Strings of Fate (Mistresses of Fate) (26 page)

“I get it. You think that if you tell the Feds, he’ll stop communicating and you’ll never find out where the rest are.”

Chris knew he would, but that was only part of it. But Chris was willing to go with that for now. What Raquel had guessed was reason enough.

“You know if we can find one body, there will be evidence tying the murder to Hays. We’ll find the rest. Have a little faith.”

Chris had seen too many people go missing, leaving too little evidence to track them down, to have much faith in anything, but she knew Raquel was right, knew that she couldn’t let that little girl’s family suffer anymore when there was something she could do to stop it.

“I’ll call Ryan when I get back.” She hadn’t wanted to carry her phone.

“Tell me his number and I’ll call him.” Raquel never went anywhere without hers. It was in the pocket of her jacket.

“I don’t know his number by heart.”

“We can call the FBI office.”

“It’ll take a while to get to him, then.”

“Let’s head back now.”

Chris nodded and they turned back, walking down the hill rather than killing their knees trying to jog.

They were spotted by a reporter the moment they arrived back at her building. Raquel held them off while Chris used her key to unlock the door to the lobby.

She stepped inside, nearly tripping over something that had been left there. She looked down and froze, her hand going to her mouth.

She could barely stifle her scream, though there was no one to hear her.

At her feet lay the body of a Chihuahua. It looked frozen, its little legs sticking out, its poor head nearly severed from its neck.

She backed away, only to have Raquel run into her from behind.

“Chris, what’s— Oh, fuck.”

Chris managed to choke out a response as she turned her head, wishing she could unsee the poor creature’s lifeless body. “I think it’s Martha’s.”

“Who’s Martha?”

“One of the missing women. The Boyfriend.”

“Okay. Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. You stay here, just come over here and sit on the stairs. Don’t look at the body.”

Raquel pulled out her weapon and her phone at the same time, calling in what had happened, advising the operator that the crime scene was part of an ongoing investigation headed by the FBI.

When she hung up, she immediately called Tavey.

“Betty, put me on with Tavey. It’s Raquel.”

“We have a situation in the lobby. Someone killed a dog and left it for Chris to find.”

Chris heard Tavey’s curse from where she was sitting.

“Yeah, I’ve called it in. Can you keep everyone away from the side door for now? . . . All right, thanks. . . . She’s fine. Shaken up. I’m taking her upstairs. . . . Yeah, I think yoga class is canceled tonight.”

She hung up and turned to Chris. “Come on.” She urged Chris to stand and had her follow her up the stairs, pausing at each landing to point her weapon and check to see if the coast was clear. Chris followed numbly, not worried that anyone was lurking on the stairs. He wanted her to take him to the place in the woods, so it wouldn’t make sense for him to kill her. Not yet, anyway.

When they reached her door, Raquel entered first so she could do a sweep. Chris waited on the landing until she came back.

“Okay, we’re good.”

She put her arm around Chris and escorted her into the room.

“Raquel, I’m not an invalid.”

“I know, honey.”

Chris sighed, shaking her head. “The poor dog.”

“I know. We’re going to find the guy. I promise.”

Chris nodded. “I know.”

Raquel deposited Chris on the couch and immediately called her supervisor at the Atlanta PD, letting him know that they’d gotten an anonymous tip about a body in the woods. Chris thought that the Boyfriend would allow that much; how else was she going to find the body? He wanted it kept a secret that she’d agreed to meet with him, that’s all.

Raquel turned to Chris. “What’s the GPS location he sent you?”

Chris hesitated, wondering about the risks involved in sharing this information.

“I wrote it down. It’s on a piece of paper on my keyboard.”

Raquel disappeared into Chris’s bedroom to look for it. While she was gone, Chris pulled her cell phone out of her purse, which she’d left on the coffee table. She checked her phone log—ten missed calls. She guessed Ryan had gotten the message.

She pressed the button to call him back.

“Chris. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Not hurt.”

“Is Raquel with you?”

“She is; she’s on the phone with Atlanta PD.”

“Okay, I need to—”

“Before you hang up, you should know that Raquel is giving GPS coordinates to the agent in charge on a case involving girls who’ve gone missing in the Atlanta area.”

Ryan took that in for a moment and then the questions started. “What GPS coordinates? What does that have to do with our unsub or the dead dog?”

But before Chris could answer, he seemed to figure it out. “He sent you a message?”

“Yes.”

“Something you wanted?”

“Yes. The location of a missing girl, but I’m betting it’s her body.”

“Great. So he, what? Saw what you were investigating and decided to help you out?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So what did he want in return?”

“I’m not sure exactly,” she hedged.

“What do you mean, you’re not sure exactly? And why didn’t we see this conversation on our remote connection to your computers?” His voice sounded muffled, as if he’d turned away from the phone.

Chris chose to answer the second question only. “I don’t know. Ask Sandeep.”

“I am asking Sandeep,” he clarified. “He says he’s looking into it.”

“Well, now you know as much as I do.”

“I doubt that.” He sounded really suspicious.

“Come over tonight and ask me in person. Maybe there’s some details I missed.”

“You bet your ass I’m coming over. And you better be ready to share every tiny detail with me,” he snarled, and hung up.

