Twisted (20 page)

“Nice ride,” he said, joining her at the trailhead. Dressed in shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt, he looked almost naked compared to her. In deference to the morning’s frosty weather, Allison had on two thick layers and a fleece headband that covered her ears.

She rubbed her hands together. “You’re not planning to whine at me, are you?”

He gave her a “get real” look. “I never whine. How many miles?”

“Six.”

He shook his head. “Always a slave driver. That’s what I miss about you.” He started down the trail.

“Don’t you even want to stretch first?”

“Stretching’s for wusses.”

She caught up to him and they fell into a brisk pace.
If things had gone differently, she’d be waking up in Mark’s motel room right now. Instead, she was running her butt off and he was on a plane back to Quantico.

I need to go handle something.

He’d left the message on her voice mail at precisely 5:45, as she’d been groggily groping for her phone.

Was he running away?

No. She hadn’t known him long, but he wasn’t the type to run away. If he was getting on a plane this morning, it was because someone needed him somewhere. He’d already proven, on more than one occasion, how important this case was to him.

And yet he hadn’t said when he’d come back. Or if.

Not that it mattered. Allison was determined to work the hell out of this case, with or without him. Her department would make an arrest, with or without him. Without him was probably better, anyway, because Allison’s emotions wouldn’t get tangled up.

“So let’s hear it,” Roland said as they passed the half-mile marker.

“What?”

“You need a favor.”

“What makes you say that?”

He sent her a sidelong glance. “One a.m. would have been a booty call. Six a.m. is work. What do you need?”

This was what she missed about Roland. No bullshit. And also, having a jogging partner—that had been cool. Really, Roland had some excellent boyfriend qualities. On the downside, his aversion to monogamy was a deal breaker.

“A? Come on, out with it.”

She pulled her thoughts together as she took the next
curve. Like many other scientists at the Delphi Center, Roland was constantly getting hit up for favors. Sometimes he said yes, sometimes he didn’t. But the best approach with him was simply to ask.

“I need some evidence examined.”

He didn’t respond.

“I doubt my lieutenant will approve a formal request, and he definitely won’t approve a rush fee even though I need it quickly.”

“What’s ‘quickly’?”

“Oh, you know. Yesterday would be good.” She was trying to make light of the favor, but he didn’t seem to be in the mood. Maybe in the back of his mind he’d been hoping this
was
a booty call.

“Sounds important.”

“It is.” She glanced at him. “You’ve read about Stephanie Snow?”

“Who hasn’t? She died right in this park.”

“They’ve put together a task force to investigate, and I’m on it.”

He pounded alongside her, looking pensive. “Thought the boyfriend did it.”

“He’s a suspect, but we’re looking at some other angles, too.”

“Such as?”

“Such as maybe it’s connected to a sexual assault case from last October. Mia’s running the rape kit for us.”

He grunted, and she could tell he wanted to hear more. Roland liked to have as much info as he could get when he took on a case. He said it helped him know where to look.

“We think the UNSUB uses a van,” Allison said,
sounding a little winded. She hadn’t run in a while. “The rape victim was in it during her attack, said she thought she smelled some sort of chemical, maybe paint. Two of our detectives spent a full day working that lead, and they got nowhere.”

“A day’s not much time.”

“In this case it is. We have reason to believe this killer is going to strike again. Soon. We really need to know what substance he has in his van, see if it points us anywhere.”

They veered around a couple walking a golden retriever. Allison waited for Roland’s response.

“What’s your fed think?”

“Who?”

He gave her a slight smile. “The hotshot FBI guy you’ve got heading up your task force.”

Allison didn’t think Reynolds would care much for that comment, but she let it go.

“He thinks the paint is a good lead.”

“But they can’t analyze it at Quantico?”

“Why can’t you guys do it?” she asked, getting frustrated now. “The evidence is with Mia already. How much trouble would it be to walk down there and—”

“Relax, I’ll do it.”

“You will?”

He nudged her elbow. “Just giving you a hard time about the fed. I hear you’re hot for him.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Word gets around.” He grinned at her. “Although I have to say I’m surprised. Wouldn’t have pegged you for an older-guy kinda girl.”

