He dropped her arms and walked a few feet away. Charlotte continued to cry, but her eyes were wary now. He could see the realization in them, then the fury began to build.
He turned away and said, “I don’t love you.”
“Well, we’ve got quite a problem on our hands. Because I’m pregnant.”
He froze, then turned back to her slowly.
“What did you say?”
She set her chin, stared him right in the eyes. “I’m pregnant.”
He couldn’t identify the emotions running through him. Bullshit. She was bullshitting him. But something in her face told him she wasn’t.
“Is it mine?” he asked.
“Fuck you, Baldwin. Fuck. You.” Big, sloppy tears coursed down her face. “How could you say that?”
“It’s too early to tell. We’ve only been together a few weeks.”
She whirled away and went to her handbag. She dug inside for a moment, then turned and threw something at him. He caught it in midair-a pregnancy test, with two pink lines.
Son of a bitch.
She’d gathered up some of her pride-her face was frozen, all emotions hid away.
“I’ll abort it. You obviously don’t want it.”
“Charlotte, I-”
“Go to hell, John Baldwin. You just go to hell.”
In a flurry of invectives and flying red hair, Charlotte decamped from the apartment. He didn’t go after her. Too much to absorb. He shut the door behind her and leaned against it with a sigh. God, what had he done? What had he gotten himself into?
Pregnant.
Oh, my God. He’d gotten her pregnant.
And that was only half the problem. For Christ’s sake, she’d suggested planting evidence.
He was at an absolute loss.
He slid down the door onto the apartment floor, head in his hands. What to do? He took a few deep breaths. That was better.
The first step would be to go to Garrett Woods and explain that he couldn’t have her on the team anymore. He’d gauge whether he needed to tell the whole story once he was in the moment; it was quite possible that Garrett would simply take him at his word and have her moved. If not, he’d have to suck it up and take his punishment like a man. It was his fault, after all. He’d been thinking with the little head.
Should he marry her? Stop her from having the abortion, marry her and have the kid? He never saw himself as a father. Of course, he’d never gotten anyone pregnant before, either.
His cell phone started to ring but he ignored it. He struggled to his feet, gritting his teeth. He felt such heaviness surrounding him, the pressure of the case, the chaos of Charlotte’s idiocy, the specter of an unplanned child…
It was too much. He went into the kitchen, splashed cold water on his face, then went to the living room and turned on the television. A breaking news alert flashed red on the screen, and he felt his heart sink. The anchor had tears in her eyes as she delivered the statement.
“The Clockwork Killer has struck again.”
“Son of a bitch!” Baldwin hurled the remote across the room. It crashed against the wall in several pieces, the perfect allegory for his life. Broken pieces. Little girls scattered like seed corn in the forest. A suspect with no evidence to tie him to the crimes. And a demented profiler hell-bent on her own personal destruction. His life, turned upside down. How many more disasters could this day bring?
Charlotte
Charlotte sat in her car, white and shaking. She couldn’t believe Baldwin had questioned her. Is it mine? That bastard. How could he think otherwise? He’d been fucking her every chance he got for over two weeks. How dare he be so callous? How dare he? After all she’d given him. After what she’d said.
She did love him, whether he believed it or not. Her love may not manifest itself in the ways others could interpret, but it was love, nonetheless. She’d never given herself so totally to a man before. Look where it had gotten her. Alone and pregnant, in her car, crying.
She wiped her face angrily. Crying would solve nothing.
He was just scared. That’s all. She shouldn’t have told him her plan, not until afterward. She should have eased him into this, told him about the baby, let him be happy first. Then he’d understand her plan was flawless, and the right thing to do.
She put the car into gear. She had so many things to do today. She’d prove herself to him, and he would come back. He would. She would make sure of it.
Fifty-One
Nashville 9:00 p.m.
T aylor was in the conference room at the CJC, getting briefed about a boy named Schuyler Merritt, who Susan Norwood and Juri Edvin called Raven. The pieces were all coming together, fast and furious. They’d sent the Howells home-there was nothing more Theo could help with tonight. The Norwoods had been dismissed, as well. Susan had been escorted to booking after telling Taylor the whole story. About how the four of them had split the crime scenes between them, gone into the homes of their enemies, held guns to their heads, forced them to take the poisoned drugs. About how Raven and Fane had perverted their love and made a movie of their actions. About their practice of witchcraft and vampirism.
Lincoln had worked fast, once he had a name to work with. Schuyler Merritt’s history spilled out onto the table with reckless abandon-somewhere, something inside the words might give a clue to where the boy might be.
“I called the reform school he was attending in Virginia. They say he ran away three weeks ago. His parents were notified-by phone and by mail. They sent back a letter saying they were going to homeschool him. The school happily washed their hands of him. Apparently, he’d been quite a handful.”
The fax machine in the conference room had been whirring for thirty minutes. The school was faxing Schuyler’s records, including his psych reports. The pages fed out of the machine one after another, regimented as any army, detailing incident after incident in the few short months Schuyler had been a resident with them.
Taylor glanced through those pages, wondering how a boy could end up so troubled. Not that she hadn’t seen it before, many times. But Schuyler Merritt seemed worse than most.
“Any word on the location of the mother, Jackie Atilio, yet?”
“No, and we can’t find Schuyler senior, either.”
Taylor turned to McKenzie. “Think he got the parents out of the way?”
“Unfortunately, yes. A cadaver dog is searching the Atilio house and yard, right?”
“Yeah. I haven’t heard about a hit.”
“Might want to send them over to the father’s place, too.”
“They’ve got instructions to go there next. Has anyone been able to place a last-known on either of the parents?”
“Marcus got through to Atilio’s husband’s commander. He’s been on a training mission and out of touch for two weeks, at least. There’s no way he could have talked to her.”
“Okay. Keep on it.”
Taylor flipped over the re-creation of Schuyler’s reform school jacket, the faxed pages three-hole punched and put into a binder to keep them from getting lost. The pictures showed a thin boy, vanilla-blond hair cropped short, blue eyes that bristled with anger. His lips were pressed together, the point of his collars resonating with the sharpness of his chin.
The reports from the school were crammed full of incidents, ranging from practicing witchcraft to bullying to homosexual liaisons. The psychologists at the school had no control over him. Regardless of their efforts to reach
