Blood Ties (7 page)

But it was surprising how much one could see only in glances.

Five of them, wearing casual clothing designed to help them blend in or, at the very least, not stand out as feds. Two men, three women. Mostly, he judged, in their thirties, people who moved with the ease of those comfortable inside their trained and active bodies. Strolling along the sidewalk, moving slowly up the hill toward the B&B where he knew they would be staying, at least for tonight.

They had stopped at one of the two restaurants along the way from the sheriff’s department, sitting at one table near the front window as they ate and talked among themselves. He had seen a few smiles but judged that they had not engaged in a great deal of meaningless social conversation.

He wondered if, in another place or time, they would be friends.

Still, there was a look about them he recognized. Like soldiers in the same battle unit or cops walking the same beat, they were all focused on the same things, the same tasks and information. And they carried that air about them no matter how relaxed they might appear, that inner wariness and tension, that alertness to their surroundings.

To danger.

The slightly taller of the two men was the least successful at hiding the coiled spring of readiness inside him. Every move he made—even simply walking with a cat-footed lightness—gave it away. He had good instincts, very good instincts. And quite probably more than mere instincts.

Otherwise he never would have been able to save the Templeton woman’s life.

“Take her out if you get the chance,”

More than one chance had come and gone. But there would doubtless be another.

He watched them walking away from him. It was a short street, all things considered, with short small-town blocks that city blocks would have sneered at, and he was able to watch the group, without leaving the shelter of his alley, all the way to the B&B.

An easy building to get inside. He had, the previous night, and had taken the time to look around, so he was completely familiar with the layout. Just in case.

He watched them go up the steps to the wide front porch and linger momentarily in the welcoming light at the door before being invited inside. The door closed behind them, and they passed from his view.

Just about to turn and go on to other chores scheduled for tonight, he was halted by a glimpse of movement in the shadows of the sidewalk near the B&B. He had to narrow his gaze and concentrate intensely, but within seconds he made out the shape of another watcher flitting along in the dark and quiet wake of the feds.

He wasn’t sure if the other watcher was a man or a woman; whoever it was clung to the shadows as though a part of them, giving away little of any other substance or shape. And when that moving shadow settled down at last, it was in one corner of the small front yard the B&B boasted, among tall shrubbery and inside the wrought-iron fence that was more decorative than protective.

A car drove quietly past, and the watcher noted that the other one was so completely hidden by the shrubbery or by skill that even the passing headlights failed to expose him—or her.

He hesitated a moment longer than he should have, then withdrew slowly back through the alley to where he had parked his own car, mentally adding another player to the game. An unknown player, with unknown motives.

Interesting…

It
was nearly ten o’clock that evening when Miranda stepped from her room out onto the second-floor balcony that wrapped three sides of the Victorian-era building. She wasn’t yet dressed for bed, which was a good thing since the temperature hovered just a few degrees above freezing. Comfortable in her sweater and jeans, she leaned against the high railing and looked up and down the very quiet, softly lit Main Street of Serenade.

“Like a postcard, isn’t it?” The low voice came from behind her, near the corner of the building where the balcony turned along its side. “The perfect come-and-visit-us view the chamber of commerce wants the outside world to see.”

Miranda didn’t look around but replied quietly, “They so often do, these sweet little towns—look picture-postcard perfect and so inviting. Maybe that’s why the monsters hunt in them.” It was a truth she had learned several years before.
^*

“Yeah. Isolated geographically and technologically. Where, even if people lock their doors, the locks are easy to pick or break and the only other security consists of the family dog sleeping at the foot of the bed. A town small enough that most know their neighbors but not so small that strangers are seen as a threat—especially since they bring tourist dollars when they come to visit the Blue Ridge.”

“Not many visit here, I’d say. Only a couple more B&Bs in the area, both smaller than this one.”

“And one fleabag motel. Yeah, I saw that.”

“Figured you would. What else did you see?”

