Silenced

Lucy’s name was never mentioned since she’d been a surviving rape victim, but Hans Vigo was quoted, as well as others Sean knew had been involved in the hunt for Adam Scott.

There were articles about Roger Morton, the man Paxton claimed to have killed, who provided detailed information about the women Scott had killed and what happened to their bodies. FBI documents were mixed with the newspapers, including Morton’s confession to helping Adam Scott cover up the murder of Monique Paxton.

PETERSON: Were you present when Adam Scott killed Monique Paxton?

MORTON: No.

PETERSON: When did you find out Adam killed Monique?

MORTON: He called me and said he needed help with something. I got to his house and she was dead. We got help from Trevor and that whiny snot Ullman and got rid of the body.

PETERSON: How?

Sean didn’t want to read anymore. He flipped through more files and saw a document marked “confidential” that made his skin crawl.

It was Lucy’s debriefing interview after her kidnapping and rape seven years ago.

Too late, Sean heard the key in the lock. He’d been so focused on the papers in front of him, he hadn’t heard Paxton enter the house or come up the stairs. He remained sitting at the desk, made no move to turn off the desk lamp, and waited until Paxton stepped into the room.

“You broke into my house?” Paxton said through clenched teeth.

Sean had to remain sitting or he would have attacked Paxton. His vision was sharp, focused, his hands steady. His heart beat fast, but steady. He was ready to fight. But if he touched Paxton, the senator would be dead.

“You have no right to these files,” Sean said quietly.

“You read them?” Paxton raised an eyebrow. He didn’t come closer.

“Not all. And I’m not going to.”

“You need to. You should know what that bastard did to my daughter. To all those other women. To Lucy.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“You think ignorance is the answer? Our minds sanitize the truth so we can cope. I don’t want the sanitized version of events. I wanted to know what he did to my daughter. That he strangled her while they had sex, then literally destroyed her body with acid he stole from the high school laboratory. Monique suffered at his hands. She shouldn’t suffer alone.”

“It helps you to know? You’re sick.”

“You want to know. I see it. You want to know what Lucy endured. My God, Sean, she suffered and then she fought back and killed him. I want to give her a medal. I had to know how he died, what he said, why he targeted my daughter. You know he picked Lucy because she looks like Monique. He said-”

“Shut the fuck up!” Sean’s arm shot out and all the papers went flying across the den.

Paxton pushed. “You want to know what drives me? You want to know why I can keep fighting when all I want to do is put a bullet in my head and join Monique? It’s because of Lucy. If she can endure, I can endure. If she can fight back, I can fight back.”

“It’s over. I’m not helping you. I’m done.”

He walked over and picked up all the FBI transcripts he could find, tearing the pages.

“Stop!” Paxton shouted.

“You don’t get to keep these. No one does.”

“You’re no saint, stop acting self-righteous.”

“Let the chips fall, Senator.”

“All I have to do is make one call to the FBI Special Agent-in-Charge in Boston and you will be arrested. You know that.”

“I don’t care anymore.” He did care. He didn’t want to leave the country to avoid arrest and he didn’t want to go to prison. Not for what he’d done-something that shouldn’t have been a crime to begin with. But he wasn’t working with this twisted bastard.

“You do care. You’ll lose her.”

Sean’s jaw tightened.

“I love Lucy like a daughter, but I will tell her the truth about how she got into Quantico. I lied to you.”

Sean had suspected as much, but he didn’t know if he could believe Paxton now.

“I tried to pull strings to get her in, but I didn’t have to. One of the panelists, the one I knew would vote for Lucy because he’s a close friend, gave me the heads-up that she was being declined-again, based on a psych profile. I called Hans Vigo and asked him what I could do to get her in. I was willing to pull any string. You know what he said? ‘It’s already taken care of.’”

Paxton sneered and shook his head. Sean was standing in the middle of the office, half-torn papers scrunched in his fists. “Lucy has a lot of friends. But she also has enemies. It would benefit you to find out who they are.”

“I’m not interfering with Lucy’s career.”

“You already have!” Paxton walked around to the back of the desk. “If you don’t want Lucy to know that her friend and mentor Hans Vigo rewrote the psych report so that she could get into the Academy, I’d suggest you sit down and we get to work to find out who has my locket. Because Lucy won’t be the only one to suffer. I would hate to see Dr. Vigo’s stellar career destroyed because of one act of clandestine kindness.”

How could he betray Hans? Did Dillon and Kate, Hans’s closest friends, know? Sean couldn’t be party to damaging their careers, but he wished he didn’t know. He didn’t want to keep this secret from Lucy, but he didn’t have much choice.

In the corner of the office Paxton had a shredder. Sean walked over and shredded the file on Lucy. He wasn’t going to read it, and Paxton would never read it again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Kate made grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches at nine that night. “Since I cooked-and I hate cooking,” Kate said, “do I get some of your ice cream?”

Lucy pretended to think about it, then smiled. “Don’t eat it all.”

Kate made a beeline for the freezer. “Before dinner?” Lucy called.

“You might change your mind.” She grabbed a spoon, and like Lucy, ate right out of the container. “Oh, God, this is orgasmic.” Her eyes flew open and she stared at Lucy. “Sorry.”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “Why apologize? It is orgasmic.” She was twenty-five, and yet sometimes her family still treated her like a child. Kate wasn’t the worst, though, and Lucy loved her sister-in-law as if she were her flesh-and-blood sister.

Kate’s phone rang while she was eating the second bite. She glanced at the caller ID. “I swear, when I get two minutes someone needs me.”

“Donovan,” she snapped when she answered.

Lucy stood and stretched. Her muscles ached from not only the crash, but from sitting on the couch for so long.

“Rachel,” Kate said, “I’m going to put you on speaker, okay? I don’t want to have to repeat all this to Lucy.” She put her cell phone on speaker and put the phone on top of the piles of papers on the coffee table.

By way of introduction, Kate said, “Special Agent Rachel Burrows, meet analyst Lucy Kincaid. Rachel is in Richmond and just finished interviewing Amy Carson, the girl Jocelyn Taylor reunited with her mother.”

“Hi, Lucy,” Rachel said. “What Agent Donovan didn’t say was that she was my cyber crimes instructor at Quantico and my advisor.”

“That was my first year teaching at the Academy,” Kate said. “You know what’s scary? How many agents I meet now who I taught at some point over the last seven years. It makes me feel old.”

“You are forty,” Lucy teased.

“You are a cruel, cruel woman.” To Rachel, Kate said, “What do you have?”

“I tried Agent Armstrong and he was in a meeting, so he told me to call you. I spoke with Amy and her mother, but there was something odd going on.”

“Odd?”