preacher’s night hours, leaving gaps of time for him to indulge in sadistic rituals. Yet the search team and CSI techs reported no evidence of a crime or sign of Brittany on the property thus far.

  Katherine angled her stiff neck from side to side. Her clammy hands splayed on the glass.

  “Who are you?” she whispered, staring at the hunched man. Her heart beat heavily in her tight chest.

  “Special Agent Bowden? Command Central for you on line one.”

  She nodded her thanks to the desk clerk and picked up the handset.

  “You need to charge your cell,” Tammy mumbled around a mouthful of something crunchy-sounding.

  Katherine pulled her phone from her pocket and stared at the dead screen. “I knew I forgot something important when I prepared for the raid,” she said. “Flak jacket, ammo packs, loaded Glock, cell phone charger…. Jeez, I’m an idiot.”

  “You agents and your excuses.” A slurping sound gargled in Katherine’s ear. “Anywho. The women’s statements check out. Cindy Winchel is wanted for kidnapping her son in Planchette, Alabama, nine months ago. The other, Renee Laurel, was reported missing by her spouse around the same time. Renee’s husband has a record of domestic abuse. I requested the local precinct fax you their files. Want me to start extradition proceedings for Winchel?”

  As if on cue, a junior detective handed her Renee and Cindy’s Planchette County records.

  She thanked the officer, then said, “I’ll have our domestic violence unit speak to Cindy first and make arrangements with CPS for her son.” Nash had promised the women fairness and sensitivity. She wouldn’t let them down. “Where are you with the audio recording? Any luck separating out the male voice?”

  “Still working on it. I’ve got one last idea I’m trying now. If that doesn’t work, we’re shit out of luck.”

  “Oh, joy. Thanks, Tam.”

  Damn it. She needed that evidence piece. It held the key to unlocking the case. She knew it in her gut. She could compare the enhanced vocal track to the preacher’s voice and end her uncertainty.

  Was Frank Stannis a pious preacher or a vicious sexual predator?

  Her chest lifted in a long inhale as she pushed open the door and breezed in. She dropped Cindy and Renee’s paperwork on the table.

  The preacher lifted his head. When his eyes lit on the documents, his face blanched. “Where did you get those?”

  “Come on, Frank. Enough with the stonewalling and pontificating. We know you abducted two women. That alone will earn you twenty-plus years behind bars.”

  That widened his eyes. “I didn’t kidnap them.”

  “Then what really happened?” Katherine leaned forward, bracing herself on her knuckles. “And no more lies.”

  “Omissions.”

  “Just the truth.”

  The preacher ran a shaky hand through his longish dark hair. “I promised to give them a better life if they’d follow the Lord.”

  “Looks like they followed you, instead.”

  “I am the path to the Lord.”

  Ah. There was her lovely narcissist.

  Unfortunately, narcissism wasn’t a crime. If it was, she’d have half the state behind bars.

  “How did you convince two women to follow you across three state lines when they didn’t know you?”

  “I promised them a new life and to keep them safe. I omitted answers earlier to protect their identities.” His chains rattled as he extended his hands her way, a squeezed-tight urgency in his voice. “Please don’t report them to the Alabama PD. They’ll be in grave danger. That’s why I relocated.”

  And he did this out of the goodness of his heart? It seemed unlikely for a narcissist…

  Take another tack…

  “What if they deserved to be abused by their husbands? Didn’t you say sinful women should be punished?”

  “Those who don’t repent should be, yes, but only by God. No mortal may serve the Lord’s judgment.” His blue eyes blazed, his zeal palpable in the cramped, airless space.

  Was he telling the truth? Or was it an act to cover up the punishments he doled out to women he chose not to save?

  “Tell me about Brittany. And this time, don’t leave anything out.” She sat and leaned closer, feeling the edge of the desk jam into her ribs as she mashed the words into his face.

  The preacher was biting down on his lip, shaking his head. “Will you promise to protect Cindy and Renee?”

  Either he was a good actor, or he genuinely cared. Did he select which women were worth saving and which should be destroyed?

  “Cindy will have to face her abduction charge. We’ll report Renee’s whereabouts to her family and keep her spouse in the dark. She’s requesting an order of protection against him.”

  The preacher was white around the freckles and breathing hard through his nose. “Cindy will lose custody of Jeremy.”

  “Our domestic abuse unit is coordinating with Planchette PD to hand over her case. In the meantime, CPS will determine where best to place Jeremy while the charges are reviewed. We’ll protect them both as best we can.”

  He clasped his hands at his chest, his smile sudden and warm. “God bless you.”

