Forgotten Secrets (4 page)

“My winning personality and ability to get along with others?” she said, her voice dry.

“You’re the best profiler to go through the training at Quantico in twenty years.”

Her mouth dropped open in shock.

“You get inside these guys’ heads. I need someone like you for this position because it’s an experiment. The staff based at Quantico does more data crunching than investigating. The field agents take on that role. This team combines the two skill sets. It forces us to face the worst of the worst when we embed ourselves as part of local task forces.”

“The unit’s working,” she said.

“Yeah. Our solve rate is higher than any of the other teams’. That’s not the point. The very gift that makes you the best at your job is going to drive you out of it. You empathize, Riley. You live every horror with the victim, but you also immerse yourself inside the killer’s head. You’re not going to survive if you don’t find a balance.”

The words coming from the man who controlled her destiny with the FBI clawed at her throat, cutting off her ability to breathe. Desperate, she dug her nails into her palms to subdue the panic. “I can do this, Tom. I promise you.”

He raised an eyebrow. He’d been a profiler for nearly thirty years. He didn’t miss much.

“I want you to stay home. For a week.”

“But—”

“You’re injured. You’re running on empty.”

One glance at her bandaged arm reinforced the point. She’d let the serial killer get the drop on her. A few ibuprofens and the graze would heal. She’d be fine.

Unlike Patricia.

In some jobs, a failure meant a late report or a reprimand. For Riley, failure meant someone else died. Not something that could—or should—be forgiven. Or forgotten.

“Tom—”

He held up his hand. “Say anything else, and I’ll make it
two
weeks. When you come back, I want you to report
exactly
how you plan to emotionally survive this job, because right now, I don’t think you can.”

Her boss walked around the car to help her out. “I’m not kidding, Riley. Seven days of serious contemplation. That’s an order.”

Without another word, he got into his car and drove away.

As the taillights disappeared around the corner, Riley’s mind whirled in chaos. A week. She had a week to come up with an answer that would convince him that she could do the job she’d worked for most of her life.

She couldn’t lose her position on the unit. She had too many promises to keep. The biggest one to her sister, Madison.

The streetlight above Riley flickered. A skitter of awareness tingled at the base of her neck. She clasped the butt of her Glock and hurried through the small gate leading to the old walk-up that had been converted into efficiency apartments a decade ago.

She climbed the concrete steps and unlocked the door. The old oak squeaked open, and she closed the outside behind her.

All was quiet in the foyer. She trudged up the stairs to her apartment. Her gaze darted from side to side with every step down the hall until she reached the last door on the right and inserted the key into the lock. It went in easily. Just like normal.

She pushed inside and quickly disarmed the alarm system, then reset it for home.

With the temporary cloak of safety in place, Riley walked directly into the bedroom, dropped her go bag, and sank onto the bed, her knees shaking. She buried her head in her hands, rubbing the grit from her eyes. Stark despair twisted her gut. She
was
running on empty, her energy sapped. It had nothing to do with her arm, and everything to do with Patricia’s vacant, lifeless gaze. God, she’d wanted to save her.

Barely able to find the strength to move, she shucked her pants and shirt and slid beneath the covers. She’d wash her face tomorrow.

With a flick, she turned off the lamp beside the bed, but the room didn’t go dark. A small night-light flickered from the outlet near her bathroom.

It never went completely dark in her room.

She hated the dark.

As a kid, she’d believed only bad things happened in the dark. She’d learned over the years the horrific could happen at any time.

But no one else had to know that. Too many demons, too many nightmares. Too many explanations she refused to provide.

No one needed to see the fears that welled up from deep within to suffocate her. They wouldn’t understand. She folded her hands behind her head and stared up at the ceiling, the shadows twisting, taunting.

OK, not true.
One
person would understand. He always understood.

Instinct trumped logic. She reached for her cell phone. The screen glowed to life, blank and lonely. No new notifications. No new calls. No texts. No e-mails.

