His gaze on her was steady. “You figure out why you’re here yet, Elaina?”
“I’m still trying to figure out why
you’re
here.”
Another shrug. “Just thought I’d drop by. Tell you to watch your back.”
“Thanks for the tip. But listen—anything I say, whether you hear it from me or one of your friends, is off the record. I’m not here to talk to reporters, and if you quote me in your book, I’ll slap you with a lawsuit so fast, your head will spin.”
His lip curled up at the corner. “I don’t doubt it.”
Inside the suite, her cell phone chimed.
“You’d better get that.” He straightened away from the wall. “Real nice meeting you, Agent McCord. Good luck with your mission tomorrow.”
Elaina got up before dawn. By the time the sky’s purple had faded to orange, she’d run four miles on the sand.
Her quads burned. Her lungs tingled. She’d passed Public Beach Access One, Two, and Three. She’d passed a sign telling her she’d entered the wildlife park. She’d passed yet another sign—
ENDANGERED BIRD HABITAT
—and sprinted on.
All her life, she’d been a runner.
No pain, no gain,
her dad always said.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
Or her favorite—which had taken on new meaning since her thirtieth birthday—
use it or lose it.
John McCord was an encyclopedia of clichés. As a child, Elaina had collected the shopworn sayings like prizes from a cereal box, hoping to gain some kind of insight into her taciturn father’s personality.
Elaina let her feet slow as she neared yet another sign:
TEXAS BIRDING TRAIL
. She glanced around but saw no birds—just steep white sand dunes and the endless line of waves attacking the coast.
She scaled the nearest dune for a better vantage point. She ended up with sand in her Nikes and grit clinging to her calves, but the view up top was worth it. Dunes stretched out as far as she could see, and marshes and sky and water. Her hotel and the rest of Lito formed a hazy outline on the northern horizon. Between her vantage point and the town, she saw only a lone fisherman wading near shore and a few squat camping tents.
Solitude.
At least the best someone was likely to find on this island.
Not a bad place to dump a body.
Elaina’s gaze shifted to the bay side of the island, where a vast labyrinth of grasses and waterways rippled in the morning breeze.
He
had
to have a boat.
How else could he transport his immobilized victims to dump sites so far off the road? Like Gina Calvert and yesterday’s victim, Mary Beth Cooper had been found in a remote marsh, albeit across the bay.
If Elaina had nailed one aspect of the profile, that was it. The killer had a boat.
And if she could find that boat, she could find him.
Troy had his eyes shut and his feet propped on Elaina’s patio table when he heard her jog up from the beach. Those soft panting sounds made his blood stir even before her shadow fell over him.
“What are you doing here?”
He opened his eyes and saw just what he’d expected: a flushed, pissed-off woman.
“Waiting for you.”
She scowled and glanced at her sports watch. An Ironman. It went well with her spandex top and running shorts, both of which were soaked through.
“How’d you know I was out here?” She leaned a hand flat against the glass door and yanked off a sneaker. Sand cascaded to the concrete.
“I checked.” He watched as she emptied the other shoe.
“You checked.”
“I told you, that lock’s a joke.”
She eyed him hotly, and he could tell she didn’t believe he’d actually let himself into her room.
He tipped his chair back to enjoy the view. Long, slender legs. Ebony hair, pulled back in a ponytail. All of it covered by a thin sheen of sweat.
“
Listen, Mr. Stockton—”
“That’s Troy.”
“I don’t have time for this. I’m late, and I told you, I’m not talking to reporters, so—”
“No, you’re not.”
“What?”
“You’re not late. You already missed it. The autopsy happened last night.”
He watched the shock come over her face, next the anger.
“You
knew
about this? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I found out this morning. State pathologist showed up around nine last night. They worked on her for a good four hours. Sent everyone home around one-thirty. Breck and Cisernos are probably still sound asleep, dreaming about all the shit crabs can do to a corpse.”
Her cheeks flushed redder. “Is this a joke to you?” She flung a shoe across the patio, and he realized that last comment had been a mistake. He’d meant to needle her, not disrespect the victim.
