The Prey (26 page)

“Maybe because you’re not a killer.”

No, I’m not a killer. My father is. My brother was. Not me. Not yet.

She stared at the file, dreading what was inside, knowing the pictures and reports would hurt and bring back memories she’d tried to keep buried. She couldn’t run anymore. She had to do it. To stop the insanity.

She opened the file.

The documents, either printed from the computer archives or faxed from Roger, were in little semblance of order. The first page was the original police report.
Multiple homicide
. The victims were listed by name, age, location, and apparent cause of death.

Elizabeth Regina MacIntosh, 46, white female, found in kitchen. Multiple stab wounds, deceased.

Melanie Regina MacIntosh, 17, white female, found in entry. Stabbed multiple times, deceased.

Rachel Suzanne MacIntosh, 15, white female, found in entry. Stabbed multiple times, deceased.

Danielle Anne MacIntosh, 4, white female, found in master bedroom. Shot once in chest with 9mm handgun, deceased.

Rowan took a deep breath. She felt like a child again. Saw her mother’s dead and bloody body. Watched her sisters die. Ran with Peter and Dani to the closet.

But Bobby came after them.

Turning the page, she saw her father’s commitment papers. She’d read them so many times before she had them memorized, so quickly turned the page.

Bobby’s arrest.

Suspect in multiple homicide escaped through second story window and was pursued to the corner of Crestline Drive and Bridgeview Court where he was apprehended without further incident. Read Miranda warning and suspect asked for an attorney.

His description was listed in clinical terms. Robert William MacIntosh, Junior, 18. Blond hair, blue eyes, six feet one inch, 170 lbs. No distinguishing marks. No tattoos. No piercings.

Bobby looked like a nice guy, but Rowan knew the truth about him. She’d known forever that Bobby was evil. Thank God he was dead.

Yet from the grave he’d pursued her. In her nightmares. In her choice of career, both to join the FBI and ultimately to quit the FBI. He’d been controlling her life since the beginning, more now that he was dead than he ever could when he was alive. How could she not see it? How could she have lived for so long under his evil shadow and not seen how much he still controlled her?

Now she knew. She wouldn’t let him do it any longer.

She turned the page.

“You okay, Ro?” Quinn asked quietly as he slid a glass of water in front of her.

She nodded and gratefully accepted the drink. She sipped, the cool liquid soothing her raw throat. Quinn stood behind her like a soldier. She felt his gaze boring into her back. She heard the click-click-click of Tess on the computer. Pause. Click-click-click. It’d be annoying if it weren’t so rhythmic.

She turned another page.

Photos.

She carefully put the glass down, afraid her shaking hand would spill water on the file. The kitchen. Mama wasn’t in it, but she saw the starkness of the black-and-white imagery, the blood-spattered walls, the overturned chair. Some artists chose black and white because its impact was far more powerful than color. There was nothing to compare with blood in stark gray. You expected it to be red in color; you didn’t realize it had such depth until the color was leeched from the image.

She rapidly flipped through the photos. She couldn’t look. This was what she was here to do, but she couldn’t do it. Quinn took them from the stack and placed them face down, away from her. She wiped her face, surprised to feel damp cheeks.

Focus on the reports. Pretend she hadn’t been there. This was simply another investigation, the family strangers.

She didn’t know if she could finish, but she had to.

She picked the pictures up again and took a deep breath.

She noticed the room had become silent. Quinn watched her closely. Tess had stopped working and was staring at her, a frown on her round face. Damn. If the answers were here, in this damned file, she had to find them.

Quinn’s cell phone rang and he answered. “Peterson. . . . All right, thanks for the heads up.” He slammed the phone shut.

“What’s wrong?” Rowan asked, fearing the worst.
Not another dead body
.

“Colleen has Adam in the garage with John. They’ll be up in a few minutes.”

She nodded and turned back to the files. The words were a blur. Was she losing it? No.
Tears
. She absently rubbed her eyes and took a deep breath.

She had to focus, read the reports like the agent she was trained to be. Look for clues. Like this crowd shot. She looked at each face closely. Were any familiar? Had she known these people as a child? Were they somehow in her life now?

She had to pretend this wasn’t her family slaughtered so mercilessly. Pretend they were strangers.

