Pitch Black (7 page)

Smothering her disappointment, Lily listened to the report, even while wishing Parker would hurry. When she spied a familiar face, she knew the wishes hadn’t helped.
Damn
.

“Hey, Fletcher, back so soon?”

Cursing her luck, she offered a brisk nod to the agent—Anspaugh—who was heading up the very investigation she’d been helping on.

“Caught another case,” she explained, hoping Brandon was paying careful attention to their own tech, and not her conversation.

“Is it a big one?”

She wasn’t sure how much Blackstone had shared beyond the walls of the Black CATs’ den. The BAU had to know they’d gotten a lead on the Professor, but that might be as far as it had gone. “Possibly.”

Anspaugh smirked, reminding her of how little she liked the man. He had a big bully’s personality and a big bully’s body, and, unfortunately, a big bully’s brain to go with the package.

She liked him even less when he added, “So, did Blackstone manage to find another Reaper to justify his team’s existence?”

It wasn’t the first time Lily had heard snide comments from others in the bureau. Wyatt had burned bridges and made enemies by blowing the whistle on some of his colleagues. The evidence tampering and manipulation had run deep, from the forensics lab almost all the way up to the deputy director’s office, and a whole lot of heads had rolled. The friends of those heads placed the blame squarely on Blackstone, who’d done nothing more than the right thing.

“Why do you ask? Hoping to nose in the way you did the last time, with Satan’s Playground?” The retort didn’t come from Lily, but from Brandon, who had obviously been listening.
Double damn
.

“Cole,” Anspaugh said with a brief nod.

“I’m not sure you guys have thanked us enough for handing that case to you on a platter.”

Anspaugh’s body stiffened; he hadn’t liked taking somebody else’s leftovers, especially since the cyber playground had been belly-up before he’d gotten hold of the case. “Good thing you didn’t keep it yourselves. You mighta cost another teenager her head.”

Direct hit. Brandon’s eyes narrowed. Lily instinctively put a hand on his arm, though she felt the sting of the accusation, too. Because it was true. They hadn’t found the Reaper in time to save the last young woman who’d crossed his path. Her headless corpse would haunt the team forever.

“We were just leaving,” she said.

“Yeah, right. Let’s hit it, Tiger Lily,” Brandon muttered, snapping his gum like he was trying to save his own tongue from being bitten off.

Anspaugh, pleased with himself for inspiring a reaction, turned his attention back to her. “Stick around. We’re getting somewhere. It’s been a long trail, but we’re close to isolating Lovesprettyboys. We know his general vicinity; now we’re zoning in on his real identity.”

Lily had longed for that day for months. But now, she had another case to work. Her team needed her, and she wouldn’t have the time to help anyone else until the Professor was captured. “Keep me posted, okay? I’d like to hear how it pans out.”

His Cro-Magnon brow furrowed in confusion. Lily didn’t wait for him to ask why she was acting as if she had only an impartial interest. Her hand still gripping Brandon’s arm, she tugged him toward the exit, not releasing him until they’d left the room.

“Asshole,” Brandon snapped.

“Yes.”

“Acting like Wyatt should hide and pretend he’s not even around anymore.”

“That’s exactly what some people want.”

Wyatt Blackstone had gone from rising superstar to ostracized outcast. After he’d blown the whistle and received public commendations, he had quietly been shoved into the Cyber Division. Handed a Cyber Action Team nobody expected to succeed, he’d been expected to keep his mouth shut and put in his time for the next twenty years until his retirement, never to be heard from again.

Fortunately, her new boss wasn’t wired that way. He was given a job to do, and by God, he was going to do it.

“He should have gotten recognition after the Reaper case. Not to mention support and resources for the team.” Brandon sounded as frustrated as Lily felt when the subject came up.

“I know.”

But it hadn’t happened. Oh, they’d gotten credit for solving it, but the investigation hadn’t been deemed entirely successful. The team had known someone was going to be killed and had how it would happen, yet they hadn’t been able to prevent it. Plus, once they’d identified him, the perpetrator had leaped out of the hands of justice by leaping into his own noose.

