Vanished (13 page)

Twelve

S
irens sounded off in the distance and a vehicle screeched to life, peeling out of the parking lot.

Evelyn slid up and peeked out the window, trying to get a look at the car, get a license number. But it was too late. If the shooter had been in the car, he was gone.

In case he wasn’t, Evelyn slid low again, kept her SIG Sauer clenched tightly in her hand as she waited for the police to arrive.

It felt like hours, but was probably under a minute before the parking lot that had been bathed in darkness was flooded with flashing blue and red.

Still, she stayed crouched under the steering wheel until Tomas appeared at her window and opened her door. The force of his movement caused the rest of the window to crack apart, sending a shower of glass to the ground.

Tomas held his weapon, and the exhaustion she’d seen on his face back at the station was replaced by intense focus. “Evelyn, you hit?”

Stepping out of the car, legs shaking, Evelyn holstered her own weapon and examined the blood sprayed across her left hand. The blood had come from somewhere else.

Carefully, Evelyn touched her head, but found nothing. Then she gently touched the side of her face, and winced as pain pricked her cheek.

“You probably need to go to the hospital and get that cleaned out,” Tomas said. “Looks like the glass from the window got you. But I don’t see any other blood. I don’t think you were hit.”

Tomas put his weapon away. Behind him, his officers fanned out, some checking nearby cars, and others heading inside the hotel. “What the hell happened?”

“I was sitting in my car. I’d just finished reading a text—the documents expert confirmed that the paper from Brittany’s note matched the earlier ones.”

“Shit.” Tomas’s face sagged.

“Yeah. Anyway, I was about to get out of my car when the bullet hit the window. I don’t know...”

She cut herself off as a car squealed into the lot, going way too fast. She was reaching for her SIG when Tomas grabbed her hand.

“It’s Jack. That’s his personal vehicle. He’s off the clock.”

Sure enough, the big gray Buick came to a halt a few feet away and Jack hopped out, not bothering to properly park. He was in the same clothes he’d been wearing at the station. “Heard it on the scanner on my way home,” he said, sounding winded, as if he’d run over instead of driving.

Tomas nodded. “Evelyn was just telling me she was sitting in her car. I think she was about to say she didn’t get a look at the shooter.”

“I didn’t.” Evelyn shook her head. “I can’t even be sure where the shot came from. I heard a car take off at the same time as I heard the police sirens, though, so he was probably shooting at me from his car.”

“Did you see
anything
?” Jack asked, cringing as he studied her face.

“No.”

“So, we have nothing,” Tomas said. “I don’t want you in danger by being here. I hate to say it, but maybe you should be consulting from Virginia.”

“I’m not leaving,” Evelyn snapped. Then, calming her tone, she added, “Actually, in some ways this is good.”

“This guy turning your face into hamburger meat is good?” Jack asked, eyebrows raised.

How bad were her injuries? Evelyn resisted the urge to find a mirror. It didn’t matter, and looking at it wouldn’t change anything. “No. But the fact that someone shot at me means he’s scared and I’m on the right track.”

She glanced from Tomas to Jack, but neither seemed to have picked up on where she was going. “Think about it. Jack and I asked Walter Wiggins if we could search his house today. And I sure pissed off Darnell Conway.”

Tomas nodded thoughtfully. “So you’re saying the two of them just went even higher up the suspect list.”

“Well, they were already at the top, but yeah...”

“Except how would either of them know where you were staying? Or that you were going to be in the parking lot at—” Tomas squinted at his watch “—almost 5:00 a.m.?”

“The perp obviously knows how to stalk someone,” Jack said. “He must be damn good at it to have grabbed Lauren now, with the whole police force and a shitload of feds looking for him.”

“That’s an excellent point,” Tomas agreed. “Okay, so Walter or Darnell—”

“Wait a second,” Jack interrupted, glaring at Evelyn. “When did you piss off Darnell?” When neither she nor Tomas responded, he barked, “Did you question him again without me?”

“There was a little incident tonight,” Tomas said, then turned to Evelyn. “He’s going to find out eventually. She was looking around Darnell’s yard.”

Jack’s eyes widened. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Tomas put out his hands in a “calm down” gesture. “Listen, Jack, it was a bad move, but Darnell’s not pressing charges, so there’s no harm.”