Right. Strangers who haunted her in her sleep.

She looked up and noticed Tess was still watching her, an odd expression on her face. The door opened and Tess turned back to her computer. John led Adam into the room, a hand on his shoulder. The kid looked terrified and glanced at John for reassurance. When Adam’s eyes rested on Rowan, he visibly recoiled, drawing closer to John. Rowan felt small and miserable. She’d hurt someone she cared about and didn’t know how to fix it. Or if it could be fixed.

John murmured something in his ear and Adam marginally relaxed, but he avoided looking at Rowan. John sat him down at another desk facing the wall.

“The pictures?” he asked Quinn.

Rowan sighed in relief as Quinn picked up the folder in front of her and handed it to John.

He opened it, glanced through it, and pulled out the crowd shots.

“Adam, remember what I told you,” John said, leaning over the desk and looking the scared kid in the eye. “I’ll be right here. All I want is for you to look at these pictures and tell me if you’ve seen any of these people before. Remember, they might not look exactly the same, but older.”

“Yes, John,” Adam said, his voice quivering.

Rowan tried to focus on her task and tore her eyes away from John and Adam.

Her heart felt heavy in her chest. John looked at the pictures with Adam, glanced at her. Was that pity she saw in his eyes? His jaw clenched, and she saw his pulse throbbing in his neck.

No, not pity. Rage. It wasn’t directed at her, but it made her uncomfortable. She didn’t want anyone, particularly John, fighting her ghosts. But dammit, if she couldn’t get herself under control she’d be no good in battling her demons, the real demon killer and those in her nightmares.

She focused again on the file.

The room was silent for a long ten minutes. Adam was the first to speak, his head hung low. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. He’s not here. I swear, John, he’s not here. I would remember. I would, I would!” His voice rose in frustration.

John rested his hand on Adam’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Adam.” He glanced at Quinn. “Peterson, did you get that photo I asked about?”

“O’Brien? Yeah.” He reached across Rowan and handed John a thin folder.

Rowan’s head shot up and her eyes narrowed. “I told you Peter had nothing to do with this!”

“Collins cleared him, but I’m just double-checking.”

She turned her back to him, squeezed her eyes with her fingers until they hurt.

Peter had nothing to do with any of this. But if she didn’t know him as well as she did, wouldn’t she, too, think he was the logical suspect? “You’re right, John,” she whispered, her admission shredding her heart.
Peter, please forgive me
. “We have to rule him out.”

John took the folder to Adam and said, “Adam, do you recognize this man?”

He showed Adam a photo. Rowan couldn’t resist standing and looking at the picture herself.

Peter looked nothing like her, except maybe for the eyes. Peter had dark hair like Dani. The picture showed him out of his clerical collar, in a button-down shirt. Where had Quinn gotten it? It appeared recent.

She missed him. Seeing his photo reminded her that she’d intentionally separated her brother from her life. He had the Church, his adoptive family, his own life. She was a reminder of the past for him just as much as he was for her. But she still loved him.

“Adam?” John prompted.

Adam shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m really, really, really sorry. That’s not him.”

Rowan relaxed. She knew it wasn’t Peter, but couldn’t help being relieved at Adam’s affirmation.

“What if he had sandy hair?” John asked. “Like he colored it. Remember, you saw him wearing sunglasses.”

Adam still shook his head. “It’s not him, I know. The man I saw at the flowers had a crooked nose.”

John glanced up at Quinn. “A crooked nose? Like maybe it had been broken? Like Agent Peterson here?”

Adam turned to inspect Quinn. He cocked his head to the side, seeming to see something no one else in the room did. Rowan tensed.

“Yeah, like his nose,” he said, almost in awe that he had recognized something. “It wasn’t straight like this,” he gestured to the picture. “And the man I saw had a pointier chin.”

“I’m proud of you, Adam. You remembered a lot.”

“But I didn’t see
him
.” He pointed to the picture of Peter.

“That’s okay. What else about this picture and the man you saw is different?”

Adam frowned as if not understanding. “I dunno.”

Damn, they’d come so far. If they had a picture of the suspect, Rowan didn’t doubt Adam would recognize him.

“John?” Tess said excitedly. “John, Quinn, I think I found something.”

