Winter’s End: Winter Black Series: Book Nine

by Stone, Mary

  This was the holy path. This was the legacy Grandpa left for me, to carry on his holy works. I needed to be more like him. I needed to be the wrath of God.

  “That’s right, sonny boy.”

  Grandpa nodded at me from the passenger seat, the flap of his ravaged skull flapping as he agreed. Dead eyes sought passage to my soul, and his mouth curled up into something that might have been a smile.

  But I was going about it all wrong. Hurting Winter had been my idea, my personal vendetta. It wasn’t God’s or Grandpa’s, but mine. I’d strayed off the path for the sake of petty vengeance. I didn’t need to hurt her. God didn’t want me to hurt her. I only needed to kill her.

  The thought of watching the life drain from her eyes was pleasing, and I felt better as I imagined it. I could still whet my desire to see her suffer, but I needed to see her suffer at the end of my blade, skewered through the heart. I needed to feel the heat of her blood on my hands as it pulsed from her body.

  Grandpa looked away, revealing the hole in his skull the bullet left behind. He stared out at the street and then reached a cold hand to the dashboard to the place I’d stabbed the knife. His gaze raked over me, promising punishment. It was a look of pure hate, though he didn’t speak.

  That was God’s mission. Grandpa’s mission. I shouldn’t have stopped hunting the people he couldn’t finish, the people on the list I’d made, who had cheated their preordained deaths the day Tyler and Kent and I tried to reveal to them the truth at the mall. I reminded myself I would continue that mission in due time.

  Winter was what was important right now. She was the only one who could stop me. It made sense then that she was the one I needed to remove so the holy work could keep going.

  And I already knew where she lived.

  17

  Dammit.

  Aiden slammed down his office phone, hoping SAC Max Osbourne felt the true extent of his irritation with him.

  A damn press conference? Now? With so little warning?

  Had Max lost his ever-loving mind?

  Slapping the file he’d been reading before the call down on his desk, Aiden closed his eyes to make all the stacks there disappear, if only for a moment. There were times when Aiden felt as though he spent his entire life flipping through carefully assembled file folders and reading reports. Sometimes, the enormity of that and all it involved was so…ridiculous.

  This report would have to be broken apart and the pieces reassembled inside a larger file. That would then be broken apart, scanned in and the original destroyed while waiting for the hard drives to fail so that all the information could disappear forever. In the meantime, what’s one rainforest, more or less.

  “We don’t actually work law enforcement,” he told the papers he was going through. “We just kill forests and reassemble them in cellars and call it ‘archived.’”

  “Sorry?” Bree asked as she came through the door of Aiden’s office. Noah was right behind her, nursing a cup of coffee and trying not to let out a yawn. It showed. Yawning and suppressing yawns looked remarkably similar. He also looked as though he’d slept in his suit and forgotten to shave that morning. If Aiden had to guess, he’d bet Bree had skipped the shower part as well. That should make Aiden’s announcement all that much sweeter.

  “Rough night?”

  Noah grimaced and pulled a long drink from the coffee cup. “They’re all going to be rough until this is resolved.” He sat heavily in a chair facing the desk, his shoulders slumped. “This mess has been rough on Winter.”

  “Well,” Aiden waved the newest entry into the ever-growing pile that was Justin’s file, “I don’t know if this will help or harm, but we got the DNA back from the saliva on Sandy Ulbrich’s cheek. It looks like a good partial match for Winter’s. It’s not exact, only a twenty-five percent match between half-siblings, but it’s consistent with half-siblings, about what we expected.”

  “Is it enough?” Noah took the papers from him and set the coffee on the edge of Aiden’s desk. “Is this enough to dig up Kilroy?”

  Aiden shrugged. “Max thinks it’s enough to go public.”

