Cold Hearted (Cold Justice Book 6) (40 page)

The kid shrugged, enormous shoulders filling out a Ravens’ T-shirt like it was a size too small. Darsh had no clue how Erin had handled the guy at the sorority house that day.

“I got a message from Drew.” The guy wouldn’t meet his gaze. “He asked me to do him a favor. To find all the people he’d been an asshole to and apologize to them on his behalf.”

“You have the list on you?”

Brady dug into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a heavily folded piece of paper. Darsh scanned it. It was the same list Hawke had sent him.

“I’m still waiting to hear your alibi for Monday night. People say there were a couple of hours when you weren’t at the party?”

Brady’s eyes flashed. “I thought you caught the guy responsible?”

Darsh stared hard at the football player. He kept his voice low. “We have someone in custody, but he hasn’t been charged yet.”

Brady’s eyes went wide. “I didn’t kill Cassie or the other girl.” He swallowed and Darsh smelled fear. “But I don’t have an alibi. I just went for a walk. I’ve outgrown the party scene. Didn’t want to be there, but didn’t have any choice. I’m gonna move off campus as soon as I can find a place.” All the breath went out of the kid. “I just want college to be over.”

Darsh nodded his head toward Rachel’s room. “So why are you here? She isn’t on the list.”

Jason straightened from his slouch against the wall. “She’s on
my
list.” A look of shame crossed his features. “Look.” His shoulders slumped. “I saw her on campus before the trial started and said some things I’m not very proud of. I thought she was lying about being attacked.” His lips compressed into a bloodless line. “But she wasn’t, was she? Everything she said happened.” He swallowed noisily. “I told her she made it up because she was desperate for attention, and that she was too ugly for anyone to want.” Tears filled the guy’s eyes, and he didn’t try to hide them. “I need to tell her how sorry I am.”

“You can tell her, but I doubt it’ll be today. Whether or not she forgives you is something else entirely.”

“That’s her prerogative.” Brady nodded, expression serious. “I need to apologize to Detective Donovan, too. I’ve been a prick. I saw her earlier, but she was talking with that TA from criminology—”

“Lachlan or Hall?” He didn’t want to think about Erin, but she was always on the periphery of his thoughts.

“Lachlan,” Brady told him.

“He’s also on the list,” Darsh noted. “What did Drew Hawke do to him?”

“We got him drunk and wrote on him at a party. Humiliated him.” Brady closed his eyes. “Man, there are a lot of people on that list. I’ve been a prick, and I need to snap out of it before I cross a line that can’t be uncrossed.” He gave a harsh laugh. “I’m starting a twelve-step program for douchebags.”

When their eyes met, a look of understanding passed between them—the kid had been an asshole but had decided to face the consequences. It took a certain amount of balls to do that. There was hope for him yet. Assuming he followed through.

“You think there’s a chance Drew will be released?” Brady asked the million-dollar question, trying to keep the hope out of his voice.

Darsh handed the piece of paper back to Brady. “Depends on what we find out and how the Department of Justice wants to handle it. Either way a judge has to decide—same way a judge sentenced him in the first place.”

He went to turn away, but Brady asked urgently, “Do
you
think Drew raped those girls?”

Darsh hesitated, then gave a slight shake of his head, even though he’d never make an official statement.

Brady pulled in a big breath. “Right. Good.” Then he resumed his slouch against the wall and began what was sure to be a long wait.

Ully was frantically motioning Darsh toward the door of Rachel’s room, and they edged inside the crowded space. The girl looked so fragile and tiny in that big hospital bed surrounded by tubes and machines. Medical personnel were drawing blood and checking her blood pressure. Her skin was about the same shade as the bleached bedsheets. Had Rachel Knight woken up with damage to her brain function? It didn’t look like it, but it didn’t mean she remembered anything about what happened yesterday. She was talking to the doctors and holding hands with her mother, her father standing at his wife’s shoulder. Between family, medical staff, and her bodyguard, courtesy of Alex Parker’s security company, the room was full to bursting.

