Her Last Wish (A Rachel Gift FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 1)

by Blake Pierce

  “What?”

  “Your hunch about Amber Seibert back at the clinic. But it should have been a discussion between us.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “I know you are. I can tell. As for me, I’m sorry I called you out. Yes, I do know you’re dealing with something. I can tell that, too. But it’s not my place to call you out on it. Just know that if there is something you’re dealing with, I’m here for you.”

  Rachel could only nod and say, “Thanks.” She feared saying anything else would bring on tears and, right behind them, the truth.

  “Now, we can get back to the precinct, but it’s nearing six o’ clock and there are zero leads,” Jack said. “Everything we need, we have digitally. I say we grab dinner and a beer, and call it a day.”

  They headed off to do exactly that as a fine mist of rain started to fall. The choice was an easy one—a little Mexican restaurant sitting right across the parking lot of the motel the bureau had booked for them. Even in the fifteen minutes that passed between leaving the officer on surveillance and pulling up a seat at the bar, Rachel once again felt the tension between them. The fact that she knew exactly where it came from made it so much worse. They ordered burritos and Coronas in the midst of that awkwardness. And it seemed to Rachel that the longer the silence persisted, the less she felt the need to share her secret with him.

  She could not keep her mind from wandering back to the moment Dr. Greene had told her the news. Up until then, the biggest disappointment in her day had been her inability to beat the obstacle course time record. Jesus, how did something like just yesterday suddenly feel like it had happened years ago?

  “We’re decent friends, right?” Jack asked when he was nearing the bottom of his first beer. She was rather glad he’d decided to break the silence because she did not like where her thoughts had been headed. “Like, outside of the job, we’re cool, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said, already knowing where he was going with it. That was one thing about Jack that could always be counted on: he was persistent to a fault.

  “I think so, too. And with that in mind, I’m going to ask this and I’m only going to ask it once. “

  “Jack…”

  “Are you and Peter finding out that a new baby might not be in the cards? Because if that’s the case, it makes a world of sense that this case would be affecting you the way it is. Hell, I’d even go to bat to have you taken off the case.”

  “That’s not it,” she said. Though, in a very roundabout way, she supposed it was at least part of it. Having a second kid was very much off the table, given that she wasn’t expected to be alive in about a year’s time.

  “Okay,” Jack said. He nodded, as if to say: see, I just asked the one time and now it’s dropped. But that “okay” seemed to hold a lot more weight, and Rachel did not like the implication behind it.

  “This case is just…it’s landing at a very odd time for me,” Rachel said.

  “Okay. And that’s your business. You apparently don’t want to talk it out, so—”

  “Why are you getting like this?”

  “Me?” he asked, surprised. “It’s you that’s off-kilter and a little defensive.”

  “Believe it or not, Jack, there are some things in my private life that I prefer not to bring into work. I don’t have to tell you everything.”

  “Yes, I know, Rachel. I know that, but—”

  “Look, I’m very tired,” she said, fishing into her wallet and dropping a twenty on the bar. “I’m going back to the hotel.”

  He looked taken aback, and she was afraid that she may have offended him. But in that moment, she didn’t care. She left him staring as she walked away while the bartender brought him another drink.

  ***

  As she’d fully expected, she felt guilty about the way she’d reacted the moment the door to her hotel room closed behind her. She also did not like the fact that the one beer she’d had seemed to be teasing her. Apparently, it was one of those days where one beer simply wasn’t going to cut it. She toyed with the idea of heading out to a convenience store to grab a six pack but before she could act on it, her phone started ringing. She figured it would be Peter again and this annoyed her for reasons she did not understand or trust. She saw his name on the caller display and tried to hide her annoyance that it was a Facetime call. Still, she answered it.

  When she saw Paige’s face on the screen, smiling brightly, Rachel nearly burst into tears. She blinked them back at once and took a few steady breaths to keep herself under control.

  “Hey, Mommy!” Paige said. She was the sort of kid that had not yet understood that you don’t have to hold the phone right in front of your face, one inch from your nose to be seen on the other end. Most of what Rachel saw was her daughter’s mouth and nostrils. But her blue eyes peeked in from the side every now and then.

  “Hey, sweetie! How are you?”

  “I’m good. Daddy said it was okay to call. He’s working late again, so Becka’s still here.”

  “I know,” Rachel said. “I’m so sorry neither one of us is there.”

  “It’s okay. Me and Becka are gonna have a dance party after the call.”

  “Not for too long, I hope,” Rachel said. She said it loudly, taking a dig at their usual sitter, Becka. She heard Becka chuckle in the background.

  “I had a question about my birthday party,” Paige said.

  “But your birthday party isn’t for another two months!”

  “I know. But Becka said her little sister had this thing at her party and I thought it sounded cool. So, I was wondering if we could get a kroaky machine.”

  “A what?”

  “A kroaky machine. You sing into it, and it has songs already on it.”

  “Oh. Karaoke.”

  “Yeah, that.”

  Rachel had to wait a moment before she could respond. Paige would turn eight in two months. Where the hell had all the time gone? Knowing it would likely be the last birthday she would be able to celebrate with her daughter stung so deep it felt like someone had stabbed her in the heart with a blade of ice.

