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“Not important to your boss. Anyway, I can’t get you a seat at the table, Parker. My influence,” I emphasized the same word he had, “only goes as far as adding what I know to the ongoing investigation. They probably won’t even let us stay for anything important.” That was a lie since we had been told by the agent in charge that she would share information as long as we did. She didn’t seem to be as stubborn as the good old boys club, and for that I was thankful.
“What should I tell Robert?” He sounded pathetic now too. I rounded on him and got in his face just like I had that day at the hospital. I was sick of this guy and his need to lick Harrington’s ass.
“Tell him to try mending fences with his daughter. He almost lost her in a car bombing and didn’t even show up until it was time to swing his dick and fire me,” I bit the words out through clenched teeth before turning from him and following Cabot inside.
Just inside the door, I found Cabot chatting with a petite blonde woman who, while very attractive, looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. I figured we all looked like that after the constant calls to coordinate an immediate meeting. Not to mention that everyone involved had seen the video by now, and that was less than conducive to a good night’s sleep. As soon as I stepped up to the conversation between Cabot and the blonde, her attention turned toward me and she shoved a hand out briskly to shake.
“Mr. Mullins.” I took her hand and she gave it one hard no nonsense shake before letting it drop. “I’m Agent Geiger, and I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but under the circumstances, it sucks.”
“No argument here. When we originally signed on as protection for the former senator and his daughter, we knew we might be dealing with a fanatical group, but we certainly hadn’t prepared for the possibility of a serial killer zeroing in on Lake Harrington.” This had been the first time I’d uttered the words outloud causing my pulse to sky rocket and me to clench my hands into fists at my side to keep calm. I knew what each piece meant in terms of our stalker, but saying it outloud almost felt like bringing it into being.
“And when I was assigned the missing women in Paris, I had no idea it would lead me down a rabbit hole with politicians and assassins,” she deadpanned. I snorted despite my best intentions. She had a point. This entire ordeal was entirely unbelievable.
“Anyway, you’re the last to arrive. Follow me.” She began striding back through the lobby and Cabot and I followed closely behind.
“How are we the last to arrive?” Cabot asked. “We were in Jersey for Christ’s sake.”
“The party was in full swing before you got your invite, Mr Cabot,” she shot over her shoulder, scanning her card at the door and ushering them through before taking the lead again. Every move was precise and efficient, and I really hoped she worked like she moved. “We’d already had this conference on the books for today. Your video has certainly changed the trajectory of the investigation.”
“Let’s never call it ‘our’ video again.” Cabot did nothing to hide his disgust, and Geiger sent an apologetic look over her shoulder before stopping at a conference room door and swinging it wide. She held a hand outwardly, inviting us to walk past and into a virtual hellscape.
Where Kasey had called his wall of screens his “murder board” for years, it was hardly used to display anything other than information. We didn’t deal with much murder in the protection business. This was far worse than what had been gracing his screens lately. Three of the four walls were plastered with papers and photos, and I immediately walked toward a section of the wall covered in pictures and information about Lake. I followed the line of pictures into information about each missing woman, then to…
“There’s more?” I asked, barely above a whisper as I studied names and crime scene photos.
“Why don’t you take a seat and we can get started.” Her tone was still brisk, but when I turned to face her, there was empathy in her eyes. Nodding, I took a seat next to Cabot and tried not to let my eyes wander to the dead women’s pictures tacked up so close to Lake’s photos.
There was a quick round of introductions around the large conference table where I quickly stored each of the men’s names to memory. I may need to call on them later for information. It was an older gentleman, Brian Murphy, with a southern accent who was heading Interpol’s involvement, and he was the first to start.