“Thayne,” she whispered, tracing the screen with her finger, fighting the disappointment that clung to her like a wet wool blanket. She longed to hear his voice. She could feel herself falling into that dark place in her head. Thayne could rescue her from drowning in a sea of frustration and doubt with a few well-chosen words. Who would’ve thought that what started out as a single passionate week, followed by a few flirtatious phone calls, would have transformed into a lifeline.

His uncanny ability to sense her moods by just the sound of her voice terrified her. Of course, she could do the same with him.

She’d come to eagerly look forward to their weekly conversations. More than that, she counted on them. Thayne helped her keep her sanity. Most of the time.

Her finger hovered over the screen. One touch and his phone would ring. She would hear his voice.

He’d called three times last week, and she hadn’t picked up. Was that why she hesitated calling now? Because he might recognize what she didn’t want to acknowledge—that her job was eating her up inside.

She tucked the phone beneath her pillow and left her hand there. If he could, he’d call sometime tonight.

One punch on her pillow and Riley curled up on her uninjured side, searching the shapes cast through the room by the night-light. Though she tried, she couldn’t fight the fatigue or the pain pills. She blinked. The grit behind her eyes hurt, but she didn’t want to close them. She hated the moments before she fell asleep.

She hated the moments just before she awoke even more because the dreams wouldn’t leave her alone and the nightmares never stopped.

Tonight would be no different.

A twisted shadow slid down the wall, devoured by the darkness. Riley’s eyelids grew heavy, and she could fight no longer. Little by little, she sank into the oblivion of sleep.

Another shovelful of dirt sprinkled on top of Riley, covering her torso, pinning her arms beside her. The smell of fresh earth embedded itself in her senses.

She sucked in a deep breath. Dirt clung to her mouth. She looked up to the sky, blue and beautiful. It should be raining and cold. She couldn’t die beneath a blue sky.

Suddenly, she was no longer in the grave; she was standing beside the hole, looking down.

She didn’t want to look inside.

Her heart raced with an erratic pounding against her chest. She forced her eyes to peer into the grave.

Below her, Patricia Masters, terrorized, innocent, and dead, stared up at her, accusing. “Why didn’t you save me?”

“I’m sorry. So very, very sorry.” Riley’s eyes stung with frustrated tears, unable to look away from the dead woman’s face.

The vision morphed.

Patricia’s blonde hair turned auburn. An adult’s face transformed into that of a twelve-year-old girl.

Madison. Oh God, it was Madison. Her sister.

Riley screamed.

She jerked up in bed. Her heart wouldn’t slow down. She choked in a shuddering breath.

With a groan, she sagged back into the soft down pillow cradling her head.

One swipe of her hand over her eyes and she knew she wasn’t covered with dirt. She glanced over at the clock. Three forty-five in the morning. She’d slept all of an hour.

She closed her stinging eyes. She should sleep. Her body needed rest. So did her mind.

Breathe in, out. In and out.
She lay there for several moments, but her mind burned with the memory. She could see it as clearly as if the kidnapping had happened yesterday.

Like Patricia and O’Neal’s other victims, her sister’s body was in a grave somewhere. Except Madison was still waiting to be found.

Riley couldn’t give up. Not ever. No matter what it took, she would never stop searching until she found Madison. Never.

Fifteen Years Ago

“Madison and Riley Lambert. Get out of bed, girls. The bus will be here in fifteen minutes.”

Madison blinked open her eyes, closing them again at the bright sun piercing through the window slats.

A snore sounded softly beside her just before two knobby knees ground into her back.

“Ow! Get off, Riley,” Madison said, shoving her little sister off the bed. “Why can’t you sleep in your own room?”

Riley hit the carpet with a thud and a groan. “What’d you do that for, Maddy?”

“I told you. It’s Madison. Maddy is for little girls. Like you.”

Madison walked over to the bedroom window and peered outside. She let out a small sigh. Thank goodness he was gone. She’d seen him on her way home from school every day for the last week.

Last night he’d stood below her window.

She hadn’t told her mother. If she did, her mom would cancel the slumber party. Madison would tell her afterward. Until then, she’d just watch out for him.

She was in middle school now. Practically grown up.

Madison waltzed over to the closet and pulled out her new flare jeans and a halter top, then grabbed a scarf to use as a belt and some hoop earrings. She tossed them on the bed.

