The Best Victim (Kindle Serial) (3 page)

To say this was Brent’s worst nightmare was nowhere close to accurate. He had already survived the worst life had to offer, though for a long time and maybe even still, he would have rather died.

But Lauren’s panicked reaction to Jimenez’s phone message was easily a bottom-five moment. How the hell would he gain her cooperation now?

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, struggling to keep his voice low and soothing. As if there were any words that could undo the damage. “Not without you.”

As they stared at each other, the fluid play of her emotions—from fear to hatred to determination—submerged into the depths of her gaze. But she could no more hide the tension in her arm where he gripped it than she could disguise the wild thumping of her pulse beneath his fingertips.

As vital as his goal was, he hated himself for scaring her. And hated himself more for what he intended to make her do.

“What is it you want?” she asked. “To kill me, like my sister?”

Ignoring the dachshund’s ominous rumbling, he said, “I know what you’re thinking, Lauren. May I call you Lauren?”

She shrugged. “You’re the one with the gun,
Special Agent
.”

He considered the sarcasm a good sign. Better than dealing with hysteria, anyway. “I have no interest in hurting you, no interest in anything but catching your sister’s killer.”

Her shaking stopped, and she straightened her spine, though she couldn’t be more than a slim five five or five six, even in her boots.
And beautiful, in her quiet way
, he couldn’t help but notice. The first noticing he’d done in so long, it surprised the hell out of him and, almost as quickly, filled him with remorse.

“Why do you care?” she demanded. “And who the hell are you?”

“Exactly who I told you: Special Agent Brent Durant. Or at least I was up ’til six months ago.” He relaxed his grip. “Did you hurt yourself when you fell? I saw you hit that elbow.” He nodded toward her left arm.

Pulling free, she rubbed it and made a scoffing sound. “I’m supposed to buy concern? From you? A man who hasn’t given me a single straight or honest answer?”

“I haven’t lied,” he said, though at least in part, this, too, was a falsehood. “Everything I’ve told you about your sister’s death is true.”

Pain arced over her expression, and she looked away a moment. When she regained control and blinked at him, her eyes had filled again. “How would you know anything about her?”

“I have sources, sources who haven’t heard—and a couple who don’t give a damn—that I’m on leave from the bureau. And I knew Rachel. Or at least, I’ve met her.”

Lauren scowled at him. “She would’ve told me if she’d spoken to someone claiming to be from the FBI. Or did you tell her a different lie? Pretend to be someone else so you could—What did you do to her, you bastard? Why is Rachel dead?”

As Lauren’s anguish echoed in the entryway, the dachshund bared her few teeth, the reddish hair along her spine raised.

He shook his head. “I tried to tell you earlier, she had my card on her when she died. That’s why Detective Jimenez called me. We worked together in the past. But apparently, word about my recent issues hadn’t reached him down in Austin.”

She gestured toward the dead phone. “Well, clearly, that’s changed, and he sounded pretty upset about it. So what’d you do? Go crazy? Start beating suspects or harassing witnesses or what?”

Ignoring her questions, he asked, “Where’s your cell phone?”

She hesitated a moment before answering, “After the detective called this morning and told me about Rachel, I was so upset I dropped it—drowned the thing in my dish water.”

“Let me see that,” he said, pulling the purse off of her shoulder. Heedless of her protests, he plucked out a cell phone. Along with an item that surprised him even more.

It was a little .38 revolver, of the hammerless, snub-nosed variety some women liked to carry. But slim as it was, it was plenty big enough to kill, and he’d bet what was left of his savings that she knew how to use it.

“Hey! That’s mine,” she cried. “You have no right.”

“How about the right of self-defense?”

“I’m calling bullshit on that. You don’t get to claim self-defense in a kidnapping. Especially when
you’re
armed.”

“It’s not a kidnapping,” he argued, though from her point of view, he was sure it must seem that way.

“I doubt the detective would agree,” she said, “and that gun’s my legal property. I have a concealed carry permit,” she explained. “Rachel hated that I have it, but out here in the country, it makes me feel safer. Because you never know when somebody’s going to stop by for a
kidnapping
.”

