12
Antebellum Inn
7:30 a.m.
Tony jerked awake. He blinked. What the hell?
Memories of the woman he’d picked up at the bar flashed one after the other in his brain. He checked the other side of the bed. Empty. The sheets on that side were cold. She’d been gone for a while.
He ran a hand through his hair and prayed the throbbing would go away. What the hell had he been thinking? He was supposed to keep himself together. Angie and Steve were counting on him. Tiffany was counting on all three of them.
A bang on the door jerked his attention there. Angie? Not likely. Even if his sister was thoroughly pissed she wouldn’t try and break down the door. He swept aside the sheets and dropped his feet to the floor. Grabbing his jeans, he tugged them on. Hopefully nothing worse had happened while he was going stupid last night.
“Open up, LeDoux!”
Tony blinked and swayed. Shit. He staggered toward the door but it burst open before he reached it. Sunlight poured in around the two suits who stepped inside as if they owned the place.
“Who the hell are you?” The throb in his head increased with the pounding in his chest. If something had happened to Angie... What if Tiffany’s body had been found? His gut clenched.
The first and older of the two suits flashed his credentials. “Special Agent Jerry Richards. This is my colleague, Special Agent Liam Johnson. We need to have a talk with you if you’re not too busy this morning.”
Tony dragged on his shirt. “Make yourselves at home.”
The two agents pulled out chairs around the table and settled there. The younger of the two held up a paper cup. “We brought you coffee. Thought you might need it.”
“Thanks.” What he needed was to take a piss. His need to hear what these two pricks had to say overwhelmed the other urge so he reached for the cup and sat down on the foot of the bed. “How long have you had someone watching me?”
Richards and Johnson glanced at each other as if they had expected their appearance to be a total surprise. He wasn’t surprised at all. Annoyed, pissed even, but not surprised. He turned up the cup. The coffee was hot and black. He flinched at the welcome burn. Caffeine was something else he needed badly right now.
Richards spoke first. His years of experience showed on his face in deep lines and around his middle in a spare tire. The suit was a little less perfect than his partner’s, the shoes a little less shiny. “That girl you harassed, Riley Fallon, filed a complaint with campus security. But everyone understands that you’re upset about your niece so they’re willing to overlook that one misstep as long as it doesn’t happen again.”
Tony was on the same page now, though he doubted Fallon had worked up her nerve to file a complaint. Most likely they’d encouraged her to do so. These two knuckleheads had likely questioned her right after he did for no other reason than to find out what he was up to. “Surely you understand.” He played along. “I’m only trying to find my niece.”
“We get that,” Richards said, “but we need you to stay out of the way on this investigation, LeDoux. You no longer serve or represent the Bureau. Unless you want a shit storm raining down on you, you need to cease representing yourself that way.”
Tony downed more of the coffee in hopes of relaxing the tense muscles around his skull. “You got a younger sister or a daughter, Richards?” He glanced at the other man. “Johnson?”
Johnson shook his head. He looked to be about thirty. Medium height, lean. Black hair, high and tight. Freshly laundered, off-the-rack suit, shoes polished to a high sheen. “Not me.”
“You know the law, LeDoux,” Richards said. “Let’s not play games here. Chief Phelps passed along the information you gave him and we appreciate it. From this moment forward, you need to stay on the outside of the investigation with your sister and her husband. We’re happy to get your input but we can’t have you poking around in the investigation.”
“If it happens again,” Johnson spoke up, “they’ll make us bring you in. We don’t want to do that. I’m certain your sister would be very upset if that happened.”
“Point taken.” Tony finished off the coffee and stood. “Now, if you fellows will let yourselves out I need a shower.”
Johnson’s mouth quirked. “Be careful, LeDoux, a chick that hot might be more trouble than you need right now.”
Richards laughed. “Sounds like you’ve had enough trouble with hot chicks lately.”
Tony ignored their smart-ass remarks and followed the two to the door. “Anything new on the case?”
Richards hesitated on the porch. “Not a damned thing.”