31

RYAN HUNG UP
the phone with a curse, putting his head in his hands. A sick, cold feeling made him swallow repeatedly. He didn’t know when it happened, but at some point Ms. Christina Pascal had become important to him. The thought of losing her, of something happening to her, had his hands curling into involuntary fists. He had to do something.

“Okay, everybody; we have ourselves a cluster fuck on our hands. Get everyone in here.”

Midaugh and another agent called the various groups into the main conference room until the relatively small space was crowded with large bodies in uniforms and TAC gear.

“Okay, we have possible surveillance of the unsub from a gas station west of Fate to analyze. We believe that the unsub may be traveling with a woman. She may or may not be willingly aiding him. We need that surveillance video analyzed. The location of where the incident occurred has already been marked on the map.” He waved a hand to indicate the pushpin showing the location. “I’d like some volunteers to sort through it and run facial recognition.” He took down the names of three officers and agents who raised their hands and assigned a leader to the group.

“Additionally, the unsub has been in communication with the woman he calls the Creator, Ms. Christina Pascal, though our remote servers indicated that no such conversation occurred. I’ll be going to interview Ms. Pascal tonight to get the details of that conversation, but we do know that he revealed to her the GPS coordinates of what Ms. Pascal believes to be the body of a missing girl from the Atlanta area. Atlanta PD has already been informed of this information in connection to their open case. The unsub has helped Ms. Pascal with information in the past. We believe he is attempting to please or bribe her with information regarding her active investigations into missing persons. Atlanta PD will continue to run that investigation.” He tossed down his notes.

“And finally, someone left a nearly beheaded body of a small dog in the lobby of Ms. Pascal’s building, presumably to frighten or intimidate her, but we’ll keep an open mind. Our evidence response team is on the way to collect the evidence. The Cherokee County sheriff was called in as well, so they’ll have investigators on the scene. We’ll need to analyze the evidence as soon as it comes in for any indications of who the unsub is or where he might be living.”

He put his hands on the conference table and leaned in. “We suspect that the unsub is circling closer to the town of Fate and the focus of his particular psychosis is narrowing in on Ms. Pascal, but so far our roadblocks in and out of the town have been ineffective, largely due to the number of private and back roads that can be used to navigate to the interstate. In short, we’re closing in on this man and we need to stay focused and on point if we’re going to catch him. I need everyone working their assigned tasks and communicating effectively with the team. Agent Midaugh and I are headed out to Fate. Any questions?”

No one had any, or at least no one spoke up.

Midaugh, as the agent in charge, was giving him a what-the-hell? look, but he wasn’t the type to get bent out of shape because Ryan called a status meeting.

“Okay, people,” Midaugh interceded, “let’s get to it.”

Everyone dispersed, leaving Ryan and Midaugh alone in the conference room.

“What’s going on, kid?” Midaugh asked.

Ryan shook his head. “I think Chris heard from the unsub earlier today. I think she knew about the location of that body but waited hours before telling me.”

“Why do you think she didn’t call immediately? You think she’s involved with the unsub after all?”

“No,” Ryan concluded emphatically. “Not the way you mean. I think he offered her the one thing she can’t resist—information about a missing person. She didn’t want to tell me because she knew I’d ask her where she got the intel.”

“Why not just call in an anonymous tip?”

“She could have, but this way there’s immediate action. She gets what she wants, which is the girl found.”

“So what does he get in return?”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

CHAOS REIGNED IN FATE.
Reporters and police from various agencies were gathered around the circle at both entrances to Chris’s building. The deputies from the county sheriff had taped off the area around both entrances. Ryan and Midaugh made their way through the crowd by flashing their badges.

When they finally got inside, the forensic techs from the FBI were documenting the scene, but the county officers were keeping the onlookers and the reporters out.

Ryan recognized Tavey Collins from his checks into Chris’s background. She was standing just inside the door to her grooming salon, talking to Investigator Downs, her arms crossed over her chest. He was taking notes on a small flipbook, his face set in hard, cold lines.

“Where’s Ms. Pascal?” he asked one of the sheriff’s officers, who shrugged and pointed upstairs.

Ryan tapped Midaugh on the shoulder. “I’ll go upstairs and talk to Chris.”

Midaugh nodded and headed over to join Investigator Downs and Ms. Collins.

Ryan leapt up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He stopped for a moment outside Chris’s door to get a grip on himself. He took several deep breaths, just as he’d seen her do, trying to focus on that rather than charging through the door like an enraged idiot. That’s what he was, an idiot, because he was fucking jealous—jealous—that she’d let that asshole talk to her, that she’d put her need to find the missing above her own safety.

The door jerked open before he’d finished gathering his cool. Raquel, the cop, was standing on the other side, her expression fierce and set.

“Get in here. She needs you.”

Ryan nodded and came inside, preparing himself for anything, really—tears, eerie calm, nervous stretching—but Chris was perched quietly on the couch, her feet pulled up so she was sitting cross-legged, her upturned palms in her lap, serene.

She looked at him with those gold eyes and Ryan had trouble breathing. There was a world of emotion in those eyes—guilt, regret, horror, and lust were all wrapped up in a single look. He met her gaze and felt like he’d known her forever, known she would come into his life and the focus of his world would change, shifting on its axis until he couldn’t imagine a day when he wouldn’t want her in it.