by Mary Stone
Autumn lifted an eyebrow at him. “Does this something have anything to do with the FBI? Or…?” She left the query unfinished.
“Something with the FBI, yeah. A case you already know about. Winter’s brother, Justin Black.” The good humor vanished from his features like it hadn’t been there.
As memories of the shadowy, two-story house flitted back to her, Autumn’s mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton balls. Nodding, she gestured to the fridge. “Do you want anything to drink?”
He shook his head. “I’m fine. I polished off an entire Chai latte on my way here.”
Autumn wanted to make a joke, but her good humor had also vanished at the mention of Winter’s missing brother. With another nod, she pulled open the fridge to retrieve a can of caffeinated soda.
“Winter’s working a case that has to do with Noah’s father, Eric Dalton. I told her while she’s doing that, I’d follow up with whatever the CSU found at that house, and I’d dig through the old Justin Black files.”
“And?” Autumn took the first sip from her drink as she met his eyes.
He broke away from the look as he shook his head. “There’s something about it I don’t like. I already had the paperwork sent to Shadley and Latham. They signed their part, so all I need is for you to sign yours.”
Her eyes widened as he slid a folded sheet of paper across the bar to her. “Shit, this is official-official, then?”
His nod was slow, his expression grim. “Yeah. It’s an official threat assessment. We haven’t found any solid leads to Justin Black yet, but I need to know what I’m getting myself and the rest of the bureau into when I do.”
Autumn was in a daze as she reached for a pen. As she scrawled her signature along the dotted line at the bottom of the paper, she felt like she had just signed away any unprofessional thoughts she might have had about Aiden Parrish.
Biting back a sigh, she held out the paper for him to tuck away. “Okay. So, now it’s officially official.”
His eyes scanned her face before he took it from her hand. “I saw the CSU’s report, but I’m curious to hear your take on what you saw in that house. First impression, I suppose.”
She couldn’t hold back the sigh this time. Raking the fingers of one hand through her hair, she forced herself not to shiver. “It was weird. Just…weird. Creepy, more like it was a haunted house than an old crime scene. Not that those things are mutually exclusive, but you get my point, right?”
He nodded as he sat at the nearest barstool and propped both elbows atop the granite counter. “Any thoughts on what kind of person might have left a message like that?”
She rubbed her eye, which had started to twitch a little. “That’s a loaded question, don’t you think?”
With a slight shake of his head, he spread his hands. “I’m not going to take any of this back to Winter. I need an honest assessment of what this kid is like now.”
She brought an index finger to her lips to bite her nail, but she dropped the hand just as fast. The day before, she had painted her nails for that express purpose—to stop the nervous habit that she’d only just developed in the past few weeks.
“An honest assessment,” she echoed.
“Yes. Based on what you saw when you were at that house with Winter the other night.”
She didn’t have to stop to mull over the scene of her friend’s childhood house—over the past twenty-four hours or more, she had run through the scene more times than she could count. And in that time, she’d put her extensive studies in abnormal psychology to work.
She didn’t have to take the time to come up with an answer to Aiden’s question because she’d already come up with an honest assessment.
Tapping a finger against the can of soda, she looked back to Aiden. “He wrote two different messages to Winter in rat’s blood, and he left a pile of mutilated rat carcasses in a corner of the room where their parents were brutally murdered. The content of the messages might be a little cryptic, but the motive seems pretty clear to me.”
Aiden was quiet as he watched her, waiting. There was a tinge of seldom seen trepidation in his pale eyes, and the uncharacteristic look made her consider relocating to a bunker in the middle of a desert.
She swallowed the nervousness, and when she spoke, her voice was steady and calm. “He’s taunting her.”
14
After her discussion with Aiden that morning, Winter had renewed her dedication to the Eric Dalton—and now, Natalie and Jon Falkner—case. Like he so often was, Aiden had been right, and his reassurance had been more effective than even Winter had anticipated.