  She wondered if the mention of any event from here on out was going to wreck her in a similar way. Every time a birthday or anniversary or trip that was more than a few months out…was she going to feel that her heart was shrinking at every single mention?

  “Whatever you want, sweetie,” Rachel said. And oh God, how she meant it.

  “Thanks, Mommy. Hey, how long are you gonna be away?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s looking like at least two days or so. If it’s more, I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay. I love you! I’m gonna go dance now.”

  “Okay. I love you t—”

  But Paige had already ended the call, lured by the promise of a two-person dance party. Rachel held the phone a bit longer, looking at the black screen and the words Call Ended. She wanted to throw the phone across the room. She wanted to scream. She wanted to call back to Richmond and tell Director Anderson that she needed to quit her job and get the hell back home to her daughter as quickly as she could.

  But she did none of those things. Instead, she decided to go out and get that six pack after all. She knew she wouldn’t drink them all. Hell, she’d likely only get two down, if that. But it beat the hell out of staying in the room by herself. Besides, if she was going to start feeling sorry for herself, she’d at least like to have a couple of beers to place the blame on.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Hannah was angry at the security lights. Or, at least, that’s what she was telling herself. She needed something to blame for her inability to sleep, so she might as well blame the glare of the security lights coming from the garage. They were new—just installed three weeks ago—and the glare cut even through the bedroom blinds.

  She sat up in bed and looked to her phone, sitting plugged into its charger. It was 1:17 in the morning, and though she had gone to bed at 10:45, she’d slept for maybe half an hour and that had been
a fitful sort of doze at best.

  She could blame the security lights all she wanted, but she knew the real reason she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t sleep because she was nervous about the fertility treatments she was going to be getting tomorrow. If they later found out the treatments had done no good, then she and her husband would have to face the fact that they were never going to be able to have biological children.

  She almost reached over and shook Ryan awake. She would ask him to pray with her, to help sooth her and calm her nerves. He’d been praying about the treatments tomorrow just as much, if not more, than she had and he’d be more than happy to be there for her. But there was no sense in both of them losing sleep over this.

  And now that she had spent almost two and a half hours in bed awake, her stupid stomach was insisting that it was hungry. She knew to lay there and ignore it would only make her angrier, so she didn’t bother. She slid out of bed and quietly left the upstairs bedroom. As she walked to the stairs, she passed by the room that they hoped would one day be the nursery and her guts suddenly felt as if they’d been dropped down a canyon.

  She went downstairs and plodded into the kitchen. She was tired and she was mad that she was tired, and it all just…well, it all just sucked. She went to the fridge and got out some of the leftover chicken from dinner. She then took out a string cheese and walked to the table. She was unwrapping the string cheese and lowering her butt into a chair at the table when she saw a flicker of movement outside of the kitchen window.

  Her first reaction was fright. It was, after all, in the dead of night and the house was deathly quiet. But then she remembered some of the posts she’d seen on the neighborhood Facebook page. People had been posting pictures of the deer that had started wandering in from the rural areas outside of the city. It was certainly strange to see deer in Baltimore, even in the more rural areas, but the Facebook pictures had proven it was real. Apparently, they were eating some people’s bushes and roses. Some very uppity people on the Facebook page were asking if the POA should get involved, or maybe even the game warden

  Hannah thought all of that was just a bit much, though. Thinking she might get her own sighting, she hurried to the back door. She quickly disarmed the alarm, which went active after ten p.m. and walked out to the back porch. She looked around the yard and didn’t see a deer—or anything else that would have caused a blur of motion through the window. She then thought that if there was as deer, it had likely moved to the side yard to snack on her azalea bushes. She smiled as she thought of how she might sarcastically bemoan such an atrocity on the neighborhood Facebook page.

  She hurried quietly down the porch stairs, not wanting to spook the deer. Passing through the grass in the quiet of the night in her bare feet was pleasant in a way she had not expected. It made her feel like a kid again, like she was sneaking around and getting into mischief.

  She came to the edge of the house and there it was. A shape in the darkness, against the side of the house.

  Hannah discovered that it wasn’t a deer just a moment too late.

  By the time she recognized that the shape was very much human, there was a hand clamped around her mouth and a knife slamming into her ribs.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  When Rachel’s phone rang, stirring her awake, she was coming out some half-remembered dream that had featured the peering eyes of Alex Lynch, looking at her as if she were a specimen under a microscope. When she reached for the phone, Rachel was certain it was going to be the doctor’s office calling to tell her that they’d misread her results and that there was no tumor after all.

  Sorry for the mix-up. Whoops. Our bad.

  But then she realized she was not in her bedroom, but a motel room. And then reality came flooding back and she loathed her phone for making her face it all again. She did not recognize the number, but knew it was a Baltimore area code. She also noted that it was 5:02 in the morning. With a bad feeling already forming in her guts, she answered it. She tried not to sound tired and discombobulated, but failed miserably.

  “This is Agent Gift.”

  “Agent Gift, this is Sergeant Owen. We met at the Masters’ residence earlier today.”

