If you’re reading this, I’m already dead...

That’s the note seventeen-year-old Haley Cooke leaves behind when she disappears from inside her high school. FBI profiler Evelyn Baine is called in to figure out who had reason to hurt her. On the surface, the popular cheerleader has no enemies, but as Evelyn digs deeper, she discovers that everyone close to Haley has something to hide. Everyone from estranged parents, to an older boyfriend with questionable connections, to a best friend who envies Haley’s life.

Secrets can be deadly...

One of those secrets may have gotten Haley killed. If she’s still alive, Evelyn knows that the more the investigation ramps up, the more pressure they could be putting on Haley’s kidnapper to make her disappear for good. It’s also possible the teenager isn’t in danger at all, but has skillfully manipulated everyone and staged her own disappearance. Only one thing is certain: uncovering Haley’s fate could be dangerous—even deadly—to Evelyn herself.

Praise for the novels of Elizabeth Heiter

“A terrific, gripping, page-turning debut by a talented new voice in suspense!”

—New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan on Hunted

“This is a really excellent thriller—fast-paced and exciting!”

—New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann on Hunted

“Hunted is a nonstop, thrilling read that will leave you breathless, and Evelyn Baine is a sharp and gutsy heroine you’ll want to follow for many books to come.”

—New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen

“Want to read a top-rate thriller? Vanished had me turning page after page. Wow. When you talk about our most-promising new thriller writers, put Elizabeth Heiter on the list!”

—R. L. Stine

“Elizabeth Heiter does her research, and it shows in this superb FBI thriller. With a ripped-from-the-headlines plot and excellent characterization, Seized is a true winner. Don’t miss it.”

—New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison

“The riveting and virtually impossible to put down Seized establishes Heiter in the upper tier of thriller writers.”

—The Providence Journal

“Seized...is a taut thriller that could be torn from tomorrow’s newspaper headlines.... Heiter’s latest is a thought-provoking thriller by a rising star in contemporary crime fiction.”

—The Lansing State Journal

Stalked

Elizabeth Heiter

www.mirabooks.co.uk

This book is for Paula Eykelhof,

an incredible editor and an even more incredible person.

I am a far better writer for having worked with you.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the world of The Profiler! If you’ve already read the first three books in the series, thank you for returning. In this book, a teenager disappears, leaving behind a note foretelling her own death, and FBI profiler Evelyn Baine must unravel the girl’s secrets...before one of those secrets leads to her own death.

If this is your first visit to the series, Evelyn’s story began in Hunted, in which she tracked down a deadly serial killer known as the Bakersville Burier and learned just how deadly it can be to get inside the head of a killer. In the sequel, Vanished, Evelyn tackled the case she’d waited most of her life to investigate—the disappearance of her best friend—when the Nursery Rhyme Killer resurfaced after eighteen years of silence. After Vanished, the short story “Avenged” (free through my website) takes Evelyn Baine and her new boyfriend, HRT agent Kyle McKenzie, on an island trip together...but their vacation is interrupted when bodies begin washing ashore. And in the third book of the series, Seized, Evelyn tackles what looks like a routine investigation—until it lands her on the wrong side of a hostage situation and in the middle of an emerging terrorist threat.

Stalked marks new challenges for Evelyn and former HRT agent Kyle McKenzie, who’s now in a new role...with a partner you might remember from Hunted. I hope you enjoy following Evelyn and Kyle as they navigate their newly revealed relationship and two very different cases that may have a deadly connection.

After Stalked, I’ll be back with three more books in my romantic suspense series, The Lawmen! You can keep up with me and all the books, as well as get extras and join my newsletter, on my website at www.elizabethheiter.com. You can also find me on Facebook at Facebook.com/elizabeth.heiter.author and Twitter as @ElizabethHeiter. I love to hear from readers.

As always, my heartfelt thanks for reading!

Elizabeth Heiter

FBI TERMS AND ACRONYMS

BAU—Behavioral Analysis Unit. The BAU is where FBI “profilers” (the official name is Criminal Investigative Analysts) work. BAU is part of CIRG (Critical Incident Response Group) and is located at Aquia. BAU agents provide behavioral-based support to the FBI, as well as other federal, state, local and international law enforcement agencies, including profiles of unknown subjects (UNSUBs).

CIRG—Critical Incident Response Group. CIRG provides rapid response for crisis situations around the country and integrates tactical, negotiations, behavioral analysis and crisis management resources. BAU (Behavioral Analysis Unit) and HRT (Hostage Rescue Team) are part of CIRG.

ERT—Evidence Response Team. ERT agents are specially trained FBI agents who collect evidence at crime scenes. Being on ERT is a secondary position, so these agents also work regular Special Agent duties.

HRT—Hostage Rescue Team. Under CIRG (the Critical Incident Response Group), HRT is part of the FBI’s tactical response for crises. Unlike SWAT, their members work full-time as HRT agents and respond to incidents involving hostage rescue, barricaded subjects and high-risk arrests. Their motto is Servare Vitas (To Save Lives).

SA—Special Agent. Special Agents investigate violations of federal laws and assist state and local law enforcement. There are more than thirteen thousand Special Agents (as part of more than thirty-five thousand FBI employees).

SSA—Supervisory Special Agent. SSAs run squads. Each field office of the FBI has numerous squads, broken up by type of investigation—white collar, intelligence, civil rights, counterterror, violent crime, etc.

SWAT—Special Weapons and Tactics. All the FBI field offices have SWAT teams, and Special Agents who are SWAT members do so as an ancillary duty—in addition to work on a regular squad. SWAT agents handle high-risk tactical operations. Some police departments also have their own SWAT teams.

UNSUB—Unknown Subject. UNSUBs are targets of investigations where the person who committed the crime is not known by name.

WFO—Washington Field Office. The FBI has fifty-six field offices across the US and Puerto Rico, as well as approximately 380 Resident Agencies (smaller offices). The WFO and its connected Resident Agency have jurisdiction in Washington, DC, and northern Virginia.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

Dear Reader

FBI Terms and Acronyms

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Copyright

Prologue

“You’ve got to stop this.”

Her husband’s voice reached her slowly, as if from a great distance, even though she knew he was standing at the doorway to her daughter’s room. Instead of turning, Linda Varner continued methodically pulling things out from underneath Haley’s unmade bed.

A red-and-white cheerleading pom-pom. A bright pink sweatshirt Haley wore over everything. A stack of glossy magazines, dedicated to the things a teenage girl worried about, like how to know if a boy had a crush on her.

Linda suppressed a sob before it passed her lips. Still, she felt her body shudder and knew her husband had seen it.

“This won’t bring her home,” Pete said softly, in the kind of careful, muted tone usually reserved for funeral homes and grave sites.

Linda squeezed her eyes tight, bringing the sweatshirt up to her nose. She inhaled, hoping to breathe in some of the too-sweet vanilla scent her daughter loved to wear, but there was only a slight musty smell.

How could Haley’s perfume have faded so quickly?

Linda sat there, the sweatshirt crumpled against her nose, her body hunched protectively, until she heard her husband sigh and walk away. Only then did she open her eyes and look around Haley’s room. Everything seemed so untouched. The police had been careful not to disturb anything, wearing their sterile gloves and their solemn expressions as they’d searched for some hint of where Haley could be.

Linda glanced back at the doorway. It was empty.

Pete would be back later. They did this routine every night. He’d give her another hour, then he’d coax her to bed. Some days she’d stand and follow him willingly; when she felt glued to the floor, he’d carry her. Then he’d hand her a glass of water and those pills her doctor had prescribed and she’d dutifully swallow two, let the blackness consume her.

Pete had stood by her. She knew it hadn’t been easy—that she hadn’t been easy to live with lately. But he could only share so much of the loss. He loved his stepdaughter, but he’d only been in her life for a few years.

“Where are you, Haley?” Linda whispered into the stillness.

Today marked exactly a month since her daughter had gone missing. Since Haley’s boyfriend, Jordan, had dropped her off at school for cheerleading practice. Since her best friend, Marissa, had waved to her from the field on that unusually warm day, watched her walk into the school, presumably to change before joining Marissa at practice.

She’d never walked out again.

When she hadn’t reappeared, Marissa had been sent to the locker room to get her. Only she hadn’t been there. A search of the school hadn’t turned her up. Now, thirty days later, they still hadn’t found her.

How did a teenage girl go missing from inside her high school? No one could answer that for Linda. As time went by, the cops seemed to have fewer answers and more questions.

But Linda knew. She knew with some deep part of her she could only explain as mother’s intuition that Haley was out there somewhere. And not buried in an unmarked grave, as she’d overheard two cops speculating when day after day passed with no more clues. Haley was still alive. Linda knew it. She was alive, and just waiting for someone to bring her home.

So every day, Linda forced herself out of bed, dressed in her most professional clothes and a heavy layer of makeup to hide the haggard signs of grief and went to the police station for an update. When she finished there, she talked to the news channels, begged them to do another feature or even a small mention of Haley, so she wouldn’t be forgotten. So people would keep searching for her.

Then she moved on to social media, the places her daughter had visited and which she’d never had any interest in until now. Each day, she posted two new messages. One requesting any information about her daughter’s whereabouts, which was shared thousands of times because of all the press. And one directly to her daughter, letting Haley know she’d never give up, never stop looking.

Only at night, after she’d shown the world how strong she could be, did she come here, and indulge her weakness. Her fears.

Why wasn’t there more information? Why hadn’t anyone spotted her and come forward? How could a seventeen-year-old girl just disappear?

Linda clutched the sweatshirt tighter, feeling the sobs well up again. She fell against Haley’s bed, trying to hold them in, and the mattress slid away from her, hard enough to move the box spring.

Linda slipped, too. Swearing, she sat up, then froze as the edge of a tiny black notebook caught her attention.

The book was jammed between the box spring and the bed frame. The cops must have missed it, because she’d seen them peer underneath Haley’s mattress when they’d looked through the room, assessing her daughter’s things so matter-of-factly.

Linda’s pulse skyrocketed as she yanked it out. She didn’t recognize the notebook, but when she opened the cover, there was no mistaking her daughter’s girlie handwriting. And the words...

She dropped the notebook, practically flung it away from her in her desire to get rid of it, to un-see it. She didn’t realize she’d started screaming until her husband ran into the room and wrapped his arms around her.

“What? What is it?” he kept asking, but all she could do was sob and point a shaking hand at the notebook, lying open to the first page, and Haley’s distinctive scrawl.

If you’re reading this, I’m already dead.

1

Kyle McKenzie leaned across the table in the tiny Italian restaurant with the dim, romantic lighting, and said in a too-calm voice, “I start my new job at the Washington Field Office tomorrow.”

Evelyn Baine felt the same surge of regret she always felt when this topic came up. “I’m glad they had a spot open up for you there.”

They both worked for the FBI, her as a profiler in the Behavioral Analysis Unit, and Kyle, up until a month ago, as an operator for the Hostage Rescue Team. He’d been off work since taking a bullet on a mission. She’d known how risky the mission was and couldn’t help but think she hadn’t pushed hard enough to stop HRT from going in. Now here they were. Kyle pretending he was okay with leaving the job he’d loved. And her pretending she didn’t feel guilty as hell over it.

He shrugged his good shoulder, the one that hadn’t been torn up by a bullet. “Yeah. I’m surprised I got it, but I wanted to stay close. To you, of course, and...”

He trailed off, but she knew the rest, anyway. He wanted to be close to his old team. The FBI’s Washington Field Office was only a forty-five minute drive—with a siren—from Quantico, where HRT was located.

Evelyn worked in Aquia, the town right beside Quantico, herself. The entire time she’d been at the BAU, she’d gotten used to Kyle making the eight and a half-mile drive to see her at her office. He’d pretended he wasn’t coming to see her. But everyone around him had seen through it. Eventually, so had she, and she’d decided to act on it. Now, they’d been dating for six months, and even though she saw him more often, she’d missed seeing him at work, missed their old office banter, over the past month.

He missed the team. She knew it, even if he wasn’t saying it out loud. As an HRT agent, he got sent out on critical missions—everything from stopping a prison riot to rescuing hostages from inside a survivalist compound to assisting with overseas rescues in war zones. The rest of the time was spent training for those missions. It was completely different from being a regular Special Agent.

She wasn’t sure if he’d be able to return to that life. She couldn’t imagine doing it herself, even though she’d worked in a Violent Crimes Major Offenders squad for six years before coming over to the BAU.

