Intimate Danger (Empire Blue) (25 page)

Chapter Nineteen

“Seriously, Uncle Ben, I’m fine. Stop fussing over me like a mother hen.”

A few days after the attack, Charlie sat on her kitchen chair and
drew a leg up, sitting her bare foot on the wooden seat. She wrapped both palms around the cup of steaming coffee and brought the mug to her mouth. Heat from the liquid inside washed over her face, and she closed her eyes only to snap them open again. Dillon Echols’ harsh grin filled her mind behind her closed lids, something he’d been doing ever since that night. He was in her dreams, the living monster of her nightmare.

She glanced across the table to the chief, who studied her with silent, knowing eyes.

“Charlie,” he began in a soft voice. “It’s okay if you aren’t, you know? That was a very stressful situation you went through.”

She sat
her mug on the table, swallowed, tried to plead with her churning stomach to settle. Her stare sought and latched on to the colorful leaves on the sugar maple and pine trees lining the back of her property. Squirrels darted along brown limbs, jumped from branch to branch, and flew through the air without fear of falling. She pushed from the table, entranced in something so free, and headed toward the windows.

Wrapped in a thick white robe, she hugged her body, gripping the soft cotton.
The air conditioner clicked on, created a comforting hum, and the refrigerator rotated the ice in its bucket. Beyond all that, the chief sighed. The sounds of her life, showing it goes on. Rather than pushing forward, though, she was held suspended, a pause button pressed, unable to break away.

She stood at the
window, her soft reflection mirroring back. As if in another body, she studied her clenched fists holding on to the cloth, knowing if she let go, she’d simply fall apart.

Ben’s s
trong hands came down on her shoulders, the touch soft, but no less frightening. She tensed, but he didn’t move away.

“I know what you’re going through, Charlie. You
’re scared, can hardly hold it together. I won’t promise you it’ll get better. That same emptiness sitting inside, the one where you’re barely surviving? I went through it, too, after your father’s death.”

She dropped her head forward until she rested against the glass.

“Chief…” Her voice cracked and pain pricked inside her chest.

“No, you need to hear this.” His voice grew gruff, thick with emotion. “I failed your father, and I won’t break my promise to him.

“That night, we barely finished dinner when we were sent on a 911 call. Dispatch reported gunshots off Broadway and First. We hoofed it on foot, having only been a few blocks away. Your dad’s grim expression as we came up on the body of a young man, no older than eighteen, was so different than from what I saw minutes before. He was talking about your ninth birthday coming up, the plans he had for you.”

Her throat grew tight,
and her eyes stung with unshed emotion. “Please, Uncle Ben.”

Strong but gentle hands drew her away from the glass, turned her toward him. Woolsey pulled her into his embrace
. When she saw liquid in his bright, blue eyes, the dam of tears broke in her and she let go. She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face in his broad chest.

“You’d been bugging him all spring to get you a new catcher’s mitt. Our little Charlie.” H
is hands stroked down her hair. “Keeping up with the boys, wanting to prove something but wanting to do it with a pink mitt, right?”

She let out a watery laugh at the memory. Playing on the town’s little league team garnered the attention of many mothers, all who chastised her father
each time they got the chance. Nowadays, it was common to find a girl on the team, but back then, it had been almost as bad as the pants she always wore. Never a dress, or a skirt. Her father ignored them all and told her to do what made her comfortable and happy.

“I still have that mitt.” She’d been given it the day of her father’s funeral. Uncle Ben held her as she cried
then, too. Much as he did now.

His arms gave her a brief squeeze. “He planned to take you to the city, meet with a few Yankee players before the game, worked out to have you help the ball
boys catch the practice hits. Andy Hawkins was planning on surprising you by tossing a few pitches your way.”

She choked on a sob, and his arms wound around her tighter. Andy had been her idol, the starting pitcher’s pictures plastered across her room.

“Your dad was excited to take you there and told me about it before that call. He loved to watch your eyes light up when it came to baseball. I knew what he was talking about, because when he spoke of you, his eyes did pretty much the same thing. So, as we arrived on scene and the switch occurred in your dad, it was like night and day. It was a change I never saw before. I wanted us to split apart, cover more ground that way and try to find the shooter. Your dad said we should stay together, that we didn’t know where the threat was.”

Woolsey heaved a sigh before continuing, “Eventually
, we split up. I headed up First, and he went down Second to cut anyone off. It hadn’t been any longer than maybe three minutes before the sound of a gunshot ripped through the air.”

The
chief continued to pet her hair, rocked his body from side to side. His entire frame radiated pain and shook with the force of it. “I found him lying prone, stripped of his weapon and radio. He was barely breathing, staring at the sky with a peaceful expression. It was so wrong, seeing him laying in all that blood and not saying a single thing.

“I pressed on his wound, but the blood came through my fingers faster than I could stop it. A stomach wound was fatal
. We both knew that. Your dad wrapped his hands around mine and then the bastard actually grinned at me.”

Charlie smiled for a moment at the affection and bafflement in his tone.

“He made me promise to keep you safe, to allow you to become the woman you wanted to be. He spoke of your mother, how much you reminded him of her, and how from day one, you’d taken over his heart. He explained how when the nights would get too rough, how the pain would become almost unbearable over the loss of your mother, he’d go sit by your bed and watch you sleep. You were his everything, the focus of his life.”

She didn’t realize she was
n’t standing on her own any longer until the chief led her to the couch, and sat, settling her next to him. His hold never lessened. He sheltered her, provided his strength and protection, just as he had always done.

