Silenced

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Sean bypassed the nurse’s station and went straight to Lucy’s room. No one tried to stop him. As long as he looked like he knew where he was going, and didn’t make eye contact, he’d bet his Mustang no one would intervene.

And if anyone tried, they would fail.

Lucy was in the emergency room, a nurse changing her bandages. He stood outside the door, the privacy curtain partly obscuring her view so she couldn’t see him at first.

Sean pushed down on the fear, burying it under layers of false confidence and bravado. He’d seen Lucy in far worse shape than a few scrapes and bruises. She’d seen him worse as well. In fact, looking at her, other than her unusually pale complexion and the fact that she was wearing a hospital gown, she looked just fine.

She’s fine. Lucy’s just fine.

He had to repeat the mantra before the pendulum in his stomach stopped swinging. When he knew he could speak without his voice cracking, he shook off the remaining anxiety like a dog shakes off water. Took a deep breath. Only then did Sean push the curtain aside and step into the cubicle.

“You picked a lovely day to relax in the hospital.” He smiled broadly to mask his lingering fear. He walked to the opposite side of the bed from the nurse and took Lucy’s hand. He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “If you needed a vacation, you should have called me. I’d fly you up to Maine. Beautiful in July.”

“Isn’t your plane still being repaired?”

“I’ll borrow one.”

“You’re not supposed to be in here.” The nurse glanced at him over the tops of her thick glasses. She was younger than Lucy, but the glasses made her look twenty years older.

He winked at the trim, efficient RN. “I won’t stay long. Cross my heart.” He made the gesture.

“She should rest. She’ll be going for X-rays in a minute.”

“Nothing is broken,” Lucy said. “I told the doctor that.”

“You’re probably right, but we’ll X-ray just the same.” The nurse walked to the foot of the bed and picked up the medical chart.

“And you say I’m a bad patient,” he whispered, his voice cracking once as he fought to control the building rage.

“You’re worse than me,” Lucy grumbled. “I am fine.”

Sean touched Lucy’s bruised face. When he found the bastard who had shot at her, he’d kill him. There was no doubt in Sean’s mind that if he could get away with it, he’d do it.

But was it the shooter he was truly angry at? Lucy was training to be a cop. She would be facing an untold number of bad guys, and Sean wasn’t planning on turning vigilante and whacking every criminal she faced.

It was partly the shooter, and partly the woman who had run from the scene—a prostitute, according to Noah—who left Lucy and a detective unconscious in the car.

But mostly, Noah was the focus of Sean’s still bubbling anger.

When Noah had called him thirty minutes ago and told him Lucy had been in an accident, Sean had wanted to throttle the agent. Sean always had something to say, but this time when Noah called, Sean listened, then hung up.

What he wanted to say would have caused Lucy untold future problems with the agent. And while Sean didn’t care if they remained friends—and would prefer if they didn’t—he wasn’t going to incite the battle.

As long as Noah stayed away from him for the next hour. Or year.

Lucy frowned, her dark, soulful eyes seeking something in his. “Sean?”

He smiled, trying to mask his simmering anger. He’d worried her, and that was the last thing he wanted.

“Were you wearing your seat belt?”

“Of course.”

“Bet your chest hurts.”

“Yes, but—”

He slipped the gown off her right shoulder, since she hadn’t been driving. A nasty bruise was already forming where the seat belt restrained her. “I’ll have a lot of fun playing nurse tonight,” he said with a grin. His vision blurred, but he averted his eyes. The nurse looked at him a moment too long. He faked a smile. It didn’t work.

“This really sucks,” Lucy said. She squeezed his hand.

Sean forced himself to relax. Lucy was alive. Nothing broken. Just bruises. “I’ve never heard you say that word before.”

She rolled her eyes. “Genie’s foul mouth is rubbing off on me.” She said to the nurse, “Monica, right?”

“Yes.” The young nurse seemed pleased Lucy had remembered her first name.

“Would you mind checking on Detective Genie Reid for me? She didn’t regain consciousness in the car, and I’d feel a lot better if I knew she was okay.”

“I’ll see what I can find out. Stay put, the orderly should be here in about ten minutes to take you to X-ray.”

