With Visions of Red (Broken Bonds #3) (12 page)

T
he news
of my brother’s grisly death traveled through the scene like wildfire. With my personal cell phone confiscated by the cops, I’ve been out of touch, which raised an alarm for the club. And with the Feds infiltrating the scene, it seemed like a good time to shut the club down.

That is, until I returned this evening to find the club crew already organizing a tribute to Julian. Lilly Anne and Onyx did the work, contacting members and insisting I relax.
Relax
. That’s not happening tonight.

Besides being in a constant state of worry over Sadie, the guilt has begun to eat at me. My main reason for agreeing to the tribute was because it would bring in a swarm of people, giving the UC agent enough cover to make Sadie’s crazy plan work.

I’ve been able to dodge most of my brother’s “investors.” Those who still owe him money and who are anxious to be taken off his blackmail list. I’ve found my little, sacred corner of the voyeur room where I down a shot of bourbon, no one questioning my request to be left alone.

Even though my brother was trying to pull away from the scene, and despite the fact that he was never really in it other than to make money, I can’t help but feel he would’ve been honored.

The stage is set for the scene to begin. Lilly Ann has stage-managed my brother’s favorites: ménage à trois, girl-on-girl, and submission. He was never big into kink; liked to keep it simple. Which only reminds me that I somehow have to organize his funeral with his fiancé.

I tip back another shot.

Across from me, Carson sips on a non-alcoholic beer, keeping his head clear but trying to appear inconspicuous. Dressed down in jeans and a T-shirt, he still looks completely uptight and out of place.

Up ahead, a few tables closer to the stage, the UC agent watches the first scene. I admit, for the short briefing she had, she’s doing a decent job at playing Sadie. She keeps to herself, fending off any advances, and doesn’t invite any attention. But with the number of people here tonight, she wouldn’t stand out. That’s the idea.

I’m trying my best to be here, in the moment, and to pay Julian my respects despite every fiber of my being screaming to be with Sadie. Trust is not the issue—I trust her. I trust her to keep herself safe; she’s handled herself in similar situations, and I have no care for the sick shit she plans to end tonight. I just can’t stand the helpless feeling stealing over me, taunting me. Shouting that she’s up against something deadlier and more dangerous than anything she’s faced in her past.

Dammit it to hell. There’s a sick roiling in the pit of my stomach tempting me to go after her.

I should’ve followed her.

“Relax,” Carson says, his gaze steady on the stage. “She’s not out there alone.”

I glare across the table at him. “What are you talking about?”

He glances at me. “Did you really think Quinn would let her go off by herself to meet up with a fucking serial killer?” He chuckles. “Sadie’s good, but she’s no field agent.”

Anger rips through my veins. “Who’s out there with her?” I kick the leg of his chair, forcing his full attention on me. “Who the
fuck
is out there?”

It finally registers in his thick skull. His eyebrows pull together as he says, “I wasn’t in on the side op. I was working the club angle with you and Sadie. Quinn put together—”

“Fuck.” I leap up, rocking the table and knocking over Carson’s beer, and am weaving through the crowd before he can finish.

I’ve never trusted Quinn. Despite Sadie’s reassurance—her own faith in the man—I’ve always been suspicious of his intentions where she was concerned. But motherfucker, I know he has feelings for her—so why the hell would he jeopardize her safety?

The UNSUB gets one whiff that Sadie set him up, and he’ll…

I stop that thought. Right there in its tracks.

I hit the hallway where I’m shoved against the wall. Carson braces his forearm against my neck. “Whatever you’re thinking about doing,
don’t
.” His eyes widen. “This isn’t your call.”

“I think we’ve already figured out who’ll win this fight.” Breaking his hold, I push him off. “She thinks she can trust him. I won’t let her get hurt.”

“She won’t,” he insists. “Would you rather her be out there alone?”

I grit my teeth. “Knowing the fucking UNSUB is one of you? Yeah. I’d say she’s safer being on her own.”

Carson keeps my glare, neither of us making a move until he turns his head away, distracted. He presses a finger to his ear. “They got a hit on the DNA,” he says.

My whole body comes alive. I’m off the wall, muscles thrumming with the need to
move
. “Who is he?” There’s still time. They can pull Sadie out.
I
can pull Sadie out.

Carson shakes his head. “They’re not saying. They’re running facial recognition software on everyone in the club. Fucking FBI. That will take forever, and they’re looking in the wrong damn place.”

“Who is he?” I’m seconds away from coming out of my skin.

Carson finally meets my gaze. “I don’t know. But he must be big on the inside if they’re keeping that on lock down. Just calm down. We’ll get ahold of Sadie.” He looks around, then throws his hands up. “Shit. She doesn’t have a phone.”

