Four Seasons Hotel

Austin, Texas

 

Wren was passed out in the bed. The empty brandy bottle sitting beside the picture box told the story Cormac had already guessed. He quickly shoved the pictures back into their shoebox and shoved the lid back on top, leaving out the picture that had gotten her so worked up. He stared at that face, those intense blue eyes, and realized he should have put it together the moment he saw Stephen Thomas. Those eyes…there was no mistaking it.

Devin Wilde was Stephen Thomas, Jr. What the hell?

What had happened in that household that turned him into the killer he became?

Wilde had been a case Cormac studied at Quantico. He knew about his crimes, knew about his confessions. He’d listened to the confession tapes, studied them to gain insight into the mind of a serial killer. He knew the cops who’d hunted him, knew the clues that had led them to his front door—finally—after chasing the case for nearly a decade. He knew the profile his colleagues and superiors had generated for Wilde based on his killings. He knew all those cold facts inside and out.

But this…he never would have guessed this.

It had been suggested that Wilde had had a woman in his life who’d been deeply important to him. Some suggested it was his mother; others thought it was a girl who’d broken his heart. No one ever thought of a sister.

If Wilde and Elizabeth Thomas were as close as everyone thought they’d been, it was very possible that her death had pushed him over an edge. But that would suggest he wasn’t responsible for her death as everyone thought. Or that her death had been an accident—but it was clearly not an accident. The crime scene photos were horrifying, the worst Cormac had ever seen in his career—and he’d seen a lot of crime scene photos. Even Wilde’s other killings hadn’t been as horrible as those.

So, what did this mean? Was Wilde actually innocent of Elizabeth’s murder? Was it possible someone else had done it?

In all honesty, Cormac had come to the conclusion weeks ago that Elizabeth Thomas’s case didn’t follow the criteria he was looking for in his search through all these homicide cases. She hadn’t been murdered by the man he’d been investigating since the beginning of his career. The only reason he kept investigating was for Wren’s sake. He kind of assumed Wilde was responsible, just like everyone else.

But this information made it possible that Wilde could be telling the truth.

If so, who killed Elizabeth Thomas?

Cormac snatched up his phone, intent on calling the pilot to arrange the flight to California. It would be a little risky, going back to Los Angeles. Wren would expect to go home, and there she would run into her roommates. If she told them about the ordeal she’d been through these last few days…but how could he tell her no? How could he keep her from the cusp of the truth she’d been seeking for so long?

But his phone began to buzz, indicating an incoming call.

“Aria, I told you, I’m coming back soon—”

“There were people searching your house.”

“What?”

“Yesterday. I tried to call you over and over again. They were in your house, taking things away!”

“Who was?”

“I don’t know. Not the police, but they were wearing bulletproof vests.”

“Not police?”

“There were no police cars, no sirens. Just black SUVs and a lot of big, muscular men.”

“The FBI?”

“I don’t know.”

“Which house?”

“Both of them.”

Cormac’s heart sank. It could be the FBI or the local police working quietly so as not to raise alarms with his neighbors. But Cormac suspected it was more likely Mastiff.

They were looking for Wren.

“You let her go, right?”

“Aria—”

“You don’t have her with you?”

“I told you, I took her to her father’s farm.”

“Then why are they searching your house? Did they figure out what we’re doing? Did they find the case files we took from that warehouse?”

“I don’t know what they’re up to.”

“If they’ve found you, they’ll find me. I can’t go back to the hospital, Cormac. I can’t be confined like that.”

“I know, Aria.”

“It’s all because of her. I knew the moment I saw her in your hotel room that she was going to be a problem for us. That’s why I took her, why I drove her back here and put her in the basement. I knew she was going to hurt you, was going to hurt me. I knew it, Cormac.”

“She won’t hurt us.”

“She will! She’s the reason they’re in your house!”

She was probably right, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. He didn’t want to give fuel to her delusions.

“We’ll figure this out when I get back to town.”

“No, I can’t wait. I have to find her; I have to make her pay. She has to stay quiet. She has to stop hurting you, Cormac.”

“She’s not hurting me, Aria.”

“They were in your house!”

“I know. But it could have been for some other reason. It’s not necessarily about her.”

“She was in your hotel room!”

“I know.”

“I’m going to find her. I’m going to make her be quiet.”

She hung up before he could say anything else. He cursed under his breath, this feeling that things were getting out of control rushing through him. But he couldn’t deal with her right now. He had to get Wren to California and the answers she wanted.

Aria had no idea where Wren was. And as long as Wren was with him, Aria couldn’t hurt her. The thing was, he knew Aria was capable of hurting someone. She’d hurt him.

He knew better than to ignore her calls, but he’d been wrapped up in the Thomas case, working with Wren trying to find witnesses to the murder, trying to find anyone who had new information that they hadn’t already gone over a million times together. He’d just gone with Wren to talk to a woman who lived near the park where Elizabeth Thomas had been murdered all those years ago. She was able to tell them that Elizabeth had been in the park earlier in the evening with Devin Wilde, information no one had managed to glean even back when the crime was fresh in everyone’s minds. He’d taken that information and tried to locate more witnesses, other people who could corroborate what that witness had said. So, he ignored Aria for a few days. Clearly a few days too many.

He walked into his house late one evening after spending hours on the computer at his office. And when he did, she shot him. He hadn’t even known she was in the house.

“Oh, Cormac, I’m so sorry!”

She rushed toward him and helped him into the house, blood already beginning to seep from the wound. He grabbed the gun from her hand, shoving it into his waistband as he jerked away from her.

“What the hell, Aria! What are you doing here?”

“I was worried. You weren’t answering the phone.”

“Why the gun?”

“I thought you were dead or hurt or something…and when the door opened, I thought you were someone else, the guy who’d taken you away from me!”

He couldn’t even remember how he’d gotten her out of the house, or how he managed to reassure her when his wound began to frighten her. But he remembered that he was lightheaded when he got behind the wheel of his car, that he’d been on the verge of blacking out every time he stopped at a red light. And he remembered struggling to decide where he should go, even though he never deviated from the route that eventually took him to Wren.

It had always been about Wren, somehow. From the moment he met her, she was the one he wanted to trust, the one he wanted to be with. She was his priority.

It was time to send Aria away. As soon as this meeting with Wilde was done, he’d do it—he’d send her back to where she needed to be.

He called the pilot and arranged to leave later that morning.