The Immortals (23 page)

Nashville
2:30 p.m.

T
aylor and McKenzie rolled up to Fane Atilio's address. Bob Parks was behind them, and another patrol car was on its way. Taylor didn't anticipate trouble from a fifteen-year-old girl, but if her boyfriend was around… She had to wonder, who was she relying on now? Ariadne's impression of a couple of teenagers at a rave? Or her own gut, which told her there was more to come?

So far all the kids she'd talked to in this case fell along the clique lines—the good kids, the athletes and high achievers—were pleasant, easy to deal with, cooperative. Probably lying through their teeth to save their own asses, but at least they were respectful about it. The bad seeds were living up to their reputation as well—Juri and Susan were nasty, ill-tempered children.

The exception to all of them was Theo Howell. The clean-cut kid, holding his friends' drugs to keep them safe. He was due into their offices at noon today. McKenzie told her Theo's parents were back in the country, would be accompanying their son. She wondered what he was hiding. Self-preservation taken into account, he'd been a little too
forthcoming. Was he truly the good kid as he depicted himself, or was there a dark side, a silent specter of the truth waiting to come out?

She pushed it all away. The Atilio house looked deserted. A two-story, it was tan brick with powder-blue shutters, a terrible combination. Taylor stepped out of the car, stared up at the windows. Was this it, then? Would this girl be the key?

She went up the five stairs that led to the front door. She rang the bell, then stepped to the side. At her signal McKenzie and Parks took up positions to her right and left.

She could hear footsteps. She touched her Glock briefly, unlatching the snap so she could unsheathe it from its holster quickly if needed. The door swung open. A sultry voice rang out.

“Silly, why didn't you use your key?”

Taylor stepped into line of sight to the door. A young girl stood there, mussed, hair askew, half-dressed in a bustier and skirt. Long black hair. Green eyes. Their girl.

“Who are you?” she asked with such a note of horror Taylor nearly laughed out loud. She bit her lip and said, “Fane Atilio?”

The girl straightened—she was eye to eye with Taylor.

“Who's asking?”

“Lieutenant Jackson, Metro Homicide. I—”

She didn't get to finish. The girl started to slam the door, face full of panic.

Taylor got the toe of her boot into the crack just in time, but paid the price. She'd have a bruise for a month on the arch of her foot after that.

“Ouch!” she shouted, shouldering the door open. “Stop right there, Fane.”

Not surprisingly, the girl didn't listen. She bolted up the stairs, her long legs moving gracefully. Taylor took off after her, heard a door slam.

She made it to the top of the stairs just in time to see the wood still quivering. She tried the knob, it was locked.

“Come out of your room, Fane. Right now. Unlock this door,” Taylor yelled.

There was no sound from within. Parks and McKenzie had caught up to her now. Parks whispered, “We're clear.”

Taylor nodded, then said, “Fane, I'll force it if you don't open the door. You have three seconds. Three, two, one.”

Nothing. Taylor stepped back, kicked the door open. It swung back and smashed into the wall, rebounding nearly closed again. Taylor pushed it open with her left hand, Glock pointing into the room.

Fane Atilio was trying to go out the window, one leg over the sill and an arm in a tree outside, calculating the drop. Taylor holstered her weapon, crossed the room in three strides and grabbed the girl by the wrist.

“Stop that. Get back in here right now.” She half dragged the girl away from the window. Though thin, she was still heavy. She collapsed onto the floor and refused to look up, a low, keening moan escaping her lips. Taylor nudged her with the toe of her boot.

“Get some clothes on. We need to talk.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” Fane said. She looked up at Taylor, eyes haughty behind their makeup.

“Oh, really? Well, just you wait and see, little girl. Because I think you have more to tell me than you can possibly imagine.”

T
aylor took the struggling girl to the Criminal Justice Center, read her Miranda warning, snapped a Polaroid of her and threw her into an interrogation room. Ariadne had identified Fane instantaneously when the six-pack was put together.

Taylor tried to look at the bright side of things. They had a positive ID on two women, a drug dealer with a chunk out of his leg and a missing teenage boy, possibly the mastermind behind the whole shebang. The Specialized Investigative Unit had confirmed that Barent Johnson was making methamphetamine and Ecstasy, so they had their drugs covered. How they all fit together—that was something she was still working on.

Ariadne insisted that Juri Edvin was not the boy she'd seen at Subversion. Her drawing of Fane Atilio was right on the money, both with and without the makeup. So maybe she was right about this mysterious fourth.

Regardless, Fane Atilio was not cooperating. It was getting close to dusk, the day bleeding away. Taylor was hungry and getting frustrated.

She took a deep breath, tried again.

“Fane. Where are your parents?”

Nothing.