But she does. I head back into the voyeur and locate the landline phone behind the bar. My thumbs push the numbers I memorized, my heart beating painfully against my chest wall. On the fifth ring, it goes to voicemail. No recording. Just a generic beep.

My fist locks around the phone, ready to pound the information from Carson’s mouth with the damn earpiece, but to hell with that. My feet are already moving, taking me past him and down the hallway, then down the stairs. I don’t stop as I clear a path toward the exit.

I throw the side door open and break into a run, heading right for the not-so-discreet van parked a block away. I hear Carson calling my name, but I can’t slow.

Before I reach the van, two FBI agents apprehend me. “She’s not in there…neither is your UNSUB. Sadie’s out there—”

“Sir, you have to calm down,” one of them says. He tilts his chin toward his shoulder. “Sir, we have a situation here.”

The van door opens, and out comes Agent Proctor, the head honcho who took over my club. “Colton Reed. I figured we’d have a problem with you.”

The agents drag me into the van. Proctor grabs me by the neck. “I told them not to let a civilian in on this op,” he says. “Cuff him. Reed, you’re being arrested for obstruction.”

“I don’t give a damn. You’re wasting your time trying to find him inside the club. He’s not there.”

Proctor squints his pale eyes at me. “What are you talking about?”

“Sir.” An agent sitting before a row of monitors turns our way. “We have another situation.”

“Son of a bitch.” Proctor scrubs a hand down his face. “What is it?”

“Agent Bonds, sir. She’s missing.”

Proctor turns and points to one of the monitors, to where the UC agent is still sitting at Sadie’s table. “Then who the hell is that?”

“I don’t know, sir. But she’s not Agent Bonds. We ran facial recognition for Agent Bonds, also…to try to locate the perp, assuming he would be near her. We were trying to narrow the search parameters—”

“Jesus Christ, spit it out!” Proctor shouts.

“The program confirmed Agent Bonds isn’t inside the club, sir.”

Proctor says into his radio, “Detective Carson, bring that decoy agent here. I’m going to have everyone’s badges before the end of the night.” Then he narrows his gaze on me. “Where is she? Where’s Bonds?”

My throat burns dry. “I don’t know, but Quinn does. Locate him. Do whatever you do to track him. He’s out there with her.”

I know I’m breaking my promise to Sadie…but as soon as I heard Quinn changed the game plan, I could feel it in my bones—sense the tables turning. Sadie’s in danger.

And as soon as my words register with Proctor, I see it in his eyes, too.

Proctor brings his radio up. “Pull everyone out!” He turns to the front of the van. “Get the coordinates up on Quinn’s last known location. I want eyes on this perp now.”

“
T
hat little fucker
!” Quinn slurs.

I brace my hand underneath his head, bringing him into my lap. “Don’t move. Where’s your radio?” My hands shake with adrenaline, my head pounds with the rapid beat of my pulse.

I rip a section of my dress and tear it free, then wipe the blood from Quinn’s lips. “Jesus, Quinn. What are you doing here? What happened?”

He tries to sit up and falls backward, grabs the back of his head. “I was tailing you,” he admits. “Don’t look at me like that.” He turns his head away and spits out the blood filling his mouth.

“You botched it,” I say, my jaw tight. I push him aside and get to my feet, bending over to grab Quinn’s radio. He intercepts it first. “Avery’s life depended on this, Quinn.” Then it hits me.“ He knew. He
knew
that I wouldn’t be alone. Whatever plan you had going, he knew beforehand.” I think about the necklace—coated in blood—and anger fuels my limbs so swiftly I have to grip my hair to keep from screaming.

Sitting forward, he says, “I know. I fucked up. But dammit, Bonds…I wasn’t going to lose you.” He stares up at me, and I see the pain he’s in. Mentally and physically. My anger dissipates. But only a fraction.

“What happened?” I demand.

He opens his mouth and touches his jaw, rocks it back and forth. “My tooth is gone.”

Bile coats my throat. “…What?”

“I was jumped from behind and hit over the head .” He groans as he touches the back of his head. “I came to with fucking pliers in my mouth. He ripped my damn tooth out.” He glances at me. “But I got a good hit in. I think we can pull some trace. Maybe even blood.” He looks over his knuckles.

“This doesn’t make sense,” I say, shaking my head. “It couldn’t have been the UNSUB.”

Quinn raises his eyebrows and stares up at me. “Who the hell would it have been? How many other psychopaths did we lure here who would rip my fucking tooth out? I’m sure he wasn’t done with me.”

The honesty of that statement smacks me hard. No, Quinn would be missing much more than his tooth if the perpetrator would’ve had time. “Can you ID him?”

He shakes his head, then winces. “Too dark. But think about it. It was personal.” Quinn leans over to spit again. “Only someone within the department would know about my damn tooth. My personal brand of torture. Crazy dentists,” he says, trying to diminish the severity of his injuries.

