Take the Key and Lock Her Up (17 page)

Now, looking at all the evidence mounting against him, he had to admit it looked pretty
convincing.

“Anyone could have copied my garrote design.”

Gage simply stared at him.

Devlin tightened his finger on the shotgun trigger beneath the table. “This is a setup.
Tell me you know that. Please tell me you don’t really think I hurt Shannon or Kelly.”

Gage pulled his hand from beneath the table. Devlin was disappointed but not all that
surprised to see the .357 Magnum pointing at him.

“Convince me.” Gage’s voice was a deadly echo in the small room.

All Devlin had to do was squeeze the trigger and a bullet would rip through the soft
wood with deadly force. If anyone besides Gage were sitting in that chair, pointing
a gun at him, he would have already shot them. But the man across from him wasn’t
a stranger. He’d been Devlin’s closest friend for over a decade. And since Devlin
could count all of his friends on one hand, that meant something. It meant everything.

He studied Gage’s eyes, the little lines at the corners tight with tension. His mouth
was a thin line. The hand holding the gun made a telling wobble before Gage tightened
his grip and steadied it.

Devlin was betting everything on that one little wobble. He carefully eased his finger
off the trigger. “Why should I bother trying to convince you that I’m innocent?”

“Other than the fact that I’m holding a gun on you?”

He raised a brow. “Other than that.”

Gage stared at him for a full minute before cursing viciously and shoving his gun
into his shoulder holster. “You’d better hope that Cyprian doesn’t realize I couldn’t
shoot you. If he does, he’ll send someone who will, like Ace. Remember when an EXIT
order was issued against Ace’s longtime girlfriend? Cyprian assigned another enforcer
to carry out the sentence and told Ace about it as a courtesy. Rumors are that Ace
volunteered
to kill her and filleted her like a fish, splitting her open from the neck down—right
after making love to her. Going after someone like you or me wouldn’t make him blink
twice.”

As always, hearing about Ace’s brutality sent a surge of anger sweeping through Devlin.
But he had his own survival to focus on right now. “So Cyprian really did send you
to kill me. He issued an EXIT order.”

“What did you think he would do? He thinks you’ve gone rogue, out of control. He thinks
you’ve already killed one enforcer and will probably kill Kelly too. One of the Savannah
detectives has already been digging into EXIT. Damage control on this is going to
be costly.”

“And I’m one of those costs.”

“What would you do in Cyprian’s position? Weighing everything, looking at the facts,
at what he thinks are the facts anyway?”

Devlin shoved back from the table and stood. “I would have sent Ace.”

Gage grinned for the first time since entering the kitchen. “Yeah, you probably would
have. God save me if my life is ever in your hands. You would have shot me without
giving me a chance.”

Devlin reached beneath the table, pulled the shotgun out, and set it on top of the
photographs. “Give me more credit than that. You’re still alive.”

His friend turned pale, but before he could say anything, his cell phone rang. Gage
pulled it out of his pocket and took the call. “Yeah.” He listened for a moment, his
troubled eyes rising to Devlin’s. “No, Cyprian. Looks like I just missed him. The
coffee is still warm.”

E
MILY HID A
yawn behind her hand and straightened in her desk chair, struggling to stay awake
as she finished reading a report on her computer screen.

“Great way to spend a Saturday, huh?” Tuck’s voice called out to her from across the
squad room as he maneuvered down the aisle to his desk. “Wait, you look like hell.
Please tell me you haven’t been here all night.”

“Thanks a lot. And, yeah. Guilty.” She waved at the handful of other detectives at
their desks. “I’m not the only one. So you aren’t allowed to fuss.”

He glanced around. “Yeah. I am. That’s the night shift about to go home, not the day
shift working a double. Go home, Emily. Take a nap. Come back in a few hours.”

“I already took a nap beneath my desk. I’m fine.”

“No. You’re not. Your eyes are crossing.” He sat across from her.

“Stop acting like my mother and take a look at this.”

He snickered. “Mom still thinks you’re not living up to your full potential since
you aren’t a doctor?”

“If I’m not in the medical field, I might as well sell burgers and fries for all the
respect my family shows me. Get over here.”

