Then when she was thirteen there was another terrifying incident. She was returning from a weekend with a friend’s family in Virginia, and had fallen asleep in the car. When she woke up she was groggy and confused and completely covered with blood. She remembered staring out into the gloomy darkness and slowly beginning to understand. There’d been an automobile accident while she was asleep. A man from another car involved in the accident lay in the street. He wasn’t moving – but Lizzie believed she heard him tell her ‘not to be afraid’. He said that she could stay on earth, or leave. It was her decision – no one else’s. She had chosen to live.
‘It’s my choice,’ Lizzie whispered in the blackness of the closet. ‘It’s my choice to live or die, not his. Not the Wolf’s. Not anybody else’s.
‘I choose to live.’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The next morning, just about everybody attached to the White Girl task force had been assembled in the main conference hall at Quantico. We hadn’t been told much yet, just that there was breaking news, which was good; there had already been too much bureaucracy and wheel-spinning for me.
Senior Agent Ned Mahoney from HRT arrived when the room was already filled. He walked to the front, turned and faced us. His intense, gray-blue eyes went from row to row, and he seemed more pumped up than usual.
‘I have an announcement. Good news for a change,’ Mahoney said. ‘There’s been a significant break. Word just came down from Washington.’ Mahoney paused, then he continued. ‘Since this past Friday, agents from our office in Newark have been monitoring a suspect named Rafe Farley. The suspect is a repeat sex offender. He did four years in Rahway Prison for breaking into a woman’s apartment, beating and raping her. At the time, Farley claimed that the victim was a girlfriend from where he worked. What alerted us to Farley is that he went into an Internet chat room and had a lot to say about Mrs Audrey Meek. Too much. He knew details about Mrs Meek, including facts about her family in the Princeton area, her house there, even the physical layout inside.
‘The suspect also knew precisely how and when Mrs Meek was abducted at the King of Prussia Mall. He knew that her car was used, what kind of car it was, and that the children were left behind.
‘In a subsequent visit to the chat room, Farley provided specific details that even we don’t have. He claimed that she was knocked out with a specific drug and then taken to a wooded area in New Jersey. He left it vague as to whether Audrey Meek is alive or dead.
‘Unfortunately, the suspect hasn’t gone to visit Mrs Meek during the period we’ve been watching him. It’s been nearly two days. We believe it’s possible he may have spotted the surveillance. It is our decision, and the Director concurs, that we take Farley down.
‘HRT is already on the scene in North Vineland, New Jersey, assisting the local field office and the police. We’re going in this morning, probably within the hour. Score one for the good guys,’ said Mahoney. ‘Congratulations to everyone involved at this end.’
I sat at my seat and applauded with the others, but I had a funny feeling too. I hadn’t been involved, or even known about Farley or the surveillance on him. I was out of the loop, and I hadn’t felt like this for over a dozen years, not since I started with the police department in D.C.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
A phrase from the briefing kept playing in my head: the Director concurs… I wondered how long Director Burns had known about the suspect in Jersey, and why he decided not to tell me. I tried not to be disappointed, or paranoid, but still… I wasn’t feeling good as the meeting broke up to huzzahs from the group of agents.
The trouble was, something felt wrong to me and I had no idea what it was. I just didn’t like something about this bust.
I was filing out of the room with the others when Mahoney came ambling up to me. ‘The Director asked that you go to New Jersey,’ he said, then grinned. ‘Come with me to the helipad. I want you there too,’ he added. ‘If we don’t break Farley down immediately, I don’t think we’ll get Mrs Meek back alive.’
A little less than fifty-five minutes later a Bell helicopter set down at Big Sky Aviation in Millville, New Jersey. Two black SUVs were waiting, and Mahoney and I were rushed to North Vineland, about six miles to the north.
We parked in the lot of an International House of Pancakes restaurant. Farley’s house was one point two miles north on Garden Road. ‘We’re ready to roll on him,’ Mahoney told his group. ‘I have a pretty good feeling about this one.’
I accompanied Mahoney in one of the SUVs. We wouldn’t be part of the six-man HRT team that would go into the house first, but we’d have immediate access to Rafe Farley. Hopefully, we’d find Audrey Meek alive in the house.
In spite of my misgivings, I was starting to get pumped about the take-down. Mahoney’s enthusiasm was contagious and any kind of action beats sitting around. At least we were doing something. Maybe we’d get Audrey Meek back.
Just then, we passed by an unpainted, off-white bungalow. I saw broken porch boards and a rusty car and camping stove in the small front yard. ‘That’s it,’ said Mahoney. ‘Home sweet home. Let’s pull over up there.’
We stopped about a hundred yards up the road, near a stand of red oaks and pines. I knew that a couple of surveillance agents in ghillie suits were already nestled in close to the bungalow. These agents did nothing but surveillance, and wouldn’t be involved in the actual bust. There was also a closed-circuit camera aimed at the bungalow and the UNSUB’s car, a red Dodge Polaris.
‘We think he’s sleeping inside,’ Mahoney informed me as we jogged through the woods until we had the ramshackle house in view.
‘It’s almost eleven in the morning,’ I said.
‘Farley works a late-night shift. He got home at six this a.m. His girlfriend’s in there too.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘What? What are you thinking?’ Mahoney asked as we watched the house from a thick stand of woods less than fifty yards away.
‘You said he has a girlfriend in the house? That doesn’t sound right, does it?’
‘I don’t know, Alex. According to surveillance, the girlfriend’s been there all night. I guess they could be the couple. We’re here. My job is to take Rafe Farley down. Let’s do it… This is HRT One. I have control. Ready! Five, four, three, two, one. Go. Go!’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Mahoney and I watched as the breech team moved quickly on the small, inconsequential-looking house. The six agents were outfitted in black-on-black flight suits and body armor. The side yard was littered with two more junked vehicles, a small car and a Dodge truck, and a lot of spare parts for appliances like refrigerators and air conditioners. There was a standing urinal out back that looked like it came from a tavern.
The house windows were darkened even though it was past eleven. Was Audrey Meek in there? Was she alive? I hoped that she was. It was a huge break if we got her back now. Especially since everybody thought she was probably dead.
But something about the raid bothered me.
Not that it mattered now.
There is no ‘knock and announce’ protocol when HRT is involved. No talking, no negotiating, no political correctness. I watched two agents breech the front door. They started to go inside the suspect’s house.