She stared across the candlelit table at him now, seeing the tension he was trying to hide. Maybe he could go back to HRT someday. But more likely, his career was going to head in a different direction.

She fiddled with her napkin, reflexively looking at the door of the near-empty restaurant as it opened. Until very recently, she and Kyle had hidden their relationship. It felt strange to be out in public, in Virginia, where someone from the FBI might see them.

Ironically, they’d only been able to officially tell the FBI because he no longer worked in the Critical Incident Response Group, which included both the BAU and HRT. He’d wanted to announce it from the start. She’d been sure that would mean reassignment for one of them. And she didn’t have quite two years in at the BAU—where she hoped to stay until mandatory retirement, which was still twenty-seven years away.

She gave him an embarrassed smile when she realized it was just another patron that had drawn her attention to the door. Some habits were hard to break. “This feels weird.”

He smiled back at her, making crinkles fan out from his ocean-blue eyes, and the slightest hint of dimples dent his cheeks. “Maybe you enjoy your secrets a little too much.”

Maybe he was right. She’d always been a private person, and in an office full of profilers, keeping anything to yourself wasn’t easy. It was ingrained in them the same way it was in her: assess everyone you meet, try to see through the mask to what was underneath. Dig up those secrets.

She tried to relax, unbuttoning the loose-fitting suit jacket she’d worn straight from the office. It hid the SIG Sauer she always kept strapped to her hip, but didn’t exactly scream “date clothes.”

When the restaurant door squeaked open again, and she instantly looked over, Kyle twined his fingers through hers across the table, and the light contact brought her attention back to him.

“What do you say we get dinner to go?”

His big, calloused hand seemed even paler wrapped around her tiny, darker one. So different, just like their personalities—but somehow they worked.

She nodded, but before she could add, “Let’s go,” her phone buzzed from her pocket.

She pulled it out, but the instant she saw Dan Moore’s name pop up, she regretted grabbing it. Her boss calling her at nine at night meant a new case had come in, one that couldn’t wait.

Six months ago, she’d been his go-to agent for urgent cases, because she didn’t mind the late-night calls. Hell, she lived for the job.

But right now? With Kyle McKenzie’s deep blue eyes staring back at her? “This better be good,” she muttered before answering, “Dan? What’s up?”

“Remember the case file that made the rounds in the office last month?” Dan replied without preamble. “The missing teenager?”

“Right,” she said slowly. She’d been through fifty cases since then, but that one stuck out.

A seventeen-year-old girl last seen walking into her high school had gone missing, no signs of foul play. The BAU had passed the police file around the room, but there hadn’t been enough to go on to give a solid profile, and they hadn’t been able to spare a profiler for more in-depth involvement.

“Did they find her?” Evelyn asked.

“Would I be calling you if they had?” Dan snapped, then said, “Sorry. Look, we told the police department this was probably a stranger abduction since no body had turned up, and the noncustodial parent hadn’t run. But now they have a note, suggesting the kidnapper was someone in the girl’s life, after all.”

“Okay,” Evelyn said slowly as Kyle unthreaded his hand from hers and walked over to the waiter. Undoubtedly he was ordering food to go, knowing their evening had just ended.

“So, if it’s someone in her life, shouldn’t—”

“Yeah, normally that would make it more of a straightforward police matter. But we can spare a profiler for a week or so, and the note was disturbing. The girl left it herself. She predicted her own death.”

Evelyn let the words sink in. “They have a body?”

“No. Still no sign of the girl. But the mom is hysterical, and she’s gotten close with the local news stations. The police need help getting in front of this.”

“If she predicted her death, there’s more to the case than it seemed.”

“You got it,” Dan agreed. “Detective Sophia Lopez is expecting you.” He hung up, as details of Haley Cooke’s missing-persons case came back to Evelyn.

“Nice talking to you, too,” Evelyn muttered. Her boss was usually terse—at least with her—but lately he’d been abrupt with everyone. She tucked her phone into her jacket as Kyle returned with to-go bags of food.

“Duty calls?” Kyle guessed, glancing around the still-empty restaurant. “I guess our big debut night on the town will have to wait.”

She nodded ruefully. Apparently they weren’t the only ones who had been hiding something from the people around them.

So had Haley Cooke, the seventeen-year-old girl whose background had revealed a popular, straight-A student whose most dangerous pastime seemed to be standing on top of a cheerleading pyramid.

What had she gotten involved in that she thought would get her killed?

* * *

The Neville, Virginia, police station looked interchangeable with hundreds of other stations Evelyn had been to in her BAU tenure. But the detective standing in front of her in figure-hugging blue jeans and an elbow-length red blazer better suited to an afternoon luncheon than hiding the Glock at her hip definitely didn’t resemble the average police officer.

“Detective Sophia Lopez.” The woman held out her hand, complete with deep red polish, and stared expectantly at Evelyn. She was already tall—topping Evelyn’s petite five-foot-two by at least eight inches—but a pair of high-heeled boots gave her an extra boost. Her long, dark hair dangled in a loose ponytail that seemed impractical for crime scenes, and her bright red lipstick looked out of place in a police station. But her intense stare was 100 percent cop.

“Special Agent Evelyn Baine,” she replied, shaking firmly.

To the mostly male officers around them, they probably seemed to have a lot in common. Two women in law enforcement—one biracial and the other Latina—giving the typical first-impression handshake. Hard, so the other person would know they weren’t to be messed with. Matched with solid eye contact, projecting seriousness.

But if Sophia’s clothes were similar to a clerk at a trendy boutique, Evelyn dressed more like the male officers, in a baggy, solid-black pantsuit. Her heels were always under two inches; enough to give her a little extra height, but not so high she couldn’t run in them. While Sophia seemed to want to stand out, Evelyn liked to blend in—hide in the background where she could watch and analyze everyone.

She studied the detective in charge of the Haley Cooke case, taking in the incongruities, trying to decipher her from just a greeting.

She didn’t just profile the predators, although that was in her official job description. To do it well, she also had to figure out the personalities of the other law enforcement officials on the case. Figuring them out fast made for an easier working relationship, usually a better reception to her profiles. Especially since the head detective wasn’t always the one requesting her presence. Often, that pressure came from above, such as a police chief or a mayor, and usually because of media attention.

As Evelyn tried to work an instant profile, Sophia’s steady stare broke, a wide grin stretching across her face and making all of her uneven features seem to come together. “All right. That’s enough posturing. We’re both hard-asses and we both know it. Come on. I’ll show you what we’ve got on the Haley Cooke case.”

She spun, striding down the hallway at a pace that had Evelyn jogging to keep up.

At the end of the hallway, Sophia shoved open a door and ushered Evelyn into a room the size of a janitor’s closet. It smelled like a janitor’s closet, too, as though it had been used to store cleaning products until very recently. The scent of bleach made Evelyn’s eyes water, and she blinked it away before taking in the pictures and timelines tacked to every available wall space.

Sophia pushed back a pair of chairs and a small folding table that took up most of the room. “I know. It’s a pathetic amount of space to devote to the investigation of a missing teenager. But it’s what I’ve got. So I work with it.”

Evelyn nodded, not saying this was more space than she’d expected, given that the case was a month old and the leads were nonexistent. Then again, Neville, Virginia—home to approximately ten thousand people in the summers and thirty thousand when the local university was in session—probably didn’t see very many missing-persons cases.

The BAU, on the other hand, was inundated with countless missing-persons investigations. Rarely did Evelyn consult on a case with only one victim. But every so often, one would come along where the investigation was getting nowhere, and if the perpetrator was a stranger, a profiler could change everything. A regular investigation would struggle to find a kidnapper who had no connection to the victim’s life, but a profiler could do it.

“You want me to put that in our fridge?” Sophia asked.

Evelyn glanced down at the Styrofoam take-out container still clutched in her hand, dinner she hadn’t had a chance to eat. “Thanks,” she said, handing it over as her stomach growled.

After Sophia left the room, Evelyn spun in a slow circle, studying the images thumbtacked right into the drywall. At the center of most of them was Haley Cooke. Seventeen years old, a junior at Neville High School. The media loved to refer to her as “all-American.”

Blonde, blue-eyed, with a smile on her face in every picture Evelyn had seen. People probably couldn’t help returning that smile.

Evelyn had a sudden flashback to another blond-haired girl, one who’d never had the chance to grow up. Cassie, her best friend, whose disappearance had sent Evelyn into profiling. Was this how she might have looked if she’d made it to seventeen?

Evelyn pushed the bittersweet thought aside and focused on Haley. Her routines, her relationships, her personality—they would all contribute to Evelyn’s victim profile. That would help her figure out who could have grabbed her.

“Loved by everyone” was another thing the media constantly repeated about Haley. Whether it was because her mother had cozied up to all the local news stations or because the complete lack of clues had captivated the country’s interest, Haley’s face had become very well-known.

Which made it even more unusual that no one had seen her since she’d walked into that high school a month ago. Unless she’d never come out because she’d been killed there. But if that was true, surely they’d have found a body by now.

The case was bizarre. Although the BAU specialized in bizarre, this one had given Evelyn a bad feeling from the moment she’d seen the case file. A beautiful young teenage girl goes missing without a trace. The ending wasn’t usually positive.

From the limited information in the case file a month ago, there’d been no way to give a solid profile, but her gut had screamed “stranger abduction.” Since Haley had predicted her own death, though, it seemed her gut had been wrong.

“Here,” Sophia said, and Evelyn turned to find the detective holding out a flimsy cup. The smell of overcooked coffee filled the small room.

Instead of telling Sophia she didn’t drink coffee, Evelyn smiled her thanks and took the scalding-hot cup. “Why don’t you give me the highlights? And let’s look at the note the mother found. Can we confirm Haley wrote it?”

“Haley’s mom says it’s her daughter’s handwriting.” Sophia perched on top of the folding table, making it creak loudly underneath her. “Most of what we know you’ve probably already seen on the news. It’s as though someone plucked her out of thin air. Poof. Gone. Forensics is giving us nothing at the scene.”

“Who else was around?”

“Her boyfriend drove away after he dropped her off, and the cheerleaders on the field saw him leave. Otherwise, there was a coach on the field, and some students in the library with a teacher. None of them saw her inside, and no one saw her leave the school, but when her friends went inside, they couldn’t find her.”

“What about other exits?”

“Yeah, there are others, but the way the school is situated, it’s not likely she could have left without being seen. You’ve basically got the front entrance—where Haley was dropped off—near the main road. On the right side, you’ve got the field where the cheerleaders were practicing. They can see the front entrance from there. Then, on the left, you’ve got another open field the school uses for soccer and other sports. That one butts up against a neighborhood. Some wooded area in between, but not much. Then the back—faculty parking, service entrance. Probably the least visible, but that leads out to a side street. No one saw Haley leave that way, either, though they might not have. Still, it happened fast for an abduction.”

When Sophia took a breath, Evelyn cut in. “How far were the locker rooms where she was supposed to be from the back entrance?”

“Not close. Someone would have had to know exactly where she was, gone in and grabbed her and then subdued her fast, without making noise. The library is fairly close to the locker rooms, at least close enough that they surely would have heard if Haley screamed. Then...this person would have needed to carry Haley out without anyone seeing. Doable? Maybe. But unlikely.”

“Either someone was prepared to take that kind of risk, or Haley went willingly, at least at first,” Evelyn said. “What do you make of the note?”

“Ah, the note.” Sophia swiveled on the table and pulled the evidence list out of the box. “One sentence.”

Evelyn took the list and looked at the description for the last item, the notebook. The matter-of-fact words sent pinpricks down her spine. “‘If you’re reading this, I’m already dead.’”

“Yeah. Ominous.”

“And there was nothing else in the notebook? No other information?”

“None. We even checked for indentations in case she’d written more and then torn the pages out, but there’s no indication of that.”

“Did you run the note for prints?”

“Yep. We found Haley’s prints. And Linda’s—Haley’s mom. That’s it.”

“And the mom just found it today?”

“Yes. Between the box spring and the bed frame.”

“So, you guys missed it when you checked the room?”

Sophia frowned.

“What I’m asking,” Evelyn clarified, “is could it have been put there after Haley went missing? Could it have been planted?” For a case this high profile, a month was a long time for such a key piece of evidence to go unnoticed.

“I don’t know. We checked under the mattress. Could we have missed it? Yes. I mean, it was jammed in an odd location. And we were there to learn more about Haley. We were looking for any hints of what could have happened, get a sense of her personality, her secrets. We weren’t taking everything apart—we were trying to be sensitive to the family. Could the note have been put there after we searched the room? That’s also possible. But if someone planted the note, then why?”

