by Paris Hansen
“Can you just invite me in, please? It’s important.”
Sloane’s irritation faded ever so slightly at the desperation she heard in Reid’s voice. It was just as hard for him to show up on her doorstep as it was for her to let him in. Maybe even more so, given how things ended between them.
Stepping to the side, she opened the door wider so he could come inside. It felt weird for him to be invading her space after all this time. She hadn’t seen him since the day she turned in her badge and gun. They didn’t even see each other during their divorce proceedings. Instead, they’d opted to handle everything through their lawyers.
That’s how badly their relationship had disintegrated.
Apollo let out a low growl as Reid took a few tentative steps into her home. Her poor dog was probably tuning in to her anxiety, making his need to protect her more crucial. Crouching down, she whispered a few calming words in his ear as she ran a hand over his back. His ears relaxed as he began to wag his tail.
She appreciated the way Reid approached them slowly. Whether it was out of respect or self-preservation, she couldn’t be sure, but she appreciated it nonetheless. She really wasn’t in the mood to deal with her dog trying to rip her ex-husband apart, even if he might deserve it just a little.
“He’s a good guard dog,” Reid said softly as he reached a hand out so Apollo could sniff it.
“The best around,” Sloane agreed as she scratched Apollo behind his ear and stood up. “He’s retired military, injured in the line of duty, but you wouldn’t know it. Unfortunately, his handler didn’t make it, so when Apollo was all healed, they decided to retire him. I adopted him not long after that.”
While Reid and Apollo got to know each other a little better, she unloaded her gun, put it back in the drawer, then went through the motions of re-locking her door. The extra protection easing some of the tension taking up residence in her shoulders since the knocking started. She wasn’t a fan of surprises, especially not surprise visitors, and even less so surprise visitors who happened to be her ex-husband.
Nothing good could come from him being in her house.
“A bit overkill, isn’t it?” Reid asked as he pointed toward her door.
Ignoring his statement, she led him toward her tiny living room. She motioned for him to take a seat on the loveseat while she grabbed the chair from her desk. It was bad enough the man was in her house. She wasn’t about to subject herself to sitting next to him on a piece of furniture meant for cuddling. The fact they were breathing the same air meant he was already too damn close for her liking.
“Say what you came to say, Reid.”
“Am I keeping you from something, Sloane? Are you too busy to catch up first?”
He was back to trying to dazzle her with the smile, which only fueled her returning irritation. If whatever he came to say was so damn important, they didn’t have time for him to fuck around with trying to mesmerize her with his pearly whites.
Sighing, she plopped down on the chair she’d dragged over. Apollo immediately joined her, placing his head on her lap so she could give him the pets he knew he deserved.
“You said it was important, so just get to it already. I’m sure you want to be here as much as I want you here.”
“Sloane…”
“Don’t. It’s ancient history, and I’m pretty damn sure you’re not here to take a stroll down memory lane. Just get to the damn point already and stop trying to make peace or whatever the hell it is you’re trying to do right now. I’m not interested. Tell me what brought you all the way out to Washington from Virginia. I know it wasn’t to try to make things right.”
Something passed over Reid’s face. A little bit of regret mixed with a whole lot of relief. Maybe he’d assumed he’d have to jump through hoops, explain his past behavior before she’d listen to the reason he was really there. Sloane didn’t give a shit about any of it. What was done was done. Talking about it now wouldn’t change things. In a way, she’d already forgiven him, but that didn’t mean she wanted anything to do with him.
They were nothing but bad for each other.
“I’m not in Virginia. I turned down the transfer right after you left. I didn’t want to leave San Francisco. I was only doing it to make things easier on you, but then you left.”
“Oh. Emily never told me you stayed. We never really talk about you, so that’s probably why.”
“Once you left, I didn’t really have a reason to leave. Then Em got pregnant, and the jackass left her high and dry. I’m glad I was there to help her out.”
“Well, that was nice of you, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t hunt me down just to tell me you didn’t leave San Francisco four years ago. What’s going on?”
Reid opened his mouth, more than likely to say something smart, but then thought better of it. Sighing, he ran a hand over his face, then leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The move made the dark circles and the bone-weary tiredness marring his rugged face more noticeable.
“He’s back, Sloane.”
She didn’t need him to say who “He” was. There was no doubt in her mind just who Reid was talking about. The case still haunted her even though it had gone cold half a decade earlier. Her inability to catch the guy behind the brutal murders still ate at her. Her failure to save the babies and their mothers festered inside of her even after all this time.
“How...why...he got what he wanted. Why start again now?” she asked, not really expecting an answer. “Wait. If he’s out hunting again, what about Addy? Where’s Addy?”
Her stomach rolled as she waited for an answer. Sweat instantly dampened her forehead, dread setting in. Was the little girl dead? Would Sloane never get the chance to reunite the missing girl with her mother, the woman who held out hope every day that they’d be reunited?
