Chapter 23
Ace
I took a break to get away from this place, but look where it landed me, in an ICE field office in fucking San Diego.
I'd rather be anywhere else, but I know the urge to run from the room and find a beachside bar that is fully stocked with whiskey has more to do with her and the fresh pain and grief she's suffering than anything else.
I have no idea who we're going to be facing. We were escorted into the plain, no-frills conference room when we got here, and we're currently waiting for an agent to speak to us about their expectations with this case.
With the obvious connection to the Full Deck Killer, this is more than a simple murder investigation, if you can call any murder investigation simple. There are a lot of hands in a lot of pies, and I fully expect someone to show up with their dick out, trying to prove he's the best man for the job. I've seen it more than once, and for some reason, there are a lot of men and women who work for governmental agencies who like to look like the big dog. They pull rank and need to feel like they're the leader of the pack, others asking how high when we're requested to jump.
It's why I hiss a breath of relief when the door opens and Mike walks inside.
"Thank fuck," I mutter when he grins at the relief on my face. "They put you on this?"
"You're stuck with me," he says as he gives Cora a sad smile.
"I'm so sorry for your loss, Ms. Preston."
"Thank you," she says. I've gotten to know her well enough, seen her vulnerable enough in the last twenty-four hours, to know she's fighting a losing battle on trying to hold herself together.
I dart my eyes to Mike's when I feel his gaze turn to me. It makes me wonder if he can sense just how much I want to wrap my arms around her and demand he leave the room so I can comfort her and remind her just how strong and capable she is.
"If you don't mind, can I ask you to wait in the other room?"
Cora snaps her eyes to me at his request.
"Anything you have to say to me, you can say in front of her," I tell him, drawing a frown to his face.
I lift my chin a little higher, leaving no room for argument. Mike isn't ranked higher than me and, even if he was, he isn't an asshole. But he could also remind me that I'm not here in the capacity of an agent.
I turn to Cora before he can get started. "You're going to hear some gruesome facts about the case. I know you want answers but sometimes it's better not to know the details. Are you sure you want this?"
She dips her head. We had this conversation before leaving the hotel room earlier, and she assured me that she knew it was going to be hard, but she wanted to know everything.
I honestly think it's a way for her to punish herself, but from a man who lost his shit for months and months after Noah’s death, I don't really have a leg to stand on when it comes to how she wants to manage her grief and regret.
Rather than worry about Mike's opinion, I reach for her hand on the table and pull it into my lap, nodding at him to let him know he can get started .
He doesn't miss a beat or give me a questioning look. Maybe it looks like I'm comforting her, or maybe he assumes it's something I'd do for anyone in this situation. It would be a hell of a lot simpler if that were the case.
"We don't know a lot about the Full Deck Killer," Mike says as he opens the file folder he brought into the room. "We've linked him to over twenty deaths, but we've only been able to solve one of them, and that was through the conviction of the man who hired the hit on his business partner. The information we have—"
"Hit?" Cora asks, looking at me before turning her attention back to Mike. "I knew she was murdered, but hitman?"
Mike's lips form a flat line as if he's disappointed that I haven't shared the limited details of the case with her, but that isn't my responsibility. Part of me knows I didn't tell her because she's always going to look back at these moments with a reminder of who gave that information, and I didn't want to be in her memories in that capacity. What can I say? I'm a selfish fuck.
"Your sister's death was an ordered hit, and from the two of hearts being left in her body, we have it on good authority that it was someone close to her, a family member."
I watch her throat work as if she's fighting the urge to argue with him, but she stays quiet, a tear silently rolling down her cheek. She seems too wrung out and exhausted to dash it away.
"In her body?"
Mike gives me a look, telling me he isn't as comfortable talking about such gruesome details with the victim's family, but when he looks back at her, he continues.
"The Full Deck Killer shoots his victims, then he rolls up the playing card and inserts it into the wound. We suspect he does this so it doesn’t get missed, and he's certain it will be found during autopsy. "
"Is it possible it's someone trying to make it look like it was this hitman hired by a loved one? Maybe one of the connections she made while on drugs?"
Mike shakes his head, and I pull in a deep breath before he can explain, knowing what's coming.
"The murders connected to this killer haven't made the media. The deaths are scattered all over the US. They usually happen in very small towns, ones without a lot of investigative resources. It takes forever for information to make it into national databases. Not to mention the lack of experience of the people working the cases. He's a smart guy, and he's taken great care not to get caught. There can't be a copycat killer because no one but federal agents are aware that the cards link them."
Her face falls, as if she'd put a ton of hope in his answer and is disappointed that the focus of this investigation points right back to William.
"Do you have pictures?" she asks after a long moment of silence.
I lift my eyes from her and aim them at Mike.
There would be no benefit for her to see such things. There are days I wish I hadn't seen Noah on video. It haunts me every day.
"Cora, you don't want that in your head."
She's slow to turn her attention to me, but when she does, I see the determination in her eyes.
"She was murdered. She died with no one she loved around her. If she can suffer that fate, then I can handle seeing how he left her."
"There's nothing you can do about her being gone, but—"
"The pictures," she snaps, looking at Mike. "Please."
With a resigned sigh, he flips to the back of the folder, pulling the printed images from a manila envelope.
"I want you to know that she didn't suffer. The Full Deck Killer doesn't toy with his victims. He doesn't torture them. If anything, he did a surprise attack. One second, she was here, and the next second, she was gone," he says as he slides several images across the table.
She looks up at the ceiling as if she's having to talk herself into looking at them, and I pray she changes her mind.
But then her eyes drop, her hand automatically coming up to cover her mouth.