“And then I can go.”

“And then the doctor will look at the film and let you know.”

The nurse left and Lucy said to Sean, “I’m not staying tonight. I didn’t even want to come, but Noah made me.”

“Where is he now?”

“He met me at the scene, I briefed him, he said he’d stop by later. They’re looking for Ivy. It’s all jumbled in my head, but I told him they’re all connected.”

Ivy … the name was familiar to Sean, but he didn’t know why. When Noah called him earlier, he’d been worried about Lucy, but now he wanted to remember why Ivy was important. “What’s connected?”

Lucy whispered, “Wendy James and the two prostitutes. Their murders are connected. I think Jocelyn Taylor was trying to help them all.”

“I’m three steps behind you. Noah didn’t tell me anything.” Lucy’s brow dipped in concentration, and Sean tried to stop her from thinking too hard. “You can catch me up later. You need to rest. You could have a concussion.”

“If you make me tell you that I’m fine one more time, I’ll call Dillon for a ride home. I just need to get my thoughts together. Everything was falling into place right before the crash.”

Sean sat on the edge of the bed and kissed her, trying to ignore the cuts and scrapes on her arms and face. He kissed her again because it felt good. To remind him that she was here, whole, healthy.

“You keep scaring me like this, I’ll have to hire myself to be your bodyguard—and I don’t do personal security. For you, Princess, I’ll make an exception.”

“Me? You’re the one who fell two stories down a mine shaft not two months ago.”

“You crashed my plane.”

“Did not. It was shot down.”

Sean raised his eyebrow.

“You,” she added, “were kidnapped by a lunatic.”

“So were you.”

“I’d say we’re even then.”

“Maybe we should move to an uninhabited island where neither of us can get in trouble.”

“We’d probably run into a poisonous snake.” Lucy brought Sean’s hand to her lips and kissed it. “Now, where was I?”

“You weren’t going to tell me you were fine.”

“Right.”

Sean breathed much easier. In their banter, Lucy’s tension eased, making him calmer as well. Unlike him, she wasn’t a good actress. If she was stressed or worried, she wouldn’t tease him.

He kissed her again. “So you put these murders together?”

Again, Lucy made sure no one could overhear, and she kept her voice low. “Some of this is just theory—”

“Lucy, no qualifications, okay?”

“I told you about the crime scene this morning?”

“Briefly. A triple murder at the Hotel Potomac?”

“Yes. The woman was a social worker for a nonprofit. She specialized in working with teenage prostitutes. The other woman was a girl named Maddie, a known prostitute and drug addict who was on and off the wagon. And the third victim, the husband, a congressional staffer.”

“Congress? Don’t tell me he worked for Crowley.”

“Dale Hartline.”

“I know next to nothing about who’s who in the Capitol.” That wasn’t completely true. He knew enough. RCK was often hired to provide personal security for high-ranking officials when they traveled overseas, but Sean rarely, if ever, took those assignments. He did, on occasion, run background checks for campaigns or high-security checks that weren’t covered by the FBI or another agency.

And it was clear that Lucy didn’t buy his disclaimer. She said, “And he used to work for Senator Paxton. In fact, the last call Chris Taylor made before he was killed was to Senator Paxton.”

“Paxton,” Sean said flatly. He had mixed feelings about the senator, from the time he’d first met him in January, but he didn’t share this with Lucy. Paxton had been her mentor for years, though after Women and Children First was shut down six months ago, they had a strained relationship. Lucy didn’t talk about it, and Sean suspected she had grown tired of trying to fill the shoes of Paxton’s dead daughter. Sean had seen pictures of Monique Paxton. The resemblance to Lucy was uncanny.

“He said Chris called to meet with him for advice, then admitted that Chris likely wanted money to help Jocelyn and the girls, but he was vague on details, claimed Chris didn’t give him any. I think he was more or less telling the truth about the call. What tipped me off that he knows something more was that he recognized the prostitutes we showed him.”

“He said that?”

“No. He kept his face completely blank, showed no recognition whatsoever.”