Winter glanced over to Bree as the other woman shifted the sedan into park at the top of a sloped driveway. After a chaotic jaunt through the airport, a flight from Richmond to Baltimore, and then a rushed effort to get to Natalie and Jon Falkner’s house, Bree still looked like she’d just woken up from a solid eight hours of sleep. Someday—not at the scene of a potential kidnapping—Winter would ask for the woman’s secret.
As Bree pulled the key from the ignition, she met Winter’s gaze and raised a sculpted brow. “You ready? The Baltimore cops have been waiting for us before they go inside.”
Reaching for the door handle, Winter nodded. “Yeah, definitely. Let’s do this.”
Normally, the FBI office in Baltimore would handle a kidnapping in their own city, but since the alleged abduction was associated with an active case from Richmond, they had been more than willing to bring in Bree and Winter. Max wanted the two agents from his office to physically visit the potential crime scene, and the Baltimore SAC, Marie Judd, had personally welcomed them to the city.
Even from the short interaction, Winter could safely say the Baltimore SAC was a fascinating person. She’d been a Naval Intelligence Analyst for a decade before she joined the FBI, but she was still one of the youngest women to ever attain the lofty status of Special Agent in Charge.
Winter and Bree produced their badges as they neared the front porch. The two detectives, one clad in a charcoal suit, the other in a teal dress shirt and a black blazer, both nodded a greeting.
“Detectives.” Bree flashed her badge one more time before she tucked it back into the pocket of her jacket. “I’m Agent Stafford, this is Agent Black.”
As she held up her own badge, Winter shifted her gaze from the man to the woman.
Though they appeared alert, shadows darkened the skin beneath their eyes. Baltimore was a large city, and even though its crime rate was in a steady decline, the occurrence of violent acts still surpassed much of the country. Winter could only imagine how thin the two detectives were stretched.
The man met Winter’s eyes first, then Bree’s. “I’m Detective Schaeffer, and this is my partner, Detective Vinson.”
With a faint smile, the woman nodded. “We’re with the Major Crimes Division. We work with the bureau quite a bit.”
Brushing a piece of curly hair from her eyes, Bree offered the duo a quick smile. “That’s good to hear. I can spare you the usual spiel.”
Bree’s smile was infectious, and Winter soon wore a matching expression. “Have you guys found anything yet? Anything that looks off from the outside?”
Detective Vinson shook her head. “No, nothing out of the ordinary. We called Mr. and Mrs. Falkner’s bosses, but they didn’t have much to say. Mrs. Falkner apparently sent an email to tell her boss that she’d be out for a few days of personal time. She’s a flight attendant, and the manager we talked to said she hardly ever used her time off. He thought it was weird, but he didn’t question it. I guess he figured she needed the vacation.”
The man next to her made a sound that crossed somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “He’s probably not wrong. But Mr. Falkner’s absence was a little more abrupt. He didn’t give quite as much notice. He’s a manager at a retail store, and one of the other managers said he just sent a text message to tell them he was sick.”
Winter glanced over to Bree. “Seems like a little mor
e than a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Bree nodded. “Definitely. So, I don’t suppose the door’s unlocked?”
The man reached into his suit jacket. “No, it’s locked, but I’ve got the key.”
The muddy daylight glinted off the silver as he held out the key for them to observe.
The detective was being so smirky that Winter chuckled. “Do I want to know how you got that?”
Detective Schaeffer grinned. “See that gnome by the flowers at the base of the stairs?”
As she followed his outstretched hand, she nodded. The gnome held a shovel in its hands, and its pleasant smile and rosy cheeks insisted nothing was amiss. To the side of the nonchalant garden sentry, a patch of yellow chrysanthemums had started to bloom.
“I used to have one just like it at my house.” This time, the comment came from Detective Vinson. The corners of her green eyes creased as she smiled. “It was for my kid. She’d forget her head if it wasn’t attached to her body. It looks like a regular garden gnome, but one of its shoes comes apart so you can store a key inside.”
