The Broken (The Apostles) (10 page)

The force behind her words stopped the agent, and she cringed. She knew it was wrong, lashing out at him for her panic. She was so much better off when it was just her and Smokey Joe.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a softer tone. “It’s been a rough twenty-four hours.”

The young FBI agent’s face grew old and weary. “I know, but Agent Reed will get him. He’s one of our best.”

He was Agent Efficient, Agent Know-It-All, Agent Obscenely Thorough, and Agent with the Really Nice Suit and Italian Shoes. Kate breathed in calm and strength. “I know.”

With the baby-faced G-man on her heels, she went back into the office. Again, she tried to ignore the stares and whispers. Her glasses were right where she’d left them on the table in the conference room. She jammed them in her bag with a shaky hand. Sweat slid along the sides of her face. It was crazy, getting so worked up about people staring at her. After all, she used to make her living from people watching her.

She smoothed her hair along her neck. “You know, I think I’d like a water bottle before we go.”

She must have looked like hell, because the agent nodded and took off. The minute he was out of sight, she shut the door on the stares and whispers. There was probably something else going on here, something to do with her re-entry into the world, and Agent Know-It-All would probably be able to explain it. Unfortunately, or fortunately, Hayden was gone, off to find her knife-wielding brother.

Pacing the room, she stopped at the second-story window overlooking the crisped grass of the courtyard below, which was thankfully empty. No Jason. She unlatched the lock and pushed open the window. The breeze, although far from cool, felt good sliding through her hair and into her tightened lungs. She envisioned herself roaming mountain roads on her motorcycle, just her and Smokey, and the wind. A different picture, one of her trapped in a safe house and surrounded by guards, flashed behind her eyes, bright and sharp, like a knife slashing into her skull.

Her fingers gripped the windowsill.

She thought about the other guards in the hospital and near her home who didn’t protect her. She thought about her brother’s threat to finish the job. And she thought about Hayden. About his palm on her cheek, his promise to keep her safe, and the sound of his shoes as he disappeared from her life.

That’s when she stopped thinking.

She hitched her saddlebags on her shoulder and pushed off the screen. Throwing herself over the ledge, she hung by the tip of her fingers, sucked in a breath, and dropped. When her boots hit the ground, she ran.

She took off with no plan, no destination. She simply had to put distance between herself and the FBI agents who would soon be hunting her down and putting her in a cage. She ducked out of the courtyard and sprinted through the parking lot.

Her legs pumped faster. She reached a nearby office complex and ran along the back row of cars, keeping low. She rounded a dumpster. Footsteps pounded behind her.

Her hair flying, she turned and saw a flash of black.
Oh, God, no!
She ran out of the parking lot toward a grassy hill and bolted toward a shallow ditch. A hand grabbed at her. Fingers sunk into her chambray shirt.

“Nooooo!” she cried over the hiss of tearing fabric.

She careened forward, but someone tackled her from behind. Her chest slammed to the ground. Her teeth rattled. A boulder settled on her legs, pinning her to the grass. She jammed her elbow back.

“Ooaf!” Her attacker winched her arms behind her.

Pain ripped through her shoulders, but she couldn’t scream. Fear closed her throat.

Jason is not here
, she told herself as hot breath slid along the back of her neck. He couldn’t have found her. Hayden wouldn’t have left her in a place where the Butcher and his knife lurked.

Her breathing slowed, and so did her attacker’s. A set of hands, cold, hard shackles, turned her over. Her eyes closed. She didn’t want to see the face. His face.

She tried to picture Hayden. His surprisingly warm hands. His gaze that said stronger than his words,
I’ll keep you safe
.

When she opened her eyes, her racing heart stilled, and she swallowed the terror clogging her throat. Safe. She was safe.

As she let loose a long breath, two hands clamped down on her shoulders and fingers dug into her flesh. Her relief gave way to irritation that skyrocketed to anger, more at herself than the oaf sitting on her.

“What the hell are you still doing here?” Kate asked.

For the second time in as many days, Agent Hayden Reed said nothing as he straddled her, pinning her to the ground. But this time, he didn’t wear a face of granite. He was livid.

*  *  *

Thursday, June 11, 4:15 p.m.
Colorado Springs, Colorado

Detective Traynor handed Lottie a pair of orange sneakers with yellow zebra stripes. She turned them over. Size nine.