  “What do you mean?” Bree asked as she tried to read over her partner’s shoulder. Aiden wasn’t sure what she’d see that he didn’t. The details listed were helpful for tracking their findings, but only if you were a qualified expert on DNA research. Unless you knew what 18S rDNA was, or Triploblastica, Mesozoa, Eutriploblastica, or any of a hundred buzz words, it might as well all be in Greek. At least the conclusion paragraph at the end was pretty straightforward and written for the layman. The samples were enough of a match to indicate that Winter shared several markers with the…sample.

  But was it enough?

  “Max wants to go to the press with this,” Aiden informed them both.

  “Shit. When?” Noah handed the papers to his partner without looking. His eyes were firmly glued on Aiden to the point where a lesser man might have backed down. Aiden met the intense gaze square on. He could take it, though he noted the banked fires in those eyes, and the pain Noah was trying so hard to hide.

  The concern for Winter was obvious. Hell, Aiden shared it, though Aiden wondered if a small part of Noah’s reluctance to have a press conference soon was because he looked like shit. A man liked to look his best when getting his picture taken a million different ways. Especially when knowing your image was about to be disseminated around the country. Noah looked about as appealing as reheated leftovers with his scruffy jawline and bleary looking eyes.

  “It’s being assembled now.” Aiden took a deep breath and debated sending Noah out to shower and find a clean shirt. “Sorry to spring it on you, I just found out myself.”

  “This is a bit premature, isn’t it?” Bree asked, slipping the report onto his desk. “We’re making progress on this case, so I—”

  “There is a killer on the loose trying to recapture the glory days of some bastard with the name ‘Preacher.’” Aiden crossed his arms over his chest. “People are dying. Justin is either the killer or he came along Sandy Ulbrich and thought he’d give her a lick as she lay dying.” It wasn’t like Aiden to be so sarcastic, but right then, sarcasm felt good. “Either way, we can’t leave a murderer out there. If we can get the public to turn him in, fewer people get killed in the long run.”

  “I need to call Winter and warn her.” Noah was already reaching into his jacket pocket for his phone.

  “You don’t have time,” Aiden said. “As lead on this case, you two will be fielding questions. You need to be up there with us.”

  Noah was fully awake now. “I can’t go on TV and tell the world that Winter’s brother is a cold-blooded killer without warning her!”

  “Make it quick,” Aiden said, standing and heading for the door, “and see if you can manage talking to her on the run without tripping over your feet. We need to make our appearance.”

  He didn’t like taking the extra time, as they were on a tight timetable, but it was the decent thing to do. God only knew he could use some good karma about now.

  Bree looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights of a Mac truck, but she shook that off and rose, smoothing her pants as she stood. Aiden wasted no more time on conversation, and assuming that they would follow, headed out of the office and toward the elevators.

  Noah arrived with his phone by his ear as they waited for the car to arrive. They piled inside and Aiden pressed the button for the first floor when Noah started talking.

  “Winter? Damn.” His shoulders slumped and he leaned against the railing in the car for a moment. Aiden could hear the familiar sounds of a recording stating that the owner of the phone was unavailable. “Winter, I need to get a hold of you. There’s going to be a press conference. In fact, we’re on our way down there now. I wanted to warn you before you saw it.”

  Well, that was a hell of a thing. Nothing he could do about it now. Aiden cursed himself for not thinking to call her himself as soon as he had the news. It would have been the respectful thi
ng to do.

  The elevator doors opened, and Aiden strode through the hallway to a door marked “Press Room.” He stopped and looked back at the other two and tapped his watch at Noah. Time was up.

  “Gotta go. I…I’m sorry.” Noah hung up the phone and shoved it into his pocket, his expression that of a man wishing like hell he’d had a chance to talk to her directly. He caught up with the others just as Aiden opened the door, surprising Max, who was standing on the other side and watching the press assemble in the room past the curtains.

  “Looks like a full house,” Max grumbled, looking at the grim-faced men and women finding seats and the two cameras set up in the back of the room. If their intensity had anything to do with their announcements and a genuine desire to take a threat off the streets, none of the agents would have minded doing the press junket half so much.