Winter returned her gaze to the pair and nodded. “A fake garden gnome. I’d be afraid some bad guy would have one just like it and target every house with a gnome.” Though she worried for a second that the comment might have come across as derisive, both detectives snickered.
Vinson nodded. “That’s why I also have a security system and changed all the outside doors to keyless locks.”
“Good thinking,” Winter said as Schaeffer pulled open the screen door. Once the lock disengaged with a metallic click, he gave the interior door a tentative shove.
The air around them seemed to freeze as they all peered into the shadowy foyer.
A handful of coats hung from hooks mounted to one wall, and on a mat beneath the jackets were several pairs of shoes. Two pairs clearly belonged to Jon Falkner, and the remaining three—boots and two pairs of tennis shoes—must have been Natalie’s.
“Hello?” Detective Schaeffer called. “Hello? Is anyone home? This is the Baltimore Police Department. We’re here to check to see if you’re okay.”
Detective Vinson’s green eyes flicked over to Winter and Bree. “We already knocked for a solid ten minutes, and there was no answer. Unless the person in there just took a handful of Ambien, I doubt anyone’s inside.”
Bree’s expression turned grim. “No one alive, anyway.”
Detective Vinson merely nodded.
Glancing back to his partner, Detective Schaeffer dropped one hand to his service weapon and unsnapped the holster. Vinson followed suit as the two took the first few steps into the foyer.
Bree and Winter each brandished their respective handguns and followed the detectives into the gloom. None of them actually thought there were Russian gangsters hiding in the shadows, but Winter wasn’t willing to take the chance with such a formidable adversary.
As the screen door slammed closed, Winter’s breath caught in her throat.
Her pulse began to hammer in her ears, and she could hardly hear as Detective Schaeffer announced that the immediate area was clear. The icy rush of danger surged through her veins, specks of darkness dancing along the edges of her periphery.
Something was wrong.
She opened her mouth to provide a warning to Bree and the detectives, but her tongue felt thick and fuzzy.
Swallowing in a desperate effort to return some of the moisture to her mouth, Winter squeezed her eyes closed against the encroaching darkness at the edge of her vision.
That had to be what was wrong. She was about to have a vision.
But there had been no headache. No warning. No semblance of the usual tip-off her body provided before she lapsed into unconsciousness.
Instead, she was overwhelmed with paranoia and anxiety. Her palms were clammy, her breathing labored.
Someone stood behind her. She could hear them as they breathed.
Whirling around on one foot to face the attacker she was sure was there, her heart pounded a merciless rhythm against her chest.
The muddy daylight streamed in through the screen door as a handful of dust motes floated through the air. All five pairs of shoes sat on the gray and green mat, and all the coats hung on their hooks.
Aside from the dust, the area was still. Empty.
There had been someone there. She had heard them.
The panic that raced through her body wasn’t the result of unfounded nervousness. That overwhelming anxiety had been real.
Winter couldn’t recall a time when she’d felt such a visceral reaction to…nothing.
“Winter?”
She barely stopped herself from leveling her Glock in the direction of the woman’s voice.
Bree’s brows drew together. “Is everything okay? Did you see something?”
Nothing visible to you.
Forcing a smile, Winter kept both arms at her sides to conceal the tremor in her hands. Rather than give voice to the bizarre rush of panic, she shook her head. “No, nothing.”
Bree tapped a finger beneath one nostril. “You’ve got a bloody nose.”
Winter bit back a string of four-letter words as she reached into the pocket of her jacket for a tissue. “Shit. Thanks. It’s probably the dry air up here.”
Bree didn’t look convinced, but before she could question Winter more, Detective Schaeffer rounded a corner at the edge of the living room. “It’s clear. No one’s here, and nothing seems to be out of place.”
“Something happened here.” Bree’s voice was calm and certain. She sounded like she had just given them the answer to a basic math question.
