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One monitor displays Simon Whitmore, his face captioned as the UNSUB—the face I looked right into as he handed me the note from Avery. The techs are running searches on his financials, a team already en route to his house and two hotels that he recently paid for with a credit card.
“He won’t be in a hotel,” I say, climbing into the van. “And he won’t have Avery at his house. You need to take the search back further, to places he visited six months ago.”
Agent Rollins snaps his fingers. “Get her out of here,” he orders one of the agents.
“Proctor sent me,” I say, jerking my arm free of the agent’s grip. “I’m to be debriefed, and there’s no way you’re shutting me out if there’s a chance our M.E. is still alive.”
I hear Carson and Colton enter the van, and Agent Rollins slams his hand against the wall. “You amateurs have already botched things good enough. What? You want to see if we can get the perp off on a technicality, too?”
“Can I leave?”
Our heads swing toward the woman hired to be my double.
Rollins glares at her. “Not unless you want the full weight of your charges brought against you. Sit down.”
She rolls her eyes with exaggeration, and Carson takes it upon himself to lead her toward the back of the van.
“Did she ID him?” I ask Rollins.
“She did,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. “She confirms Simon Whitmore, a tech from your own department lab, hired her to dance with him at the club and lead Reed out the side entrance. She claims she doesn’t know anything else. But she’s going into interrogation just to be sure.”
The UNSUB has been on a mission today, closing up loose ends. Why not her?
“You wouldn’t have half the information you do now without us putting our lives on the line,” I say, turning my back to him and moving closer to the monitors. “You will give us the respect we’re due, and you will either work with us now to help our M.E., or you can get the fuck out of the way.”
The air of the van thickens with tension. I can feel Rollins simmering, his close proximity hovering behind me. I’m sure he’s about to have me escorted from the vehicle when he says, “I better not regret this, Agent Bonds.”
He has one of the analysts bring up Simon’s financial records for the past six months. “See if you can find a recurring payment on property—rent, mortgage, or it might even be disguised as a car payment. Go back further into his records and see if he inherited any property. Any gifts he tried to get past the IRS.”
Carson appears at the head of the van. “He’s not what I expected,” he says. “I feel almost…disappointed.”
This is true. Simon Whitmore is a shadow. He was easy to overlook because nothing about him stood out. Average looks. Average height. Average life. He’s so unassuming that no one would bother to look too closely…if they ever bothered to notice him at all.
“You’ve had an ideal suspect in mind for two years,” I say to Carson. “It’s hard to imagine anyone outside that profile once you’ve made up your mind.”
Our gazes connect briefly, letting an unsaid understanding pass between us out of respect for Colton. Julian couldn’t be the apprentice. He was too much of an alpha to ever submit to anyone else.
I look at Rollins. “We need to compare the evidence of the crime scenes to this knew information.”
Rollins tosses a pile of files down on the table in the center of the van. “Knock yourselves out.”
Feeling like this night is about to swallow me, I take up a seat next to Colton, the weight of this day finally catching up. I tweak a file from the stack and flip it open.
My vision blurs. I blink hard, trying to focus on the crime scene image from the suspended vic. It was what Avery was last working on. There has to be something here I missed. It’s the only scene where a mistake was made—one he caught, but just barely. He was devolving rapidly at this point; he could’ve made another mistake.
“I’m sorry, goddess,” Colton whispers near my ear.
My insides hum. Just hearing him say goddess takes me away from the cruel reality gripping my mind. “You don’t have to be,” I say. “I never would’ve let you go.”
His jaw clenches. “I almost didn’t…I was close to locking you up in my room.”
I smile. For him. “I promised you we would get through this.” I look into his eyes. “Why did you—?”
“I thought Quinn was the UNSUB.”
I huff a weak laugh. “He couldn’t be. Well, I might’ve questioned him at one point. He went through a rough divorce a few months ago; that’s enough of a trigger for anyone to commit homicide. And he’s a neat freak. I cut my eyes a few times at him with suspicion…but no.” I shake my head. “Quinn isn’t subservient enough. Also, he didn’t spend enough time in Roanoke to build a connection with Connelly. If anything, Quinn would be the master, not the apprentice.”
Colton’s eyes skim my face, then travel lower as he lifts the tattered hem of my dress. “When I first saw you…all I could imagine was Quinn attacking you. Or someone hurting you. I learned the hard way you can’t break out of handcuffs.”
