FOUR
Her phone chirped from its spot on the kitchen counter, letting her know that she had a new email. She took that last bite of her turkey and swiss sandwich and washed it down with a swig of ice water before retrieving the phone. She opened her email and clicked on the link, watching carefully as the timestamped map played through every move of the Bakers’ Escalade since early the previous morning.
There was the expected trip to the daycare, then off to work, followed by a quick trip home about the time that Mr. Baker would have been notified that Mrs. Baker had been found alive. That was to be expected, since he would want to bring her a change of clothes and maybe a few other things. Then, the SUV went back to his work, presumably to wait for the call to come pick Jessica up. Senora was under the impression that the mother-in-law was going to bring the baby to the FBI office and pick up Mrs. Baker, but plans could have changed. Senora wasn’t present when Mrs. Baker was picked up, and based on what Mr. Baker had said, she was sure he’d come to pick his wife up instead of sending his mother.
The video jumped ahead to the afternoon, cutting out the hours that the SUV had sat parked. Senora watched as the arrow on the screen left work and bypassed going to daycare, heading straight for the FBI office instead. Senora wondered why he wouldn’t pick up little Evie from the sitter before picking up his wife, but it was possible that he didn’t want Evie to see her mother battered and bruised, and he had no way of knowing ahead of time what condition Mrs. Baker would be in. It made sense, and maybe the comment about the mother-in-law picking up Evie had been misconstrued by the agent who had called Mr. Baker to inform him that Mrs. Baker had been found. Senora had been busy with Mrs. Baker, and the quick note had only stated that the mother-in-law would be picking up the child from daycare. Senora had interpreted it to mean that she was bringing the child to see Mrs. Baker, but obviously, Senora had been wrong.
The arrow stopped in front of the FBI building briefly, then left and headed west.
Senora wrinkled her nose, leaning forward and watching the arrow head away from the city and away from Edmonton Falls. Maybe the traffic was bad and he was planning to swing north once he got out of the city?
“Where is he going?” she said out loud.
She paused the video and grabbed a pen and notepad. She jotted down the time, then pushed play and continued watching. He went west quite some distance, and Senora ran her fingers through her chocolate brown hair, the tension mounting as she watched him speed further away from the city and the Baker home.
The car got off the highway and pulled a short distance away before stopping for a few minutes. Senora made a note of the exit, certain she would find a gas station there.
The car was stationary for almost ten minutes, then it made its way back to the highway and continued west.
Where the hell is he going?
Senora gasped audibly when he took a sharp turn that took him south on Skyline Drive, and her heart sank. He was going into Shenandoah Valley National Park.
“This is bad,” she fussed, her horror growing with each mile he drove down Skyline Drive.
The road itself was over one hundred miles long, cutting through the dense wilderness. Over one hundred and twenty-four square miles of the three hundred square miles the park covered was designated as wildlife only. It was a good place to get lost and never return.
Or a good place to dump a body.
All the compassion Senora had felt for Mr. Baker disappeared as he took what had to be a fire road about fifty miles into the park. The GPS’s arrow icon continued moving, but there was no road beneath it on the map. Based on the timestamp, it was just after dark, and the park would be almost deserted. The road that wound its way through the park never closed, but there would be no rangers and no one monitoring the park after the sun set.
Fifty miles in was the general halfway point. She was sure that he’d killed Mrs. Baker, but if there was even the slightest possibility that she was alive, there was no way she could get back to the road and make the fifty-mile trek to the nearest highway to find help in time to save her life. He was covering all his bases, and she couldn’t believe that she’d ever considered that he might be a grieving husband who just wanted his wife and his life back the way they once were.
“You rotten-” Senora began but cut herself short.
It wouldn’t do her any good to get mad now. He didn’t know that she had this information, and he would believe that he’d duped her with his retreat story. He had no way of knowing that Mrs. Baker had talked about her late sister. No, Mr. Baker would go about his life like always, and he could continue claiming that Mrs. Baker was on a retreat without anyone questioning his motive for months.
Mr. Baker was involved in Mrs. Baker’s disappearance somehow, but Senora wasn’t sure why. None of it made sense.
