01 A Cold Dark Place Read online

  She held her gun on the suspect as Lucas reached down to check Meacher’s pulse. Her gaze flickered to the victim who lay perfectly still on the bed. It was Janelle Ebert, the woman who’d been reported missing.

  Alive, or were they too late?

  “He’s dead,” Lucas confirmed.

  Mallory walked swiftly over to the woman, touched two fingers to her neck, searching for a pulse. A huge swell of relief burst through her at the feel of warm flesh and a solid beat at the base of her throat. “She’s alive. I don’t see any obvious injuries.” Her voice caught and she stumbled through her own nightmares. Put it away, Mal. She scanned the restraints. “She’s also cuffed. Who the hell shot Meacher?”

  They went back on high alert, she and Lucas moving in tandem to clear the rest of the basement. It wasn’t big. There was a massive upright freezer—Mallory could wait a lifetime to go through that sucker. Steps to storm doors off to the right. There was also a small room built into the corner, with the door firmly closed. A furnace fired up, making them both jump. She and Lucas looked at each other, nodded in silent communication, and stood on either side of the doorway to the small room. Lucas turned the knob and pulled the door outward. Mallory went in low, but there was no one there.

  There were enough glossy photographs plastered to the wall that even if there hadn’t been a woman handcuffed to a bed, Mallory would have no doubt Meacher was their UNSUB. Sweet Jesus. A choking sensation rose up in her throat but she forced it away. She quickly scanned the photos, searching for a sister she hadn’t seen in eighteen years even as she told herself not to. Then she made herself stop. There were other things to deal with first.

  SSA Danbridge came down the stairs; the woman’s boots were lethal weapons but at least Mal always knew where her boss was.

  “It’s clear,” Lucas shouted.

  “Get the EMTs down here,” Danbridge yelled behind her, stepping around Meacher’s corpse and walking to where Mallory and Lucas stood staring into what had to be Meacher’s trophy room. “I didn’t hear a shot.”

  “He was already dead when we got here.” Lucas looked disappointed as he holstered his weapon. “Which is a damn shame because I’d have loved to haul his ass off to jail.”

  The woman on the bed groaned and Mallory strode across to her, holstering her own weapon even though the creepy cellar made her scalp prickle. “Where are those EMTs? Can I take these cuffs off?”

  Danbridge looked pissed but nodded, then, “Wait!” She pulled out her cell phone and took a series of photographs of the woman, the cuffs, the proximity of the bed in relation to the body. Meacher was a serial killer but he’d obviously been murdered. This was a crime scene on multiple levels but the safety and comfort of living victims always came first.

  “Do you think he had a partner who tipped us off and then killed him?” asked Lucas.

  “Meacher’s only been dead a few minutes. You can still smell the gun powder.” Mallory sniffed the air. “It would have been a hell of a risk to tip us off just before he killed him.”

  “I’ll set up roadblocks and a search party.” Danbridge spoke quickly into her radio.

  “Someone might have set up Meacher to be the fall guy,” Lucas offered.

  “Maybe.” Mallory grimaced. “But nothing about the profile suggested Meacher had a partner and those images”—she jerked her thumb over her shoulder—“only show one male subject in action. We should search for video footage. No way he’d be satisfied with just photographs.”

  EMTs arrived on the scene and pounded down the wooden steps. Danbridge herded them away from Meacher’s body. “You don’t need to worry about him.” Tall and blond, Supervisory Special Agent Danbridge put the ‘bitch’ in ambitious. Mallory had a great deal of respect for her boss as an agent, but she wasn’t an empathetic being. No warm and fuzzies in the girls’ restroom back at the office. “Touch anything apart from the woman on the bed and I’ll report your asses.”

  Yup. About as warm and cuddly as a tarantula.

  Both EMTs rolled their eyes as Mallory unlocked the handcuffs using keys Meacher had left tauntingly close to the bed, just out of reach of the victim. The woman started to moan, then blink and frown in confusion.