A sob escapes her throat, and I know her pain is only beginning. The image facing her is a full-body picture of Sadie Preston lying face down. She was shot in the head from the back. I've seen enough bullet wounds to know what the front of her head is going to look like.
Instead of flipping to the second picture, she shoves them away.
"She's in the same clothes," she manages through her sobs. "The same ones she was wearing when she came to the house that last time."
I squeeze her hand, fighting the urge to pull her to my chest and promise that I'll hunt this motherfucker down and kill him myself. But I know that I'm not a super agent. I don't have a greater skill set than the other men who have been trying to catch this man for the last ten years.
Hell, if anything, the betrayal is in the person who hired the hit. The Full Deck Killer is only the vehicle used to get it done. He's a hired killer. He's in this for the money and nothing else.
"I want her body exhumed," she says after she blows her nose.
I hate that when she's done, she drops her hands into her lap instead of reaching for mine again.
'That's—" Mike begins, but she lifts her hand to silence him.
"I need her home, not buried in a shallowgrave as if no one loved her." She hiccups another sob. "She was loved."
"I can work on arrangements for that," Mike tells her. "I just want to let you know that the level of care for a person buried in a pauper's grave isn't the same as one that has a paid-for funeral."
"What exactly does that mean?" she asks, sounding horrified.
"She wasn't embalmed," he explains. "Once she's exhumed, your funeral home can do that, but a lot of deterioration happens in nearly a month."
Her cheeks puff as she blows out a long stream of air as if she's trying not to get sick.
"I'd suggest making plans for a closed casket, especially with the damage to her—"
"She gets it," I snap, wondering how Mike has made it so long as an agent and hasn't mastered his skills of speaking to a victim's family.
"Sorry," he mutters, as he puts the pictures back into the manilla folder.
I want nothing more than to curl my body around hers and protect her, and I know the danger in that. I know the danger of me just being in her life, and what it could mean. But for the first time in my life, I want to fight to protect her. I want to shield her from all the bad and be her hero. I can't go back in time and prevent these bad things from happening to her, but there's a voice in my head saying I can keep her safe, sheltered from grief and sadness, going forward.
The reasonable side of my head knows better. It knows that hits will keep coming, and there will come a point when she'll get hurt simply because of her connection to me. My job takes me away and puts me right in line with dangerous people who will stop at nothing to keep their deviant businesses operational, even if that means cutting me off at the knees by hurting people I care about.
"I don't know how to tell my brothers," she says. I know Mike was waiting for this opening, but I wish he'd take a moment longer before introducing it to her.
He doesn't .
"I wanted to talk to you about this," he begins, wishing he wasn't about to sound like some skeezy used-car salesman. "We think it's best if you don't tell them."
"I can't bury my sister and grieve alone," she says, immediately rejecting his suggestion.
"I'm not asking you to do anything alone. Just that you postpone it. We were hoping that you could go home, invite them to your house, and then we'll give the call or have someone come to the house to make the announcement. We want professionals to go over how people in her life respond to the news."
Her head shakes, but she doesn't speak as new tears track down her face.
"I know what I'm asking of you," Mike says.
"Do you?" she snaps. "I can hardly function knowing she's gone, but I'm supposed to go home and act like it hasn't happened while planning some damn dinner party?"
"We're not asking for a dinner party. I can leave it up to you how you want to get your brothers to the house."
"My brothers," she whispers. "I'm telling you, they didn't do this."
"Not they ," Mike says, making me want to once again pop him in the nose.
I don't know if there is a more sensitive way to handle this situation, but even I'm not impressed with the way he's handling it. It definitely makes me reconsider how I speak to people because it sucks being on this side of it.
"William specifically."
"So you want to announce her death to see if he responds how you expect him to?"
"It's a little more complicated than that, but yes. We'll make the announcement to get an initial response and then we'll explain what happened."
"You think it's smart to tell the person who you think hired her murderer that she was killed by a hitman? "
"We're going to lie. We'll say she was found deceased in a different way. We'll say she was found somewhere else," he explains.
"Because if he's confused, he'll be guilty?"
"Once again, it's a little more complicated than that, but yes. I'm not the one who will be watching for those micro-reactions, but someone who specializes in that will be."
"And these people will just happen to be in my house watching them?"
Mike gives her a weak smile. "We'd like to put cameras up in your house."
She pulls in a deep breath as if he's asking a lot and she's getting close to shutting the whole thing down.
"And if he doesn't react the way you expect a murderer to act?"
"We continue to investigate and pray that one day we can catch the Full Deck Killer before he creates many more victims."
"How does doing this help you catch him?" she challenges. "It sounds like you just want to nail my brother."
"He might know something about him that we don't know," Mike offers. "Your help in this is vital. If William isn't guilty, then we need to know that so we can move on."
She's silent for a long moment, and I clear my throat when Mike pulls in a breath, telling me that he's preparing to lay on another level of shit to the pile that has already been created.
Thankfully, he takes a hint and remains quiet.
"I'll do it," she whispers, straightening in her chair. "But only to prove that William had nothing to do with it."
"Thank you," Mike says, but I can see in his eyes that he thinks the complete opposite.
My hope, of course, would be that it wasn't William. Cora has been through enough, and to lose her sister and then lose her brother to a murder conviction would be just too much for anyone to handle .
"I'm going to have Rebecca go over some things with you so we can make sure this operation works," Mike says just as the door opens and a woman walks in.
I stand with her, fully intent on sitting beside her while she's briefed on what's going to happen back in South Carolina.
"A word, Eddie," Mike says before I can follow the women out the door.