The Broken (The Apostles) (36 page)

At last he found the final water bottle and poured the few remaining drops into his mouth. When it was empty, he bit into the base of the bottle and made a small hole. Then with his old, muddy hands—nothing shaky ’bout ’em now—he tore at the hole, peeling back the plastic bit by bit. This one probably wouldn’t last too long either, but it didn’t matter. He’d keep digging. He’d done it before, and back then it had only been his sorry old butt on the line.

“You haven’t got me yet, Butcher Boy, and you ain’t gonna get my girl.” Smokey gouged his plastic shovel into the three-foot wormhole he’d been working on for two days. “I’m coming, Katy-lady. Just you hang on and stick with G-man. Old Smokey’s coming for you.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Friday, June 19, 4:10 p.m.
Reno, Nevada

H
ome sweet home.” Kate tried to keep her voice light, but it wavered as she stood at the front door of her Reno condo, trying to get the courage to slip her key in the lock.

Hayden motioned to the two-story ground-floor unit with the walled private patio. “Nice place. You could have sold it for a considerable sum. Why did you hang on to it?”

“Honestly?”

Shoot straight or ditch the rifle.

Hayden nodded.

“This is my home, the first real home I ever had, and I guess a part of me wanted to hang on to it in case I ever felt safe enough to come back.”

“More hope?”

“Or stupidity.” She laughed, but the sound died off as she aimed the key at the lock and missed.

Hayden held out his hand, and she handed him her key. Good, let Agent Efficient help her get what she needed, and then they’d go. He turned toward the door but didn’t insert the key. Instead he squinted, frowned, and plucked a small round object from above the door jamb.

“Is that what I think it is?” Kate asked.

“A camera to watch you coming and going.” Hayden fisted it in his hand. “Set up no doubt by the Butcher.”

Fear burrowed in her chest as she tried to comprehend someone so consumed with finding her that he’d set up miniature cameras at her home. And he must have seen her when—“The trigger. Oh, my God, Hayden. I’m the trigger.” Guilt, an icy, heavy avalanche, almost knocked her over. She steadied herself against the patio wall. “The Butcher made his first attack six months ago, and you said something happened to trigger that attack. It was me. In January, I came here to get some jewelry to sell, and he must have seen me. It’s just like you said. Realizing I was alive, he must have killed the other broadcasters, knowing that I would have to come out of hiding because I could never live with myself if I let the injustices against those women go unanswered.”

Hayden slipped the disk into his pocket. “But he won’t get you. Let’s get the dress and go.”

Kate didn’t argue. After Hayden unlocked the door, she hurried up the steps into the master bedroom, refusing to look at the brown stain of her own blood and terror and anger indelibly imprinted on the carpet. She threw open her walk-in closet and rummaged past the suits to the back, where she kept her formal wear. She took out three full-length dresses. The first, a sapphire velvet gown, was too low in the front. She studied the black with the jet beads, but the sleeveless sheath would show too much of her arms. Finally she held an emerald green charmeuse with a high waist and cap sleeves.

“The green,” Hayden said. “Definitely the green.” She spun and found him sitting on her bed, his legs stretched out in front of him, his back against the headboard.

“Why the green?” She held up the shimmery fabric with the flowing skirt and low back.

“It’s my favorite color.”

“You like
green
?”

“Is that a crime?” For the first time since his run-in with Dr. Trowbridge, Hayden smiled. The sight sent a brilliant light through the dark, dusty room.

She shrugged a laugh. “You’re just not a
green
kind of guy.”

He shook his head like a parent amused with a precocious child. She knew she and Hayden were fundamentally different. He was an analytical control freak and she was…She clutched the dress to her and sunk onto the edge of the bed. She didn’t even know who she was anymore.

“I’m not green,” he said. “Okay, then what color am I?”

She squinted. “Something practical. Black. Brown. Maybe camel.”

“Nope.” He reached for her. “I’m definitely a sucker for green.” He ran his finger along the side of her face then nodded to the wad of emerald charmeuse in her hands. “Wear it. It matches your eyes.”

She hugged the flimsy fabric to her chest. “Tonight I’ll be in a room with a killer who needs me dead.”

“And I’ll be right beside you.” Hayden was a large man, but he moved with surprising agility as landed a deep, hot kiss on her lips.