  “You’re okay, Miss. Can you tell me your name?” the EMT asked, strapping a blood pressure cuff to her arm.

  “Where am I? Was I in an accident?” Her voice was hoarse. “The man said I was going to be okay. Said the feds were coming. Why would the FBI be here?” She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead.

  “Lie still,” the medic admonished.

  “I feel dizzy. God, I didn’t have that much to drink.”

  “Who told you the FBI were coming?” Mallory asked, exchanging a glance with Lucas. The trouble with special-K was it could produce vivid hallucinations and often made witness statements not only inadmissible, but downright freaky. Still, right now they had nothing else to go on. Maybe she’d remember some detail about whoever shot Meacher. “Did you get a look at his face?”

  “A really nice looking guy. Unless I was dreaming.” Dark brown eyes focused and unfocused as she squinted at Mallory’s face. “Are you with the FBI? What happened? Where am I?”

  But before Mal could answer, the woman caught sight of Meacher’s corpse lying on the floor, and seemed to become aware of her ripped blouse, the crinkle of plastic beneath her. She half sat up, looked around at the cold dank basement, and started to sob. Then she started to scream.

  ***

  Seven hours later, Mallory stood in the shadowy parking lot at the back of the hospital, sipping too-hot coffee and wishing SSA Danbridge would pick up the damn phone. Her feet were numb; toes tingling blocks of ice. Giving up on her boss, she stuffed her phone back in her pocket and jammed her free hand under her opposite armpit. She should have grabbed an overcoat to go over her black wool pantsuit before she’d left the division yesterday but had been too excited to even think of it. A hard layer of frost covered the ground—ridiculously cold for North Carolina even in November.

  Danbridge had assigned Mallory the task of accompanying the victim to the hospital and getting a statement. If the “alleged” serial killer had still been at large there was no way a lowly agent like her would have gotten this job. Mal sighed. By the time a doctor examined Janelle Ebert’s injuries and collected evidence from her clothes and person, it had been three AM. Then the poor woman had requested a nap while Mallory paced the hallway. Finally Mallory had gotten a statement which told them nothing they hadn’t already known. Janelle had been out for a drink in a bar and Meacher had snatched her from a poorly lit parking lot. She remembered nothing between leaving the bar to waking up in that basement.

  She’d been reported missing by a friend who’d arranged to sleep over at Janelle’s apartment and who’d worried when Janelle hadn’t arrived to let her in. When the friend had gone back to the bar and seen Janelle’s car still in the parking lot but the woman herself nowhere in sight, she’d called the cops.

  Now Janelle was sleeping quietly with a local sheriff’s deputy guarding the door to her room—more as a protection against members of the press than any unknown attacker. If the person who’d killed Meacher had wanted Janelle Ebert dead, he—or she—had had ample opportunity.

  Janelle was a very lucky woman.

  Mallory wanted to leave. Wanted to help search the house of horrors and see exactly who Edgar Meacher had killed. But she needed her job and pissing off her boss topped her list of things not to do if she wanted to keep it. She took another scalding mouthful of coffee and then watched her breath freeze on the exhale. The sun was rising over the eastern horizon lightening the gray of twilight to pale mauve and pink of dawn.

  It made her pause.

  Her twin sister Payton had loved watching the sun rise over the woods that surrounded their West Virginian home. At the time, Mallory had resented being poked awake with the birds, but nowadays she found it oddly reassuring—another fragile connection to the sister she’d lost. No
matter what happened, the sun always rose. And until the day the solar system decided to implode and take this galaxy with it—it always would. It reminded her exactly how small a speck in the universe she really was.

  Her colleagues had found photographs of twelve victims so far—one was even a former pupil of Meacher’s—but no mention of anyone who resembled her identical twin.

  Payton had been nine when she’d disappeared without a trace from the bedroom they’d shared in their West Virginian mansion. Mallory hadn’t really expected to find evidence of her at Meacher’s house, but there was always a tiny flicker of hope she and her parents would eventually get closure. The sheer number of monsters she’d encountered since she started working for the FBI stunned her.

