by Mary Stone
That all changed when Yolanda Hernandez’s little Honda sedan had been hit by a drunk driver in a Lincoln sports utility vehicle. The man in the expensive SUV had survived, but Yolanda and her son were pronounced dead at the scene.
Almost all Yolanda’s family still lived in their native El Salvador, so custody of Maria had been granted to her drug-addicted father. For a short time, the man cleaned up his act, but the charade didn’t last.
Little more than a month before she had gone missing, Maria had been caught in possession of marijuana at a house party. Based on Levi’s writeup, the tone of which exuded only a fraction of the irascibility Noah knew must have been present in the man’s eyes, there was a good chance Maria had met Lewin at the party.
At the time, Lewin had been twenty-nine, and his younger cousin—a senior at Maria’s high school—had hosted the party. There were a number of other drugs passed around that night, including methamphetamine and cocaine.
Five weeks later, Maria Hernandez dropped off the face of the planet.
Classmates had expressed concern about her attendance at school, and some of her friends indicated that Maria and a few other freshmen had started to use harder substances like meth and coke.
When Maria was reported missing by her father, police assumed she must have run away. They made a half-assed effort to find her, but ultimately, the disappearance of a lower-class teenager whose father was a drug addict didn’t appeal to the mainstream press.
Over the past couple weeks, Noah had worked with and learned more about Levi Brandt, including his motivation for obtaining a position in the Victim Services Division of the FBI. Levi’s background was similar to Autumn Trent’s, and he worked in Victim Services to make sure that people like Maria Hernandez didn’t fall through the cracks.
Levi was a good man and a damn fine agent, but if Noah was honest with himself, the man was scary as hell when he was mad.
Winter told him about the incident with Gina Traeger and the Richmond PD, but Noah had been convinced that her description was exaggerated.
Some people swore a lot when they were angry, and some had difficulty focusing themselves enough to form comprehensive statements, but not Levi. Agent Brandt was as articulate when he was pissed as he was when he was calm. According to Bree, Levi would have made a good mob boss.
When the screen of Noah’s phone lit up, he blinked a couple times to ensure he had not fallen asleep.
No, he was still awake.
With a quiet groan, he grabbed the device to squint at the number. Though he assumed the caller was a follow-up on one of the six-thousand outbound calls he had made that month, the area code didn’t belong to Virginia.
“A Texas area code,” he muttered to himself. Maybe his mom or his sister had gotten a new phone number, he thought. Either way, his curiosity was piqued, and he swiped the green key at the last second.
“This is Agent Dalton.”
“Agent Dalton,” a man drawled in response. His tone was upbeat, almost excited, but Noah couldn’t place his voice.
“Who is this?” Noah asked.
“Mark Quesada, SAC from the Violent Crimes Division of the Dallas office. One of our friends in the Dallas PD, Detective Jake Nielson, put me in touch with you. You used to be in the Dallas PD, right?”
“That’s right.” Noah rubbed his eyes with his free hand. “I was in the Dallas PD for four years. Tactical response for most of it. Detective Nielson was in narcotics, so we ran into one another whenever he’d be doing a raid on some cartel facility. What can I do for you, SAC Quesada?”
The SAC chuckled. “That’s exactly what Detective Nielson said, and you’re right. I’m not just calling to shoot the shit with you. Like I said, I’m with Violent Crimes. That’s your division too, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Noah confirmed, but he guessed the SAC already knew every detail of his life, down to his shoe size.
“Great. We’ve been looking into what you guys are working on out there in Virginia, The Norfolk Executioner. He’s been killing rapists and pedophiles, is that right?”
“Yeah. Murderers too.”
“Right, right,” Quesada replied. “That’s what we saw out here too.”
Noah sat up straighter, grabbing his pen to take notes. “Go on.”
“It’s about five years old now, at least the most recent one is,” the SAC explained. “But, yeah. We popped open some old case files out of curiosity, and it seems like we might be looking for the same guy. About five or six years ago, we had a series of murders just like you’re looking at in Richmond and Norfolk.”
“How many victims total?” Noah asked.
“Ten that we know of. One about six months before the rest. The weird part about it all was that he shot the first ones. The first four, actually. All with the same weapon, but when we found the fourth body, the weapon was there. A Heckler and Koch G36 automatic rifle. No serial number, no nothing. Far as we could tell, he made the damn thing himself.”
The hair on the back of Noah’s neck stood up. “We found a Barrett Model 98 Bravo sniper rifle at the scene of the third murder. He killed the first three with the same weapon, and after he got rid of it, he’s been—”
“Killing them with a hunting knife,” Quesada finished for him. “Yeah, Agent Dalton, that’s exactly what happened here too. About half the bodies were around Killeen, and the other half were closer to Dallas. They weren’t all necessarily in an urban area, though. Some were in rural areas outside the city.”
“There’s no pattern to the location, at least not as far as we can tell,” Noah replied.
“Bingo. The only pattern is the victims’ pasts. And the notes that are left behind. Believe it or not, they were like those ransom notes you used to see in movies. Letters cut out of a magazine or newspaper.”
