The Prey (8 page)

“Even if they didn’t know who you really are, I still worry about my friends. Anyone I know could be a target.”

“You have no friends. You’re a hermit.”

“That’s not true. I have friends.”

“Name one.”

“I can name two. Miranda and Olivia.”

“Your old roommates?” Peter sounded skeptical. “Do you keep in touch?”

“Of course,” she said, feeling a twinge of guilt at the lie. When was the last time she’d spoken to Liv? More than a year ago, though she had sent her an e-card for her birthday just last week, before all this happened. Miranda? She’d had a hard time after being booted from Quantico. An occasional note or postcard in the mail—nothing since Christmas. But Rowan didn’t blame her; Miranda was on a mission, one Rowan understood all too well.

“Rowan?”

“Sorry, woolgathering.”

“You don’t really have anyone to support you right now, do you?”

“I don’t need anyone. Really, Peter. I’m fine.”

“I doubt that.”

“Don’t.” She wiped some tears from her face, took a deep breath, and resolved to stand strong. “I—I love you, Peter.”

“I love you, too. Call me if you need anything.
Anything
.”

“I will. And Peter—be careful. Just in case.”

She hung up the phone and dialed Roger at his Washington home. She had to make sure her brother was kept safe.

John whistled softly as he and Tess walked up to the Malibu house. “Nice spread.”

“It’s not hers. A friend or something. She has a cabin in Colorado and is just in L.A. because her book’s being made into a movie.”

“You sound jealous,” John teased.

She shrugged and playfully hit him in the arm. “Not really. Maybe a little about the house and everything, but she doesn’t seem to be the happiest woman in the world, regardless of the money her books and movies are bringing in.”

Michael answered the bell, surprise in his eyes as he looked from John to Tess and back at his brother. “I thought you were in South America until the end of the week.”

“Wrapped up early.” He walked in, closed the door, and surveyed the surroundings. “Cush job, Mickey.”

“While you were sunning it up in Bolivia, I got the call.” Michael broke into a wide smile. “Glad you’re back in one piece, Johnny.” He embraced his brother, slapping him on the back in a bear hug.

“Me, too.” John stepped back, squeezed Michael’s shoulders and grinned. “It’s really good to see you.” He dropped his hands and looked around. Cold, sterile, artificial. He certainly wouldn’t want to live in this expensive tribute to minimalism. “Can you use help?”

Michael stood back, hesitating. John understood how hard it was for Michael to ask for his help. Tess, yes. Cops, yes. His older brother, no.

“Sure, always. I left a message for you, actually. Tess didn’t tell me you were coming back early.” Michael narrowed his eyes at Tess, but wrapped an arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head.

Their brief reunion was interrupted by a female clearing her throat. John turned his eyes to Rowan Smith for the first time.

He was surprised at his reaction. He wasn’t a first-sight-attraction kind of guy. But the impression he had of Rowan from her book jacket was nothing compared to the woman in person. She still had the rigid, distant look of her profiled picture. Elegant and classy. A blend of the 1930s temptress with the cool estrangement of a twenty-first-century professional. No doubt a beautiful, remarkably striking woman, but there was something more. Her intelligent, stormy blue eyes, watching and curious. John noted how she kept herself detached from them, her body turned at a slight angle, almost as if she were ready to bolt even as she looked him straight in the eye.

Captivating.

He glanced at Michael and saw the familiar look on his brother’s face. He was smitten. Michael glanced at him and frowned, almost imperceptibly. He probably considered John a rival—at least as far as Ms. Rowan Smith was concerned.

They stared at each other briefly, and John tried to judge how hard Michael had fallen. Without a doubt, his brother was in deep, but he seemed to be keeping his emotions in check. If John didn’t know Michael as well as he did, he wouldn’t see the competition in his eyes.

When they were in high school, they’d instituted the “First Sight Rule” to avoid fighting over girls. They were only a year apart and were frequently attracted to the same women. To keep the peace in the family, they had agreed that whoever saw the girl first had first right of refusal.

Not this time.

John dumped the rule then and there. By the look on Michael’s face, he knew it too.

