Chapter 28
Lexie’s concept of time warped and twisted. Shattered fragments of awareness needled her consciousness—a never-ending nightmare.
The chronic nausea had passed, yet her world kept spinning. White light blinded her. Stars danced behind her lids. The air she breathed smelled of damp—mildew, dirt, and manure. Her hands were half-numb, the hard pressure of the duct tape on her wrists burned. But there was something else too, beneath her fingertips. She couldn’t be sure, but the small, round bumps on the underside of the armrests could have been tacks, the kind one might expect on an old vinyl chair. For no apparent reason, other than survival instinct telling her to, Lexie began picking at one, loosening it, digging it out. It gave her something to focus on, and as more and more perception of where she was and what was happening came to her, it gave her hope too.
After a long time, she opened her eyes, blinking into the first clear vision she’d had since waking up in this horrible place. The stranger holding her prisoner stood directly in front of her. Lexie’s breathing suspended. Her stomach clenched. Because it was no stranger at all.
“No . . .”
This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.
Before she could fathom a single thing to say, Lexie caught sight of something else, just outside the beam of light from the hanging bulb above. Lying crumpled in the corner of what appeared to be an old cellar or basement of some kind, was Kyle. His eyes—dead and unseeing—sat open. The knife wedged in his chest, evidence of a brutal end, was planted in the middle of an enormous, dark stain that had once been the fresh blood of the man she used to love.
Lexie couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. Her vision blurred through erupting tears and without warning, a wail of fear and grief and anger tore its way out of her throat. She screamed and screamed and didn’t stop, even as the familiar face in front of her bared it’s teeth and said, “You brought this on yourself.”
“No, nothing here either,” Frank grumbled into his cell phone. “It’s a dead end. We’ll look around a bit more, then meet you back at the station.” He gave Nico a sad grin. “No news. They checked Lexie’s house; it’s empty.”
Nico barely had it in him to acknowledge the statement. He turned in a slow circle, taking in the ransacked drawers, scattered papers, and general chaos that was the result of a painstakingly thorough search of Colin Rowe’s taxidermy shop. On the outside, Colin was nothing more sinister than a man with a creepy-ass profession. His business turned a small profit and the books appeared legit. Nothing suggested he spent his spare time butchering innocent young women. Nico felt his mouth set in a hard line. Were they even scrutinizing the right guy? He’d hoped they would find something—anything—that might give them a clue where to look next. They hadn’t. And the more time went by, the more his hands shook, and his control began to slip.
You sick fuck. I swear, if you’ve hurt her . . .
Finding his way back out onto the sidewalk, Nico plonked down on the edge of the gutter. He rested his arms on bent knees. Every cell in his body raged with thoughts of what Lexie was enduring—or had endured—at the hands of a monster. And he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
Frank came to sit beside him. He was quiet for a few moments before saying, “It’s not over yet, kid.”
Nico hung his head. “It might be. For her.”
Before Frank could reply, Nico’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn’t recognize the number.
“Nico? It’s Annie.”
“Hey, what’s up?”
“You tell me,” she said. “I just got off the phone with Wade. Lexie’s missing?”
Nico checked his watch, feeling another link in his chain of patience break loose. “That was over an hour ago. He was supposed to call you immediately.”
“He did,” she snapped. “But I’ve been having some problems of my own tonight, namely a husband who’s disappeared off the face of the earth, so I’m sorry if returning a phone call from my boss wasn’t at the top of my priority list!”
“Paul is gone too?”
“Oh, relax,” she said dourly. “We had a fight yesterday and he’s obviously still sulking. Forget it. Tell me what’s going on.”
Nico rubbed the back of his neck. “What did Wade tell you?”
“He said Lexie was attacked at the bar tonight, that her car is gone, and”—he heard her draw in a shaky breath—“he said there was a lot of a blood.”
Nico sighed. There was no point sugar-coating it. “It’s true.”
“Oh, my god.” Her voice broke.
“Annie, did you see Colin Rowe in the restaurant during your shift?”
“Sure, he was there, but what’s he got to do with anything? Kyle is the one you should be looking for. I just knew that bastard wouldn’t let her walk away so easily, not after the public smack-down she gave him. Oh, this is bad. This is really bad. What are we going to do?”