  Footsteps approached. A man ambled toward her.

  She turned to face him, mentally mapping out her surroundings. Even though it was early there were too many people and too many cameras for him to be a real threat but her right hand slid closer to her weapon anyway. Cataloging the man’s big wool overcoat, nicotine stained fingers, and razor sharp eyes she knew exactly what he wanted.

  He held out a pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?”

  “Thanks, but I don’t smoke.”

  “You a fed?” He’d accurately assessed her bullshit meter to be in the red zone and decided to be direct. Small mercies. “Know anything about this whole serial killer business?”

  “You with a paper?”

  “Charlie Fernier. The Post.” He held out his hand, which she pointedly ignored.

  She slugged back her coffee, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Silence was her best friend when it came to the press.

  “Hey, don’t I know you?” He angled his chin to get a better look at her face, his gaze lingering on her eye which had darkened overnight to form a nice blue-rimmed socket. “You look real familiar.”

  Mallory held her ground even though she wanted to run. Ice formed inside her chest. That old familiar cracking sensation when someone recognized her from her mother’s annual campaign to keep her sister’s disappearance in the public eye. Who needed computer generated aging software when you had a readymade replica on hand?

  Well, not this year. She was done with pretending Payton might still be alive, and done giving her abductor a thrill as she begged for information. She wanted to see him begging—for mercy as she held her Glock to his head. The image startled her out of her reverie. Too much coffee; not enough sleep.

  “No. You don’t know me.”

  “Are you sure, Special Agent...?”

  She started to walk away. “I’m sure, Mr. Fernier.”

  “Hey!” His voice boomed off the glass and concrete of the hospital behind them. “You’re that girl”—every muscle in her body flinched—“the one whose twin sister was taken all those years ago.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her mother had a lot to answer for.

  “It’s gonna make a great headline, ‘Senator’s daughter still searching for justice after all these years.’”

  She stuck her middle finger in the air without turning around and heard a strong male laugh behind her. Her life was more than a news headline. Tossing her coffee cup in the garbage she climbed into her car, checked her mirror and saw the reporter walking away, probably plotting how best to spin her involvement in this case. She started the engine and reversed out of her spot. By the time the story went to press she’d have either succumbed to a nervous breakdown or taken down Meacher in hand-to-hand combat and saved Janelle’s life. How to piss off your colleagues and influence people. Like her life wasn’t complicated enough.

  Making an executive decision, she turned right out of the parking lot to head back to the farmhouse. Her phone rang. It was her boss. Mallory rolled her eyes.

  “Where are you?”

  “Still at the hospital.”

  “You not done there yet?”

  Mallory bit down on a retort. “Just finished. Janelle’s sleeping and I have the evidence locked in the trunk.” Clothes. Rape kit. Although there was no evidence of assault.

  “She say anything about the person who shot Meacher?”

  “He had beautiful eyes and she thinks he touched her hair.”

  “Pity they haven’t invented a DNA test that sensitive yet.”

  “Anything in the farmhouse?”

  “Enough photographic evidence to suggest Meacher killed at least twelve women. We’ve found his video cache. There are probably more.”

  Mallory braced herself. “You want me to help look through it?”

  “BAU is sending two agents to assist in the evidence collection and they specifically want eyes on the video and photographs to try and link unsolved murders.”

  Which meant, as the junior agent, Mallory would be reduced to fetching coffee. But it would be worth it to pick the brains of these people.

  “I want you to go back to division and start tracing that anonymous tipster—”

  “What?” She winced. Damn. She sounded like a whiny kid, but the tipster wouldn’t lead her to her sister’s killer.

  “Somebody suspected Meacher was The Snatcher before we did. I’d bet the same person put a bullet in his brain. Whether it was an accomplice or an outraged member of the public I want them brought to justice.” Danbridge hung up on her.