When she pulled away, she steadied her hands on his chest. “Is that a classic case of courage delivered with a kiss?”

“No. That was purely primal on my part. It happens when I’m lying in a bed with you.”

She took a deep breath. She’d handled dragons as a child, dealt with barracudas like Robyn Banks in broadcast news, survived twenty-five stabs wounds, and she got Hayden Reed to tap into and act on primal feelings. She was ready for tonight, for a cocktail party with a butcher.

*  *  *

Friday, June 19, 7 p.m.
Dorado Bay, Nevada

“Damn, Pretty Boy, you look good in a tux.”

Hayden ignored Lottie’s smack to his butt and held out the cufflinks.

She took one of links and threaded it through the buttonhole of his right cuff. “Are your guys ready?”

“Hatch and Evie are already at the Conlan mansion. Parker has men set up at the estates on either side. Chief Greenfield has roadblocks all along the bay roads.”

The old police sergeant turned him around and secured the other cufflink. “You be careful. You might look like a million bucks, but you’re still flesh and blood under this fancy suit.” She straightened his tie.

“You, too. I’ve arranged for one of Chief Greenfield’s men to go out with you tonight.” Lottie gave herself a clean bill of health, and she planned to spend the evening flashing around the sketch of the “woman” seen by Shayna Thomas’s stalker. The difference now was that she’d be telling everyone that this was a man disguised as a woman.

Lottie placed both hands on his chest and pushed him away. “Kate’s right. You’re a control freak.”

“No, Lottie, I care about you.”

The sergeant waggled her eyebrows at him. “You got an older brother hiding somewhere who likes old bags with great shoes?”

Hayden laughed. “No, but if I did, I wouldn’t hesitate to introduce you.”

At that moment, Kate and Maeve walked out of the bathroom, and his heart dropped to his knees. He was sure of it, because they were knocking with a steady beat as he looked at the fairy-tale version of Kate. Here, in the early twilight, she looked like something out of her closet mural, Happily Ever After. Her creamy skin peeked out from the brilliant emerald of the long, flowing dress that hugged her slim curves, and in her hair, hanging in loping curls about her face, were tiny iridescent pearls.

“Let’s go,” she said when it became obvious he was gaping at her.

He nodded. Go. They needed to go.

Kate remained silent as they drove toward the glittering mansions on the lake. It was like first-date jitters, but to the
n
th degree. Their date tonight was with a butchering serial killer.

As they passed the road leading to Mulveney’s Cove, Hayden recognized a car heading to the water. “There’s Jon. I want to check in.”

Lakeside, they found Jon dispatching an elite SAR group from Phoenix.

“No news,” Jon said as they joined him at the water’s edge. “But we won’t stop until we find him, and we’re going to find him. Alive.”

Kate did the unthinkable and hugged Jon, whispering against his neck, “I know.”

On the way back to the car, Hayden recognized another face, a smaller one without Jon’s hope. Charlie Hankins sat on an outcropping of rocks overlooking Mulveney’s Cove, tears streaming down his face.

“Oh, Hayden.” Kate grabbed his hand. “That kid’s miserable. Please go over and say something to him.”

The kid’s hunched shoulders were carrying something heavier than the weight of the world. “I don’t know what to say to him,” Hayden said.
Sorry for letting you down. Sorry for not finding your brother before the Butcher did.

“That’s crazy. You always know the perfect thing to say and do.”

“Kate…” he started.

She thumped him on the chest. “Just go.”

He shook his head. “I can’t leave you.”

“I’ll glue myself to Jon. Go.”

She gave him a little push, and his feet slogged through the lakeside muck toward Charlie Hankins. He climbed the back of the rock, which was covered in dried fish innards and lichen. The boy picked at the frayed edge of his cut-off shorts but didn’t say anything as Hayden sat next to him. Clearly, Charlie’s heart was breaking, and he felt guilty as hell. The hard part was knowing what to say. For once there were no voices in his head, no logical thoughts processing in his brain.

“I heard the funeral’s tomorrow,” Hayden said.

Charlie tossed a rock into the red-gold waters of the bay reflecting the setting sun. “Yeah. You gonna be there?”

“I’d planned on it. That okay with you?”

Charlie tossed in another rock. “Yeah.”