“Attention,” Evelyn suggested. She’d seen it before, sometimes a misguided attempt to get more manpower on a case, and sometimes just to get the victim’s family back in the limelight. “The girl’s mom has been on the news—”

“Exactly,” Sophia agreed. “Linda Varner doesn’t need a stunt to get more attention for her daughter’s case. The woman quit her job. She does nothing but try to get resources for this. But it’s all about finding Haley. She wouldn’t plant evidence that might lead us in the wrong direction.”

“You sure?”

“You’re the profiler,” Sophia said. “But speaking as a cop—and a mother myself? Linda Varner appears to be the devastated mother of a missing child. Do they sometimes do things they shouldn’t, trying to make sense of what they’re going through? Sure. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. Linda knows I’m working the case. I talk to her every day.”

“Every day?” Evelyn interrupted.

“Yep. Every single day, she shows up here, regardless of how many times I tell her I’ll call if I have anything new. We might as well have a standing appointment. And anyway, Linda confirmed the note was written in the daughter’s handwriting.”

“The mom—”

“It’s not Linda’s writing,” Sophia broke in. “Could she have gotten someone else to write it? I guess so, but then we’re looking at a conspiracy.”

Evelyn nodded. Conspiracies were relatively rare. The simplest explanations were most often the real ones.

“So, even if we think someone else put it there, Haley still wrote it.”

“Which leaves us at the same place.”

“Right.” Sophia’s shoulders slumped, and Evelyn suddenly saw the dark circles underneath the detective’s heavy-handed concealer.

The dark circles weren’t all from this case, either, and Evelyn realized Sophia was older than she’d initially thought—probably nearing forty.

“She was into something she shouldn’t have been,” Sophia said, ticking off possibilities on her fingers. “Or she knew something she shouldn’t have known, saw something she shouldn’t have seen. Or she was a victim who’d decided to finally tell, and someone wanted to shut her up.” Sophia shrugged. “Whatever it is...”

“She almost certainly knew who grabbed her,” Evelyn finished.

“And if Haley’s note is right,” Sophia said softly, “that person has already killed her.”

2

Early the next morning, the door to the broom-closet-cum-office burst open, and Evelyn looked up from the Haley Cooke case file. She’d left late last night and returned early enough that she might as well have just slept at the station. She’d barely had time to swing by the BAU office first, squeezing in a quick chat with Kyle on her hands-free while she drove to the station and he headed to his physical therapy appointment.

Standing in the doorway now was Quincy Palmer, the grizzled, veteran detective Sophia had introduced her to last night. He made up for having no hair on the top of his head with a thick salt-and-pepper beard, wore his detective’s shield dangling around his neck even inside the police station and didn’t seem capable of cracking a smile. She’d also learned he had poor boundaries when it came to other people’s food in the police fridge. Her 2:00 a.m. dinner had been a candy bar from the vending machine after he’d eaten her pasta.

“You’re not going to be happy about this,” Quincy announced.

“What?” Sophia asked, barely looking up from the report she was reading.

“Morning news.” He turned and headed back the way he’d come, offering no more information.

“Shit.” Sophia dropped the report on the table and followed.

Evelyn trailed behind them, not even trying to keep up. They turned into the break room—it smelled of gunpowder and body odor—on the other side of the station. There were a handful of patrol cops inside, drinking coffee and chatting before their early morning shift started. A small TV was on in the corner, the sound low.

Quincy turned it up loud enough that the other cops scowled at him and left the room. Sophia and Quincy ignored them. Evelyn gave them rueful nods and stepped out of the way.

There, standing in front of a big white colonial in well-tailored dress pants and a bright blue sweater, was a middle-aged woman with dark blond hair and sad blue eyes. Microphones were pointed at her from all directions, as though she’d called a news conference.

“Linda Varner,” Sophia said unnecessarily. Haley’s name had been a staple on the morning news for a month, but it had been a while since Evelyn had seen her mom in front of a camera.

“Where’s the husband?” Evelyn wondered. The first few days after Haley’s disappearance, she’d gotten used to seeing Linda Varner speaking into the microphones, with Pete Varner standing slightly behind her, silently holding her hand. Always playing the part of the dutiful husband, and yet Evelyn had gotten the feeling it was for show. “What’s going on? Do they still camp out at her house or did she call them?”

Sophia shook her head, but it seemed to be at the TV rather than any response to Evelyn’s question. “Don’t do it, Linda.”

“My daughter left behind a note,” Linda said, her voice strong and clear.

“Damn it,” Sophia snapped. “What the hell is she thinking?”

“She must have called the press,” Evelyn said softly. What a disaster.

“What did the note say?” one reporter asked.

“When did you get it?” another called.

“I found the note last night,” Haley’s mother said in the same steady, even voice, almost as if she was reading from a script. “It said...” Her voice suddenly broke, and her chin dropped to her chest before she tipped her head back, looking determined. “It said she feared for her life.”

“Well, not exactly,” Sophia noted. “I can’t believe she’s doing this. She knows better.”

“It said she knew someone was coming after her.” Suddenly, Linda was staring directly, unnervingly, into the camera. The shot zoomed in close on her face. “My daughter suspected someone was stalking her. That person grabbed her. But I know she’s still out there. I know she wants to come home. So, whoever you are, know that we won’t stop looking. We’re going to find my daughter, and unless you let her go, that means we’ll find you, too.”

The camera was so close that when she stopped speaking, Evelyn could see Linda swallow, could see the shallowness of her breathing despite her calm demeanor. From a distance, she looked put together. Up close, the cracks were showing.

When Linda didn’t say any more, the reporters started yelling over one another with questions.

“That’s all I have to say.” Linda stepped back, opened the door and disappeared into her house.

Sophia lifted the remote and stabbed at a button. The TV went dark. “Unbelievable.”

“Have you talked to her about the press and—”

“Hell, yes,” Sophia said as Evelyn glanced at Quincy, who stood silently in the center of the room, arms crossed over his barrel chest, watching them.

She wondered about his role. In the short time she’d been involved, he seemed to show up a lot, and stick around for the details. “Are you involved in the investigation?”

He grunted at her. “Nope. This is a small station. Sophia and I are the only experienced detectives. Sophia’s handling this case close to full-time, and she’s a single mom with two kids at home.”

“That’s irrelevant,” Sophia snapped. “I’m not the only cop with kids.”

“Yeah, well, you’re the only detective here working all night long, while a babysitter watches your kids. Believe me, that can’t lead to anything good. When’s the last time your good-for-nothing ex...” He trailed off as Sophia’s lips tightened and she jammed her hands on her hips. “Anyway, it means I’m getting called in on nearly everything else. Just consider me an interested party.”

“We had a lot of department turnover last year,” Sophia told her, dropping her arms to her sides.

She still looked annoyed with Quincy, but Evelyn got the impression they were friends, and she seemed to shake it off fast.

“We’ve got some new detectives, but they’re not fully up to speed yet,” Sophia added.

From the loaded gaze Quincy was sending Sophia, Evelyn had a feeling there was a story there, but instead of asking, she said, “Should we talk to Haley’s mom again? At this point, the damage may already be done, but—”

“I’ll handle it,” Sophia cut her off. “Fact is, I can’t stop Linda from talking to the press. She’s doing anything she can to keep Haley’s story in the news. And honestly, if I were her, I’d probably be doing the same thing. Maybe it will even help. If she’s still alive, someone must have seen her.”

“Sure, but put too much pressure on her kidnapper and if she’s alive—”

“I know.” Sophia grimaced. “She won’t be for long. So, let’s get down to it. You’ve looked through the files. What do you think? Is she still alive?”

“I need to get a closer look at all the players before I can answer that,” Evelyn hedged, because although she was ready to give Sophia a victim profile, she had too little to go on to give a helpful perpetrator profile. “But why would Linda think the note meant her daughter had a stalker? Did anything turn up about a stalker?”

Sophia sighed, pouring herself a cup of coffee from the break room carafe as she shook her head. “No. But Linda’s convinced Haley was grabbed by a stranger. She’s thought that since the beginning. She’s talked herself into thinking a stalker set his sights on Haley the week before Haley went missing, when Linda was away at a work conference. She can’t bring herself to believe it’s someone she knows.”

“But it makes no sense for Haley to leave some cryptic note if she thought a stranger was stalking her. She’d tell someone.”

“Agreed,” Sophia said.

“Why would she leave the note at all?” Quincy spoke up. “If it was a stranger, why not tell someone she was scared right away? And if it wasn’t a stranger, and she really feared for her life—if she really believed that if anyone ever found the note, it would be too late for her—then why not write down his name? Or at least give us some details so we can figure it out. I mean, by then, if she’s right, that person can’t hurt her anymore.”

“That’s a damn good point, Quincy,” Sophia said, and looked at Evelyn. “You have a take on that? You think the whole thing could be some kind of hoax, could be planted?”

“I really doubt it,” Evelyn said. “But you’re right. It’s an odd note. We should consider the possibility that Haley had an entirely different intent, that she didn’t name anyone because there was no one to name.”

“Meaning?” Quincy asked.

“Meaning, maybe she ran away, and she left the note behind to send everyone in the wrong direction.”

“That’s what Haley’s dad is claiming.”

“Linda’s husband?” Evelyn asked, surprised.

“No. Haley’s biological dad. Bill Cooke. He went to the press, too, not long after Haley went missing. It didn’t get as much airtime because he doesn’t have Linda Varner’s presence or persistence and he isn’t the custodial parent. But he claimed Haley ran away from home because of abuse.”

Evelyn gaped at Sophia. “I didn’t see anything about that in the case file. Did you investigate that possibility?”

Sophia dumped her coffee down the sink, muttering under her breath, then said, louder, “Of course. And it is in the file. You probably haven’t gotten to Bill Cooke’s interview yet. But I haven’t found anything to substantiate his claim. If anything, I’m seeing signs Bill was abusive and that’s why the parents divorced.”

“How long ago?”

“The divorce? About three years. Right before Haley started high school.”

“Okay. What about the stepfather? Any possibility of abuse there?”

“Well, technically, Bill was blaming Pete all along,” Sophia said. “But we looked into Linda, too. And we didn’t find anything at all. Although quite frankly, I’m not so impressed with Linda’s husband. He’s—” Sophia seemed to be searching for a word, then finally settled on “—cagey. I’m not seeing evidence of abuse. Doesn’t mean there isn’t any, as I’m sure you know. But as far as Bill’s claims go, they seem to be intended to hurt Linda more than help Haley.”

Evelyn got ready to ask more, but Sophia preempted her. “Look, the divorce was ugly. Really ugly. There was a custody battle and Bill lost big-time. Haley was old enough to have a say, and she wanted nothing to do with him. Haley never went as far as to say there was abuse, at least not in the court documents I dug up, but Linda got primary custody. Bill got a few weekends a year. From what I can tell, his time was usually cut short.”

“By who?” Evelyn pressed.

“According to Linda, that was Haley’s choice. But given the animosity there...” She shrugged.

“So, this could be a custody issue,” Evelyn suggested. “Maybe Bill grabbed Haley, and he’s claiming abuse by the mother’s new husband to deflect attention.”

“It’s a possibility,” Sophia said. “But if he grabbed her, where is she? We’ve interviewed Bill Cooke, several times. He lives in a little brownstone in DC. He won’t let us in, but he’s got almost no yard. The houses there are close together. I’ve talked to his neighbors, and they can tell me what he watches on TV at night. It would be pretty hard to hide a seventeen-year-old in there, especially one who’s been on the news as much as Haley, and particularly if she didn’t want to be there. If he took her, wouldn’t he have gone into hiding?”

“Maybe he’s waiting for the search to die down before he moves her,” Evelyn said.

“That might work with a four-year-old,” Quincy spoke up.

His deep voice startled Evelyn. Even though he’d planted his large frame in the middle of the room, he’d been so quiet she’d nearly forgotten he was there.

“But hiding a seventeen-year-old is a little trickier,” he continued. “I agree—he’d have a hard time keeping her there if she didn’t want to stay.”

“I know it’s a long shot,” Evelyn said. “But we need to look into it, especially in a case where there was a hostile dispute over custody. And with Haley turning eighteen in less than a year, maybe Bill Cooke figured this was his last chance, especially if Haley was threatening to cut him out of her life entirely.”