The men rushed to her desk. “What?” John asked.

“I did the search on Robert MacIntosh in the medical database Quinn gave me access to. Look.”

They were silent. “Holy shit,” John said. “Rowan, come here.” It was a command, and Rowan obeyed. But her feet felt heavy, her whole body sluggish.

She peered over Tess’s shoulder at the screen. At first she didn’t see what John saw. Each line appeared to be a medical entry on Robert William MacIntosh. Her father. Each procedure was carried out in Boston at the Bellevue facility. Except one for surgery two weeks after the murders. Multiple gunshot wounds. Release date was four weeks later, federal custody.

“My father wasn’t shot.”

“But your brother—also named Robert MacIntosh—was when he tried to escape.”

She shook her head. “Bobby was killed trying to escape.”

“Not according to these records.”

Rowan started shaking uncontrollably. Bobby couldn’t be alive. He couldn’t be. How? Where had he been all this time? Wouldn’t Roger have told her? Had he been lying to her all these years?

John reached for her, but she pulled away.

Roger had to have known. All along, he had to have known that Bobby was alive. And if Bobby was alive, he was perfectly capable of killing all those people. Doreen Rodriguez. The little Harper girl with the pigtails.

Michael.

She grabbed the stack of photos from the table and flipped through them, discarding most, not caring when they drifted to the floor.

Bobby.

She took the one clear photo of Bobby from the stack. He was handcuffed and held by one cop while another opened the rear door of a black-and-white. Bobby had blood on his clothes, Mel and Rachel’s blood. No one could stab another human being and walk away unsoiled.

He had blond hair, a couple of shades darker than hers. His eyes stared at her. Cocky. Unremorseful.

She swallowed bile at the thought he was still alive. It just couldn’t be. That meant Roger had been lying to her since he met her.

She slapped the picture in front of Adam. “Is this the man you saw?” She couldn’t keep the fear and anger out of her voice.

“Rowan.” John was at her side, his hand on her arm. She tried to brush him off, but he squeezed her wrist. “We need a recent photo. It’s been twenty-three years.”

Twenty-three years. Yes, Bobby would have changed, she thought. What did he look like now? Had she seen him and not known? Not known that her evil brother was alive and walking the streets?

Adam was mumbling something and she turned to him. “Adam, I’m sorry. I-I, just, oh hell,” she concluded lamely.

“Maybe,” Adam whispered.

Rowan pulled out her cell phone and dialed Roger’s direct line.

“Collins.”

“Why didn’t you tell me Bobby was alive?” Her voice was cold, detached, as if someone else was using her mouth.

He said nothing for a long, long time. “Rowan, he threatened you. I sat across from that devil’s spawn and listened to him tell me how he was going to kill you. When he escaped, he killed two guards. We tried him on those deaths so you didn’t have to testify. Plenty of witnesses, and with two peace officers killed, he easily got life without parole. He wasn’t getting out, Ro. And you were having such awful nightmares, Gracie and I were worried. If you thought he was dead, what was the harm? I didn’t think—”

“He’s been in prison all this time and I didn’t know? How dare you! How dare you keep something so important from me. I’m not some weak-kneed child anymore. I could have handled it.”

“But—”

“Where is he? Right now, where is he?”

“Texas.”

“I want to see him.”

“I spoke with the warden after the first murder and—”

“You suspected him?” Her world spun around her. She felt John’s hands on her arms, grounding her, easing her into a chair. But she didn’t see anything; rage the color of dried blood blinded her. She pictured Roger, the man she had often wished were her real father, sitting at his desk, telling her he’d lied to her for twenty-three years.

“No, no, not really. I was just checking. Making sure there wasn’t a mistake. He’s in maximum security, no escapes.”

“I want to see him. Now.”

“Rowan—”

“With or without you.” She couldn’t talk to Roger. She thrust her phone in John’s direction and dropped it. He grabbed it.

“Collins?” he said into the receiver. “What prison?” He paused. “We’re leaving on the next available flight.” He hung up. “Rowan, if—”

“John.” Tess interrupted. “Look.”

Both John and Rowan turned to the computer screen. Tess had brought up Bobby’s mug shot. “This was taken five years ago.”