“I can dig deeper, write up an official report, get validation from Behavioral Sciences,” Lucy said. She wanted to do it—and she was good at it. Her background in criminal psychology was enhanced by her experience—the good and the bad.
“I’m not talking about the killer,” Noah said. “You’re not unbiased, Lucy, and I need someone I can trust to give me an honest assessment on Hannah Edmonds.”
The tension skyrocketed as fast as Sean jumped up. “Is that a requirement to be a cop? That you have to be unbiased? Because none of you guys fit the bill.”
“And I know a lot more about this case than you do, Rogan, so back off.”
“What haven’t you told me?” Lucy asked.
“It’s all here,” Noah said. “Get yourself up to speed because Rick Stockton wants you in the office first thing in the morning.”
“I have an appointment,” Sean said. He kissed Lucy, hard and fast, and said, “I’ll stop by on my way home.”
He walked out, slamming the door.
Noah pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s been a long day. I apologize if you think I don’t trust your judgment. But this is my case, and I have to live with every decision I make. And right now, I need experience over eagerness.”
Kate said, “Dillon is out of town at least until Monday night. He was called up to Philadelphia today to assess a guy who went on a two-day killing spree and says he can’t remember anything.”
“I’ll talk to Hans,” Noah said. He looked at his phone. “DC police found Jocelyn Taylor’s car parked in a Metro station lot. I have to go.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Kate said.
Lucy didn’t relax until she heard the door shut. Then she leaned back and closed her eyes.
She was so embarrassed. Maybe she had hit her head harder than she thought, because she didn’t know why that conversation had gotten so out of hand, or what she’d said to make Noah think she was so biased that she couldn’t work up an accurate psychological assessment of Ivy Harris. She didn’t know that anyone could, based solely on what they knew.
Kate walked back into the room. “Don’t let it get to you.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes you are. Here.”
Lucy opened her eyes. “The rental agreement?”
“I found it on the fax. Anything interesting?”
Lucy scanned the document. “It’s all standard—but she does have a Social Security number here; we should find out if that’s false as well as her name. There’s also a reference.” She frowned.
“What?”
“Under personal references it lists Paul Harris, her father.”
Kate blanched. “Could she have assumed the identity of a real person?”
“Identity theft? Anything’s possible. No address, but a phone number.”
“I’ll call it in and get the address, run a background on the guy. Good catch, Lucy.”
But it didn’t make her feel any better.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Brian loved his younger brother, but he wanted to pummel him for his stupidity.
“You shot at a fucking
cop
?”
Ned glared at him. “I didn’t know she was a cop—why would that bitch get in a car with a cop?”
“Maybe because we’re trying to kill her?”
Shooting at cops escalated police involvement. If it was just a couple of dead hookers, no one would care after a while and the crimes would disappear from the radar, but a cop?
“It’s not like she’s
dead,
” Ned said. He pulled a matchbook from his pocket and took out a match. “The news said she was stable. That means she’s fine. Probably a scratch.”
Ned lit the match, watched the flame flare, the smell of phosphorous hanging in the still air. The matchstick burned down, he pinched out the flame, and lit another.
Brian ignored his brother and flipped through news stations trying to get more information. If anyone saw his brother or found any damn fingerprints, Brian’d shoot him. Ned was in the system. That would be just fucking
awesome
for the feds to match his prints and find out Theodore Adam “Ned” Abernathy had spent three years in prison for extortion and fraud.
“I took the plates off the van,” Ned explained. He lit another match, watched, pinched it out.
“You think they can’t trace the van off the paint you left all over the city? You rammed their
car.
They have paint samples, glass, who knows what else. You are such an idiot!”
Brian couldn’t find anything that said there was a composite sketch. According to the news, the police were “investigating.” Good. But a witness
could
come forward, the police
might
trace the van to Ned’s next-door neighbor. And while they had paid off the lowlife drug addict, he would squeal if he was put under any pressure.
