Chapter Twenty-Three
The white van was gone.
I stood fifty feet from the door of the café, staring at the spot where it had sat.
The flow of traffic on the sidewalk bent around me, people throwing me annoyed or confused looks as they passed.
Fair enough; I’d come to a screeching halt in the middle of the sidewalk, and now it must look like I was just standing here daydreaming.
Where the hell was the FBI van?
I blinked a couple of times and then looked up and down the street, wondering if the feds had moved it for some reason. Maybe they’d parked illegally and a pesky town official had threatened them with a ticket.
Sweat beaded on my forehead. The sun beat down, baking the pavement. Heat waves rose from it in a way that made me wonder if I’d finally snapped and was hallucinating. I checked the street again. No. I wasn’t. The van was gone.
I frowned and forced myself to walk toward the café.
Jakob had known about Nick. How? Howww? And why hadn’t he said anything sooner?
Why had he let me into Kearny, into Charley’s, knowing that I used to sleep with an FBI agent?
Maybe Jakob had friends still in government work, too, one at the NSA who agreed to illegally hack my Messenger account, and so Jakob knew I’d turned Nick down.
Or maybe he’d told Daniel about the risk I posed, and they agreed to let me in only so they could teach the FBI a lesson.
Through my violent murder. Now, wouldn’t that be a hoot after everything I’d already been through?
I barked a laugh. It sounded as hysterical as I felt.
The nice old white lady passing me on the sidewalk shot me a look and then picked up her pace to get away from the crazy woman.
I wanted to apologize to her, tell her I was fine, but I didn’t know if I was.
Jakob was right; I wasn’t used to his world.
As warped as I thought I was after surviving two wars and a plane crash, I still had morals.
My mind might have some dark corners, but there was light in there too.
I looked for the good in people. Jakob was proof of that.
My first instinct was to befriend someone, not to sniff out ways to manipulate them.
I was in way over my head with all these devious motherfuckers.
With that thought ringing through my mind, I pulled open the café door and stopped dead in my tracks for the third time in less than five minutes.
It was silent as the grave inside. The gentle music that had filtered down from overhead was off.
No quiet conversation met my ears. No tinkling of ceramic mugs, no whirring of machinery, no scraping of chair legs over floor tiles. Nothing.
The door opened into the middle of the shop.
Straight ahead was the service counter. When I’d walked in earlier, three people had been manning it.
A pimply teenage boy worked the register.
Two baristas were behind him, foaming, whipping, and pouring coffee.
The counter stood empty now, and it freaked me out.
I jerked my gaze away and took in the rest of the space.
The entire goddamn café was empty.
What the fuck was going on?
A motion caught the corner of my eye. I turned to see Nick emerging from the back.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
He smiled that megawatt smile at me, like everything was okay. This time I didn’t fall for it.
“Come sit with me,” he said, pulling out a stool at the table we’d shared earlier.
I stood rooted to my spot by the door. “Answer my question, Nick.”
“I will,” he said, still smiling. “Just come sit down.”
The only reason I obeyed was because it felt like my legs were about to give out.
Too much shit had happened in the past few hours—hell, the past few days—and my mind was unraveling.
Calm, logical Krista Evans, who, if she’s honest with herself, thinks she’s smarter than the average bear, had gotten everything wrong again and again, and now she was in the middle of an empty café with an FBI agent having a full-blown existential crisis.
Maybe the sky wasn’t blue. Maybe it was purple. And really, what is life?
I dropped down hard on the proffered chair. “Where the hell is everyone?”
Nick smoothly took his seat beside me, looking unflappable. “They’re out back, taking their fifteen-minute break together.”
I eyed him. “You didn’t have them all killed?”
He laughed, his whole face lighting up with amusement. “No. They’re fine.”
“Where’s Redding and his lawyer? What happened to our plan?”
He sobered. “Redding said something about you I didn’t like, so I arrested him.”
What the fuck?
I eyed him. He didn’t look like he still held a torch for me. From all appearances online and in person, he seemed to really love his wife. I didn’t think him arresting Redding was born from jealousy or overprotectiveness, so what was this about?
