Scenario one: Jesse Tyrone Boyd, with his excellent legal representation, no eyewitness, and an alibi provided by Will Miller, would be released. That release would serve to draw out the woman who would want to see him put back behind bars.
If not that, the other option would put a whole lot more people on Lily's trail and make finding her ever so much easier. Somebody at the FBI would finally bother paying attention, do his job, and connect the murders of those three men with their own supposedly dead agent.
God, they must be complete fools not to have done it so far. How much more obvious did the crime scenes need to be? Would leaving the former agent's picture, writing her damned name on the wall in blood, do it? How about dropping off her tattered bulletproof vest, kept hidden all these months? What in heaven's name would it take?
It had all been so carefully planned. Easy enough that a child could put it together. But apparently not a police officer.
There'd been the specific victim type. The Internet connection. The obviously vengeful crime scenes- passionate, planned, full of rage. The names of the supposed children. The flowers, eventually even a damned tiger lily, which had been the fake online name the agent had used when trying to capture the man Lily Fletcher had known as Lovesprettyboys or Peter Pan.
All of that and they didn't even suspect yet. There'd been not one news story, not one speculative article, about the FBI's involvement in a tristate murder investigation. Local outlets were covering the cases, but hadn't put them together. It truly seemed that nobody had noticed the perfectly chosen clues.
So perhaps it was time to be just a little more obvious. If the FBI couldn't figure out subtle hints, it was time to drop some not-so-subtle ones.
You could wait for Boyd.
Yes. If Boyd got out next week, Lily would come slinking back into town on her own. There could be no doubt about that. She would never let the guilty man walk free as long as she had breath in her body.
But if the appeal failed, and the man didn't get out to serve as a lure for the woman, even more time would have been wasted. And this had gone on long enough. Hiding the secret, keeping Lovesprettyboys' true identity locked away forever, returning to the real world and a real life, had been a tremendous strain. The pressure had become nearly unendurable and just couldn't continue.
This had to end. Maybe it would, with Boyd's release. Yet it never hurt to cover all bases. Meaning the lily murderer needed to act once more. And this time, there would be no ambiguity whatsoever. Only raw, bloody violence and blatant clues nobody could miss.
Perhaps a strand of hair from Agent Fletcher's own blond head-kept ever since that last night before she'd disappeared? Or something even more blatant?
It was, perhaps, time to look through a few mementos of Lily Fletcher's stay in Virginia last January. They were locked away in a storage locker, had been all along. Just in case of emergency.
"Smart. So smart. Always thinking ahead." Everyone said so.
There was only one thing left to do: reel in the prey. It was soon, mere days after the last killing. But the irons were already in the fire, the contacts established. The Internet connection was live, secure, and untraceable. Which meant it was time to ramp up the e-mail communications with one Frank Addison, a truck driver out of North Carolina, who loved to hang out at a site with a triple-X-rated name any search engine would warn against visiting. They’d already exchanged many pleasant e-mails. Even an IM session, during which they'd compared stories. Shared fantasies society frowned upon.
Now it was time to bring the matter to a close. Set the date, the time, the location. The trucker thought he was arranging to meet a drug-addicted mother and her son.
A mother named Lily Fletcher.
"And if that doesn't wake you the fuck up, not a single one of you deserves to carry a badge."
Chapter 7
Once she'd recognized the voice on the conference audio recording Friday, both Lily and Wyatt had expected he'd go immediately to Williamsburg to find out whom it belonged to. Unfortunately, that hadn't happened as quickly as they'd wanted. Because when he'd tried calling to arrange a meeting, they'd learned Drs. Kean and Underwood, who needed to listen to the recording, had gone away for the holiday weekend. Several other members of their family, many of whom also worked at the same private practice, had gone as well. Meaning there was no one around to tell them how to reach either woman. Since an outside physician was covering any emergency medical calls, the answering service hadn't been helpful, either.
They'd looked up the other speakers in the panel workshop-all of them were from faraway states, one even from another country. None was likely to remember one question from a long-ago convention. Kean, who had seemed to know the person questioning her, was the best bet.
Without a warrant, and with the need for extreme discretion, there hadn't been much they could do. Which was why, instead of leaving on Friday, as she'd expected, as she'd wanted, Wyatt had remained here with her throughout the holiday weekend.
It had been an awkward couple of days. Lily didn't really understand why, but this trip, this time she'd spent with Wyatt, had been more difficult than the times before it. Something had disappeared. Their ease with each other, perhaps. Or the quiet comfort she'd felt from him, the sense of security from knowing he was in the next room.
There had been no more intimate, late-night talks on the patio, no visits to her room to drag her from her night terrors-of which there had been a few. She'd stayed in her bed, telling him she was fine when he'd asked through the door if she was okay the previous night. They had, in fact, almost been tiptoeing around each other since Friday, talking only about the case. Keeping a physical distance, and an emotional one.
You know why.
She tried to ignore that little voice as she showered late Sunday afternoon. Just as she'd been ignoring it all weekend. But she couldn't fool herself forever.
She knew.
In recent months, Wyatt had consoled her and lent her a strong arm. He'd carried her; he'd shielded her. Recently, he'd even begun to verbally spar with her, acknowledging-as Brandon would not-that Lily was strong enough to take it. And, in fact, wanted it.
But then he had pulled her onto his lap Friday when she'd nearly broken down. He had held her close, letting her feel his hard, muscular form, smell the warm aroma of his skin, even share every breath because their mouths were so close. During that unexpected encounter, everything had changed. Everything.
It was probably a good thing she had recognized the voice on the tape at just that moment, for any number of reasons. One of which was that her leaping to her feet in shock had prevented her from doing something crazy. Like, oh, wrapping her arms around his neck, sinking her hands into his thick, dark hair, and tugging his mouth to hers for a crazy-hot kiss that she had fantasized about since she'd first set eyes on his strong mouth.
She'd been fooling herself the other morning, thinking she could ignore the sexual attraction she felt toward the man, or think about it rationally, coolly, and decide if she wanted to act on it. Because there had been nothing rational or cool in that long, intimate moment. And while it had started as an embrace of comfort, she'd known, somehow, that his awareness had been as strong as her own.
Never in her former life had Lily believed she had a chance with Wyatt Blackstone. Never had she imagined him looking at her with dark blue eyes made darker with want. Yet in that one single moment, when she'd lifted her head and met his stare head-on, she'd seen that want. Maybe even had that chance.