Brian didn’t enjoy killing people, and he especially didn’t enjoy killing people because his brother screwed up. He’d been looking after Ned ever since they were kids. Ned was the baby of the family, the one who could do no wrong, the one who could charm the habit off a nun, as their dad said before he croaked. For years, Brian had been cleaning up after him. The extortion gig happened when Brian had done his own thing for a while, in Hawaii, where girls wore bikinis under a hot sun and no one was stressed, everyone relaxed all the time.
He should never have left.
But you can’t pick your family, right?
His mother had flown to Hawaii after Ned was arrested, begging Brian to come back to DC and help her fix it. But Ned had been arrested before, and they’d always fixed it. Now he was stuck. “Maybe a few years in prison will toughen him up,” Brian had told her. “Make him less stupid.”
That infuriated his mother. She’d always thought Ned, who got straight As in school and was voted Most Popular and was the quarterback of the damn football team was
smart.
Smarter than Brian, who barely graduated high school and never went to college.
Brian would take common sense over book smart any day. Not that people like his mother valued the ability to stay out of trouble.
Twice
she came to Hawaii, begging him to come home. The second time was when Ned was up for parole, and his lawyer said he’d be getting out. Brian wanted to know how he knew. It wasn’t just conjecture, his mother came to him and said, “Ned is getting out of prison next week and I need you to watch over him. You’re his big brother. It’s your responsibility.”
“Ned got five to ten, why do you think he’s getting out in three?”
“Good behavior,” she’d told him.
Now Brian knew the truth. Information is power. He wondered how different his life would have been today if his mother hadn’t married the lawyer. He wondered if Ned would be back in prison because he was an idiot, and if he, Brian, would still be in Hawaii enjoying the scenery and the sun.
Brian turned off the news when he was satisfied that the police had nothing on Ned being the shooter. Ned turned the TV back on and flipped to a baseball game.
“What the
hell
are you doing?” Brian pulled the plug out of the wall.
“The Yankees are playing—come on, Bri, you told me to lay low, this is how I lay low. I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
“You’ll do what I say if you want to stay out of prison.” Why did Brian even care if Ned went back?
Because he loved his brother, warts and all. And he didn’t want to see his mother cry. Even though deep down he knew his mother had manipulated him most of his adult life, he still had a deep need to please her.
Protect Ned at all costs. Even if he was so stupid he’d get them all tossed in prison.
Ned pouted and lit another match. Brian watched it burn out. The heat didn’t bother Ned—his fingerprints had been burned off his thumb and index finger. But the police had all five fingers, plus a palm, and probably DNA for all Brian knew.
Brian was no saint, he’d done his fair share of bad things, but Brian had never been caught. Because he knew how to be careful.
“Let’s think this through,” Brian said. “The good news is she went back to her neighborhood. That means she’s staying local, at least for now.”
“She’s probably long gone.”
When Brian first learned that Poison Ivy—his pet name for the wily bitch—was with the cops, he panicked. If Wendy told her everything, the girl was an immediate threat. That’s why he planned on getting out of town
now.
He had a train ticket for New York that he could use anytime, and from New York he could go anywhere in the world.
He needed to leave before the cops got smart and flagged his name. Let someone else clean up Ned’s messes. Mom loved him so much, let
her
track down the bitch. Or get her pretty-boy husband to do it. Why did it always have to be
him
? It wasn’t like it was
his
idea to use Wendy to gather information. He’d never trusted her. Like Ned, she thought she was better, smarter than everyone else.
Neither of them were as smart as he was. Which was why he was alive without a criminal record, and Wendy was dead and Ned had been to prison.
But when he was in the middle of packing, he had the radio tuned to his favorite twenty-four-hour news station. As soon as the report came on about the crash, he turned it up. Two cops transported to the hospital. One civilian may have fled the scene. May have? Damn straight Poison Ivy ran away. That meant the game was still on. And though Brian didn’t want to go to prison, the thought of losing to that little whore made his head hurt.
He just wanted to kill her so he could disappear.
What he didn’t understand is why she was still in town. If it were
him,
he’d be halfway to the islands by now.