“Fane, where were you on Halloween?”

Blank, soulless stares that never met Taylor's eyes. Nothing.

“Fane, your boyfriend. What's his name?”

They continued in this vein for a good thirty minutes before Taylor finally got huffy, stood and left the room.

McKenzie was in the video-feed room, watching.

“Stubborn brat,” Taylor said.

“She is at that. But a true believer. Want me to have a go at her?”

“Sure. Why not. I'm getting nothing. She's giving me the creeps, really. How do these girls get so much attitude?”

“You didn't have attitude when you were fifteen?”

“All in a good way—not like this,” she said, but blushed. He was right, she'd been just as sullen and noncooperative when she'd gotten picked up for underage drinking when she was thirteen. She wasn't the one doing the drinking at the time, it was the friends she was with. The patrol officer who arrested her friends believed her. That cop had been Fitz, and he'd let her off with a warning. He'd treated her with respect, actually listened to her when she said she wasn't involved. She'd been struck by the fairness of his actions, and it had started her thinking. The next thing she knew, she was obsessed with becoming a cop, with being fair and just. She'd not seen such actions before, and she liked it.

“You okay?” he asked.

She dragged herself back to the present, forcing the vision of Fitz's eye sitting on a table in North Carolina out of her head.

“Yeah, fine.”

He looked at her sideways, but she busied herself with her ponytail until he said, “Lincoln got a warrant for Fane's phone and laptop. He's getting ready to delve into that. Ariadne ID'd her, right? That should be solid enough to start.”

“Yes. Though I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to going to the A.D.A. with this testimony.”

“LT, she's credible, no matter what her beliefs. You won't have any trouble there. I just saw Theo Howell and a couple who I assume are his parents. They're waiting on you.”

“I'll stick here for a few minutes, if that's okay. I'd like to see you work your magic.”

He smiled at her. “Your foot okay?”

“It's a bit sore. I'll live.”

“Good. Here goes nothing.” He went into the interrogation room.

When McKenzie walked into the room, Fane Atilio sat straight up in her chair, eyes wide. Taylor watched the tiniest bit of a smile curve her lips upward, and then she got it. Fane glanced at the door, saw no one else was coming through it and promptly began to cry. She looked like a wounded kitten, eyes moist and round, the long black lashes filling with salty dew. She cried prettily, demure and low, with glances up now and again to judge the effect.

Taylor turned the volume up on the tape. She'd seen women like this before. The ones who played men, who acted completely vulnerable just to get the attention. Taylor had watched many a strong man fall all over himself to help a girl like this, a true damsel in distress. A girl who needed.

Taylor wasn't like that. She'd always been a hoist yourself by your bootstraps, put on your big girl pants and deal with life kind of person. She detested the very idea of a man rushing to her rescue. Hell, that's what caused half the friction between her and Baldwin in the first place—his desire to protect her and her stubborn refusal to allow it.

But as she watched, she quickly realized that Fane was her complete opposite. Fifteen and already well-versed in the art of fragile seduction. She was peeking out from under her lashes to gauge the effect her crying had on McKenzie. My God, the girl was just like Taylor's mother, Kitty. She was Kitty, to a T.

McKenzie, bless his soul, wasn't falling for it for a second, but was using it to his advantage. Fane was being played by a player, and didn't even know it.

“She's quite a piece of work.”

Taylor turned. Joan Huston stood at her elbow, gazing speculatively into the video monitor.

Taylor gave her a wry nod. “Yes, she is. But at least she's starting to talk. I was in there for half an hour and she didn't do anything more than grunt.”

“This is your suspect?” Huston asked.

“One of them. We can't find her parents, and she's not cooperating anyway, so we're going to have to sit on her for a while until we clear it up. We're missing one more, but I'm pretty sure they are all in league together. Our eyewitness drew a likeness of this girl and Susan Norwood, and they matched exactly.”

“What's her agenda?”

“That's a good question. I'm looking for it. She talks a good game, but who knows? We've tracked the drugs back to the dealer. I'm waiting to hear if the lab results from this morning's bust match what we took from the Howell boy last night. If it does, we have Keith Barent Johnson and Juri Edvin dead to rights for murder one, for Brittany Carson. What I'm trying to figure out is where these girls fit into the picture—Fane Atilio and Susan Norwood—and how the other seven victims are tied in.”

“The Norwood girl's brother was a victim, correct?”

“Yes, ma'am. He was found with his girlfriend, Amanda Vanderwood. When I spoke to the parents at the crime scene, they said their daughter was at home with her nanny. They didn't seem to know that she was out of the house. And Xander's best friend is Theo Howell. He was the last person to talk to Xander. We've got a lot of loose ends, I'm afraid.”