Sophia nodded slowly. “Yeah, that’s true. I don’t really like Bill Cooke for this, but honestly, I don’t really like Bill Cooke at all. I wouldn’t be surprised that if we do discover there was any abuse happening, he’s at the center of it.”

“Okay,” Evelyn said. “Let me finish reading through the case files. Because all I can give you now is about Haley.”

“A victim profile?” Sophia asked. “Tell me.”

“Well, the key thing here is that Haley is very high risk for whoever took her. And the location and timing was high risk, too. He—or she—had to be certain he could pull it off.”

Sophia nodded. “Someone close to her.”

“Someone Haley trusted,” Evelyn said. “Because either she walked out of that school with her abductor, or she let him get close enough to subdue her without screaming.”

“Maybe she expected the person,” Quincy suggested. “Or there was more than one of them and they overpowered her.”

“Both are possible,” Evelyn agreed, “but remember, no one heard her yell for help, or any kind of struggle. So as soon as I finish reading this case file, I want to meet all the people in Haley’s life. Anyone who could have grabbed her, or might have insight into why she thought her life was in danger.”

* * *

“Bill Cooke?”

The man scowling at her from behind a screen door might have had a strong resemblance to his daughter at one time. Blond hair, now receding back to the middle of his head, faded blue eyes, heavy lines alongside his mouth that suggested once he’d had reason to smile a lot. Now, from the top of his balding head to the bottom of his muddied boots, everything about him screamed “angry.”

“Yeah.” Bill glanced from Evelyn to Sophia as they stood cramped together on the small stoop in front of his house. “What now? You haven’t found her, have you?”

“Don’t you want us to?” Evelyn asked, surprised by the tone of the question.

Bill stepped back, held the door open. “Maybe she’s better off if you don’t. I’m telling you, Haley ran away. Linda’s looking for attention, but my daughter was just trying to escape.”

“You think she ran away?” Evelyn prompted as she slid sideways past Bill and stepped through the doorway, taking in the tidy entryway tracked through with fresh mud.

They didn’t have any snow, but the ground was still near frozen. Where had Bill Cooke gone to get mud all over his boots?

“Yeah, and I’ve told that to Detective Lopez here a hundred times. Who are you? New to the police force? Don’t you people share your notes? No wonder you can’t find Haley.”

Ignoring the dig, Evelyn held out a hand as Bill stepped farther back. Sophia joined them inside, closing the heavier door behind them and shutting out the fierce wind. It may have been unusually warm over the past month, but it was still January.

“Special Agent Evelyn Baine. I’m consulting from the FBI on your daughter’s case.”

Instead of shaking her hand, Bill wrapped two work-roughened hands around hers and squeezed; she tried to remember what he did for a living.

“I appreciate the thought, Agent Baine. But my daughter is fine.”

“Have you heard from her?” Sophia asked, stepping forward slowly, and making Bill drop Evelyn’s hand and move back. Instinct when someone stepped into your personal space, and a smart way for Sophia to get farther into the house.

She’d told Evelyn that he’d never invited her inside before, instead always insisting on meeting at the police station. Evelyn had wanted to do this interview spontaneously, hoping it would change things, but she was still surprised he’d invited them in so easily. If he’d ever had Haley hidden here, it suggested he didn’t now.

“No, I haven’t heard from my daughter. And I doubt I will. At least not until she’s eighteen and she can finally be free of her mother and Linda’s new husband.” He spat out “husband” as if it was a dirty word.

Sophia stepped forward again, but this time, Bill didn’t move, just crossed his arms and stared back at her. The aggression in his eyes was barely concealed by the exasperation.

“Why are you so convinced she ran away?”

“We’ve been through this. Haley hated living in that house. Linda’s new husband is a real jerk. He resents having to deal with a teenager, treated Haley like crap.”

“How so?” Evelyn asked, hoping he’d be more willing to go through the details again if she was the one asking, instead of Sophia.

He studied her, and she could see him cataloging the details: long, dark hair, carefully knotted into a bun; light green eyes from her mother that always stood out against light brown skin, which had come from her father; prim black suit, cut too large to conceal her weapon, that made her look even smaller than she already was.

She suspected he’d be like a lot of suspects and translate “small” into “not a threat.” If he was responsible for Haley’s disappearance, though, she vowed to make him regret it.

“Haley never told me any specifics. But she made all these offhand remarks about Pete Varner that made me think...” He shuffled his feet, drawing Evelyn’s attention back to the mud on his boots, an odd contrast to the clean, tidy house.

At least what she could see of the house. The three of them were jammed into the entryway, just far enough back that Evelyn could peer into a small living room. Everything looked dust and knickknack free, but nothing had much personality. Just a dark, matched set of furniture and a big-screen TV, probably purchased after the divorce.

She wondered how much of Bill’s animosity had justification, and how much was just resentment toward his family for moving on. Then again, all she knew about Linda’s new husband, Pete Varner, was what was in the background checks Sophia had completed. Nothing had stood out, other than his job installing vending machines. A job that took him to a lot of high schools, including Haley’s. Maybe he’d seen the daughter before he’d married the mother.

“You think there was sexual abuse?” Evelyn cut straight to the point, watching Bill carefully.

His head jerked backward at the question, and he shook his head. “No, not... No. I don’t think so.”

“So what kind of abuse? Does Pete hit her?” Evelyn pressed.

“I—I don’t know. Maybe.” Bill fidgeted. “What I know is she was unhappy. What I know is she hated it there. She ran away.” He yanked his wrist up, stared at his watch, then said, “I’ve got to be somewhere soon. Call next time and I’ll come to the station.”

“This could help us locate Haley,” Evelyn started.

“You’re not asking me anything I haven’t already told Detective Lopez,” Bill responded. “And here’s the thing—I know Haley ran away. I’m not going to help you bring her back to her crazy mother and that asshole she married.”

“What if she didn’t run away?” Evelyn pushed, even as Bill got in her personal space, practically herding her out the door. “What if you’re wrong?”

She didn’t move, just tilted her head back so she could look up at Bill, who had almost a foot on her. Sophia stayed right beside her.

“I’m sure—”

“You haven’t heard from her,” Evelyn reminded him. “Which means there’s a chance someone took her. Even if there’s only a small possibility she’s in trouble, don’t you want to make sure she’s okay?”

Something shifted in Bill’s eyes, but Evelyn couldn’t be certain what she’d seen before he blinked and it was gone.

“That didn’t happen,” Bill insisted, and this time, he actually put his hand on her arm, pushing her backward. “I want you to leave.”

Evelyn pulled free of his grasp, and planted her feet farther apart. “Okay.” She peeled off a card and handed it to him. “But the FBI doesn’t usually waste their time chasing runaways. Call me if you think of anything that might help.”

She turned and headed for the door, but not before she saw him frown down at her card.

Once they were back in Sophia’s police car, Evelyn asked, “What does Bill Cooke do for a living?”

“He’s a construction foreman. Why?”

Evelyn nodded. That might explain the mud on his boots, although she still found it odd that he’d track mud through his ultraclean house to answer the door for them. Especially since he hadn’t wanted them there. But maybe he hadn’t looked through the peephole before he’d opened the door. Or he’d been so anxious to deal with them and then get rid of them he wasn’t worried about the mud. “Just curious.”

Sophia jabbed her keys into the ignition, but didn’t start it up. “Okay, I have a question, too. What do you think? Is Bill Cooke lying to us? Did he take Haley?”

Evelyn frowned at the house as they sat in the driveway. She could see the curtain move at the front of the house, as though Bill was watching them. “He’s lying. I’m not sure what about—maybe the abuse claims. But he seemed genuinely surprised—and worried—when I mentioned sexual abuse. So, it’s hard to say. I don’t think he would have let us in the house if he had Haley in there. But does he know where she is?”

She sighed, wishing there was an easy answer. “Maybe. He was quick to insist he hadn’t heard from her, but when I asked if he was positive she was okay, he looked like he wasn’t sure. Still, it is odd he’s not more worried about her condition or where she might be, who she could have run off with. That could be a sign he’s not concerned because he knows the answer. His behavior was a little contradictory.”

Sophia tapped her hands on the wheel in a frustrated thump-thump-thump, and then started up the engine. “What do we need to do so you can point us in a solid direction? I’m running in circles with this case. And if Haley’s out there somewhere, I want to bring her home.”

As she pulled out of the driveway and Evelyn watched the curtain flutter back into place in Bill’s front window, Sophia added, “And if Bill’s abuse claims are legit, I want to deal with that, too.”

“Let’s talk to Linda and Pete, then,” Evelyn said. “Profiling isn’t a Magic 8 Ball. I can’t just talk to someone for ten minutes and tell you if he did it. But once I get a better handle on all the players, I should be able to help you narrow your search.”

Sophia’s phone rang, cutting off any reply she’d been about to make. She pressed the phone to her ear as she turned onto the street. “Lopez.”

There was a pause, and although Evelyn couldn’t hear whatever was being said on the other end of the call, Sophia’s suddenly furious expression told her it was bad news.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sophia said into the phone, then gave a heavy sigh and said, “Yeah, I’ll deal with it.”

She ended the call and tossed her phone onto the console, muttering, “Un-fucking-believable.”

“What is it?”

“You wanted to meet Haley’s mom?” Sophia gunned the engine. “Let’s do that now. I’ve got some things I want to say to her myself.”

“What was the call about?” Evelyn asked, bracing her elbow against the door as Sophia took the turns out of Bill Cooke’s neighborhood too fast.

“As if that TV interview wasn’t enough, someone just posted a picture of Haley’s note online.”

“What?” Evelyn gaped at her.

“You heard me,” Sophia said. “Now the whole world knows that Haley predicted someone was going to kill her. Which means all the wackos who weren’t already calling our tip line claiming to have seen her are going to start now, claiming to have killed her.”

“And it tells everyone with an internet connection that the person who grabbed Haley Cooke is probably someone she knows,” Evelyn said.

“Yep,” Sophia agreed. “Which means whoever did it knows we could be on to him. That person could be destroying evidence as we speak. And if Haley was wrong, and someone had been keeping her alive before...”

“He might worry we’re going to start focusing on people Haley knows, and that could make him act.”

“Yeah. If Haley didn’t predict her own death before, whoever leaked that note might have just caused it.”

3

“He’s lying.” Linda Varner stood in the doorway of her house, arms crossed over her chest. Her husband stood behind her, peering over her shoulder.

While Linda was an odd mixture of pissed off and frayed nerves, Pete Varner just glared suspiciously. Evelyn pegged Linda as being in her midfifties, but Pete had to be a decade younger. He had a weight lifter’s build, and his long, thin face seemed mismatched to his body. He stuck close to Linda, as though he was trying to protect her.

Still, he seemed oddly at ease. After less than thirty seconds in Linda’s presence, Evelyn felt the woman’s twitchy nerves transferring to her, but Pete was calm.

Sophia visibly tensed and Evelyn could tell she was working hard to stay composed. “Who’s lying?”

“My ex-husband,” Linda said. “He called here, made a big fuss about you visiting him. He obviously thought we sent you, which—”

“We know what that bastard said,” Pete Varner interrupted his wife.

“He’s been claiming from the start that Haley ran away from home.” Linda opened the door wide for them. “If you’d believed his lies about Haley running away and he’d prevented the police from investigating, I would have killed him.”

“I’m not sure you want to say that to a police detective,” Sophia muttered, stepping inside and adding, “This is FBI profiler Evelyn Baine. She’s consulting on your daughter’s case.”

Linda’s wide eyes darted to Evelyn and she gripped Evelyn’s outstretched hand with both of hers. In contrast to Bill Cooke’s rough, strong grip, Linda’s freezing-cold hands felt desperate and shaky.

Evelyn studied her closely, taking in the bloodshot eyes Linda had tried to disguise with heavy coats of mascara.

Pete wrapped his arms around his wife from behind, making Linda drop Evelyn’s hand.

The move was somehow both protective and aggressive, and Evelyn hid a frown. Could there be merit to Bill Cooke’s claim? Was Pete just watching out for a wife who’d been thrust into the spotlight after personal tragedy? Or was he keeping her within sight at all times to make sure she didn’t spill a secret he wanted to keep hidden?

“Did you find something?” Linda asked frantically, bringing Evelyn’s attention back to her. She clutched her husband’s arm, her fingernails biting into his skin. “Did you make a profile we can see? Of the person who took her?”

“Actually,” Sophia said, “we’re here to talk about how one or both of you is hindering our investigation, and could be hurting our chances of bringing Haley safely home.”

