The Hill (19 page)

Chapter One

His heart jumped just a little when he saw her. Alexander Harkins wasn't really surprised. His heart had jumped the very first time that he'd met her, and now even two years after their divorce, it was as if it was an involuntary response that he had a feeling he would never be able to control.

Special Agent Georgina Beaumont might wear her rich dark hair boyishly short, but there was nothing remotely boyish about her large green eyes fringed with long dark lashes or her classically beautiful features.

There was definitely nothing faintly masculine about her full breasts, tiny waist and long slender legs. Even in a short-sleeved white blouse and neatly tailored black slacks, she managed to look effortlessly feminine and ridiculously hot.

He was seated on the other side of the large conference room when she entered and struck up a conversation with two other FBI agents who stood near the doorway.

Since their divorce, they'd worked out of this same building but hadn't been assigned a case to work together and had only run into each other occasionally. The fact that they were both in this same room indicated that was about to change.

A knot tightened in Alexander's chest as he speculated on what they were all about to be handed. It didn't really take much thought on the matter. He knew the people in this room had been called together to form a task force to handle the issue of missing FBI agents and their loved ones.

He was more than happy to be part of the team because the last agent who had disappeared was a close friend of his.

Jackson Revannaugh had gone to Kansas City to work a case and had returned two weeks ago with a fellow FBI agent named Marjorie who had obviously won his heart. Three days ago Marjorie and Jackson had gone missing from Jackson's lavish apartment... just like an agent and her husband in Kansas City and another agent and his wife from the nearby small town of Bachelor Moon.

Two nights before their disappearance, Alexander had met Jackson and Marjorie for dinner at a restaurant known for its creole cuisine. He'd been charmed by Marjorie, who talked as if she intended to transfer from the Kansas City bureau to Baton Rouge in order to continue the relationship with Jackson. He'd never seen his friend, famous for being an unashamed ladies' man, so taken by a woman. Alexander had definitely heard the peal of wedding bells in the not-too-distant future for the two. And now they were gone, apparently taken from their bed in the middle of a Tuesday night.

There were eight agents in the room when Director Jason Miller entered. The tall, gray-haired man would be an imposing figure under any circumstances, but at the moment, with his strong jawline throbbing with tension and his blue eyes sharp and narrowed, he looked ready to breathe fire. The agents quickly found chairs at the long conference table and fell silent.

Alexander found himself seated across from Georgina. She cast him a quick smile and then directed her focus on her boss. That little smile of hers evoked old memories that he shouldn't have retained, that should have been erased the minute he'd signed the divorce papers two years before.

He quickly turned his attention to Director Miller, already dreading the job he feared was ahead of them all. On the wall behind Miller was a whiteboard / bulletin board that at the moment was covered with a large sheet of blank white paper.

The silence in the room shattered as Miller turned to the board and ripped off that paper. The whiteboard side was pristine, ready for dry-erase markers to get to work, but the bulletin board was papered with perfectly aligned photos of the missing people.

Alexander's heart squeezed tight as he looked at the photo of seven-year-old Macy Connelly and then moved to a picture of his dark-haired, handsome friend, Jackson. There were a total of seven pictures of people who had seemingly vanished from the face of the earth over the past couple of months.

These weren't ordinary people, four of them were seasoned FBI agents, one a respected sheriff, one a beloved wife and one a precious little girl. There was circumstantial evidence that they'd all been taken unwillingly from their homes.

“We have a problem,” Miller said, his voice booming in the room. “We have seven missing people, no bodies, no ransom notes and you all are going to find out what has happened to these people. Officially, you are now a task force working solely on this case.”

“Why here and not in Kansas City?” Alexander asked, knowing that two of the people had disappeared from the small town of Mystic Lake, just outside of Kansas City.

“Because this morning we believe we received communication from the perp.” Miller moved to the board and tapped what was obviously a copy of a note that was pinned there. “For those of you who can't see from where you're seated, it reads, ‘Right under your nose I work my plan, to become the best killer in the land. I've collected my research subjects two by two, and the world will shudder when I'm through.' It's signed by the FBI-trained serial killer.” Miller looked disgusted.

Several of the other men muttered curses beneath their breaths and shifted in their seats.
Right under your nose
—that implied the perp was somewhere here in the Baton Rouge area. Alexander's stomach muscles knotted.
Research subjects
—that sounded like some crazy mad scientist who was taking apart the brains of his victims, he thought grimly.

As he listened to Miller give the condensed version of each of the crimes, he focused intently and tried to keep his gaze from the woman across the table.

He knew these particular crimes had stymied the law enforcement officials in Bachelor Moon, a small town not too far from Baton Rouge, and in Mystic Lake, Missouri. There had been no clues, no forensic evidence, nothing to indicate whether the vanished were dead or alive. The note, if it could be believed, at least indicated that the person responsible was someplace in this area...right under their noses.

Already adrenaline surged through him, the eagerness for the hunt and the anticipation of the chase. As one of the agents passed around thick folders to each of the people in the room, Alexander glanced up and his gaze met Georgina's.

Her green eyes appeared electrified and he knew she felt the same flood of energy, the readiness to get to work, that he did. He tried not to remember that her eyes had also lit up like that when they were making love.

They had been married for two years and the amount of information he knew about his ex-wife could be written on a small cocktail napkin.

He frowned and focused on the contents of the folder he'd been given. It was filled with the details and reports of the FBI agents who had originally investigated each event.

“Harkins,” Miller said, the stern voice pulling Alexander from his reading.

“Sir?” he replied.

“I'm appointing you lead on this. Every agent will report to you, and you will report to me.”