I’ll make it up to him.

Besides, they didn’t have time for fun and games while a killer was on the loose. And protecting his family—and now Rowan Smith—was John’s number-one responsibility.

She stood outside the picturesque two-story white colonial, heart pounding, a light sheen of perspiration on her back. Her skin was clammy, and she wondered if she was coming down with something.

The house was familiar, but she’d never been to this part of Nashville before. She glanced at local Agent Tom Krause, a seasoned veteran she’d worked with on another multiple homicide in Tennessee two years before.

Mature trees, evenly spaced, grew tall on the recently mowed lawn. Trimmed hedges stood sentry, marking the bottom of every closed window, every blood-red shutter. Yellow crime-scene tape slashed the serene landscape, a stark reminder of what awaited her inside.

Rowan had walked through hundreds of crime scenes. She’d seen the worst that man could do to his fellow man. Gathering her emotions, she pushed them down as far as she could, deep down, behind her soul. But today, she was having a harder time separating herself from the crime scene. Somehow, this murder was different. Familiar.

She stood in the entry hall of the immaculate home. Clean, comfortable, expensive furnishings, polished wood. There was the general disturbance associated with law enforcement presence, but the house was otherwise neat as a pin. The smell of a lemon-scented cleaner mingled with the coppery scent she knew too well, the metallic taste of blood already in her nostrils, her mouth. She closed her eyes, gathering her strength.

Why was it so hard to proceed?

“Agent Smith, you okay?”

Tom’s voice cut through her hesitation. She snapped her eyes opened and nodded. “Of course, just thinking. Who were the victims?”

Tom glanced at his notepad. “Karl and Marlena Franklin and their children. Suspected murder-suicide, but the techs haven’t been through the scene except to photograph it.”

She nodded and continued to survey the surroundings. The bottom of the staircase landed in the foyer, curving elegantly as it approached the second floor. Displayed on the wall were pictures of a growing family, arranged step-by-step, year-by-year. The mother and father, dark-haired and blue-eyed, together. Together with an infant. Then an infant and a toddler. A toddler and a kindergartner. Two kids and a baby. Two kids and a toddler and a baby. Dark hair, blue eyes, attractive family.

Three boys and a baby girl.

At the top of the stairs was the last portrait this family would ever take together. Three boys, the oldest about twelve. A little girl, three, with dark pigtails and red ribbons in the hair.

Pigtails and ribbons.

Run!
Her mind screamed, but she was compelled to move forward. She heard Tom talking, but didn’t hear his words
.

Run!

Her feet were rooted in the too-familiar house.

The blood in the first room was confined to the bed. Oldest boy, Packers football fan, baseball awards on his shelves and walls. Second room, bunk beds, more blood. She smelled it, tasted it, breathed it into her lungs and gagged.

“Rowan.”

The voice was far away, and she put one foot in front of the other, leaving Tom behind.

“Rowan!”

She turned into the last door, knowing before she opened it what she would see.

The baby girl’s room decorated in pink and white frills, full of teddy bears and dolls. A picnic had been laid out on the floor, complete with a Babar the Elephant tea set and guests. A teddy bear, a giraffe, and Babar preparing to partake in the meal. Left from yesterday’s game.

An empty seat where the little girl would have sat.

Dani.

The little girl could have been sleeping. Would have been sleeping until her life was stolen from her. Blood soaked her white down comforter. Dear God, how could so much blood come from such a tiny person!

Pigtails.

Dani.

She screamed.

While drinking coffee in the dining room, John listened as Michael filled him in on the police investigation and the FBI’s role. Rowan had fallen asleep on the couch in the adjoining living room less than half an hour before. She’d looked exhausted when John first saw her, and he didn’t doubt that recent nights had been interrupted by the pressure the killer placed on her.

A moan escaped Rowan, and both he and Michael jumped up. They stared at each other for a moment, then John sighed and sat back down. “Your case,” he said, though he wasn’t sure he was making the right decision. Michael had been handling the security measures like the pro John knew he was, but whenever he looked at Rowan, a softness came over his face. A familiar expression, John thought, most recently seen when Michael was involved with that liar Jessica Weston.

