At Close Range

by Jessica Andersen

  He retook his seat as the chief closed the meeting by shifting a few assignments and repeating that they were to have “no comment” about the Henkes incident.

  Seth listened with half his attention while he thought about his revelation.

  Cassie was an attractive woman and a cop, and she was damn good at being both.

  Two halves of a whole. Two sides of a single coin.

  He glanced up behind the chief at the case board, which held pictures and notes from the Canyon kidnappings on one side, the newer pictures and data on the other side. The end result looked schizophrenic, like they were trying to make a whole out of two unrelated halves.

  The words echoed in his head. Two halves of a whole. Two sides of a single coin.

  And then Seth saw it. No, he thought as the meeting finally dispersed and his vision was obscured for a moment by a press of bodies heading for the exit. Not two.

  Three. A three-way conversation.

  Three men. The kidnapper, Bradford Croft. Their murderer…and someone else. A mastermind who had brought two completely different criminals together for a common goal.

  To destabilize the Bear Claw P.D.

  The room cleared as the theory took shape in his head. He wasn’t sure that it would help them find their man, but it explained too many inconsistencies to be a figment.

  “Something wrong?” the chief asked, pausing beside Seth’s chair.

  “Yes.” Then Seth shook his head. “No, nothing’s wrong. I’m thinking…I think—”

  A female scream split the air, muffled by distance and walls, jolting him to his feet in an instant. He bolted for the lobby with the chief on his heels, instinctively knowing where the scream had come from.

  The basement.

  Cassie’s lab.

  His heart pounded in his chest, nearly bursting through his rib cage as he hurdled the stairs in two strides and charged into the forensics department.

  Alissa stood near Cassie’s desk, hands pressed to her mouth, eyes wide and dark.

  She turned to him the moment he entered. “Tucker said he’d…stay with Maya. I came to talk to Cassie and found…” she swallowed, got herself under control and said, “I found this.”

  “What is it?” He strode to her side. “Where’s Cassie?”

  But he didn’t need her to tell him Cassie was gone.

  Not when he saw the bucket of melting ice and a single fingertip.

  His stomach took a quick trip to his toes and leapt up into his throat on a shout that he jammed behind his clenched teeth. He reached toward the fingertip, and training barely overrode the overwhelming desire to snatch it up.

  “Polish.” He forced the word between his teeth. “Cassie wears pink polish.”

  “Not the same shade,” Alissa said quickly, but she didn’t sound sure. She pointed to a single sheet of paper lying on the desk. “And she left us a note. She wouldn’t have done that if…” She trailed off.

  Aware of the other cops arriving at his back, staring over his shoulders or milling in the doorway, Varitek leaned forward and read a pair of sentences hurriedly scrawled on the paper.

  Blue hatchback in the parking lot. I’m counting on you to back me up.

  DRIVING WITH BOTH HANDS on the wheel and the cheap single-use cell phone clamped between her ear and shoulder, Cassie ran every red light she could and swerved into oncoming traffic at regular intervals.

  Come on, she thought with all her mental might. Come on! Where’s a cop when you want to get pulled over?

  But she didn’t say it aloud because the cell connection was live. She couldn’t hear anything at the other end, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t listening. He might not be able to see her anymore by camera, and she was pretty sure he wasn’t tailing her as she followed his obscure, circuitous directions through the city, but she’d bet money that there was a GPS tracker somewhere in the vehicle or the phone. He’d know if she turned off the planned route.

  Whoever he was.

  She’d passed through fear and hit determination. The fine tremor in her fingers was adrenaline, not nerves, and the sick feeling was anxiety for the woman hostage, not herself.

  At least that was what she told herself. But deep down inside, she knew there was fear, as well. She was cut off from her backup. Alone.

  “Take your next right,” the voice said suddenly against her ear, making her jolt and swerve unintentionally.

  She made the turn without comment, having already found that he wouldn’t answer questions, wouldn’t respond to a damn thing she said. It almost made her wonder whether the receiver was muted at her end.

