Page 22 of Into the Veins
“I better be invited. It isn’t every day a friendship is forged in the heat of hunting a serial killer.” Her laugh dissolved almost as quickly as it’d filled the room, and the joke died between them. The last case they’d worked together had triggered ripples that would last years for the agents and deputies involved, including her and Lawson. Before she’d met the Violent Crimes agent and his fiancée, the bookcases in her living room had been relatively empty. Lawson had lost himself in love after he’d saved Arden from the most wrathful killer Seattle had ever known. Blair had bought over a hundred pounds of porcelain clay off the internet and molded it into a hundred different shapes. Each law enforcement officer handled the effects of the job differently. Hers had been to try to create in the wake of so much death. “I take it my case has caught the interest of the FBI elite.”
“Call my being here a favor for helping me a couple months ago. If it weren’t for you, I might not have gotten to Arden in time. We wouldn’t be planning a wedding.” Lawson took a seat in the chair beside the bed. “Hear you took quite a beating out there.”
The hallucinations, the fear and paranoia, the pain—it threatened to break her all over again, but she wouldn’t crack in front of Lawson or anyone else. She studied the scrapes in the palms of both hands, the broken fingernails. The ketamine had done its job as the killer intended. She’d been absolutely helpless under its effects. If it hadn’t been for Colson, she might never have walked out of that state forest alive. “Nothing I haven’t been trained to handle.”
“Blair.” The dip in Lawson’s voice urged her to meet his gaze. “You were there when we found Arden trapped in that burning warehouse. You saw me at my most desperate. I was terrified of losing her. I would’ve gone off the deep end if I hadn’t been able to get to her. I still remember what it felt like to not be able to do anything to save her. I still have nightmares. It’s okay to admit you’re not okay.”
Seconds slipped by, the weight of his attention coaxing her to respond, but Blair had already given her statement to half a dozen of her deputies, to January, to the EMTs. She didn’t have anything left to give. As soon as her doctor cleared her, she’d go home. She’d try to forget.
Lawson leaned forward in his chair. “If you’re not going to talk to me, you need to talk to someone else. You can’t let what you went through out there eat at you. Trust me. It’ll only fester before it destroys you completely. You will lose the ability to help yourself or anyone else. You’ve done a lot of good for the people of this county. Don’t let that go to waste.”
He spoke from experience. The death of a child had only been the beginning of the agent’s loss, but he was slowly on the rise to a new life, a happy life, with the woman he loved.
“Thank you.” Blair nodded appreciation, but that was as far as she’d let herself slip. “Do you have any news on Colson Rutherford?”
“He’s out of surgery. The blade nicked one of his intestines, but the surgeon I spoke to said he’s going to pull through without any problems,” Lawson said. “I have two agents stationed outside his door. He’s conscious. I was able to get most of his statement before he threatened to undo all the surgeon’s work unless he got an update on your condition. Seems you two think alike.”
A smile escaped her control. She wouldn’t have expected any less from the man who’d dove over a cliff to save her. Fractures of memory scattered across her mind as she settled back against the pillows stacked behind her. Colson had disobeyed her order to remain with her patrol car, but if he hadn’t, she wasn’t sure what would’ve happened. Wasn’t sure if she’d be sitting here at all. The distracted private investigator had defied the box she’d tried to fit him into, and she’d never been more grateful to be wrong in her life. “And January?”
“Agent Reese insisted taking up the hunt for our killer.” Lawson intertwined his fingers over his abdominals. “She stuck with you until I was able to finish overseeing CSU and the search team at the scene. I tried to convince her the best place for her was here with you, but she said something about us both knowing you would want her out in the field.”
January was right. “Have the rangers or search and rescue been able to figure out how the killer escaped?”
“The tracks we followed from where we found you and Colson led down another trailhead on the other side of the mountain. Whoever attacked you two out there knew every inch of that forest, probably better than the rangers themselves, considering they knew they could set up in a shed that hadn’t been used in years. We’ve got crime scene techs going through it all. So far they’ve recovered six vipers still in their terrariums and four mature strychnine trees.” Lawson swiped his palms down his thighs. “From the initial search of the place, it looks like the killer extracted the poison right there in the shed with a food processor and mixed it with saline before loading the syringes injected into both victims. It’ll be at least another couple of days before we’re finished processing the scene, but it’s a start. We’re running background checks and collecting alibis on all of the rangers, but so far we haven’t come up with anything solid.”
“She.” The flash of the attacker’s outline filled her head, and she closed her eyes against the onslaught of emotions that came with it. Her fingers automatically curled into the heavy blanket she’d had the nurses set on top of her to counter the weightlessness she felt inside her own body. “The killer is female. The drug she injected me with distorted her voice, but I’m positive we are looking for a female assailant.”
Lawson sat back in his seat as her words settled between them. “I read your statement. Your toxicology report said you were injected with ketamine. That kind of drug disorients the user to the point witnesses have been barred from testifying in court. It makes them unreliable. No district attorney is going to consider yours or Colson’s personal accounts while under the drug’s effects as solid evidence.”
“I know.” Which meant when they caught their killer, she couldn’t be charged with the attacks on either Blair or Colson, but that wasn’t going to stop Blair from seeing this through.
“According to your case notes, you and your partner interviewed a female suspect two days ago. Evyn Garder.” Lawson unpocketed his phone and swiped through a few screens. “She’d sent the first victim, Rachel Faulkner, threatening messages and has expertise with the same species of vipers recovered on the remains. Did you get the sense she might be behind what happened in those woods?”