Michael approached the couch cautiously as Rowan thrashed in her sleep. “Rowan,” he said softly.

Suddenly, she screamed and bolted upright, her face a mask of terror as she teetered between sleep and wakefulness.

“Rowan! Rowan! Wake up!” Michael sat behind her and pulled her nearly into his lap, grabbing her waving arms. Even across the room John saw how tense Rowan was, her arms locked and quivering, almost in an empty hug.

“Dani, Dani!” she cried in the midst of her nightmare.

“What’s wrong with her?” Tess asked, concerned, as she rose from the workstation she’d created in the adjoining alcove.

“Nightmare,” Michael said grimly.

Who’s
Danny
? John thought, frowning, his arms crossed over his chest as he rose from his seat.

Rowan quieted as Michael whispered nonsense in her ear and pulled her closer to him, patting her hair and smoothing it down her back. She shook from violent sobs, but no sound escaped.

“Rowan—”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She turned into Michael’s chest and her stifled sob tore at John’s heart.

But John had to get to the bottom of this. “Who’s Danny?” he asked, his voice harsher than intended.

Her head jerked up and she glared at him, her eyes red with unshed tears.

John ignored the signals Michael sent him to shut up. Something about this was important.

Rowan pushed herself away from Michael, reached to the small of her back, and removed her Glock from its holster. She checked the ammunition, put the gun back, and stood in the middle of the living room. John watched her control the terror of the nightmare, focusing instead on her obvious anger toward him. Why? He had only asked an obvious question. One Michael should have been asking instead of consoling her.

In the back of his heart, John wanted to wrap his arms around Rowan as well. But unlike his brother, he put sentiment on the back burner when lives were at stake.

“I need to call my boss. Ex-boss,” she corrected. “I—I had a memory of a case I worked on. My last case. I’m wondering if there’s some connection.” She shook her head and closed her eyes. “I don’t see how,” she said, almost to herself, “but why else would I dream of the Franklin murders now?”

“Franklin murders?” John repeated.

She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Brutal murder-suicide. Or so we suspected at the time. There were some doubts, but I wasn’t involved in the investigation. I need to see the file, though, and it’s not in the box of cases Quinn brought over.”

John nodded. He noted she grew composed as she became proactive. So different from the pain-filled woman who’d woken from a violent nightmare only moments ago.

“Who’s Danny?” John asked again. “One of the victims?”

She looked at Michael, not John, her eyes once again shielding pain he’d seen only a moment before. She shrugged. “Another case. I’ve spent most of the day reviewing crime scene photos and notes. Everything’s all mixed up. I don’t know what I was dreaming about.”

Dammit, John knew she was lying. She’d had a nightmare about Danny, whoever he was.

He sensed she wouldn’t go into any more details now. Maybe it
was
all mixed up in her mind. But there was something there, something he needed to pull out. Maybe something her conscious mind didn’t even realize was important.

“I’m going to call Roger,” Rowan said, and she left the room without a backward glance.

Michael strode over to his brother and poked him in the chest. “What the hell were you doing? Interrogating her? Couldn’t you see she’d just had a nightmare?”

John’s jaw dropped. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting, Mickey? There’s something trapped in that pretty little head of Ms. Smith’s, and it’s about time someone started asking the tough questions. Hell, I don’t think she even knows what it is. But we need to push, we need to get to the bottom of this. The FBI is on top of it because she’s one of theirs, but they aren’t here in this room, are they?”

“You’re doing it again,” Michael said.

John blinked. “What?”

“Taking over my case.”

John threw his hands up in the air, a rare outward sign of frustration, and stalked over to the dark windows that reflected Michael’s angry expression and Tess’s watchful eyes. This wasn’t a new argument.

“I’m not taking over your case, Mickey,” John said, though he itched to do just that. Michael had reasonable plans, but in John’s mind they sounded like they would take too damned long to implement. Maybe Michael was trying to coddle Rowan into opening up, but John was more of a straight shooter. He expected everyone else to shoot straight as well.