“So what’s with you and Anspaugh?” Brandon asked as they walked down the corridor. “You cheating on me? Messing around with somebody else’s hard drive?”

She laughed softly. Brandon was hot, but he was also young, probably no more than twenty-five or -six. Not to mention a player. Their relationship was strictly platonic, meaning she could appreciate his hotness without actually being burned and enjoy his playfulness without being played. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Seriously. What’s up?”

“I’ve been lending a hand now and then on the Lovesprettyboys investigation.”

His didn’t try to conceal the sympathetic look in his eyes. Brandon knew Lily’s story; everyone on the team did, except the new guy, Lambert. “I see.”

Immediately defensive, she explained, “I asked Wyatt if I could work it on my own time before we caught the Reaper.”

She should have known Brandon wouldn’t leave it alone. One brow arched in frank disbelief. “And he said yes?”

Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she hesitated before replying, “Yes. He did.”

He pressed harder. “Recently? Even after the site went dark and the investigation turned to the users of it, not the owners?”

She didn’t answer. Here was where it got particularly sticky.

“I get it. And begging forgiveness is easier than asking permission?”

“Something like that.” She didn’t ask Brandon to cover for her. She wasn’t totally sure she’d done anything wrong, but just in case, she wasn’t about to drag him into it with her.

“Okay. I guess you know what you’re doing. Please, though, don’t let it get to you.” His handsome face growing more serious, he added, “If it starts to get in your head, promise me you’ll walk away.”

A laugh, small and bitter, escaped her mouth. “Oh, my friend, you don’t even want to know the kinds of things that go on in my head.”

She began walking again, telling him without words the subject was closed. Though Lily appreciated his warning, and knew it came from a good place, she was far beyond being warned. He hadn’t worn her shoes, lived what she’d lived. Few people had or ever would in their lifetime.

I’m doing okay. As long as I have the job, I’m fine
.

Yeah. The job. It kept her moving forward, one foot at a time, one case at a time, one scumbag at a time.

There would be more than that someday. There had to be. They said after every nightmare came another dawn, and Lily Fletcher believed it.

She had to. Because God help her if it wasn’t true.

Sixteen and dead.

Sixteen and murdered.

Sam couldn’t speak for a moment after the FBI special agent in her kitchen broke the news. In fact, she couldn’t quite breathe. Or hear. Or think.

She walked as if in a daze to the sink. Turning on the faucet, she splashed cold water on her face, needing to clear her head and get a grip on her emotions. Sam kept her back to the man whose professional expression had not hidden his sympathy. He knew she had barely known Ryan Smith. Yet he also knew she was devastated by his death. Which said either that the man had very good intuition, or that Sam was very bad at disguising her feelings.

“Are you all right?” he asked from behind her.

Sam nodded, saying nothing as she grabbed a paper towel and dried her face. The cold water had snapped her out of her moment of shock, though she didn’t turn around right away. She wanted one more moment, a second to pretend she had merely imagined a nice young kid she knew had been murdered.

Then she remembered something. “Wilmington.” She spun around. “I saw a story blurb online about missing Delaware teens found in a frozen pond.”

He nodded once, confirming the suspicion.

She shuddered. What a horrible way to die. “How can you be so sure he didn’t fall through the ice? How do you know he was murdered?”

“Trust me.”

Two words she never wanted to hear coming out of a man’s mouth again. “I don’t even know you.”

“I mean, trust me when I say there is no way it was an accident.” His jaw flexing, he bit out a reluctant explanation. “They were bound.”

She closed her eyes briefly as her stomach churned and her throat tightened.

“They,” she mumbled, acknowledging the rest of it. “Were they random victims? Or was the other boy someone Ryan knew?”

“His best friend.”

Two teenage boys. This was more awful by the moment. “His friend—not the friend he was writing to ask me about? Not the one who was being taken in by an e-mail scheme?”

Agent Lambert nodded, his sympathy still evident. And suddenly she realized why he was here. Why he was asking these questions. Why he had come to her. It was more than the fact that they’d exchanged a few e-mails. Much more.

“My God. Were they killed by whoever was trying to scam him?”