  Could she use that somehow?

  Could she trust it enough to dare?

  Where are you, Seth? she wondered, knowing that she’d gone from wanting to see any cop to seeing him, specifically. He should have found the iced fingertip by now, should have seen the note. Depending on the status of the parking lot cameras, they should be looking for her even now, because at least the voice hadn’t forced her to dump the—

  “Pull in here,” he said. “Park beside the white sedan with the ragtop.”

  She cursed under her breath and did as she was told, but she knew what would come next. Hell, it was what she would do, and the voice on the other end of the phone had already proved he was equally as clever as the Bear Claw P.D.

  She only hoped he wasn’t as clever as a single FBI agent.

  Seth would come after her. He wouldn’t stop until he’d found her.

  Right?

  The fact that she wasn’t entirely certain brought a shiver. What if nobody had headed down into the lab yet to see if she was okay? What if they didn’t even know she was gone?

  The loneliness closed in, nearly suffocating her, making her wonder whether it was truly better to be alone than to be in a relationship with someone she loved, compromises or not.

  “Leave the phone and get in the white car. The keys are under the floor mat on the driver’s side. You’ll find a map under the seat. Follow it. You have five minutes or she’s dead.”

  The line clicked off.

  “Damn it,” she said, finally able to speak aloud. “Damn you!”

  But she hustled out of the hatchback, leaving the door open and the phone on the seat. What could she leave as evidence, as a clue that she’d been there, that she was going somewhere else?

  That damn clock ticked down in her head. He’d said five minutes. She had maybe four and a half left.

  She grabbed the map, took a quick look at it—

  And had an idea.

  SETH DROVE at the edge of safety, weaving through the city, looking for the blue hatchback they’d just been able to glimpse a corner of on the parking lot cameras.

  They’d gotten three numbers off the plate, but that would be enough.

  It had to be enough.

  The radio crackled to life at his elbow. “Blue hatchback alpha-bravo-bravo-three-niner-one-one has been spotted in a short-term parking lot on Post Office Road.”

  The dispatcher went on to order units to the area, but Seth was already on it. His truck didn’t have lights or a siren, but the other drivers got out of his way when he hit the gas and the horn, and raced toward the address.

  They had reported finding the car, but not the cop.

  Not Cassie.

  He battled mental images of Robyn. But for the first time in what seemed like forever, they were secondary memories, crowded out by newer, fresher mental pictures. Cassie looking up at him from a soft nest of pillows and body-warmed sheets. Cassie getting in his face, eyes sparking with temper, with passion.

  She had so much passion inside her.

  God, he thought, she’d better be okay. If she wasn’t—

  It didn’t even bear thinking about. She was okay. She’d be okay.

  The words spooled in his brain like a mantra as he careened into the short-term parking lot on two wheels, right behind the first BCCPD unit on scene. He slammed the truck into Park and leapt from the cab. �
�Stay back! Nobody tromps on my evidence!”

  Not at what was easily the most important crime scene he’d ever worked, personally, if not professionally.

  The thought barely even gave him pause. Yeah, it was personal for him now. Had been for longer than he wanted to admit. He didn’t know what he was going to do about it, where he wanted it to go, but he damn sure knew he and Cassie were going to have to rewind that last talk once he found her.

  If he found her.

  No. He wouldn’t think that way. He would find her, he would talk to her, and this time he wouldn’t be a coward. He’d find a way they could make it work. He’d change or she would. Hell, they both would. Whatever it took. He’d marry her. Give her children. Hell, he’d have her children if that was what it took to—

  With those emotionally charged, disorganized thoughts rocketing around in his brain, Seth approached the blue hatchback. The driver’s side door was open, nearly touching the car beside it, a black SUV with its engine still ticking as it cooled down.

  The SUV had been parked recently, he thought, as though a space had opened up.

  “There’s a cell phone on the driver’s seat,” one of the cops said. He was a younger uniform Seth hadn’t dealt with before, but he and his partner stood solidly aside, following orders not to mess up the scene.