Riley reached out to touch the jewelry.

“Quit it. I told you to stop touching my things, Riley. You’ll mess them up.”

Her little sister looked down at the ink stains on her hands, but not before tears glistened in her eyes. Madison ignored the twinge of guilt. Maybe last year she and her sister had played Barbies together, but that was a long time ago.

Madison turned on the latest tune from her favorite boy band and danced into the Jack and Jill bathroom she shared with Riley. She opened the drawer.

“Riley! Get in here! Where’s my lip gloss?”

Riley came to the door, biting her lip. “I dropped it on the floor. Flower got it.”

“The dog ate my lip gloss?” Madison wailed. “Can’t you do anything right?”

Madison slammed the door in Riley’s face and locked it. She took out her brush and counted to one hundred as the bristles smoothed her long auburn hair.

Knocks pounded on the door. “Come on, Maddy. I have to get ready, too.”

“No way. I’m getting ready all by myself from now on. And I’m locking my bedroom door so you can’t sneak in at night.”

“Maddy . . . ,” Riley whined. “I get scared in the dark.”

“Too bad. You’re being stupid. Monsters aren’t real. All you’re doing is scaring yourself.”

After all, a girl starting seventh grade knew ghost stories were told to scare you, and unlike her sister, Madison never got scared.

That night, however, Madison Lambert would learn some monsters are very, very real.

CHAPTER FOUR

Four years of medical school, three of residency, and an emergency medicine fellowship could never have prepared Cheyenne for this.

A dungeon—because that’s the only way she could describe the windowless prison she found herself in—was no place to operate.

And yet here she stood, scalpel in hand. The other med students and residents had thought she’d gone crazy signing up for every surgery elective throughout her education, but she’d known coming back to Singing River to practice medicine, she’d be on her own. She’d imagined search and rescue, car accidents, someone on the wrong end of a bull’s temper and no time to transport. Definitely not being kidnapped so she could perform an appendectomy in the middle of nowhere.

Right now she sent up a prayer of thanks for every moment she’d spent in those surgery rotations. She could do this.

But would her makeshift assistant survive without fainting?

She glanced over at him. Ian stood next to the instrument tray, his face pale but his posture determined.

They might actually pull this off.

She checked her patient. The sedative had taken effect. Cheyenne administered the local anesthetic. No way could she put the woman under with a general. Too risky. She had no one to monitor her vitals. Luckily, during her Emergency Medicine Under Austere Conditions fellowship, she’d learned how flexible medicine could be.

She made the first incision and set to work, letting instinct and training take over. Every so often she glanced at Ian, but he hadn’t fainted yet.

“Retractor,” she ordered.

His eyes grew wide and panicked. She pointed out the instrument, and he handed it to her.

She pushed aside the tissue and revealed the woman’s appendix. Cheyenne froze.

Pink. Perfect. Healthy.

Oh God. What was she supposed to do now?

“Is something wrong, Doctor?” Ian whispered, tone laced with fear.

“Of course not,” Cheyenne lied, her mind racing.

The door creaked open. Adelaide stepped in. “Father says you should be finished by now. He wants a report. Can I tell him Bethany’s going to be fine?” Her trembling voice left no doubt Adelaide prayed Cheyenne could say just that.

So, Cheyenne finally knew her patient’s name. “Bethany would have a better chance if you’d let me take her to a hospital.”

“She can’t leave.” Adelaide took one step toward the makeshift operating table, her expression desperate. “Please, Doctor. Father must know. Will Bethany recover?”

“Yes, she’ll be fine.”

“Thank goodness.” Adelaide turned to leave, then paused. “Father wishes to see her appendix,” she said, tone apologetic.

Cheyenne’s gut knotted. “I need to concentrate, Adelaide. Come back later, but please think about what I said before. My father can help us all.”

Ian’s eyes widened, but he said nothing. The woman bit her lip and nodded before locking them inside the room.

Cheyenne’s gaze lingered on the steel door for a moment. Then she stared down at the healthy tissue, a plan forming in her mind. During most abdominal surgeries, the appendix was removed, since it served no function. She’d follow procedure and damage the organ so it appeared diseased. Giving in to her captors would buy her time. Time to convince Adelaide that she had a choice.