“Ain’t my size.” She tossed them on her desk. “And I look like shit in orange.”

“But apparently Shayna Thomas’s stalker liked them,” Traynor said. “We had a shoe guy check the casts, and a pair of shoes like these made the print in front of Shayna Thomas’s bedroom window.”

“I’ll let Hayden know ASAP. We need to find out if this Jason Erickson he’s hunting down has size nine feet and shitty taste in sneakers.” She nodded to the papers in his hands. “What about the other prints?”

“Boot print confirmed. Matches shoes worn by Thomas’s lawn man.”

“Got a location on him for Monday night?”

“At home in bed with his wife.”

“And the other print from that orthopedic-looking shoe?”

“Still working on that one.” Traynor held out a stack of papers that listed orthotic shoe vendors. “You up to some shoe shopping?”

*  *  *

Thursday, June 11, 4:30 p.m.
Denver, Colorado

“You know, Reed, my ass is on the line, letting you take her,” Agent Wulbrecht said. “Officially she’s in our custody, not yours.”

“Officially she’s alive, and I plan to keep her that way.” Hayden shut the passenger side door and walked around to the driver’s side of his rental car. “She’s coming with me.”

“You’re in the middle of a case,” Agent Wulbrecht said.

“Exactly, I’m in the middle of a case, and that woman,” he jabbed a hand at the passenger side of the car, noticed his fingers shaking, and jammed his hand in his pants pocket, “is a vital part of it. You and your team were assigned to watch her, and you failed. You jeopardized the investigation and put Kate’s life in danger.”

“We left her for less than two minutes. How the hell were we supposed to know she would jump out a second-story window?”

“You,” Hayden pulled out the rental car key and aimed it at Wulbrecht’s chest, “obviously don’t know her.”

“But she never would have gotten away, Cisney was out that window seconds after her.”

“Like I said, you don’t know her.”

“And you do?”

Hayden pictured the hundreds of files, dozens of video clips, and stacks of interview transcripts he’d gathered on Katrina Erickson. And he compared it to the woman he knew as Kate Johnson. He heard Kate’s voice, sharp as broken glass as she talked of her brother but soothing as she held Smokey Joe. He saw her hands, fisted at him but gently holding Maeve’s. “Yes.”

Wulbrecht offered Hayden his palms. “Fine, have it your way, but you’re going to have to answer to the SAC.”

There’d been only one other time in his FBI career Hayden refused so blatantly to play by the rules. Six years ago, when he was working for the Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, he worked up a profile of a suspected serial killer targeting homeless men in Little Rock, Arkansas. The commander of the Arkansas State Police’s Criminal Investigation Division, a grandstander with political aspirations, refused to release Hayden’s profile because it was clearly at odds with their investigative course of action. With seven dead men in the city morgue and an investigation stymied by lack of evidence, Hayden went to the press on his own and released the profile. The Arkansas State Police denounced his profile and started a flame-throwing war with the bureau. In a bid for jurisdictional harmony, Hayden’s supervisors demanded that he recant his profile. Hayden refused, was yanked out of the field, and immediately turned in his resignation. Twenty-seven hours later, two Little Rock police detectives who just wanted to get a bad guy off the streets tracked down the killer using Hayden’s profile. Six months later, FBI legend Parker Lord visited his classroom at the University of Arizona, where he was teaching psychology, and invited him to be part of a new team he was starting.

Hayden pointed to the pen in Agent Wulbrecht’s pocket. “Write the report. I’ll sign it.”

Hayden got into the car, clicked the door shut, and stared straight ahead. Next to him, Kate squirmed in her seat. He placed his hands on the steering wheel. “You have to stop running, Kate. Do I need to remind you again what we’re up against?”

She shot a hand toward the building. “Do you really think the Butcher would come after me so close to an FBI office?”

No, the Butcher would never try anything that bold or stupid. Stupid right now belonged to him. Hayden made an error. He should never have entrusted Kate to the care of someone he didn’t know and trust implicitly because
she
was anything but stupid.

