Closer Than You Think (53 page)

He couldn’t hear their voices.
He thinks I’m rushing him to hurry
. ‘Kimble!
Help!
’

The door opened behind her and she heard Greg’s gasp. Colby reached over her shoulder and took a handful of the boy’s sweatshirt and dragged him forward.

‘
Kimble!
’ shouted Faith, wedging herself between Colby and Greg. ‘Agent Colby, you’re upset. You’re grieving. Do not do this. Do not throw your career away.’ She gave another shove, one hand on each of them. Greg managed to wrench himself from Colby’s grip and slam the bathroom door, locking himself inside.

Leaving Faith to face the enraged Colby alone.
Oh God
. Wild-eyed with grief, he grabbed her blouse, viciously hauling her to her toes.

‘Don’t
tell
me what to do,’ he hissed. ‘My partner is dead. And it’s that kid’s fault. And yours.’ He gave her a shake that rattled her to her bones. ‘We were stuck here protecting
you
.’

‘When I brought this all on myself?’ she asked with a calm she didn’t feel. ‘Is that what you want to say?’

‘No.’ His eyes filled with tears. ‘But he was my partner. My friend. Now he’s dead. He didn’t deserve this.’

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘He didn’t. I’m sorry.’ Tentatively she reached up, cupped his cheek. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Colby shuddered, the tears falling unchecked. ‘They gutted him like an animal,’ he whispered. ‘Like a goddamned animal.’

Faith left one hand on his face and with the other gently covered the fist gripping her blouse. ‘Agent Colby, you’re hurting me,’ she said softly, pressing on his fist firmly. ‘I don’t think you want to do that. I don’t think you’re that kind of man.’ The wild fury that filled his eyes began to dissipate, misery taking its place. Misery, horror, and shame.

He released her blouse and she eased down until her feet were flat on the floor again. ‘Thank you, Agent Colby.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he rasped. ‘Oh my God. I’m sorry. I . . . I’m sorry.’

She wasn’t going to say it was okay, because it wasn’t. ‘I’m not hurt,’ she said, keeping her voice non-combative. ‘You’re not hurt. Let’s leave this room.’ She took his arm and turned him toward the bedroom door, just as Kimble ran through it.

‘Tend to Greg,’ she told Kimble. ‘I’m going to make Agent Colby some tea.’

By the time she got him down into the living room, Colby was trembling. He closed his eyes as they passed the FedEx man, still sitting on the floor, but no longer in handcuffs.

Kimble must have freed him.
On my say-so
, Faith thought.
I guess we’re making progress
.

She guided Colby into the kitchen and up on to one of the bar stools. He buried his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking silently as Faith put the kettle on the stove and prepared his tea.

Kimble brought Greg through the kitchen on his way to the garage. Greg wouldn’t meet her eyes as he passed, embarrassed now that it was all over.

Kimble, on the other hand, stopped and held her gaze for a long moment. ‘Thank you,’ he murmured fiercely. ‘I got a few of your things. We need to go. Now.’

He had her laptop bag on his shoulder and carried the overnight case she’d left in Deacon’s bathroom. The sight of a big, brooding man carrying a Hello Kitty overnight case might have made her smile under any other circumstances.

‘Colby’s boss is outside. He’ll take over,’ Kimble said. ‘I just got a call from Meredith Fallon wondering where the hell we are. I explained, but we need to go now. Arianna’s already dropped off to sleep once. She’s refusing pain meds until you get there so she can stay awake.’

Spent, Faith followed him to the car and climbed down on to the floor next to Greg, who still wouldn’t look at her. ‘I might sleep on the way to the hospital,’ she said as Kimble pulled out of the garage. ‘So don’t worry about me if I don’t sit up when the coast is clear.’

‘I’d say you’d earned a nap, Dr Corcoran,’ he said gently. ‘I’ll wake you when we get there.’

Exhaustion pulled at her, but she fought it a moment longer. ‘Did you get Deacon’s coat?’

‘Yes, I did.’

Relief. ‘How?’

A chuckle. ‘I signed for it when I uncuffed the FedEx guy. It’s in the trunk.’

