Angels & Assassins: BWWM Romance

by K. Alex Walker

  “Do your profilers have anything about why this man would need his victims to be alive for so long?” Tayler asked. “Why he needs them to be warm? What purpose they believe they women are serving?”

  “Sadistic torture,” Joel answered.

  “If he needed them warm to be tortured, I don’t think you’d find marks on the first victim post-mortem. There’s a reason he needs a warm body.” She rubbed her hands together even though the ambient temperature in the room was near perfect. “But, that’s all I’ve got for you, Agent Lattimore. I’m sorry. I can only imagine how frustrating this is for you. This man moves around more than a military family.”

  Joel and Gage’s brows came together at the same time, then their eyes darted to the map. Gage’s eyes scanned the locations while Joel’s rolled up to the ceiling in calculative thought. Then, he bolted to the kitchen.

  “What just happened?” she asked.

  Gage approached the map. “With the exception of the ones here in North Carolina, each attack happened within an hour’s drive of a military base.”

  “So the suspect might be current or former military?”

  “We don’t know yet, but you might have just given them a major break in this case.”

  She studied the different points. “So, in every way, Yearwood is an anomaly?”

  “Maybe. The closest base to the town would be,” he traced a line on the map with his index finger, “Fort Bragg up near Fayetteville. But the thing is, he skipped over Fayetteville, Hope Mills, and Southern Pines to come here.”

  Gage turned to look at Tayler when he realized that she’d been quiet for entirely too long. She was gnashing at the inside corner of her cheek while her eyes darted around the room.

  “I was in Fayetteville for a major annual pediatric conference that was held there three years ago,” she quietly revealed. “There’s a cancer center up there in Cape Fear Valley. I went with two of my good friends and colleagues. Is that where he saw me?”

  “And followed you to Yearwood,” Gage concluded.

  Joel reappeared with a smile stretching from one ear to the next. The tired lines in his face were gone as though someone had waved a Photoshop wand.

  “Wolfe was right,” he announced. “You are something else, Tayler. My guys just confirmed it. Our suspect is abducting women who live within a certain proximity of military bases. We’re contacting them now to comb through their assignment lists for a match.”

  “Check churches too,” Gage added. “Maybe even schools. Some of the most violent people I’d ever met were devout fathers, husbands, wives and mothers.”

  “Good point. I guess, unlike in a game of paintball, we can find ways to work together,” Joel suggested.

  “You’re two steps too slow, your aim is shit, and I think you might be losing hearing in your left ear,” Gage replied.

  Joel’s appalled gaze went to Tayler. “You see? I was trying to bury the hatchet. Your guy here doesn’t know how to shake hands at the end of a fight.”

  “Most of the fights I’ve been in ended in sudden death.”

  “Don’t mind him,” Tayler cut in, smiling in Gage’s direction. “That’s how I like my guys.”

  The last time she’d referred to him as her guy, he’d stormed away. This time, he didn’t even flinch.

  “One of the lists just came in,” a voice called from the formal dining room.

  “That’s my cue,” Joel said, turning. Then, he glanced from Gage to Tayler. “I have no idea why, but this works. I like her for you, Wolfe. Don’t ever let her go. At least, not where I can catch her.”

  “You’ve got people that would miss you,” Gage warned.

  He laughed and went to join the other agents. When he was gone, Gage pulled his phone from his back pocket and tossed it to Tayler. “Call your colleagues. Maybe they can help you remember if you’ve met this son-of-a bitch before.”

  *****

  Joel drummed his fingers on the tabletop as the men around him combed through the lists of military personnel. In front of him was a printout of schools from the areas where victims had been found. The office had sent over everything ranging from daycares to high schools even though the profilers didn’t think their suspect was old enough to have a child in high school. He’d still requested the list when their completely incorrect psychological profile of the Beltway sniper came to mind.

  Morning was breaking through in full force, and he tried not to think about the last time he’d actually gotten some sleep. Not even a decent night’s rest. Just rest. Period.

  He began making calls to the locations on the list. By the time he got to the fifty-eighth school, the script in his head was so solid that the words began to spill out before his thoughts.

  “Hello, my name is Joel Lattimore…an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation…it’s because we’re investigating…yes, that string of murders…I know, it is unfortunate…okay, I’ll look into it…thank you for all your help.”

  Hanging up the phone, he rubbed his hand over his face, pulling the skin across his cheeks due south. Stubble scratched his palm, and he was sure that the mix of coffee and overtime had left him with putrid breath. It was almost to the point where he considered asking Tayler for an extra razor and toothbrush.

  The next location on his list turned out to be an early childhood learning center for deaf children in Augusta near Fort Gordon. While the phone rang, he scrolled through their website. The center offered speech and language pathology services, helped children adjust to cochlear implants, and even provided children with deaf role models. It was a school that he would have never known existed, but he imagined parents with deaf children knew it very well.

  A woman’s voice picked up, one that sounded much younger than he figured she probably was. “Hello, thank you for calling the Laurent Clerc Early Learning Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. This is Kita speaking.”

