The Collective (7 page)

“Not much of a choice,” Turcotte replied. “And it doesn’t sit right.”

“It’s your call,” Voss said with a shrug. “But tell me now and save us all a lot of bullshit that’ll take away from the time we should be spending running these assholes down.”

Turcotte pondered it for a few seconds, then nodded and stuck out his hand. “All right, Rachael. We’re together on this. Let’s see how it works out.”

Don’t call me Rachael
, she wanted to say. Other than Josh, the only time she didn’t mind men using her first name was in bed. But Turcotte knew she didn’t like it and had done it anyway. And if she couldn’t take a little ribbing, they’d never be able to work together.

“It’ll turn out fine,” she said, then gestured to the agents hard at work in the apartment. “What’ve we got so far?”

Chang nudged Turcotte. “Yeah, boss. I’m curious, too.”

Her gentle chiding worked, and Turcotte gave her an apologetic smile. “Don’t worry, Chang. I need you on this case. I just sent you on a little detour.”

Chang looked like she wanted to say more, but Voss knew she wouldn’t. Not in front of the others.

“All right,” Turcotte said, glancing around as if to orient himself. “What’ve we got? Food in the fridge. Dishes in the sink. Dirty clothes in a laundry basket. But most of the drawers are empty, or nearly. They cleared out fast. Faster than they expected to have to.”

Voss frowned. “I wonder what set them off? If they were going to commit a quadruple homicide, they had to know the hunt would be on.”

“Maybe it didn’t go as planned,” Josh said.

Turcotte frowned. “What does that even mean? They thought they could kill all these people and not have it look like murder?”

“It’s possible,” Chang said. “Set it up to look like murder/suicide maybe? But things went wrong with Colonel Greenlaw and they couldn’t cover it up like they wanted to.”

They all pondered that for a few seconds.

“Maybe,” Voss conceded.

“What else do we have?” Josh asked.

“In the pocket of a dirty pair of khakis we found the business card for the realtor who showed them the Greenlaws’ house. We’ve got some junk mail with names, and we’re running down the names on the rental agreement, but there’s no doubt that all of them are aliases.”

As he spoke, Voss caught movement from a bedroom off to the side. She glanced that way and stiffened when she spotted the two men who had been so out of place back in Manatee Village—the lieutenant from SOCOM and Norris from Black Pine. “What the hell are they doing here?”

Turcotte glanced into the bedroom. “Not my idea, but I have orders. Mr. Norris is a consultant from Black Pine. The guy from SOCOM … he seems decent enough, and you can understand why he’d want to learn how Greenlaw ended up dead.”

“He’s not supposed to be here at all,” Voss said.

Turcotte smiled thinly. “Officially, he’s not. Unofficially, he’s just observing. It’s ironic, though.”

“What is?” Josh asked.

“You two worrying about other agencies interfering with my case.”

Voss smiled. “It’s what we do.”

There was a commotion in the corridor outside the door, and then one of Turcotte’s agents—thirtyish and bristling with urgency—slipped into the apartment and made a beeline toward him. He faltered for a second, noticing that Voss and Josh weren’t wearing FBI insignia.

“It’s fine, Barclay,” Turcotte said brusquely. “What’ve you got?”

“We think we’ve found one of them, sir,” Agent Barclay said.

Voss stiffened. “Where?”

“Talk to me, Barclay,” Turcotte ordered.

“A newborn was abducted from outside a hospital in Bangor, Maine. Security cameras caught it all. The footage is grainy, but we’re pretty sure the perp is one of our guys.”

“Holy shit,” Chang muttered.

“Wait, they’re stealing babies now?” Josh said. “What the hell is this about?”

“And why Maine? The guy was in Florida last night. He must’ve gotten right on a plane,” Chang said. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Turcotte said. “But it’s going to be your job to make sense of it, Agent Chang.”

“What?” Voss and Chang asked together.

“You were worrying about me not utilizing you on this case?” Turcotte said. “Well, as far as I know, we’ve got three suspects possibly still in Florida, so we’ve got to keep the investigation centered here. But we also need someone on this abduction in Bangor, trying to chase down the suspect there. That someone’s going to be you.”

Voss nodded. It made sense. They needed someone to set up a satellite investigation in Bangor, and Turcotte didn’t want to assign someone out of a field office in New England. He wanted his people on it directly, so he didn’t get secondhand information or someone else’s assumptions.

Voss hated what she was about to say, but it was also the most logical conclusion. “Any objection to me sending Josh along with Agent Chang, to ride shotgun?”

“None,” Turcotte said. “With all the agencies involved in trying to track an abducted child, it’ll help to have a Troubleshooter along, to help cut through the bullshit.”

Josh grinned at Chang. “That’s what we do best.”

Voss tamped down ruthlessly on a pang of jealousy. They were on the job. Personal stuff had to take a backseat.

“You’re a little cocky,” Chang was teasing Josh. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

Voss forced a laugh. “Has anyone
not
told him that?” Then she put her hand out to Turcotte and they shook for the second time. “Good to be working with you, Agent Turcotte.”

“And you, Agent Voss. We’ll get these guys.”

“I have no doubt.”

But inside she was not nearly so certain. One of the killers had abducted an infant. The child might already be in a shallow grave somewhere. Voss knew the job was to catch the killers, but more than that, she wanted to get them before there were any more dead children to bury.

When her son, Tommy, was an infant, Jane Wadlow would often wake in the middle of the night for no discernible reason. In the quiet darkness, she would listen for any disturbance in the house and then, met by silence, she would rise and go check on Tommy, just to make sure he was still safe in his crib and her world still spun on its axis.

