His feet were shackled, but instead of his hands being cuffed, he was in a straitjacket, his arms lashed to his sides. Despite this, he held himself like he was the emperor of his own tiny kingdom. Like she was a serf who had the honor of experiencing his presence.
Abby showed no emotion as she sat down, placing her notebook and pen in her lap. Stan hovered in the corner, and Abby gave him a small nod.
“I’ll be right outside,” he said. “Panic button is right here.” He pointed meaningfully at the red button on the wall. “Don’t try any of your manipulative shit, Wells.”
A light tsking sound filled the air as Stan left them alone, and Abby stared at him. He came forward, so he was just inches behind the thick sheet of Plexiglas that kept him from going for her. “Abigail Winthrop,” he said.
“Hello, Howard,” she said. She refused to call him Mr. Wells. And she certainly wasn’t going to call him Doctor. There wasn’t going to be any deference here.
She wasn’t playing his game. She was here for answers—and she was going to get them.
“You’ve been very persistent,” he said, looking her up and down, his mouth twisting in a way that made her stomach churn. She felt assessed, like a piece of meat, an object. But she stamped the nausea down.
That’s what he wanted her to feel.
“As I said in my letters, it’s very important I speak to you.”
“So,” he said slowly, like he was savoring the words. “Which of my girls did you know?”
This time, she wasn’t able to stamp down the revulsion she felt. His girls. As if he owned them. As if by killing them, his victims belonged to him. Disgust curled inside her, and she had to stop her fists from curling too. She wanted nothing more than to get behind that Plexiglas and deck this bastard like the take-no-shit farm girl she was. But she had to confirm her suspicions. And that meant she had to stay calm.
She had to get him to make a mistake.
She wasn’t stupid. He could pretend all he wanted, but he knew exactly who she was. He might’ve been in solitary, but a man like him? He had his ways. But she was going to let him draw his guessing game out. She wanted to know everything about how he viewed Cassie, how he talked about her, how he looked when he talked about her.
She was going to get to the bottom of this, even if it meant manipulating one of the most infamous serial killers of all time.
“You’re what . . . early thirties?” he asked, openly assessing her now. “None of my girls had younger sisters who’d be that age now. So you . . . you must be a friend.” His eyebrows raised in mock concern. “Did I take your best friend away from you?”
Abby didn’t reply as she opened her notebook, flipping through the pages filled with her cramped handwriting. She did this deliberately slow, watching as he peered at the book, his interest evident.
Solitary drove most men to the brink. But this man? He wasn’t even close to the edge.
He was bored. That’s likely why he manipulated the other inmates—and apparently at least one guard—into killing themselves. It was a way to alleviate his boredom.
A bored serial killer was one who slipped up. Especially if she got him talking about the right things.
“Maybe a cousin?” he suggested, his mouth thinning at her silence. “A niece?”
Abby uncapped her pen, dropping it into the groove of her open notebook, and finally looked up to meet his eyes. And then she waited again. She counted silently to five, her pulse thundering in her ears as she refused to look away. Sweat trickled down between her shoulder blades, gathering at the small of her back.
Finally, when she had his complete attention, when it was just the two of them and his eyes drilled into hers, waiting for her to speak, she said: “Cassandra Martin.” She enunciated each syllable with deadly weight. “You’re going to tell me everything.” She looked down at her watch. “You have twenty minutes.”
Chapter 2
Sweat trickled down Paul’s forehead as he bolted down the alleyway. The muggy DC air was so thick he could almost taste it as he moved, swift and silent, gun raised, eyes trained ahead, where the alley split off in two directions.
“We need him alive, Paul.” It was Agent Grace Sinclair’s voice in his ear. His profiler was back at headquarters. She’d sprained her ankle on their last case and still hadn’t been cleared for field duty, a fact that made her use everything from espresso to chocolate chip cookies, trying to bribe him to clear her.
The problem with being friends with a profiler was that they honed in on all of a man’s weaknesses. But Grace was no match for Paul when it came to the safety of his team. He wasn’t going to let her out in the field injured, no matter how many cookies she baked.
Paul was almost to the fork in the alley, his pace slowing as his hand tightened around his Glock.
“You’re going to want to take a right, boss.” This time, it was Zooey, the team’s tech and forensic expert, on the radio. “Security cameras show he ran into a dead end. He’ll be heading back your way in twenty seconds.”
“Got it,” Paul said quietly. He moved to the right side of the alley, flattening himself against the brick wall as he moved swiftly toward the corner.
“Ten seconds,” Zooey said.
Adrenaline pumped through him. A child had been taken from his mother. And he wasn’t going to let either of them down.
“Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”
A man in a tattered jean jacket bolted into the alley, looking around wildly.
“Harry Jordan!” Paul’s voice boomed out, his gun trained on him.
The man jerked at his name, spinning around.
“Put the gun down,” Paul warned, moving forward.
Harry stared at him, his face falling. “I didn’t—” he started.
“Put the gun down, Harry,” Paul said again. “Put it down and we can talk.”
“Yeah, about what?” Harry asked. “You’re just gonna shoot me.” The gun in his hand wasn’t raised. Paul had the upper hand here. And he needed to know where Harry had put the kid.
“I don’t want to shoot you,” Paul said. It was the truth. He wasn’t that man. He’d taken lives before, necessary acts to protect others, but he knew the cost. “All I want is to bring Brandon home safe.”
“Brandon is my son!” Harry shrieked, his voice going from quiet to screaming in just words.
“Paul, he’s escalating,” Grace said over the radio.
No shit, Paul thought.
“He is your son,” Paul agreed. “But Haley is his mother and she has sole physical and legal custody. The courts decided that you need a year’s worth of clean drug tests, before you’re allowed to see him.”
“It isn’t fair!” Tears tracked down the man’s face and Paul took advantage of his distraction to move forward.
“I know you’re hurting,” Paul said. “But this is where you prove that you’re a good father, Harry. This is the moment where you put Brandon’s needs before your own. And right now, Brandon needs to be safe at home with his mother. And you need to focus on getting clean.”
Harry’s face crumpled, like a building collapsing within itself. “I tried getting clean. I did. It’s just . . . God, it’s so hard. I just wanted to spend time with him. And then Haley said all those things in court—” More tears down his face. “They were true,” he said. “God, they were all true.”
“Careful, Paul,” Grace warned. “We might not be looking at homicidal behavior here. This may turn into suicide or suicide-by-cop.”
Paul’s stomach clenched. Grace’s read of the situation was right. Both his training and his gut were telling him so. He needed Harry to stay calm and to not panic or get too low.
He breathed in and out, wishing like hell that Grace was here to do this. Or Maggie Kincaid, the elite negotiator that worked on a case-by-case basis with his team. Both of them were better at this than him.
But right now, it was on him.
“You put the gun down and tell me where Brandon is, Harry, and I will personally talk to the DA about getting you in rehab. You can get clean. You can be a good father to your boy. You can start right now, by telling me where he is and putting that down. It’s so easy. Simple. You want to be a good father, right?”