Just once he’d like to hear that his instincts were wrong. Tony watched until the two agents had loaded up in their nondescript sedan and driven away. Going forward he would be on the lookout for a tail. He closed the door and turned back to the bed. His cute reporter had sneaked out on him. Funny, he was the one who usually played that role.
A note on the bedside table drew him there. He picked up the folded piece of bed-and-breakfast letterhead.
Call me. I have a few ideas on these abductions. I added my number to your contacts. Carrie
At least now he knew her name. He shoved the note into the pocket of his jeans. She wouldn’t be interested in hearing from him when she found out he had no intention of sharing anything he learned with a reporter.
He surveyed the floor in search of his shoes, then hesitated. Yesterday was the first time his current status had really bothered him. When his sister and niece needed him most he wasn’t in the position to help them the way he wanted.
You fucked up, Tony.
Funny how doing the right thing sometimes cost you everything. He forced the idea away. Time for that shower and a shave and then he would get back on the trail of Miles Conway. He grabbed his overnight bag and started for the bathroom. A soft knock on the door stopped him.
“Damn it.” He tossed the bag on the bed and strode to the door expecting to see Angie with a breakfast tray or maybe his Bureau buddies had forgotten something. Instead he found the mystery woman from last night. Carrie.
“I thought you might be hungry. I woke up starving.” She shoved a bag and a tray with two paper cups toward him.
She wore the same body-hugging cream-colored dress she’d had on last night, the enormous leather bag still draped over one shoulder.
“Sorry.” Her gaze lingered on the coffee cup he’d abandoned on the table. “Looks like you already had something.” She shrugged. “I guess I should have just kept going when I left.” She drew the bag and tray away from him. “I meant to, but I just kept thinking—”
He took her by the arm and pulled her inside, cutting off whatever else she would have said. When he’d closed the door, he stared at her for long enough to have her squirming. “Carrie? That’s your name?”
She nodded. “Look, if you don’t want breakfast, I can leave now.”
What he wanted was not in the bag she carried. “I’m starving.”
She relaxed. “Great.”
Before he could say more she ducked around him and went to the table. Every time she reached across the table the dress slid upward giving a fleeting glimpse of her lacy panties. Tony drew in a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair. For all he knew she could be the someone the Bureau had watching him.
At this point he trusted no one.
“Ham or sausage?” She held up the wrapped sandwiches from the bag.
“Sausage.”
“Good. I hate sausage.” She put the sandwich on the table, pulled out a chair and sat down. “Excuse me if I don’t wait for you.”
He walked toward her, watching her every move. She tore the wrapper from the sandwich and bit into it. She closed her eyes and moaned. He pulled out the chair across from her just as she licked her lips.
“I know it’s not good for my body, but fast food tastes so good.”
He reached for his own sandwich. “Something’s gotta kill you.”
She laughed. “True.”
The conversation lulled as they ate. The way she devoured the sandwich, licked her lips and seemed to make love to the coffee cup with her mouth fascinated him. The idea that he got hard just watching her was seriously fucked-up, particularly under the circumstances.
She balled the paper and her napkin and tossed it in the bag. “There’s something I want to show you—if I can really trust you.”
He wadded his napkin and dumped it in the bag with hers. “I thought we played that game last night.”
“Haha.” She took a breath. “I almost lost my nerve. That’s why I left without saying goodbye, but then—” she moistened her lips “—I realized that if I couldn’t trust you, maybe I couldn’t trust anyone and that won’t work. I can’t do this alone.”
“I’m listening.”
She pushed the breakfast remains aside, reached into her bag and removed what looked like a photo album. She placed it on the table. “This is a scrapbook I’ve been keeping for a while. Have a look at it while I use your shower.”
Bag in hand, she disappeared into the bathroom but didn’t close the door. He opened the scrapbook to the first page.
The article was dated the twentieth of March, eighteen years ago. Milledgeville, Georgia. College Freshmen Found Alive was the first headline. His pulse reacted. The page taken from the newspaper was yellowed with age. His gaze moved over the typeset words. The water in the bathroom turned on and he glanced that way. With the door open, he watched as she stepped into the shower, the water gliding over her smooth skin. As much as he would enjoy watching, the headline drew his attention back to the article.