Her son had long since grown to manhood and started a life of his own, and the house had more empty spaces since Tommy had gone off to film school in California. Tommy had grand plans for the future, and they didn’t include ever living in Medford, Massachusetts, again. That was the bitter joy of parenting, Jane had learned. You spend all those years teaching children, nurturing them, preparing them to go. And then, damn them, they went.

But in recent months there had been many nights when the house breathed with new life. She babysat regularly for her niece, Caitlin, who worked as part of a news crew for the local NBC affiliate. Most of the time she worked the day shift, driving the news van for reporters working on stories for the midday or evening news. That worked perfectly, because it meant that Cait could be up early in the morning with her baby girl, and still have a little mother-daughter time before heading to work. But once or twice a week, Cait was called in to work the night shift, covering the eleven o’clock news.
On those nights, Jane and her husband, George, would put Leyla to sleep in her playpen in Tommy’s old room, and it made more sense for Caitlin to crash there than to go home to her own apartment.

Shortly after two o’clock in the morning, the August sunrise still hours off, Jane found herself awake. The flickering glow and the low murmur of voices told her that George had fallen asleep with the TV on again. She sighed, knowing that if she didn’t drift off within seconds it would be at least an hour before sleep claimed her again. Those seconds passed with no slumber imminent, and Jane lay in bed, wondering how late Caitlin had come in, and how the girl would ever find another man to fall in love with when all she ever did was work and play with her baby.

She doesn’t want another man
, Jane chided herself.
Not right now
.

Ever since Caitlin’s father—Jane’s brother—had died, the Wadlows had been Caitlin’s guardians and closest family. Even while her father had been alive, Caitlin had been close to her aunt and uncle, and her only cousin, Tommy. She had practically grown up in Sweet Somethings, the fudge and chocolate shop that Jane had owned and run for decades in Medford Square. As Caitlin had grown older, she had helped Jane to mix fudge in the big copper pots in the back room and to put chocolates into the display cases. Jane had paid her, and in time Caitlin had become an official employee—until she’d graduated high school and gone off to college.

After her father’s death, Caitlin had seemed to spend even more time at Sweet Somethings. Jane had sold the store six years ago and, though she was happy not to have to work the long hours anymore, she missed it every day. But she thought that Caitlin missed it more.

Jane smiled wistfully at the thought. She reached out and touched her sleeping husband’s arm. At the moment, George lay beside her in their bed, snoring softly. He had fallen asleep during the baseball game and the remote control still lay on his chest, an inch from his splayed fingers. He always turned the volume down low, so it wouldn’t disturb her. Now the late night news was repeating and she glanced at the
weather forecast. She wanted to hear this, so she took the remote from her sleeping husband and turned the volume up slightly.

Other than a little rain shower, the attractive girl in the tight suit predicted a warm, sunny August week. That was good. But then the news returned to the same story that had been on right before the ball game, that of a baby stolen from its mother in Bangor, Maine, as she left the hospital with the newborn for the first time.

Grainy footage from security cameras in front of the hospital showed a nondescript man with dark hair striking the woman in the back of the head and snatching the infant car seat from her hand as she fell, then climbing into the back of a nearby van with the stolen child. The father had apparently gone to fetch the car to take his family home. The security footage showed him pulling up in his Buick only moments after the van pulled away.
A nightmare. I’d never have been able to live with myself
.

Beside her, George snorted a bit, then turned over to make himself more comfortable and fell into soft, easy breathing. Jane clicked the button on the remote that turned off the television and set it on her nightstand. In the deeper darkness and stiller silence, she listened for a telltale rustle or whimper that would suggest that Caitlin or Leyla might be having a restless night. She heard nothing, but old habits died hard. If she didn’t get up and check on them, she’d never be able to fall back to sleep.

She ran her fingers through her hair, climbed out of bed, then padded quietly down the hall to peek into her son’s old bedroom. Caitlin lay tangled in a single sheet, knees drawn up toward her chest and the pillow drawn down into an embrace. In sleep, her face was peaceful and soft, almost as if she were once again the teenage girl who had first come to live in this house, full of grief at the death of her father and anger at the world that had made her and her older brother orphans. But Caitlin wasn’t that girl anymore. She’d been a soldier, and she’d fallen in love, and then the world had taken that away from her, too.

Jane had never met Leyla’s father, Nizam, but in his pictures
he looked handsome, serious, and kind. Jane had always loved photographs, and put a lot of stock in her ability to read people from their pictures. Cait tended not to talk much about Nizam except to Leyla, reassuring the baby that her father loved her and watched over her from heaven. But in those moments, the pain in Cait’s heart was etched on her face. She’d found a good man and endured anger and resentment and prejudice in order to love him. Now she was an ex-soldier, a young widow, and a single mother trying to make a life with Leyla.

Quietly, Jane crossed the room and looked down into the playpen, where Leyla mewled softly, eyes still closed but fussing a bit. At seven months old, she might not be able to walk or talk, but even without words she had personality. She made people smile. Hundreds of times, Jane had been with her at the store or at the park and seen the way people lit up at the sight of her. Babies had that effect, she knew, but Leyla seemed to have it more than most. And when Jane explained the story of Leyla’s birth—of her soldier mother and her Iraqi father, and of Nizam’s death—a different light came into people’s eyes, as if they had suddenly begun to understand something for the first time.

Jane knew exactly what it was. She and George had had the same feeling the first time they held Leyla in their arms. The beauty of this baby girl, with her Christian mother and Muslim father, reminded people that even those they saw as enemies could fall in love.

A cry arose from the playpen, as if the mere act of thinking about the baby had disturbed her. Jane glanced at Caitlin, then hurried to retrieve Leyla. Cait had worked late, and Jane didn’t want Leyla waking her up.

“What’s the matter, sweet pea?” Jane whispered as she reached into the playpen and began a comforting, rhythmic tap on the baby’s back.