Quinn’s radio crackles. “The perp is on foot. Repeat. The perp is on foot. All units be advised. White male, approximately six foot, brown hair and wearing black clothing was last scene leaving TRI.”

Quinn wipes his mouth using the scrap of my dress to clean the blood away. He lifts the radio. “Kyle, do you have his location?”

Static. “Negative.”

Quinn curses.

Flashes of red and blue light up the highway, blinking against the wooded tree line. I pull Quinn’s arm over my shoulder and help him stand as unis surround the memorial. Once I’m sure Quinn can stand without my support, I step away and take out Colton’s phone.

I’m dialing the number to the club when I spot Colton entering the clearing. In cuffs. Being escorted by Carson. “Get those off him,” I shout.

I make a beeline for Colton, but Proctor steps into my path. “This will go down as the worst UC operation ever. I hope you have a good explanation, and a damn good reason as to why I shouldn’t lock every single one of you up for obstruction.”

“Quinn needs medical attention,” I say, nodding to where he’s sitting on one of the benches. “I take full responsibility. I put Quinn in harm’s way. I organized a side op to apprehend the UNSUB away from the club.”

“And failed. Big time,” Proctor grates. He points toward the bridge. “You and your crew. In the van for debriefing.”

I glance back at Quinn, a mix of emotions assaulting me. Anger that he didn’t trust me enough to enter the field on my own battling with my concern for him. He almost got himself killed.

“He’ll live.” Proctor eyes me closely before he shakes his head and starts toward Quinn. “It will be your captain who takes the hit. Just remember that.”

People know just where to strike to hurt the worst. No one else was supposed to suffer for this. And now…now, we’ve loosed an unstable psychopath on Avery. She’ll pay the highest price.

I turn toward Carson. “Uncuff him.”

He expels a heavy breath. “Why not? I’ve already lost my badge. Why not go the whole nine yards and let the Feds arrest me, too.” He jerks his head toward the bridge. “Not here.”

As we make our way toward the van, I link my arm through Colton’s. “How did you end up arrested?”

“I ratted you out.”

I stop short. Turning to face him fully, I say, “You did what?”

Carson holds up his hand. “It doesn’t matter, Sadie. The Feds already made the UC agent. The op was a bust as soon as they got a hit on the DNA from the sample.”

My head begins to spin. Despite being cuffed, Colton manages to keep me upright. I lean into his chest. “We have the UNSUB?”

Carson’s features smooth some. “Yeah. Well, we have his identity. You know that lab tech that works with Avery? The tall guy. Glasses. Skinny…”

My stomach bottoms out. “Simon?”

“Simon Whitmore. He evaded the initial search of the department by tampering with his file. That’s why the profile didn’t align with him,” Carson says. “The Feds have already pulled his original info. He worked in the Roanoke forensic lab. Moved here about six months ago, though his file states he’s been here for a year after transferring from upstate.”

I take off toward the Van.

If Avery isn’t already dead…if there’s a chance she’s still alive…finding that bastard Simon is our only hope. I pull the door open and am immersed in a full-scale search already in progress.

One monitor displays Simon Whitmore, his face captioned as the UNSUB—the face I looked right into as he handed me the note from Avery. The techs are running searches on his financials, a team already en route to his house and two hotels that he recently paid for with a credit card.

“He won’t be in a hotel,” I say, climbing into the van. “And he won’t have Avery at his house. You need to take the search back further, to places he visited six months ago.”

Agent Rollins snaps his fingers. “Get her out of here,” he orders one of the agents.

“Proctor sent me,” I say, jerking my arm free of the agent’s grip. “I’m to be debriefed, and there’s no way you’re shutting me out if there’s a chance our M.E. is still alive.”

I hear Carson and Colton enter the van, and Agent Rollins slams his hand against the wall. “You amateurs have already botched things good enough. What? You want to see if we can get the perp off on a technicality, too?”

“Can I leave?”

Our heads swing toward the woman hired to be my double.

Rollins glares at her. “Not unless you want the full weight of your charges brought against you. Sit down.”

She rolls her eyes with exaggeration, and Carson takes it upon himself to lead her toward the back of the van.

“Did she ID him?” I ask Rollins.

“She did,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. “She confirms Simon Whitmore, a tech from your own department lab, hired her to dance with him at the club and lead Reed out the side entrance. She claims she doesn’t know anything else. But she’s going into interrogation just to be sure.”

The UNSUB has been on a mission today, closing up loose ends. Why not her?

“You wouldn’t have half the information you do now without us putting our lives on the line,” I say, turning my back to him and moving closer to the monitors. “You will give us the respect we’re due, and you will either work with us now to help our M.E., or you can get the fuck out of the way.”