He didn’t answer her question, countering with several of his own. “Is there anything else you can remember about your interactions with Ryan Smith? Did he mention even in passing where he might be headed that night or who he was meeting?”

“That night?” she asked, gulping as she realized the hits hadn’t stopped coming. “The night he IM’d me?”

“Yes.”

She shuffled to her chair and sank onto it. Like most people, Sam read the news; she was aware awful things happened to people every single day. She’d been touched by tragedy herself, with the accidental death of her father when she’d been only eleven.

But these were just kids. Nice, friendly kids whose only crimes had been gullibility and loyalty. Kids who’d ended up on the bottom of a frozen lake, never to go to their senior prom or set off for college or meet the right girl and get married. All that possibility—gone.

And if she hadn’t gone out for a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, and some damned ice cream, and had been home to answer Ryan Smith’s instant message, they might be alive today.

“There’s nothing you could have done,” Lambert said. He moved behind her, but she didn’t turn around, not even when he dropped a hand onto her shoulder and gently squeezed.

It was the first intimate touch she had received from a man in almost a year.

Even Uncle Nate—her late father’s partner in the force, whom her mother leaned on for everything except romance—did nothing more than shake her hand when they saw each other. As if he recognized the mental barricade she had erected between herself and any man.

This man hadn’t seen that barricade. And Sam found herself going very still, trying to decide how she felt about it.

When she’d pictured being touched again by a male of the species, she’d had typical divorcée daydreams. Running into her ex and his skank-ho with Josh Duhamel on one arm and Johnny Depp on the other. That would be good. Not this. Not comfort from a complete stranger.

But then, never in her darkest dreams had she envisioned getting caught up in a double murder investigation, or that her heart would feel on the verge of breaking over a sweet teenager she barely knew.

“You can’t blame yourself,” the agent said, his hand still heavy and warm on her shoulder. “The scam was convincing. I think the other boy would have gone no matter what you said, and Ryan would have tagged along with him. They had that kind of friendship.”

She nodded, appreciating the words, knowing they could be true. She had Tricia, her own through-thick-or-thin friend, and they would do anything for each other. So maybe her being home and trying to talk Ryan out of going with his buddy by IM wouldn’t have changed a thing.

But maybe it would.

“You okay?”

Sam tore her thoughts off the dark imaginings of the boys’ final moments and became more aware of the pressure of his strong hand on her shoulder. It didn’t feel threatening or inappropriate. In fact, the small bit of human connection felt nice. Very nice.

Before she could say a word, a sharp knock intruded from the front of the apartment. It was repeated a split second later, the impatience of the person audible in the hard punctuation of knuckle on wood.

Agent Lambert stepped away. Looking up, Sam saw a quick frown cross his face and knew he regretted stepping out of professional bounds, even if only for a moment. Sam couldn’t bring herself to regret it, though. The quieting touch had lasted long enough for her to swallow down her emotions and stop herself from bursting into tears at the utter senselessness of Ryan Smith’s murder.

“I’m sure that’s my partner.”

“I would bet she’s going to be in a bad mood,” Sam said, glad for the distraction. “No way did she get off without a ticket.”

“We’re law enforcement on official business. He might have made her jump through a hoop or two, but there’s no way she got cited.”

Maybe. But those hoops had probably reached his not-petite partner’s chin.

Leaving the kitchen, she went to the door and opened it. The attractive, female FBI agent wore a scowl and her lips were thin. “Special Agent Jackie Stokes,” she said, sticking out her hand. “Sorry for the disruption.”

Sam shook it, liking the other woman’s strong grip, not to mention the look of intelligence in her brown eyes. Sam suspected the gruff Agent Stokes was an excellent foil for her too-handsome-for-his-own-good partner. Stokes could undoubtedly intimidate a suspect with her gruff tone and hard stare. Just by virtue of his looks, Lambert could just say
please
and have any woman ready to spill her guts about anything he asked.

Except her. She was immune to anything resembling charm. She’d had an inoculation the size of a two-liter bottle of Coke injected into her veins courtesy of her ex-husband. Masculine charm was no threat to her at all.

But niceness, like the comforting drop of a hand on a shoulder? Well, with too much of that she could be in trouble.