He slipped both the gun and phone into a pocket of his jacket. “I’ll return them later.”

“When?”

“When I’m sure you’re not going to call the cops or drill a few holes in me.”

She glared at him, her gaze assuring him that if she managed to get the weapon, it might be more than a few holes.

On second thought, he added, “Come to think of it, I might hold off until we catch the son of a bitch who killed your sister—and I make damned sure he never gets the chance to drive another blonde to suicide.”

As he marched her into the yard, Lauren’s every instinct screamed that she shouldn’t get into his sedan, with its darkened windows and the driver whose grim determination chilled her to the marrow.

But whatever lies he’d told her, she recognized one sure truth. He wasn’t out to just arrest the man responsible for Rachel’s death. Durant meant to kill the bastard.

The idea burned like straw thrown on the hot coals of her anger, and bloodlust leapt like flame inside her: the desire to see the monster who had taken Rachel from her dead. Need burned even brighter, the need to know for certain that her sister had not willingly chosen to leave her, to leave life behind, without so much as a goodbye.

Though the first few flakes swirled on a bitter breeze, Lauren didn’t feel the cold as their feet crunched over frozen gravel. She picked up Dumpling and climbed into the passenger seat while Durant put her bags in the trunk.

What are you doing?
Rachel’s voice was in the car, so clear and so urgent, Lauren swung her head to stare into the seat behind her. And nearly wept when she found it empty.

Get out, Lauren, now. Run, while you still can!

Deeply shaken, Lauren fought back her terror, telling herself it was her own subconscious speaking, not her sister. And knowing she could never hope to outrun Durant, let alone a bullet. Besides, as dangerous as the man seemed, he offered the answers she craved—and maybe even the chance to avenge Rachel’s death.

Still, Lauren’s muscles remained coiled, begging her to listen to the voice of reason.

The driver’s side door opened, and he climbed in and started up the engine. When he put the car into gear, a loud click echoed in the silence: the sound of the door locks automatically engaging.

She forced herself to swallow, though her throat felt hard and tight. As he backed into the empty road, she managed, “You promised me you’d answer all my questions.”

He didn’t say a word but instead flipped on the headlights against the bruised-sky gloom. Flurries spun away, parted by their passing, and her nerves stretched taut, as if one end remained anchored back at home.

His gaze remained fastened to a country road pockmarked by potholes. They passed another farmhouse, but the lights were off, and the neighbor’s truck was gone.

Angered and frightened by his silence, she tried again, her mind assembling truth from disparate pieces. “You said ‘we’ before. ‘Until
we
catch’ the person who killed Rachel. So that means you need my help, right? It’s why you came here, isn’t it?”

Remembering his recent access to FBI records, she ventured yet another guess. “You know about me, what I do, and you think I can help you somehow.”

“Something like that,” he admitted.

“
Exactly
like that, and if you want my help, you’re going to have to answer my questions like you promised, Durant. Or whoever the hell you are.”

“They might’ve drummed me out of the bureau, but they didn’t take my name. It’s Brent Durant, just like I told you.”

She wouldn’t bet on it, but right now something else he’d said pricked her attention. “Drummed you out? I thought you said you were suspended.”

“It started out that way. But when they figured out I’d never stop, they made it permanent.”

She digested this new information, wondering if this man ever opened his mouth without spewing lies or half-truths.
“
Never stop
what
?”

He slowed to turn onto the same state road she would have taken if she’d gone to visit Rachel, as she should have. As Lauren stroked the dog on her lap, she struggled to keep her head above the sense of unreality rising like an icy tide, threatening to drown her. She had nearly forgotten what she’d asked him when he finally deigned to answer.

“I never stopped ignoring my assigned cases and looking into suicides across the country. Looking for connections where nobody else sees them.”

“What sort of connections?”

“Younger women—all blond and attractive—with no history of depression or suicide attempts.”

“What else?” she asked. “What else did you find that linked them?”

“Not enough to convince the SAC—that’s the special agent in charge—to pull me off drug trafficking and let me run with this full-time. But then again, he wasn’t really listening, only watching me like I was a damned time bomb ready to go off any minute.”