‘Won’t you get into trouble?’

‘Probably. I’ll open the box in Tanaka’s lab, just in case it’s a decoy package. But I owe Deacon. If I get into trouble, I’ll just be paying my debt.’

Cincinnati, Ohio, Tuesday 4 November, 11.15
P.M.

I blew it
, he thought in disgust. From the upstairs window of the house three streets away, he watched the sedan pull out of Novak’s garage and just knew Faith was in it.
They’re removing her. Taking her to a new safe house
.

Gutting the FBI agent had seemed like a good idea at the time, but this was what happened when he acted impulsively. If he’d just been patient, he could have drawn her outside by killing the boy when he opened the door to the FedEx man.

But he’d become impatient from too many hours of waiting for Faith to leave the house. When he’d seen the high-school punk approaching the house holding a big-ass bowie knife, he thought he could make something happen.

Of course, a high-school punk with a big-ass knife had been a wild card on which he hadn’t planned, an extra player over whom he had no control. So he’d taken the kid out of the picture. Luring the boy away before the patrolling Fed saw him had been the dicey part.

Killing the punk had been a piece of cake. Sneaking up on the Fed had been only a little challenging. He’d been watching the two men patrol and knew their patterns.

At least killing the Fed had been satisfying. And now he had a new gun. He could throw that old nine mil into the river.

But that was the only good that had come of the whole thing, because the ploy hadn’t worked. He’d been so certain that Faith would run outside to help a wounded FBI agent, but she was actually following instructions and staying indoors, the bitch. Now the place was crawling with FBI and CPD and Faith was being taken elsewhere.

This house was now useless as an observation point. He’d killed the old man who lived here for nothing. At least they wouldn’t find his body anytime soon, or the body of Greg’s classmate for that matter, the two of them stashed in the big freezer in the basement that the old guy had used to keep venison.

Luckily for him, it wasn’t deer season yet and the guy had eaten nearly all of last year’s hunt. There was plenty of room for both the homeowner and the kid who’d been stupid enough to bring a blade to Novak’s house.

Unfortunately, his own plan had backfired as abysmally as the punk’s had, with Faith slipping out of his hands once again. On the bright side, the cops would be chasing their tails for a while, trying to figure out who’d killed the Fed.

Giving me time to draw Faith out of wherever they’re taking her next
.

He’d have to come up with a different approach. She wasn’t risking her own hide for random strangers, but if he had the right lure, he could still force her to come to him. The kid would make good bait. Or Novak’s sister.

Or Corinne Longstreet
. Why hadn’t he thought of this before? He’d kept Corinne alive for his own enjoyment, but she might be more useful as the one carrot Faith would respond to. The one death she’d trade herself to avoid.

So go back to the cabin and collect Corinne
. He could drive out there and be back in four hours. He took a step away from the window, alarmed when he stumbled.
Shit.
How long since he’d slept more than an hour at a time?

He’d been going strong for days, but he had to face facts. His body would give out soon. He could handle driving the interstates if he drank a strong cup of coffee, but those twisting roads through the woods to the cabin were treacherous in the dark.

Getting caught by the cops because he’d wrapped his car around a tree was not going to happen. Although the irony would be almost too delicious.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Cincinnati, Ohio, Tuesday 4 November, 11.15
P.M.

‘Hell, hell, hell,’ Deacon muttered as he ended what he prayed would be his last call. He’d been on the phone since they’d left Indian Hill, Bishop at the wheel, her hands tightening on it with every new piece of bad news they’d had, starting with the shock of hearing that Agent Pope was dead.

Deacon still couldn’t believe it. The man – an experienced federal agent – had been killed.
Outside of my house.
Only yards away from Greg and Faith.

‘The second-to-last call was from Adam. He’s just getting Faith to the hospital to see Arianna. He wants you to be there if we can get there in time. Just in case Arianna will give a statement. He thought she might be more comfortable with you.’

‘What else did he say? What was that about Colby? He lost it?’

‘Completely. He tried to grab Greg and drag him outside to see Pope’s body – to show him the consequences of his prank.’

