Painted Walls

by Megan Mitcham

  “She came in about ten minutes ago. Critical.” Boob’s dark gaze slid to Keen. “The others are in a private waiting room on the right just before the double doors of the OR.”

  Boobs leaned forward, leading with her only assets. “I’m sorry.”

  Keen ignored the blatant gesture. His fingers wrapped Ava’s and he tugged. “Come on. I see the OR.”

  Despite everything, their past, the killer looming, and the life in question, Ava’s heart did a little song and dance in her chest.

  That’s right lady, back up. He belongs to me, and I finally have the balls to claim him.

  A smile bloomed and her cheeks heated with unmeasurable joy. This was love. Ill timed, inappropriate, headless-of-its-surroundings love.

  Ava firmed her grip on his hand and pulled him into a small alcove near a little desk with a computer and a phone. She planted her hands on either side of his face and stared into his brilliant eyes. The feelings inside her bubbled out in a near-giddy squeal. She wasn’t prone to squeals, giddy or otherwise, but hell if she could control it.

  “I know this is the worst time, but I can’t wait for a time when we’re not being interrupted or chasing a mad man or surrounded by people we don’t know. I’ve waited too long already. I wasted so much precious time running scared. I can’t control it any more and I never want to again.”

  She leaped into his arms and crushed him to her. Their lips collided in a heated tangle. His arms tightened around her, securing her body to his. The zig in her belly zagged to the tips of her extremities.

  Ava pulled back for a breath and filled her lungs with him. Warmth cocooned her.

  “Keen, I love you.”

  He smiled his devilish smile and took her mouth. When her hands began to roam he broke the kiss and set her on her feet. He steadied her and blew a breath. “It’s about damn time.”

  After straightening themselves they continued down the hallway and turned quietly into the waiting room where a mixture of lawmen and family paced or sat, their faces trenched with various depth of grief.

  The cloud of elation she’d soared upon moments ago dissipated. Life giveth and life taketh away. What if Rory tried to take Keen away?

  They shook hands with several agents before they made their way to Winslow, who sat in a far corner with puffy red eyes and a tear soaked face.

  Ava tried to politely ignore the quiet sobs of the woman across the room, but when Keen broke away from her and moved toward the woman she stopped to watch. His large frame nearly blocked the woman from her view when he knelt in front of her. A huge fella, who made Keen look small and Winslow look average sized, rubbed a hand up and down the woman’s back. Ava stared on as Keen spoke in hushed tones to the couple.

  “Lara’s mom and dad,” a deep voice said in her ear.

  Turning to the voice, Ava came face to chest with Mason Beaumont. When she took a half step back and brought her face up to his she could see anguish etching it. “Mason?”

  “I’m an interloper. Not family. Not Bureau.” He shrugged. “But she matters.”

  “I’m sorry. Yeah, Gray said you and Lara were…well, you know.” How did one say screwing around delicately?

  “It’s not like that.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked onto his heels. “We’ve never even gone out. She won’t accept my invitation. I don’t mean this as arrogantly as it’ll sound, but I know she wants to. I can see it in her eyes.” He winced. “Man, that just sounds creepy. Forget it.”

  “No. Well, maybe,” she conceded, “if other people didn’t see it too. Gray did. He said you affected her when most men don’t.”

  “In a good or bad way is the question. I never expected a woman like Lara. I never expected her to matter.”

  Ava smiled. “When she wakes up, ask her.”

  “Sure.”

  “She’ll be fine, Mason.” And though she didn’t get along with the woman, she hoped it was the truth.

  Keen stepped into their small circle. He shook Mason’s hand and patted his shoulder.

  The dark version of Keen nodded. “How are her parents holding up?”

  “As well as can be. They have each other to hold onto through the storm.”

  “What’d you say to them?” Curiosity got the better of Ava. It always did.

  “I just told them that if a weak ass like me could make it through a tough spot, a fighter like Lara was a sure bet.”

  She just stared at him in that gooey wonderment of love until Mason shooed them toward Winslow. “Go get the details so y’all can catch this piece of shit.” Several nods and here-here’s flashed through the room.