Dread mingled with the faint tease of potential redemption. The last time he'd taken lead on an important case, a young woman had been murdered a single minute before his team had arrived, and soon after that debacle, his marriage had failed.

He'd been plunged into a depression that had lasted for weeks, haunted by the face of the murdered woman and later enduring the pain on Georgina's face as she'd told him she needed out.

He knew he was a good agent, one of the best, and he also understood that his director was showing his complete faith in him by giving him the lead in a case of such importance.

“Thank you, sir,” he replied. He stared down at the reports in front of him. Although he didn't have a marriage to lose this time around, he was intensely aware that seven people were depending on him doing the best job he possibly could to lead this task force to save them.

* * *

G
EORGINA
 
WAS
 
ACUTELY
 
AWARE
of Alexander's presence from the moment she'd entered the conference room. He was a force of nature, emanating energy as his blue eyes focused on his surroundings.

Miller had left the room and Alexander had moved to take his place at the head of the conference table. He looked confident and at ease, but she knew him well enough to recognize how important this case was to him.

It was important to her as well. It was the biggest case she'd ever worked and, as the only woman in a roomful of men, she was desperate to prove that she was more than up to everyone's standards.

She'd spent her five-year career with the FBI trying to raise herself from being a good agent to a great one and this was the kind of case that could make that happen for her.

“We'll spend our first couple of hours here going over the contents of the folders and getting familiar with what's already happened and where we are now,” Alexander said. “We'll start with what happened in Bachelor Moon.”

She listened to his deep rich voice detail the fact that former FBI agent Sam Connelly, his wife Daniella and Daniella's seven-year-old daughter had disappeared during what had appeared to be a late-night snack session in their kitchen. Cookies and milk had been half consumed and a chair had been overturned, indicating that something untoward had occurred.

Although he looked calm and focused, she knew the torture he'd suffered the last time he'd been lead on a case that had gone bad. It had been a torment that had highlighted all her failings as a wife—as a person—and had ultimately forced her to make the decision that he was better off without her.

But that was then and this was now, she reminded herself. She couldn't dwell on the past, she needed to get her mind in this game, to prove she was as good as, if not better than, every other agent in the room.

“The second disappearance occurred in Mystic Lake, Missouri,” Alexander continued. “Amberly Caldwell, an FBI agent, and her husband, Cole, the local sheriff disappeared from Cole's home. Our own Jackson Revannaugh was sent to Kansas City to help in that particular investigation. And then, as you all should know by now, three nights ago Jackson and his girlfriend, an FBI agent from Kansas City, went missing.”

“How do we know that Jackson just didn't take his honey off somewhere for a few days?” Agent Nicholas Cutter asked. “He was on vacation for another week or so, wasn't he?”

“Yes, but according to the agents who investigated Jackson's house last night, all their identifications, their weapons and personal items were still in the bedroom where we assume they were sleeping,” Alexander replied.

Georgina shot a glance at Nicholas. He was relatively new to the bureau and already had a reputation for being a hotshot wanting to make a name for himself. While she shared the same desire, she was a team player and she wasn't sure that Nicholas cared about any team.

She rarely made snap judgments about anyone, but the first time she'd met Nicholas Cutter, she hadn't particularly liked him. Still, she was a professional and never, ever let her personal feelings show. In her job this ability was a blessing. In her personal life it had been a curse.

“I want you all to take some time now and read through all the reports, look at all the photos that are included in your folders and familiarize yourself with everything that's been done so far with all the different law enforcement agencies that have been involved,” Alexander said.

He returned to his seat across from her and the room fell silent except for the turning of pages as each of the agents began to learn the details of what had been accomplished through the different investigations and what was ahead of them.

Despite the fact that September had arrived on Wednesday, two days before, brilliant warm sunshine drifted into the windows and dust motes floated in the air.

Georgina was a fast reader and easily retained what she read. She was finished long before the others and leaned back in her chair, hoping to escape the faint scent of Alexander that drifted across the table.

He wore the same spicy cologne he'd worn when they had been married. The scent of it stirred not only memories of being held in his arms, of making love, but also a depth of failure she had tried for two years to put behind her.

She looked back down at the folder and opened it to the photos of the victims. Failure was not an option now. She might not make friends easily, she might be incapable of any real intimacy with anyone, but she was going to work her butt off to find out what happened to these people.

“I think they're still alive,” she said, breaking the silence that had filled the room. “We have no bodies, and the note, if it's really from the perp, implies he's keeping them as some sort of scientific study.”

“I agree,” Agent Tim Gardier replied. He was the youngest agent in the room. Painfully thin, with glasses and a head full of red hair that had probably not seen a barbershop in the last five years, he was also a genius computer geek and a genuinely nice guy.

“I don't know, maybe we just haven't stumbled on their bodies yet,” Nicholas said.

Georgina mentally groaned. Just what they all needed, negativity at the very beginning of an investigation.

“It would be quite a challenge to house and feed seven captives,” Agent Frank Webb added. “Especially if only one person is responsible for all this.”

“It's too early in the investigation to make the assessment that we're only hunting one perpetrator,” Alexander said. “What I hope is that the note received this morning really is from our man, and I hope it's the beginning of him becoming chatty.”

“He hasn't had much to say until now,” Nicholas said, a frown cutting across his broad forehead. “We don't even know if he's finished or if he intends to kidnap more people.”

“You're right,” Alexander said with a touch of impatience in his voice. “We don't know much of anything about this person. We don't know if he has enough ‘research subjects.' We don't even know if his plans for more subjects include someone in this room.”