“Notecards this time, and the words are typed.”
“Guess our vigilante has gotten more efficient over the years,” Quesada mused. “Sure seems like we’re looking at the same killer, don’t you think, Agent Dalton?”
Noah leaned back in his chair. “I’d say so, yeah.”
“We’ll send you everything we’ve got from those murders, including our BAU people’s profile and all the suspects we ruled out. I’ll also have one of my agents fly out to Richmond this evening to help you and your people go through it. She worked on the Killeen Executioner case right after she got out of Quantico. She’s Special Agent Chloe Villaruz, and she’ll be there a little after supper time.”
33
There were more people in the briefing room than Winter had ever seen at one time. Considering the amount of news coverage devoted to The Norfolk Executioner case, however, the manpower was warranted.
After her evaluation of Sun Ming, Autumn had been called back for a consultation on the new information about the killer’s activity around Killeen. Her green eyes flicked back and forth as Winter eased the glass door closed behind herself.
Even as she felt a pang of sympathy for her friend, she was glad for her presence at the early morning o’clock meeting. Like Aiden, Autumn had a keen eye for details that a normal person might overlook.
As Winter took a seat beside Noah, she didn’t miss the scrutinizing glance Sun cast to her friend. If Sun flashed any more of the venomous looks at Autumn, Winter would make a mental note to ask the tenured agent what in the hell her problem was.
Chances were good Sun’s issue had to do with the slight tilt of Aiden’s head as he leaned in to say something to Autumn, or with the way Autumn’s lips curled into a faint smirk at the softly spoken comment.
Over the drone of the handful of conversations in the room, Winter couldn’t make out what Aiden said, but apparently, the fact that he had uttered a private word to another woman was enough to set Sun on edge.
Winter fought against an eye roll as she lifted her paper mug of coffee to her lips.
Well, at least Sun’s anxiety from her brush with the business end of their investigation had worn away. T
he woman seemed to be back to her usual prickly self.
The chatter died down as Max cleared his throat, and within moments, all eyes were fixed on the front of the room. The SAC stood beside a tall, willowy woman whose green and amber eyes seemed to sparkle beneath the light overhead. She had pinned her ebony hair back in a neat ponytail, and she held a black leather jacket in one arm.
When Winter glanced over to Noah, she felt as if a hand might have constricted around her throat. The corner of his mouth had turned up into the start of a smile, and there was an unmistakable glint in his eyes.
Brushing a stray piece of hair from her face, Winter swallowed against the tightness in her throat and forced her focus back to Special Agent Chloe Villaruz.
She hardly heard a word the woman said.
A chasm had opened up in Winter’s mind, and the pit of darkness threatened to swallow her whole.
Stomach in knots, the burn of bile in the back of her throat, Winter went through the perfunctory motion of note-taking as Max talked them through the murders that had occurred five years earlier around Dallas, Texas.
When she looked down to read over what she had written, all the material felt new. She could hardly recall hearing the words she had scrawled, much less writing them.
She was in one of the most important briefings so far in her career, and her thoughts would not stay put.
Her gaze was fixed on Max, but all she could see was that damn look on Noah’s face. As she paused to consider her visceral reaction, she wasn’t so sure she could label the sentiment as jealousy.
That’s what she should have felt, wasn’t it? Was that what a normal woman would have felt if they watched their friend—a friend who they had begun to view in an entirely different light—gawk at an attractive woman?
Had Noah even gawked?
The more thought she gave his fleeting expression, the more unsure she became.
Despite the new light in which she had started to view her friend, the fact remained that Winter and Noah were not together.
In fact, until recently, she had done a damn fine job of making sure he knew they weren’t together. Just because something in her head had shifted didn’t mean that same thing had shifted in Noah’s mind.
As far as he knew, they were still friends with a couple of awkward kisses under their belt.
Winter knew they weren’t the only pair of friends who had shared an awkward kiss—she could still picture Autumn’s sarcastic grin when she first told her the story.
During her undergraduate, Autumn had been friends with a grad student who studied Industrial Organizational Psychology. Though their relationship was platonic, there had been at least one misunderstanding between them that had resulted in a kiss.
They laughed off the misstep, and now, they still communicated regularly through text messages and emails.
Autumn’s friend was married now, and he and his wife expected the arrival of their first child in January or February.
Was that how Winter and Noah’s friendship would go?
A year from now, two years from now, would they be connected only through a series of electronic messages? An occasional video chat? Would Noah send her an invitation to his wedding through email, or would she receive a physical copy?
She didn’t want that. She didn’t want any of it. She didn’t want to type out a periodic update to send to him after he had moved back home to Texas, didn’t want to add him on Skype just so she could see his bright smile, and she sure as hell didn’t want to watch him marry a veritable stranger.
But whenever she looked to Chloe Villaruz, all she could see was his inevitable absence in her life.
No one stayed single forever, especially not someone like Noah. And when he found the woman of his dreams, what would that mean for Winter?
The thought was selfish, she knew. She should want what was best for her friend, and if that was another woman, then so be it.