She was spiraling, and he didn’t have time for it. “I can’t explain it to you right now,” Nico said, a little terse, but she’d have to forgive him later. “We’re looking for Kyle, but I need you to tell me everything you can recall about Colin. Was he alone? Who served him? Did he approach Lexie in any way?”
“He was with a woman,” she said after a long pause. “They were in for drinks. I covered the bar for Wade while he was in the back. As far as I know, Lexie never spoke to either of them.”
“Did you recognize the woman?”
“I’ve seen her around. Pretty sure she’s a teacher at one of the schools.”
“Do you remember seeing them leave?”
“Yeah, they left together not long before I finished. By the look of things, it seemed like they were taking the party elsewhere, if you know what I mean.”
“Who settled the bill?” he asked.
“What does that matter?”
“Who?”
Annie growled, as if annoyed by his line of questioning. “She paid.”
“Cash or credit?”
“Credit card.”
Bingo!
Frank—who’d overheard the entire conversation—slapped him on the back. The trail just turned from frigid to red hot.
Nico hung up with a promise to keep Annie updated, then put a call in to Seth with instructions to coordinate a search for the local schoolteacher, using Wade’s customer transaction records to learn her name. It took less than fifteen minutes to find her information. Another ten to converge on her home address. Five to discover her and Colin naked in bed together, innocent and oblivious to anything but their own lust bubble. And one second for another promising lead to turn to shit. Nico went numb. He barely heard the commotion going on around him as he walked away from the scene on rubbery legs. The gun he’d planned to point at Lexie’s abductor hung slack at his side. The hope in his heart that he’d find her and that she would be alright dashed in an instant.
How could he do this? How could he find her if he didn’t know where to look? How could he save her if he didn’t know who to save her from? And, most disturbingly, how could he ever forgive himself if he failed?
What followed was something of an out-of-body experience; Nico recognized what was happening but did not actively participate. The squad brought Colin in for questioning, during which Nico stood silently in the corner, hearing but not listening, absorbing but not caring. Seating him in the holding cell alongside Logan Hayes, their suspect tally now sat at two of four. Wilde called again with news that Bryan Fowler had been found dead execution style on the mainland, a clear message from his former crew that snitches do, indeed, end up in ditches. Three suspects down. Nico should have felt relieved. He didn’t. If anything, he only felt more lost. They’d checked the ferry logs, the traffic cams, put out a BOLO and exhausted every available resource to track down number four; Kyle Garrett, the most unlikely serial killer and yet the most likely to want to do Lexie harm. It was a cruel joke, not knowing what kind of monster he was facing off with; the drunk and angry kind who might hurt her out of jealousy, or the mass murdering kind who would torture her for sport. Perhaps both. Problematically, Kyle had an alibi for the night Darcy Walsh was killed, but it wouldn’t be the first time law enforcement had been fooled by an elaborately planned rouse.
The clock on the wall moved faster than it ever had before, its hands gliding around and around, mocking his inactivity with every revolution. Results from the puddle of blood wouldn’t be in until morning. At two a.m., Frank sat a strong cup of black coffee in front of Nico and ordered him to drink it. When the caffeine hit, he stood and ran anxious hands down his face. He’d never felt so overwhelmed in all his life. He was drowning in it: the unknown, the what-if’s, the anger. He scanned his eyes over the giant whiteboard filled with crime scene photos, maps, mug shots, post-it notes, and relevant scribbles of information about the case. He looked at each victim’s picture, took in their smiling faces, candid moments of their lives captured at times when they never knew what horrors awaited them further down the track. Sara Riley. Isabelle Moss. Darcy Walsh. And most recently, Lexie Bowen. Her photo had been hesitantly pinned up thirty minutes ago as another possible victim. Nico’s hands itched to tear it down.
Frank had moved away and was talking quietly with West, who’d finally made an appearance after Zoe did exactly what Nico had told her to, which was to basically annoy him into coming. According to the two of them, Kyle was nowhere to be found. They’d searched his apartment, his parent’s beach-side mansion, all the local watering holes—nada. In between more threats to sue the department, his mother had let slip that Kyle went in search of Lexie earlier in the evening, a fact that not even West could easily ignore or dismiss as coincidence, though it did prompt him to share that he’d gone to see Kyle after the rock-through-the-window incident to talk some sense into him. “He gets it now,” he’d told Nico. “I made sure of it. He gave me his word he wouldn’t bother her anymore. We even started arrangements with his parents to find a good rehab facility.” Nico didn’t believe it for a second, and for the first time, West also seemed to be asking himself the same question the rest of them had been asking from the beginning: was Lexie’s ex-husband capable of murder?