  As it was, all of the major networks were in attendance, lined up beside the locals. Serial killers were all the rage and boosted ratings. Everyone else was a third-tier reporter, either in the process of scrambling up the corporate ladder, or in the case of one graying reporter in the corner, someone on their way out. This particular individual had been coming around ever since a scandal minor enough to shunt him to the side had broken last month. Of all of them there, he was the only one worth his salt as a reporter, if he was sober enough to put the story together.

  Not exactly the cream of the crop. It would have to do.

  Max checked his watch and nodded to the others. “Time’s up. Everyone ready?”

  Aiden nodded in return, and the four of them trotted out on the small raised stage, Max heading for the podium, Aiden directly behind him and to his right. Noah and Bree stayed in the background as flash after flash of cameras left them all blinded.

  The room lapsed into silence as the fourth estate waited breathlessly for the point of the meeting. Or more likely, they recognized the sooner this was over, the sooner they could get all the gory details on the air.

  “Ladies and gentlemen.” Max held up his hands. Not only did the gesture create full silence in the room, but it at least gave the illusion of the feds being the ones in control of the meeting. After he finished the customary introductions, he jumped right in. “There is a suspect in the murder case of the Ulbrichs and the Danville shootings.” He picked up a remote and pressed a button. The screen next to him sprang to life with an image of Jaime Peterson. Jaime, not Justin. Until this was over, it would be easier for Aiden to think of him as Jaime. Noah wasn’t the only one struggling to distance himself from the case.

  This particular image was a screen capture from the video Winter had received. In the video, Justin had sat in shadows, half sunk in blackness. The tech team had worked for hours to enhance the photo, using visible lines to more clearly outline the face. Then, an artist had taken the photo and created a composite sketch that they were now using.

  Unlike television shows, law enforcement couldn’t take a shit picture and make it look like a daisy. But this was pretty close, Aiden felt sure. And if it was as close as he believed, Jaime Peterson was a strikingly handsome young man with ruffled dark hair and a strong chin that made him look like a Hollywood version of a homecoming king.

  Instead of a menacing, dark threat, the sketch looked like a high school graduation picture, something posed and worthy of a yearbook entry. There was even a smile of sorts, if you didn’t look at the eyes. They weren’t smiling at all. Aiden was reminded of a shark as he stared into those cold, lifeless eyes.

  “This is Jaime Peterson,” Max was saying. “Also known as Justin Black. Jaime is possibly related to Douglas Kilroy, also known as The Preacher. We have reason to believe that Jaime was raised by Douglas Kilroy after Kilroy killed his parents and badly injured his sister.”

  Faced by cameras and a half-dozen major outlets ready to report anything they saw, Aiden kept his face impassive and his emotions in check. Despite the fact that Max was detailing more than he’d expected him to, Aiden was able to hold his face neutral. He just hoped the two behind him were able to do the same thing. The most important thing in press meetings like this was to show a sense of unity. Any division or altercation in the face that the Bureau showed would be exaggerated and rebroadcast.

  “The suspect is a childhood friend of Tyler Haldane and Kent Strickland, who were the principle shooters at the Riverside Mall in Danville, Virginia. The suspect may or may not have had prior knowledge of the shooting and is wanted on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder. The two shooters, Tyler Haldane and Kent Strickland, were intimately acquainted with the serial killer Douglas Kilroy, also known as The Preacher. It is for these reasons and others that the FBI has declared Jaime Peterson one of America’s Most Wanted.”

  What the hell?

  Aiden couldn’t hold his reaction. His head shot up, and he looked at Max. Remembering where he was, he turned his gaze to the press, wondering if they’d noticed. The old guy was poised, interested. Sober enough to understand what just happened. Thankfully far enough away that he couldn’t hear the sudden intake of breath Aiden had heard behind him. He didn’t know if it was Noah or Bree who had lost control, nor did it matter. They’d been broadsided every bit as much as he had.

  Why hadn’t Max warned him? Keeping them all in the dark was a shit move. The fact that he’d dropped this bomb in front of the press was unusual for a tenured SAC. Max liked a cohesive department, and this was close to being a violation of trust.

