O’Shea was the first to kick back into motion, hustling toward the door. “I’m going to get the team on the cards and see if we can track down where this call came from, digitally and otherwise.”
Lincoln resumed pacing. “Fuck. If he’s on Dr. Fear’s clock, there’s no time left. Not enough?—”
Carter stepped in front of him, cutting off his circuit and clapping his shoulders. “This is good, L. They’ll make it in time.” He said it as much for his own benefit as for Lincoln’s. He wanted to be there in DC, running down this lead himself, but he had to trust Kirk’s team, that the senator’s own personal stake in the outcome would lead them to do everything possible to bring Ruby and Chase home alive. And their work here wasn’t done.
Motion to Carter’s left drew both their gazes toward the imaging room, where Weathers had hopped off the table. “What about for Stacy?” Lincoln asked as they watched Weathers move from the side of the table to the chair, then back to the table. Likewise nervous. As he should be.
“Chances aren’t as good.” Carter ran through the timeline. “The copycat kept her alive long enough to be useful, but she was just a means to an end. Ruby and Chase were the target. Once he was done with her . . .”
“He’d either kill her or just leave her there to die.” Lincoln dragged a hand through his hair, glancing back at Weathers. “You think he’s playing us? He could be Dr. Fear.”
Carter took another good long look at Clyde Weathers. Blond hair, middle-aged but fit, and seemingly genuinely upset by the prospect of losing his junkie sister. Who he’d given a car to and met up with each week to visit their mother. “I don’t think so,” Carter said. “He doesn’t fit any of the profiles Kirk, you, or we’ve developed. I think he’s telling the truth.”
“Why did the copycat want him to burn the records? Because we’d find the car?”
“Likely, which means he somehow got wind we were getting close.”
A mole was the last complication they needed. “Who?—”
“Agents!” O’Shea’s thundering footsteps drew them both toward the doorway. “We have a location on Stacy!”
“That was fast,” Lincoln said.
O’Shea handed them a photo, the resolution of the plastic-wrapped cups cleaned up.
“Mountain Top Motor Lodge,” Carter read.
“It’s a few exits north on 81. Confirmed it using the channel guide like you suggested, Agent Monroe.” O’Shea split a glance between them. “What do you want to do? This is your case, your call, agents.”
They could sit and wait for news on Ruby and Chase, or they could follow this lead and try and save another life in the process. No question. “Let’s go!”
Carter opened the hotel room door, and Lincoln couldn’t stop his body’s instinctive reaction as he got his first live look at Stacy Weathers. Or rather dead. It only took a second to make that assessment: the blood, the eyes, the lack of chest movement, the smell. He turned his face away and swallowed hard, forcing down the rising bile. But unlike earlier at the church, and unlike all those years ago at Fame High, the queasy feeling receded quickly as his other skills—the ones he’d spent the past fifteen years honing—charged to the forefront. For the first time since Beverley appeared in his classroom, Lincoln felt like he was exactly where he was supposed to be, fully back in his element. This was a stage he was comfortable on.
O’Shea cleared his throat. “I’m gonna go notify the front desk and check in with ERT. See how far out they are. You two good?”
Carter mumbled something in response and tossed him the key he’d gotten from the desk clerk. Lincoln turned his attention back to the scene and began cataloging the things wrong with this picture. The blood pooling on the bedsheets beneath Stacy’s bound hands and sliced forearms was more red than brown and some of it still dripped from her mangled wrists. And from where Lincoln stood just inside the door, he observed only the initial signs of rigor—a few fingers curled on each hand and Stacy’s jaw clenched loosely around the gag.
A pair of booties was shoved into his hand, and Lincoln put them on, steadying himself against Carter. “The clerk didn’t see anyone come or go from the room?”
He returned the steadying favor as Carter did the same. “Nothing,” Carter said. “Stacy paid the clerk extra when she checked in. Asked for a room on the backside here and not to be bothered.” Gloves came next. “Got the impression it’s a regular request. Transients, junkies, and the like. Security cameras don’t work either. Just for show.”
They quickly discussed how best to get a closer look without disturbing evidence, then, game plan decided—Lincoln would examine the body, Carter would sweep the room—Lincoln waited for Carter to snap a few scene pictures with his phone before approaching the closest side of the bed.
“Drug paraphernalia on the chest of drawers,” Carter said as he rounded the end of the bed. “Unused. Directly in her line of sight. Ditto the mirror.”
From his crouch beside the bed, Lincoln glanced over his shoulder, taking in Stacy Weathers’s deathbed view—her own self, bound, beaten and tortured, and the drugs that had ruined her life. Likely led her here? He turned back to the body, away from the reflection, before the disassociation from the immediate scene brought back the bile. Avoiding the dripping blood, he laid two fingers against her neck. No pulse. He added two more fingers, feeling for temp. Warm. He reached up and lifted one eye, then the other. Minor corneal clouding.
“How long?” Carter asked.
Lincoln withdrew his hand and straightened. “We need liver temp to be sure, but no more than six hours. There’s minor rigor and corneal clouding, so probably more than three. Given the worsening weather, there’s no way our copycat made it out here and back to DC in that time window, not if he intends to keep to Dr. Fear’s clock.”
“Because our copycat didn’t kill her.”
Lincoln’s gaze shot up and across the bed to where Carter stood next to the opposite bedside table. “What?”
“Come take a look at this,” he said, not lifting his eyes from the table.
Lincoln carefully made his way around the bed and teetered to a halt as soon as he glimpsed the handwriting on the outside of the folded sheet of paper propped on the table. Dr. Monroe, in a script he’d recognize anywhere. “Get pictures before I move it,” he told Carter.