“As much as I hate to admit a fault here, cards on the table, we had no idea this was even a pattern until we knew the template.” He jerked a thumb toward the corner of the wall with Lake taped all over. “It’s not exactly a walk in the park involving dozens of countries to get information, and honestly we still don’t know if we found them all.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. “So, to start from the beginning, as far as we know, this began four years back. The oldest isn’t actually a missing woman. Her body was left inside the closet of her own hotel room. No sexual assault but she was found naked and mutilated much in the same way as…” He cleared his throat. It was one thing to walk into a crime scene and see the aftermath, it was a whole new nightmare to have to watch it play out and be helpless to stop it. “Much in the same way as Bailey Voss,” he finished. He began to run down the list of missing and murdered women who had all gone missing from the same clubs Lake had been at the same night.
After the hour-long rundown on a total of 20 women, a bleak looking Geiger turned to me and gave a nod. “This is where you come in,” she said, referencing our involvement in the timeline. I began to explain from the start of Robert Harrington reaching out after receiving the letters. Cabot passed copies around the room like it was a damn study guide. I continued into the texts, and then into The Wraith. Murphy sucked in a startled breath at the assassin’s name, and I was sure he was familiar with it.
I turned to Mal, sitting in the seat across from me and gave a chin jerk. “This is where you come in with the Pasternaks.” And then he began explaining the investigation with the couple who had lived next door to the estate. He filled them in on crime scene information, of which there was little, then kicked the conversation back to me.
Having to relive the car bomb and immediate aftermath was hard enough without my mind slipping into the past with Remy, so I kept to the facts as I kept myself as detailed as possible. I’d felt like I’d been talking for hours when I was finally able to say “And then we intercepted a video to Lake that I’m sure you’ve all seen by now.” There was a morose murmur of agreement around the room.
Geiger cleared her throat. “And finally we get to my two cents.” She stood up and paced as she spoke, and I could see this woman wasn’t the kind to sit still, which was good for us. We needed a bulldog and she was chomping at the bit.
“Bailey Voss and Monica De Carlo weren’t looked into by Paris police for the first two days. Apparently two women vanishing from a nightclub is a common occurrence there and ‘they turn up’.” She scoffed and shook her head before shooting Murphy a murderous look like he’d been involved somehow. He threw his hands up in surrender and shook his head.
“After friends and family pressured the FBI, coming in with their own proof in the form of their lack of social media activity and lack of bank transactions, we got involved and began trying to trace backwards from the surveillance video. We were unable to track the offenders before arriving at the club, and we lost them after leaving the club.” She finally sat in the seat. “We’d been spinning our wheels until that video came in, but fuck I wish it hadn’t. It would have been nice to hold on to a little bit of hope.”
Hope for what though? Hope that they were still alive? That they would come back home? Or just hope that death had been quick? Because it hadn’t been for Bailey Voss and most likely not for the 20 other women this sick bastard had under his belt. Pinching my bottom lip between my thumb and forefinger, I listened as she went on, not saying anything of evidentiary importance. There were far too many puzzle pieces to attempt to fit together and not nearly enough time.
The phone in the center of the conference table rang and Agent Geiger snatched it up barking her name into the receiver. Her eyes went wide and she pressed the button to put it on speaker, replacing the handset before announcing, “You have amazing timing, Mr. Kasey.”
“Yeah,” he snorted over the line, “Okay.”
Immediately Cabot and I grabbed our phones looking for any sign he’d been using our mics to remain involved. I had no idea how to check for tampering with my device and apparently neither did Cabot as we both returned the phones to our pockets and our attention back to the black phone in the center of the table.
“I’ve been looking into the metadata behind the video, something I know your Geek Squad is working on too, but while all we have is the time and date the content was created, we know that our ‘offender’ as we’re calling him, I guess, had to have been in Paris two days ago. Okay, well not entirely true there, but it was recorded in CEST, which means he had to be in one of those countries at the time, which means he wasn’t in the States.”
“Point, Kasey,” I growled. “Get there.”
“My point is, Lake Harrington was all over the world going to these clubs. Fitz has said he is 97% certain this offender is an American.”
“97%?” The question came from Murphy and Geiger at the same time and Mal rolled his eyes.