She wanted him to be happy, but for the first time, she realized she wanted the cause of that happiness to be her. Not Chloe Villaruz, not a woman he had yet to meet, but Winter.
She didn’t want to lose him, but she reminded herself what had happened the last time she was overcome with the same type of anxiety. In a panic brought on by the thought that he might vanish from her life, she had initiated their second awkward kiss.
At the time, she had stepped away, horrified that she might have ruined the only real friendship she’d had since grade school. Now, if they were back in the galley kitchen of her apartment, she would have wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held on like it was the last chance she would ever get to be so close to him.
Because, as far as she knew, the evening in her kitchen might have been the last opportunity.
“Agent Black.”
Max’s gravelly voice jerked her out of the darkening pit of anxiety like a flare brought to life in the dead of night.
Rather than vocalize a response, she met his steely gaze and nodded.
“You and Agent Villaruz head to the ME’s office and see what you can find out about our newest victim, Alex Rolaz. Dr. Nguyen should’ve had enough time to look over the body by now.”
Without a glance to Chloe Villaruz, Winter nodded again. She felt like an alien who had just stepped off their spacecraft for the first time.
As Max delegated tasks to the remainder of the room—aside from Autumn, at least—Winter brushed a finger along the adhesive at the top of her notepad. She paid special attention to each indentation and scratch, and at the same time, she focused on the faint strawberry and vanilla of her body spray.
It was a scent Noah often complimented, but she forced the thought from her head as soon as it surfaced.
The entire purpose of grounding was to avoid a panic attack, not instigate one. Maybe tomorrow she would use the lime and coconut fragrance Autumn had given her for Best Friend’s Day. Autumn had gifted Noah with a candle from the same store, and ever since, he went back to buy a replacement each time the wax was gone.
Damn it.
She barely prevented herself from uttering the words aloud. Grounding didn’t work when every damn thought led her back to the person she was trying to forget.
“Thanks again for coming by, Dr. Trent,” she heard Max say when she managed to focus her hearing.
“No problem,” Autumn replied. With a smile, she extended a hand to the tenured SAC. As Max accepted the handshake, Autumn’s pleasant expression didn’t waver.
There, she told herself. Think about Autumn, or Max, or even Aiden. They’re all over there smiling at one another, and you’re here with your head stuck in the clouds like some kind of high schooler with a crush on the homecoming king.
No, Noah had never been crowned homecoming king, nor prom king, nor any other type of teenage royalty. He had hated high school, and he’d spent the majority of his time on his grandparents’ ranch as they helped set his uncle up to take over the property.
Then, as soon as he graduated, he joined the military to follow in the footsteps of his stepfather, Chris.
Damn it, she thought. You’re doing it again. Stop it.
“Agent Black?” a woman’s voice asked.
Winter snapped her attention away from Autumn, Aiden, and Max as she and Noah looked over to the speaker.
“Hi, that’s me,” Winter said. Good lord, she sounded like a bumbling idiot. “Sorry, it’s early, and I haven’t had very much caffeine yet today. It’s nice to meet you.” With a practiced smile, Winter shoved to her feet and offered her hand to the woman.
“I can sympathize,” Chloe laughed. The sound was pleasant, almost melodic. “I’m a caffeine junkie, so you’re in good company. We can swing by a Starbucks on our way to the ME’s office.”
“Just stay away from the coffee in the breakroom,” Noah advised.
Winter wanted to put a hand over his mouth to keep his usual charm at bay, but she forced herself to maintain a smile instead. “Yeah, it’s pretty disgusting.”
“We’ve got one.” Winter almost jumped at Bobby Weyrick’s voice. “Sorry, wasn’t eavesdropping. Or at least I didn’t think I was, anyway. It’s past my bedtime, that’s about all I know for sure.” For emphasis, he stifled a yawn.
“Wait,” Noah said, narrowing his eyes at the agent from the night shift. “Y’all have a coffee maker that you’ve never told us about?”
“Hey, you heard the woman.” A smirk tugged at the corner of Bobby’s mouth as he spread his hands. “Each shift gets its own. Y’all want one, y’all go get one. Or, you know, come to the night shift.”
“No, thank you.” Noah looked appalled at the thought. “I’m good. I did that for two years while I was in Dallas.”
When Chloe flashed a smile at Bobby, Winter was almost relieved.
She learned a couple days earlier that Bobby and his wife had decided to divorce, but as far as she knew, the man didn’t have a new love interest.
Weyrick was a year younger than Noah, and for the first time, she let herself take stock of his appearance.
If it hadn’t been styled, the ends of his dark blond hair would have hung just past his earlobes. His black suit was tailored, though she doubted the price of Bobby’s attire surpassed that of Aiden Parrish’s.
Winter wondered if part of the men’s training at Quantico had involved suit selection.
Without a doubt, Bobby Weyrick was a good-looking guy. Autumn had mentioned as much from the weeks she had been under Bobby’s protection, but until now, Winter had merely taken Autumn at her word.
A quick glance to Noah confirmed that he had noticed her inspection of Bobby, but the disheartened shadow behind his eyes hadn’t been the reaction for which she had hoped.