Evelyn tried not to grimace at the harsh tactic, especially since Haley could already be dead, but she knew how badly media leaks could damage a case.

“Wh-what?” Linda stuttered, leaning backward, even though there was nowhere to go, with her husband pressed against her back.

“Someone released a picture of the note from Haley’s notebook onto the web this afternoon,” Sophia continued, moving closer until she was practically in Linda’s face. “Between that and your little stunt on the news, you’re putting our investigation—and possibly your daughter—at risk.”

“I—I...” Linda’s face went so pale that Evelyn actually stepped forward to catch her if she fell.

Not that it would be necessary, since her husband practically had a death grip around her shoulders. He was glaring at them, but there was something else in his eyes that gave Evelyn chills.

Recognition made her breathe faster and her fists clench. She knew that look. The look of someone who felt sure he held all the power. Someone who thrived on control, usually at the expense of others.

A memory flashed through her mind, of a man who looked nothing like Pete Varner. A man who’d dated her mother, but who’d stared at ten-year-old Evelyn with a predatory intensity. A man she’d known instantly to try to avoid.

She’d done her best, which was difficult with a mother prone to passing out on the couch, surrounded by the stink of stale vodka. She’d escaped a very bad fate through pure luck and a little desperate ingenuity. If the flimsy lock she’d latched on the bathroom door hadn’t held long enough for her to climb out the window...

Evelyn’s attention shifted to Linda and she noticed the glaze over the woman’s eyes. Had she started taking medication to numb the pain of her daughter’s disappearance or had she been on painkillers before?

Anger flooded, and she knew it was directed more toward her own mother than at Linda Varner.

It must have shown on her face, because Pete suddenly snapped, “Leave her alone,” bringing Evelyn’s focus back to the conversation. “We had nothing to do with leaking the note.”

“Since you two are the only ones who had access to it before it landed in a police evidence room, I highly doubt that.” Sophia’s dark eyes filled with her own fury.

She was so angry it made Evelyn wonder if Sophia had a similar tragedy in her own past. Or maybe she’d just taken this case too much to heart, since she had young children. Either way, Evelyn and Sophia were probably both projecting too much. And it might shut Linda and Pete down, prevent them from cooperating.

“Maybe one of your cops leaked the note,” Pete said, sounding smug instead of outraged.

Evelyn put a hand on Sophia’s elbow. This wasn’t getting them anywhere. The damage was done, and Linda looked ready to faint. Besides, Evelyn had a feeling they’d get a lot more out of her if they could separate her from Pete, which she didn’t think would be happening today.

The detective glanced at her, gave her a small nod even as fury still radiated from her clenched jaw and flared nostrils, and stepped back.

“Look,” Evelyn said, trying to hide her own animosity as she addressed Linda instead of looking up at Pete. “What’s done is done. But we want you to understand there’s a reason we were keeping the note out of the media. It’s best for your daughter that we don’t share certain parts of the investigation. Going forward, you should talk to us before the media.”

“Okay,” Linda said, her voice small and quiet, tears in her eyes. “Pete just thought—”

“We thought it would help put pressure on whoever grabbed her,” Pete interrupted. “Get him to think the police were closing in on him, so he’d let her go. The media is starting to lose interest. And we’ve got to keep Haley’s face in front of people, so they keep watching for her, so someone comes forward if they see her.”

So, it had been Pete’s idea for Linda to go on the news. Evelyn wondered why he hadn’t stood beside her, the way he had for other news conferences.

Then again, if Pete didn’t want Haley coming home because he was hiding a secret, leaking the note wouldn’t really help him if she’d run away. And if a stranger had grabbed her, but the note had been about Pete, would leaking it cause her abductor to panic? Maybe not, but Evelyn didn’t have the luxury of assuming anything.

“If someone has your daughter,” Sophia said slowly and deliberately, “we don’t want that person to panic.”

Evelyn glanced up, past Linda’s wide-eyed horror, expecting to see smugness on Pete’s face, but it was wiped clean. Instead, he seemed genuinely shaken.

“Oh, my God,” he whispered. “I never thought—”

“We’re already running damage control,” Sophia said, holding out a hand that Linda gripped so hard Evelyn could actually see her cutting off blood flow, turning Sophia’s fingertips an unnatural white.

Sophia glanced questioningly at Evelyn, and she nodded at the detective. Linda was clearly too distraught to answer a lot of questions, and this trip had answered a few things for Evelyn already.

It told her that whatever mistakes Linda might have made, Sophia was right about one thing. Linda was desperate to get her daughter back, but she hadn’t planted the note.

Pete still looked horrified, a little pale underneath a tan that had to be from a spray bottle. But was it an act?

Beneath the distress in his eyes was something shrewd and slimy. But it didn’t mean he had anything to do with Haley’s disappearance.

From the outside, to the media, Haley was the perfect, all-American teenager and her family the new normal: divorced, one parent remarried, visitation rights for the other. To the world, family and friends were grieving and searching as hard as they could for Haley.

But up close, there was a strange dynamic in this household. And there was clear animosity between the Varners and Bill. Where did Haley fit in? How many secrets did this family have?

“We should go.” Evelyn nodded at Linda, who reluctantly released Sophia’s hand.

It was time to dig as deep as they could into the people closest to Haley, and see what they could unearth.

* * *

How the hell had his life come to this?

Quincy Palmer stared into the cracked mirror in the station’s dingy bathroom, and didn’t like what stared back at him. Sure, he looked pretty much the same on the outside. Same grooves alongside his mouth and across his forehead that had worn deeper and deeper with age. Same thick beard, just more white in it now. It was his eyes that bothered him.

He’d stopped meeting his own gaze in the mirror three months ago.

No one else seemed to have noticed the change in him. It probably said a lot about the strength of his personal relationships, and he tried to see it as a positive. If no one else could see the difference, no one would wonder what had caused it.

The bathroom door opened behind him, and Quincy looked up, nodded into the mirror at one of the newbie officers and walked out the door. Back into the buzz of the station.

Things were crazy with news of the Haley Cooke note being released to the media. What had the parents been thinking?

And what the hell had happened to Haley? The case was weird enough on its surface, but he was the only one here who knew how hard it should have been to grab Haley Cooke.

Because he’d had his eye on her for three months. He’d been watching her closely—stalking her, by the legal definition. It had been his job to make sure she didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, and if she did—say, if she showed up at the police station—it was his job to take her statement. Then to make sure that statement disappeared.

Twenty years on the job, and he’d never taken a payoff. Never taken a bribe. Never looked the other way.

And then this mess. They’d found his one weak spot, the one thing that would make him throw away twenty years of dedicated service to a job he believed in so much he’d given everything for it. Given his marriage, given his relationship with his son, given all his free time. It had become his life.

If this came out, though, it wouldn’t matter that he’d had nothing to do with Haley’s disappearance. And it really wouldn’t matter that he’d done his damnedest to find her.

Because he knew they’d make him take the fall.

* * *

“That family is hiding something,” Evelyn told Sophia as they walked into the police station.

Sophia had fumed the whole drive back, but now she just seemed dejected. “Everyone in this case is hiding something.”

“What happened? What did you learn?”

The deep voice made Evelyn jump, and when she turned, she saw Quincy Palmer rushing toward them. His pale face was flushed, blotchy red above his heavy beard.

“I don’t know,” she told Quincy, wondering if his own cases ever took him out of the station. “But my guess would be some kind of abuse. Either the father or the stepfather.”

“Really?” Sophia stopped walking, and turned to face her.

Evelyn nodded. “But honestly, with this much scrutiny on the case, with this much media attention, I doubt a seventeen-year-old girl could stay under the radar if she had just run away. I think someone made her disappear. Maybe it started with her going willingly, maybe not. Either way, at this point, chances are, we’re not looking for Haley.” At Quincy’s deep frown, she said apologetically, “You know the statistics.”

Sophia nodded, her shoulders slumping. “We’re looking for her body. I know. But I’ve learned all about this girl. Everyone I talk to loved her—her classmates, her teachers, her neighbors. They all say the same thing. Haley was nice to everyone she met. This is a sweet kid, with a bright future. I want her to beat the odds.”

“So do I,” Evelyn said. “Maybe she will.” She tried to sound upbeat, but the fact was, she’d handled too many missing-persons cases.

More than half a million people were reported missing every year in the US alone. The first twenty-four hours were crucial, the first forty-eight the most likely time to make a live recovery. After a month, the chances were practically nonexistent. Especially when the victim was a beautiful teenage girl.

It wore her down, being asked to provide profiles on case after case where the victims would probably never come home. Sometimes, all she could hope for was to bring some closure to the family left behind. Maybe this time would be different. Maybe they could really find Haley, give her back that bright future.

No matter the outcome, she vowed to help find the answers Sophia had been so desperately searching for over the past month. She didn’t care how many secrets she had to expose to do it.

Sophia and Quincy looked back at her, both solemn and serious.

“What’s next?” Sophia finally asked, her upbeat tone sounding forced.

Before Evelyn could answer, a plainclothes officer raced down the hall, her eyes bright with excitement as she skidded to a stop in front of them.

“Detective Lopez,” she panted. “We just got a note.”

When she took a breath, Sophia asked, “What sort of note? Someone else claiming to have knowledge of Haley’s—”

“No. Not a whack-job letter. This one matches the handwriting from the note you brought in yesterday.”

“What?” Quincy barked. “The note Haley left in her bedroom? That means—”

“This is from Haley. She’s still alive.”

4

Of all the agents in the Washington Field Office, what were the chances he’d be paired with Jimmy Drescott? Kyle wondered as the Supervisory Special Agent in charge of the Civil Rights squad introduced them.

Kyle had spent the morning filling out paperwork, before finally making his way into the WFO’s bullpen. It looked a lot like the field office in New York where he’d started his FBI career in counterterror, years before joining the HRT. Really, it resembled any other office building in the DC area. Only this particular office happened to be populated by men and women carrying Glock pistols.

“Mac,” Jimmy said, using the nickname Kyle had been given by the HRT. Jimmy stood slowly as the squad supervisor glanced back and forth between them, having just brought Kyle over to introduce him to his new team.

Apparently he’d just missed the rest of the group—two were testifying in court and the other four were out on a case. So, just Jimmy Drescott waited in the Civil Rights squad’s little corner of the bullpen.

“You two know each other?”

“We’ve met,” Kyle said, holding out his hand. The last time he’d seen Jimmy, the man had been lying under a big fir tree in Evelyn’s front yard, a near-fatal knife wound slicing through his neck.

“You moved out of Violent Crimes?” Kyle asked. That was where Jimmy had been assigned the last time they’d met, working a case that Evelyn had consulted on nine months ago.

Kyle was actually a little surprised Jimmy had stayed in the FBI. He’d lost his partner that night, and he’d almost lost his life.

But here he was, standing in the WFO, a neatly groomed beard covering the ugly scar Kyle knew had to be underneath. Otherwise, he looked pretty much the same, resembling a TV version of an FBI agent with overgelled hair, a nicer suit than most agents could afford on a government salary and his jacket open to display his gun.

“Yep,” Jimmy replied, shaking his hand vigorously, as if they were old friends.

Maybe because the last time they’d seen each other, Kyle had helped save his life.

“I needed a change of pace. I figured a new challenge would be good for me.” He grinned widely, showing off straight, white teeth.

Same old Jimmy apparently. Except maybe amplified, if that was possible.

This was going to be interesting, Kyle thought, but what he said was, “Good to see you.”

“Great,” his new supervisor said, looking frazzled as she glanced at her watch. “Because I have a meeting with the Director in twenty minutes. Since you guys are already friends, Jimmy can get you up to speed on the squad’s open cases.”

She nodded at Jimmy on her way out, and he winked back.

Kyle might have thought they were involved, except he remembered how Jimmy had incessantly flirted with Evelyn when she’d consulted on a case with the young agent. It was pretty nervy to hit on the head of the squad, but he’d never pegged Jimmy as shy or subtle.

“You want to talk me through the details?” Kyle asked, rolling his new desk chair over. It had been nearly four years since he’d worked in a bullpen. Half a day at the WFO and he already felt hemmed in. Already missed the rush of adrenaline as he wrapped his hands around a thick rope dangling out of a hovering helicopter and glided to the ground at Quantico. It’s what his old partner would be doing right now, as practice for future missions.