She ignored his baiting.

“I seem to recall you’ve got a
lot
of energy. He can’t keep up with you, just give me a call—”

She threw an elbow, but he dodged it, grinning.

“Hey, no need to get feisty. Just thought I’d offer.”

As he did in place after place, year after year, Mark entered the home of a victim and tried to imagine what killed her. Hannah Eckert had been found at a rest stop this morning off Interstate 95 near Richmond. As with Rita Romero just a few days before, the cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the forehead.

But Mark believed Hannah Eckert’s true cause of death lay on the coffee table in her filthy apartment. He picked his way through a sea of trash and looked at the homemade crack pipe.

“She have drugs on board at the time of the shooting?” Mark asked the young FBI agent standing behind him.

“No tox screen yet.”

Mark’s gaze scanned the room. The three-hundred-square-foot efficiency was one of twenty units in a ramshackle building that faced a busy stretch of Interstate 70, right outside Baltimore. The paper-thin walls did little to keep out the traffic noise, and Mark wondered how anyone managed to sleep here.

“How long have they been living here?”

“Three months,” the young agent informed him. Donovan was his name. He’d been on the job for about five minutes. “The building rents by the week. Manager said they’re two weeks behind and he was getting ready to evict them.”

Mark surveyed the kitchen area, which was littered with trash. A sour-milk smell permeated the room and
he attributed it to the sink filled with dirty dishes. He stepped over and pulled open the door of the rust-spotted refrigerator. The shelves were empty except for a carton of milk. Mark checked the date. Three weeks expired. He pulled open a drawer and found a half-finished package of hot dogs.

Mark studied the living room again. The sofa had a blanket and pillow bunched at the end and looked as though it doubled as a bed. In the far corner of the room, two plastic patio chairs—the kind sold at Walmart for a few bucks each—sat side by side with a Dora the Explorer blanket draped over the top. This would be Kaylie’s space, and Mark stepped over to take a closer look. He crouched down and peered into the child’s fort. Inside was a sofa cushion with a striped beach towel spread out on top of it. Tucked into the makeshift bed was a stuffed blue dolphin. Beside the cushion, a row of small plastic ponies was lined up neatly against the wall.

Mark stood up. His gaze landed on a pair of pink sequined flip-flops parked beside the fort. A knot of anger formed in his chest as he thought about a six-year-old’s efforts to create order amid the chaos swirling around her. Kaylie Eckert had had the odds stacked against her from the very beginning, and those odds only worsened with every hour she remained missing. Same for Rita Romero’s daughter.

“Hannah Eckert’s cell phone. Who’s checking the records?” Mark turned to Donovan, who was watching his every move, as if he might pick up some kind of superpowers just by being in the same room.

“Sir?”

“Her phone. It wasn’t in the car, correct?”

“No, sir. We’re not even sure she had a phone. And there’s no landline—”

“She had one,” Mark said. “Rita Romero had one, too. Both phones were stolen from the victims at the time of the shootings.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We need records, ASAP, from whatever companies provided the cell-phone service.”

“Maybe they were using throwaway phones.”

Mark glanced at the door, where a homicide detective stood waiting impatiently. Mark could tell by his tone that he wasn’t thrilled about the FBI’s involvement in this investigation, but the Bureau had been brought in almost immediately because of the missing children.

“They weren’t,” Mark said. “Neither woman has a computer, which means the phones were equipped with e-mail, Internet access, probably cameras, too. You get those phone records, you’re going to find one number that called both women the day of the murders.”

“To set up the meetings,” Donovan said. “At the rest stops, you mean.”

“That’s right,” Mark said. “You find the person who owns that phone number, and you find the two missing girls.”

If they’re still alive.
Mark didn’t say it because it was understood.

The agent hurried from the room as the phone buzzed inside Mark’s pocket. The detective in the doorway was still eyeing him skeptically, and Mark turned his back on him.

“Wolfe.”

“It’s Allison Doyle.”

She sounded perfectly polite, which grated on his nerves. He hadn’t spoken with her in five days.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I just got a message from Mia Voss, the DNA specialist at the Delphi Center.”