“No harm?” Jack stepped right up to her, raising his voice enough that other cops turned and stared. “You’re destroying the chain of evidence everywhere you go, with every suspect! You’re going to blow this case to hell! What happens if it
is
Darnell or Wiggins, huh? If we prove it’s one of them, but we can’t convict because you’ve screwed the legality of the whole investigation?”

“Jack—” Evelyn began.

“You get pissed at how
I
want to approach suspects, just because I think going in hard and aggressive works, and you pull this shit? At least I stick to the book, so that when I
do
get an arrest, it won’t be thrown out!”

Tomas seemed about to speak, but Jack pivoted toward him. “My dad did things by the book, too. And you allow this? I told you she was a problem from day one. I want her out. And if you don’t take care of it, I’m making a formal complaint myself, and I’m taking it straight to the FBI.”

“Jack,” Evelyn tried again as apprehension took hold.

But he ignored her, slamming the door as he got back into his vehicle, and peeled away as fast as he’d arrived.

“Shit,” Tomas breathed.

Silently, Evelyn agreed. If Jack called her boss, he’d yank her out of Rose Bay in a second. And Evelyn knew if she refused to go, she might as well turn in her badge.

* * *

Evelyn’s eyes opened slowly, her eyelids scraping against her eyes like sandpaper. There was an odd taste in her mouth and her head throbbed. Exhaustion kept her trapped on the bed.

It took too much effort to roll over, and when she did, pain exploded through her cheek. She groaned, blinking to bring the alarm clock next to her bed into focus. Nine-thirty. Judging from the sunlight streaming through the slats in her closed shades, it was morning.

That meant she’d gotten about two hours of sleep after she’d driven back to her hotel from the hospital. Apparently it was long enough for the painkillers they’d given her to wear off, because her cheek throbbed and felt swollen to double its size.

When she’d finally been able to check out the damage in a mirror, she’d discovered Jack was right. Her cheek was torn up, tiny bits of glass embedded all over it. The doctors had told her she’d been lucky no glass had made it into her eye. They’d debrided her cheek, put some liquid bandage on the worst of the cuts and sent her on her way. They’d also told her she wouldn’t have any scars, but as she stumbled into the bathroom and glanced in the mirror, she found that hard to believe.

The injuries had swollen up while she’d slept, so if the police didn’t kick her out of the station this morning just on principle, she could probably scare suspects with a glance. Cringing at her reflection, Evelyn prodded gently at the worst of the cuts, and pain burst in the left side of her face. She knew the doctor had gotten it all, but it felt as though there was still glass under her skin.

Trying to push back the pain, she splashed water on the right side of her face and downed two more painkillers. Then she threw on the clothes at the top of her suitcase as she tried to do the math in her head. Brittany: sixty hours missing. Lauren: twelve and a half hours missing. Which equaled no time to get any more sleep.

She needed to head to the station. Her plan was to continue as normal and pray that Jack hadn’t followed through on his threat.

But the thought of arriving at the station and being ordered to pack up and return to Virginia made her nauseated.

Evelyn sank onto the edge of her bed and grabbed her phone with hands that shook—from lack of sleep, she told herself. It might even have been true.

What she should’ve done was called Dan at BAU and explained what had happened, then beg forgiveness before he heard anything from Jack. Instead, she found herself dialing the number for the nursing home where her grandma lived.

When the receptionist picked up, she said, “It’s Evelyn Baine. How’s my grandma today?”

“She’s been missing you the past few days. Today she’s not at her best, but she’ll know you. You want to talk to her?”

“Yes, please put her on.”

Her grandma’s dementia had been worsening for more than a decade. Some days, she was sharp as ever, but more and more, she was losing memories. Her short-term memory was mostly gone and Evelyn knew her long-term memory was going, too. Evelyn wasn’t religious, but in case there was a God, every day she prayed for more time.

“Evelyn,” her grandma said a minute later when she came on the line.

Her voice was different, slightly uncertain, which Evelyn knew meant she was confused and didn’t understand why. But at least today, she recognized Evelyn. In the past few years, she’d begun to have periods when she couldn’t remember her granddaughter, didn’t know her husband was long gone and her only daughter a drunk neither of them had seen since Evelyn was a teenager.

