Sweet Dreams Boxed Set (124 page)

“Katie, do you remember what I told you we were going to do today?”

Suddenly the smile slid off her face and her eyes darted over to Delaney. He scooted the chair closer and put a hand out. She hesitated only a few seconds before she reached out and put hers in his.

She looked up at Gwen and said, “We’re gonna find the bad guy.”

“That’s right. But if you feel sick or scared at any time we’ll stop, okay?”

Katie nodded and sucked on the straw until it made a gurgling sound of more air than shake. She handed over the empty glass and sat up straight.

They were starting to put together some of the puzzle pieces. Ganza had sent off to ballistics the bullet that was removed from the back of Katie’s father. They also were able to provide Deputy Wilson’s service revolver.

Sheriff Geller claimed he and his deputy had not taken more than a step inside the double-wide. They had arrived on the scene together, opened the trailer door, took one whiff along with a brief glance and closed the door again. But the CSU techs had processed fingerprints that had been left on one of the lamps. One of the lamps that the killer had cut the electrical cord off to use as restraints. Those fingerprints matched Deputy Wilson’s.

Gwen pulled out a set of five by seven photographs. Cunningham had asked that Gwen handle this part though he had instructed her how to make her presentation.

She smoothed the blanket out in front of Katie and then one by one she began to lay each photograph down in front of her.

“Try not to think too hard,” Gwen told the girl. “Just look. This isn’t a test. There’s no wrong or --.”

“That’s him,” Katie said with a tinge of excitement, almost as if she was relieved that this was easier than she thought it would be.

“Are you sure?”

It was Deputy Wilson’s photo. Maggie still wasn’t sure if the girl recognized him as the man who shot her father or if she simply remembered his face from the day they’d found her. Wilson and the sheriff had stayed back the entire time, never leaving the side of the cruiser, but was it possible Katie could have seen him that day? Was that where she was remembering him from?

“Good job,” Delaney said and squeezed her hand.

Gwen was already putting the photos away but she caught Maggie’s eyes, and Maggie could see she was just as skeptical about this. But Cunningham thought it was important.

“I’ll see you later today,” Gwen told the girl and started to leave.

“I’ll be right back,” Maggie said and followed Gwen out the door.

She and Gwen walked side by side down the hallway before either of them spoke. Finally they turned the corner and stopped at the elevators but neither of them pushed the button.

“She might never remember the events of that day,” Gwen said. “She doesn’t even remember walking around the trailer although we know that’s where she got all the blood on the soles of her feet.”

“We can’t protect her forever from this other killer. In the meantime what are we supposed to do?” Maggie asked.

“I suggest you do what you do best, Agent O’Dell. Find him.”

About Alex Kava

ALEX IS A
NEW YORK TIMES
BEST-SELLING AND AWARD WINNING AUTHOR of psychological suspense novels. Her Maggie O’Dell series has been widely praised by critics and fans. They have appeared on the
New York Times
and
USA Today
bestseller lists.

ON JANUARY 2015, Alex is introducing her fans to Ryder Creed, a retired marine dog handler who will have his own series starting with SILENT CREED.

Alex’s books have been published in twenty-six countries and have hit the bestseller lists in Australia, Germany, Poland, Italy and the UK. She is also one of the featured writers in the anthology Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night, edited by James Patterson.

In 2011, she teamed up with fellow author friends J.T. Ellison and Erica Spindler to write SLICES of NIGHT (a novella in 3 parts) and in 2013 STORM SEASON. 

ALEX WRITES FULL-TIME AND LIVES IN Omaha, Nebraska and Pensacola.

Find Alex here:

http://alexkava.com/

https://twitter.com/AlexKava_Author

https://www.facebook.com/alexkava.books

A Lucy Guardino FBI Thriller Novella

by CJ Lyons

Chapter 1

The boy was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen—especially since he had no idea she was watching him. Megan stood on the balcony of their hotel room, her mom still asleep behind the sliding glass doors.

High tide had receded enough that she could spot the foam-capped breakers past the dunes beyond the hotel’s pool. The sunrise sky was painted in shades of citrus as if God had awoken craving a fruit salad: a wedge of lemon yellow sun surrounded by ribbons of tangerine and raspberry clouds, the sea below the shade of blueberries with lime-green waves of grass crowning the dunes.

None of it as beautiful as the boy. He was tall, obviously older than Megan’s fourteen, but she couldn’t resist the sight of him. He’d strode up from the dunes wearing a wetsuit with its top peeled down around his hips, leaving his chest bare, and carrying a surfboard taller than he was. When he’d entered the pool area, he’d tilted the board upright to stand beside him. Then, in one breathtaking motion, he’d vaulted into the deep end of the pool with a sideways dive into the water, carrying the long board with him. It was the single most graceful, stunning movement Megan had ever seen. As if the water had called to him and he was part of it, returning home.

When he came up for air, he rolled onto the floating surfboard and, using one hand, lazily stroked the water, gliding over the surface, eyes closed. Megan felt something stir inside her—an unfamiliar warmth, a yearning to share the freedom he possessed.

She slid the door to the room open, careful to not wake her mom, tossed on the nicest blouse she’d brought, a gauzy swing-top that barely came down to meet the waistband of her denim cut-offs. Her best friend, Natalie, had convinced her to buy it with her birthday money despite the fact Megan usually just wore a soccer shirt or one of her mom’s FBI tees. Now she was glad she’d packed the blouse. The hem swished and brushed against the bare skin below her belly button, making her feel older, maybe even kind of sexy. Slipping into her well-worn Sketchers, she grabbed her room key and a twenty from Mom’s wallet, scrawled a note, and went downstairs.