‘He tried to drag your brother out of a safe house?’

‘He wasn’t thinking of it as a safe house at that point, I guess. I didn’t realize he was so unstable when I called him about Greg and the school. I thought he’d redirect resources to look for the kid who’d threatened Dani. I never thought he’d go after Greg.’

‘Because you’re not irrational.’ She shook his head. ‘Where is Colby now?’

‘In custody.’ Deacon’s mouth tightened, his fury still boiling. ‘Adam said Colby grabbed Faith by her blouse and lifted her off her toes.’ Deacon was glad he hadn’t been home to see it.
I might have killed him
.

‘But Adam stopped him, right? Colby didn’t hurt her?’

‘She talked him down herself,’ he said in disbelief. ‘Then she made Colby a cup of tea.’

Bishop’s frown softened. ‘I’m liking her way more all the time.’

Me too
. That she’d put herself in harm’s way for Greg shouldn’t have surprised him. She’d been doing the same thing for kids for years, just in a different context. As much as her lack of self-preservation terrified him, he was grateful she’d protected his brother.

‘Who was the last call?’ Bishop asked. ‘The “hell, hell, hell” one?’

‘Vince,’ he said. ‘He received Jeremy’s prints from the Ohio Medical Licensing Board and they don’t match the print from the hairbrush found in the basement. Not even close.’

‘Damn,’ Bishop said, but without much heat. ‘That would have been too easy, though.’

‘I wish we could have gotten Stone’s prints.’

‘He was military. They would have taken prints. Can we pull them?’

‘If they still exist. Discharged vets can petition their prints be wiped from the database. Stone may have been wily enough to do that.’ He sent a text to Tanaka. ‘Asked for them.’

‘So Jeremy didn’t bury ten bodies in the O’Bannion basement and he didn’t try to kill Faith. But Stone’s still a suspect in both, although not in the murder of Agent Pope. Tell me about this kid who’s threatened Greg and Dani.’

‘Sixteen years old, always in trouble. Big, plays varsity football. Defensive lineman.’

‘So not terribly light on his feet,’ Bishop said. ‘Certainly no sprinter.’

‘He moved pretty slowly in the school security video that I saw. Apparently he was fairly popular, although at least some of that was via intimidation. Not so popular recently.’

‘Because Greg made everyone think that the kid’s HIV positive, which is scary, Deacon. Both that your brother thought up something like that and also that he’s got the skill to pull it off.’

‘Trust me, I know, but right now I’m not thinking about Greg. I’m thinking about the fact that a trained federal agent let a high-school kid get the drop on him.’

‘I was thinking that too,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Not wanting to disrespect Pope’s memory, of course. But, wow . . . 
that
was the guy they sent to guard Faith?’

‘I might have thought that too, but I checked his background when he was first assigned to Faith. Pope was Special Ops before he joined the Bureau.
Nobody
should have been able to get the drop on him, and certainly not with a knife. And certainly not that kid,’ he added. ‘So what if Pope’s murder wasn’t a cosmic coincidence?’

‘Meaning that he was killed deliberately by our guy?’ Bishop considered it for a moment. ‘It’s possible. Where is this kid now?’

‘In the wind. He’s skipped the last few days of school and the agents that went to retrieve him from his house say he wasn’t home. His parents claim they don’t know where he is either. The SAC put surveillance on his house and the houses of his friends in case he resurfaces.’

The Special Agent in Charge was ready to tear down the town looking for the kid who’d murdered one of his men in cold blood. Deacon knew he needed to have his thoughts in order before presenting an alternate theory at this point.

‘And the knife they found in Pope?’

‘Adam says it matches the description Greg gave him. The bully had been showing the knife around at school. He’d bragged that he’d stolen it from the sporting goods store.’

‘That’ll be easy enough to verify. If it
is
the boy’s knife, but it
wasn’t
a coincidence, how did the killer get the knife?’

‘Good question. I don’t know. Maybe I’m seeing conspiracies that aren’t there.’

