“She was a smart girl.” Mallory
eyed the overflowing ashtrays. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr. Keeble.”
He glared at her for a moment, nostrils flaring,
eyes watering with a sudden onslaught of tears. “People keep saying that to me.” He lit a cigarette from the box beside an old worn-out recliner, inhaling the smoke like it was oxygen. He blew out a thick curling stream that made her cough. “
I’m sorry for your loss
? What do I say to that? ‘That’s okay’? ‘Thank you’? I mean what the fuck do you do when people say that to you?” His eyes drilled into her, wanting an answer. Wanting a way of dealing with the awful reality of having lost the only thing that truly mattered.
A dark truth
escaped from somewhere deep inside as she held his gaze. “People aren’t saying it for your benefit. Not really. They mean well but the words let them acknowledge the tragedy and move on. People like you and I, we can’t move on, not at first.” Emotion made her voice rough. “Losing someone to violent crime isn’t like normal loss. We grieve differently than other people. We
hate
differently.”
His eyes locked on hers
because now he knew she understood him completely.
“
That hatred can either swallow us up, or we learn to let it go.” Which path had she chosen? She didn’t know yet. “Nothing makes grief better except time.”
His eyes
burned, fiery red. “I suppose you heard it often enough.”
Way too many times to count
.
“I’d like to see
Lindsey’s room if I may?” SSA Frazer cut in. He’d catalogued the exchange like the profiler he was. Had probably learned more about her than Bryce Keeble.
“Help yourself but don’t take
nothing without asking.”
“I won’t.” He looked at Mallory pointedly. “Agent Rooney
can make you some tea or coffee.”
She felt her eyes widen but nodded.
That she could do. She walked into the kitchen and tried not to wince. Although it wasn’t filthy there was a strong smell from the garbage and piles of dirty dishes in the sink.
There was no coffeepot so s
he filled the tea kettle on the electric stove and opened the dishwasher and gingerly started stacking it. She may as well help on a practical level because she’d gotten a clear ‘get lost’ signal from Frazer. She felt eyes on her from the doorway. Bryce Keeble had followed her.
“
I take it Lindsey was the housekeeper of the pair of you?”
A look of shame swept his features and he stopped slouching against the doorframe. “I’m not usually a
slob, I just...find it hard to care.”
The heartbreak in his eyes undid her.
“She wouldn’t want this to destroy you, Mr. Keeble. She loved you. From what I’ve heard Lindsey was a tough and determined young woman.” She tried not to picture her corpse under that white sheet.
Tears streamed down his face and he wiped them on his shoulder. “She was tough and determined. After her mother let her down she learned to take control of her own destiny..
. Someone ripped that away from her.” He swallowed repeatedly. “She’d have fought him and he’d have hurt her more because of it. And she’d have been waiting for me to save her.” A sob ripped free. God, she understood that sort of guilt. “The way I was supposed to save her.” His breath was a raw choking rasp. “I want to find the person who did this and rip them apart with my bare hands.” His fists were doing just that.
“
Vengeance isn’t the way to deal with this,” she tried to calm him. “Don’t betray your daughter’s memory by ending up in prison. Let us do our jobs.”
“Like the cops did for your sister, you mean?”
His expression turned scathing and bitter. “They thought it was me, did you know that?” He took a step toward her. Too close in the tiny kitchen. After her encounter with those intruders in her home she was jumpier than she used to be. It pissed her off. “When they figured it wasn’t me, your bitch mother fired me anyway because someone told her I used to take you girls on the back of my bike. ‘It’s too dangerous’.” He mimicked her mother. “Well, I never hurt anyone, but the cops never did me a blind bit of good.” His voice rose, his body language was getting increasingly aggressive. She forced herself not to put her hand on her weapon because she knew how much he was hurting.
The anger in his face dissolved
to be replaced by misery. “I just realized something else. If someone as high and mighty as your bitch of a mother can’t get justice, someone like me doesn’t stand a chance.”
“The law doesn’t come with a price tag.”