  “Hi, Kita. I’m special agent Joel Lattimore with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I was wondering if I could maybe speak with the director of your facility.”

  “You’ve found her,” she replied, chuckling. “We’re a bit understaffed today, so I’m pulling double duty. How can I help you, Agent Lattimore?”

  “My question is rather vague, so humor me, if you will.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  “Based on your location, do you get very many military children at your center?”

  “We’ve had a few over the years,” she said. “Because of the nature of our center it’s not very many, but we petitioned to have zoning restrictions removed so our children sometimes come from as far as Crawfordville.”

  “I see.” He made a few notes. “Well, and again very vague, are there any military families over the past three or four years that might have stood out to you? For any reason at all?”

  “Oh lordy, three or four years?” She exhaled. “Hmm, lemme think.”

  “I know it’s a big stretch.”

  “Oh no, it’s okay. The FBI just doesn’t call anybody.” Dead air filled the connection as she recounted the years. “Well, I’d say that in the past three of four years, we’ve maybe had three military families…no, four. We had a single father. I can’t believe I forgot them. His daughter was so sweet. She was two, I think, when she attended the center and she was making good progress. But, her father was abruptly reassigned. They left one afternoon and we never saw them again.”

  Joel’s palms itched. That couldn’t have been a coincidence.

  “By any chance, do you have the family’s names?” he asked, crossing his fingers that she didn’t start spewing about warrants and confidentiality.

  “Yeah. Could you give me on second?”

  She put him on hold, and his excitement budded as he waited. His instincts told him that this was his smoking gun. After chasing this man for over a year, for the first time since he was assigned to the investigation, he finally felt as though he was making headway.

  “Agent Lattimore?”
Kita’s voice reappeared. “I’m back. You got a pen?”

  -14-

  Tayler dialed the number she knew by heart for one of her best friends from medical school who now operated out of his own practice in Louisiana. A recently married man with his first child already on the way, the last thing she wanted to do was bring negativity into his life. So, while the phone rang, she thought of ways to get information without alerting him to her current situation.

  “Dr. Stewart’s office,” a cheery voice answered.

  “Hey Anita, it’s Tayler. Is Ethan in the office?”

  “Oh, hi Dr. D,” the woman greeted. “Yeah, he’s here. Both he and Dr. Edwards are here. I’ll transfer you.”

  Tayler groaned. Keeping her secret from Ethan would have been difficult enough on its own, but it would be damn near impossible with Ethan and Kellen. Both men had been friends since their undergraduate days in college, but she wasn’t added to the duo until medical school. She’d spent more than her share of time mother henning them for their antics even though, more often than not, she was right there with them.

  “What’s up, Tayler? How are things in the smallest town in the USA?”

  “Hi Kellen. Hi Ethan.”

  She felt the shift in Gage’s mood even without looking at him. “Cool your jets,” she told him. “They’re just colleagues. Thought your little background check would reveal that.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Ethan asked. She could picture his dark brown hair and grey eyes mischievously lighting up.

  “A friend.”

  “A man friend?” Kellen asked. With his mixed Spanish and French heritage, Kellen’s hair was a deep, rich black. There hadn’t been a day yet that she hadn’t seen mischief in his hazel eyes that oscillated between sea-foam green and cinnamon.

  “I have a question that I need to ask you guys,” she tried to redirect.

  “Wait, you can’t just skip over the man friend,” Ethan argued. “As far as we knew, you didn’t have time to date.”

  “We’re not exactly dating,” she revealed.

  Kellen’s exaggerated gasp sounded as though it had enough suction to tug the phone to his lips. “I’ve never known you to be one for casual sex, Tayler,” he replied. “I’m proud of you.”

  “Look, guys, I promise I’ll tell you about Gage later. I need your help.”

  Her tone flattened, becoming more serious, and she heard both men shift positions.

  “What’s wrong?” Kellen asked.

  “I’ve been going through a situation here in the past few weeks. Have you guys heard anything on the news or read anything about the women who’ve been getting abducted along the coast?”

  Kellen’s reply was immediate. “The East Coast killer?”

  “I wasn’t aware that he had a name, but yes. I’ve, uh, kinda had a run in with him.”

  Both men replied at the same time. “What?”

  “The FBI is here at my house as we speak.”

  “We’ll be on the first flight out,” Ethan offered.

  “Gage has been taking care of me. I’m okay,” she reassured. “We’re trying to see if we can figure out if I’ve ever come in contact with him before this, and we think that he might have marked me as a target in Fayetteville.”

  “At the oncology summit?” Ethan asked. “Shit. How? There were hundreds of doctors there. You didn’t even have a presentation.”

  “That’s the same thing I said.”

  “Put it on speakerphone,” Gage cut in.

  She pressed the button and continued her questioning. “I’m trying hard to think back to the conference, what we did, where we ate, and who we might have talked to.”

  “We broke up into the smaller training sessions after the keynote,” Kellen added. “What about anyone at your table during the trainings?”

  “Think outside of the physicians,” Gage suggested.