Nico stepped back a few paces, so he could see the board in its entirety.
Come on, give me something.
The thought came and went like a soft scent on the wind, then his attention was caught by the sound of Cora’s voice announcing she’d brought fresh chili and cornbread. The smell set Nico’s mouth watering. He watched the team gather around it.
“What are you doing here, Cora?” he asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“I am as much a part of this team as you are,” she said, thrusting a serving of food into his hands. “Just because I don’t carry a gun on my hip, doesn’t make me useless.”
“I never said that.”
“Oh, I know. You wouldn’t dare. Now, eat.”
Nico tried but could only stomach a few bites before it all threatened to come straight back up. How could he eat while Lexie . . .
Setting his bowl aside, he went to join Cora who’d assumed his previous position staring at the board. He could hear Frank and West still talking behind him, their voices muted and garbled. They were discussing options for a manhunt, estimating how many men they would need, how many dogs, and how much time it would take to cover the whole island. Nico closed his eyes. Too long. That was a fact no one could deny, no matter how many suggestions were thrown around. They couldn’t wait. Hell, it might already be too late.
“Logan swears that the blood on his truck belongs to one of the women up the mountain, just a hunting accident,” Frank was saying. “In any case, we can’t hold these guys for more than forty-eight hours, and the clock’s ticking.”
“So, I guess George didn’t do it?” Cora said suddenly.
Nico frowned down at her. “Do what?”
She glanced at the holding cell, her forehead crinkling in confusion. “I saw him in lockup this morning and just assumed you’d brought him in for”—her hand waved uncertainly toward the board—“he is a suspect, isn’t he?”
“No, he—” Nico shook his head. “He got himself into trouble at Wade’s last night and needed to sleep it off, that’s all.”
“Oh.” Cora returned her eyes to the line of victim photos. “It would seem my instincts aren’t as sharp as they used to be.” Lowering her voice, she added, “Between you and me, he’s the one I had my money on. Awful thing, losing a child. God-only-knows how twisted his mind’s gotten because of it.”
“Cora, that’s . . .” Crazy. And yet, something in Nico’s brain twitched. He blinked, his mouth dropping open, his thoughts tentatively dancing around the edge of a possibility he’d never seriously entertained until now. Like a basketball circling the hoop, almost a score but not quite, the idea percolated. “George wasn’t anywhere near the scene of the first murder the night it happened. It couldn’t have been him,” he said, but his voice lacked the proper conviction.
“Well, for everyone’s sake, I hope you figure it out soon.” Cora gave him a sympathetic pat on the back as she walked away.
Nico barely felt it. His mind reeled. Like a carriage with wobbly wheels careening down a mountainside, thoughts raced and converged and slammed into one another. He couldn’t slow it down, could only hold on tight as his brain dragged him along for the ride.
George’s reaction when he’d thought he was being accused of murder had seemed so genuine. So outraged that Nico would have bet his career he couldn’t have faked that level of offense. But that wasn’t what was at stake, was it? Lexie’s life was. What if he’d been wrong? What if—no. It wasn’t possible. The man’s alibi was solid. He had to be removed from the equation, at least as far as Isabelle’s death was concerned. And yet . . . Something about Cora’s hunch held him, tugged at his arm; look this way.Her words rang true even if the theory was flawed: losing a child would be an awful thing. Awful enough to drive anyone mad with rage and sorrow. But to murder? Nico just couldn’t see George doing it. Even if the Rileys did harbor resentment toward their daughter’s childhood friends, perhaps even blame them for what happened, between Esme’s ill-health and—
Nico stopped. He looked up at the board again. Absently, his hands glided up, his fingers pointing and jerking to every photo, every post-it, every shred of evidence as his brain reached the cusp of an unthinkable thought.
No way . . .
“Lieutenant?” Cora asked, having noticed his silent ambivalence. Her voice held an edge of concern, and it caused others to take notice. Nico felt the attention of the room shift.
Frank came into his line of sight. “What is it, kid?”
“I . . .” His eyes squinted as he tried to piece it all together, leaning on every bit of training and experience he’d had to make it fit. Finally, he found something to grab onto, the rock in the stormy sea. “When you arrested George Riley last night, you said he’d never acted that way before.”