The arrow icon stopped briefly, then made its way back to the road and headed straight to Edmonton Falls. Senora took down the location and prepared herself to find a body. She could call it in, but then she would have to explain how she knew Mrs. Baker was there. But if she drove down there and took a short hike, she could find the body and make an anonymous report on her way out of the park. Then, Agent Patterson would never know it was her, but Mrs. Baker’s remains would be taken care of. Since Mr. Baker was the last known person to see her alive, he would be a suspect and his GPS records would be pulled to place him and the family car at the dump site. Senora had no doubt that this would be an open and shut case, one that she didn’t have the heart to deal with.
She shuddered, biting back a sob that came out of nowhere. This time yesterday, Jessica Baker was sitting down at the table beside Senora, bravely providing a sketch of the woman who’d kidnapped her. She’d been safe, though bruised, beaten down, and weighing considerably less than she had when she’d been taken, but she was alive. Just the thought of coming home only to be murdered by her own husband weighed heavily on Senora.
Had she missed a warning sign? Mrs. Baker had been eager to see her husband, but maybe that had been an act. How could Senora have missed it?
She sat down hard, staring at the video as it started over again and trying to calm herself. This was horrible. Out of all the cases she’d worked over the years, she could say without a doubt that she’d never sent a victim home to their own family to be murdered after surviving so much. It was beyond reason, and Senora felt physically ill.
Jumping up and ready to get the next few hours over with, she hurried upstairs and changed into jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and some sturdy athletic shoes. She didn’t hike, but she was sure that they would do.
She punched the GPS coordinates into her phone, adding the exit that Mr. Baker had taken to the trip so she could check out the area he’d stopped in for so long. Maybe she’d tried to escape and he’d killed her then.
Maybe he hadn’t meant to.
She shook her head. Don’t give that man the benefit of the doubt, she thought angrily. She’d shown him compassion and understanding before, and now she was finding out that he was a monster hiding behind a handsome smile.
She was angry, and she needed to get going.
Her car hugged the road as she sped west down the 66, hovering just under ten miles above the speed limit. She wanted to get there fast, but she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. In the sleek, sky blue sports car, it was easy to find herself going eighty miles per hour, even when it felt like she was barely hitting fifty-five. She had to be careful not to fly down the road, especially when it was nearly empty in the middle of the weekday.
The GPS prompted her to take the next exit, but Senora could see from the road that there was no gas station and no way that anyone had witnessed anything. It was nothing more than an abandoned lot and a four-way intersection that led to the farm houses that started popping up along the countryside this far from the city. If anyone had seen anything, Mr. Baker would be dead or in jail. No one in this area would hesitate to get involved if they happened upon Mr. Baker and his wife so much as arguing. He’d stayed there almost ten minutes, but there were so few residents out this way that Senora was confident that he hadn’t been seen.
She skipped the exit, making a mental note to have Betty pull the GPS records for the Escalade again and send it to whatever agent was handed the case. With any luck, a junior agent wouldn’t question why they were given the information, and anyone with half a brain would be suspicious of Mr. Baker’s ten-minute stopover in a place where there was no gas and no other supplies to be purchased. They would comb the area for clues, and Senora could avoid having to explain herself by not adding her own tire tracks and footprints to the empty dirt lot. She didn’t want the chance that she’d end up having to explain herself to evidence. Agent Patterson would know right away that Senora had been working off the clock, but with J out of contact and the higher ups breathing down her neck and forcing her to spend most of her time in the office, Senora wasn’t so sure that Agent Patterson could keep her from getting swept up in the investigation as a possible suspect. She’d eventually be exonerated, but it wasn’t worth the mess it would cause.
She forced herself to focus on the road and let go of the inner turmoil she’d been feeling for the past several months. There wasn’t any way for Senora to figure out what was going on and why she was being railroaded. Her only choice was to go with the flow and hope that the truth came out eventually. J did things his own way, and even in his absence, his orders seemed to be to keep Senora in the office where she could be watched. If she thought about it too much, it infuriated her. She’d been so close to catching the Gate Keeper, and finding out that there was a connection between the Gate Keeper’s involvement in human trafficking and the kidnapping of dragon changelings from their home had brought Senora closer than she’d ever been. They were close; she could feel it. Working with Ty had opened up so many connections that Senora knew it was only a matter of time before the Gate Keeper case was blown wide open and the Gate Keeper was brought to justice. Pulling her out of the field couldn’t have come at a worse time. Unless you were the Gate Keeper. Her change of scenery had given the Gate Keeper back some measure of control. It was all Senora could do to keep from screaming in anger.
