He stopped the car and turned to her. “You are like me. You’re like Bobbie. You’re a survivor. That’s why you came back to this place. To stop the persons who did this to you and to all the others.”
“Yeah well, that’s not really working out so far. Your niece is still missing. By now she believes no one is coming, including her super cool uncle the FBI profiler.”
“Does it make you feel better to throw that at me?”
She refused to look at him.
He rolled back onto the road. “Maybe you don’t care how this turns out. You survived. You can just walk away like you did before. You don’t need anyone or anything. Is that how you feel?”
“You don’t know me.”
Her cell vibrated. The text was from her boss.
You still alive?
She almost laughed out loud. She hadn’t been alive in nearly two decades. To avoid more of her boss’s questions, she sent him a yes in response along with a happy face. That should really freak him out.
“Tell me the part you haven’t told anyone else, Joanna. I don’t care if it was right or wrong. I only care that it might help me find my niece alive.”
“That building.” She pointed to the upcoming one on the right. “It looks more familiar than all the others.”
It didn’t but she was tired of his questions. He’d hit too close to home. The only reason she pointed the building out was because the gate was open. The twelve-foot fence would have kept them out otherwise. Beyond the open gate, one of the entry doors stood open, too. Seemed like a good place to change the subject.
He pulled over and turned off the car.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m not sure of anything.” She opened the car door and got out.
He rounded the hood and followed her through the gate.
The whirr of something moving jerked her attention upward. A camera was focused on them as they approached the entry door. Old man Griffin had said there were cameras everywhere.
Why was that?
If there was nothing here, why all the cameras? Maybe the old man was right about the pockets of activities.
Tony came up beside her. “Let me go in first.”
She should be ashamed of herself for sending him on a wild-goose chase like this. He really was trying to help her. Had she grown so coldhearted that she didn’t care about him or his niece? Was Ellen’s death for nothing? “Wait.”
He turned back to her.
“I—”
He held up a hand for her to give him a minute, and then he reached for his cell. “LeDoux.”
He listened for a few seconds, glanced at her, and then listened some more.
“I’ll be right there.”
He shoved his phone into his pocket and she asked, “What’s going on?”
“That was Phelps. Hailey Martin—Madelyn Houser—is dead.”
It’s coming down to you, Jo.
Everyone else who knew what really happened was dying.
What’re you going to do now?
34
Day Six
Eighteen years ago...
No food today.
Nothing.
No sound.
Everyone is too tired to make any noise.
A bottle of water was left next to each of us while we slept.
That’s something. At least we have water.
My body is sore. I feel every scrape, every bruise as if it goes all the way to the bone. Ellen lies beside me. She is withdrawing more into herself every day.
No-Name is... I don’t know where she is.
I pray there will be no battles today. I feel too weak. Too tired. Too depressed.
A flicker on the wall snaps my attention. Another. Like an old movie reel that takes a moment to reach the full frame of an image—only there are dozens.
More flickers. Faster. Blurry images moving frantically across the wall.
Next to me Ellen sits up.
“What’s happening?”
I don’t know. I’m not sure whether I answered her or if I only thought the words.
“What the fuck?”
No-Name is suddenly on the other side of me.
It must be bad if she’s scared.
Then the blurry images become clear.
People.
Blood.
Lots of blood.
So many images, as if multiple movies are playing all around us. Slasher movies. Blood and guts. Knives and axes.
My eyes hurt looking at them.
My brain hurts thinking about the images.
“Don’t look,” I murmur.
Then I close my eyes.
35
Doe Run Road
4:00 p.m.
The forensic techs were finishing up by the time Tony and Joanna arrived on the scene. She stayed in the car. Her idea, not his. As long as she didn’t disappear on him he was okay with that. He suspected she wanted to avoid Phelps. On the other hand, the past two days had been hard on her. He had a feeling she spent a lot of her quiet time reliving the horrors of eighteen years ago.
He couldn’t afford for her to bail on him anytime soon...not until this was done. On some level he trusted her. They shared a common goal and she wanted it as badly as he did even if she didn’t admit it.
“No forced entry,” Chief Buckley was saying as they moved through the entry hall. “We had to call animal control to come get her dog. Between the lack of forced entry and the dog I’d say whoever she was entertaining was a familiar or at least an invited guest.”
A reasonable conclusion. Brutus had appeared more than a little protective of his master. Then again, knowing Martin’s lifestyle, maybe not. Tony kept the comment to himself. He hadn’t been asked for his opinion as of yet. The security system hadn’t been breached, which also appeared to confirm the chief’s conclusion. But then there were people who knew how to get around a security system.
Was the person who hired Martin and Conway to do their dirty work tying up loose ends? They were the only two people Joanna remembered being close when she was abducted. Both had been seen with Tiffany. At this point they were running out of suspects and they already didn’t have a damned lead.
As he and Buckley started up the stairs, Tony noticed Chief Phelps in the dining room with another detective. They were huddled over a laptop.
“Ultimately,” Buckley said, “the coroner thinks Martin drowned in that big old tub. But there are marks that indicate someone’s fingers were around her throat. Someone strong enough to hold her down.”
Forensic techs were covering every square inch of the place. Tony had seen two uniforms and another tech moving back and forth in the yard. Milledgeville PD was on top of the situation. They wanted this case solved almost as badly as Tony did.
At the top of the stairs, Buckley gestured to the right, and then headed that way.
“No video with her surveillance system?” The system was high-end. Tony had spotted a couple of cameras on his first visit.
“There is video,” Buckley answered. “Chief Phelps and one of his detectives is reviewing it now.”
So that was what they were doing in the dining room with the laptop.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Chief,” Tony said, “but how did you and Phelps end up here? This is way out of your jurisdiction. As I recall, when I mentioned that Miles Conway might have an accomplice named Hailey Martin, you two didn’t want to hear about it.”
“Chief Phelps had been trying to catch Martin at home for a hair sample, considering she was blond and that blond hair was found in Conway’s apartment. I believe you suggested Martin as a person of interest.”
For the good it had done, Tony mused.
“The detectives made a couple of attempts to find her with no luck so they sort of let it go,” Buckley admitted. “But that was before the FBI called us about the hard drives found in Conway’s bathtub.”
Now there was some news Tony hadn’t heard. Maybe his Bureau contact had gotten his hand slapped for giving Tony a heads-up now and then. “The Bureau was able to pull something from the hard drives?”
“At first we thought they would be damaged beyond recovery but whoever put them in the tub made a mistake. He or she didn’t take the parts that counted out of the casings so they were protected to some degree. They couldn’t recover everything but they got enough to show that Martin and Conway were working together in some capacity.”
“Meaning,” Tony pressed.
“We have footage of Tiffany Durand, Vickie Parton and an unidentified female restrained in the back of a van. Conway was taunting them.”