“We haven’t found a body. There haven’t been any five-year-old girls left abandoned anywhere. We’re working under the assumption that Addy’s still alive, and the unsub still has her.”
“Then why is he doing this? What is he looking for?”
Reid shrugged but didn’t say out loud he had no idea why the man was once again hunting pregnant women and killing them for their unborn children. She knew the case had been just as hard on him as it had been on her, maybe even more so since he’d always hoped to have children of his own someday—another reason their marriage made very little sense.
“How many?”
“One.”
Her brows furrowed. “One? How can you be sure it’s even him?”
“It has to be. The latest victim was a pregnant woman close to her due date, abducted from a public place, cut open, her baby removed, and her body dumped in an alley near her place of employment.”
“If he’s out there hunting, why are you here?”
“We need your help, Sloane. Your instincts about this case were right the first time around. You know more about it than anyone else. If we’re going to find this guy and stop him, we need you to help us do it.”
“In case you forgot, I’m not with the FBI anymore. I’m sure there are plenty of qualified agents available to help with this investigation. You don’t need me.”
Even as she said the words, she felt how wrong they were. She might not be an agent, but he was right. She could help. She wanted to, no, needed to help. Bringing the man who killed so many innocent people to justice was important to her.
“You’re right, you’re not an agent, but you can come in as a consultant. I already checked into everything before coming up here. That was the easy part. I knew getting you to agree to come back with me would be next to impossible, but we need you, Sloane. The victims need you.”
“That’s a low blow,” she whispered.
Reid had to know it wouldn’t be easy for her to go back. When she burned out, she went out in a spectacular fashion. People who’d doubted her ability to handle the job boasted about being right. Those who thought she was just as crazy as her mother whispered about her to a
nyone who’d listen.
Showing her face in any FBI office after all these years would be challenging, but if it meant catching the one who got away, she’d do it, especially if there was any chance she could bring Addy home to her mother.
“When do we leave?”
Chapter Three
A little more than an hour later, Sloane was on a plane headed to the San Francisco FBI field office going over everything Reid had about the Mommy Murderer case. The name, courtesy of the media, was dumb as hell, but they used it anyway. What else were they going to call him? The “Asshole Murdering Women and Children” had been Sloane’s vote, but it was a bit of a mouthful.
It felt weird leaving her home, yet the further away they got, the more determined she became. It had taken her ten minutes to grab her go bag and add a few extra items to it. Keeping a bag packed so she could leave at a moment’s notice wasn’t something she’d learned from being a special agent. That particular quirk was courtesy of her parents and a childhood she tried to forget.
Saying goodbye to Apollo, and dropping him off with her closest neighbor, had taken a little longer.
Retired Lt. Colonel Richard Briggs, a grumpy old man who barely left his cabin, lived a few miles down the road from Sloane. After coming across each other in the woods one day, they’d bonded over their mutual distrust of other people and their love for dogs. Sloane volunteered to do his shopping for him, and in return, he hung out with Apollo whenever she needed to leave the island. Both of them had moved to the woods because they didn’t think they needed companionship. Their chance meeting showed them they were wrong.
At least sort of.
When she’d stopped by to drop Apollo off, Richard tried to talk some sense into her. He wasn’t convinced helping the FBI was a good idea. While he understood her need to finish what she’d started, her friend was worried revisiting the case would be hazardous to her mental health. And he certainly didn’t like her ex-husband being involved in the situation.
After assuring him she’d be fine, Richard let her go with a promise to keep Apollo safe and a reminder that he had plenty of guns and a lot of wide-open space to bury unwanted things. He’d made sure to look at Reid while he laid out his very obvious warning.
“I feel like I should point out to the old man that he threatened a federal agent, but I’m fairly certain he knows and just doesn’t give a shit,” Reid said as they drove away from her sanctuary.
She hadn’t bothered to respond, instead opting to watch as they got further and further away from her peace and quiet. Reid didn’t seem to care or maybe even notice she had nothing to say. He filled the silence on the hour drive from her island home to the nearest private airport with details about the case.
Sloane was thankful he didn’t try to talk to her about anything else, especially not their private lives. She didn’t care to hear about his, and she certainly didn’t want to talk about hers. She didn’t see a reason for them to catch up after their years apart, especially since he hadn’t seemed to care much about her life when they were still together.
Once they were on the plane, she only had a couple of hours to get up-to-date on the newest victim so she could hit the ground running. While Reid chatted with someone on the phone, she scoured through the report, then read through it even slower line by line to make sure she didn’t miss anything.
Five years ago, she’d nearly lived and breathed this case yet never got a chance to bring the killer to justice. She wasn’t going to miss her chance now that she was getting a second shot at him.
She had no doubt the latest woman, Sabrina Moreno, was a victim of the same unsub, or unknown subject, they’d hunted years before. There were too many similarities between the two cases for it to be a coincidence, including details they never released to the press or the public.