Schaeffer returned his matte black handgun to its holster. “I don’t doubt it. The Russians are good at this type of thing, though. Kidnapping for ransom is part of their business model, and whenever someone owes them, they love to use family members as collateral. It’s not surprising that they’d leave it without a trace.”
Winter pulled a pair of gloves from the collection bag she kept in her pocket and began to put them on. “There’s always a trace.”
The detective shrugged. “True enough. We’ve got some officers keeping an eye on Mrs. Dalton and her son, but the brass doesn’t like us pulling people into federal safe houses unless we’ve got something to indicate that they’re in danger.”
Bree scoffed and pulled out her own gloves. “Eric Dalton’s deal with the Russians isn’t enough for that? You said yourself that they’ve got a habit of abducting family members.”
For the second time, Schaeffer shrugged. “You’re right, but this city’s budget is stretched thin enough as it is. If we threw everyone in a safe house when we thought they might be in trouble, we’d be bankrupt before the first fiscal quarter ended.”
Despite the reassuring presence of Bree and the two city detectives, Winter couldn’t shake the lingering haze of paranoia.
When unbidden images of a newly released horror film began to surface in her thoughts, she squeezed her eyes closed and pinched the bridge of her nose. She’d watched the trailer for the film a few weeks earlier—it had been a welcome distraction from the veritable mountain of paperwork with which she had been saddled.
Even though she’d expressed interest to Noah and Autumn about going to see the movie once it came out in theaters, Winter and Noah had been sucked into their newest case before they had a chance to make plans.
She was certain the images in her head were scenes from the film, but she didn’t know how in the hell they’d gotten there.
Now, her sixth sense was responsible for spoiling movies. Great.
She suppressed a groan as she dabbed a few tissues under her nose, making sure the bleeding had stopped. All she needed was to contaminate the scene with her own DNA. She’d have some explaining to do then.
When she stepped closer to the kitchen, her vision became clearer. Winter hadn’t experienced the terror, the breathing. But Natalie had.
With feet that felt like lead, Winter made her way to the ceram
ic tile that marked the start of the modest kitchen. From beneath the closed lid of the trash can, she spotted an unmistakable red glow. A red glow that didn’t illuminate the drywall behind the can.
Her breathing grew labored as she stepped farther into the kitchen, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. But she didn’t stop moving forward. Instead, she kept her eyes fixed on the red glow.
Reaching out, she gripped the trash can’s lid and lifted. Although she braced herself, expecting to find something horrible like a decapitated head, she breathed out a sigh of relief when only the broken shards of a plate glowed red like they were fragments from a radioactive disaster.
The din of Bree and the detectives’ voices drifted over to her, but she didn’t pause to try to make out their words. As she turned to face the row of cabinets above the sink, she heard it again.
The breathing, its cadence calm and measured.
Now that she was sure the sound had been manufactured by the part of her brain responsible for the headaches and visions that had plagued her since she was attacked by Douglas Kilroy, she was able to push past most of the rush of fright and anxiety.
Even with this knowledge, as she advanced to the sink, she might as well have been trudging through quicksand.
Every instinct instilled in her since even before she’d joined the bureau told her to turn around and run, but she pointedly reminded herself that the paranoia was part of the strange vision.
A sharp sting in the side of her neck jerked her attention away from the careful examination of the pristine countertop. She winced as she snapped a hand up to clasp at the site of the pain. Though she half-expected to see her palm smeared with the remnants of a wasp or a hornet, her hand was clean.
It was clean because Natalie hadn’t been stung by a wasp. She had been drugged with a syringe.
Winter finally turned her attention back to Bree and the detectives in the other room. To her relief, only Bree’s eyes were on her.
The taller woman raised an eyebrow. “What are you thinking?”
With a slight shake of her head, Winter looked back to the wooden cabinet. “There’s a broken plate in the trash can. I think Natalie dropped it.”