“You guys were being watched. All the way from the sheriff’s department. While you were in the restaurant too.”

“The alley on the other side of the street?”

“Yeah, he’s not as bright as he thinks. Which does not, of course, make him any less dangerous. More so, probably. I let him catch a glimpse of me just to give him pause. Not enough to I.D. me, of course. Anyway, he’s at that fleabag motel. Paid cash, used an alias to check in. John Smith, if you can believe that. I’m figuring he’s down for the night.”

“Was he today’s shooter?”

“Pretty sure.”

“You found his vantage point?”

“Gabe did.” Gabriel Wolf was a Haven operative. As was his twin sister, Roxanne. And they formed a unique team.

“Was Quentin right?”

“Yeah. An old hunter’s blind. No real evidence to be found, including foot-, tire, or hoofprints. Nothing in the blind worth taking to court except one little smudge Gabe believes could have been made by binoculars.”

“So we were watched all day.”

“Seems likely. The guy must have hiked in and out, sticking to all the granite outcroppings and ridges to avoid leaving prints. And judging by how good he was at that, and how twisty and difficult his path must have been, our guess is he’s determined and disciplined as hell and he knows his way around these parts.”

“This area specifically?”

“Yeah.”

“Then he probably isn’t the killer we’ve been tracking.”

“Unless you find something that more strongly ties the bodies here to those we’ve been following, our guess is not. The one thing our killer’s previous dump sites have in common is that they were handy to roads. The two vics today, not so much. But that isn’t really good news. Given the distance between his position and the second dump site, this guy today is a pro sniper, and I mean a well-trained and well-equipped one. Probably military at some point, maybe recently. And soldiers with his type of skills tend not to stop the work just because they take off the uniform.”

“A private contractor.”

“The war created a lot of them. And with the current lousy economy, legit jobs are getting harder to come by.”

“Paid assassin?”

“That’s our take. DeMarco is a better person to ask about that sort of thing, but it makes sense given the skill necessary to even attempt that shot today. If we’re right, Hollis may have a price on her head. It’s the simplest explanation. Thing is—”

“The simplest explanation,” Miranda finished, “is seldom the right one in our world. For one thing, why single out Hollis? She’s taken the brunt of things more often than any other agent, but not usually because she was on the offensive. She’s stayed out of the spotlight. She’s made enemies the unit has made, but not on her own behalf. She’s never been a primary agent on any investigation, not so far, and we haven’t sent her in undercover. Under wraps for all the good that did, but not undercover.”

“There’s that. All that. What we can’t get past is that he watched all day. Hollis was visible a lot of that time, close to motionless long enough and often enough to give him a clear shot—if that was his only goal, his only reason for waiting out there all day. But he did wait. Until late in the day and after the second victim was found. Almost as if that was what he was waiting for.”

“Maybe hoping we wouldn’t find that victim. Or maybe what Diana suggested. Mind games.”

“Could be. Especially if he recognized any of you as belonging to the SCU.” There was a pause, and then, wryly, “It’s getting a bit like the Old West these days, only in your case the hotshot young gunslinger riding into town to challenge the famous veteran is a twisted serial killer eager to pit his smarts and skills up against the SCU.”

“I really hope that isn’t the case.”

“Yeah.”

Miranda was silent for long minutes, her gaze roaming absently up and down the quiet, peaceful scene of Main Street, Small Town, USA. Finally she said, “If Hollis was the target, she’s become a threat to someone. A very specific threat to a very specific someone. And I’m finding it difficult to believe that would be wholly unconnected to our investigation these last weeks.”

“It doesn’t seem likely.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

“If nothing else, the shooter could have been following you two as you pursued the investigation. Under orders not to do anything until…”

“That is the question, isn’t it? Until what? Maybe… somewhere along the way, through some action or simply by her presence, Hollis became too much of a liability to the killer. And yet she has some of the least-invasive, least-threatening abilities. She’s a medium and a self-healer, and she sees auras. Where’s the threat in any of that?”