Bishop shook her head. ‘Except that Pope was Special Ops and he shouldn’t have been taken by surprise. So if it was our killer, how did he do it? How’d he get the drop on Pope?’

‘Maybe he shot him first, like the Butler County sheriff’s deputy. Or maybe he drugged him.’ Deacon got out his phone. ‘I’m texting Washington a request for a tox screen on Pope.’

‘If it wasn’t the kid, we know it couldn’t have been Stone, Keith or Jeremy because they were with us at the time. That just leaves Combs plus whoever was in the basement.’

‘Who wasn’t Jordan, because his alibi checks out, or Jeremy, because his fingerprints don’t match, but could still be Stone or Keith.’ He scowled. ‘It’s like a damn jigsaw puzzle.’

‘There’s still Herbie the Third. Or even a Mr X. And we can’t forget about the woman who met Herbie at Maguire’s fake offices. Could be a woman who fired on Faith from that van on the bridge in Miami. If our killer has a partner, maybe
he’s
a
she
. Regardless, we’re looking at someone who squatted in the house for years, has good handyman skills and is a crack shot.’

‘And is strong enough to drag the Earl Power guy across the back of the O’Bannion house,’ Deacon added, ‘can sew stitches like a trained physician, and embalm like a mortician. And, importantly, had access to that damn will.’

Cincinnati, Ohio, Tuesday 4 November, 11.20
P.M.

Faith stood in the doorway to Arianna’s hospital room, using the moment it took to unzip her borrowed FBI jacket to center herself before barging in on the teenager. Her mind was still a little hazed from being woken from a deep sleep, her body aching from having taken that sleep while curled up on the floor of Kimble’s car.

But her discomfort was a drop in the sea compared to Arianna’s. Deep lines that hadn’t been there that morning radiated from the corners of Arianna’s pursed lips.
She looks my age
. The girl had refused her pain meds to stay awake, and this was the result.

Meredith Fallon, seated at Arianna’s side, stood as soon as Faith and Kimble entered the room, her eyes widening when she saw Faith. ‘Dr Corcoran, what happened to you?’

Faith looked down, astonished to see the front of her blouse streaked with blood.
Oh, right.
Agent Colby had grabbed here there. ‘It’s not my blood.’ It was Agent Pope’s. Colby’s hands had been covered in it. ‘If I can get some scrubs, I’ll cover up. And please call me Faith.’

‘I’m Meredith.’ Grabbing a clean hospital gown from a shelf near the door, she glared over Faith’s shoulder at Kimble. ‘You didn’t even let her change her clothes?’

Kimble opened his mouth, probably to make a smart remark. Or maybe to defend himself, but Meredith was having none of it. ‘Go,’ she said, flicking her hands toward the door. ‘Out.’

Meredith had pushed Kimble from the room, closed the door, and was dragging Faith’s blouse from her jeans before Faith could form a thought. Making a face, Meredith pulled on a pair of gloves. ‘Give me your blouse.’

Faith stared at her. ‘What? Why?’

‘It’s going in the biohazard bin. This is an ICU ward.’

‘Of course.’ Faith’s mind clicked back into place. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, stripping the blouse off and dropping it in the biohazard bag with a pang of sadness. That was the blouse she’d worn when Novak had . . . 
No, Faith. Not going there
. She shook her head hard. ‘We had a disturbance at my safe house. Kimble rushed me out and straight here and I fell asleep in the back of the car. I’m still a little cobwebby. Give me the gown.’

‘Um, no.’ Meredith’s nose crinkled. ‘The bra, too.’

Faith sighed. Blood had seeped through her blouse, speckling her bra. Popping the front clasp, she held the gown to her chest while she dropped the bra in the bag along with the blouse. ‘It was my nicest one, too,’ she murmured.

‘Sorry,’ Meredith said softly. ‘Arms in.’

Faith obeyed, allowing Meredith to dress her as though she were a child. She caught Arianna struggling to open her eyes and gave the teenager as bright a smile as she could muster. ‘Hi, honey. I’m sorry I’m late.’

‘Hold your hair,’ Dr Fallon ordered, stepping behind her to tie the gown.