He could get used to the routines of regular casework again, that standard blend of 90 percent hard work and frustration for the 10 percent payoff when you finally got the excitement of closing a case. He could get used to the jacket and tie instead of the cargoes and T-shirts, staring at a computer screen all day instead of carrying sixty pounds of tactical gear. Or so he’d been telling himself ever since he found out he’d lost his spot on the HRT because of his injury. Maybe one of these days, those words would ring true.

“Don’t get too comfortable, Mac.” Jimmy’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

Kyle glanced up, wondering if Jimmy knew about his own near-death experience, and saw Jimmy was hanging up his phone. “What?”

“We’re heading to the hospital.” Jimmy scooped a pair of car keys off his desk and double-timed it for the door. “Possible human trafficking case.”

Kyle stood and followed a little more slowly. Nine months ago, Jimmy had been bubbling over with rookie enthusiasm. Apparently having a serial killer try to slice through his carotid artery hadn’t dimmed it at all.

“Come on,” Jimmy called after him, and Kyle picked up his pace, shaking his head and wishing he could tone down his new partner’s excitement—or borrow some.

“We’re heading to the Neville University Hospital,” Jimmy said as he got into his FBI-issued sedan and floored it out of the underground lot before Kyle had even buckled in. “The victim is a student there. Cop on the scene said they’re going to move her soon—she’s in bad shape, and they’re not really equipped to handle it—but she was insistent.”

“Insistent about what?”

“She wanted to talk to the FBI. The cop tried to take her statement, but the girl knows her stuff. She told him she was reporting a federal crime and wanted a fed on the case.”

“Is she pre-law?”

“At Neville University?” Jimmy snorted. “Maybe, but they don’t have a law school, so I doubt it. You know what the locals call that place, right?”

“I can guess,” Kyle said as Jimmy spoke over him, his voice keeping pace with the speed of his sedan.

“Nepotism U. It’s a good degree, don’t get me wrong, but if you’re local, getting in there has as much to do with your last name as it does your grade point average.”

“Jeez. Watch where you’re going,” Kyle snapped as Jimmy jumped a curb, then raced onto an on-ramp for the I-395 freeway.

“Come on, man, what good is the siren if you don’t get to use it every once in a while?”

“I don’t think taking a victim statement warrants a siren,” Kyle said, even as Jimmy rolled down the window and slapped it onto his roof.

“Doctors want to move her to a new hospital. I want to get her statement.”

“Next time, I’m driving,” Kyle muttered, then asked, “What about a victim specialist? If we’ve got a possible human trafficking victim—”

“You’re right.” Jimmy tossed his phone over. “Pull up Aliyah Aman. She’s good. Have her meet us there.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Kyle said as he dialed, but Jimmy must have missed his sarcasm, because he didn’t even glance over, just punched down harder on the gas.

Faster than Kyle had expected, even with Jimmy’s racetrack speeds, they were on campus, winding through the cobblestone roads at just above the posted limit. Students started to cross at random spots instead of crosswalks, and jumped back as their sedan didn’t slow. They passed frat houses that resembled castles and an administration building that boasted the kind of intricate architecture that spoke of old money.

“Here we go,” Jimmy said, sliding into a parking spot in front of a more modern building. “The Neville University Hospital. Let’s find out what we’ve got.”

Kyle grabbed his arm before Jimmy could get out of the car. “The victim specialist is still twenty minutes out.”

“Fine. Let’s at least see if the cop is even right or if we’ve got a totally different situation. If we need to wait to question her, we’ll wait.”

He couldn’t argue with that logic. Dropping Jimmy’s arm, Kyle followed him inside.

The smell hit him first, that antiseptic scent mixed with stale air and sickness. It took him instantly back to a month earlier, when he’d woken up in a hospital in California, pain in his shoulder and numbness in his arm. As the room had come into focus, he’d seen Evelyn first, looking panicked in the chair at his bedside. Then he’d seen his partner on the other side, and the expression on Gabe’s face had told him instantly. He was hurt badly enough to put his whole career in question.

Pushing the memory aside, he glanced around the much smaller hospital he was standing in now. The emergency department was bustling, but most of the people in the waiting room looked bored rather than in distress. Staff behind the counter gossiped as he and Jimmy approached and showed their credentials.

“We’re here to speak with Tonya Klein,” Jimmy said, flashing a big smile at the college-age student behind the desk.

“Is that a real badge?” the girl replied, her eyes widening as she glanced from Jimmy to Kyle.

“It is,” Kyle said. “Can you take us to Tonya? We need to speak with her.”

“Of course, sure,” the girl replied, flustered as she led them down the hall, through a few doorways and toward a room with a police officer sitting on a chair outside.

The officer looked little older than the students he was supposed to protect. He stood slowly as they approached, scowling enough to make the girl back up as she gestured to the room, telling them, “That’s Tonya’s room. The doctor thinks she might need to go to the Inova Fairfax Hospital. She’s real beat up.”

She continued backing away as the officer thrust out a hand, which Jimmy shook.

“I’m with campus police,” the officer said. “I took the call. I tried to take her statement, but all she’d do was demand you guys.” His face flushed an angry red as he continued, “Didn’t matter how much I explained the law to her. She thought she knew better, little bi—”

“She said she was the victim of human trafficking?” Jimmy pulled his hand free, which seemed to take real effort.

The officer huffed an ugly sound through his nose. “Yeah, but it’s pretty obvious what’s really going on.”

“And that would be...” Kyle stepped forward, getting in the guy’s personal space a little, pissed off by his attitude.

The officer’s attention shifted to him, and Kyle could actually see him trying to decide which of them would win in a fight. He figured he’d won when the guy stepped back and muttered, “She’s just a prostitute. Probably got beat up by her pimp.”

“You get much prostitution at Neville?” Jimmy asked.

The officer’s scowl returned. “On campus? No. But there are slums close by. She could have wandered in.”

“I thought she was a student at Neville?” Kyle asked.

“Yeah, well, maybe tuition was a little much for her. I’ll let you guys take it from here,” he said, animosity pouring from him as he strode away.

“Now there’s a guy I’d hire to protect a campus full of college students,” Jimmy said, rolling his eyes as he pushed the door open to the hospital room.

Kyle almost walked into his back as Jimmy stopped short right inside the doorway.

Jimmy’s mocking tone was gone, replaced with a softer, more subdued voice as he said, “Tonya Klein? I’m Special Agent Jimmy Drescott with the FBI’s Civil Rights squad.” He moved over a little and added, “This is my partner, Kyle McKenzie.”

The woman staring back at him could only do so through one pale blue eye, webbed with red from a burst blood vessel. The other was swollen completely shut, and dark purple. Her cheek was swollen, too, and covered with a bandage. Blood still caked her hairline, where her long dark hair had been shaved so a doctor could sew up the kind of cut that might have come from a broken bottle. Her hands, resting on the stark white sheet, were bloody and bruised, a few fingers splinted. Defensive wounds.

Whoever had attacked her, one thing was certain: Tonya Klein had fought back hard.

Good for you, Kyle thought. Regardless of what her story was—whether she was truly a human trafficking victim or if she’d been pulled into prostitution some other way—both pimps and traffickers knew how to make it hard for anyone to get out. Most of them gave up, learned to take the beatings and other abuse, just to survive.

“Thanks for coming,” she croaked in a tone that had Kyle looking at her neck.

As she lifted her head, he saw it. More bruising, this time on her neck, and it explained not only her voice but also the damage to her eye. Strangulation victims often showed hemorrhaging to the eyes. And he could actually see the darker spots in the bruises above her collarbone where fingers had pressed in.

This hadn’t been the kind of beating meant to teach a lesson. Someone had wanted Tonya Klein dead.

He caught Jimmy’s eye and the younger agent nodded, then told Tonya, “We have a specialist on the way. Her job is to make sure you have all the resources you need. We can wait for her to get here before we start—”

“No,” Tonya barked, and Kyle tried not to cringe at the cracks in her voice.

It was painful to listen to her talk. He couldn’t imagine how badly it hurt to do it.

“Do you want us to wait for a family member to come and sit with you?” Jimmy asked.

“No. They’re all back in Alabama. It’s too hard for them to get up here.”

“Do you want to try to write it down?” Kyle asked.

“No. I just want to tell you, before...” She cut herself off, then began again, keeping her attention firmly on the sheet as she spoke, her voice flat and emotionless. “I was trying to get out. They’d warned me about what would happen, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I tried to go to the police. But they came after me and...” Her hands fluttered into the air, revealing more bruises snaking up her arms. “They said there was only one way out. And that was a body bag.”

Her voice was flat as she said it, as though she’d heard similar threats often enough that it hadn’t surprised her. Or—a cynical agent who’d heard it all before might think—as though she couldn’t generate real emotion because she was making that part up.

“Okay.” Kyle eased himself into a seat next to the bed, careful to keep his distance as he took out a notepad. “Is it all right if I sit here?”

She gave a small nod.

This was an intense reentry to regular casework. When he’d worked counterterror, he’d seen some human trafficking—it was a common way to fund terrorist operations—but he’d never been the one sitting in a hospital room, taking victim statements.

Jimmy pulled up a seat on the other side of her bed as he asked, “Do you know who attacked you?”

She shook her head, cringing and clutching her side with her splinted fingers.

“How many people attacked you?” Kyle asked. “Would you be able to describe them?”

“They wore ski masks. There were two of them, but I don’t know who they were.”

“Okay. Could you tell if they were male or—”

“Yeah, they were men,” Tonya interrupted. “Not even all that big, either, but they could hit.”

“Did they say anything to you?” Jimmy asked.

She shrugged, a short jerk of her shoulders that made pain flash in her eye. “Just what I told you. About how there was no getting out.”

“Do you remember the exact words?”

“He said, ‘We warned you about trying to leave. There’s only one way out, and that’s a body bag.’ And then they started punching. I swore to myself that it didn’t matter what it took, that I was finished. But I knew they were going to kill me in that alley and...” Her voice broke. “I told them I’d come back—I begged—and they said it was too late. And then one of them hit me with a bottle that was lying in the alley. I passed out after that. I’m not sure what happened, if they just thought they’d killed me or—”

“Two students saw you. They scared off your attackers and called 911,” Jimmy said.

“Now what?” Tonya asked. “Because I read where sex trafficking victims can be protected, that the FBI will go after whoever is behind it.”

“That’s right,” Kyle said slowly, glancing at Jimmy across the bed. He could see the skepticism in Jimmy’s face, and he tried to keep an open mind. Nothing about this suggested human trafficking yet, but colleges were the new recruiting grounds, so he wasn’t ruling anything out.

“Let’s backtrack a little bit,” Jimmy said. “To before today’s attack. What can you tell us about your situation, about the people threatening you?”

“I...” She shook her head, her hand tightening against her side as she looked at the bed instead of them. “I don’t know who they are. I got an email at first.” She flushed, then said, more quickly, “There was a video attached. A video of me and it was...”

When she didn’t finish, Jimmy asked, “A sex video?”

“Yeah. But I didn’t take it. I never would have slept with the guy if I knew he was taping it. The email said it would go out to everyone I knew if I didn’t show up at this warehouse outside of town. I didn’t know what to do. I thought about going to the police, but I didn’t want anyone to see the video. But I was thinking about it, anyway, when I realized the email was gone. I don’t know what happened to it. I didn’t delete it, but it just wasn’t there anymore.”

“There are programs that can delete an email after it’s been viewed,” Jimmy said, frowning as he jotted notes.

“So I had nothing, no proof, and I figured the police wouldn’t believe me if I just went to them and said the email had disappeared. But they still had the video, so I went to the meeting. I thought they were going to ask for money—not that I had any—but they didn’t. There were a couple of guys there and they made me...” She trailed off, then whispered, “It might have been the same two who attacked me today—their voices were familiar, but I can’t be sure. Anyway, when I got back to my dorm, there was an envelope under my door. There were pictures of my family inside, from when they came with me to orientation and the special scholarship luncheon—I’m a scholarship student. I can’t afford this place. Even with the scholarship, I had two jobs. Anyway, after that, I just did what they told me.”

“Were there threats against your family?” Kyle asked.

“Not specifically,” Tonya said. “But they didn’t need to say it. They knew who my family was! I wasn’t going to risk it.”

“Did you try to go to the police before now?” Jimmy asked.

“No. I quit my jobs—the other thing in the envelope was instructions. They told me to stop working, and there was some money to cover my next tuition payment, so I did. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. They said they were watching all the time.”

“Do you still have the envelope?” Kyle asked.