  America’s Most Wanted was how Douglas Kilroy came to be called The Preacher. Just being on the list brought the suspect into a harsh spotlight where half the country lived in terror of him and the other half wanted to hunt him down for the reward, even if no one ever said anything about there being one in the first place. With this one sentence, they’d just dramatically increased the chances of Justin not being taken alive.

  I should have delayed the press conference until Noah was able to get a hold of Winter. Hell, I should have called her myself. If this was such a surprise for us, it’s going to be devastating for her. God, I hope she’s able to talk to Noah before she sees this.

  Max continued with the boilerplate speech, the whole “asking for the public’s help,” and “do not approach” phrases which were standard at this point. All the crap you had to say when what you really meant was, “don’t let this man rest.” A suspect with no safe place to hide would often turn himself in just to be done with running. That was the best-case outcome. Aiden had his doubts that it would apply in this particular case.

  That done, Max introduced Noah and Bree as the agents in charge and opened the floor to questions.

  The Danville shooting was like tossing chum into shark-infested waters. The press fired question after question at Max, who sidestepped them with the aplomb of a master dancer.

  “Was he there at the time of the shooting?”

  “How many have died?”

  “Are we looking at a copycat killer?”

  “What is being done to apprehend the suspect?”

  “How is he related to the two mall shooters?”

  Questions that had already been addressed as well as probes for new and juicy bits of information peppered the air.

  Everything was part of “an ongoing investigation” and therefore “could not be discussed,” one of them said over and over. Noah and Bree carefully sidestepped the relationship between one of America’s Most Wanted and one of America’s Finest Agents. That too was a well-done dance, close enough to the truth without actually entering it. Noah, it seemed, had a gift for saying nothing at length.

  Aiden began to grow resentful, waiting until the conference was over. The fact that that bastard Kilroy could still be headline news even after his death was revolting. It was bad enough that these boys were following him and shooting up malls, but to keep him in the spotlight with the cute little names the press were calling him made Aiden more than a little nauseous.

  The best curse for that son of a bitch was obscurity, to be forgotten
and spend eternity as nothing more than a footnote, not rehashed over and over again. This madhouse of questions and press interest showed him what would happen if Kilroy was exhumed.

  A feeling of dread lay heavily on him as he looked at the swarming mass of reporters. This investigation needed to end. And quickly.

  18

  “Gotta go. I’m sorry.” Noah sounded harried and worried.

  The voice prompt asked if Winter wanted to delete the message or save it in the archives. She hung up on the recording, throwing the phone on the bed and grabbed for the TV remote, fumbling in her haste and knocking it under the nightstand. Cursing, she fished for it, flipping the TV on before she even turned around, hearing canned laughter behind her as a sitcom came up, startling her in its intensity.

  Still on her knees, she flipped through channels. There were few enough stations that cared about press conferences anymore. Soundbites were usually extracted and dangled on the evening news like sugar plums. There were a couple that still played them live, cable channels mostly, ones that didn’t care overly much about ratings.

  She couldn’t remember which number would find her the news and wound up flipping through a dozen movies and infomercials frantically, wanting to scream that the world cared more about tight abs than things that went bump in the night. She gritted her teeth in frustration.

  Mouth dry, she got up and sat on the edge of the bed, tightening the towel around her and vigorously drying her hair with another. The timing had been remarkably bad. She’d just stepped into the shower when Noah called and didn’t hear her phone. By the time she found the right channel, the press conference was already in full swing.

  Max took the podium, Aiden at his side. The handsome and debonair Aiden looked dyspeptic, as if something he ate wanted back out again.

  Bree, on the other hand, looked like she’d just walked out of a beauty spa. As far as traits went, it was irritating to say the least. Winter had spent the first week of their acquaintance feeling like the frumpy friend whenever the two of them were in the same room. Had they not been good friends and Bree not an absolute joy to be around, Winter would have had to hate her for that magical ability.