“Do you even have jurisdiction?” I asked. “A reason to hold him?”
In answer, he pulled his cell from the inside pocket of his suit. “I did more digging into him after we got off the phone last night.”
“Yes, you said.”
He tapped his phone screen and then slid it over to me. “Take a look at these.”
I picked it up. A woman stared back at me. I frowned at Nick. “What is this?”
“Keep going,” he said.
I dropped my gaze to his phone and dragged my finger to the left, moving to the next picture.
And then the next. A pattern started to emerge as I swiped through the photos.
They were all women. Women who had long dark hair, tan skin, full lips, and brown eyes.
Women who looked a hell of a lot like me.
Nick straightened the cuffs of his suit jacket. “You can’t tell from the photos, but they’re all taller than five eight.”
“Are these… are these Redding’s victims?”
Nick’s eyes rose to mine. “Yes. We can’t prove them all. He’s gotten much better at what he does since leaving the military. But I checked his known whereabouts against unsolved violent rapes of women who fit his profile, and he was within driving distance of every one of them.”
It felt like the floor dropped out from under me.
I thought back to the first time Redding laid eyes on me, at Magnolia Hills, and my idle thought that he looked like he was checking my features against some internal database.
He had been. This was Redding’s ulterior motive.
He’d agreed to meet with me because he wanted to canvas his next rape.
Not only did I fit his profile, but I was also dating a man close to Daniel King.
What better way to taunt Daniel, to make him feel hunted, than by raping a woman who people thought was under Daniel and the Kings’ protection?
A wave of nausea rolled over me as I remembered the way Redding looked at me in the police station. That sick smile. And here, in the coffee shop, the burning intensity of his stare.
My fingers shook when I handed Nick his phone. “This is why you didn’t say anything about what would happen if the Jokers talked to Redding instead of killing him.”
Nick nodded, slipping his phone into his pocket. “I knew they’d never get the chance to. Once I realized that you fit his profile, I wasn’t willing to take the risk that he would slip out of their grasp and come after you.”
“Do you have enough to hold him, or do I need to worry about him slipping through your grasp instead?”
“I have enough to hold him for a long, long while,” he said. “Dr. Perez woke up an hour ago.”
Finally some good news. “Thank God.”
“Redding was the one who beat her up.”
Rage swamped my relief. “Fucking piece of shit. Please tell me he didn’t… ” Like Beth at the bar the other night, I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“He didn’t sexually assault her.”
Some of the tension eased from my shoulders. Thank heavens for small miracles. “How did he think he would get away with all of this?”
Nick shook his head. “I don’t think he expected the doctor to survive.
She sustained a lot of damage. As for the rest…
” He shrugged. “Sociopaths tend to get sloppy the longer they’re active.
They inflate their own egos. The more they get away with, the more they tell themselves they can never be caught.
They’re too smart for us dumb law enforcement officers.
It helps that he has family members in power helping him.
When I arrested him, he made some crack about how the charges would never stick. ”
“Thanks to his uncle, the state rep.”
“And another one, who’s a federal judge,” Nick said.
I stared at him. “Seriously?”
Grimacing, Nick nodded. Redding was even more of an elitist prick than I first assumed.
“Please tell me you have proof they’ve been covering for him,” I said.
“Not yet. But we will by the time Redding goes to trial for what he did to Dr. Perez.”
He sounded so confident I almost believed him.
“What now?” I asked.
He pulled something else from his pocket and slid it over to me. It was a thumb drive. “All the photos you need are on there. You might not get to take Redding out, but once the Jokers see him with me, they’ll pull out of Magnolia.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll figure out some way to get it to them.”
He grinned. “I’m sure your boyfriend’s father will know how.”
Goddamn it. Everyone knew everything but me. Why the fuck had I even gotten involved?
Nick’s smile slipped. My stupid, expressive face must have given me away.
“Don’t take it personally, Skywalker. We’ve all been watching each other for years.
It’s our business to know every move the other player makes.
” He eyed me for a second before continuing.
“Once everything cools down, you might want to take a step back and give yourself some space to think about whether you really want to be involved in this world. You’re not in so deep that you can’t get out. ”