Keep it together, she thought, checking the GPS and wishing she was already at the Skyline Drive exit. As long as you’re on vacation, you can do some digging and maybe pick up some leads.
Maybe she could even solve the case from the white sand beaches of her resort.
She scoffed. And maybe the Gate Keeper would just walk into the FBI office and turn himself in.
The exit for Skyline Drive finally came up, forcing Senora to focus again on the road as she guided the Audi smoothly down the curved exit and onto the scenic drive without slowing down. She kept her eyes open, scanning the sides of the road for deer even though they weren’t likely to be out in the middle of the day. This area was renowned for wildlife, and despite the good conditions and the smooth handling of the car, Senora slowed down and reminded herself that getting to Mrs. Baker’s body a few minutes faster wasn’t worth the danger.
She checked the GPS and noted that Mr. Baker had pulled off the road forty miles from where she was now. At her current speed, she had almost an hour before she would reach that point. Settling in, she turned the cruise control on and let her mind wander. Her knuckles were pale from gripping the steering wheel so forcefully, and with each passing minute and every deep breath, they loosened slightly. Agent Patterson was right about burnout, and this case had the potential to break Senora. Just twenty-four hours ago, Jessica Baker had been safe and sound, her escape from her captors a miracle. And now? Now, she was somewhere in these woods. Senora hoped that her death had been quick and that she hadn’t lain alone all night in the chilly air of late fall, slowly succumbing to her injuries or exposure. With only a few weeks until Thanksgiving, the nights were already so cold, and the daytime air was crisp in contrast to the still warm sun. It was a bad time of the year to be dumped if you were a victim but great for a murderer. The air would keep the body cool enough so that it wouldn’t decompose too fast but warm enough so that scavengers-
“Stop it,” she said, shaking her head and ridding it of the dark thoughts.
Yes, the reality of it wasn’t pretty, but she wasn’t going to dwell on the what ifs. She would find Mrs. Baker soon enough, and there would be no guessing after that.
“Your destination is on the right,” the GPS said suddenly.
Senora slowed, pulling the car off the main road and onto a steep fire road. She switched the car to manual, putting it into first gear and creeping down the fire road. She watched the GPS as she went, her body tense as the car started to slide on the gravel.
There was a small turnoff to her right, just wide enough to pull in and back out. She checked the GPS again, decided that she was close enough to the dump site to walk, then turned the compact car sharply left on the wide road so that the rear of the car was lined up with the turnoff. She backed all the way in, then exited the car and walked a few yards up the fire road toward the highway. Her car couldn’t be seen from any angle, and from the front of her car, she couldn’t see the road. There was no way that someone driving down the road would see the car and decide to investigate, and as long as there were no rangers using the fire road, she was safe.
She didn’t want to get caught in the act. Off the main road, car hidden and within several hundred yards of a body dump was not the best place for her to be found. Yes, she was planning on calling in an anonymous tip. But she was planning on claiming that she had happened upon the body while hiking, ran up the fire road in hopes of getting a signal, then gave up and flagged someone down to take her back to her car so she could drive to the Ranger’s Station and make a report. It wasn’t the most solid story, but considering that the most obvious suspect would be Mr. Baker and he was the last known person to see her alive, Senora didn’t anticipate the agents looking anywhere but at Mr. Baker. Her flimsy story would hold up enough, and that was all that mattered right now.
Careful not to move too fast and risk sliding down the steep incline, Senora started down the gravel road, GPS up on her phone, watching the map as she went. She was so close to where Mrs. Baker had been less than twelve hours before. It was gut-wrenching to be so close and yet so far from being able to help. She had no way of knowing that Mrs. Baker wasn’t safe with her own husband, and now, it was too late.
A bird flew out of a bush, shrieking in fright and flying right in front of Senora’s face. Startled, she lost her footing and started to slide, falling onto her rear end and sliding several feet down the hill before she came to a stop.
She was about to stand up when something caught her eye ahead of her and to the side of the trail. Moving carefully, she got onto her feet and crouched low, keeping her eye on the shiny object that had found its way beneath a group of low bushes at the base of a tree. She was almost to the bush when she saw the tire tracks and the obvious marks where a large vehicle had executed a three-point turn in order to go back up the hill.
The Bakers’ Escalade had been here, and someone had lost something in the bushes.