“I was angry with myself for weeks after he died. Destructive, not only to my professional life but my personal one, too. I pushed myself away, became a loner. My wife saw to your needs, tried to help you in your comfort, but you cried non-stop and the guilt inside of me grew and grew every day.

“Uncle Ben,” she began.

“No, Charlie, let me finish. We both need it.”

She wanted to argue, but rested her head against his shoulder, stared out the windows again, not seeing anything in front of her, only the past.

“I drank myself into a coma every night. Couldn’t remember pieces of time the next mornings.”

She remembered all-too-well, the scent of it on his breath.

“One morning when
I woke, you were there, sitting on my lap, your tiny, little hands wrapped around one of mine, and suddenly, it was like I woke up. The anger inside me for so long turned to shame. I felt as if I were failing not only your father and my promise to him, but you, too. Here, this little girl had no one left in her life but me, and I pushed her away until she forced herself into my arms. Even in sleep, you looked troubled, sad. I made a vow to remove that expression from your face and never allow it to get there again.”

He drew in a shaky breath, and his tears dripped on her hand. He reached down and tugged on her robe, covered her legs and cradled her
within the shelter of his arms, the same as he done all those years ago.

“I see it again in your eyes, Charlie. I know what’s put it there. You have to know two things. One, Echols will never get to you again.
He’s been given clearance by the doctors and will be transported to the city this afternoon, under FBI protection. Dwayne will be acting as an escort. Rossi insisted on it. To put everyone at ease.”

She stiffened at the mention of Trent’s name.

“That’s the other thing. I know you need time, but you can trust him. He’s asked about you, worried just the same as the rest of us. I see what he’s feeling, saw it the night we found you, and it’s killing him not being able to see if you’re okay.”

Charlie
didn’t say anything. She couldn’t.

“He didn’t know. He has been doing everything by the book, has
amassed a pile of evidence against Echols to ensure he won’t ever get out of prison.”

She
looked toward the floor-to-ceiling windows again and studied the trees, tried to center her thoughts. “I need to think it over, Uncle Ben. I hear what you’re saying, but it’s hard to believe right now. Please, give me some time.”

“And you’ll get it.”

Her gaze fastened on another squirrel making its way across a branch, and she tensed when it leapt and missed the limb of the next tree. The squirrel spread its legs, fell through the open air. Everything moved in slow motion as if the air had grown thick. Her gasp sounded loud to her ears, the chief’s startled question almost booming.

In her peripheral, he turned his head, followed the path of the animal as well.

The squirrel hit the ground, didn’t move. Her heart kicked in her chest, started to pound in her ears.
Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.
Seconds ticked by and a steady, comforting hand ran across her back.

“Time, Charlie.”

Moments later the squirrel jumped up, its little chest breathing in rapid motions before it ran off. She let out a startled laugh and fell against Ben’s chest, shaking her head, thinking if that squirrel could survive a fall from twenty feet up, she could get through this small hurdle.

****

Trent sat back in the chair and rubbed his tired eyes, exhaustion plaguing his system. He felt like he hadn’t slept in weeks, which was probably true. It wasn’t just a tired body, but his mind screamed for sleep, a break, rest from the mounds and mounds of evidence he was trying to sort through.

A search of Agent Dillon Echols’ cabin revealed eight Tupperware tubs full of women’s lingerie.
Each of the bras and underwear were filed, studiously set to preserve for years, and even color coordinated. Sectioned off in parts, the catalogue of lingerie had even been broken down by month and year. The man had been able to store close to three hundred pieces per storage container. The amount of victims involved was astronomical.

Between the searches through Nyack and Washington Metro PD files, they linked Echols to at least ninety separate break-ins and assaults, all the way back to 2005. Trent’s head hurt from the information
he sorted through, and from his worry over Charlie.

She still hadn’t reached out to him, and it made him sick to his stomach to think that she could believe he’d be involved in something as
revolting as this. It hurt more so that he’d given her the opportunity to not trust him by never opening up to her when she asked. He was an asshole.

He stared up at the stained white ceiling,
and refused to let his eyes close, even for a minute. He was unable to keep his mind from pulling up the images of pictures and video he sorted through. While he’d go through counseling once this case was over, there was no amount of help he could get to bleach any of this out of his brain.

He needed time. Time to let the images fade.

Echols took thousands of pictures, most of them of him in lingerie, often masturbating, and many times using crude instruments on his victims to sexually assault.

The videos were worse.

Dillon Echols taped every second of the attacks, from the point of the women returning home until he finished with whatever scene he chose to play out. Whether that be taking pictures, raping them, or watching the life drain from their eyes, it was all the same in the end. There was no turning back time. His violence spread through several communities, and lives had forever changed.

In many of the videos, Echols caused so much fear that his victims pleaded for their lives, apologized when they unintentionally swiped his hands away, and then begged to pleasure him, all while blindfolded and placed in positions of vulnerability.

The rapes had gone on for hours and hours with no relief through any of it.

It made Trent sick to
watch.

With hardly any sleep, minuscule amounts of food, and his brain working on overdrive, his body was about to shut down.
His bones ached, and the room spun as if he were drunk.

With a quick glance at the clock, he found
that once again, he had worked through the night. It was eight-thirty in the morning, and more than past his bedtime.

Tonight was the night they would
take Echols back to the city to answer to management, and for his crimes. His reign of terror marked two cities, crossed over state lines and was considered a federal case, one where Trent got named the chief investigator. The one who would bring his mentor and one of the FBI’s most wanted men down. It was a landmark case. Something to go down in history.