Saying a small prayer, she completed the procedure and dropped the organ into a metal dish.

“Bethany’ll be all right now?” Ian asked.

Not hardly. Because whatever had caused Bethany’s symptoms was still attacking her body. Cheyenne explored the open abdomen, searching for an obvious cause, but nothing appeared abnormal. She had no choice but to close the wound.

With the last of the staples in place, she stood back. “I’ve done all I can,” she said to Ian. At least until she figured out what had made the poor woman so deathly ill.

“When will Bethany wake up?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Normally a post-appendectomy patient would be awake within a few hours. Except Bethany hadn’t needed the operation. And whatever was causing her symptoms hadn’t been repaired. Cheyenne changed gloves and checked the IV antibiotic drip before lowering her mask. “I can’t promise anything, Ian. She needs a hospital.”

Ian swallowed. “Father won’t be happy if she doesn’t get better.”

Cheyenne’s knees shook, and she sank into the chair beside Bethany, studying her, searching for an identifying symptom. Ian hovered at her shoulder, watching, waiting.

Somehow, Cheyenne had to do the impossible: make healthy tissue appear diseased so Father would be fooled
and
diagnose her patient’s symptoms.

If she didn’t, she had no doubt that she wouldn’t leave this room alive.

The soft green numbers of the clock glowed another five minutes since the last time Riley had checked. There would be no more rest tonight. Resigned, she padded into the living room by rote, a path she’d followed thousands of times before. The kitchenette table hadn’t been used for eating since she’d moved in three years ago. File boxes covered one side, filled with newspaper clippings, photos, interview transcripts, copies of forensic data.

A large map of the United States was pinned to the blank wall. Black pins peppered the view, representing stranger abductions of girls about the age of her sister. Red pins indicated victims who had been recovered—most of them hadn’t made it. A few, like Elizabeth Smart, had survived longer than the seventy-two-hour life expectancy of missing children.

Stranger abductions might be a small percentage of those taken, but they were also the deadliest.

Riley knew all of this. She’d studied all the statistics. Her sister was dead, had probably died fifteen years ago. Riley owed it to her family to bring them closure. Somehow. Some way.

She’d made a little headway since joining the FBI. She’d searched the federal databases on her own time and had discovered a pattern. Madison wasn’t alone. Too many girls of about twelve years old, red hair and freckles dotting across the nose, had vanished over the last decade and a half.

The map told the story. Many of them had been abducted within thirty miles of I-25.

Vanished without a trace.

Gone, but not forgotten. Not by their families. And not by Riley. Never by Riley.

One flick of a switch and her computer whirred to life. Tom might have kicked her out of the office for a week, but she could use the time. Trying to save Vincent O’Neal’s last two victims had taken 110 percent of her concentration. She’d neglected Madison’s case.

No more.

She logged in to the FBI’s computer system. She’d review the HSK database for changes first.

What kind of world was it where a Highway Serial Killings Initiative database existed? The depravity of some human beings never ceased to shock her, even after studying the worst of the worst since she’d been able to sneak Ann Rule’s book on Ted Bundy from the public library as a teenager against her parents’ orders.

Digging into evil had become commonplace. Tom had no idea what she could handle. Riley narrowed the parameters, searching for new abductions of young females.

No records found.

Relief warred with frustration, because as horrible as the truth was, Riley was stuck. Unless the man who had taken Madison made a mistake or a new lead turned up, she didn’t know if he’d ever be caught. It had been a while since someone who fit the victim’s profile had disappeared. Could he have stopped?

She knew better. Sexually preferential offenders
never
stopped. They were drawn to a very specific type. A very specific age. They
couldn’t
fight their urges for long.

She rubbed her eyes and stared at the screen. What was she missing? There had to be something. He was organized, methodical, careful.

The only commonality was the girls’ similar appearance. And the fact that they came from middle-class or upper-class homes.

With one exception, of course. The first girl—taken from Singing River, Wyoming—Gina Wallace. Only a few months before Madison’s kidnapping.

