Cody Lorcan was good at what she did, at least.
Rain pelted his jacket, but Todd ignored it.
He’d seen Lytel wandering around, strutting like he ran the place.
Objective, Todd supposed the man did. When it came to his team of auxiliary agents, Lytel was most certainly the agent in charge. Todd knew the numbers; there were one hundred PAVAD: AUX agents. Lytel, five coordinators, six teams of ten each, and support staff. But he didn’t want auxiliary. Everyone knew that was a place where an agent went to land in no-man’s-land.
Auxiliary agents never left auxiliary. In four years, none had promoted out into other PAVAD areas.
That was telling to Todd.
He wanted more than that.
But he supposed that the head of the auxiliary unit was a position that meant something. He had no idea what Lytel’s beef with PAVAD and Ed Dennis was.
He wasn’t interested in finding out.
But he had to play the game now.
First opportunity he had, Todd left the initial crime scene and walked up the road. Crossed the state line right next to the Welcome to Missouri road sign.
Lytel was there, scanning the scene with binoculars, checking on the auxiliary teams he had out, plus the SEARCH agents.
Todd stepped up to the man’s side. “What did you want?”
“An answer. Are you in? Completely?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What’s the hesitation?”
“A man like Paul Sturvin seems like a damned good hold up. What in the hell happened?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Best thing I can figure—the guy got into it with his wife, and things got out of hand. Just shitty coincidence Sturvin was…on the payroll.”
Todd nodded. That’s what made the most sense to him, too.
“Make a choice, Barnes. You in, or are you out?”
“I’m in,” Todd said. He’d come up with a working plan. It was the best he could do.
Hell, he knew the truth.
He had no other choice.
62
Hours passed. The waiting was the hard part. Jac was kept busy coordinating at the command post when what she truly wanted to do was take the dog Nat had left with her and get out there looking for the girls herself.
But she couldn’t do that; she had a job to do—and that meant doing it right there at the command tent.
She had to trust the people she worked with to do their jobs.
Her sister was out there. If the girls were out there somewhere, Nat would find them.
She was the best Jac had ever seen after all.
Finally, her sister emerged, after five long hours. Nat came right to her, ignoring the agents and locals and the man she’d arrived with.
Jac stepped toward her sister. “Nat?”
“We found a body,” Nat said quietly. “A woman matching the description of Deborah Miller. I’m sorry, Jac. Signs of the girls remain within fifteen feet of her body, but never branch out after that. There are fresh tire tracks. From the way Kudos kept losing the trail, the girls were taken away—either carried off or by car. Whatever it was, they didn’t walk out of here. But they…are just gone.”
Jac ran over the possibilities in her head as Max came up behind her. “Initial forensics are reporting that the car was run off the road.”
Jac flinched. “She made it this far. And what? Was killed here, or was this just as far as she could make it?”
Nat shook her head. “She didn’t just end up here, Jackie. She has a clear handprint over her face. She was suffocated. And as beaten up as she is, she couldn’t fight back.”
They’d have to confirm it with forensics, but Jac trusted her sister’s words. She turned to Max.
“The killer tracked Debbie here, killed her, and took the girls away in another vehicle?”
“It’s the most logical conclusion. Which tells me he or she may have wanted the girls in the first place. Or just to silence Debbie, and the girls are incidental. He took them for a reason. When he could have killed them and left them out here. We’ll have search teams continue to comb over this area, but right now…we’re almost back to where we began.”
“And the girls are now definitely in the care of a killer.”
63
Driving one-armed for four hours was probably enough to give any woman a nasty case of tennis elbow in her good hand. Miranda tried to shake it off as best she could.
Dani had called her halfway through the drive to give her an update.
They hadn’t been able to get a hold of Paul Sturvin by phone.
Nor had local officers been able to locate him.
She’d confirmed that with Jac not even five minutes ago.
He’d disappeared. At the time his wife was brutally murdered? Uh…no.
That didn’t sit well with Miranda—or anyone else involved.
They had seen family annihilators before. She speculated that was exactly what she was facing. Miranda headed to the field office first. Anything could go wrong in a case like this. She wasn’t about to go poking about looking for a potentially dangerous man one-handed without backup.
The last thing Miranda considered herself was stupid. If the contents of the file had gotten people killed before, she didn’t want to be added to that list.
Ed Dennis said there would be an agent waiting for her at Indianapolis.
There was.
Miranda liked it when things went according to plan.
She took a look at the long, tall, dark, and handsome man in the suit and mirrored sunglasses and almost sighed. Her day had certainly gotten a lot brighter.
“Agent Walker Taggart?”
The man, a good six inches taller than Miranda’s almost five eleven, nodded. She wished he’d take off the sunglasses. Miranda had always thought you could tell a man’s character by that first look in his eyes.
It was something her grandmother had taught her early on.
He held out a hand, she shook as well as she was able to around the bag in her one good
