Chapter 40
It was after midnight by the time Michael brought Kara to the hospital to be checked out and given an IV.
Kara didn’t care for needles, but she was still dehydrated and agreed to stay until dawn. She needed the rest. She’d dozed
on and off driving back from Georgia, but she could sleep for an entire day and still need more downtime.
Matt sat with her. He had showered and put on slacks and a polo shirt. “I still don’t feel clean,” he told her.
“Did you sleep any?”
“I crashed for two hours while getting the infusion.”
“When this is over, do you think Tony will give us a day or two off to soak in my hot tub?”
One of the best things about owning her own house was that she had a private hot tub. She used it often.
“You can’t soak in water with those stitches,” Matt said. “And you’re going to be on desk duty until you get a doctor’s clearance.”
She frowned and glared at him. “What about you?”
“Me, too. We’re probably going to be out of commission for at least a week, probably longer.”
She groaned. “I hate sitting at a desk.”
“I’ll get you a standing desk.”
She rolled her eyes and he laughed, took her hand, kissed it. “While the doc was checking you out, Michael told me about your
conversation with Reid. You gave him your number.”
“Yes, I needed to—it was a test on his part, and I want him to reach out to me. He will either call me, or he’ll leave to
meet up with Clara, so he can kill her.”
“That’s what Michael said you thought. Why?”
“Something Catherine said when she was debriefing me. Catherine is convinced that Clara killed Becca to clear the way for
her to keep Garrett. Maybe that was why she did it, or she just couldn’t stand someone smart like Becca winning back her boyfriend.
Whatever.” Kara rolled her eyes. The drama of the situation was just too much for her. “Anyway, Catherine told me if Garrett
believes it, he’ll help us. Maybe. But if Catherine is right that Becca was Garrett’s first and only true love—and I think
she is, because Becca’s parents believed it—then Garrett is going to want to kill Clara. Garrett isn’t stupid. He’s well-educated,
he’s sharp, he’ll see exactly how Clara manipulated him—and he’ll be angry.”
“Why would he kill her? Maybe he doesn’t care that his first girlfriend is dead,” Matt said, playing devil’s advocate.
“Clara is extreme. She falls, falls hard. She wasn’t going to allow Garrett to leave her for anyone, especially a cute, successful,
college-educated ex-girlfriend. The older women he dated were no threat to her . . . Becca was a threat. So she took her off
the game board. Becca was a threat because Garrett loved her.”
Matt nodded as Kara spoke, then said, “You’re beginning to sound like a shrink.”
“Bite your tongue,” she said. “All cops have to be part psychologist. We have to be able to read people. And Garrett is going to avenge Becca.” She sighed, leaned back. “You’re right, this IV is amazing. I almost feel human again.”
Her cell phone rang. It was Garrett Reid.
“I guess he wants to talk.”
“Answer it,” Matt said.
She did, put it on speaker and motioned for Matt to keep an eye on the door and make sure no one came in. “Hello, Garrett.
It’s Kara.”
“She called me this afternoon,” Garrett said. “But you probably already know that, if you have my phone records.”
“What did she say?”
He didn’t answer the question. “I knew she wasn’t coming back. I thought about what that other fed, Jones, said. That her
name was Clara Dolan and she had a trust fund. When I called her Clara, she denied it at first, but then gave it up. Said
her parents disowned her and she hated the name. She legally changed her name to Audrey.”
“She may have done just that,” Kara said.
“I told her when we first met, no lies.”
“She didn’t legally change her name to Audrey until after she left LA.”
“She told me that even though you were a cop, that you and that other agent were an item. Showed me a photo of you two outside
a restaurant, said that you were staying together at the resort even after I was arrested. Is that true?”
“Yes,” Kara said. Matt winced. They were never supposed to give personal information to suspects. But in this case, Kara had
to maintain the rapport she’d built with Garrett earlier. His whole world was crashing down around him, and he knew it was
just a matter of time before he was back in jail, this time for decades. And if he didn’t help them, Clara would remain free
while he paid the price.
“Do you love him?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
“I loved Becca. It feels different. It’s . . . hot and cold, exciting and scary, and I would have spent the rest of my life with her. I would have married her, we would have had kids, we would have been happy. I never really felt anything until I met Becca.”
“What happened, Garrett?” She left the question open-ended, not sure where his head was at.
“We went to different colleges. She came to visit and we got into an argument. It was stupid. She wanted me to fight for her,
but I told her if she didn’t love me to leave. She left, so I assumed she didn’t love me. It gutted me. But I wasn’t going
to chase her if she wanted to be free.”
“Because you loved her,” Kara said.
“Exactly.”
“Did Audrey know about Becca?” Kara used the name Garrett was comfortable with, her voice calm, no accusation.
“I never thought about it. Until now.”
“And?”
“She stole the only person from me that I have ever loved, the only person who was so good, deep down in her soul good, who
made me good.”
“Where is Audrey right now?”
“She will soon be in hell, where that fucking bitch belongs.”
He ended the call.
“Well, shit,” Kara said. “Get the nurse, get this thing out of me, he’s going to do something stupid.”
“The sheriff’s department has a team on his apartment,” Matt said. “And Zack is wired on energy drinks pouring over all her
financial statements. We have every ID we know about flagged and she’s not flying out or crossing the border. We’ll find her.”
“She could have identities we don’t know about. Get the nurse, please? It’s almost done anyway, and I need to be prepared.”
“Neither of us should be in the field right now.”