The second shoe landed with a
clop
beside the door and Elaina sank into a chair.
Troy took his feet down from the table and sat up.
“Great.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose and seemed to be talking to herself. “Scarborough’ll have me piloting a desk Monday morning. How can I contribute to an investigation when the lead detective won’t even talk to me?”
He watched her, weighing the pros and cons of bringing her in. Pro, she was a fed, meaning resources and connections. Con, she was a fed, meaning red tape and other bullshit he didn’t want to deal with. Plus, she was
a
she,
which wasn’t going to win her any brownie points around here. If he aligned himself with her, he’d be signing up for a crapload of trash talk from now until he finished this project, possibly beyond.
Elaina slumped in her chair and gazed out at the water, as if he weren’t even there.
“Breck isn’t the lead.”
She turned her head. Blinked. “What?”
“It’s not Breck you have to watch out for. He’s the lead, yes, technically, because these last two bodies turned up on the island, which is his jurisdiction. But that ranger you met yesterday, he’ll be the one calling the shots now, all the way from Austin. He’s got the governor’s ear, and if this turns out to be a serial killer at one of the state’s most popular beach resorts, you can bet the governor’ll get involved, even if only behind the scenes.”
“The Texas Ranger. I don’t even know his name.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Troy said. “It’s his connections you need to remember. Other thing is your boss, Scarborough. He and Breck go way back.”
She looked skeptical. “Scarborough and Breck?”
“They were frat brothers at Texas State. I’m surprised he didn’t mention that when he sent you up here. And if your boss sent you here, knowing full well how Breck would react, there has to be a reason.”
She looked out over the water, those blue eyes hot. He liked the thrust of her chin. She resented being manipulated, but she wasn’t about to give up.
“You know, you still haven’t told me what your interest is in this case,” she said.
He’d known she’d get back to that. “I write crime. And these murders are happening in my backyard.”
“
Is that all? Proximity?”
He looked into her eyes, and he could see she believed there was more to his motive. She was right.
Troy leaned forward. “If your theory holds water—”
“It does.”
“Okay, assume you’re right. Then Mary Beth Cooper was one of this guy’s first victims. That would mean the man who confessed to killing her was lying, and my book is wrong.”
“So you’re here to set the record straight?”
“I don’t like to be wrong, Agent McCord.” He’d bet she didn’t, either.
She held his gaze for a long moment, and he saw the first flicker of trust. Then she looked away.
“You seem to know the local politics,” she said.
“I grew up around here.”
“You seem to be trying to help me.”
“Maybe.”
She turned to face him. “I won’t be a source for you. I’ve got enough career problems without my boss seeing me quoted in some pulp fiction novel.”
“I write nonfiction. It’s called true crime.”
“Fine,” she said. “But I’m off limits to you as a source.”
Troy suppressed a smile.
Off limits
had never been part of his vocabulary. “Whatever you say.”
“Why did you stop by, anyway?”
He watched her, liking her attitude and knowing he would regret what he was about to do. “Thought you might want a tour.”
She eyed him warily. “A tour of what?”
“The crime scene.”
• • •
Troy Stockton’s boat was flat and narrow, and looked different from all the other flat, narrow fishing boats living at the Lito Island Marina.
“It’s black,” Elaina said, gazing down at it from the dock.
“So?” He undid the bowline and whipped it into a neat coil, which he tossed on the boat’s floor.
“All the other boats are white.” She stepped aboard. Everything shifted, and he caught her arm to steady her.
“No law against black.” His hand dropped away, and he turned to flip some switches at the helm. Soon the engine grunted.
“Looks like it can go in pretty shallow water.”
“Eight inches,” he said with a touch of pride.
She looked around for a good place to stand. There weren’t many choices, so she rested a hand on the captain’s chair as they eased back out of the slip.
“Hold on.” He shifted gears, and then they were gliding in the other direction, moving out of the sheltering cove the marina shared with the police dock. Elaina glanced over her shoulder and watched the pier recede. She was going out on a boat with a man she barely knew, without letting her boss or anyone else know what she was doing. Not terribly smart.