Still, even with the evidence backing him up, Sloane wasn’t sure how Reid was able to get his boss to assemble a task force over just one victim. The first time around, it had taken three victims to even get the brass to consider helping the local police.
“What did you have to promise to get this put together after one victim?” Sloane asked, then immediately regretted the decision.
When they’d set out on their journey, Sloane had promised herself she’d refrain from engaging Reid as much as she possibly could. Any conversations they had would be strictly about the case, and while her question was case related adjacent, she had a feeling she opened up a can of worms she would’ve rather kept shut.
“What makes you think I had to promise anything?”
His answering her question with a question was classic Reid Morgan material. It used to aggravate the crap out of her when they were married, but now she was actually thankful for it since it gave her the out she wanted. If she didn’t respond, maybe they could go back to the mildly awkward silence they’d enjoyed before she asked her stupid question. He could go back to rapid-fire texting, and she could go back to studying the report in her hands.
“You’re right,” he muttered after the prolonged silence had given her a false sense of having dodged a bullet. “I can’t give you any details, not that I suspect you’d want to hear them anyway, but I did have to make a few promises to put this together so fast and bring you on board. I basically had to sign away the rest of my career, but if he’s truly back like I think he is, then us catching the bastard will be worth every promise I had to make.”
Sloane could feel Reid’s eyes on her, but she refused to acknowledge them. She knew he was talking about the two of them when he said us and not the task force comprised of agents from the FBI and members of the local authorities. Catching this unsub was as personal for him as it was for her. She just hoped he realized catching the killer wouldn’t change anything between them.
Before she could respond, the captain notified them of their impending descent into San Francisco. Despite her best efforts to quell them, Sloane found herself overwhelmed by nerves. It had been four years since she’d last been in the area. Four years since the day she said goodbye to her former life. Being around Reid was distressing enough. Voluntarily walking into the San Francisco field office was a completely different story.
The last time she’d been in the building, she’d left her gun, her badge, and her husband behind. Now here she was about to walk back inside with one out of the three, except he was no longer hers, and if the smile on his face while he was texting was any indication, he’d found someone who made him happier than she ever had.
Sloane was happy he’d moved on. She’d always hoped he would. While she was angry with Reid for a long time after everything went to hell, and sometimes still was, she’d always said he deserved better than her and her cargo-plane load of baggage. He’d always been a glutton for punishment, though, so she hoped his current relationship was a hell of a lot easier than theirs had been.
Neither of them spoke while the plane landed or while it taxied to where they were to disembark. Sloane tried to steady her breathing and her nerves as they got into the car, waiting for them near their terminal. She watched the city pass by her window while Reid called ahead. He wanted everyone to be ready to jump into things as soon as they arrived.
“You ready for this?” Reid asked as their driver pulled into the underground parking garage. “It’s not too late to turn back.”
“We both know it is. And even if it wasn’t, we both know I wouldn’t. I haven’t changed that much in five years.”
“No. It doesn’t seem like you’ve changed much at all,” Reid muttered before handing her the name badge she’d need to enter the building.
Sloane took it out of his hands and studied the sturdy plastic. It was nearly identical to the one she’d worn around her neck for years. The FBI logo was in the upper left-hand corner across from the picture they’d taken after she graduated from the academy. On the bottom was her name with the words civilian consultant printed underneath it, followed by the barcode that would most likely only allow her through the
gate in the lobby and nowhere else in the building.
It was surreal to put the all too familiar lanyard around her neck again after being away for so long. Somehow it still felt right, even though the FBI had pushed her aside, and she’d let them. She might no longer be an agent, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel like one.
From an early age, despite the horrors she’d seen or maybe because of them, Sloane had known she wanted to be an FBI agent. She fought hard to make the dream come true, battling against people’s preconceived notions of who she was and who she would become. After everything she went through to get where she was, she should’ve fought harder to remain an agent when she started to feel the tug of burnout.
Shaking off the memories, Sloane tried to remind herself she couldn’t waste time on the past. She needed to save room in her head for what was coming. If she allowed herself to get distracted, they’d never find the man who’d taken the lives of so many women and infants. Even if he tried to disappear again, Sloane wasn’t going to let him go.
This time he would pay for what he did. She would see to it no matter how much it cost her.
Chapter Four
The entire office was abuzz with the news that the infamous Sloane Matthews was finally on her way up. It seemed like everyone had a firsthand story about her, or they’d heard one passed down through the grapevine over the years. The conference room where the Mommy Murderer task force was gathered was no different.
Cade could hear snippets of the two separate conversations happening around him, but he wasn’t paying attention to what was being said. He was probably the only person on the task force, hell in the building, who didn’t care about her nearly stellar record as an FBI agent or her epic meltdown. What fascinated Cade was her life before the FBI...her childhood, her parents, and how it all affected who she became.
And exactly how she might be involved with the case he was currently working on.
Not the one with the man killing women so he could steal their babies, but the one he was sure had to do with Sloane’s past.