  Mallory tossed her phone on the seat. Great. Just frickin’ great. Everyone else got to dissect the mind of a serial killer. She got to trace a phone call.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Outside the front of FBI Charlotte Division a light dusting of snow clung to the sidewalk. “What do you mean you can’t trace it?” Mallory tugged on the small gold hoop in her ear as she looked through the window. “I thought you could trace anything.”

  “Not this.” Mike Tanner specialized in communication systems. He was a super nice guy and everyone in the Bureau tried to exploit that fact. Ex-military, he’d helped design some of the software that used voice recognition to pick up suspected terrorists talking on cell phones during the Iraq war. “He bounced the signal off different servers and used a burner cell which has since been switched off and deactivated. I could possibly tell you where the call was made from—if I devoted the next six months to this one thing. Unfortunately my boss will have other ideas.”

  Securing the phone handset with her shoulder, she checked her email. “What about voice analysis?”

  “It was electronically disguised.”

  “So you’ve got nothing?”

  “More specifically, you’ve got nothing.”

  “Ha. Thanks, Mike,” she said it with enough humor that he laughed.

  “Always a pleasure, Mal.”

  She hung up as Lucas Randall came into the room. His black hair stood on end, a day’s growth of beard darkened his jaw. He was a good looking guy and she was aware of speculation that they were secretly a couple. Not true. They’d been friends for years. He’d always been like a big brother to her.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Unit briefing in the conference room in fifteen minutes. Two BAU bigwigs in attendance.” He pointed his finger at her. “Danbridge was pissed to see you making an appearance on The Post website.”

  She pulled a face. “Like I planned that. Some journalist cornered me at the hospital, recognized me from my mother’s yearly media circus and pounced. Believe me, I am not seeking any form of attention.” She stood, stretched out her back, then followed him over to his desk. Her fellow agents had been processing the Meacher residence non-stop for the last eighteen hours while she’d been chasing her tail, achieving nothing. The tight cast to Lucas’s lips and added weight to his shoulders suggested the day had taken its toll. “Bad?” she asked.

  She’d only been in the FBI for twenty-two months and was still on probation, but she’d already seen things she’d take to her grave. As much as she wanted to be involved in the Meacher investigation she knew dealing with this sort of evil took a toll. It was one thing to see crime scene photograp
hs; quite another to be in the lair of a serial killer, uncovering victims.

  “We’re up to fifteen women,” Lucas’s voice was gruff. The dark circles under his eyes added a worn out quality to his grim expression. He answered her silent question with a shake of his head. “I didn’t see any kids and no one who looked like Payton.”

  Mallory was torn between disappointment and relief.

  “He kept more personal trophies in his bedroom. Whoever shot the sonofabitch did the world a favor.” A flicker of unguarded emotion crossed his face. Then he buried it beneath six years field experience and a flat cop stare. “You’ll hear all the details at the briefing.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Lemme get a coffee and we’ll head over together.” He froze as a stranger wearing a visitor badge and carrying a laptop walked through the office doorway. “Alex? What the—?”

  “You missed the meeting, asshole.” The man’s expression was fierce. “Thought I’d hunt you down and make you buy me a beer.” His gaze darted to her. “Looks like a bad time though.”

  “That was today?” Lucas palmed his forehead. “Jesus, you’re right. I’m an asshole.”

  “I already covered that.” The man—Alex—grinned, and Mallory got a fierce blast of gorgeous.

  The response wrung a reluctant smile out of Lucas. “Believe it or not, Mal, this is a good friend of mine, Alex Parker. I asked him to attend a Counterintelligence Awareness Group briefing I organized so he could tell us about some of the latest internet security measures being developed in the private sector. He runs his own company in DC. Does a lot of government contracts. We served together in Afghanistan.” His gaze swung back to Alex. “I assume the meeting went ahead without me?”

  Alex nodded. “We managed to fumble along without your incisive brilliance.”

  “Yet I’m the asshole,” Lucas grinned. “This here is Special Agent Mallory Rooney.”