  She cleared her throat, oddly touched. “Tell me about Brittany. You said you had reasons for not coming forward about giving her a ride home.”

  He threw himself back in his chair. “I drove her to the convenience store near her home.”

  “I have someone checking the footage.” She studied the preacher for any signs of worry or concern, but he only nodded, his eyes a guileless blue.

  Damn it. He had to be the Last Call Killer. If not, then…

  She veered away from the cliff-dive of a thought. “What will he see on the footage?”

  “Me dropping off Brittany.”

  “Did you stay or leave right away?”

  “I stayed since I didn’t want her to walk the rest of the way on her own.”

  “And did she get back in the car?”

  The preacher
shook his head. “She said she didn’t want more lectures.”

  “You warned her against smoking.”

  “And her controlling husband. She told me about him on the ride home. She’s married to a trucker who stays in town long enough to black her eyes or bust a rib. I offered her a place to go if she wanted to get away from him. A better escape than a sinful night out with loose women.”

  The trucker part of the story checked out…could the preacher be telling the truth?

  “When you saw she was missing, why didn’t you come forward?”

  “Because I hoped she’d changed her mind and was faking her ‘disappearance’ before coming to my compound.”

  “What about her cell phone? How did it come home with you?”

  This point bothered her the most. The Last Call Killer always got rid of phones at the abduction sites. It was part of his meticulous M.O. Brittany’s phone turning up in the preacher’s car made him less of a fit for her unsub.

  Frank didn’t flinch or pull away. He stared back at her, eye to eye. “She must have left it behind in my car. By the time I cleaned out my truck, Jeremy had already taken and hidden it.”

  Plausible. It all sounded damn reasonable.

  His story was falling into place, just not on the side she preferred.

  One of the first things she’d learned as an investigator was to stay open to all possibilities and never let one theory shut out others. The only problem was…she was out of time and had no other theories.

  “May I go now?” The preacher raised his cuffed hands.

  “I still need to verify the rest of your story, and the search of your property is ongoing. Do you want a lawyer?”

  She froze in the doorway. When had she ever offered a suspect legal representation? Was she starting to believe Father Frank?

  The preacher shook his head. “The truth will prevail.”

  “Yes, it will.” The door shut behind her with a firm click.

  “Katherine!” Nash snapped shut a civil service exam prep book, shoved back a chair set against the wall of the central hall, and stood. “I reviewed the footage.”

  “And?” Her breath stuck in her throat, swelling it.

  “The preacher’s story mostly checks out. The camera shows him dropping her off, but he doesn’t leave right away.”

  “He said he tried convincing her to accept a ride the rest of the way.”

  “The camera backs that up.”

  “Any chance he picked her up again while she was on foot?”

  “He drove off in the opposite direction Brittany took.”

  “He could have turned down a side street and doubled back.”

  “A bank camera further down the road shows him still continuing toward his compound and away from Brittany.”

  “Then who picked her up?” Katherine asked.

  “I wondered that too, until…”

  The room around them stilled as fingers froze above keyboards and conversations hushed, all ears straining to hear the crucial update.

  “Until?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

  “I spotted a vintage black Corvette with a white racing stripe passing the bank camera, Texas plates.”

  Keeping her voice down was hurting her throat, like something swallowed wrong and swelling. “Could you make out a plate number?”

  “No. Too far away from the camera.”

  “Which way was it headed?”

  “In Brittany Reins’s direction.”

  The room clamped around her—thick hot air. “Nash. That could be our unsub.”

  “Right. And Father Frank is not.”

  Her shoulders slumped. Until the officers finished searching the property, she couldn’t completely rule Frank out. Yet the preacher looked less likely a suspect by the minute.

  Someone abducted Brittany when she walked from the convenience store to her house. Who? Had the serial killer targeted her and followed the preacher’s car? According to the M.O., only forty-eight hours remained before he murdered her.

  Katherine doubled over and grabbed the nearest desk edge at the thought’s sharp twinge.

  When they found Brittany, would it be on their terms, or the Last Call Killer’s? They were locked in a deadly game; one she had to win.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Mother Truckers?”

  Nash smiled as Katherine’s eyebrows rose halfway up her forehead, her gaze trained on the motorcycles piled up outside the rustic dive. Leather-clad, tattooed men and women drank and shouted over the frenzied music pulsing from the clapboard building. Like every other Dallas honky-tonk, even its parking lot reeked of cheap beer and exhaust fumes. “You said you were taking me somewhere to unwind.”

  “Exactly,” Nash answered.

  “This is a biker bar.”