She shook her head, looking up at him for the first time since she’d started telling her story. “No. They said to destroy it, and I was scared they’d know if I didn’t.”

“Okay,” Kyle said, subtly glancing at his watch and wondering where the victim specialist was. “Can you tell me who you were sleeping with in the tape? And how long ago did this happen?”

“It was—” She cut herself off, suddenly lurching forward, clutching harder at her side.

“Are you all right?” Jimmy asked. “Do you want me to get a doc—”

“No, I’m okay,” Tonya said, leaning back against the pillow. But just as fast, she jerked forward again and her heart monitor went off.

It took so long for anyone to respond that Kyle almost ran out to get them, but finally a pair of nurses came in, and pushed him and Jimmy out of the room.

As they stood in the hallway waiting, Jimmy asked, “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Kyle admitted. “It’s pretty obvious someone tried to kill her. But as for why? Her story could be true.”

“Or she could be looking for federal protection for some other reason,” Jimmy said. “She admitted looking up information about the FBI providing resources for human trafficking victims.” Before Kyle could agree, he added, “Or she could be a prostitute who wants to get out, but doesn’t want to admit she was ever breaking the law, so she makes up a claim of being forced into it.”

“That’s possible, too,” Kyle said, but the petite college student didn’t seem like a typical prostitute. Still, if her story was true, blackmail was an unusual recruitment method. “We should get more specifics on the warehouse she mentioned,” he said just as a pair of doctors came racing down the hall and into Tonya’s room.

One of the nurses walked out a minute later and told them, “You might want to come back tomorrow. She’s got to go into surgery.”

“What for?” Jimmy asked.

“We suspect she has internal bleeding.” The nurse started to head past them, still jotting notes on her clipboard, and when they didn’t follow, she snapped, “Come on. You’re going to need to move. They’re about to take her up to the surgical floor.”

“All right.” Jimmy pressed his card into her hand. “Have someone give us a call when she’s out of surgery.”

Kyle followed him out of the hospital, Jimmy texting away on his phone. “Aliyah got caught in traffic. I told her to head back and we’d call her when we can come for another interview, but that I think it’s a no-go,” he said.

“You think she’s lying?”

“Not entirely. But it sounds way too amateurish to be a human trafficking setup. Not that it couldn’t work, but there are a lot of potential holes. Not to mention that whoever took the sex tape used to blackmail her had to be involved, meaning there’s a personal connection. If you ask me, this is some kind of revenge scenario. Definitely needs follow-up, but this is probably a case for the local police.” He tucked his phone away and picked up his pace. “Come on. Let’s see if anything else came in while we were here.”

“Sure,” Kyle replied. “But toss me your keys.”

“What for?”

“I’m driving back. And we’re not dropping this so easily. I want to talk to the two students who called 911, and get their side of the story. Whether or not we’re talking about human trafficking, someone tried to kill this girl. And I want to know why.”

5

“Haley’s still alive,” Sophia repeated, staring slack-jawed at the note that had appeared at the station.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Evelyn said. “We don’t know when this note was written. And we don’t know if Haley was coerced.”

“If it’s legit,” Sophia said grimly as she finally looked up from the note, “then we’ve got a whole different case to investigate.”

“Are we sure someone didn’t just copy Haley’s handwriting?” Quincy asked from over Evelyn’s shoulder.

The three of them were crowded around the note, no one touching it because they didn’t want to add prints—or smear any. Other cops stood at a distance, necks craned as they tried to get a look.

“We can have a handwriting expert at the FBI take a look,” Evelyn said. “They should be able to tell us if it’s Haley’s writing or an imitation. They might even be able to identify signs of coercion, although with a note this short, I don’t know.”

“Really? They can tell coercion from this?” Quincy sounded skeptical as he read the note aloud. “‘Stop looking for me. I’m safe, but I won’t come home for another beating from Stepdaddy. Let me go.’”

“Maybe,” Evelyn replied, then turned to face Sophia. “You know the case best. Does this sound like Haley’s voice to you? Is this how she’d talk? Is that what she called Pete?”

“It is,” Sophia said slowly. “Her friends all referred to him that way, said it’s what Haley called him, in kind of a mocking way. They didn’t get along, but none of her friends thought he was abusive, at least not that they were willing to tell me. But what about the last part? ‘Let me go’? Am I the only one creeped out by that? Shouldn’t it be just ‘leave me alone’? Why ‘let me go’? This is the kind of language people use when they’re waiting to die.”

Her phone beeped and Sophia pulled it out of her pocket, then swore. “Well, let’s push coercion right up the list,” she said, then turned her phone toward them and pushed Play on a video attached to an email that went by too quickly for Evelyn to read.

Bill Cooke’s craggy face filled the screen, pressed close to what was obviously a camera on a home computer. He looked furious, and he was wearing the same clothes he’d been in when they’d stopped by his house earlier in the day.

“My name is Bill Cooke. My daughter, Haley, ran away from home to escape abuse from her stepfather. This bullshit about a stranger stalking her is just that—bullshit. She’s out there somewhere, and I want her to know I understand, and I support her decision.” He’d been staring down during most of the talk, but he suddenly looked up and stared directly, intently, into the camera. “Haley, you do what you need to do, honey.”

The video went black and Quincy stared at Sophia. “That’s it?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Her lips curled upward with restrained fury. “Just what this case needs. The parents fighting on a public stage, distracting from the real problem.”

“Maybe it will help us,” Evelyn said. “Where was this posted? And what time did it go up?”

“On Bill’s social media. The video was posted pretty soon after we left his house today, but it’s already been shared a thousand times.” Sophia shoved her phone back into her pocket. “You’d think her parents don’t want Haley to come home, with all the shit they’ve started pulling. I don’t know where this is coming from. Maybe Bill wasn’t the easiest guy to deal with, and Linda was a bit hysterical, but none of them fucking impeded the investigation before now.”

“So, what?” Quincy broke in. “Bill made the video three hours ago, and we already have a note from Haley? That’s fast for coercion. It would mean—”

“If the note is really from her, then someone is holding her nearby, to be able to see the video, tell Haley what to write, then deliver it to the station this quickly,” Sophia finished.

“And if not, the person who sent this is still nearby, somewhere close, so hopefully it won’t take long to nail his ass,” Quincy said.

“It could be Bill himself,” Sophia said. “Whether he has her or not. I’m sure he has samples of her handwriting he could copy.”

“You have cameras, right?” Evelyn asked.

“We sure as hell do.” Sophia headed for the front desk, even as she barked at another officer who’d come over. “Bag the note. Get it logged into Evidence now.”

“Someone just got sloppy,” Quincy said, keeping pace with Sophia. “Maybe this will be the break we need.”

“Wait,” the officer who’d told them about the note called, running after them. She was young, probably not long out of high school herself, and bursting with newbie enthusiasm. “It came in with the mail. I took the stack of mail from the carrier myself.”

The young officer took a step back as both Quincy and Sophia stopped in their tracks, spinning toward her. Evelyn hurried to catch up, wishing she had a longer stride.

“The normal carrier?” Sophia demanded. “How did it come so fast, then, if it went through the postal system? Unless Bill’s video was a coincidence. Or he sent the letter himself, before he posted the video.”

“Why did you get the mail?” Quincy asked.

“I—” She glanced from one detective to the other. “Sergeant Jett stepped out, so no one was at the desk out front. I was there. I took the stack. Yes, the normal carrier brought it. I dumped the stack on the desk and was going to leave, but I noticed this letter had no postage. I was going to ask the carrier, but she’d left and—”

“You sure she gave it to you?” Sophia said. “No one dropped it in the pile?”

“I’m sure.”

“Shit,” Sophia said. “Okay, we’ll talk to the carrier. Let’s take a ride.”

Sophia was already racing for the door, but Evelyn snagged her elbow before she could get far. “Hang on. Let’s look at the cameras first.”

“But if—”

“How would a piece of mail with no postage get into a mail stack coming into a police station?”

Sophia frowned back at her, then nodded slowly. “It must have happened nearby. Otherwise, the person couldn’t be sure it would get delivered. It might end up being sent back, since there was no postage.”

“Except the envelope had the station as the return address, too,” Quincy called out. “It would have ended up here either way.”

“But not in the stack. They would have asked for the postage, right?” Evelyn asked.

“I guess so. All right, let’s pull the tapes.” Sophia turned, heading back toward the front desk, where the sergeant who usually sat there was returning. “We need the footage from around the station for the last few minutes, Amber,” Sophia told her.

Amber stood, frowning as she set down the sandwich she’d just started eating, and gave an exaggerated sigh. “All right. Come on.”

She moved to the side, letting Sophia behind the desk. As Sophia’s raised an eyebrow, Evelyn joined them in the tight space.

“Here we go,” Amber said, picking up a remote and rewinding on the tiny screen mounted beneath the desk.

Evelyn glanced at Sophia, who nodded.

“We have live picture surrounding the station. Amber can go back and look at anything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours. After that, it automatically backs up. It’s a good system.” She leaned closer to the screen. “Stop!”

Evelyn leaned forward, too, as the mail carrier suddenly pitched forward at the edge of the camera, and a hand darted out and steadied her.

“There!” Sophia shouted, making other officers glance their way.

“What?” Evelyn asked as Sophia rewound once more, then hit Pause and pointed.

“He bumped her on purpose, then grabbed her arm to steady her while he slipped an envelope in the stack with his other hand. Sneaky bastard. Not quite pickpocket good, but that was pretty ingenious.”

“He?” Evelyn pressed. “All I see is an arm, in a dark sweatshirt. Do we have another angle on this?”

Sophia glanced back at Amber, who frowned and shook her head. “This is at the far side of the station. We have cameras mounted on all sides of the station, but not just out on the street. And the person who did this was standing in the alley. Probably waiting for the mail carrier to come by. There aren’t cameras there, not even from other businesses.”

“Are you sure?” Sophia pressed. “Maybe the bank has an angle that we can—”

“I’m positive,” Amber insisted. “We had a couple of muggings there a year ago. The station took a lot of heat because it was so close and it took us a long time to identify the person.”

“I remember,” Sophia said. “But I also remember you pushing to get cameras in there.”

“That’s a battle I lost,” Amber said. “We barely have the budget for this.” She gestured to the screen still on pause below the desk. “Sorry.”

Sophia handed over the remote and leaned against the wall. “We can’t catch a break. And this can’t be dumb luck, the guy being so perfectly positioned.”

“If whoever took Haley is from around here, he’d probably know about the muggings,” Evelyn said. “If the police took heat for not having cameras there, I’m guessing it was in the press?”

“You’d be guessing right,” Sophia said. “Amber, I want you to get a hold of our mail carrier. Get her in here and ask her to describe this person as soon as you can find her.” She looked at Evelyn. “And since we already think Haley’s abductor is someone she knows, let me introduce you to a guy who wears a lot of sweatshirts.”

Evelyn followed as she headed for the door, glancing back to see Quincy step behind the desk. “Who?”

“His name is Jordan Biltmore.”

“Haley’s boyfriend? The one everyone saw drive away after he dropped her off at school?”

“That’s the guy,” Sophia replied, not slowing down as she left the station and got into her car, parked in front. “Let’s go for a ride.”

* * *

“School is in session,” Sophia said unnecessarily as she drove onto the Neville University campus.

They’d driven across a ridiculously ornate bridge over a man-made pond to enter campus. Students’ tuition money at work apparently, because Sophia told her the university had put it in at a cost of several million. It made for a hell of an entryway, but the whole thing seemed a little ridiculous to Evelyn, who’d never before been on the relatively small Neville campus.

Now, they were moving at ten miles an hour as they wove down narrow cobblestone streets lined with hickory and maple trees. Students darted out in front of the car in laughing groups as they chatted and hurried to their next classes.

“Aren’t any of them worried about getting hit by a car?” Evelyn muttered.

“At Neville U? Probably not. On campus, pedestrians think they have the right of way no matter where they are. You’ve got to be careful driving through here, especially at night.”

“So, tell me more about Jordan Biltmore,” Evelyn said as they drove along at a maddeningly slow pace, deeper and deeper into the small college campus.

All Evelyn knew about Neville U was its reputation as being the go-to college for kids from wealthy Virginia families with decent-enough grades. To balance out the rich kids, there was a hefty scholarship fund that brought in out-of-state students with fantastic grades and not-so-fantastic funds. A degree from Neville wasn’t quite Ivy League level, but that didn’t matter for top-level job hunting if you had the right last name.