Smart guy
, Lauren thought, remembering how swiftly, how violently Durant had ripped out her phone and answering machine. Putting the memory aside, she said, “Well, I’m not him. I want to hear it. What else connected these women?”

“Every one of them had been involved in some recent tragedy, one receiving widespread negative publicity.”

Lauren frowned, thinking of Rachel’s accident, of the new stories surrounding both the drowning and the lawsuit, along with the heartbreaking photos of the pregnant victim and her children splashed across the evening news. There had been interviews with loved ones, too, friends talking about the Megan’s devotion to her church and family, her many acts of kindness, how she’d sold her own car to help pay for therapy for their little boy, an adorable, blond four-year-old born with Down syndrome.

In the eyes of the media, Megan—a pretty blonde herself—became the perfect mother, a sainted victim who inspired candlelit services and roadside memorials heaped with flowers, teddy bears, and crosses. Rachel, on the other hand, was just as quickly vilified after former judge and current cable TV darling Jaycee Joiner had unearthed a tagged Facebook photo showing Rachel, clearly buzzed, at a friend’s bachelorette party months before. It had been enough for the host to brand her a party girl, a reckless threat to respectable married women, and lambaste the grand jury for failing to punish the perpetrator of this “blonde on blonde crime.”

After a couple of hellacious weeks—weeks in which Rachel was publicly crucified as the “Blonde on Blonde Killer”—the furor was drowned out by an even more sensational news story involving a drug-addled young starlet accused of murdering her own baby. Still, Lauren had regularly searched the web for anything and everything to do with Rachel’s case. Unlike her sister, she was net-savvy enough to stop short of reading various forum comment sections, knowing that the conversations on these websites often were both personal and painful.

“
They’re just stupid trolls
,” she’d warned Rachel the day her sister called in hysterics over a rash of particularly cruel comments, “
pathetic losers who’ll say anything to get a reaction. They’d come out against fresh air, sunshine, even the damned Easter Bunny if they thought it would get them five minutes’ attention.
”

Recalling what Durant had just said about the other victims’ tragedies, Lauren asked him, “What kinds of tragedies? Were there similarities?”

“Sad stuff, all of them.” His mouth tightened before he added, “You’re sure you want to hear the details?”

No
, she wanted to shout, but she had to understand. Had to know if Durant could be right—or if he was completely insane. “Yeah.” She nodded. “I have to know.”

“One was a young mother whose baby died after she absentmindedly left him to roast in her hot car. There was a teenaged girl, too, who’d been blogging about her struggles with anorexia for about six months when another set of parents accused her of ‘encouraging’ their daughter to starve herself to death. And then there was the woman whose—”

“Enough, please.” Lauren raised a hand, bile burning in her throat. Sickened, she turned her head and stared out the window at the bleak, brown farmland sliding past, stark behind the rippling veil of snow.

“I’m sorry,” he said somberly. “It’s just—I know you’re already in shock, overwhelmed.”

“Don’t tell me what I’m feeling,” she interrupted, too upset to care that he was right on both counts. Not when he’d added raw fear to the mix. Fear that she was blinded by grief—and as crazy as her captor for believing anything that came out of his mouth.

“I think I do know,” he had the balls to answer, “I know because I’ve—”

“You’ve
what
? Delivered bad news to a lot of people?
Abducted
them from their homes, too?”

He glanced over, his jaw clenched and his brow furrowed. “I am not abducting you.”

“You scared me half to death at the house. You still do.”

“I’m only trying to make sure you’ll listen long enough for me to explain the truth to you. The truth you’ll never get from the police, the FBI—not from anyone but me. I’m giving you the information I’ve spent the last year gathering, and I’m letting you decide for yourself if you want to help me catch your sister’s killer.”

“And if I don’t believe you?”

“Then when we get to Austin, you’re free to go and grieve your sister’s suicide.”

As the flurries in the headlights dwindled, sunset peered beneath the cloud cover to stain the flat horizon as red as fresh-spilled blood. She wasn’t ready to let her fury die, too, to leave herself in the grip of an endless winter mourning and questioning her sister’s choices. Questioning, too, whether her own first instinct—that Rachel never could have done this—had been right, or she was merely being sucked into Durant’s delusion.