“We can observe, can’t we? I can’t lie around here and do nothing when he is going to kill her.”
Matt reluctantly left the room.
Kara tried calling Garrett back. It went to voicemail.
“Garrett, it’s Kara. If you tell us where she is, we can apprehend her and tell the court you cooperated. That’ll help you
in the long run. But if you do anything rash, if you go after her yourself, you’re only going to be putting the final nail
in your coffin. What would Becca want you to do? Call me. We’ll talk again.”
She hung up, tense and agitated.
A text message came through a minute later.
Becca was a saint. I am not.
She tried calling him back. She got a call center recording.
“The number you are trying to reach is unavailable . . .”
She ended the call mid-recording, swung her legs around to sit up, and was about to take the IV out herself when the nurse
came in. Maybe it was the look on Kara’s face, or Matt had said something to her, but she didn’t argue about taking out the
IV.
“I need to make note that you’re both leaving against doctor’s orders,” she said.
“We’re fine,” Matt told her.
“Get Zack on the phone,” Kara said. “I have some ideas about how he can narrow the search.”
“You’re amazing, Kara,” Zack said when he came onto the video chat screen.
“Yep, I know. What did you find?” She was too tired for Zack’s long-winded explanations right now.
They were back at Sapphire Shoals in the conference room where Ryder and the team had been working.
It was after three in the morning and all Kara wanted was four hours of uninterrupted sleep. Or longer. Maybe a day. Maybe
being forced to take time off wouldn’t be a bad thing.
They were all there, except Jim who was still in Georgia and Sloane who was with the Graves family at the hospital. Detective Bianca Fuentes had also joined them, though she looked like she hadn’t slept much, either.
“Kara said to focus on properties within a half-day drive of the cannery on the coast, not only those owned by the LLC or
Clara Dolan or any of her aliases, but property owned by her parents or grandparents.”
“I hadn’t thought to look at her family,” Catherine said. “Her mother essentially disowned her.”
“She would probably get great satisfaction using one of her mother’s homes,” Kara said. “A big fat middle finger from afar.”
“Why the coast?” Michael asked.
“Because of the victims. They were dumped in the ocean, which tells me she has access to a boat. Probably owns one. And if
she has access to a boat, she would have a place where she could dock.”
“There are two properties,” Zack said. “Both owned by the Wilmington Family Trust. Wilmington is Piper Dolan’s maiden name.
They’re originally from Georgia, but I haven’t been able to track down any relatives still in the area.”
“You said two properties,” Matt said, refocusing Zack, who often went off on many tangents before getting to the point.
“Yes. One in Savannah, which isn’t on the coast, but the property abuts a river with access to the ocean. Moreover, there’s
a dock attached to the property and no current residents. It was used as a second residence for Gerald Dolan when he taught
an annual seminar at a college in Savannah.”
“So Clara would have been familiar with the property,” Catherine surmised.
“It’s been in the family for more than fifty years. The second property is a two-acre spread on Kiawah Island, purchased by
the family trust as a vacation home sixteen years ago. There’s a dock, and aerial photos show a boathouse.”
“Do you have visuals?” Kara asked.
Zack typed on his keyboard. The first property that popped up on screen was in Savannah. The satellite image showed a boat at the dock and easy access to the river from the house. Moreover, it was three hours from Clinch County, and accessible to Flagler Beach by waterways.
He clicked again and highlighted the Kiawah Island property. It had privacy, and Kara would bet her pension that’s where Clara
was.
“There,” she said.
“Savannah is closer,” Catherine pointed out.
“There are neighbors close to the Savannah house, and if her dad lived there on and off, they might know her. She won’t risk
it. She may have used the place at some point, but if she’s regrouping before she disappears, she’s going to Kiawah Island.”
Matt said, “Bianca, can you contact Savannah police and have them check out that property? We’ll fly to the closest airport
to Kiawah Island, contact local law enforcement on our way, but I don’t want anyone tipping her off. She can leave by land
or sea, and if it’s by sea she’s going to be that much more difficult to catch.”
“Not if we call in the Coast Guard,” Michael said.
“Do it,” Matt said. “I should have thought of it.”
“You’re on leave,” Catherine pointed out.
“Not today,” Matt said with a glance at Kara.
“When that bitch is in custody, I’ll take all the time you force on me,” Kara said. “Until then, I’m all in.”
“You’re both impossible,” Catherine muttered, but she was smiling.
Garrett destroyed his phone after he called Kara Quinn. He liked her. She was direct. She didn’t break eye contact. She was
pretty.
She wasn’t Becca. But Becca would have grown into a pretty, confident woman, just like Kara.
She didn’t have the opportunity to do so because Audrey had killed her.
Garrett no longer doubted that Audrey wasn’t even her name. He didn’t doubt that she killed Becca. When he realized she had
lied to him for nearly eight years about something as simple as her name, he knew she could have lied to him about anything.
He’d always known she had money, but thought it was from her honey traps. He had no idea she was a trust fund baby, given
everything on a silver platter. She’d never told him. She’d told him nothing about herself, or she’d lied.
She had lied about everything.
They’d had fun, a good seven years, but through it all, she had kept secrets that could have made a difference in their lives.
If she could lie to him so easily and for so long, there was no way she respected him. She had never intended to protect him
when things got too hot. Which meant she’d never planned to bring him along, give him a new identity, create a new life.
Not that he would have gone with her. Not after learning she had killed Becca.
His anger was a slow-burning ember. Audrey was fanning the flames with each lie he uncovered.
She was playing a very dangerous game.