“That’s right.”
“So, why would a man who’s never caused any trouble suddenly try to start a bar fight?”
Frank looked lost. “Uh, I don’t know. He was emotional.”
“About what?”
“He didn’t share.”
“Vikki said he yelled out ‘stupid bitch’ before it all went down.” Nico looked past Frank to the autopsy photos. He pointed at Darcy’s gray, dead face; the laceration on her cheekbone that had been cleaned to reveal a deep, swollen wound. “What was it that the ME said about this blunt force trauma?”
“That it likely knocked her unconscious, but it’s not what killed her,” West replied, coming to join them.
“Isabelle Moss had one just like it on the back of her head, didn’t she?” Nico could feel his whole body vibrating as he spoke, the thrill of the chase igniting his bones. “Didn’t she?”
“Yes, she did,” Frank said, wild curiosity in his eyes. “Talk to us, Nico. Where are you at?”
What Nico experienced in the next few seconds was like realizing you’ve just locked your keys in the car, times a thousand: equal shares of shock, awe, and exasperation at himself for not seeing it coming. His brain jolted, neurons fired, a million light bulbs pinged, and everything suddenly became so terrifyingly clear.
“Holy Christ,” he whispered.
It wasn’t Kyle Garrett they were looking for. It wasn’t Bryan Fowler, or Colin Rowe, or Logan Hayes. He’d known the women on that board were not killed out of rage or sadism or any other number of theories they’d come up with, because he’d felt it from the moment he walked into the first crime scene. It was different. More purposeful. Sara Riley had been murdered, passionately and unexpectedly. But Isabelle and Darcy, they were punished. Hate was not the driving force of their deaths, but love. Loss.
“Why?” Nico asked, already shrugging into his jacket. “Why knock them out only to stab them to death afterward? Why not just go straight for the kill?”
“Control maybe?” Seth put down his half-eaten bowl of chili. “A lot can go wrong while a victim is awake and unrestrained. Maybe the killer didn’t want to take any chances.”
Nico nodded. “But look at these girls—” He waved a hand to Darcy and Isabelle’s photos. “They’d barely have weighed a couple hundred pounds combined. Almost anyone could have overpowered them and done the deed without much fuss, but the killer chose to keep them alive. Why?”
Frank and West remained quiet. Pensive.
“Some kind of fantasy?” Zoe asked. “The killer wanted to . . . taunt them?”
“Which means it wasn’t just pre-meditated; it was personal,” Nico said, speaking quickly so as not to waste any more time. “These women were best friends, they shared history. If we were dealing with some kind of garden-variety psychopath, there would be no reason to choose victims with such a close connection.”
“Okay,” Frank said. “So, the question is—as it always has been—who had motive to kill them both?”
Nico felt multiple sets of eyes on him as he forced two unfortunate words out of his mouth. “The Rileys.”
“Nah, we looked into George, remember?” Frank said, bordering on impatient. “Old Mr. McKinney needed his Corvette ready for the auto show. They pulled an all-nighter.”
Nico shook his head. “I don’t think it was George.”
It took a good ten seconds for his words to sink in, but once they did, a collective scoff swept through the room, including Seth and Zoe.
“You can’t be serious,” West said.
Nico stood his ground. “She has the motive.”
“But not the means,” Frank urged. “Jesus, Nico, a strong breeze could knock that woman over. How in the hell do you expect she’d be capable of cold-blooded murder?”
“By being smart about it,” Nico argued, struggling to keep his voice level. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that there wasn’t a single sign of a struggle at either crime scene? What does that tell you?”
“It tells me that whoever did it had enough strength to subdue two young, healthy women quickly and efficiently,” Frank said. “Which Esme couldn’t possibly have done.”
“Don’t underestimate broken people,” Nico warned. He then leaned over Zoe’s desk to tap a few letters into the keyboard. “Right there. George Riley is the registered owner of a pump-action Remington rifle. If Esme got her hands on it, she could have easily threatened her way into both women’s homes, got them where she wanted them and then—”
“And then socked them in the head,” Frank finished, rubbing his chin in thought. “I don’t know, Nico. Seems a stretch.”
“Then let’s go. Prove me wrong.”
Frank looked to West, who sighed, clearly unable to think of a reason not to at least check it out.
“Alright,” he said. “Go.”