“It wouldn’t have taken Buckland long to find it,” he finally said. He remembered the look in Eve’s eyes, the utter shock. The fear. And the shame. “That he’d use it to rattle Eve says quite a lot.”
Hunter slid another omelet on his plate. “So what are you going to do about him?”
Noah forced his clenched fists to relax so he could pick up a fork. “I sent out a BOLO last night when I found he’d tampered with her gun. Today, Eve will file her complaint, and when I catch him, he’ll wish he’d never seen a newspaper.”
Hunter nodded once. “Sweet.”
“What’s sweet?” They turned to find Eve standing in the doorway. Her short hair stood in wet spikes. She’d been crying, hard. Hunter took a step toward her, but she held up one hand to fend him off. “Not now. Please. What’s sweet?”
Noah closed the interview and lowered the lid of Hunter’s laptop. “Just that you’ll file your complaint and we’ll put Buckland in a cage where he belongs.”
“I’ll drive you to the police station,” Hunter said. “Sit. You need to eat. Webster needs to sleep. If you both don’t start taking care of yourselves, you’re going to get sick.”
Unbelievably, the side of her mouth lifted in a smile. “David takes care of people when he’s stressed out,” she said to Noah and Hunter bristled. She sat, careful not to touch either of them as she did so. “I’m sitting and I’ll eat. But I’ll drive myself to the police station.” Again she raised her hand as both he and Hunter opened their mouths to protest. “You can follow me if you want, but once I’ve filed that report, I’m going to school, where I’ll be surrounded by people. I have my Abnormal seminar at ten. If I’m not expelled by the time all of this is over, I don’t want to be behind.”
Hunter turned his glare from Eve to Noah. “You’re going to let her?”
Her face was cool and calm. But her dark eyes churned with emotion and he knew she needed at least this vestige of control. “I can’t stop her,” he said to Hunter, “but we’ll all watch her. And I’m taking your gun as evidence,” he said to Eve.
“It’s okay. I have another. I have several others.”
“Of course you do,” Noah murmured. “It’s a survivor thing. I get it. Promise you’ll park out in the open and you’ll stay around people.”
She nodded. “I promise.”
“Oh for God’s sake,” Hunter snarled and turned back to the counter, slicing green peppers with frustrated vengeance. “If you’re going to be stupid, at least take my truck.”
“Why?” Eve asked, still too calm.
“Buckland will be looking for you in your Mazda. Besides, your car needs a tune-up and it’ll give me something else to do while I worry about somebody else killing you.”
She rose, placed her hand on Hunter’s arm and his frantic chopping stilled. “I know you worry because you love me. And I know better than anyone that I am not invincible. But if I cower here, then he wins and I lose. I promise I will be careful. I will call you every hour and if I see Buckland, I’ll call 911 so fast. But I can’t hide. Not even for you.”
Hunter’s shoulders sagged and Noah cleared his throat. “I’ll follow her in and she can park in the police garage. If he follows her, we’ll grab him.”
“And when she leaves?”
“I’ll find a way to get coverage.”
Hunter nodded once. “If he doesn’t get coverage, you call me, do you understand?”
She leaned up, kissed Hunter’s cheek. “Completely.”
Noah stood, his heart unsteady. With Hunter, Eve was unfettered and made Noah realize how much of her guard she maintained with him. But he’d promised to give her time and space. “I’m going to catch an hour sleep. Don’t leave without me.”
Wednesday, February 24, 9:00 a.m.
Noah gave Jack a short nod when they sat down with the rest of the team in Abbott’s office. An hour of sleep had made a little difference. At least he could think again.
They were waiting for Abbott, who was still in a meeting with the brass. Noah didn’t envy his boss a penny of his medium-sized salary at the moment.
There was an awkward silence as they waited. Micki and Olivia looked at him and Jack with concern. Olivia’s partner, Kane, looked as if he realized he’d missed something, but wasn’t going to push it because he trusted his partner to fill him in later. Olivia and Kane had one of the best working relationships of any of Abbott’s staff. Noah envied them.
Ian had been at Rachel’s scene and had worked the rest of the night. He looked like hell. The only one at the table fully rested was Carleton Pierce, but even he frowned as he checked each face around the table.
“What’s happened?” Carleton asked. “And I’m not talking about the investigation.”
“We were too late getting to the victim’s house last night,” Noah said. “She was already dead, by forty minutes.”
Carleton’s brows knit. “Who found her?”
“I did,” Olivia said. “And I missed the killer by ten minutes.”
“I don’t understand. How did you know where to look?”
“We got another tip,” Jack said tightly. “From our CI.”
“He knows, Jack,” Noah said. “Carleton, I know that you went by to see her last night. We were able to figure out which of the test subjects was next, but we got our signals crossed and now Rachel Ward is dead.”
“I see,” Carleton said, glancing at Jack’s stony face. “I wish I didn’t.”
Abbott came in then. “Tell me we have something, people.” He closed the door, his face almost as stony as Jack’s. “At least balm for that ass kicking I just took. Ian?”
“I finished the autopsy. The victim had a blood alcohol of 0.15.”
“Whoa,” Micki said. “That made her damn near pickled. But I’m not surprised. We found a vodka bottle under the seat of her car. She’d drained it dry.”
“The ket blood test isn’t back yet,” Ian said, “but I found no puncture wounds on her neck. I did find the same swelling around her elbows that Christy had, so I’m betting he used a straitjacket again. No defensive wounds on her hands, although there were ligature wounds at her ankles. She was tied to a chair while her feet burned.”
Noah remembered. The smell in the place. Burning flesh. It still made him nauseous.
“He burned her feet?” Carleton said, hushed. “My God.”
“Burns on feet and calves,” Ian said. “Urine came back positive for amphetamines.”
“Did she self-administer,” Abbott asked, “or did he give it to her?”
“There was only one needle mark. I think he gave it to her to counteract the booze.”
“He wanted her alert,” Micki murmured.
“So he could scare her senseless with fire,” Jack said. “I checked her background. Five years ago her ex-husband found she’d been cheating on him, so he followed her to the motel where she met her lover and torched the place. The lover and two bystanders died. Rachel was trapped. She had severe smoke inhalation and almost died herself.”
“That explains the old lung scarring I found,” Ian said. “I wondered.”
“Where is the ex-husband now?” Olivia asked.
“State pen,” Jack said, “serving twenty-five to life. And he’s still there as of this morning. I had the warden himself check the man’s cell.”
“So this victim had a documented fear of fire,” Carleton said. “The killer could have assumed this was her greatest fear.”
“Or he could have these.” Noah put a stack of questionnaires on the table. They’d been delivered that morning. “Filled out when subjects began the study at Marshall.”
“May I?” Carleton reached for the questionnaires. “ ‘What is your greatest fear?’ ‘Why do you think you have this fear?’ Samantha feared being buried alive because…” He flipped to the next page. “Interesting. Her cousins buried her in the sand at the beach as a child and left her there, with a snorkel in her mouth to breathe from.”