Rachel’s eyes searched the crowd and paused when they found his. He edged closer.

“Where’s Erin?” she asked hoarsely.

“She wanted to be here,” Darsh told her. So why had she left? To avoid him, he realized. The knowledge sat like a tombstone on his chest. “Do you know who did this to you, Rachel?”

She nodded. Despite her ordeal, her eyes were brighter than they’d been when they’d talked the other day. Her greatest fear had come true, and she’d survived. Maybe she could overcome some of the trauma that haunted her. In a war zone they called it “seeing the elephant.”

She gripped his sleeve and pulled him closer. His pulse kicked up a beat. “He tricked me into meeting him at the park by saying a girl needed my help. He forced me to walk into the forest where he intended to hang me from a tree and make it look like I’d committed suicide. He said he was the one who raped me last year, and that he pretended to be Drew Hawke. You have to let Drew out of prison, he didn’t do it.” Her hand shook, not with fear, but with passion. Her thoughts were with the man she’d helped wrongfully convict.

“Who?” he asked, trying not to sound impatient. “Who tricked you? I need a name or a description.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and he leaned close so she could whisper in his ear. “Rick. Rick Lachlan.”

The words came out as barely an undertone, but they shook him to his foundation. He searched her face to make sure she hadn’t made a mistake or been confused, but her gaze was clear and direct. It wasn’t the professor. The professor was another stooge, like the quarterback had been. Darsh had been fooled the same way Erin had been fooled.

Erin
.

Erin had been with Lachlan earlier…

Part of him wanted to ask Rachel if she was absolutely sure, but that was a stupid question, and he’d already been stupid enough. The final pieces clicked together. The professor didn’t have a personal grudge against the football team, but this Lachlan guy did.

He squeezed her hand, nodded curtly to her parents, and strode into the corridor, calling Erin’s cell. She didn’t answer, but maybe she was just avoiding him. Next he dialed Agent Chen. “Rachel Knight just named Rick Lachlan as the person who attacked her yesterday and said he’d confessed to raping her last year. Can you tell me everything you’ve got on him?”

Ully stood at his shoulder, looking confused. The bodyguard followed them out.

Chen began reciting information, “Rick Lachlan lived in the same hall as Rachel’s roommate’s boyfriend. I’m looking at the data I entered for where the victims took classes, and they all had classes in the building where he was based.” Which would cross over with Professor Huxley. Lachlan also had access to the professor’s office and probably to his house and car keys. Not to mention Mandy Wochikowski’s keys from when she’d worked in their lab last summer.

“He gave the impression he was working at the mission on Monday night. Bickham was supposed to follow that up. Call her and ask her to confirm,” he told Ully.

“Lachlan’s the killer? The professor’s grad student?” Ully asked, surprised.

“Yeah.” He wanted to slap himself on the forehead for missing the obvious. “Genius IQ. Fits seamlessly into the student population because he is one.” Darsh was talking both to Agent Chen and to Ully. “And someone with his intellect would probably be quite happy to not only make law enforcement look incompetent, but also to screw up his boss’s career and turn himself into the resident expert. Put a trace on his and Erin Donovan’s phones right now. Can you send me a picture of him, Chen?”

“Why Erin’s?” Ully asked urgently.

“Sending right now,” said Agent Chen. “There’s something else. His mother was murdered by his father right in front of Lachlan when he was nine years old. The father violated a restraining order. Shot her and then himself, leaving little Ricky an orphan. It might give him a reason to attack the criminal justice system.”

“Yup,” Darsh acknowledged. The photograph downloaded, and Darsh showed it to the bodyguard who was hovering in the doorway. “You seen this guy around here?”

His brows rose. “Sure, he’s been hanging around on and off since yesterday. He’s the guy?” the bodyguard asked, staring at the photograph as if memorizing every line.

Darsh nodded. “You being here probably saved her life.”