He shoved his foot against the side of his desk, sending his chair rolling across
the space that separated them. “What are we looking at?” He peered at the screen.
“Virginia Hawley’s medical report?”

“Skim through it. Tell me your gut feeling.”

He frowned and grabbed the mouse, scrolling through the two pages before sitting back.
“Pretty cut-and-dried. Multiple bruises, lacerations. Ligature marks on her ankles
and wrists. The doctor mentions a cross-shaped bruise with each of the ligature marks.
Did Hawley say what that was from?”

“She wasn’t sure. Maybe from the rope.”

He shrugged. “The rest of it looks fairly standard to me. What’s bothering you about
it?”

“She wasn’t sexually assaulted.”

“Serial killers don’t always rape their victims,” he reminded her.

“I know. It just seems . . . surprising, given that she was tied up. There aren’t
any broken bones either. Not even a cracked rib. Wouldn’t you expect that from the
number of bruises?”

He pursed his lips and tilted his head back and forth as he considered her question.
“Okay, yeah, probably. I guess he just didn’t hit her hard enough to break bones.
Maybe he’s not a big guy. Or he just likes leaving marks on the skin, some kind of
fetish. Or maybe he would have broken bones if he’d kept her longer.”

“I don’t think so.” She clicked the mouse and maximized another document. “I’m not
the only one who pulled an all-nighter. Kennerly was here too. He finished all three
autopsies. And
this
is the part that bothers me.” She highlighted a line in the report.

“Huh.” His brows rose. “No broken bones on that one either. Okay, but Carolyn Buchanan—I
mean, Shannon Fisher—had multiple fractures. Kennerly noted that in the basement,
even before he performed the autopsies.”

“True, but once he performed Shannon’s autopsy he concluded those breaks, all of them,
were set correctly and healed with no issue, which wouldn’t be typical if an abuser
had broken those bones. He wouldn’t have sought medical treatment for the vic.”

“Agreed. Fisher was either accident-prone or had a dangerous job or hobby. But her
attacker isn’t the one who caused the fractures.”

“Right. Set that aside and what do we have?
None
of the three women in this case—four if you count Hawley—had broken bones as a result
of their treatment by the killer. None, that is, except for the hyoid bone in their
throats.”

“Wait, the killer was strong enough to strangle them, but not strong enough to break
any other bones when he beat them?”

She tried to imagine Devlin as the man who’d hurt these women. He was tall, fit, arms
bulging with muscles. If he’d beaten someone, wouldn’t he break some of their bones?
He was certainly capable of violence. He’d killed Hawley’s abductor with his bare
hands. And she hadn’t changed her mind that he was hiding something, that he might
very well be the hired assassin she’d believed him to be back in the interrogation
room. So then, why couldn’t she picture him hurting these women, or any woman?

She shrugged. “I don’t know what to think.”

“That’s because you’re exhausted. Go home. Don’t come back until you’ve had at least
four or five hours of sleep.”

“I told you, I’m fine.”

“Okay. Then I guess you want to hang around for Drier’s press conference. That should
be fun. It’s scheduled to start in a couple of hours.”

She shot him an aggravated look. “I’ll be out of here in five minutes.”

He laughed as she shut down her computer.

G
OING TO THE
police station was risky, but Devlin considered it a risk worth taking. Whoever had
brutally murdered Shannon was either holding Kelly as his prisoner or had already
killed her. Until a body was found, Devlin was holding out hope she was still alive
and he could save her. And if she could save
him
in the process by telling his boss he wasn’t involved, that would be one hell of
a fringe benefit.

He figured the fastest way to find her was to catch up on the police investigation,
so he wouldn’t waste time covering the same ground they’d already explored. That was
why he was once again in the lobby of the one place where he felt the least comfortable,
the police station.

One specific thing he wanted was a copy of the missing persons report that had been
filed on Shannon. Getting a copy, or at least getting O’Malley to share the information,
would take some creative lies. But he’d find a way. It was bugging the hell out of
him that an enforcer could have been reported missing without any alarms sounding
within EXIT. Shouldn’t someone there have known she was unaccounted for? Her parents
knew she worked for EXIT as a tour guide. Wouldn’t they have called someone there
to ask if they’d seen Shannon? He had way too many questions and almost no answers.

