Chapter Nine
Death and its close cousin, extreme violence, had walked this meandering path before.
They’d held hands in the dark shadows beneath these towering live oaks.
They’d carefully avoided the bulging tree roots that lifted and cracked the concrete, quietly stalking their prey.
Here, in the near-darkness where thick branches and leaves blotted out the hot Florida sun overhead, they’d crouched in this ten-foot-wide space lined on both sides by six-foot-tall wooden fences.
The fences were supposed to ensure the privacy of the homeowners whose properties backed onto the nature trail in The Woods subdivision while joggers and walkers enjoyed these paths.
But two years ago, these same fences had protected and concealed evil.
This was where Teagan Ray had been attacked, brutalized and then abducted.
There were theories that extreme violence, whether or not it ended in death, left an indelible mark on a place.
It tainted the soil, the trees, even the air with its negative energy and could be felt for years afterward.
Standing here now with a sense of dread and oppressiveness weighing down on him, Bryson was more inclined to believe those theories than to dispel them.
Because it wasn’t the GPS coordinates that had made him stop when he’d reached this spot. It was an overwhelming feeling of doom.
He shook his head at those thoughts. It was more scientific than that.
He’d stopped here because he’d tried to mentally place himself in the role of a man stalking prey.
This is where he’d have lain in wait for a potential victim.
It was a particularly dark spot, with thick overgrown bushes providing the perfect cover.
And over two years ago, unfortunately, Teagan was the one who’d happened through here at just the wrong time. And she’d paid for that dearly.
After the initial attack, the belief was that she’d been drugged.
Still able to walk with assistance, but not coherent enough to fight back or even understand what was happening to her, she was led by her abductor to wherever he’d parked his vehicle.
Or, at least, that was the theory. There weren’t any witnesses to fill in those details.
Her first lucid memories, after the attack on the path, were that she was blindfolded and tied up in the shack where he’d taken her.
Two weeks later, when he’d left on one of his so-called supply trips that he took every few days, she’d miraculously escaped.
But she’d gotten lost in the wilds of the Florida backcountry for days.
By the time a hiker had found her, she was dehydrated and sunburned and half out of her mind.
Once she’d recovered enough in the hospital to explain that she’d escaped a kidnapper, over two days had passed.
The police used scent dogs to backtrack to the shack where she’d been held.
Turns out she’d been about an hour and a half from her hometown of Jacksonville, deep in the woods outside of Live Oak, near the Suwannee River.
But the abductor wasn’t there, and he never came back after that.
The owner of the shack was cleared. Not because Teagan couldn’t pick him out of a lineup.
She couldn’t pick anyone out of a lineup.
She’d been drugged, blindfolded, deprived of water and food.
Her abductor had kept the shack mostly dark, with room-darkening drapes and few sources of light.
He’d told her from the beginning that he planned to kill her.
But until then, he was super careful, obviously in case she somehow escaped, which she did.
Because of his extreme care to conceal his identity, she’d told the police she could probably pass him on the street and would never know it.
That was likely one of the reasons she had put her education and the rest of her life on hold to try to find the man who’d attacked her.
Knowing he was in prison and could never hurt her again would no doubt be the only way she could ever live without the fear of him finding her again, and finishing what he’d started.
Too bad her abductor hadn’t been the owner of the shack.
That would have made everything neat and tidy and it would all be over by now.
But the owner lived in Canada, where he went to work every day and had plenty of people to vouch for that.
The shack was where he stayed two or three times a year when he came down to work at clearing the land around it in preparation for building the retirement cabin he dreamed about.
Bryson made some notes on the police report, marking things on the map of the trail that he’d noticed today.
Then he tucked the report into his jacket pocket and took one last look around.
He intended to walk all of the paths in this community today if his hip could handle it, or use his wheelchair if he had to, which seemed likely by how badly his hip was already throbbing.
He wanted to see whether there were other good ambush spots on other trails.