“That’s my job,” the guy said. “The mom said he was a friend of Rachel’s.”

“Which is how he convinced her to meet him yesterday morning. He must have overheard me and Erin talking at lunch the other day, saying Rachel was remembering things from her rape. Erin told me she’d done some lectures for Huxley.” And that was the exact moment Darsh knew he’d just figured out the real motive.

Erin
. She was the center of this thing. She made all the pieces fit.

“I’m betting Lachlan met her and started to fixate on her. He probably found out about her history with her late husband and decided they shared a bond because of the way his father killed his mother. Then the football players humiliated him at some frat party, and he decided to use the campus rape issue and the prominence of varsity athletes in these events to not only take them down, but to stick it to the system and ingratiate himself with Erin. After the trial he no longer had her attention, so he figured out another way to get it.”

Some of the images he’d seen of her on the professor’s wall that morning were old, speaking of long-term obsession. Her hair had had time to grow from a sleek, chin-length bob to way down past her shoulders.

Darsh tried her cell again. Nothing. Ully did the same. When she didn’t pick up Ully’s call, Darsh felt the first twinge of real fear.

“Get road blocks up ASAP. Pretty sure he will at least try to grab her.” Erin had taken down Jason Brady with ease. She could handle a short-ass like Lachlan. That’s what he told himself so he didn’t start freaking out. Keep calm, keep cool, Erin was fine. Just avoiding him and her fellow cops. “Where’s security around here?”

Ully led the way, and they barged inside and demanded the guard replay all footage of the entrances for the last thirty minutes. It didn’t take long to spot Erin leaving the side entrance with Lachlan.

“You take the cruiser, I’ll take my car.” Ully tossed him the keys. “Erin said she left it here in the lot so I’m guessing Lachlan offered her a ride. I’ve got a radio on me. We can cover more ground this way.”

Erin was in danger, and it was his fault. He’d been the one to target the professor, and part of his dislike for the man had been personal. It should never be personal. He’d fucked up way more than Erin ever had with Drew Hawke. Darsh swallowed twice before he managed to force out, “Let’s get a chopper in the air and start searching the area.”

He ran to the cruiser and called Agent Chen. “Put out an ABP for whatever Rick Lachlan drives and then inform the cops that our UNSUB is one Rick Lachlan, and he may have Detective Donovan with him. Location unknown. They left the hospital twenty minutes ago. Get the message out to all the surrounding counties, too.”

Darsh got in the cruiser and sat with his heart thudding crazily. His hands shook. He couldn’t lose her. He should have told the chief to stuff the case that morning and just gone with Erin when the bastard fired her. If he had, she’d be safe now. But he’d needed to finish the job, to prove he was the best, even though it had cost Erin not only her job, but possibly her life.

He sat there, paralyzed. He had no idea in which direction to drive. Lachlan could head to a cabin in the woods, and it might be weeks before they tracked him down—weeks where he got to hurt Erin the way he’d hurt those other women.

Darsh knew Erin could take care of herself, but she didn’t know Lachlan was the enemy. She didn’t know he was a monster.

Darsh forced himself to remember his training, not only FBI, but Scout Sniper School too. To calm his racing pulse and use his brain. The hunt was always as much mental as physical. He brought up a map of the area. Lachlan knew he didn’t have much time before Rachel Knight told the world he’d tried to kill her. His options—assuming he had Erin—were murder, murder-suicide, hiding, or making a run for it. The young man felt intellectually superior to law enforcement and was a total narcissist, probably borderline personality disorder. Darsh doubted he’d lower himself to suicide. His obsession with Erin meant he’d want to keep her alive, at least in the short-term. To live out the fantasy he’d created for himself with her at his side.

So where would he go?

Darsh zoomed out on the map and had his answer.

The sun was setting in the west, and it would be dark soon. Rick Lachlan was going to make a break for Canada. And he was planning to take Erin with him.

E
rin swiveled to
look at the turnoff they’d just driven past. “Hey Rick, you mis—
ouch
!”