  They would’ve huddled in the corner with Winslow, but his guilt ate up the space. Tears trailed the man’s cheek. “It’s my fault.” His head hung as though someone had snapped the vertebrae in his neck.

  “That’s bullshit and you know it,” Ava disagreed. “Rory Coghlan is the one to blame. Not you. Not me. Now, dry it up and tell us what happened.”

  “Damn, you’re bossy.” Winslow wiped the moisture from his face.

  Keen nodded his agreement.

  Winslow drew a ragged breath. “He had to know we were watching the house. That son of a bitch…he baited us like fucking trout. Just before nightfall he moseys up to Bree Coghlan’s front door, rings the goddamn door bell, and waits for her to let him in. I got a call from my guys watching as soon as he showed. They wanted to move, but I told them to stay put.”

  “Abbott and I…we really wanted a piece of him. More than that, we didn’t want him to slip through two suits. I instructed Mitch and Dan,” he said pointing to two agents sitting near the doorway, “to watch the house, contact us if anything changed, and to follow him if he left.”

  “We made it to the house in record time, but it was dark by the time we got there. Mitch and Dan took the front. Abbott and I split up.”

  He let the story hang there while he rubbed his palms into his eyes and took several rattling breaths.

  “We were supposed to meet in the back. Lara down one side of the house, me down the other. That sick fuck hid under the house. Took her from behind.” A grunting mixture of laughter and disgust escaped his throat. “He didn’t expect a fighter. He nicked her throat, but she blocked him from...” His head shook.

  “He would’ve slit her throat. But she stopped him. There was a short struggle. I heard the sound, the unmistakable grunt of effort and satisfaction Lara gives when she really nails somebody. I knew she was fighting Coghlan, but I just jogged toward her. I knew she’d just cocked him a good one and I actually smiled. I knew she had him. Then she screamed.”

  Gooseflesh rolled in long waves over Ava’s arms, across her middle, and down her legs.

  “She’s never screamed before, not like that. It can’t be the last thing I hear from her.” Again with the head shake.

  “I ran then, all out. When I rounded the house she just lay in a heap. I froze. Worthless. Mitch called for an ambulance. Then he and Dan searched for Coghlan. They called for the dogs.”

  “I finally went to her. She rasped these shallow, wispy breaths. But she was breathing. I tried to stop the blood. But it just kept coming.” Fresh tears dripped off the end of his nose.

  “It took the ambulance five minutes to get to her. It seemed like that many hours. The dogs came. Followed a trail back under the house, out the other side, and through back yards two blocks. Then lost him. He probably hopped in his car and drove away clean, like he was never there. But he was. I didn’t see him, but he was there.”

  He dissolved into silent tears.

  Ava patted his back and looked desperately at Keen for some guidance. He pinched her chin lightly between his thumb and folded forefinger. “Coffee. We all need some coffee.”

  “Yeah, coffee would be a good start.”

  She watched him weave his way out of the crowded waiting room. When his bright blond hair, broad back, and cute butt vanished from view, Ava adjusted in the hard chair and eased back. Taking
in the room full of hopeful mourners, Ava began to reason out all the information she had on Rory Coghlan. Her hand stilled on Winslow while her training and instinct went to work.

  As she began to calculate all the facts the room around Ava dimmed. Her father, James Red Hardy, had begun killing at an early age. Long before he’d met and married her mother, James had a long-standing love affair with Bree Coghlan. So why had he married Sarah and started a family like he was the perfect business and family man? Because he needed a false front? Because he loved Sarah? Why hadn’t he married Bree?

  Too many questions she couldn’t answer there. On to the next. He continued to kill women, built a family, and maintained an affair. His affair ratcheted up a notch when he knocked up Bree nearly eight years in. Shortly after his son was born, James Hardy got caught. The killing stopped and two families, legal and not, imploded.

  It galled Ava, but she was forced to admit both she and her half brother had been wounded in the blast. Over the years, those wounds festered from the infection that was her father. They festered in vastly different directions, but abscessed all the same.