Bryce sneered. “You keep on believing that.” He whirled, strode to a corkboard near the backdoor and ripped down an old newspaper clipping. He thrust it toward her face and she stopped it with her hand, prepared to take him down if he got any closer. He didn’t. He stepped away. She looked at the piece of paper he’d given her. It was a cutting of one of the first pieces written about Payton’s disappearance and featured a picture of them both on the lawn of Eastborne with their dog lying between them. “I kept it to remind myself never to stop looking for your sister, but she’s dead, just like my Lindsey’s dead and we’ll never figure out what happened to either of them.” The disgust in his eyes made her breath stop.
“
I don’t know whether to envy your parents or pity them.” His gaze raked her from head to toe, “On one hand they still have a kid who looks exactly like the one they lost. On the other, the constant reminder must have torn them inside out every single day.”
She’d
witnessed that pain in their eyes. Raw emotion rose up and wanted to swamp her but that wasn’t her fault any more than his daughter’s murder had been. “I’m not my sister, Mr. Keeble. We just looked alike.”
Frazer appeared in the doorway as the kettle started to whistle.
“Everything all right?”
Bryce Keeble shuffled over to the stove
to turn it off. “Fine. I’ve got it.” To her relief, he started filling the sink with hot water and dish soap. Maybe he’d make it through this mess. Maybe.
“We’ll be in tou
ch, Mr. Keeble,” said Frazer.
On the front step he turned, hands on hips. “What
the hell was that?”
She pressed her lips tight together
and ignored him. She couldn’t speak. The dog wagged his tail at Frazer but eyed her with suspicion. She ignored the mutt and got in the Lexus. She’d stopped caring about whether or not she impressed SSA Frazer. She smoothed out the newspaper cutting and laid it over her knees, staring at the fragile yellowed paper. Keeble was right. It
had
been hard for her parents since Payton was taken. They’d never found justice. Never got closure. Her sister had been taken and no one had ever known why. She wanted to prove Keeble wrong about cops. She wanted to believe in the system. She wanted to find justice for Lindsey and her grieving father. Then, maybe, there was still a glimmer of hope she’d get justice for her family. They all deserved that.
***
He came down the steps whistling. It was almost Thanksgiving and he had a lot to be thankful for. He’d sent Mallory Rooney a little gift in the mail this morning and felt better than he had in months. The girl sat up on the bed.
“
How you feeling today?”
She smiled
nervously. “O-okay. Sore, I guess.”
T
hey’d had sex twice. Nothing adventurous. Nothing rough. Nice and slow and easy; he’d been a considerate lover. He’d used a condom—he wasn’t ready to commit to any other level of trust just yet, but he was considering the idea of starting a family. He glanced around at the space. There was no way they could raise a child here but he’d given it some thought. That was his biggest regret with Payton. Not having a baby with her.
“
I brought you some clothes.” He held out the garments he’d picked up in a big box store over in the next county when he’d arranged to send his package.
She reached for them.
“Thank you.”
Her nails were dirty. She could probably use a bath.
“Want me to heat some water to wash with before you put on your new things?”
She cleared her throat.
“That would be nice, thank you.”
Well brought up and good manners. His mother would
have approved.
He put a pan of water on the propane stove on the counter top. When he turned around she was still sitting on the bed. He
was amused by her coyness. “You’ll need to get undressed.”
Her hands gripped the new clothes tighter.
He frowned. It was natural to be uneasy around men but surely he’d proved he wasn’t going to hurt her? He’d gone out of his way to make sure she’d enjoyed it too.
“
Don’t be shy.” The sharpness of his tone startled her into action and she started undoing the buttons of her shirt. She folded it and placed her bra neatly on top. She pulled off her jeans and socks, one leg catching on the chain around her leg. He knelt down and undid the shackle so she could properly change. One day they wouldn’t need the chain.
S
he stood before him, naked, head bent in submission.
“
That’s better.”
He dipped the washcloth in the warm water and tipped up her chin.