The hotel was a small, three-story family-run establishment. They’d had no trouble getting an ocean-view room on the top floor since it was half vacant—tourists rarely came to Harbinger Cove in large numbers until summer, the clerk had told them last night when they checked in. It was too far out of the way, especially now that Route 17 had been expanded to four lanes, making it so much easier and faster for vacationers to bypass this secluded area of South Carolina and instead drive to Hilton Head with its fancy resorts.

No fancy resorts here in Harbinger Cove, Megan thought as she crossed through the lobby empty of people except for a sleepy-looking clerk sitting behind the front desk. The décor was last century: fake wood paneling in an unnatural shade of green, orange faux-leather furniture, lamps covered in seashells too pretty to be real. The single rack of tourist information listed attractions like the outlet mall twenty miles away on the mainland, dolphin watching cruises an hour away down in Hilton Head, historical tours two hours north in Charleston, and featured sun-faded, expired coupons for the collection of shops just across the street that included several restaurants, a small grocery store, a bunch of clothing and souvenir shops, and a bakery.

She pushed through the glass doors leading from the lobby out to the circular drive at the front of the hotel. The bakery directly across the street already filled the air with the enticing aromas of yeast, cinnamon, and coffee. Who could resist?

Her plan in place, she turned the other way and walked down the side of the hotel along the path to the pool. When she arrived, the boy had set his surfboard onto the pool deck while he swam laps, the sun now high enough to send random beams through the dune grass, sparkling like sapphires against the pool’s water.

“I was just going for coffee,” she called to him from the fence surrounding the pool, hoping she sounded like someone sophisticated enough to drink coffee. Actually, her parents didn’t like her drinking caffeine and she didn’t care for the taste of coffee. But what was she going to do, ask him to join her for a cup of hot cocoa? It was already at least seventy degrees, so much nicer than chilly, gray Pittsburgh. “How do you take yours?”

He rolled onto his back, fluttered one eye open and shaded it with a hand, water dripping over his face. His hair was dark, and he wasn’t that much older than her, she realized. Maybe only a year or two. Guys didn’t intimidate Megan—which was maybe part of the reason why she’d never had a boyfriend. All the guys she met ended up being simply friends.

But when you’re the only girl in your black belt class—except for the one gray-haired lady older than Mom—and one of three girls on the regional co-ed all star soccer team, and you hang out with your mom’s coworkers from the FBI and your dad’s friends who were mostly former soldiers, you learned what guys wanted in a friend, but not how to act like a girlfriend.

It had to be about more than the makeup and heels and the coy texts her friends who were girls—and who
did
have boyfriends—obsessed over.

“Don’t like coffee, but could you get me a milk?” he asked with a lazy stroke of one hand that propelled him to the side of the pool. Before she could answer, he’d rolled himself out of the water and into a sitting position, then upright to his feet in a graceful move that defied gravity. Sometimes, watching her sensei perform kata, she had that same sensation. Movement flowing in sync with nature, as if the body simply went where it was destined to go.

He propped his board up against the fence where it would be out of the way of any other early-bird swimmers, studying her as he moved. As if
he
were intimidated by
her.
Megan wasn’t sure what to think of that; it left her a bit flustered.

“I saw you from our balcony,” she said, mainly to fill the time and space between them. “I’d love to learn how to surf. What’s it like? Do you give lessons?”

His smile was genuine. He turned his head to glance behind him at the ocean. “It’s like being with God.” The words were low, spoken like a prayer, and she wasn’t sure if they were even directed at her. Then he bounced on his heels and turned back to her. “The waves are best at high tide, not much going on the rest of the day, I’m afraid. But if you don’t mind getting up early tomorrow…”

She nodded eagerly at his invitation. “I don’t mind.”

“Okay, then, it’s a date. How about I swap you surfing lessons for breakfast?” He patted the hips of his wetsuit. “Left my wallet in my other pants.”

“Sure. That’d be great.”

They walked in companionable silence, Megan taking two strides to each of his. As they passed the hotel, she darted a glance up at her room. He noticed. “Sure your folks won’t mind?”

“It’s just my mom. Down here, I mean. Spring break, but Dad had a work emergency. Anyway, she’s asleep.” She didn’t add that her mom had only fallen asleep less than an hour ago.

Her mom barely ever slept, not in the two years since she’d become head of the Pittsburgh FBI Field Office’s Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement Squad, and especially not in the past three months after she was wounded in the line of duty.

Even here, a thousand miles away from home and work, on a quiet beach on an out-of-the-way island in South Carolina, she still didn’t sleep, had been up all night, pacing the room, double-checking the locks on the door, shutting herself in the bathroom to call Megan’s dad. When Megan had asked her what was wrong, Mom said she couldn’t sleep without Dad there, go back to bed. Her voice had sounded almost normal, not like she sometimes sounded when she had a panic attack. Happily for Megan, Mom hadn’t had one of those in awhile, but Megan knew from her dad’s work—he was a psychologist who worked with veterans with PTSD—that the attacks could come at any time, even when you were on vacation.

The thought made Megan shake her head. Her mom, the great FBI hero, always in the newspapers or out saving innocent victims from really nasty bad guys, yet her job had left her crippled in so many ways. Not just the limp she still had from her leg injury when she’d almost died three months ago. Not just the bad dreams and night terrors and panic attacks. Everyday stuff. Like trying to smother Megan—who’d proven time and again that she could take care of herself—or always trying to protect her and Dad from what really went on at work, as if they’d never heard of YouTube or Twitter.

Sometimes, it felt like Mom didn’t want Megan and Dad in that part of her life. Like she had to work extra hard, be two different people, juggling two worlds: work and home. Except those worlds kept colliding. To the point where both Megan and her dad had been placed in danger, despite Mom’s best efforts.