If so, then maybe someone with homes backing up on those paths might have spotted a man walking the trails back then, choosing his ultimate hiding place.
There could be some witnesses who didn’t even realize they’d seen something important.
There were 4.1 miles of nature walks and trails in this community, according to its website.
Other statistics that he’d gleaned about The Woods were that it had 811 homes and 18 man-made ponds.
It boasted a so-called natural setting, thus the name.
From his perspective, that meant there were a heck of a lot of trees and overgrown bushes, providing great hiding places for would-be attackers.
But because the community was gated, the residents had been lulled into thinking they were safe.
Maybe that explained why Teagan had thought nothing of walking through this overgrown, dark, far less traveled section of the trails as the sun was going down.
Her parents lived just a few streets away, and she’d been home from college on a visit.
Having grown up here without any major crime incidents in an upper-middle-class area that was generally considered safe, she had felt there was nothing to worry about.
In a perfect world, there shouldn’t have been.
But unfortunately, there were some very bad people sharing the same air as the rest of them, and Teagan had the misfortune of coming across one. Wrong place, wrong time.
Or did that really explain it? Could the attacker have been after her specifically?
That was one of the questions Bryson needed to answer. The assumption all along in the police reports, and by Teagan and her parents as well, had been that she was a randomly chosen victim. There wasn’t any evidence to the contrary. But Bryson wasn’t the type to assume anything.
A low growl had him turning around, leaning on his cane with one hand as he flipped back his jacket with the other to grab the pistol holstered on his hip.
But he didn’t pull his weapon. Instead, he let his jacket fall back into place and rested both of his hands on the cane to steady himself as he glanced from the impressive, still-growling German shepherd to the gorgeous young woman holding its leash.
Teagan.
The accusation that she might have somehow gotten Pierce to tell her where he was and then followed him to Jacksonville died on his lips unspoken. She hadn’t expected to see him here. It was evident by her wide eyes and the way her left hand was pressed against her throat.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “I thought you’d be in Savannah by now.” His accusatory tone did exactly what he’d intended. It gave her something to focus on instead of the fright from seeing a man standing in the shadows where she’d once been attacked.
She dropped her hand and gave the dog a command that had him sitting on his haunches. His tongue lolled out as if he hadn’t been poised to rip out Bryson’s throat seconds earlier.
“Why would I be in Savannah?” She sounded genuinely confused.
It was his turn to be surprised. “Didn’t you get a call? From FBI special agent Pierce Buchanan?”
She shook her head. “No. But I haven’t checked my messages since leaving your place yesterday. My phone number listed in the folder I gave you is a landline at my apartment. It’s not one that I share with many people. And it’s not registered under my name.”
The truth sent a wave of anger and sympathy straight through him. “You carry a burner phone, don’t you? You’re worried that your attacker might trace you.”
Her gaze was her answer, darting toward the fences on either side of the path and the thick trees and bushes blocking the view of anyone behind them.
He wondered why the homeowners association hadn’t voted to clear out these dangerous hiding places, especially after what had happened to Teagan.
But mostly, he wondered why she was here.
He took a step forward, hesitating when her dog emitted another threatening growl.
“Zeus, stop.” She shook the leash and the dog quieted, but his dark eyes followed Bryson’s every move. “Why would an FBI agent be looking for me?” Her eyes widened again. “Have they found something? In Savannah? Oh no. Someone else wasn’t attacked, were they?”
Ignoring the new round of growls from her dog, he limped toward her, stopping just out of lunging distance.
“No. I’m not aware of any more attacks linked to the man who hurt you.
Pierce is a good friend of mine who lives in Savannah.
Because of his experience with serial killer cases, he ended up assisting on the task force in Kentucky.
We worked the Ripper case together. After you left yesterday—”
“After you threw me out, you mean,” she accused. “I thought you Justice Seekers were supposed to be honorable and help people in need.”