Washed the dirt and grime from around her mouth and cheeks. Her lips were a deep natural red. Hair fine and almost black. He did sweeps down her neck, holding her long tresses up out of the way while he worked. She shivered, nipples turgid red peaks against milk pale skin. She was slim to the point of scrawny, except for full breasts, which were bigger than Payton’s had been but he had to admit he liked them anyway. Blue veins were visible under the translucent skin. He felt himself growing hard but forced himself to wash all of her because he’d promised. Along her arms, hands, each finger, her nails. “Turn around.” He rinsed out the cloth and washed her back, her buttocks, her legs, feet. By the time he made her turn around again he was almost bursting out of the top of his jeans. “Open.” He pointed to her legs and she obeyed without hesitation. From his knees he looked up at her face but she avoided his gaze. He liked the way she did what she was told even though she was inexperienced.
He ran the warm cloth
up one delicate ankle, up the inside of one leg, and then the other. The shackle had rubbed her ankle and he made a mental note to bring longer socks.
W
hen she was clean, he leaned forward and kissed her stomach. She went to take a step back. “Don’t. Move,” he warned her. He met her gaze, eyes so dark he couldn’t have said what color her irises were if he hadn’t already known. “Lie down on the bed.”
She did and he smiled as she lay there shivering with her legs pressed tight together. She might not be Payton, but she did what she was told. Maybe one day she
’d try to please him the same way Payton had pleased him. One day.
“
Spread your legs for me.”
She parted them just a little bit.
“Wider,” he bit out impatiently.
She did so immediately.
“That’s better, sweetheart.” She needed to know who was boss. But he needed to remember she was unsure and nervous and to give her time. She wasn’t like those others. Or like Payton’s slutty sister. “You keep pleasing me the way you’ve been doing and everything is going to turn out just fine. I’ll take care of you. I promise.”
P
!nk’s “Blow Me” was playing on her iPod as she drove home, and she too had had a shit day. Actually her second full week at the BAU had been so bad that the stress headache pounding her temples was preferable to being at work. She’d worked straight-through Thanksgiving with the promise to her parents she’d make it up to them at Christmas. The joys of public service.
She wanted to
crawl under her duvet and sleep for two days straight.
There had been no additional cases of abductions reported or bodies found with PR carved in
to the skin—which was good news. They hadn’t got the results back from the possible DNA samples the ME sent to the lab yet, so there was still hope the killer might have screwed up and be in the system.
She
’d sensed a tiny thaw in her relations with a couple of members on the BAU team—the secretary and the janitor. Yesterday, on Thanksgiving, she’d managed to search Barton and Singh’s desks and found exactly nothing. Hanrahan hadn’t been blown away by her results so far but he’d stressed patience and stealth. People this smart wouldn’t leave incriminating evidence in plain sight.
Moira Henderson
had restrained herself from letting down any more tires or being quite so openly hostile. So far Mallory hadn’t seen anything to make her doubt the integrity of her colleagues. They worked their asses off hunting monsters.
The scary thing was deep down she understood the vigilante.
Over the years she’d often fantasized about what would happen if she ever found the man who took her sister. In her mind she put a gun to his head and demanded he tell her where Payton’s remains were. But after he told her it became a blur. Would she pull the trigger? Or would she read him his rights and arrest him?
She didn
’t know, and hated herself for the weakness.
Lindsey Keeble
’s case haunted her. Her father’s grief was so raw, so negative, and her family had added to his burden. She remembered the devil-may-care young man who’d carted them around the swimming pool on his dirt bike, and the infectious grin he’d once sported. The grin was gone now. She didn’t think he’d ever get it back.
He could have taken Payton
...
Or he could be yet another victim of the whole sad episode. He’d obviously loved his daughter.
Traffic was heavy.
She inched her little sedan through a busy intersection. Another Friday night with DC all dressed up in its pretty festive dazzle. She pushed thoughts of Alex Parker out of her mind. Tonight she planned to stay in and do nothing. Not a goddamn thing. Definitely not call the guy for a repeat performance no matter how tempting it was just to hear his voice.
She
’d volunteered to go to Lindsey Keeble’s funeral next week even though she hated funerals—probably because her sister had never had one. There was no headstone to place flowers. No grave to tend. But she owed Bryce Keeble, both because of her family’s treatment of him, and as a law enforcement officer investigating his daughter’s death.
