chase. He realized that if Meredith could pinpoint exactly where Linden was, she would do it. But as she kept explaining, she had only limited control over her visions. Knowing very little about psychically gifted people, Luke saw Meredith as a puzzle, one he needed to somehow figure out and then put together. Griff had entrusted him with her care. Babysitting a woman that Dr. Meng believed to have what she referred to as “exceptional abilities” wasn’t easy for a guy like him. Meredith needed someone patient and kind, someone who accepted her psychic talents without question, someone who didn’t find himself occasionally wanting to shake her until her teeth rattled.
Meredith was certain that Anthony Linden had landed at Heathrow last night and had left London and traveled north with a female companion.
Even if she was right about Linden, north of London covered a lot of territory. He had contacted the head man of Powell’s London based headquarters, Thorndike Mitchum, before they left the hotel, given him Meredith’s info, and hoped like hell that it would help Mitchum and his team of investigators.
Once out of London that morning, Luke and Meredith had traveled sixteen miles due north to Waltham Abbey, the first stop on their psychic trek to locate Linden.
“No, this isn’t the place,” Meredith had told him as they drove through the village. “I don’t sense him anywhere nearby. Drive west.”
And so they had taken M25 to Potters Bar in Hertfordshire.
“This isn’t the right place either,” she had said after they had fully explored the small town. “Maybe we need to go farther north from here.”
Leaving Potters Bar behind, they headed to Abbots Langley and then when that also proved to be the wrong town, they had driven even father north and were now a few miles outside of St. Albans.
Luke could tell that with each subsequent disappointment, Meredith had grown weaker, as if some force she could not control was draining the energy from her body and from her mind.
“When we arrive in St. Albans, we’re staying for a while,” he told her.
“What if it’s not the right place either?”
“It doesn’t matter. We need to eat and you need to rest.” When she looked at him with gratitude in her eyes, he quickly added, “You’re no good to me if you pass out from exhaustion.”
The tenderness in her eyes faded and her gaze hardened.
“You think I’m some sort of freak, don’t you?” she said.
“I don’t think you’re a freak.”
“You do. I can see it in your eyes every time you look at me.”
“You’re an enigma to me,” he admitted. “I don’t understand how you do what you do. When I’m around you, half the time, I question my own sanity.”
“Thank you for being honest with me.” There was a hint of sadness in her voice.
“Look, Merry Berry, I’ll make a deal with you,” Luke said. “I’ll always be honest with you, even if it upsets you or hurts your feelings, if you promise you will trust me to take care of you and you won’t question me when I tell you to do something or not to do something.”
“I’m a great deal of trouble, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, you are. But most things worth a damn are a lot of trouble.”
“Oh.”
“So, do we have a deal?”
“Yes, I suppose we do.”
She remained quiet for several minutes, and then she asked, “Luke, why did you call me Merry Berry?”
“Huh?”
“You called me—”
“It’s just something that popped into my head. Your name is Meredith, so the short version is Merry. And you’re covered in a million freckles that look like tiny copper berries.”
“Oh, I see. I’ve never had a nickname before. Hmm . . . Merry Berry.” She smiled. “I think I like it.”
Luke barely stifled a groan.
“The authorities have been notified,” Griff explained. “Sheriff Fulton will handle this case personally, as a favor to me. And he’ll deal with the TVAP. Fulton has promised to keep his personnel to a minimum and I’ve promised that we will cooperate fully with his department.”
Everyone seated at the conference table remained silent and attentive. Griff had called this meeting of highly trusted personnel to share information about Shiloh Whitman’s murder and how the crime would be handled by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, the TVA police, and the Powell Agency. Griff issued orders for the agents present to deal with their subordinates.
“I expect Sheriff Fulton’s team will arrive within the hour,” Griff said. “That gives us precious little time to prepare for their investigation and to secure Griffin’s Rest. At no time will any member of our staff interfere with the sheriff’s investigation. But that doesn’t mean our people can’t ask to see everyone’s ID, which I fully expect them to do.”
Derek watched and listened, his gaze moving from a haggard Griff to his equally fatigued wife. To a person, everyone in the room understood the significance of Shiloh Whitman’s death. Someone from the outside being able to break into Griffin’s Rest would be the equivalent of someone breaking into Fort Knox. The possibility of that happening seemed highly improbable. How could the Copycat Carver have gotten through security? How could a stranger have penetrated the seemingly foolproof protection surrounding the compound?
“I don’t think I have to tell y’all how Nic and I feel about Shiloh’s death.” Griff reached out to Nic, who immediately stood up and took his hand. “And you’ve all undoubtedly asked yourselves the same questions we did, and no doubt came to the same conclusions.”
“Since the copycat has murdered three Powell Agency employees and three members of employees’ families, it would be reasonable to assume the copycat killed Shiloh,” Nic told the group. “We are not ruling out that possibility. However, there are two very good reasons to consider an alternate possibility—that the copycat did not kill Shiloh.”
As if they were a tag team supporting each other through this ordeal, Griff took over again from Nic. “One: It would have been virtually impossible for a stranger to have gotten inside Griffin’s Rest. Two: Whoever killed Shiloh did not slit her throat nor did he mutilate her body in any way.”
“How was she killed?” Michelle Allen asked, her voice quivering slightly.
“From what we can tell—and an autopsy will no doubt reveal—Shiloh was attacked, subdued, and her head held under the water at the edge of the lake until she drowned. There is bruising on Shiloh’s body and upper arms.”
“So you can see that the killer’s MO does not match that of the copycat,” Nic explained. “But that does not necessarily mean the copycat didn’t kill her. If the Copycat Carver is, as we believe he is, a professional assassin, it would have been easy enough for him to alter his method.”
“But if the odds of the copycat breaching Powell security are slim to none, then we have to broaden our search and accept the possibility that someone on the Powell staff killed Shiloh,” Maleah said aloud what she knew everyone there was thinking.
Luke drove down Chequers Street until he reached St. Peters at the southern end of the main street in St. Albans. Then he headed down Hollywell and turned onto Sopwell Lane.
“There it is,” Meredith said. “The Goat Inn. It looks like a nice place.”
“There’s no point in going back to London tonight,” Luke told her. “I’ll see if they have a couple of rooms here. If they do, you can rest for a while after we eat lunch and maybe even take a nap.”
When she opened her mouth to argue, he held up his hand in a Stop gesture. “Remember our deal. You’re going to trust me to take care of you.”
She nodded.
