Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Durham, New Hampshire
Wednesday, October 9
7:23 p.m.
Her body didn’t feel solid anymore.
Pulled in a thousand different directions she couldn’t keep up with.
Leigh drowned the urge to fidget as she stroked Ava’s hair. It was early evening, but the atmosphere in Thompson Hall’s lobby had reached a level of surrender and stillness. There was nowhere they could go, nothing they could do, no one who could help them as long as the storm kept mounting. Students and administration alike had tired of the unspoken social rules between groups. No one wanted to be alone. Instead, staff rotated in turns checking on students, handing over jackets and emergency supplies to get through the night. What they’d assumed would be a short shelter in place order would now certainly stretch into tomorrow. Maybe longer. Acceptance and exhaustion settled over the group of thirty-six and took their last remaining threads of energy. Everyone was tired from worry and questions and fear. Sleep was the only escape.
And Alice Dietz’s killer was possibly stuck along with them.
The few flashlights they’d collected from around the building had been distributed with instructions for use only in dire circumstances. There was no telling when they would all get out of here. Food from the vending machines down the hall was all gone, and Leigh couldn’t imagine the state of the dorms or any other building campus goers had been sequestered to. She didn’t have any way of finding out.
Leigh shifted onto her hip against the cold, hard floor, her elbow tucked underneath her head. The position wasn’t remotely comfortable and would be impossible to sustain through the long hours ahead of them, but she’d managed to convince Ava to get some sleep, pressed up against her chest. Next to Leigh’s heart. Where she belonged.
What’d happened on the roof… The panic that’d seized her had yet to dissipate. It vibrated through her. There was no way she’d be able to sleep tonight. She’d come so close to losing the one good thing to come out of all the violence of the past. Too blind to see the gift she’d been given. But she’d never make that mistake again. She didn’t know where she and Ava would go from here. Probably therapy, maybe an extended leave of absence from the BAU—whatever it took to earn Ava’s trust. They needed it. Ava had lost her father to suicide. Lost her mother to a lifelong prison sentence. Had her innocence and freedom stripped away by a man who haunted her nightmares, and her choice of where to live overlooked. And while Leigh had been in a similar situation at her age—desperate for someone to care—Ava deserved the one thing Leigh had never been granted. To feel safe.
No. That wasn’t true. Leigh had felt safe once. Protected. Loved. Right up until two Durham PD officers had shown her a photo of Teshia Elborne.
Leigh tried to get comfortable again without waking Ava. The emotional war waging between them was enough to knock Leigh out for a week if given the opportunity. But she wouldn’t let it. Not with a killer hiding in these walls. Ava moaned in her sleep, and Leigh ran her hands across the girl’s temple again. Ava was alive. That was what mattered. Alice Dietz couldn’t say the same. What were the victim’s parents going through right now? Unable to reach their daughter, not knowing the details of what’d happened to her. “Shhh. You’re safe. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Ford moved from his position at the front glass doors, keeping watch. He’d already made his rounds from the front of the building to each exit. Three times. But nothing could take the tension out of his shoulders, and the same restlessness drilled through Leigh. Rest wasn’t a word in her vocabulary. At least, it hadn’t been up until a month ago when she’d been forced to give up her uterus to cancer. Some habits died hard. She and Ford were similar in that respect. Always looking for answers. Never satisfied with where they were. Constantly looking for the next challenge, the next case, the next answer. It was probably why he’d chosen to become a US marshal. He loved the hunt. Careful not to wake those who’d finally settled in for the night, he headed for the corridor where Dean Groves had vanished.
If he’d been there at all.
Had seeing him been real? Or had coming back on campus triggered her brain to conjure the man she’d been searching for these past eighteen years? Leigh wasn’t sure she could trust her own senses, let alone her own memory at this point. She felt like she’d reached levels of exhaustion not yet discovered by sleep scientists.
An outline peeled from the wall near the stairs. Nearly as large as Ford, but there were no other men in the lobby who came close to his size. Instinct froze her to the core underneath the weight of the shadow’s attention. As if he was staring directly at her through the dark. Which was impossible. She knew that but couldn’t shake the rattling feeling of exposure.
The outline shifted. There one moment. Gone the next.
Darkness absorbed the movement at the base of the stairs. Or maybe her mind had finally broken. All the trauma, the loss, the grief, and desperation to change reality—it was just a matter of time before she lost out to a mental breakdown, right? She didn’t need to get up to prove she wasn’t crazy. She didn’t need to leave Ava to ensure the rest of the people in this room weren’t in danger. And she certainly didn’t need to be chasing any more ghosts.
Except she couldn’t stop staring at the spot where he’d stood.
Leigh pressed a kiss to Ava’s temple and smoothed her hair away from her adopted daughter’s face one last time before slipping free. Maneuvering through the piles of bodies strewn across the lobby floor, she tried to keep her movements to herself and avoid stepping on any heads or hands in her path to the stairs.