Frazer had leapt on the
suggestion and by the end of the conversation he seemed to have persuaded himself it was his idea.
Men
. She rolled her eyes as she turned into her parking garage. She pulled into her space, switched off the engine and relaxed.
She closed her eyes and sagged in her seat.
Silence. Blessed silence.
This time
two weeks ago, all she’d wanted to do was forget. Now, it seemed imperative that she try to remember. There were so many things she didn’t recall from that period of her life. Going to Greenville, meeting Bryce Keeble and that deputy, Sean Kennedy, had made her realize she needed to dig deeper into the past because maybe, just maybe, the answers were still there waiting for her.
She thought of Alex, and how she
’d blown him off and how desperately she wished she hadn’t. “Damn you, Pay. Why’d you have to go and leave me?”
The headache
ratcheted up a notch, relentlessly grinding her temples as she climbed out of her little silver sedan and hauled her laptop out of the passenger seat to the elevator. It weighed a thousand tons. Maybe she’d take the night off. Reboot her brain. Visit her poor neglected mother like she kept promising. She stopped to check for mail and found a slightly battered looking parcel from Amazon. Her mother and father often ordered her things off the web, maybe compensating for their general lack of family togetherness. She put it under her arm and headed up to her father’s apartment. In the elevator she kept flashing back to that Friday night and the man who’d rocked her world. Her toes curled remembering the feel of his hands on her skin. Her pulse sped up.
But there was a limit to how many times you could push someone away without them actually going. Tears wanted to form in her eyes but she refused to let them. She wasn
’t that weak. She didn’t need a man in her life right now, it was too complicated.
She managed to unlock the door and stumble inside the apartment. It was cold and quiet. She boosted the heat and dumped all her possessions by the front door. She kicked off her boots, hung her jacket in the closet. Put her Glock and its holster in the drawer beside the door. She put the parcel on the coffee table and poured herself a large glass of
water and found headache tablets in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. She wandered aimlessly through the kitchen. She was going to have to go grocery shopping soon or face starvation.
Back in the living room, she t
urned the package, squeezed it. Whatever was inside was light, and soft. A T-shirt maybe? Her father had a wicked sense of humor and often sent her shirts he couldn’t wear himself. She slowly peeled back the flap, enjoying the element of surprise. She pulled out the contents and frowned down at them, not understanding for a whole three seconds. Then her heart pounded like a pile-driver and she dropped the plastic wrapped clothing as if it had stung her. She groped for her cell, hit redial. Shock made her brain stop working.
“
Mallory?”
She blinked, confused. She thought she
’d dialed work, but as soon as Alex answered she needed him. “Something happened. Will you come? I’m at the apartment.”
“
I’ll be there in five minutes.”
No questions. No drama.
She covered her mouth with her hand as she stared down at the children’s pajamas someone had sent her. She leaned over the package, knowing she mustn’t touch the wrapper again with her bare hands, but searching for clues as to its authenticity. The garments had purple horses on a white background, solid purple cuffs. They were exactly the right type of clothing they’d both been wearing the night of the abduction, but were they Payton’s? She examined them inch by inch and finally found the answer in the hand-stitched repair job on the left cuff. Her mother had used blue cotton because she couldn’t find purple. Mallory fell back on the floor, away from the clothing, away from the evidence that they’d been searching for all these years. Evidence that someone somewhere knew exactly what had happened to her sister.
There was a pounding on her door. She scrambled to her feet and ran to the entrance, checking the peephole before unlocking it and throwing herself into Alex
’s arms. They closed around her like a vise. He radiated strength, safety, security. He’d obviously been out running when she’d called him. He was damp from sweat and his heart beat strongly against her ear and calmed her racing pulse. He maneuvered her inside, closed the door with his heel and herded her to the couch where he pulled her onto his lap and rocked her. She held on, so shaken, so torn between despair and hope she couldn’t speak. She gripped his T-shirt tight in her fist. She could feel the heat of his skin through the fabric and the effect curled through her and offered such comfort that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. He smelled wonderful. Strong clean male sweat with that hint of sandalwood that seemed to be an integral part of his being.
