But I will not put my penis in this vile woman. I have not touched any of them like that. I do not know where they have been. I will take care of my needs later.
First I must punish this female.
I hit her over and over, faster and faster, and she’s screaming and crying. One last smack and the sawhorse falls over and she lies there, sobbing, her backside bloodied.
“Get up,” I tell her.
She doesn’t. I grab her and pull her to her feet. She cries out in pain and falls to her knees.
“You will crawl back to your cage,” I order her.
I raise the paddle.
She begins to crawl. I open the barn door and she crawls through the snow.
I smile.
Even the most stubborn females can learn to obey.
Even Lucy Kincaid.
EIGHT
Though after meeting Kate Donovan Noah didn’t think she was a viable suspect, he still took the time to clear both Donovan and her husband, Dillon Kincaid, of Morton’s murder first thing Friday morning. At his desk, he glanced through the reports and statements again. Their alibis were airtight—not only were they out of town, but they’d had dinner with the warden of Petersburg Federal Penitentiary on the night Morton was killed.
A rock-solid alibi didn’t mean that Kate hadn’t hired someone to ice the rapist. But nothing in her financials, or her husband’s, or Lucy Kincaid’s, indicated that they’d hired a hit man. Noah passed the financials over to an analyst for further scrutiny but didn’t expect to learn anything different.
It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that Kate knew the sort of guy who would take down a prick like Morton out of the goodness of his heart, but that was a stretch. Noah was a good judge of character. He generally believed the worst in people until they proved otherwise, yet Kate simply didn’t hold up as a cold-blooded killer. Had she known Morton was in D.C. and wanted him dead, Noah suspected she would have done it herself, and his body would have never been found.
Abigail walked in a few minutes after nine with two cups of coffee. “Didn’t know how you liked it,” she said, putting his cup down and dumping packets of fake cream and sweetener from her pocket onto his desk.
“Black,” he said. “And thanks.”
“Should you ever decide to bring me coffee, I drink mine light. Very light.”
“Duly noted.”
“Anything juicy? Smoking gun? Alibi didn’t check?”
He shook his head. “The Kincaids—Kate and Dillon—check out. Morton was killed with a nine-millimeter—Kate has her service pistol, a Glock .45, and a personal firearm, a .38 revolver. Her husband doesn’t have a gun registered to him. Lucy Kincaid is licensed to carry, owns a .22 and an H&K .45. Not that any of those facts means squat, considering their connections to RCK and law enforcement—and buying a gun on the street would be easy for anyone who knows even a fraction about the underground that Donovan does.”
Abigail laughed humorlessly. “It sounds like you want one of them to be guilty.”
“No, I just don’t assume that they’re innocent.”
“Whatever happened to ‘innocent until proven guilty’?”
He just stared. In his three short years with the FBI, most suspects were guilty.
Abigail shook her head. “Come on, Armstrong. Kate Donovan had nothing to do with Morton’s murder and you know it.”
“I’m inclined to agree.”
“Did Lucy Kincaid come in yet?”
“She called this morning and said she’d be in at ten.”
“I’m surprised Kate is letting her come alone.”
“I suspect that Lucy does what Lucy wants to do.” Noah didn’t think Lucy had faked her reaction when told that Morton was out of prison. It was too raw. He supposed she could be an extraordinary actress, but he didn’t see it. In fact, in Lucy he saw a rare quality: the inability to lie.
Half the night, he’d been thinking about what she’d said and how she’d reacted. She’d been on his mind when he woke this morning after four hours sleep. He’d come in early to finish reading the files and financials that had landed on his desk at eight a.m. And he’d done more research on Lucy Kincaid.
Out of all the suspects, had Lucy shot and killed Morton, she would have gotten away with it even if she’d called the police and confessed. No jury would have convicted her after hearing what she’d suffered at the hands of Morton and his sick partner.
Noah honestly didn’t know exactly what to make of Lucy Kincaid, which made her both suspicious and intriguing. Her FBI file was surprisingly thick—and he’d been able to access it only after Hans Vigo cleared him. Few people knew that she’d killed Adam Scott, pulling the trigger six times, emptying a .357 revolver into his chest. It disturbed Noah, showing him that she could and would kill if threatened.
Six bullets was overkill.
Except he hadn’t been there. And if he’d learned anything in the military, it was to avoid the shortsighted criticism of the politicians and media sitting high and mighty—and safe—in the states, second-guessing command decisions when they didn’t understand the immediate threat.
Morton had been killed with a single bullet to the back of the head. The point of impact told Noah that the killer knew exactly what he was doing and where to aim.
Executions were for betrayal or money. And depending on the criminal enterprise, they were carried out in a variety of ways. A single bullet suggested a calculated hit. It seemed impersonal. A hit or business.
Could Morton have been killed for a reason completely unconnected to his past criminal enterprises? Or by someone upset that he’d turned state’s evidence? Who had suffered when Trask Enterprises went down?
“Abigail, can you run a list of all Trask Enterprise employees and associates? Current address, records, anything you can get.”
“What are you thinking?”
“The method. Bullet to the back of the head. It’s cold and impersonal.”
“Kicking his balls wasn’t impersonal,” Abigail commented.
“Yes, but the killer, or killers, had privacy—the marina was deserted. No security cameras in the area. They could have beaten him to death. Tortured him. Shot every limb and made him suffer. If it was personal.”
“Remind me not to get on your bad side, Armstrong.”
“There’s one thing I don’t understand yet,” Noah continued. “Why was he here in D.C.? He had to have a reason. It seemed sudden and unplanned. Any word on the motels?”
“Still searching. If he used an alias, we’re screwed unless some manager recognizes him. We’re checking both his name and his cousin’s name.”
“What about someone who hasn’t checked out?”
“Already ahead of you. We’re working that angle.”
Noah’s instincts told him the reason Morton was in D.C. related directly to his murder.
The Denver field office was interviewing everyone who’d associated with Morton since his release. “No word yet from Guardino?”
“It’s eight in the morning in Denver. I’ll start nagging in an hour.”
Noah’s phone buzzed. “Lucy Kincaid to see you.”
Right on time. “Thanks, I’ll be right there.” He nodded to Abigail. “Let’s get this over with.”
Lucy was alone. Kate Donovan hadn’t won the lawyer battle. “Thanks for coming down, Ms. Kincaid.”
She nodded. Noah led her down the hall to a small conference room. Lucy was a very attractive woman and seemed more mature than her years—her twenty-fifth birthday was next month, but she had the air of a woman with experience and confidence, who didn’t let people push her around. At the same time, her body language—tight, controlled, with minimal facial expression—told Noah she kept her true self bottled inside, that her exterior was a shell. He’d seen that yesterday when she first walked into the dining room—how hard she struggled to rein in her outburst after learning that her sister-in-law had been lying to her for six years.