Chapter 55

Hearing movement in his room, Sandesh woke up confused and disoriented. Where was he?

“Sorry to wake you.”

“Leland?” Oh, that’s right. He had spent the night in a guest room at the Mantua Home. “Tell me you don’t have a thing for blonds.”

Leland laughed. “No. Definitely not my type. And I know you haven’t gotten a lot of sleep, but I have a favor to ask.”

Sandesh looked around. It was not even five a.m. What was with this family and waking people up? Truthfully, he preferred the way Justice woke him.

He sat up. The room was still dim, but he could see Leland clearly enough, standing at the foot of the four-poster bed. The whole room looked as if it belonged in Victorian England.

“No problem.” Sandesh rubbed at tired eyes. He’d gotten only about two hours of sleep. “What do you need?”

Leland shifted, let out a breath. “What do you know of Justice’s father, Cooper Ramsey?”

Her father? “Not much. He left Justice to an abusive grandmother. He’s a drug addict.”

Leland moved to the chair by the vanity. He pulled it out and sat. “That’s true. But more important, we suspect he is working with the family traitor.”

Sandesh swung his legs out of bed. This seemed like a big admission on a normal nine-to-five schedule, but at five a.m., it was pretty obvious where this was leading.

“Where does he live?”

* * *

Wearing jogging gear donated by Leland, Sandesh ran with steady ease down the wide blacktop of the Schuylkill biking trail.

He wouldn’t have pegged Leland for the mesh-shorts-and-Glassboro-hoodie kind of guy. The brown hoodie was big—big enough to conceal and carry. Helpful.

The sneakers were a good fit, though not Sandesh’s style. Expensive. White. With too thick of a sole. He felt like he was running on a loaf of bread.

When Leland had woken Sandesh this morning, he’d brought the shoes, the clothes, and a mission. Though the security cameras had spotted very little of the drones, Leland’s security team had scoured the camera footage along the campus perimeter from the last few days.

They’d spotted Justice’s father outside the school taking pictures. Leland wanted Sandesh to look into it, because, well, thanks to his own ideas and a few well-placed suggestions in his FBI interview, the feds suspected Sandesh’s connection to the school had caused the bombing.

If he were caught investigating the bombing, it would only draw more attention to Sandesh and away from the school. After last night, he’d jumped at the chance to help. He didn’t mind being used.

He should mind. But he’d always had a problem with giving a shit about petty crap like what the FBI thought of him when he was trying to save people’s lives.

Even with the friction of the gun harness against his chest, it felt damn good to move. He let his body stretch with each stride, enjoying the pace, the breeze. It was a beautiful trail. Trees budding, the sun out, the river to his left, and the river houses on stilts with their boats and careless yards.

He wouldn’t mind a house like that. Waking up beside Justice with a cup of coffee and easing out onto the deck before starting their day.

As the trail angled up, the river dropped down, and the apartment complex came into view. A series of five-story red-and-tan buildings.

He circled, doing recon on the place and the area. Outdoorsy. Pet friendly. He passed a woman with two wiener dogs. She scolded one as they walked along the trail.

From what Justice had said of Cooper—a drug addict who’d sold his own children—this place was not what he’d expected. Did painting houses pay this well?

He eased off the trail and onto the grass in front of building 7. Sandesh stopped and stretched.

When a man with a dog went inside, Sandesh followed. The man held the door open. Yep. A nice neighborhood. Sandesh said thanks and dipped his head, petted the dog to avoid the security cameras, slipped past.

The elevator was open and waiting. He got in and pressed the button for three. And quickly hit the “close door” button as the man with his lab went to get his mail.

At Cooper’s door, Sandesh knocked. After thirty seconds of no answer, he squatted, took the light tools from his pocket, and picked the lock.

Checking the empty hallway, he palmed the edge of his sweatshirt, turned the handle, pushed open. A huge, slobbery, black-and-white Newfoundland bounded out at him.

Sandesh cut him off with a sweep of his body, guided him back into the apartment. He kicked the door shut, knelt, and petted the big dog, whose entire body vibrated with joy. And slobber. Sandesh cringed. Lifted his hand up.

Not just slobber?

Blood.

He wiped his hand on the inside of Leland’s sweatshirt, took out his gun.

He swung his Ruger as he scanned the front hall and into the main living area.

Jesus.

He moved past the dead man strapped in a chair wrapped in bubble wrap, past the kitchenette, and into the bedroom. Empty. As was the closet. And bathroom.

Back in the bedroom, the dog watched as Sandesh checked under the bed.

A white box. He slid his leg under and kicked it out. A drone box, an empty drone box. He went back into the living area. The dog followed.

Judging by the long, black hair and distinctly Native American features, not to mention Justice’s exact nose, the corpse strapped to the artist chair was Cooper.

He’d been tortured to death.

Under the plastic wrap, chicken wire pierced Cooper’s face and down the flesh of his naked body. His mouth split in small red fissures at the creases, chafed by a thick leather ball gag. Cooper’s head lay to one side. Blood pooled beneath the chair. A dog-sized bloodstain saturated the beige carpet beside the chair.

The apartment had a lot of windows, but all the metal blinds were closed.

He took out his cell, hit Leland’s preprogrammed number.

Leland answered on the first ring. “And?”

Not even a hello? “Found Cooper. He’s dead. Someone did a nice job of torturing him. I’m not sure how this is going to go down with the authorities. Justice’s father murdered a day after the school was bombed.”

There was a very long pause. “Clean off any of your prints. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Leland hung up.

Sandesh holstered his gun and went into the kitchen. Keeping his hand covered by his shirt, he opened a couple of cabinets, found the dog food. He opened two cans and slapped them into the empty dog dish by the fridge. The dog was eating big, sloppy mouthfuls as Sandesh refilled the water bowl. When he was done, he surveyed the main room.

There was an easel and paints in one corner. The easel contained a painting of a Buddha in front of an orange, red, and yellow Buddhist temple. He recognized it. He’d passed it on his way to the Mantua Academy campus. It had caught his eye because of the bright colors and because there weren’t a lot of Buddhist temples in Pennsylvania.

So Justice’s father had been a Buddhist? And was now a suspect in the school bombing. And had been tortured to death.

Could Cooper have been a go-between? Someone the traitor had recruited to help?

Maybe.

And after Jordan, Walid might’ve been able to track him here.

So he came here, tortured Cooper to get information. Maybe to figure out who’d given him the warning about Jordan. How much had Cooper known? Had Walid been told about the school and then gone to bomb it? If so, is that why Cooper had a single drone box here? Had Walid’s men set up camp here?

Cooper wasn’t exactly swimming in enough luxury to be buying drones to mess around with. Other than the easel, the chair with him in it, a small, round kitchen table, and an abused, brown suede couch, there wasn’t any other furniture.

There were a lot of decorations. Well, paintings.

He’d never seen a picture of Justice as a child, but he knew the portraits that took up nearly every wall were of her. And the girl beside her, the one Justice had her arm slung across, was most likely her sister. Hope. And the woman? He’d take a guess, since she resembled the blond girl Justice had her arm around, and say that was the mother.

The portraits were repeated again and again all over the walls. Like the man had played one moment, one loop of thought in his head for the last twenty-five years.

So Cooper painted not just houses, but people. And not just any people but Justice and Hope and their mother. Over and over again. The same picture. Dissected down to the smallest detail.

And those details were so clear. Freckles. Blue eyes. Dark eyes. And the dark shadow over every painting, as if the artist foreshadowed the days to come. Or asked where it had all gone wrong.