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“Killers?” I check, noting her last two words.
She nods. “Most of the files were destroyed, but Hunter lifted some information from the hard drive we pulled from the trash can.” She clicks open a file on the laptop.
“They’re federal badge numbers,” Grayson jumps in.
Again, Macy nods. “But they don’t belong to the victims.”
“Potential victims?” I ask.
This time, she shakes her head. “They’re current bureau members with a known association with each of the victims’ partners.” She opens up a mug shot. “Agent Mahone was overlooked for a promotion three times in the two years before his ex-partner’s spouse’s death.” Another image. “Agent Sylvian forever excelled further than the agents who graduated with her.”
“So you’re telling me they committed murder for a petty thing like a colleague getting a promotion before them?”
I’m taken aback when Macy hums in agreement.
“Why not kill the agents? Why their partners?”
I get my questions answered by the laptop speaker. “Because in some satanic cults, sacrificial scapegoats are usually the more innocent of the group. Wives. Children. Virgins.” Amelia huffs before murmuring, “Hence me losing my purity early.” When Macy groans, Amelia gets back on track. “And by sacrificing the cause of someone’s purity, the intended target’s rejuvenation under the Church of Satan will occur more rapidly.”
Macy clicks open a barrage of disciplinary action forms usually concealed from any agent who isn’t IA. Every name on the top of the document belongs to an agent who lost a partner at the Night Killer’s hands.
“There’s no quicker way for a man to dance in hell than to make him dead set on revenge first.”
Amelia’s comment makes sense until I recall Leroy’s reason for attacking Henley. “Leroy didn’t like that I went against protocol to protect Henley. Shouldn’t that have been his objective?”
“Things with Leroy were a little different.” My stomach twists when image after image after image of me in various poses pop up on the laptop screen.
“And you wonder why I still have a landline,” I mutter under my breath when it is obvious some images were bounced off my cell phone camera. “Am I naked in that shot?”
“And regrettably lying on your stomach with the sheet around your waist? Yes, you are.” Amelia giggles at my huff before firming my anger. “That’s just what I found on his work computer.”
“There are thousands more in his private home files,” Hunter adds on, groaning.
Confident I’ve gotten the point, Macy commences closing down the hundreds of images.
The mouse clicker icon freezes partway across the screen, and when Macy’s eyes flick to Grayson, they have a private conversation.
“What is it?” I ask, not as coached on reading silent words.
Macy isn’t a book I’ll ever be able to read.
“This number is different.” Macy highlights a number at the bottom of the stack before cranking her neck to me. “It is a USMS badge number.”
I twist the laptop screen to face me. “For Marshal Levalley?”
She shakes her head. “No. For an ex-partner he left behind when he was promoted to supervisor.”
31
BRODIE
“Drop the weapon.”
The perp standing across from agents wearing the same riot gear my unit wore while raiding a property on the outskirts of New Jersey doesn’t heed the agent’s warning. He dives for Marshal Levalley’s wife, who is bound and gagged on a chair in the living room of their home in Ravenshoe, Florida, leaving the agent no choice but to fire.
Since his aim isn’t hindered by a steering wheel and the body of a mangled car, he shoots the assailant in the knee and shoulder, bringing him down along with the knife he intended to slit across Lania’s throat.
“The perp has been contained,” Macy says down her cell phone, twisting away from the monitor displaying the action occurring hundreds of miles away. “Your wife is rattled but okay…”
Her voice drowns out when Alex Rogers, Grayson’s brother, yanks the balaclava down the killer’s face.
“Jesus Christ,” I murmur, matching Grayson’s sentiments to a T when the assailant is exposed as female. It is the rookie recruitment officer Marshal Levalley took under his wing at his last placement. She looks barely over the age of twenty-five.
“Organize secure transport. I want her here and alive.”
The cult membership numbers are in the thousands, but we only have a few dozen names on our list, so if we want any chance of narrowing it down, we need her alive and capable of speaking.
“I’m not bringing her to you.” Alex snarls at his reflection in the entryway mirror of Marshal Levalley’s family home. “If you want to talk to her, you can come here.”
“She’s my fucking target,” Grayson shouts.
“Who was caught in my jurisdiction,” Alex fires back.
While the brothers continue arguing, Macy stores away her cell before twisting to face me. Her smile isn’t one I expected to see today, but it makes sense when she says, “We’ve found her. Henley is alive and well. In his relief, Marshal Levalley gave up her location. She is in a hospital in Newark.” She tosses me a set of keys. “That’s Grayson’s baby, so if you get a scratch on it, he will kill you.”