  “Hey guys, that’s Gage,” she introduced. “He’s not the best with introductions. Or people. But, he’s really nice. Well, not nice, nice. Never mind. Gage, meet Kellen and Ethan.”

  “Anyone, even servers,” Gage went on. “Staff members. Door greeters. Were you wearing name tags? Was there anything that listed who the guests were or what facilities were being represented? Did you stop to talk to anyone that worked with Tayler that did present?”

  The line went silent. Tayler replayed the conference through her head from when she first walked into the hotel to her last night as she packed up her belongings.

  “Dr. Tipio,” Kellen spoke up. “He talked about the research that he was doing on disparities in cancer care. In the middle of his presentation, he announced that you would be taking over for him at Yearwood Medical. If this guy was in the room, he could have easily heard that. If he’d set his sights on you back then, one Google search is all he would’ve needed to find out where you were.”

  “The cottonmouth,” Gage suddenly said. “When the snake bit you in your office, you said that you’d had another run in with a cottonmouth. That wasn’t a coincidence. The person was paralleling what had happened. They’ve been in Yearwood for at least two years.”

  Tayler closed her eyes and tried to pull up the room. There was banquet-style seating with a table up front for presenters and the expert panel. A heavy partition was drawn to turn the long, rectangular room that had hosted the keynote speaker into the smaller training units. Servers, dressed in black, filled glasses of ice water. Then she saw him. He had sandy-brown hair, light brown eyes, a handsome face, and had been standing at the door. She remembered feeling eyes on her and looking up to his smile. Back then, it hadn’t been a face that she’d ever seen before. Now, it was a face that she’d seen. Often.

  She started toward the dining room, but Joel was already walking over to where they were standing.

  “Joel, I think I have a possible connection,” she said.

  “You remembered something?”

  “A familiar face from a conference I went to in Fayetteville. The height matches and he’s only been here about,” she gripped her chest, “two years. He came on as a paramedic.” She faced Gage. “He was there that night, Gage. The night we met. He helped us carry you. Oh God, was that the night? Is that why he was there so late? Was that the night?”

  Gage slipped his arm around her waist. “What’s the name, Tayler? Come on, what’s his name, baby?”

  “Eric,” she replied, gasping.

  Joel’s entire body twitched. He looked down at his legal pad then turned it to face them. On the pad, circled several times in roller ball pen, was the name Eric Hall.

  -15-

  Gage ignored Tayler’s requests for him to leave the downstairs bathroom as she heaved over the toilet. The minute the names had matched up, several agents had grabbed their guns and ran out the door to the address that Eric had on file at the hospital. Gage had continuously told her that she’d done an excellent job, but every compliment had only made her gag harder.

  The realization that the night she’d found him was the very same night that would have marked the beginning of the end of her life solidified everything that he’d believed about their relationship.

  “Gage, I don’t want you to see me like this,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “I—”

  Another bout started, and she lunged for the toilet. He knelt next to her and massaged the space between her shoulder blades. “I’ve gutted men with combat knives and then slept like a baby the same night, Tayler. This is nothing.”

  When she was finished, she flushed the toilet and moved to the sink. A volume of tears he’d never before seen were tumbling from both corners of each eye. She shook so hard he was afraid she would jar something loose.

  He watched her as she rinsed and gripped the bathroom counter as though it was the only thing supporting her. When she was finished, the minute she released the counter, her legs gave way. Before she fell, he picked her up and carried her out to the sofa. Instead of sitting her down, he sat and pulled her into his ches
t. She was terrified and in near shock. The main thing she needed at that moment was to know that he was there. That he had her.

  They sat in silence until she calmed enough to fit her head in the crook of his neck beneath his chin, then she slipped her fingers through his.

  “You do know what this means, don’t you?” she asked. “You and I meeting right at the moment we did. Me getting this house in a will. All of this happening. It’s what brought us together and kept us together.”

  “What does it mean to you?” he asked. “I’ve already decided what it means to me. Want me to tell you?”

  She shook her head. “No. Tell me when all of this is over.”

  *****

  The address that Eric had kept on file led to a house so desolate that if anyone had lived there in the last five years, they were likely of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre variety.

  Joel picked up a rock and flung it at the front door out of frustration. He’d had his first solid lead in months, and it meant absolutely nothing.

  “It’s completely clean on the inside,” an agent said, walking up.

  “No shit,” he grumbled.

  “Shouldn’t be too hard to find him around these parts, Lattimore. Don’t get all bent up.”

  Irritation seeped from his pores. That was the problem. The town was the size of the nail on his pinky. Why the hell was this man so hard to find? Hiding in this place was like playing hide and seek with a toddler. Yet, even with government resources, they were always two steps behind the curve.

  He slid into the sedan and pressed his head back into the seat. His phone began to vibrate against his pocket. “This is Lattimore,” he answered.

  “Katia and the children are missing,” the voice on the other side reported. “We’re here at the residence and found the husband barely conscious. Head trauma. He’s en route to the hospital. The sheriff’s already put out a BOLO and an Amber Alert.”