Hayden picked up one of the rocks and tossed it in the water, a soft
kerplunk
harmonizing with the fading day’s chirps and buzzes. He tossed in seven more before Charlie turned his tear-stained cheeks to him. “I have these dreams at night where I find him, the killer, in Benny’s room, and I take Benny’s baseball bat and hit him over the head. Again and again and again until…until…there’s nothing left. Is that okay to feel that way?”

The ripples in the water stretched farther and farther. “Yeah, it’s okay to be angry, because that means something deeper is going on. You’re hurt or sad, probably a little of both. Feelings are okay. They prove you’re human.” And lately, Hayden had felt very human.

*  *  *

Friday, June 19, 8:30 p.m.
Dorado Bay, Nevada

Robyn Banks tore off the check for $1,000 and handed it to the birdlike woman at the door of the Conlan mansion. The woman from Hope Academy took the check and smiled, although she wouldn’t be smiling tomorrow when she tried to cash it. That little piece of paper would bounce higher than the gold balloons floating in the cathedral ceilings of Oliver and Ava Conlans’ front entryway.

“Do you need a mask?” The woman pointed to the array of feathered, sequined, and bejeweled face coverings.

Robyn hadn’t thought to bring one. She’d left her home in Reno focused only on finding her husband, who’d crawled out of his hole of despair to go after Katrina Erickson. “Yes, I’ll take the red one.” The crimson mask sported a single red plume jutting jauntily from the right side.

Robyn slipped the red silk confection over her face and entered the ballroom, where hundreds of masked partygoers mingled. A string quartet played in the corner, and waiters in black pants, white shirts, and various animal masks threaded through the guests with sparkling flutes of champagne and artfully arranged finger foods.

One of the waiters offered her a glass of bubbling liquid, but she declined. How easy it would be to get stinking drunk right now, which she guessed was the case with Mike. She searched the masked faces, trying to spot the tottering, drunken fool, because she knew he’d be here in search of Katrina.

Funny, how everything kept coming back to Katrina.

When Robyn arrived home from her final day at KTTL with a bag of chocolate peppermints and the grand idea of leaving with Mike and starting a new life, she’d discovered that he’d left without her. And he must have started off the journey already pickled, for she’d found an empty fifth of scotch next to his wallet and his cell phone. The last text he’d sent had been to Katrina to agree to meet her at 9 p.m. at the Hope Academy fundraiser.

What a stupid, stupid fool. Her husband was on the hunt for Katrina Erickson, but she had to stop him before someone found out who he really was. Her fingers wrapped around her purse, home to her 9mm handgun.

*  *  *

“Do you see Kyl Watson?” Kate asked as she and Hayden found a quiet spot in the corner of the Conlans’ bustling ballroom. She and Hayden had walked the floor for the past hour, Hayden taking a mental inventory of the guests, but it was hard with so many masks. Her own mask, the white one with the one-winged angel, scratched her nose, but that single angel gave her hope that Smokey Joe was still alive.

“I don’t think Watson is here yet,” Hayden said. “But Dr. Trowbridge is. He’s the one in the mask with the silver glitter.”

The short man with the Clark Kent build ground his hands together behind his back. “Looks a bit uncomfortable, doesn’t he?” Kate noted.

“Kyl Watson is the people man, the one who connects to the boys, the staff, and the donors. Dr. Trowbridge, on the other hand, is the head, the brain responsible for working out programming to turn troubled boys into productive members of society. He hates stuff like this, and if the academy weren’t on the brink of closing, he wouldn’t be here.”

A tall blond man wearing a gold sequined mask with three purple jester points in stiff velvet flashed her miles of brilliant white teeth. “Was that Hatch?” she asked.

“Yep. Evie is by the musicians. She’s wearing the red-sequined mask with the devil horns.”

“Do you recognize anyone else?”

Hayden pointed out the mayor, the publisher of the local paper, the pastor Ike Iverson, and two casino owners who had vacation homes on Dorado Bay. “Anyone who’s anyone in this town is here tonight. I spotted Chief Greenfield earlier following Dr. Trowbridge.”

Knowing that the chief and Hayden’s teammates hovered nearby gave her comfort, as did the fact that Parker Lord and another half dozen agents were stationed at the neighbors’ properties while Chief Greenfield’s men were manning roadblocks.

Outside, a steady rain started to fall, and the wind rattled the glass panes of the tightly closed patio doors. The long-awaited storm had landed and broken the back of the heat wave.