Which meant she had something here, or no way of getting out of town. No money? No car?
He considered
why
she’d come back, exposed herself.
She was desperate.
She was hiding locally. Why?
What was keeping her here when she knew he wanted her dead?
“Ned, why did you think she’d go back to her house?”
“I dunno. Maybe because I’d go home if I were in trouble.”
But the house was gone. She must know someone in the area, someone she could trust.
“You followed her for a few blocks before she saw you.”
“Yep. I was so close to grabbing her. But there were people around, I didn’t want her screaming and causing a scene.” Ned lit another match. Brian extinguished it himself and grabbed the matchbook.
Then he closed his eyes and counted to ten. Slowly.
Your chasing and shooting a cop caused far more problems than some bitch being grabbed off the street could ever cause.
Brian pulled a map out of his desk and spread it out. He circled Hawthorne Street. “You show me where she went. What streets she walked, if she made any sudden turns, if she stopped for more than two seconds. Then we’ll go back. Smoke her out, so to speak. We’ll find her, or we’ll find the other girl, but we’re going to find
somebody
and Poison Ivy will regret fucking with the Abernathys.”
When this was over, he’d fly to Hawaii, or better yet, an island that didn’t have an extradition agreement with the U.S. He hoped that this time, six thousand miles was far enough.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Sean drove too fast to Alexandria, but he needed to calm down before he met with Paxton. His custom Mustang GT gave him the power necessary to purge his anger.
Noah was a prick, he decided. For the last six months he’d been worried that Noah had a thing for Lucy, and Sean didn’t like them spending so much time working together. Stupid jealousy. Lucy sensed it, but not the cause, certainly not that Sean was jealous of Noah. She thought it was all about Noah being a rigid cop. But after they returned from the Adirondacks, his jealousy had lost its edge. After all, Lucy told Sean she loved
him,
not the damn fed.
If Noah
did
have feelings for Lucy over and beyond a professional friendship, Sean hoped he continued acting like the jerk he was tonight.
Except Sean couldn’t stand to watch Lucy struggle with the harsh, unwarranted criticism. And Sean couldn’t do anything for fear of messing with Lucy’s career goals. Once she went through the Academy and had her badge, he’d be relieved. Her confidence in her abilities would be validated.
Sean’s left hand gripped the steering wheel tightly as he downshifted to avoid rear-ending a jerk who thought he needed to stop twenty feet behind the red light. He breathed deeply, forcing himself to relax, and prayed Lucy never learned the truth about how she got into the Academy.
If
Paxton was telling the truth. Sean was fifty-fifty on believing him, and he planned to do his own digging on that angle. But he had to tread carefully. Two of Lucy’s sisters-in-law were Feds and Noah had ins with people Sean didn’t know. He couldn’t afford to let anyone learn he was snooping.
A pleasant breeze had come in with the night, a harbinger that the heat wave might break. As the natural light dimmed and the horizon’s glow darkened, the old, tree-lined street full of narrow, three-story brick homes on which the senator lived became a sepia-toned nostalgic snapshot.
Sean parked around the corner from Paxton’s house. Paxton said he’d be there by nine; it was already eight thirty. Sean didn’t care if Paxton caught him inside—he just wanted the time to find what he was looking for.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure
what
he was looking for.
He’d come early for two purposes. The first, to find out what the senator knew about his crime in Massachusetts and, more important, how. The second was proof, one way or the other, that Paxton had pulled strings to get Lucy into the Academy. Sean wanted to know who was in Paxton’s pocket.
Paxton’s security was decent enough to thwart would-be burglars, but Sean wasn’t a thief. After a quick assessment, it only took him ten seconds to bypass the alert system, then another ten seconds to crack the alarm code. He was inside in less than a minute.
Sean’s eyes adjusted to the dark and he kept his penlight low to the floor. He was familiar with the general layout of these older homes. The bottom floor was usually storage, an office, utilities. Sometimes the area was a large open space, sometimes an in-home office, sometimes an added bedroom suite.