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After she was locked away in the small room/closet, she’d spent no time feeling sorry for herself or, worse, feeling panic, letting it rule her for whatever time she had left. Certain things were obvious to her, but the most important was the reality that this horrible monster wasn’t going to let her go. Ever. So she had spent countless hours plotting her escape. But realistically she knew that it wasn’t likely to happen. She was bound with leather straps, and though she’d tried every possible maneuver, every twist and turn, she hadn’t been able to break loose. Even if she did by some miracle, she could never overpower him. He was probably the strongest man she’d ever seen, twice as powerful as Brendan, who had played football in college.
So what could she do? Maybe try something during a bathroom or food break—but he was so attentive and careful. At the very least, Lizzie Connolly wanted to die with dignity. Would the monster let her? Or would he want her to suffer? She thought about her past history quite a lot, and took comfort in it. Her growing-up years in Potomac, Maryland, spending nearly every spare hour at a nearby stable. College at Vassar in New York. Then the Washington Post. Her marriage to Brendan, the good times and the bad. The kids. All leading up to that fateful morning at Phipps Plaza. What a cruel joke life had played on her.
During the past few hours locked up in the dark, she’d been trying to remember how she had gotten through other terrifying experiences. She thought that she knew: with faith, with humor, and with a clear understanding that knowledge was power. Now Lizzie tried to remember specific examples . . . anything that might help.
When she was eight years old she’d needed surgery to correct a straying eye. Her parents were always “too busy,” so her grandparents had taken her to the hospital. As she watched them leave, tears had streamed from her eyes. When a nurse came in and saw the tears, Lizzie pretended that she’d bumped her head. And somehow she got past the lonely, terrifying moment. Lizzie survived.
Then, when she was thirteen, there was another terrifying incident. She was returning from a weekend with a friend’s family in Virginia and had fallen asleep in the car. When she woke up she was groggy and confused and completely covered with blood. She remembered staring out into the gloomy darkness and slowly beginning to understand. There’d been an automobile accident while she was asleep. A man from another car involved in the accident lay in the street. He wasn’t moving—but Lizzie believed she heard him tell her not to be afraid. He said that she could stay on earth or leave. It was her decision—no one else’s. She had chosen to live.
“It’s my choice,” Lizzie told herself in the blackness of the closet. “It’s my choice to live or die, not his. Not the Wolf’s. Not anybody else’s.
“I choose to live.”
Chapter 36
THE NEXT MORNING, just about everybody attached to the White Girl task force assembled in the main conference hall at Quantico. We hadn’t been told much yet, just that there was breaking news, which was good; there had already been too much bureaucracy and wheel spinning for me.
Senior Agent Ned Mahoney, the head of HRT, arrived when the room was already filled. He walked to the front, turned, and faced us. His intense gray blue eyes went from row to row, and he seemed more pumped up than usual.
“I have an announcement. Good news for a change,” Mahoney said. “There’s been a significant break. Word just came down from Washington.” Mahoney paused, then he continued. “Since Monday, agents from our office in Newark have been monitoring a suspect named Rafe Farley. The suspect is a repeat sex offender. He did four years in Rahway Prison for breaking into a woman’s apartment, beating and raping her. At the time, Farley claimed that the victim was a girlfriend from where he worked. What alerted us to Farley is that he went into an Internet chat room and had a lot to say about Mrs. Audrey Meek. Too much. He knew details about Mrs. Meek, including facts about her family in the Princeton area, her house there, even the physical layout inside.
“The suspect also knew precisely how and when Mrs. Meek was abducted at the King of Prussia Mall. He knew that her car was used, what kind of car it was, and that the children were left behind.
“In a subsequent visit to the chat room, Farley provided specific details that even we don’t have. He claimed that she was knocked out with a specific drug and then taken to a wooded area in New Jersey. He left it vague whether Audrey Meek is alive or dead.
“Unfortunately the suspect hasn’t gone to visit Mrs. Meek durin
g the period we’ve been watching him. It’s been nearly three days. We believe it’s possible he may have spotted the surveillance. It is our decision, and the director concurs, that we take Farley down.
“HRT is already on the scene in North Vineland, New Jersey, assisting the local field office and the police. We’re going in this morning, probably within the hour. Score one for the good guys,” said Mahoney. “Congratulations to everyone involved at this end.”
I sat in my seat and applauded with the others, but I had a funny feeling too. I hadn’t been involved or even known about Farley or the surveillance on him. I was out of the loop, and I hadn’t felt like this for over a dozen years, not since I started with the police department in D.C.
Chapter 37
A PHRASE FROM THE BRIEFING kept playing in my head: the director concurs . . . I wondered how long Director Burns had known about the suspect in Jersey, and why he had decided not to tell me. I tried not to be disappointed or paranoid, but still . . . I wasn’t feeling good as the meeting broke up to huzzahs from the group of agents.
The trouble was, something felt wrong to me and I had no idea what it was. I just didn’t like something about this bust.
I was leaving the room with the others when Mahoney came ambling up to me. “The director asked that you go to New Jersey,” he said, then grinned. “Come with me to the helipad. I want you there too,” he added. “If we don’t break Farley down immediately, I don’t think we’ll get Mrs. Meek back alive.”
A little less than fifty-five minutes later, a Bell helicopter set down at Big Sky Aviation in Millville, New Jersey. Two black SUVs were waiting, and Mahoney and I were rushed to North Vineland, about ten miles to the north.
We parked in the lot of an IHOP restaurant. Farley’s house was 1.2 miles away. “We’re ready to roll on him,” Mahoney told his group. “I have a pretty good feeling about this one.”
I accompanied Mahoney in one of the SUVs. We wouldn’t be part of the six-man HRT team that would go into the house first, but we’d have immediate access to Rafe Farley. Hopefully we’d find Audrey Meek alive in the house.
In spite of my misgivings, I was starting to get pumped about the takedown. Mahoney’s enthusiasm was contagious, and any kind of action beat sitting around. At least we were doing something. Maybe we’d get Audrey Meek back.
Just then, we passed by an unpainted bungalow. I saw broken porch boards, and a rusty car and a camping stove in the small front yard. “That’s it,” said Mahoney. “Home, sweet home. Let’s pull over up there.”
We stopped about a hundred yards up the road, near a stand of red oaks and pines. I knew that a couple of surveillance agents in ghillie camouflage suits were already nestled in close to the bungalow. These agents did nothing but surveillance and wouldn’t be involved in the actual bust. There was also a closed-circuit camera aimed at the bungalow and the UNSUB’s car, a red Dodge Polaris.
“We think he’s sleeping inside,” Mahoney informed me as we jogged through the woods until we had the ramshackle house in view.
“It’s almost noon,” I said.
“Farley works a late-night shift. He got home at six this A.M. His girlfriend’s in there too.”
