“We’re pretty certain the Pretender’s next play will involve me directly. I just want some extra backup. After hours. Off-site. My place. That kind of thing. Do you have a couple of folks you could detail to me for a week or so?”
“Only a week?”
“If it lasts longer than that, I’m doing something wrong,” she said softly.
Price was silent for a few moments. She held her breath. Surely he wouldn’t say no. She was right.
“Okay, Taylor. I’ve got a couple of guys who might work for you. They’re discreet. Quiet. And damn good at their jobs. I save them for our more private endeavors.”
Private. Right up her alley.
“That sounds perfect. When can they start?”
“Tonight, if you’d like. Give me a couple of hours to wrangle them up.”
“Just let them know one thing. The Pretender is mine. They are not to engage him if he gets close, they are to alert me and back off. Okay?”
“Taylor…” His voice held a note of warning.
“I just want to be the one to bring him in, that’s all.”
Price harrumphed, but let it go.
She hung up the phone and leaned back in her chair, smile gone from her face. There. Step one was in place.
Now she could worry about the second part of the plan.
She’d felt the darkness inside her, writhing like a snake in its warm nest, the deadening of her spirit becoming more and more complete as she grew older. Each death meant more blood on her hands, more pieces of her soul shattered and sloughed away. Why would this be any different? He was a threat, and threats needed to be neutralized. Simple as that. Taylor knew she could do it. She knew she was capable.
She’d left the church years before, but she found herself praying to an unknown, unseen God, the words moving past her lips soundlessly.
Let it be me. Let me be the one to end this.
Sixteen
T aylor awoke with a start. Damn it. She’d closed her eyes for half a second and drifted off.
A wave of emotion cascaded through her. She needed to move, to breathe in the night air, to find him. It was all well and good to dream about taking the fight to the Pretender, but the truth of the matter was, he was probably bringing it to her.
The walls grew too close and she stood, fast. As she rose, her holster caught on the edge of her inbox, dumping the contents to the floor.
“Son of a bitch!”
She looked at the mess, the parallel to her own emotions.
Be hunted, or be the hunter.
When it came right down to it, she knew which path she would choose.
She dropped to her knees and began assembling the mess. She’d gathered the papers and files into three significant piles when her phone rang. She reached up to her desk and pulled the phone to her. An internal call, from the switchboard.
“Lieutenant Jackson,” she answered, pushing all the morbid thoughts from her mind.
“LT, it’s Marcus. I’m out on a call, and I think you need to see this.”
She glanced at the clock, 10:11 p.m. Crap. Baldwin would be mad at her, she wasn’t supposed to be here that long. And seeing as she was deskbound, Commander Huston would be very displeased if she went out on a case in an official capacity. But Marcus Wade wasn’t prone to histrionics. Steady and smart, he was the one she counted on to see past surface appearances and into the heart of the matter. If he was calling, he actually needed her.
A quick look couldn’t hurt anything, and if the Pretender was watching… A shot in the proverbial dark, perhaps?
“It’s late. Why didn’t B-shift get the call?”
“Lincoln and I pulled it earlier. It’s taken us hours to get the body out of the water. He’s still in there, tied to something. We’ve got the OEM divers trying to get him untangled.”
That was right, Lincoln had mentioned getting called out to a drowning. And now Marcus was calling… “You have an inkling about the identity of the victim?”
“I think it might be Peter Schechter.”
Taylor groaned inwardly. Yet another teenager dead, more parents to engulf in sorrow. That would be nine of Nashville’s kids murdered in less than a week, not counting the one she’d taken down. She didn’t know how the city was going to recover. She didn’t know how she was going to recover.
“Is he a part of the Halloween massacre?”
“I don’t know. Can you come on out here? I’m at Percy Priest, a boat dock off Hamilton Creek Park. Sam’s just arrived.”
“I’ll be there in ten. Tell Sam to hang on until I can see the scene, all right?”
“Will do. Thanks, Taylor.”
Marcus clicked off. She turned the light out in her office and headed toward the motor pool at a jog. Her boots made sharp clangs against the concrete spiral up into the parking lot. Screw being on desk duty. One of her team needed her.
She grabbed the first unmarked she got to, slid behind the wheel and headed west.
J. Percy Priest Lake was the largest lake in Davidson County, over two hundred and thirteen miles of shoreline, five marinas and thirty-three boat ramps. With trails and playgrounds and fishing and boating, it was a miracle they’d found Schechter’s body so quickly. Though Taylor remembered her friend Robert Trice, who used to run OEM, the Office of Emergency Management, the department that conducted water search and-rescues, telling her that all bodies come to the surface eventually. Robert was gone now, dead too early. She missed him.
Marcus was standing off to her left, talking to Sam. The moon’s glow on the water should have been beautiful. Instead it was menacing. She didn’t like this one bit. It all felt wrong, had for weeks. She needed to do some serious assessments of her life. Because this was her dream, right? Right? To protect. To serve.
She didn’t think she was saving too many lives these days.
She stepped over to Marcus and Sam, who were deep in conversation.
“How’d they find him?” Sam was asking.
“Some guy coming down to tend his boat saw a flash of red in the water, realized it was a puffy down jacket and called 911.”
“That’s lucky. He could have been submerged for much longer. The cold water might have helped save some evidence.”
“The knots that tied him to the branch were elaborate. His jacket is weighted, too, though obviously not enough. He wasn’t meant to be found this quickly, I don’t think.”
Sam pushed her too-long bangs out of her eyes, her brown eyes sharp. “Good thing he was tied to that branch. He would have floated away, drifted down the lake, washed up somewhere else. So, Taylor, how’s Fitz?”
“He’s as good as can be expected. He’s been through a lot.”
Sam gave her a critical, assessing look. “So have you. You need to think about taking some more time off. You’re still on leave anyway, why are you here?”
“Because Marcus called me. I’m fine, really. I need to stay busy. If I sit around for another day I’m going to go mad. I won’t touch anything, I promise.”
Sam spoke softly, so only Taylor could hear. “You were hardly sitting around this morning. I heard what happened. Are you okay?”