She glanced down the corridor where Ford had disappeared. He was still making his rounds. If he followed the same pattern as the last three times, he’d move on to searching each classroom, ensuring all windows were secure from the inside. Leigh pulled up short of climbing the stairs to the second level, turning instead to the ones leading downstairs.
Hadn’t Ford secured the basement door earlier?
Maintenance workers had given up on trying to bring the sabotaged generator back to life. The wiring stripped from another unit wasn’t interchangeable. They just had to ride out the storm, same as everyone else. It didn’t make for the best conditions, but they were safe as long as they remained quarantined to this building and didn’t turn on each other. Leigh found herself descending into the basement, grabbing for her phone’s flashlight.
She tapped the button on the screen, and white light seared her vision as she crossed the threshold. Quietly closing the door behind her so as not to wake anyone in the lobby, she faced off with a long corridor smelling sweetly of rot. Pools of water puddled in the cracks along the cinderblock walls and cement flooring. Overhead bare bulbs added to the creepy factor as she took the first few steps. “Ford?”
Had the marshal slipped down here for his security rounds, and she hadn’t noticed? No. That didn’t fit his pattern.
Drip. Drip. Drip. Water pelted her shoulder from above. Several tons of rain had soaked the surrounding property and was trying to work its way inside a non-waterproofed foundation. Then again, who could’ve predicted a hurricane in the Atlantic reaching this far inland? Leigh’s flashlight failed to illuminate anything more than a few feet ahead of her and reflected back at her from puddles spreading across the floor. Some several inches deep. She raised the phone’s flashlight ahead of her.
And landed on a human shape.
Back turned to her, she couldn’t make out any details other than mountainous male musculature, short dark hair, and black clothing and boots. Not Ford. Energy charged into her free hand as she reached for her holstered sidearm and raised her weapon. “Hey!”
The figure sidestepped into a corridor to his left.
Out of view.
Leigh pressed herself against the wall and heel-toed toward the corner as silently as puddles and her shoes allowed. She couldn’t ignore the instincts screaming at her not to follow, but she couldn’t ignore a potential lead on Alice Dietz’s murderer either. The killer was trapped on this campus with them. What better hiding place than a series of underground tunnels administration only ever used for maintenance purposes?
Back pressed against solid cinderblock, she forced her breathing to slow. Charged nerves lost a bit of their influence as she craned her neck around the corner and raised her flashlight beam.
Empty.
Leigh stepped into the corridor, her focus honed on any potential threat. Water soaked through her shoes, much deeper here, as if the foundation itself sloped steeper into this section of the building and collected the storm’s tears. Each step had her wading until her slacks were plastered against her legs from her knees to her ankles.
A trap. This was a trap. Whoever had killed Alice Dietz was intelligent enough to realize they weren’t getting out of Durham until police cleared the roads, but escape would still be his number one priority. The first step to getting away with murder? Make sure you’re not being chased. But the lure had already hooked into her. Pulling her deeper into the building and eviscerating her survival instincts.
Leigh built a mental map back to the door leading up to the lobby. It would be easy to get lost down here without anyone knowing where she’d gone and just five percent left on her phone battery. She glanced at the screen. Make that three percent.
She should turn back now. Wait until morning when Ford could accompany her in another search of the basement. But by then, the killer could be gone. She couldn’t wait for backup.
She caught sight of movement ahead. Her lungs suctioned to her ribcage as she raced against the deepening flood to catch up. “FBI! Stop!”
The water thickened here somehow, and she really didn’t want to think about what she was wading through as she approached the end of the corridor. Ice worked through her feet and cut off feeling in her toes the deeper she trod. Leigh pulled up short of a dead end. That didn’t make sense. He’d been right here. Spinning in place, she lost her grip on her phone. The device hit the two feet of water increasing by the second and blacked out.
Throwing her into darkness.
“Shit.” If the killer had wanted her out of the picture, he was certain to get his wish in the next few minutes. Leigh stretched her free hand out to test for a wall—something—to lead her out of this fresh hell. She’d never had a problem with small spaces, but the corridor closed in too tight. Too dark. Unknown. Crouching, she allowed the rest of her outfit to soak through as she searched for her phone. She couldn’t leave it, but saving it might be a waste of time if she died down here. Her fingers grazed the powerless brick, and she attempted to turn it back on. In vain.
Water sloshed against her legs.
But she hadn’t moved.
And the feeling she was being watched again hardened the muscles along her spine. Leigh raised her weapon. Completely at the mercy of the darkness—and the killer—closing in.
His voice cut through the thudding pound of her heartbeat behind her ears. “I’ve been looking forward to this moment for a very long time, Agent Brody.”