  Liking the younger cops’ fidget-free calm, Seth nodded toward the road. “Tell the others to park on the street. I don’t want anyone else in this lot until we’ve processed the scene. I think she took another car from here.”

  That had to have been how it played out. There was no blood, no signs of a struggle in the slushy fringe at the edge of the lot, no evidence that she’d been hurt.

  Please, God, don’t let her be hurt.

  With anger and worry a hard, hot ball in his gut, Seth stepped to the front of the car and looked down at the single-use cell phone sitting in the front seat. He examined the evidence without touching, knowing it was very possible that they’d need all the trace they could get. The killer or his master had planted the car in the P.D. parking lot.

  Seth tried to clear his mind for the job, tried to empty himself of everything but the evidence.

  He failed. There was too much worry clogging him, too much emotion. When was the last time he’d felt this much emotion, this much anger and fear?

  Robyn, he thought automatically, then corrected himself. No, this was worse.

  Robyn’s attack had happened so quickly, so unexpectedly. He hadn’t had time to process the horror before it was over.

  But this situation…he was chasing a lukewarm trail. Worse, he knew without a doubt that Cassie had gone willingly, called by duty, by ambition.

  By the fact that she was a damn good cop.

  When he’d first met her, he’d thought he couldn’t handle being with someone who flung herself into danger with the same abandon he used in his work. Now he knew better. Cassie wouldn’t be Cassie without that go-to-hell attitude and fearlessness.

  She wouldn’t be the woman who’d first attracted him, who’d broken through the barriers he’d erected after Robyn’s death.

  Without her thirst for solitary danger, she wouldn’t be the woman he’d fallen in love with.

  The word love sliced through him like a velvet-edged sword, too little, too late. Or was it?

  “Not on my watch,” he said aloud, and bent toward the cell phone. As he did so, a spear of sunlight broke through the cloud cover and glinted off the side of the hatchback.

  At the cryptic message written on the dusty paint of the rear quarter panel in a cramped scrawl.

  Anasazi.

  Oh hell, Seth thought as the fine hairs on his nape prickled. They’d had it for days.

  Not Anna Susie. Anasazi. The name of the Native American group being featured in the new exhibit at the Natural History Museum. But why?

  Why would the mastermind give them a name?

  Because, Seth realized as he bolted for his truck, he wanted them to find Cassie, just as the Diablo brothers had wanted him to find Robyn. Only this time, Seth vowed, he’d damn well be in time to keep the woman he loved from taking her last breath.

  Or he’d die trying.

  “ANNA SUSIE,” Cassie said to herself as she climbed the stairs to the Bear Claw Natural History Museum, which was closed while they built the much-lauded new exhibit. “Anasazi. I get it, but why?”

  As the quick spring dusk fell over Bear Claw, she tried the door and found it unlocked.

  Her enemy knew someone within the museum, or else he worked there in his “real”

  life. She filed the observation, but had a feeling she wouldn’t need it. The case would be closed for her tonight.

  One way or the other.

  Her footfalls echoed strangely in the deserted lobby, making alone feel all that much more lonely. She had an almost overwhelming urge to turn tail and run, to pick up the phone in the ticket booth and call for help, to do something, anything but walk deeper into the too-quiet museum.

  But she forged onward with the image of a bloody fingertip held firmly at the forefront of her brain. The hostage was a victim. An innocent of Bear Claw. One of Cassie’s own. She was a Bear Claw cop now. They were her responsibility. Her people.

  The thought made her feel less alone. Unfortunately, so did the sudden creeping sensation of being watched.

  Of being hunted.

  The note in the white ragtop had said only to go to the museum. Now, as she passed the gift shop and neared a half-finished composite archway, she wondered whether this was such a good idea. But what other choice did she have? She would have to keep going and trust that Seth would get her back.

  The archway had been sculpted to look like rock, like the entrance to a cave. The air was cool and damp, though she wasn’t sure whether that was a special effect or a by-product of the moist spring chill.