He started toward the main desk to ask for O’Malley, automatically scanning the lobby
for potential threats. When he noticed a young man on the other side of the room,
he stopped. There was nothing about the man that made him look any different from
anyone else sitting on the benches and chairs waiting to see whomever they were there
to see. Nothing except his deathly stillness, and the way he seemed to look at everyone
except
Devlin, as if purposely trying not to draw his attention.

An EXIT enforcer? Had Cyprian given EXIT orders to two different assassins? Or maybe
this young kid was the real rogue, the one who was framing Devlin. Doubtful. Devlin
didn’t recognize him. And he knew the faces of every enforcer EXIT employed. The only
way this guy could be an enforcer was if he was a new recruit, fresh out of training,
still on probation. Which meant he had a handler somewhere. That upped the number
of people after Devlin to at least three—Gage, this kid, his handler—and possibly
four, depending on who was orchestrating this conspiracy against him.

The young man’s gaze met his and quickly flitted away. Oh, yeah, he was definitely
watching Devlin and trying unsuccessfully not to be obvious.

This was all spiraling out of control fast. He needed to talk to Cyprian again, try
to convince him he was innocent—or as
innocent
as Devlin could ever be at this point in his life. But right now, the
only
thing that mattered was figuring a way out of the police station and into hiding
without getting himself, or anyone else, killed. Seeing O’Malley was no longer an
option. He couldn’t risk making her a target by being seen with her again. If Cyprian
were already convinced Devlin had gone rogue, it wouldn’t take much of a leap to think
that he’d told O’Malley more than he should have, especially if she’d said anything
outrageous on the phone when she’d called EXIT.

Keeping the rookie in his peripheral line of vision, he strolled back toward the front
doors. His plan was to use EXIT’s own rules against them. Rule number #3:
Never kill anyone in law enforcement
. The only exception to any of the rules was if EXIT’s mission was in jeopardy, serious
jeopardy, and there wasn’t a viable alternative. Which meant the rookie couldn’t shoot
Devlin if it meant shooting a cop to get to him.

Not knowing who might be watching from outside, he stopped well back from the glass
doors, waiting for his chance. The rookie suddenly stood, as if only now realizing
Devlin’s intent. Devlin timed the movements of a large group of detectives and uniformed
officers heading toward the doors. Ten feet, nine, eight.

The rookie started toward him, his movements jerky, panicked, as he tried to push
his way through another group of visitors between him and Devlin.

Five feet, four . . .

The rookie burst through the group, turning his head back and forth, searching for
Devlin.

Devlin edged closer to the door.
Now!

A
VOIDING THE MAIN
lobby of the police station so she wouldn’t get stuck talking to anyone, Emily headed
out the side door to the parking lot. As soon as she passed the visitor’s row, she
stopped and did a double take. There was only one vehicle parked there, on the end,
near the street. A white Ford pickup. The same one she’d ridden in earlier—Devlin’s
truck. Why was he at the police station?

She headed to the truck and looked through the driver’s window. Empty. She felt the
hood. Warm. He must have just gotten here. Had he gone into the lobby while she’d
gone out the side? She debated continuing to her car, but her curiosity wouldn’t let
her do that. She wanted to know why Devlin was here and whether it had anything to
do with the case.

She rounded the corner of the building to go in through the front this time, then
stopped. What if Tuck caught her talking to Devlin and started teasing her again?
She’d told him her suspicions about EXIT Inc. right before she’d left. Big mistake.
He’d told her exactly what he thought about her ideas, that she was letting all those
muscles distract her and was wasting time looking into both Buchanan and the company
he worked for. Could he be right? Was she not thinking clearly? Was she really that
shallow that a few dimples and a flat stomach could make her see clues where they
didn’t really exist?

Her shoulders slumped. If there were even a chance Tuck was right, she should go home
right now. If Devlin asked for her upstairs, Tuck would take care of it. That’s what
partners were for.