She patted her BlackBerry in her back pocket. Her Glock was stashed in the Bianchi holster at her ankle, and if Troy tried anything funny, he was going in the bay.
Elaina shifted, putting some distance between them. She couldn’t explain why he made her uneasy. It made no sense, because she spent every day surrounded by macho types—guys trained in firearms, hand-to-hand
combat, and mind games. Since her first day in Brownsville, many of the Bureau, DEA, and Homeland Security guys had attempted to intimidate her either physically or by getting in her head, and she’d learned to blow them off.
But Troy was harder to ignore.
He stood between the helm and the captain’s chair, and she stood beside him, trying not to cling too tightly and reveal her fear of toppling out of the boat. She glanced over and noticed his ropey forearms and powerful calves. He was some sort of athlete, obviously, and she tried to guess the sport.
“You get seasick?” Troy asked.
“No. Why?”
“You look uncomfortable.” But he wasn’t even looking at her. Those eyes—which were the exact green color of the bay—were trained on the southern horizon. He wore cargo shorts and Teva sandals today. His white T-shirt contrasted with his sun-browned skin, and she envisioned him on a surfboard.
Why was she even thinking about this? She needed to focus on the case, not on Troy Stockton. This man had a reputation. It was coming back to her in bits and pieces. She didn’t usually read celebrity mags, but she had a vague recollection of flipping through
People
at her dentist’s office. Troy had been photographed with some gorgeous starlet. That girl from Corpus Christi. What the hell was her name?
“That was some profile you came up with.”
She cut a glance at Troy and saw the smile playing at the corner of his mouth. She bristled.
“What do you mean?”
“
White male. Likes hunting and fishing. Owns a boat. Sounds like half the men on this island, including me.” He stared down at her, serious now. “Except for the getting-it-up part.”
Elaina felt a blush creep up her neck. “Look, Troy—”
“Here we are.” The boat slowed abruptly as he pushed the throttle up, and she stumbled into him. “She was found just over there,” he said.
Elaina looked in the direction he was pointing, but saw nothing unusual. Just more grass and water.
“How do you know?”
He tapped his control panel, and she noticed the GPS. “I got the coordinates.”
He got the coordinates. From the police, no doubt, who clearly were sharing information with members of the public, but leaving her completely in the dark.
“They got a good set of prints from the victim last night.” Troy veered close to the shoreline, and the water was so shallow, Elaina could see grass on the bottom. “They’ll run the thumbs through DMV, hopefully get an ID soon.”
Elaina thought of Valerie Monroe, who’d graduated third in her class at Baylor Med and had been accepted as an intern at Texas Children’s Hospital. She wondered what Valerie’s parents were doing at this moment. Most likely they were either en route to Lito Island or already camped out at the police station, waiting for news.
Troy veered left into a narrow inlet.
“We’re going in?”
“You want to see it, don’t you?”
“Yes, but…” She watched him deftly steer the boat through the tight opening. The water wasn’t even a foot
deep, and she saw ripples in the sand as they skimmed along the surface. “What if we run aground?”
He smiled. “You get out and push.”
But they didn’t run aground. He tipped up the engine and slowed down, using just enough speed to maintain control over the steering as they maneuvered this way and that through all the channels. She began to doubt that he really knew where he was going.
She spotted something yellow tangled in the reeds. “Look there.” She pointed.
“Well, shit.” He let the motor stall and then jumped out of the boat and waded over to take a look. “I’ll be damned.”
“What?”
The boat drifted into the grass and bumped against the bottom.
Troy gazed down at the thin yellow twine but didn’t touch it. “They must not have seen this,” he muttered. “Or maybe they came in from the south.”
“Who came in?”
He looked up. “The crime-scene guys. Breck, Maynard, Chavez. They should have collected all this. It’s evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
He trudged back to the boat and shoved it into the center of the narrow channel.
“Of your unsub.” He climbed aboard and got them moving again. “This marsh, it’s like a maze. I grew up all over this bay, and I get lost half the time. Looks like the killer used twine to mark the route so he could find his way out after dumping the body.”