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Beau had decided to give into his basic urges months after the wedding and moving into a new house. Looking back, he never should have married her to begin with, but it had served many, many purposes in working toward his goal of her redemption.
After Grace had ultimately been taught about the errors of her own self-interest, Beau’s mother hadn’t once asked him if he was ready move on with his life. She gave him his space, allowing him to carry forth his mission to test others about their knowledge of basic humanity. In addition, the police’s interest in him as a suspect had waned after a second woman had been abducted, and then eventually…the FBI had declared that a serial killer was responsible for their disappearances. They had been searching for some mindless killer, not a herald of justice.
Beau had recognized the gift that he’d been given, and he wasn’t going to waste it.
He could see what others couldn’t, and he’d been handed the opportunity to seek out those who ignored loved ones and make them see the error of their ways…with death. Reverence for one’s elders was its own reward, because with that came wisdom.
“Oh, Amelia,” Beau said before clicking his tongue in earnest. “You’ll be given a chance to change my mind about you. You think that people don’t know about your father residing in another nursing home right across town. You moved him there after Jackie killed that patient, but I overheard you on the phone. I’ve also been keeping an eye on you for the past three years. How many times a month have you gone and visited him? Rarely. You were last there three months ago, and that was only because the nursing home said that he needed new undergarments. What kind of daughter leaves her father to rot in some bed for others to wipe his ass? You work in a nursing home. You should know better.”
The bitter taste in his mouth no longer had anything to do with the fact that he might need to give up his quest after deciding on Amelia’s fate. It now had everything to do with his disgust for women like her. Where were these women’s motherly instincts? All of them were self-absorbed, and they had no room in their lives for the ones who helped raise them. It was sickening, and it had to stop.
Maybe he should just force Amelia to join the others tonight. It went against his own moral code of ensuring that he had read the situation right, but with the FBI agents and police crawling all over the nursing home, it seemed prudent to expedite her ultimate reward. His excitement grew at the thought of leading Amelia to the old well where he and his father used to throw in pennies for good luck.
“I’ve changed my mind, Amelia. You’re about to come face-to-face with your new reality,” Beau said with an elated laugh. “Don’t worry, though. Others are there to keep you company.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Brooklyn Sloane
February 2023
Wednesday — 7:29pm
Aflurryofactivityhad occurred in a very short time span.
Thanks to Abe, Brook had been able to connect Beau Willow to the profile of the unsub. During standard police investigations, the spouse was usually the prime suspect. It was extremely rare that said spouse turned out to be a serial killer.
Brook now understood how the investigation had veered off the usual course.
During one of their many conversations, Beau Willow had mentioned that he’d wasted money on psychics. She realized that it had merely been a slip of the tongue in the moment. Unfortunately, such a mistake had wasted precious time in an investigation where a woman’s life was now at stake.
Willow had long maintained that Grace could still be alive, but that had obviously been an act for appearances’ sake only. He’d done so with the intent of coming across like a grieving widow refusing to accept the likelihood that she had met her demise. Such a desperate individual who had gone out of his way to use unconventional methods like psychics wouldn’t have been so blasé about dismissing it after the fact.
“Once we get closer, the unit in front of us will shut off their lights and sirens,” Brook explained to Theo as the red and blue radiances swirled in front of them. “We’ll pass them by and take lead before exiting at the turnoff.”
Theo was driving them in his Jeep with the emergency flashers on, while a police cruiser with activated lights and sirens guided them down the highway at a high rate of speed. Bit had remained inside the van near the nursing facility, and Sylvie had joined Special Agent Ann Nelson in the agent’s car. More units were in route to join them, but time was of the essence.
A call had been placed to Ann the moment they’d received proof from the one and only Levi Kittle. Brook had gotten ahold of him and confirmed her suspicions of Beau Willow borrowing the man’s truck from time to time citing engine trouble in his own vehicle. A quick factcheck had lined up the dates, with the exception of the truck that had originally been spotted tailing Grace into her neighborhood. The two men hadn’t been reacquainted by that point, but Brook doubted that it would have been difficult for Willow to borrow another truck.
“A serial killer marrying a woman who he intended to kill is something that I haven’t come across before,” Theo said with disgust as he kept his attention on the police car in front of them. “It’s a little out of the norm, wouldn’t you say?”
“I don’t believe that Beau Willow really intended to kill Grace when they wed. He didn’t—doesn’t—think of himself in that light. In his mind, he had convinced himself that he was doing right by Jonas Davies after repeated attempts to change her behavior.”
“A man who was a complete stranger.”
“Yes, but the adrenaline high that Willow received when he’d inserted himself into Grace’s life was like a drug. He found that he enjoyed the hunt just as much as the end result,” Brook explained, grateful that Levi Kittle had been truthful regarding certain timelines. “Willow is highly intelligent, and he is nowhere near the end of his run. He can still stop on a dime and suppress the urge to kill for periods of time to protect himself against getting caught, and he almost certainly believes that we have no idea that he is the one behind Amelia’s abduction. That is our ace in the hole. He isn’t expecting us to be chasing after him this early…if ever. Willow used AA as part of his cover when he began to take too much time off work to monitor his targets. Levi just happened to be an available patsy, and Willow took advantage of him.”
“Kittle should have come forward sooner.”
Brook figured they were less than a mile away from the exit. From there, it would be another five minutes before they reached a turnoff that would take them far out into the country. She wasn’t sure how much time Amelia had left given the circumstances. Willow might feel compelled to stick to his routine, but he was smart enough to know when to accelerate his timeline in order to limit his own vulnerability.
Once Brook had been reasonably certain that she’d identified the unsub, a search of City and County land records for Beau Willow and his immediate family had yielded results. His father owned a remote piece of land bordering a nature preserve. He’d never gotten around to developing the property, and it was a fair assumption that it was the location where Beau had taken Amelia Jennings.
Bit had been able to pull footage of Kittle’s truck from several cameras that had been installed to monitor traffic in the city and along the local surrounding highways. Unfortunately, Willow had taken one of the exits that hadn’t been under surveillance, but the general direction had supported Brook’s supposition about the remote piece of land owned by Beau’s father.
Brook didn’t want to think about the chance that they might be wrong about Willow’s destination. They had nothing else to go on.
“Kittle mentioned on the phone that he never suspected a thing until Beau asked him to join in on the meeting with us. Kittle sensed a shift in Willow’s demeanor during that interview. He just couldn’t fathom that an old high school friend could do such a thing, especially to his own wife. A wife who he purportedly missed so badly that it drove him to alcoholism.”