“Speaking of the Norwoods, they're here now, making quite a fuss. I'd suggest you go have a conversation with them, get them calmed down.”

“I'll go in just a minute. I want McKenzie with me. He's got insight into these kids. His impressions have been invaluable.”

“He's a good detective, isn't he?”

“Yes, he is.”

Huston flashed her a horsey grin. “Tell me, Lieutenant. Is it true that you have a soothsayer on board this case?”

Taylor turned away from the video feed. “A soothsayer? I don't know about that. Her name is Ariadne, and she showed up yesterday and fingered these kids for the crime. I'm not sure how much I believe her, but she does claim to be a witch.”

“Hmm,” Huston said. “Maybe I should go ask her to read my fortune.”

Taylor realized she was teasing, smiled back. “We're close, ma'am. Very close.”

“Good. Keep me informed. Good work, Lieutenant.”

She strode off and Taylor looked back into the room. She turned the volume back up. McKenzie's face was twisted in alarm—she had missed something. Fane was talking again.

Taylor felt her blood chill when she heard the girl's words.

“You know nothing. He's going to kill them. He's going to kill them all.”

Quantico
June 17, 2004
Charlotte

C
harlotte was fascinated by death. She felt at home, comfortable, at ease when staring into the abyss. Her job gave her the best of all possible worlds, an overwhelming supply of killings to analyze, hypotheses to form, and perpetrators to trace down. She knew empirically that they were monsters, but she was mesmerized by their actions, the sense of purpose that drove them to satiate their desires by exterminating their prey. Predators were her specialty. Knowing inside of them, their dirty little secrets, the twisted, rotted parts that made them tick—that's what she was good at.

She hadn't told Baldwin about the basement yet. Arlen's basement. The crime-scene techs had gone over it and found nothing. It was empty, with no real indication of use outside of a lack of spiderwebs and dust, not surprising considering how organized and clean the rest of the house had been. But she'd felt something down there in the cold, dank dark. Something evil and wrong. Something she hadn't told Baldwin about, because it wasn't visible to the naked eye. And she knew bringing her theory to Baldwin, trying to
explain her thought process, would lead to an exploration of her own past that she wasn't ready to divulge, not just yet.

She had the Clockwork Killer file open on her lap, a glass of Scotch with just a splash of water sitting next to her elbow. Baldwin's couch was extremely comfortable. Heightening this feeling was the fact that Baldwin himself was at the other end, staring into space.

She wondered what he was thinking about. The case, sure, of course, but was there something else in his face? A sense of tenderness, perhaps? Could he possibly be thinking of her?

They'd been distracting each other terribly. Sparrow knew; Charlotte could tell in the way the woman shrank back when Charlotte tried to stroke her arm. She was surprised to learn Sparrow wasn't inclined to share. That was fine. She had more going on here with Baldwin anyway. A future. A life.

Baldwin took a deep breath and turned to her. “Charlotte, we need to talk.”

“That sounds ominous,” she said lightly. She didn't want to scare him off, not now. Not when things were going so well. She had everything planned to perfection—she didn't need him growing a conscience and ruining it all.

“Not ominous. Just…necessary. This affair needs to stop.”

Charlotte closed the file in her lap and sat very still.

“I thought we were having fun,” she said.

“I know. We are. But Charlotte, I'm your boss. I'm responsible for you, for the team. I can't be sleeping with you. It's not right.”

“I could transfer.”

She felt him tense. “You'd do that? You worked so hard to get into the BAU. You'd be willing to leave for me?”

“Yes, I would.” She tucked her feet under her and faced him. He was obviously surprised by her statement. She went all in. “You're the best thing that's happened to me in a long time. I want to be with you more than I want to be in the
BAU. I'll happily transfer out if it means we can continue seeing each other.”

“I'm not sure what to say. I never thought—”

“Would you rather I stay and we stop seeing each other?” There, she'd thrown down the challenge. Now she'd know just how serious he was about her.

Baldwin didn't answer right away. Shit. That wasn't the reaction she'd hoped for.

“Forget I said anything,” she said, injecting as much ice into her voice as she could. She stood up, dropped the file on the coffee table. It knocked into her Scotch, splashing some on the edge.

“Whoa, Charlotte, hold on.” Baldwin was on his feet too, his hands gripping her arms like a vise. He was so damn strong, even if she wanted to get away, she wouldn't be able to pry herself loose.

He leaned in to kiss her. She tried to hold very still and not respond, but that only lasted a moment. She felt his tongue flick at the edge of her lips and opened her mouth, accepting him. He tasted like Scotch and honey, and she kissed him greedily, unsure whether this was the last time, or just the beginning.

When they finally broke for air, Baldwin gave her a smile.

“We'll talk about it again in the morning.”