  Ava fixated on work, on curing the evil in the world. Rory fixated on hurt and hate. He begrudged her and her mother for having the father and family he never did. The hunger for his father morphed into revolt and he plotted a course for revenge. Long planned and far thought out. Further than she’d ever anticipated.

  Needles pricked trails down her sensitive skin. Her, a doe-eyed freshman trying to learn the layout of a massive university. Him, watching and stalking her every move. She’d been naive and blind and he’d been there all along. The quiet in the night. The eyes in the shadow. He’d followed her through the years, learning her—his prey—patiently waiting to mangle her world.

  He’d likely played the part of student while he watched her from the next table. And when she’d graduated he’d likely been a face in the crowd. When she changed schools he’d followed. When she’d excelled in the academy and become an FBI agent he’d wormed his way silently into her world, a deadly parasite found too late to stave its havoc.

  Why had he never presented himself? It was obvious he wished her harm, but death was too swift for his liking. He wanted to strip her of all she held dear. From watching her he’d learned that little was more important to her than the job, being the hero, and catching the bad guy.

  Coghlan had formulated a plan to take it all away from her by framing her for murder.

  He’d disguised himself as a janitor, infiltrated enemy lines, and gathered intel he’d later use against her. Her schedule at the conference left just enough time between her final session and flight to kill Josie Ackerman and William Boston. Her contentious relationship with Stan Watts would have sealed the coffin of suspicion over her head, had she stayed in town as ordered. She wondered what else Rory had learned on his mission and what or who else he would try using against her.

  How had he known about Keen? Her heart skipped two beats and she bolted upright in her chair. Winslow stopped sniffling and turned toward her.

  She and Keen had been in a relationship during college. He had come to her rescue in her time of deepest need.

  Ava squinted tight and tried to think like Keen’s life, like her life, depended on it.

  Gray’s words played over and over in her mind. Then she breathed them. “He baited us like fucking trout.”

  They were here in the hospital because Rory wanted them to be. With all the time and planning he’d put into this, no way would he not know that Lara Abbott could handle herself. He had known if one of her own was hurt Ava would come help. He’d been playing them from the start, moving them around like puppets on a damn string.

  Gray’s shirt front crumpled in her hand before she could blink. His expression blurred from sorrow to confusion to concern. Straining to keep her volume in check, Ava pulled him in close.

  “Lock down the hospital. He’s here.”

  25

  Y ears of training prepared Ava for tense situations. She’d been shot at, punched, and bitten by a serial killer who refused to go quietly. She’d even been in a knife fight and unfortunately stabbed. Through it all, Ava’s training kept her alive.

  Training taught Ava how to take the body’s physical reactions to a volatile situation and use them to her advantage. When panic flared in her chest, threatening to stop her heart. When adrenaline snaked through her veins, making her knees quiver with weakness. When her breath shallowed so drastically it was as if oxygen suddenly ceased to exist. When fear quaked her mind so forcefully she wanted to collapse. Ava stopped.

  Three deep breaths filled her lungs by force and concentration. Her shaking hands balled into fists, then released several times. She took the fear, kicked it into the cellar of her mind, and slammed the steel door shut. Ava checked it all. The panic, doubt, and fear. She focused on the task at hand.

  Find Keen. Subdue Rory.

  A familiar calm settled over Ava. Panic morphed into something else—clarity of mind and a physical alertness. Ava could hear Winslow talking to the hospital director in hushed tones, his free hand cupped around his cell. She ignored the words and checked her weapons.

  First, she folded down and released the Glock 26 from her left ankle holster. She kept it low to keep from alarming the stressed crowd of the waiting room. The magazine ejected smoothly into her hand. She checked the load. Full. The chamber slid back like silk bed sheets. She checked it. Empty. Popping the magazine back in place, she advanced one in the chamber and engaged the safety. She repeated the ritual with her side arm. Turned toward the wall, she kept the well-oiled G21 hidden from view.