“And?”

“She finished the profiles and ran them through the database.”

“She got a hit?”

“She got something. But she said it’s complicated and she’ll explain tomorrow. Said she needed to confirm a few things first. I’m meeting her at the lab at eight a.m.”

Mark checked his watch. That was fourteen hours away. He bit back a curse.

“I’m in the middle of a situation,” he said. “I probably can’t make it.”

“I’m aware of that, but you said you wanted to be kept informed.”

“Thank you.”

A tense silence stretched out between them as Mark stood in the center of the squalid apartment and thought of all the reasons he couldn’t go to Texas right now.

But he wanted to. Badly. Which was exactly why he should stay the hell away.

“Let me know what you hear, would you?”

“Of course,” Allison said, and hung up.

As she walked down the glass corridor to the DNA lab, Allison noticed the ominous gray thunderhead rolling in over the hills.

“Don’t envy Kelsey today,” Mia said. “She was supposed to have a dig this morning.”

“Grad students?”

“CSI training. You know she’s running two sessions a month now? That’s a lot of revenue into the lab. They’re going to have to build a statue in her honor.”

They passed the DNA section, and Allison could see half a dozen lab-coated men standing at worktables and peering into microscopes.

Mia glanced at Allison again. “Hey, you notice anything weird with her lately?”

“Kelsey? No, why?”

“She’s been acting . . . I don’t know. Off.”

Mia ushered her into her office, which was really a glorified workroom equipped with gadgets and microscopes that probably cost more than Allison made in a year.

“‘Off’ as in distracted?” Allison asked.

“That.” Mia dropped her purse in a chair and slipped into her lab coat. “And maybe depressed.”

Allison frowned, thinking about it. She hadn’t noticed anything weird with Kelsey, but really, how much attention had she been giving her friends lately? She’d spent the past few weeks battling an impossible workload, a boneheaded boss, and now an inconvenient attack of lust.

She’d hardly given Kelsey a thought.

“Maybe there’s trouble in paradise,” Allison suggested. “Didn’t she fly out to see Gage a few weeks ago?”

“Last month. And yeah, I know. Where has the time gone? It’s been so busy lately.” Mia crossed over to her slate-topped work counter and booted up the notebook computer sitting there. Allison pulled up a stool beside her.

“I just wanted to see if you knew anything,” Mia said. “I’m starting to get worried.”

“Sorry. I’ve been buried at work.”

“Yeah, me, too. The good news is, I’ve made some serious progress.” The phone on the wall rang, and Mia reached for it. “DNA.” Her gaze went to Allison. “Okay, good. Send him up.”

Allison’s nerves fluttered.

“That was the front desk. Mark Wolfe is on his way up. I thought you said he was at Quantico?”

“He was. He had some other cases come up, so I figured he was done here.”

Mia watched her, and Allison felt her words being analyzed.

“What?”

“Kelsey’s not the only one acting weird,” Mia said. “What’s up with you two?”

“Nothing.”

Mia’s eyebrows arched.

“What? You think I’d be dumb enough to start something up with some fed who lives on the East Coast?” She tried to make it sound absurd, but it really wasn’t. That was exactly what she’d been trying to do.

Mia just looked at her. Her gaze moved over Allison’s shoulder, and for a second she thought Mark was standing there. She turned but saw nothing.

“Anyway, go ahead. He can catch up.” Allison nodded at the laptop. “You have the results on your computer?”

Mia returned her attention to the screen. “These are my notes. I have a form I use while I work. Keeps me organized.” She tapped a few keys. “I had a pretty amazing stroke of luck with this sample. Actually, I shouldn’t say
luck
. Not when you consider the high rate of recidivism when it comes to violent offenders—”

“Dr. Voss?”

Allison turned around, and now he
was
standing there, filling up the doorway. He wore a gray trench coat over his suit today, and the shoulders were damp from rain. His hair was damp, too, and mussed slightly, as if he’d combed his hands through it when he’d come in from outside. He looked ridiculously attractive, and Allison felt the sting of his rejection all over again.