She wished, as she always did, that she could have the grandma who had raised her back. That she could’ve had more years with the woman who’d pulled Evelyn out of the hell of her childhood and made her who she was today.

“Hi, Grandma. How are you feeling?”

“Where are you, Evelyn?”

“I’m back in Rose Bay, Grandma.”

She was about to add “for a case” when her grandma said, “You’re over at Cassie’s house again? Honey, you’ve got to tell me when you go over there to play.”

It happened a lot, her grandma thinking it was some time in the past. But right now, when Evelyn needed her badly, it filled her with frustration. Guilt quickly followed. Her grandma had always been there for her. Now it was Evelyn’s turn.

She tilted sideways until she lay curled up on the bed. “Sorry about that, Grandma.”

“It’s okay, sweetie. You’ve got to try to remember, though, or Grandpa and I will worry.”

“I’ll try,” Evelyn whispered.

If you didn’t count her mother—which Evelyn didn’t—her grandma was the only family she had left in the world. Days like this made it hard for Evelyn to talk to her. Add searching for Cassie to the mix and she knew it was showing in her tone.

Evelyn pushed to her feet. “Sorry I forgot to tell you, Grandma,” she said, trying to sound upbeat.

“Just be home for dinner, will you? Ask Mrs. Byers if Cassie can come with you. I’m making strawberry pie tonight. I know it’s you girls’ favorite.”

A smile lifted the corners of Evelyn’s lips as a memory surged forward, of her and Cassie racing to her house for her grandma’s pie. She didn’t remember what they’d been doing that day, but they were carrying their shoes and they were mud-covered from their feet to their knees. Her grandma had just laughed as they’d splattered mud all over her clean floors in their hurry to get the pie.

Warmth filled her, and a sadness she felt more and more often as she watched her grandma’s decline. “I love you, Grandma.”

“I love you, too, Evelyn. Don’t forget to ask Cassie’s mom before you bring her over.”

“I promise.”

“Okay. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Evelyn ended the call, wishing that was true. Wishing she could turn back time, back to the day Cassie had disappeared, and somehow warn her.

But of course, she couldn’t. All she could do now was help bring her home.

* * *

If ever there was a morning to start drinking coffee, it was now. Instead, Evelyn paid for her tea and raisin scone in the little coffee shop off the hotel lobby. Spinning for the door, she almost slammed into someone.

“Sorry!” she said, looking up to find it was Kyle. He was clad in camouflage pants and a dark T-shirt, a bag slung over his shoulder, probably stuffed with weaponry. It was 10:00 a.m., so he must’ve run late coming back from surveillance.

Heat rushed up her face as she remembered how she’d climbed onto his lap and fused herself to him a few hours earlier, then practically fallen off the bed when her phone rang.

He didn’t seem to notice her embarrassment. As soon as he saw her injured cheek, the exhaustion on his face disappeared and his eyes widened. “Evelyn, oh, my God.” He took her chin in his large palm. “What happened?”

Evelyn tried to shrug away from him. Beyond hoping it didn’t leave scars, she hadn’t really cared how her cheek looked until this second. “I think I’m getting close to one of my suspects. I scared someone yesterday. Now I just need to figure out who.”

She tried to step around him, but he blocked her way, gripping her arms. “That’s not an answer.”

“Someone shot at me last night.”

Fury lit his eyes and he studied her carefully. “You don’t know who?”

His intense scrutiny made her fidget. “No.”

“Where did it happen?” His forehead furrowed. “And what hit your face?”

“The hotel parking lot. I was in my car. It’s from the window.”

“
This
hotel?” Kyle asked, cursing when she nodded. “During the night last night?”

She could see him mentally berating himself for not being there, but it wasn’t his job to protect her. She was a federal agent. It was part of the job description that she might find herself on the receiving end of a bullet. At least this one had missed. “I’m fine.”

“This time.” Kyle spoke her fear. “What makes you think this person won’t try again?”

Evelyn shrugged, hoping to seem unconcerned. “The cops got here pretty damn fast. He was almost caught. Hopefully that’ll scare him off.”

She started to move again, but Kyle got in her way. “What if it doesn’t?”

“Well, there’s not a whole lot I can do about that, is there?”