Arianna’s dark eyes grew big as saucers. ‘What happened?’ she whispered, horrified.

Too late, Faith realized she’d neglected to cover the scar on her throat. She dropped her hair, instinctively covering her scar, but kept her voice warm and soothing. ‘It happened a few years ago. Nothing for you to worry about now.’ She allowed Meredith to drag her to the sink and scrub her hands, giving Arianna a helpless look that made the girl’s pursed lips curve.

‘Now you’re clean enough to sit in an ICU ward with a patient recovering from surgery,’ Meredith said crisply, but she put a gentle hand on Faith’s shoulder. ‘Kimble called while he was driving you over here and told me what happened. He said you stepped in front of a grief-stricken, out-of-control federal agent to keep him from abusing Kimble’s fifteen-year-old cousin.’

Faith wondered why Meredith had taken precious seconds to rehash Agent Colby’s meltdown. Until she saw a subtle change in Arianna. Minute relaxation, the lines of pain around her mouth softening.

‘You did that?’ Arianna asked.

Faith sat in the chair at the girl’s bedside. ‘Yes,’ she said simply.

‘Like you did for me.’ Arianna’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I thought it was a dream.’

‘Arianna woke with nightmares,’ Meredith explained. ‘By the time I arrived, she was a tad worked up. She’s a little unsure of what exactly happened last night.’

Faith noted the soft restraints still hanging from the bedrails. ‘A tad worked up’ really meant that Arianna had been thrashing so frantically that she’d been a danger to herself. The hospital never would have restrained her otherwise, knowing what she’d been through.

‘Waking up from nightmares is always disconcerting,’ Faith said. ‘But the fog you’re experiencing is normal. You’re not losing your mind.’ She watched Arianna’s gaze flick up at Meredith, who smiled and nodded as if she’d said the exact same thing.

‘I’m so damn scared,’ Arianna whispered. ‘I always kept clear before. I can’t go crazy.’

‘Before?’ Faith asked carefully.

‘Before Lauren’s family took me in.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I had a lot of uncles back then.’

Faith’s heart broke, but she kept her tone strong. ‘But you could always count on your mind to tell you what was real, and today you haven’t been able to do that. Well, don’t worry. Some of your confusion is shock from your injuries and some is a side effect from the anesthesia. It happened to me too, but at least I woke up to see my dad and stepmother and uncle, not two red-headed strangers.’

Dark eyes opened to lock on Faith’s face. ‘I remember that you covered me with your coat. Then you stood over me. You had a gun. I thought maybe you were going to shoot me. But then you said that no one would hurt me. That they’d have to go through you. Did that happen?’

Faith held Arianna’s hands. ‘Yes. I didn’t know if whoever hurt you would come back.’

Arianna’s brows knit together. ‘Why didn’t you
run
?’

‘I wouldn’t have left you. How did you get in the road? I mean, one second it was empty, then all of a sudden there you were.’

‘Dragged myself.’

Just like Deacon had thought.
‘From the power company’s truck?’

‘Yes.’ Her eyes shadowed. ‘I saw the man from the power company get shot, but I left him there. I left Corinne there.’ A sob broke from her throat. ‘
I ran away
.’

‘You ran to get help.’ Faith wiped the tears from Arianna’s face. ‘I was the one who called the power company and asked them to send the man out. Do you think I’m to blame?’

A slight frown, as if trying to make sure it wasn’t a trick question. ‘No.’

‘Then how can you possibly be? And a lot of people are looking for Corinne, because you got help.’ Faith brushed dark hair from Arianna’s damp forehead. ‘Don’t lose hope.’

Arianna’s face tightened on a spasm of pain, shuddering out a breath as the pain ebbed.

‘The nurse is going to make you take that medication now that Faith is here,’ Meredith said. ‘You should make good use of the time you have before you go back to sleep.’

‘Okay. I’m ready to talk about what happened now.’ Arianna dropped her gaze to the scar on Faith’s throat. ‘But first, tell me how you got that.’

‘All right. I used to counsel victims of sexual assault. Usually incest. But I also had to work with the people – mostly men – who’d hurt them.’