Gina’s mother had grown up middle class but had fallen into a spiral of addiction. Riley almost hadn’t flagged Gina’s file. But the resemblance between the girl and Madison had been uncanny.

One year ago, on Riley’s next vacation, she’d headed to Singing River. The trip hadn’t broken open the case the way she’d hoped, but she’d met Thayne. And she’d fallen into his arms . . . mostly to forget.

From the bedroom, a faint buzz sounded. She stopped typing. Could it be him?

Thayne had never called this late before, but she really needed to talk with him.

Riley ran to her bedroom and grabbed her phone from under the pillow. She glanced at the screen and groaned. She tapped the phone. “Lambert,” she said, her voice cautious.

“What are you doing, Riley?” Tom barked in her ear. “What were my orders?”

“To consider whether or not I should stay in the unit,” she answered, trudging back to her computer.

“You logged in to the system. I set an alert to notify me immediately. What are you searching in the middle of the night? The case is over.”

She didn’t reply.

“Oh, hell, Riley.” The anger left his voice. “You need a complete break. From this case and from your sister’s case.”

“I’m thinking about what you said,” she said, her voice tight. “What more do you want from me?”

“I’ve changed my mind. Complete rest and relaxation, Riley. No logging in to FBI systems, no working on your sister’s. That means
no investigations
.”

“I’m off duty. What I choose to do—”

“Don’t push it, Riley. One write-up triggering an investigation and I’m certain they’ll discover that you’re using government equipment to research an unassigned, personal case. You’ll not only get kicked out of the behavioral analysis unit but lose your job, too. And once you’re fired from the FBI, there are no second chances.”

Her body went cold. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. “Tom . . .” What could she say?

“Your sister’s been missing for fifteen years. It might be harsh, but one week won’t make a difference. You need the break.”

“My personal life is none of your business.”

“It is when it impacts your ability to function. And my ability to trust you.”

“You’re wrong about me.”

“Prove it. Get out of DC. Go see your family, take a vacation, knock toes with the Friday night phone buddy you try so desperately to hide from everyone. Anything that doesn’t deal with murder and serial killers.”

She stared at the phone. “How do you know about him?”

“You’re not as discreet as you think. Eight o’clock most Friday nights your phone rings and you smile. I’ve seen that look before. In the mirror when I first met my wife. Besides, it’s the only time you smile.”

Mortified at her transparency, Riley nearly groaned into the phone. “Fine. One week.” If believing she was going to see Thayne would get Tom off her back, she could live with the deceit. She
couldn’t
lose her job. Not until she found Madison. Her sister trumped everything else in Riley’s life. Including Thayne. She owed Madison that much.

“Don’t go around me on this,” Tom warned. “I can be your biggest supporter. I’ll go to the mat for you. Cross me and I’ll become your worst enemy if it’s in the best interest of you and Unit 6.”

He ended the call.

Riley tossed the phone onto the table.

Her computer beeped.

A message in bold yellow letters popped up on a red screen.

A
CCESS
D
ENIED
.

Tom had done it. He’d really done it. He’d cut her off.

She leaned back in her chair and tucked her knees to her chest. Her mind whirled. The computer was silent. The mantel clock’s second hand ticked, the click growing louder with each strike. The muffled sound of a siren echoed below. Ambulance this time.

Riley laid her head on her knees. Everything she’d worked so hard to achieve was slipping away. She couldn’t stop looking for Madison. She’d promised herself. She’d promised her parents. Her mother.

That horrible darkness that had enveloped her the first year after Madison had vanished clutched at Riley’s throat. She grabbed the phone back and stared at the lit screen.

Thayne. She needed to hear his voice. He’d butted heads with his SEAL team commander more than once over the rules of engagement. Politics trumped mission too often to count, and innocents died because of the choices of a few suits in a very safe room. Thayne might be the only person who would truly understand.

Her finger lingered above the screen until she squeezed her eyes shut and let the phone fall from her hand. Counting on him was dangerous. She could tough out this challenge alone. She had to, because she’d learned a long time ago. She really couldn’t count on anyone but herself.