  “Another one?” she asked.

  The silence was answer enough but after several quiet moments, Owen answered in a shaky voice. “Yeah.”

  Rachel grabbed the hotel room stationery from the bedside table and a pen from the drawer. “The address?”

  He gave it to her and she scribbled it down. Ending the call, Rachel slid out of bed and started to get dressed. As she slid into her pants, her mind instantly brought up memories of being in the doctor’s office, of getting the bad news. She wondered if it was just going to be this huge, mental juggernaut and if it would keep stalking her even after she’d come clean with it. Was this her life now, defined totally by this one bit of terrible news?

  Shaking the thoughts away, she called Jack’s number. He answered on the fourth ring and, like Rachel, made very little attempt to sound as if he had not just been stirred awake far too early.

  “It’s barely after five in the morning,” he croaked.

  “I know. But I just got a call.”

  Again, his response echoed hers from moments ago. “Another one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Even with the cops keeping look-out?”

  “Seems that way,” she said, confused over the matter herself.

  “I’ll meet you at the car in three minutes.”

  ***

  It started to make a dark sort of sense when they arrived at the crime scene. It was the residence of Hannah and Ryan Kettleman. It was nearly on the opposite side of town from the other two murders. But most significant of all was the fact that Hannah Kettleman had not been a name on the list they’d gotten from Regency Fertility Clinic.

  As Rachel and Jack walked around the side of the house to where several police were gathered, it all started to feel similar. A murder in the back yard, just like Lucinda Masters. That was almost enough to kill off any hope Rachel had that the murder might be unrelated. But when they saw the body and the grim looks on the faces of the gathered officers, it died away completely.

  She recognized Owen from the Masters’ residence and approached him right away. “She’s not on the list we got from the clinic.”

  “I know,” Maters said. “All the same, the husband tells us that she was scheduled for fertility treatments tomorrow.”

  “But how—”

  “It’s a different facility. Not Regency.”

  Rachel nodded as she and Jack approached the body. Forensics, who had just pulled in ahead of them, were also closely studying the body. She heard their murmured conversation as they took notes and confirmed everything they said with her own eyes. It looked exactly the same as the first two victims: multiple stab wounds in the abdomen area, done in a fashion that seemed hurried and urgent. On this new victim, there was a slash lower than all the rest, nearly in the groin, but it was slanted upward, indicating the knife used to do the stabbing had slipped.

  Yet again, Rachel’s thoughts went to Alex Lynch. He’d killed with similar brutality, almost as if he’d enjoyed it—had thrived on it. And while the similarity was enough to bring his case to mind, she hated that she felt so drawn to his old case because of this new one. She’d spent so much time trying to forget about him, spending months in therapy. Now she felt like she was taking several steps back, letting that vile man back into her mind.

  “Where’s the husband?” Jack asked.

  “He’s inside with the EMTs,” one of the officers said. “He gave is information like a champ for about two minutes and then it all hit him. He’s being treated for shock.”

  “Jesus, I guess so,” Jack said. “Did he have anything to share that would be useful?”

  “No. Poor guy is floored. I honestly don’t even think he’s fully aware of what has happened.”

  The crime scene then fell into a silence Rachel had seen before—everyone
realizing that they were standing in the middle of a huge event, in the shadow of evil. The man that had done this was sick, that was for sure. But as Rachel looked to the body and stepped aside to let the forensics team get in closer, her mind shifted into some other place. It seemed to be doing that a lot lately—perhaps in response to her sudden rampant thoughts and memories of Alex Lynch.

  “What if it’s not just about the fertility treatments?” she wondered out loud.

  “What do you mean?” Jack asked.

  “I mean the fertility treatments are a definite link. There’s no question about that. But he’s also killed them the same way every single time. They’re all at home. The wounds are all in the stomach or sides angling into the abdomen. It’s always with a knife and there’s nothing neat or precise about it. Maybe there’s something we can use in that…in the way he’s doing it.”

  “I’m not sure that sort of answer would help us, either,” Jack said.

  Rachel looked back over to the cops and asked: “Did anyone ask the husband about security footage before he went into shock?”

  “Yeah. They’ve got cameras at the back of the garage and a Ring doorbell front door, but nothing back here. There’s an alarm on the back door, but he says it was disengaged. He figures she disengaged it when she walked outside.”

  “Has anyone checked the Ring footage?”

  “We did. There’s nothing. A single car goes by but we obviously can’t see the plate.”

  “Any idea why she might have come outside in the first place?” Jack asked.

  “We didn’t get that far,” Owen said.

  Rachel paced around the back yard. She looked to the garage, where halogen security lights glared. She scanned the yard and looked back to the body. Something wasn’t adding up here. As she stood there, the first true light of dawn crept across the Kettleman’s back yard but it felt almost melodramatic. Light or not, there were no leads or clues here. The lights, the layout of the yard…it made her think this was a calculated killer. He’d planned it and plotted it. He’d likely driven by the houses of his victims to study the layouts, to learn their schedules. And given how quickly he was working, it likely meant he’d been very meticulous. He knew their names, their addresses, details of their houses and schedules from the looks of it. This could get very bad, very soon.