  “You have something against bikers?” He nodded to his own Harley. “When were you planning to tell me? In a Dear John letter?”

  Katherine smiled faintly. “No…it’s just…I’m not in the mood for partying.”

  “We’ll stay for a couple of drinks and a game of darts. Tops. It’ll give you a break.” He made a mental note to thank Reese for the extra time off she’d given him while working this case. Katherine needed him tonight, and he wouldn’t let her brood alone at home. “Plus, we were invited.”

  “By?”

  “Your coworkers.”

  Nash thought he saw her eyes flicker with light, but it was over so quickly he couldn’t be sure.

  She shook her head. “I doubt that.”

  “I asked if we could tag along when I overheard their plans.”

  “Why would you do that? They don’t like me.”

  “Megan said you needed balance.” He gestured to the long line of patrons impatiently waiting for the bouncer to unclip the rope and wave them inside. “Let me give it to you.”

  Katherine’s teeth worried her bottom lip. The remembered cinnamon taste of her flooded his mouth. “The officers agreed when you asked?”

  “Not all of them—not as many as you think—are against you. I heard them talking about how you led the stack at the raid. How you collared the preacher and didn’t put on airs or ask subordinates to do your dirty work. They admire you. Let them get to know you better.”

  “But Brittany…”

  “There’s nothing more we can do until the search team finishes at the preacher’s property or Tammy separates the audio tracks. Unplug for tonight, and you’ll be fresher tomorrow. Maybe you’ll gain some perspective and see things differently.”

  “I don’t know. I thought we’d go back to my place and…”

  “We will.” Her blush filled him with pure male satisfaction. What he’d do to her later…but first, he’d help her mend her work relationships and find the balance she craved. If her job stopped being her life, she’d have room for him in it, too. “Once the other officers know you, they’ll love you.”

  Her short laugh held little humor. “That’s pushing it.”

  He pulled her close and slid his fingers down the back of her silky hair, plucking the pins holding her bun in place until the strands fell in a golden sheath around her shoulders. “Is it? That’s what happened to me.”

  No one else made him feel…alive. Not until the day they crossed paths at Dallas Heat, when Katherine met his eyes and everything changed.

  “Nash,” she gasped, white showing all around her violet-blue eyes. Panic or pleasure at his confession? If he was a betting man, he’d say both.

  “Hey, girl!” Megan arrived in a cloud of raspberry and coconut body wash wearing scuffed boots, jeans, and a tank top with the words Winey Bitch emblazoned across the chest. Around her cat-shaped face, partly wet hair hung to her shoulders.

  Katherine grabbed her in a fierce hug. “What are you doing here?”

  “Nash
invited me. Said we could commiserate together.”

  Katherine smiled at him over Megan’s shoulder before releasing her friend. “That was nice of him.”

  “He’s a keeper.”

  “One of the good guys,” Katherine avowed, and he lit up at her praise.

  Megan ducked her head. “I can’t stop thinking about Brittany. You’ll find her, right?”

  Katherine swooped down to catch Megan’s eye and dropped a hand on her shoulder. “We’re doing everything we can.”

  “We planned a trip to Mexico this summer,” Megan choked out.

  “I’m sorry, Megan. I wish I had answers, but…”

  Megan swiped at her eyes and sniffled. “I know. Maybe I just need a bottle of whiskey to knock me out.”

  “You mean over the head?” Katherine teased lightly, her tone still somber. “It’d be the quickest way.”

  “And the cheapest,” Nash added.

  “Plus, no calories,” Katherine concluded.

  “Too bad my insurance wouldn’t cover plastic surgery to repair the scar,” Megan said. “Guess we’d better go inside and get comatose the old-fashioned way.”

  “I have whiskey at my house,” Katherine offered.

  Megan wagged her finger. “We’ve talked about this. You can’t keep hiding out at home, your life consumed by your work. You’re coming inside and being miserable with me.”

  “Who could resist that offer?” Katherine said drily.

  “Exactly. Misery.” Megan pointed at Katherine, then jerked her thumb back at herself. “Meet Company.”

  Katherine’s small smile returned. “You go in first. Nash and I were finishing a conversation.” Her wide eyes darted back to him.

  Yep. Definitely panic. If he’d spoken his heart too soon, then he’d hold off and work harder to earn Katherine’s trust. No backing down now. He knew what he wanted and wouldn’t quit until he won his girl.

  “And take the chance you might not come inside after all?!” Megan’s lower lip jutted. “No way.”

  Katherine peered up at Nash. “We’ll finish our–uh–discussion later?”

  She blushed again under his heated stare which promised her a heart-to-heart and much, much more—later.