The two freshmen were last seen the Friday before spring break, and then found fourteen days later. Dehydrated, bruised and battered, but alive. He turned to the next page. A year later, two students went missing. Different colleges that time. Different dates. But both were found alive fourteen days after their abduction. Dehydrated, bruised and battered. He turned to the next page. Another year passed. Two more women, a nurse and a brand-new mother this time. Both turned up fourteen days later. Same condition as the others. Yet another page showed a similar scenario. The ages of the victims varied slightly; the location of the abductions included Georgia, Alabama and Florida. The time frame the victims were missing was always the same—fourteen days. The condition of the victims upon release was always the same as well.
Not a single one could identify her abductor or the place where she’d been kept.
Carrie returned to the table. This time she wore jeans and a sweatshirt proclaiming her love of rock and roll. Her short blond hair was as untamed as the woman who’d brought him to his knees twice last night. At the bar she’d looked petite and thin but that was far from true. Though she was maybe five-two or -three, she was lean and strong.
“So, what do you think?” She stared at him with those inquisitive blue eyes.
“You’ve been following these abductions all this time? When the first abductions took place—” he turned back to page one “—you had to be what, twelve or fifteen?”
She laughed. “Not quite. I was in college myself. I guess I wanted to be a reporter even then.”
He closed the scrapbook. “What’s your theory on how all these are related? Apparently the Bureau and the local cops have never found any dots to connect.”
“I thought you might be able to tell me. After all, you’re the profiler.”
So she’d done a little checking up on him. He should have expected as much. She was a reporter. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. I need to read the police reports and crime scene reports. I need to meet and interview the victims.”
“What would you like to know?”
“Are you saying you know one of these victims?”
“May I?” She gestured to the scrapbook.
“Of course.” He pushed it across the table.
She turned to the first page. “Joanna Guthrie.” She exhaled a big breath. “That’s me.”
Her answer wasn’t the one he’d expected. He thought about the note in his pocket. “So your name isn’t Carrie.”
“I had a moment of doubt. I needed some distance to get right with the decision to trust you.”
He laughed a strained sound. “You made that decision while you went for Egg McMuffins and coffee?”
She hesitated, and then nodded. “I did.”
“Well, all right. So tell me this, your collection stops thirteen years ago. What happened thirteen years ago?”
She shook her head. “The abductions continued for five years and then nothing. I don’t know why—they just stopped or the MO changed so drastically I couldn’t connect any new abductions to the old ones—until yesterday.”
Tony exhaled a weary breath. This wasn’t the first time he’d been approached by a crime junkie. The woman could be a fiction writer looking for inspiration for her next novel. He was doubtful that she was actually the victim from the eighteen-year-old abductions. “I see. What is it you think I can do for you, Ms. Guthrie?”
Her pale eyebrows went up in surprise but she didn’t relent. “Help me find the persons who did this. If we find them, we’ll find your niece.”
Tony nodded slowly. His instincts were telling him not to set aside her theory so quickly. “How can you be so sure about that?”
She put her hand on his arm. “I wish I could explain this feeling.” She shook her head. “I just know. I’ve kept quiet about this for eighteen years. If I wasn’t as certain as I can be I sure as hell wouldn’t be talking to you now.”
As much as he wanted to believe her story, how could he risk the distraction from his niece’s case? “I’d like to help you, Carrie—Joanna, but my first priority has to be finding my niece.”
“We have the same goal, Tony. If my calculations are correct, your niece has at most ten days before one of the three of them dies.”
He held up a hand. “Wait a minute. My niece and one other girl are missing. According to your collection of articles, two girls go missing and two girls come back alive. Where is this new theory coming from?”
Joanna or Carrie or whoever the hell she was took another breath and said, “There’s always one who doesn’t come back.”
He held her gaze for a moment. She didn’t flinch. “Not one of these victims—including you—mentioned a third victim or a murder.”
She squared her shoulders as if bracing for what she had to say next. “We were afraid to tell...but, believe me, someone always dies.”