“Does he have a tell? Did his eye twitch or something?”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “No. It was his total lack of empathy. You know him—he’s hired you and RCK, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“He has this way of being quietly enraged when women are in danger. It’s subtle, but it’s always there. And he buried it. I think because he didn’t want to show that he recognized the girls.”

“You’re not stretching on this? Reading something into it?”

“No! Dammit, Noah said the same thing. But I swear, Ivy Harris is the type of girl he feels compelled to save. Same basic physical features as his daughter.”

“And you.”

She closed her eyes.

“Luce, talk to me.”

“Today was the first time I saw Jonathon in nearly six months.”

“Why is that strange? WCF was disbanded. Would you have a reason to see him?”

“Maybe not.”

But something was on her mind, and he pushed. “Did something happen when you last talked to him?”

“I haven’t talked to him since the last WCF fundraiser, the week I learned my boss was a killer.”

“But I took you to the Capitol to see him. Remember? A few weeks after that fiasco.”

Lucy didn’t say anything, and Sean had the uneasy sensation that she was trying to come up with a lie. Lucy was one of those rare people who couldn’t lie convincingly.

“Lucy?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. Something is bothering you, what is it?”

“I didn’t actually talk to him.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t talk to him?”

She looked at him, her eyes uncertain. “Did you ever know in your heart that something was true, but couldn’t prove it?”

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I think Jonathon was an active participant in the vigilante group that destroyed WCF.”

Sean absorbed that stunning accusation.

“How active?”

“I suspect that he knew about it.”

“Do you think he’s a killer?”

“Maybe.” She glanced away. She was hedging.

“Who do you think he killed?”

“Shh,” Lucy admonished, glancing around the semiprivate room. She whispered, “Roger Morton.”

Sean looked at her for a long minute. “Why?”

“Something Mick Mallory said.”

“Mallory confessed to killing dozens of sexual predators.”

“Yes, but when I spoke to him, before his formal confession, he said something that had me thinking the senator actually pulled the trigger.”

“I can’t hate him for that,” he said simply. He brought her hand to his lips. Lucy was aching about this, and he wanted to remove her conflict. Roger Morton didn’t deserve to live, but saying that out loud wasn’t going to help Lucy. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know! What was I supposed to say? A powerful U.S. Senator killed a scumbag rapist and I’m actually kind of happy about it?” She shook her head. “I don’t have any proof. It’s just a bunch of little intangible things that have been bothering me. You kill once, it makes it easier to do it again.”

“Don’t go there, Lucy.” She’d killed two men. They were evil bastards who’d hurt and murdered numerous innocent people. Why did she keep torturing herself over it?

“I don’t know how deep he was involved,” she said. “I don’t want to know. Like I said, I have no evidence—and I want to keep it that way.”

That, Sean understood. “Don’t let it hurt you like this.”

“I’ve made peace with it.” Again, her eyes darted away. She was so easy to read.

“Have you?”

“Yes—”

“I think you’re torn. He may have killed a rapist. A killer who was let out of prison far too early. Someone who hurt you—and who hurt his daughter. Deep down, you can’t condone it. But I’m not going to lose sleep over this, and neither should you.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes you are. It’s all clear to me now. If the senator is guilty, you think not saying something is wrong. But the truth is you have no proof, and saying anything about it would be the mistake. But I can find out.”

“How?”

“Talk to Mallory.”

“No!”

“You deserve the truth, and I know you don’t want to face that bastard.”

“I don’t want to know the truth. If I know for a fact that Jonathon killed Roger Morton, I’d have to tell Noah and the FBI. I don’t want to.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” She was obviously surprised he’d given up so easily.

Sean kissed her forehead. “You think the senator is capable of not quite legal activities,” he began.

Lucy raised an eyebrow. “Murder is illegal.”

“Not justifiable homicide.”

“Sean.” She shook her head at him.

“Okay, sorry. I’m proud of you.” He kissed her again. He’d crawl into the hospital bed with her if he thought he could get away with it.

“What is really bothering me was talking to Jonathon today, what he said and what he didn’t say, I think Chris called him to help Ivy specifically. I can’t figure out why or how. But Jonathon is involved with MARC, maybe not to the extent he was with WCF, but it’s a pattern with him. Getting involved with victims’ rights groups and taking it too far.”