  With guns ready, Ava felt the waist band of her left hip. The cold metal clip of her three-inch pocket knife reassured her. Ready to go, she scanned the room to make certain none of the other agents noticed her commando readying. She had to move quickly and silently. She needed the element of surprise to get any kind of advantage against Rory.

  Most eyes honed in on Gray. Great. Ava made her way through the crowd, much like Keen had five minutes earlier, and into the hallway.

  Ava scanned the corridor—left toward the ER’s entrance, then right to a set of double doors with a sign barring all but hospital staff beyond them. The space was deserted, except for an old man being carted by a transport aid down a bisecting hall. Ava went left, the way she’d seen Keen go and her only real option. She scanned the cross hall dotted with nurses, people in ultra-sheer hospital garb, and their loved ones. She pushed on toward the emergency room.

  No Keen. No coffee. There were, however, pouty red lips and massive breasts behind the counter. Why not?

  “Excuse me,” Ava said in as pleasant a tone as she could muster.

  Long, totally fake, lashes and the eyes hidden underneath them scanned her from head to toe. The sneer said Betty Boobs remembered her. Ava smiled back at the sneer and pressed on.

  “The man I came in with, have you seen him?”

  Boobs Magee let out a sound akin to a moan. “Oh, yes. He stopped by here just a minute or two ago.”

  The woman licked her lips and Ava pressed hers together. She drew a lungful of heavy perfume, like whipping cream. “And?”

  Bombastic Boob’s lips curled. “He was looking for coffee. I was more than happy to help him out.”

  Ava practically shouted, “Where did he go?”

  Boobs hopped back at her tone. They undulated far too long. “Up the hall back the way you came. Turn left. Just past the nurses’ station there’s a break room on the right. That’s were I told him he could get coffee.”

  Ava didn’t look back. She bolted down the hallway and hooked a left at the intersection. The nurses’ station was in the middle of the long stretch of white wall and sterile tile. Her petite legs carried her with surprising speed past a quietly grieving family, the station with a single nurse, and into the break room.

  The empty break room.

  “Shit.”

  She checked the bathrooms.
r />   Empty.

  She checked the storage closet.

  Well, she wasn’t looking for a five-year supply of Styrofoam cups.

  Back in the hallway Ava scanned. Everyone was gone. The nurse. The family. There were no patients being carted. An eerie quiet set in. She scanned again. Nothing to the left. The same to the right.

  No, wait. There was something near the end of the hall, near the stairwell. She couldn’t make it out at the distance and needed to advance, but her entire body tingled in warning. She had to proceed cautiously in this logistical nightmare. There were, at least, seven doorways lining the corridor on either side. And Rory could wait for her in any one of them. The chances were slim, but a chance was a chance all the same.

  She breathed deeply once, hefted her sidearm, and began a wary advance. It took only a moment to clear two rooms. Two more. Behind the next she heard an old couple arguing about a question on Jeopardy. Ava had halved the distance when she looked again at the thing in the hallway.

  Ice split her stomach with barbed fractals.

  Blood streaked the bright tile where a body had been dragged across it. Next to the blood, a small bag and, presumably, its contents were scattered.

  She drew closer.

  A hospital ID badge and medical paraphernalia littered the wet floor.

  Her mind raced on without her. Rory had disguised himself as a doctor, stalked Keen to the break room, and baited him to the stairwell where he sliced his throat. Tears came without permission, blinding her until they coursed in wide paths down her cheeks.

  She raked her forearm over her face. “Get it fucking together.”

  Ava scanned the hallway again. Nothing. Voices echoed in the distance, but they might as well have been a world away. Here, alone, fear and doubt weighed a ton. Ava swallowed them. A hard lump to dislodge. She squared her shoulders toward the stairwell door and braced for whatever she might find behind it.

  26

  A va stepped over the winding roads of crimson, positioned her back at the hinge of the heavy metal door, crouched low, readied her Glock, and placed her hand on the lever. The handle twisted like the hands on a stop watch at the end of a race, one heart-stopping click at a time. The breath in her lungs turned to a solid, weighing her down. It combined with the weight of the door against her shoulder. She pushed.