And Jordan Biltmore, a sophomore and Haley Cooke’s boyfriend, had the right last name. The son of billionaire CEO Franklin Biltmore, Jordan probably could have gotten into Neville with grades bordering on dismal. But according to the brief stats she’d seen on Jordan, he was actually close to a straight-A student.

“Jordan and Haley had been dating for about six months when she went missing. Apparently they met when Haley went to a party on the college campus,” Sophia said, making a slow turn into the parking lot of a building way nicer than any frat house Evelyn had ever seen.

“Haley’s friends seem to like him—or seem to be jealous that she’s dating a billionaire’s son who’s in college. Her mom seems lukewarm, but isn’t so crazy about the idea of her high school junior dating a college kid.”

“What about Bill? And Pete? What do they think of Jordan?” Evelyn asked as Sophia squeezed her sedan into a parking spot meant for a coupe.

“Pete grunts about the age difference and what college boys are really after when you ask him, but otherwise, he doesn’t seem to have anything bad to say about Jordan specifically. Bill—as far as I could tell—had never met Jordan. To be honest, I’m not sure he even knew Haley was dating this kid until she went missing and Jordan’s name was in the news.”

“Hmm,” Evelyn mused. “That says a lot about his relationship with Haley if she’d been dating Jordan for six months. And yet, he’s acting pretty damn certain that she wasn’t abducted. Kind of strange for someone who doesn’t seem to know as much as he should about her life in general.”

“Yep,” Sophia agreed, shutting off the engine. “I can’t be sure he didn’t know. Bill acts as though he was aware they were dating, but just hadn’t met Jordan. But the impression I got? He was lying. He wanted me to think he was a more involved father, especially with the news attention. But today, I’d love your take on Jordan. He’s been extremely cooperative, and honestly, since a squad full of cheerleaders saw him drop her off and then drive away that day, I’m not sure how he could have done it. But he’s just—” her lips pursed, and finally she settled on “—too smooth.”

Evelyn shifted to face her. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe it’s just the rich-kid, son-of-a-CEO thing, but the vibe I’m getting is someone who’s happy to help, because he’s sure we’ll never catch him.”

“Huh. All right.”

“I mean, his alibi is solid. But he just bothers me. Have you ever gotten that feeling about someone in a case?”

“Oh, yeah.” Plenty of times, with her job.

“What happened when you got the vibe?” Sophia asked.

“Sometimes you get that feeling for the obvious reason—because they did it. Other times there’s some other thing they’re guilty of, related to the case or not. And sometimes it’s just a person who’s using what happened to get in the limelight. The bad feeling we get is because they feel guilty they’re enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame—which they wouldn’t have gotten if a person they loved wasn’t missing or dead. Let’s go chat with Jordan and see why you’re getting that impression from him.”

She followed Sophia up a well-groomed pathway to the front door. When Sophia knocked on the door, it swung open by itself, revealing an interior as ornate as the outside. Except that there were brightly colored bras hanging off the enormous crystal chandelier in the entryway, empty pizza boxes piled on the antique table in the living room and a pair of frat boys curled up asleep, one on each end of the dirty but obviously expensive couch.

“Here we go,” Sophia said. “Neville’s most notorious frat house.”

“What are they notorious for?”

“Being awesome, mostly,” someone said from much closer behind her than anyone should have been able to get without Evelyn sensing a presence.

She spun around and craned her neck up at the college student giving her an “aren’t I charming” grin. His dark blond hair was perfectly groomed, his low-slung jeans and Neville U sweatshirt just a tiny bit rumpled and his dimples were on full display. He held a cup of coffee in one hand and tucked a pair of keys with an Audi key chain into his pocket with the other.

As Sophia spun around, the flirtatious grin dropped off his face, replaced by sudden worry. “Detective Lopez. Do you have news? Did you find Haley? Is she okay?”

“We don’t have anything new,” Sophia said.

“Jordan Biltmore?” Evelyn guessed.

Disappointment—or maybe relief—slumped his shoulders, then he studied her again, as if he was assessing her role or importance, and he stuck out a hand. He gave her the kind of handshake more appropriate for a business meeting than standing on the threshold of a frat house that stunk of old beer and dirty socks. “That’s right. And you are?”

“Special Agent Evelyn Baine, from the FBI.”

Her title should have made an impression on a kid his age, either concern about the FBI’s involvement if he was involved, hope for more resources on his girlfriend’s case if he wasn’t or just plain awe if nothing else. But he simply nodded at her, the strength of his handshake revealing power in his lanky frame.

“If there’s nothing new, what’s going on?” he asked Sophia.

“Let’s find a place to sit and chat.”

“Sure.” Jordan angled his head around them and yelled, “Brent! Jim! Get lost.”

The pair of students sleeping on the couch jolted awake. One looked ready to snap back at Jordan, but at the sight of Sophia—who held up her detective’s shield—they both shuffled off into the cavernous house.

Evelyn glanced around as they walked in, seeing a kitchen off to her right, fully stocked with gleaming stainless appliances she doubted the frat boys used. There was even a pair of vending machines neatly lined up next to the fridge. She assumed the bedrooms were off the hall to her left and up the giant staircase beside the entryway.

“Take a seat,” Jordan said, gesturing to the couch.

As soon as they were seated, instead of doing the same, he planted his free hand on his hip and stared down at them. “You must have news if you’re back here.” Before they could answer, he added, “If it’s about that crazy video her dad released, let me tell you, Haley didn’t run away.”

Evelyn looked up at him, wondering about his background besides the wealth and the important father. For a nineteen-year-old, he had a lot of confidence to usher two law enforcement officers into seats and then stand in a symbolic position of power himself. Was he doing it on purpose or subconsciously?

“Why do you say that?” Evelyn asked, staying comfortably seated. Let him believe he was in charge.

“About her dad? Because how would he know what happened to her? Believe me, unless he actually did it, he has no clue. He just wants the attention, because his family left him and he’s miserable.”

“Do you have reason to suspect Haley’s dad kidnapped her?” Sophia asked.

Jordan shrugged, setting his coffee on the table between them. He finally sprawled on one of the plush leather chairs across from the couch, his long legs stretched out in front of him. “No, but the guy is an asshole who used to smack her and her mom around.”

“Haley told you she was abused?” Sophia demanded, leaning forward as though this was news to her.

“Nah. Haley was too sweet to actually say it. She always gave everyone the benefit of the doubt, always had excuses when someone did bad shit or treated her wrong. But I can read between the lines.”

“Give me some examples,” Sophia insisted. “What did she say to make you think that?”

“She usually clammed up when anything to do with her dad came up. But she told me once that she was glad they’d divorced, him and her mom. That she couldn’t take living with him anymore.”

“Did she ever mention running away?” Evelyn asked.

Furrows lined his forehead and he sat forward, crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, look, yeah, she might have mentioned that a few times, but it was a while ago. And she never actually would have done it. Besides, her dad was out of the picture. I mean, sure, he had some sort of partial custody. She had to visit every once in a while, but it wasn’t like he was around all the time.” He stared hard at Sophia. “If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that if Haley had decided to run away, she wouldn’t do it this way. She’d never let her mom worry. Never.”

Sophia nodded, her expression telling Evelyn that everything she’d learned about Haley in her investigation meshed with what Jordan was telling them.

“What about her stepdad?” Evelyn asked.

“Pete?” Jordan rolled his eyes. “She thought he was kind of an ass-hat, that’s for sure. She definitely avoided him.”

“Did she ever talk about him being a threat?”

“No. She wasn’t his biggest fan, but he’s sort of a weirdo, so that’s no surprise. You’ve asked me all this before.”

Sophia glanced at Evelyn, giving a small shrug, and Evelyn jumped in.

“Jordan, I want to go over what happened when you dropped Haley off at school. Everything you can remember.”

“Sure.” He glanced between them. “But I haven’t thought of anything new.”

“That’s okay. I just want to hear it from you instead of a police report.” Sometimes, even with witnesses who were telling the truth, repeating the details raised inconsistencies, gaps in memory or brand-new information.

Jordan’s whole body tensed. “It was a pretty typical day. Haley’s school day was over, and I’d been to my morning classes. I picked her up after she finished for the day and we just drove around a bit. We got some ice cream because, for December, it was crazy warm. It’s probably why her team was practicing on the field instead of in the gym. The cheerleaders,” he clarified.

When Evelyn nodded, his focus went back to some spot on the wall, as though he was searching his memory for details that might matter. “She acted happy. Nothing seemed wrong, like I told Detective Lopez before.” He shook his head, but he still wasn’t looking at them. “I didn’t see anyone weird hanging around. I watched her walk toward the school when I dropped her off. She turned back and waved at me. It’s the last thing I remember before I drove away.”

He stared at Evelyn again, a sad, desperate look in his eyes. “I should have waited, seen her go inside. But I assumed she’d be safe there.”

“So you didn’t actually see her go inside?”

“No. But didn’t her friends? I thought the cheerleaders saw her go in. And besides, where else would she go? The whole reason I dropped her off was for her cheerleading practice.”

“And she didn’t tell you anything about meeting someone later?”

He shook his head. “No. She was going to grab a ride home from practice with Marissa.”

“Marissa Anderson,” Sophia interjected. “Haley’s best friend. They were on the cheerleading squad together.”

“And she never spoke of anyone she was afraid of? No one who was hassling her?”

“Other than her dad?” Jordan shook his head.

“How were things going in your relationship?” If they’d only been dating for six months, as Sophia had said, that meant they’d met while Jordan was at Neville U and Haley was still in high school. It wasn’t a huge age difference, but the experience difference between a high school junior still living at home with her mom and a college student, living in a frat house, could be huge.

“Fine.” Jordan shrugged. “Good.”

“No arguments? Neither of you were seeing anyone else?”

“We weren’t exclusive, I guess. I mean, we hadn’t really talked about it. But no, neither of us was seeing other people.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“No jealous exes, then?”

Jordan gave a short laugh. “Haley didn’t have any exes. And no, not on my end.”

“So no one you can think of who might want to hurt her?”

“No! Everyone loved Haley. She was sweet, innocent. No one would want to hurt her.” He sounded offended by the idea. “I heard about that note her mom talked about on the news—some kind of stalker—but I can’t believe she wouldn’t have told me.” He visibly puffed up. “I would have protected her.”

“She never mentioned thinking that someone might be following her around?”

“No.”

Evelyn nodded, not surprised. She stood, and Sophia slowly did the same.

Jordan stayed in his seat, staring up at them. “That’s it? Why haven’t you found her? It’s been a month, and you’re back here questioning me about the same old things?”

“Sometimes people remember new details if they go through it again,” Evelyn said calmly. Most of the time, she consulted from a case file and not directly on a scene, but when she did talk to families and friends, she was used to the frustration and anger and fear. And Jordan’s seemed genuine.

“We’ll be in touch,” Sophia said.

As they headed for the door, the high-pitched whine of a young woman reached them. “Seriously? You went out and got yourself a coffee and didn’t bother to get me one?”

Evelyn glanced back and saw a blond college student in tight yoga pants and a T-shirt that swallowed her, ultrared lips pursed in a pout as she stared down at Jordan. Her hair was a mess, and she’d clearly just climbed out of bed, thrown on some clothes, swiped on some lipstick and went looking for Jordan.

He darted a look over his shoulder and flushed when he caught Evelyn’s eye.

Instead of lingering, Evelyn walked out the door.

“So much for the worried boyfriend act,” Sophia muttered.

Evelyn frowned, pausing to glance backward. Jordan’s reaction when he’d first spotted Sophia hadn’t seemed faked. Sure, he might have had nothing to do with Haley’s disappearance, and still be sleeping with someone else, but he’d said he wasn’t seeing anyone besides Haley. Was he just too embarrassed to tell them he’d already moved on? Or was it all a lie?

As the girl stomped out of the frat house, looking annoyed, Sophia stopped her. “How long have you been dating Jordan Biltmore?”

“Dating?” the girl scoffed. She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Met him at the frat party last night. I should have gone home with one of the other guys hitting on me. Asshole didn’t even share his coffee.” With that, she headed past them, toward the center of campus.

Sophia stared after her a minute, then stomped toward the car, looking pissed off on Haley’s behalf. “I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t care whether he’s found himself a new girlfriend, or he’s just sleeping around. It’s been a month since Haley disappeared. That’s pretty damn fast to move on in any way, if he really cared about her. Jordan Biltmore just hit the top of my suspect list.”

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