“This makes a lot of sense,” Sean said. “Except the why.”

“Because Jonathon is like you. He cannot stand bullies. He has always stood up for victims of violent crime. And teenage prostitutes—many of them were victims before they turned to selling sex. According to Jocelyn’s boss, Ivy was involved in this business for a long time, but helped other girls get out. She helped Jocelyn get girls off the streets.

“And somehow, Ivy is connected to Wendy James. I mentioned her name and it was written all over Ivy’s face. Three crime scenes, three messages, all a variation of a children’s rhyme.”

Lucy frowned, lost in thought, her lips moving, but he only heard an unintelligible murmur.

Sean didn’t like the expression on her face. She was internalizing the crime. He hadn’t seen her this intense in a long time, not since they had tracked an obsessive psychopathic killer in New York City five months ago.

“Luce—”

Ivy Harris.

Sean remembered why he knew the name. Talking about Senator Paxton was the connection.

Paxton had hired him to do a background check on Ivy Harris. Said she’d applied for a job on his campaign.

Sean had learned that Ivy Harris didn’t exist, but her Social Security number belonged to a dead girl, Hannah Edmonds. He offered to dig deeper, but Paxton said it wasn’t necessary. That was right before Sean and Lucy went to the Adirondacks, and Sean had put it out of his mind.

Lucy suddenly sat up. “I got it!” She winced at the sudden movement. “I needed to say it out loud, and then I heard the rhythm. Listen:

“And this guilty whore don’t cry no more; And this little pig goes wee, wee, wee.”

Sean heard it, but didn’t know how Lucy extrapolated it.

She said, “It’s the exact same rhythm, the exact same beats. He was having fun; it means absolutely nothing. Remember, he didn’t intend to rape her. He only wanted to make it look like a failed rape. He strangled her from behind—there was no sexual component. He wanted the police to think she was killed by a random stranger. But it wasn’t random. And in his effort to make it appear random he pulled ideas from thin air. Maybe he wanted to embarrass her, something he couldn’t do except in death.

“And,” she continued quickly, “when he killed the others he realized he’d had fun with the message. He saw the rat at the Red Light, spontaneously came up with the poem. Six targets. Witnesses say that at least six girls lived in the house on Hawthorne. Except—”

“Slow down,” Sean said, helping Lucy lean back onto the pillows. “Really, slow down.” His heart was racing, needing to keep her from overworking herself. What was he thinking? If the roles were reversed, he wouldn’t want to lie down in bed while a major investigation was happening. He could, however, keep her calm.

“I need to explain this all to Noah,” Lucy said, excited about her theory. “It wasn’t clear earlier but now I see it.”

Monica the nurse came in with an orderly pushing a wheelchair. “You can talk to whomever you want after your X-rays.”

Sean kissed Lucy on the forehead, then helped her sit up. “Listen to the nice nurse and do as you’re told and you can have ice cream in bed when you get home.”

Lucy gave him a reprimanding look, but she couldn’t hold it and started laughing. “No, no, don’t make me laugh, it hurts.”

Her laugh was the best thing for Sean’s nerves.

Sean watched Lucy being wheeled away and heard her ask the nurse, “Did you find out anything about Genie Reid?”

“She’s in surgery, but the doctor said she’s healthy and he expects her to fully recover.”

When everyone was gone, Sean sat heavily on the bed and rested his head in his hands.

Lucy is fine.

He’d find a way to keep her from working too hard tonight, but tomorrow morning she’d be back on this case.

By then, he’d have the answers from Paxton. Why the senator hadn’t gone to the FBI already, Sean didn’t know, but he’d damn well find out.

Sean sat up and called Lucy’s brother Dillon.

“Is Lucy all right?” Dillon asked.

“She’s fine. She’s in X-ray.” Sean smiled, remembering how irritated Lucy had been, repeating herself.

“I’ll let Kate know, she’s on her way to the hospital.”

“I have an errand, and I’m afraid I won’t be back before she’s done. I wouldn’t go if it wasn’t urgent.”

“No explanations necessary. Kate will bring her home.”