Eventually he spoke into her hair.
“What happened?”
She released a deep breath. She wasn
’t usually this emotional but events lately had been turning her inside out. “I received a present in the mail.”
He shifted her so he could lean forward. She tried to escape his arms because she was a federal agent, not a weakling
girl, but he wouldn’t let her go and he was a damn sight stronger than she’d realized.
“
Hush.” He held her tighter. “You scared the crap out of me on the phone. Just give me a minute.”
She closed her eyes and
squeezed her arms around him.
He peered at the envelope and plastic wrapped clothes.
“What is this?”
She told him quickly about her sister
’s abduction. “They were Payton’s.” Then she let him go. And pushed away. This time he let her.
He looked at her sharply.
“Are you saying these are the actual clothes your sister was wearing when she was taken?”
She
nodded, her throat too raw to speak.
“
And they sent it to you? Here? To your home?”
She nodded.
His face hardened. “You can’t stay here alone, Mallory.”
She just looked at him. She hadn
’t even thought of those implications.
“
What if he comes after you?”
She couldn
’t stop the tear that rolled down her cheek. “Then I finally get to find out what happened to my sister.”
“
Even if it costs you your life?” His voice was soft.
“
I have to know, Alex. Not knowing is killing me.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Anyway, I’m not a little girl. I’m ready for the bastard if he tries anything.”
He nodded slowly like he
’d made some sort of decision. “Okay. Find something to package this up in and I’ll drive you to Quantico with it right now.”
That made sense.
“And then we’ll swing by my apartment and I’ll pick up some stuff—”
“
Wait. What?”
His jaw firmed.
“I’m not leaving you alone. Not until I know you’re safe. Not until this sick sonofabitch is either locked up, or dead.”
“
That could take months, years even...”
“
We’ll figure something out, but in the meantime if you’re staying here, you’re stuck with me.”
She couldn
’t believe he was doing this for her, but he was a security consultant. Maybe she’d known exactly how he’d handle the situation. That made her a coward because she wanted him here and hadn’t had the courage to follow through by simply asking him. Her hands clasped one another. She felt small and petty and confused. “I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your texts.”
He laughed and climbed to his feet. He was dressed in black
running shorts and a blue/black work-out T-shirt that make his eyes look smoky and dark. He caught her hand and rubbed her knuckles with his thumb. “I don’t care whether or not you texted me. I’m not a teenager. You told me from the start you didn’t want a relationship, but you called when you needed me. Thank you.” He brushed her bangs aside. “Whatever happens in the future, no matter what happens between us...you need to know I’ll always be there for you if you need me. Always.”
A shiver rippled over her
. The last time she’d felt this sort of connection with anyone, they’d shared the exact same DNA. What she and Alex felt for one another was more intense than it should be, and she knew he felt it too. “I don’t want to drag you down to my level of crazy.”
The smile on his face was beautiful.
“I am
way
beyond your level of crazy, sweetheart. Truth is, you might be the most normal thing there is about me.”
***
It was close to midnight when they got back to Mallory’s apartment. He’d run by his place and grabbed more stuff and his weapon. Not the one he used for missions, this one he legally owned and was allowed to carry concealed.
He
’d waited outside at Quantico. It was easier all around rather than trying to sort out a visitor pass this late at night, and he figured she’d be safe enough on base. She’d handed the evidence to her boss, who’d met her there. SSA Frazer had sent the clothes and envelope straight to the crime lab and taken her statement.
Now, standing in her apartment, Mallory was so pale
Alex was scared she was going to pass out. She hadn’t eaten anything. He touched her cheek. “Go to bed. You’re safe. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
She shook her head and pulled him with her to the darkened bedroom.
“Sleep with me.” She let go of his hand and stripped without a measure of seduction or self-consciousness. Pulled on a nightshirt. He watched her, making sure none of the thoughts he was thinking leaked through.
He wanted her.
Even though she was tired and upset. He wanted her. And he wasn’t about to let her know what sort of a guy he really was.