It was no sixth sense that made him turn around to check on her. It was his intimate knowledge of her psyche. She was a victim, but at her core, she was a survivor. He pressed his arm to the tender spot of his side where she’d jammed him with her elbow fifteen minutes ago. She was also a fighter. He’d made the colossal error of forgetting this, which is why she was going to the Box, the SCIU’s home base on the coast of northern Maine. There’d be hell to pay from FBI higher-ups for breaking protocol, but Parker would stand by him. Hayden promised Kate he’d protect her, and he was going to keep that promise. The Butcher spent too much time in Hayden’s head for him to be worried about conventions.

Hayden was also mad at himself. He’d demanded her trust but gave her nothing in return. He unclenched his fingers from the steering wheel. Maybe it was time to trust her. Kate was a journalist, someone who cared about justice and truth. Maybe Kate needed to see the truths of this case.

He reached into the backseat for his briefcase and took out a folder. One by one he set six eight-by-ten glossy photos on the dash in front of Kate.

Color drained from her face.

“They don’t even look human, do they?” Hayden asked.

Her teeth dug into her bottom lip, but she didn’t take her gaze off the photos of blood and bone and shredded flesh. “Why are you showing me these?”

“So you know what we’re dealing with.”

“I know, more than anyone else, I know what kind of vile creature Jason is. I lived with him.”

He banged a fist on the dash, shaking the photos. “Then why the hell do you keep running away?” The volcano he’d kept a lid on let out a fiery spurt. This woman, unlike anyone he’d ever met, had the uncanny knack of pushing his buttons.

Hot sparks shot across her cheeks as she jabbed her thumb at the FBI building behind them. “That was hell for me back there. Hell. Do you know how many people I’ve talked to in the past six months? I can count them on one hand. One. Hand.” Her hand, hovering between them, visibly shook. She shoved it under her thigh. “I needed to get away, Hayden, and I’m not going to apologize for it.”

Knowing they needed balance, he calmed his racing heart and gathered the photos. “This isn’t time for alone. That will come later. Right now you need to be patient with the process, and you can’t forget who’s after you.”

Her finger traced the scar near her right eye, which was no bigger than a grain of rice. “I won’t forget,” she said. “He made sure of that.”

He reached for the envelope. “Now there’s one more picture you need to see.” He pulled out another eight-by-ten, but it wasn’t a face.

“A mirror?”

“It’s from Shayna Thomas’s guest bedroom. It’s proof that the Butcher didn’t finish the job. He didn’t break all the mirrors. Which means…”

She inched back from the glossy photo of the unbroken mirror. “Oh God, he’s going to kill again. Soon.”

“Exactly. As much as he likes order, he won’t wait a full month between killings. He needs to right his wrong. He needs to break all the mirrors, which is why I need to be focusing on him and him alone, not you, Kate. I’ve wasted precious time this afternoon.”

“I’m sorry, Hayden. I didn’t realize…I…” She fidgeted with her seatbelt and slipped it in place. “Okay, I’m ready to help.”

“With what?”

“The investigation. I’m going to help you find my brother.”

“That’s my job. Right now all you need to do is stay put and stay safe. I’m taking you to the airport, where I’ll be handing you off to Finn Brannigan, one of my teammates. He’ll take you to SCIU headquarters in Maine. The Box is completely secure. You’ll be safe there. I’ll even send for Smokey Joe if you like.” The Box was on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean with plenty of open space and fresh air.

“No.” She picked up the photo of the unbroken mirror. “I’m not going to Maine.” Her pale cheeks gave way to a fiery wash. “You need me.”

“I know this is hard on you, that you feel horrible about those broadcasters’ deaths, maybe even responsible, but I assure you we’ll catch the Butcher and bring him to justice. We have hundreds of trained law enforcement officials on this.”

“I can help. I’m a trained investigator and researcher.”

“You’re a journalist.”

“But I’m also the Butcher’s sister.” He opened his mouth, but she waved the photo of the unbroken mirror in his face. “You can get a hundred more
trained law enforcement officers
on this, but they won’t be able to do what I can do.” The green of her eyes brightened, a look he’d seen so often in her “Justice for All” reports.

“What are you talking about?” Hayden asked.

Kate jammed the photo into his briefcase and buckled her seatbelt. “I can take you to Jason. If my brother isn’t at his house in Dorado Bay, I know where he’s hiding.”