“Something we can’t know until we find out who—or what—she threatens.”

Miranda drew a deep breath and then allowed it to escape, misting in front of her face. “Yeah. And in the meantime, we have these murders to investigate.”

“That we do.”

“While we keep Hollis safe.”

“Might be easier just to take the shooter out.”

“Easier, but probably not the right call. Take him out and chances are somebody else will be sent to do the job. Somebody we might not see until too late. At least this guy is an enemy we’ve spotted, one we can keep an eye on.”

“True. So we watch him? Stick close?”

“Like white on rice. And, Roxanne—be careful. Be very careful. You and Gabe both.”

“Copy that. Get some rest tonight, will you? All you guys are running on fumes, and that is not a good thing.”

“I know.”

“You have guns. Dangerous things in sleep-deprived hands.”

“And you’ve made your point.”

“Good. We’ll watch tonight. Time enough tomorrow to try to figure things out.”

“I hope you’re right,” Miranda said.

“That you’ll figure things out?”

“That we have time enough to do it.”

F
or a long time now, Diana hadn’t needed sedatives to sleep, but she still required time to wind down and something boring to occupy her mind while her body gradually relaxed and her nearly ever-present guard came down. The usual remedies, like a hot bath or shower and glass of warm milk, didn’t do much for her.

For her, either a few games of solitaire—the old-fashioned way, with actual cards—or a boring documentary on TV tended to work more often than not.

On this particular night, it was “not.” Weary though she was, nothing seemed to work.

Her room in the B&B, one of only three doubles with two queen-sized beds, looked out onto a pretty little courtyard at the rear of the building. It was pleasant and comfortable, and since each guest room was a suite with its own tiny sitting area and generous bathroom, and there were eight of the suites, each agent had his or her own space. That was not a little thing, they had discovered, to have some room and privacy during an investigation. It provided at least the illusion of normalcy.

Most of the time.

And it helped. Most of the time.

But Diana didn’t think the problem tonight was her surroundings. She’d been on edge since she and Quentin joined this investigation a couple of weeks before, and she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because this was the first real SCU case she’d been assigned, and she was still uncertain of her training and abilities.

Maybe it was because her relationship with Quentin was still tentative and wary.

Maybe it was the case itself, twisted and depressing as serial-murder investigations tended to be. With little evidence and few leads, she had the hollow feeling they were pretty much chasing their own tails, waiting for a break in the case that might never happen, while viciously murdered and tortured victims were being cast aside like garbage and contemptuously left for them to find.

Contemptuously?

It was an easy guess, she decided, requiring no particular skill as a profiler—which she wasn’t. But she had begun reading up on the subject, as she was reading up on so many others, and what stuck in her mind was the accepted fact that most if not all serial killers developed and followed very specific, unique rituals—many involving burial or whatever means they chose to dispose of bodies. Some rituals were even weirdly respectful, with victims dressed in clean clothing and laid out in carefully dug graves.

This killer very clearly didn’t see his victims as people deserving of any respect, not before death and not after.

Diana realized she was endlessly shuffling her deck of playing cards and tossed them aside with a half-conscious curse. She leaned against the pillows banked behind her and stared across the room at an old, mostly black-and-white documentary on TV about World War II.

So he feels contempt for his victims. No big surprise there. Nothing helpful there. Miranda probably had that little bit of information nailed with the first victim. If not before
.

The real problem, she decided reluctantly, was that she felt pretty damn useless. Despite intensive training over the last months, she didn’t feel qualified to investigate a single murder, let alone a string of them. Even as…just one of the team. Not only had she never been any sort of cop, but her entire adult life—right up until little more than a year ago—was more dreamlike than real in her mind.

Except for scattered instances of a psychic ability she was still coming to terms with—which had been notably absent for weeks now—she had literally sleepwalked through her life.