He’d gotten access to the case report. Not a surprise considering how often their departments overlapped one another. While Lawson handled federal investigations, the King County Sheriff’s Department was usually the first responder outside of Seattle limits. Her brain automatically tried to superimpose Evyn Garder’s voice and frame over the outline of the woman who’d thrown her over a cliff, but Lawson was right. The drug had compromised her memories. Frustration burned through her, and she fisted the sheets tighter. “We executed a search of the house. There wasn’t anything there that led me to believe she’s responsible aside from an empty terrarium. But I can’t be sure. Evyn Garder surrendered her fitness watch, equipped with GPS, to prove she hadn’t been anywhere near the first crime scene until she called in to report she’d found the body. I ran through her phone carrier’s network to confirm her number is the only one registered under her name, but her motive is weak. Evyn claimed she’d only sent those messages because the victim refused to issue a refund for a conference registration fee once she discovered Rachel Faulkner was lying to her fans about her divorce. That doesn’t scream methodical to me, and there’s nothing in her history that suggests she’s violent or has experience with chemistry.”
“I’ve seen people kill for less,” Lawson said. “But you’re right. Her motive doesn’t convince me, especially given the release of the video publicly forcing Rachel Faulkner to admit she’d lied to her followers.”
Only now Rachel Faulkner wasn’t the only victim. Blair rubbed at the back of her neck as the headache arcing through her skull intensified. She’d been warned about the side effects of the drug leaving her system, but she’d take it over feeling nothing at all. “We haven’t found a connection between her and Cardin Townsend, either. Even if there is one, it doesn’t make sense for her to point us to the video showing both victims fighting outside the restaurant if she planned on killing them and leaving their bodies on those trails. It would make her an automatic suspect.”
“That’s the problem with psychopaths. Not everything has to make sense for them to do what they think is right.” Lawson pushed to his feet, buttoning his suit jacket. “I should tell you another video has been posted.”
“Cardin Townsend.” Two victims. Both maliciously killed with the same MO thirty-six hours apart. Blair had seen the damage one serial killer had done in the span of a few months. What were the odds another had followed in such violent footsteps? She pressed the edge of one layer of sheets under her thumb nail.
“The killer forced Cardin Townsend to admit she stole lyrics from another artist and used them to produce her own music,” Lawson turned his phone to face her. “Same set up as the first video. CCS is working on trying to clear up the image, but there’s not much to go on right now.”
Blair took the phone, comparing the features she’d noted in that dark, rainy field to the woman on the screen. Her instincts said Lawson had come here for more than to check up on her. “You think this might be linked to our last investigation. That this could be another serial case.”
“I was there, Blair.” A flood of anger contorted his expression. “I was in the observation room when the woman who tried to kill Arden practically admitted there were others out there just like her. I heard her tell you we’d find out who they are soon enough. Arden still has nightmares. It’s been two months, but for her, it’s as real as though it’d happened yesterday. The FBI estimates there are approximately 250 serial killers active in the United States at any given time, but I’m not willing to wait around for a third body to show up if these two investigations intersect, and I’m sure as hell not going to risk Arden’s safety to prove it. Are you?”
“Is that why you’re here, to see if there’s a connection between both of these cases?” She craned her head to stare up at the agent and handed back his phone. Honestly, she couldn’t blame him. What he’d gone through, what his fiancée had gone through—no one should have to endure such violence and fear, but she’d thought they were better friends than that. “Or is this your way of telling me Violent Crimes is taking over my investigation?”
The tension between his dark brows eased. “I’m not here to take over your case. I wouldn’t if I could. The entire reason I applied to take over as director of the Violent Crimes Unit was to get away from cases like this, but you’re still in the trenches. I came to warn you, Blair. I’ve investigated a lot of serials over the years, but not a single one of them came close to the deviousness and violence we saw on that case.” Lawson moved toward the perimeter of the curtain blocking her view of the hospital room door. He paused, angling his chin over his shoulder. “If there is a connection, you and that private investigator only got a taste of what she’s capable of. Just be careful.”
The hospital room door clicked closed behind him, and Blair gave into the tremors working up her hands. She’d held it together since jolting awake in the middle of the emergency room, but her control was quickly fading. She’d ensured she would never feel as helpless as she’d felt when her parents had been killed that terrifying night. She’d joined the Seattle PD and then the sheriff’s department to test herself in the face of the county’s most violent criminals, but a different kind of helplessness replaced the terror she’d experienced out there in those woods as she took in the empty room, the soft beeping of machinery. Dark tendrils of loneliness took hold, tearing her apart from the inside out, and urged her to pull back the covers. She peeled the blood pressure cuff from her arm and left it on the bed. Cold worked up through her toes and into her heels as she forced herself to balance on the gleaming white tile.
Collecting the set of clean scrubs from the end of her bed the attending had left for her, Blair bit back the pain in her bones and tossed the thin hospital gown before dressing. She’d faced her trauma alone these past few years. She knew how it felt to be a ghost—in the world, but not of the world. No more. She crossed the small hospital room and wrenched open the door, nearly colliding with the man waiting on the other side. “Colson.”
The last of her control shattered at the sight of the bruises around his face and the clean set of matching scrubs, and she collapsed against him. A rough exhale escaped his chest. Strong arms encircled her as desperately as she held onto him. She wasn’t sure how long they stood there, how many agents, deputies, and hospital staff were staring. It didn’t matter. They’d survived. Together.