All the Pretty Girls

Fifty

“T here’s no one at his house.” Fitz’s disembodied voice was yelling out of Taylor’s speakerphone as she and Baldwin broke all the traffic laws and speed limits getting to Reese’s house. “We’ve cleared the scene. He got away.”

“Put out a BOLO for him and his car. He’s in the wind again, and we can’t take a chance that he’s going after another girl.” She clicked off the speaker and glanced over at Baldwin, who was talking into his cell phone and making notes as quickly as he could.

“Okay, thanks. That’s what I needed.” He hung up and returned Taylor’s gaze, eyes deadly serious. “Nathan Chase has had one visitor. Only one. It was a male who came to visit him nearly five years ago. Care to guess who that someone is?”

“Reese Connolly.”

“That’s right. Now it all makes sense. If Quinn had just told us in the beginning that Reese wasn’t her and Whitney’s little brother, but a son, that would have made life a little easier.”

“Baldwin, I don’t think she’s told too many people about it. Obviously, she didn’t even think Reese knew. But he figured it out, didn’t he?”

“He must have. Visiting his father in jail. Man, that’s…wait a minute. Head back to the office. I want to check something out.” They arrived at the CJC in five minutes. Taylor parked on the street and they bounded through the back door, right into her office. Whitney Connolly’s laptop was still open on Taylor’s desk, an inanimate object that held all the answers they’d been seeking, if only they’d known where to look.

Baldwin pulled up the e-mail folder, then went to the white board in Taylor’s office, writing the address down.

IM1855195C

He started teasing the letters and numbers apart, the white board quickly filling up with symbols that made no sense to Taylor. Baldwin looked positively blissful, a mad Sam Nash of the profiling world. He finally stood back and let her see the finished product.

I/ M/ 1/8/ 5/ 5/ 1/9/ 5/ C

IM/18/5/5/19/C

I’m 18 5 5 19 5 C

I’m R E E S E C

I’m Reese Connolly

Baldwin’s face was triumphant, as if he’d just solved the most intricate key to the world’s most obscure riddle.

“How’d you do that?” she asked, not exactly stroking his ego but knowing he wanted to show it off.

“At first I thought it was Nathan Chase’s prisoner number, but that didn’t match up. It’s a simple code, correlating to the letters of the alphabet. R is the eighteenth letter, E is the fifth. S the nineteenth. After that it was pretty clear.”

Taylor stared at the board for the longest time, then stood, took the pen from Baldwin and wrote her own answer below his. The words chilled them both.

I AM REESE CHASE.

“His father’s son. That’s what all this is about, isn’t it, Baldwin?”

Baldwin was staring at the board, nodding. “I think it is.”