  You have five minutes, the voice had said, but was that five minutes to reach the museum or five minutes to find the next clue? If the latter, she was dangerously close to running out of time. Knowing it, knowing she’d come this far and damn well wasn’t going to back down now, she steeled herself and stepped through the arch, into the mostly completed Anasazi exhibit.

  The archway led to a tunnel, with a rock-painted roof that hung low overhead and walls that pressed in on her, bringing her back in time. There were petroglyphs carved and marked on the cave walls, symbols she recognized from books and hiking trips, an amalgam of Anasazi and other cultures no doubt intended to set the mood of ancient times and other worlds without relying too heavily on accuracy.

  “It’s working,” Cassie whispered to herself, needing the human sound as she worked her way through the tunnel. The atmosphere clung to her, making her feel as though her humanity, her civilization was being stripped away layer by layer.

  When she reached the end of the tunnel, she swore she heard a slide of footstep behind her. She spun, slapped for the weapon that was no longer at the small of her back, and called, “Who’s there?” When there was no answer, no more motion, the fine hairs on the back of her neck rippled, and she shouted, “Show yourself, you coward! Step out here now, or I’m coming after you!”

  An amplified voice chuckled in response, bouncing from speakers that must be hidden amongst the stones, which seemed more and more real by the moment.

  “There’s no need to shout, Officer Dumont, and no need to threaten. We’re waiting for you. Just keep walking.”

  She stood where she was. “I want an assurance that you’ll let the hostage go. You want me, right? Well, you’ve got me. Just let her go!”

  She expected a mocking laugh. She wasn’t disappointed.

  “Now where is the fun in that?” the voice asked on a chuckle. Only now she realized it wasn’t the same voice as on the phone. Even through the fuzz of mechanical distortion, this voice was deeper, darker.

  There was another man.

  She lifted her chin, not knowing whether he could see, but needing the defiant
gesture for herself. “I’m not here for fun. I’m here to arrest both of you.”

  “Stop stalling.” The voice cracked angrily from the loudspeakers. “You have ten seconds to reach the chamber.”

  A woman’s scream sounded up ahead, spurring Cassie onward. Mental clock ticking down the seconds, she ran until she burst out of the tunnel and into a central courtyard of stone.

  Signs pointed out the various exhibits. A splash of dark red wetness marked one, and Cassie followed the arrow beneath at a run, hoping the blood was from the woman’s finger wound and not something more serious.

  Something more fatal.

  The offshoot tunnel was a warmer tan color, sandy instead of dark rock, and marked with flowing, spiritual pictograms. She paid them little heed as, lungs heaving, she skidded into the chamber.

  The exhibit was meant to be a kiva, a beehive-shaped room of the type the Anasazi had used for spiritual reflection and religious practices.

  But the shrine had been perverted by a madman.

  Redness splashed the walls, dripped down and pooled on the floor. The lax body of a woman lay off to one side. He hadn’t even bothered to pose her. He’d just dropped her when her arterial spurts had faded in death. A pair of surgical gloves lay nearby, along with a flipped-open five-inch buck knife that was covered in blood.

  Cassie’s stomach dropped and her heart clogged her mouth. She was too damn late.

  The woman’s skin hadn’t gone gray-blue with death yet, but the smell of it was in the air. The finality of it coated the inside of Cassie’s mouth and sinuses, and crept cold fingers into her heart.

  Knowing it, hating him for it, she focused her attention on the lone man standing in the center of the domed room. He was in his late thirties, and of medium height and build, though the way he stood hinted at muscle and strength beneath the loose pullover and crisp new blue jeans. His brown hair was neatly trimmed and his brown leather shoes matched his belt. He looked like a businessman on casual Friday, come to the museum for lunch.

  Until she stared into his eyes. They were winter-cold, an ice-blue that showed no hint of expression. They simply held…nothing as they looked at her, looked through her as though the man wasn’t even sure why she was there.