The air of the van thickens with tension. I can feel Rollins simmering, his close proximity hovering behind me. I’m sure he’s about to have me escorted from the vehicle when he says, “I better not regret this, Agent Bonds.”

He has one of the analysts bring up Simon’s financial records for the past six months. “See if you can find a recurring payment on property—rent, mortgage, or it might even be disguised as a car payment. Go back further into his records and see if he inherited any property. Any gifts he tried to get past the IRS.”

Carson appears at the head of the van. “He’s not what I expected,” he says. “I feel almost…disappointed.”

This is true. Simon Whitmore is a shadow. He was easy to overlook because nothing about him stood out. Average looks. Average height. Average life. He’s so unassuming that no one would bother to look too closely…if they ever bothered to notice him at all.

“You’ve had an ideal suspect in mind for two years,” I say to Carson. “It’s hard to imagine anyone outside that profile once you’ve made up your mind.”

Our gazes connect briefly, letting an unsaid understanding pass between us out of respect for Colton. Julian couldn’t be the apprentice. He was too much of an alpha to ever submit to anyone else.

I look at Rollins. “We need to compare the evidence of the crime scenes to this knew information.”

Rollins tosses a pile of files down on the table in the center of the van. “Knock yourselves out.”

Feeling like this night is about to swallow me, I take up a seat next to Colton, the weight of this day finally catching up. I tweak a file from the stack and flip it open.

My vision blurs. I blink hard, trying to focus on the crime scene image from the suspended vic. It was what Avery was last working on. There has to be something here I missed. It’s the only scene where a mistake was made—one he caught, but just barely. He was devolving rapidly at this point; he could’ve made another mistake.

“I’m sorry, goddess,” Colton whispers near my ear.

My insides hum. Just hearing him say
goddess
takes me away from the cruel reality gripping my mind. “You don’t have to be,” I say. “I never would’ve let you go.”

His jaw clenches. “I almost didn’t…I was close to locking you up in my room.”

I smile. For him. “I promised you we would get through this.” I look into his eyes. “Why did you—?”

“I thought Quinn was the UNSUB.”

I huff a weak laugh. “He couldn’t be. Well, I might’ve questioned him at one point. He went through a rough divorce a few months ago; that’s enough of a trigger for anyone to commit homicide. And he’s a neat freak. I cut my eyes a few times at him with suspicion…but no.” I shake my head. “Quinn isn’t subservient enough. Also, he didn’t spend enough time in Roanoke to build a connection with Connelly. If anything, Quinn would be the master, not the apprentice.”

Colton’s eyes skim my face, then travel lower as he lifts the tattered hem of my dress. “When I first saw you…all I could imagine was Quinn attacking you. Or someone hurting you. I learned the hard way you can’t break out of handcuffs.”

I take his hand in mine and run my fingers over the bloody welts around his wrist. “I’m sorry I put you through this.” I swallow hard. “Quinn was attacked. Not me.”

“I wouldn’t put it past Quinn to fake an attack. To throw suspicion off of him.”

“I doubt Quinn would’ve pulled his own tooth,” I say, returning my gaze to the crime scene image. “He won’t go anywhere near dentists. He’s squeamish about anything that has to do with them.”

Colton stares at the image from over my shoulder. “I don’t understand why he’d use a bowline knot to hoist the victim,” he says suddenly.

My head jerks up. “What?”

“At this crime scene. He tied a bowline knot.” He gets closer to me to whisper. “If it were me, I’d use a blood knot. Ten times as strong, better to support a body, and it’s more poetic. Keeping to the theme of the Blood Countess.”

I turn my gaze on him. “Who would use a bowline knot?”

He shrugs. “It’s a basic knot. Easy to learn. So really anyone. But you mostly see it used on boats. Like sailboats.”

A surge of hope springs me to my feet. “See if Simon has access to a boat. No wait… Pull up Lyle Connelly’s financials and look for—”

“I have it,” the tech says. “There was a title transfer between Connelly and Whitmore five months ago. A sailboat was gifted to Whitmore. To avoid paying taxes, Connelly’s lawyer drew up the paperwork in a charity’s name registered through Whitmore.”

I’m back at the front, staring at the screen as if I can find Simon on the map. Proctor stands beside me. “Bring up every boat slip between Arlington and DC. He might not have it registered in his name. Crosscheck the slips and the names of the boats.”

“I found one, sir.” The tech transfers the data from one screen to another, zooming in on an aerial view of the Columbia Island Marina. “The Countess. It’s docked at the marina now.”

“That’s just a few minutes away.” Quinn’s voice comes from behind.

I whip around. “Am I removed from the field?”

He frowns. “Could I order you to stay put?”

“Not a chance.”