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“My lawyer alreadytoldme,” Lane cut in to growl.“His mother died when he was about ten years old.A woman who looked a whole lot like Lark and the others he killed in Vegas.To hide the smell in the house, he’d steal flowers and put them on his poor, dead mom.”
Info that had only just come to light because the guy’s past had been buried so deeply.Oliver nodded.“Yes, and when he started killing women in Vegas, he did the same thing.Gave them bouquets just like he gave his mother.”
Lane leaned forward.“What I want to know is how did that twisted-as-hell freak get in the FBI?Aren’t you guys supposed to have psych tests you pass or something to ward off the nutjobs from getting inside?”
Voice flat, Oliver replied, “Anyone can pass a test, if you know the right answers to give.”
Lane’s gaze sharpened.“Why do I suddenly feel like you will always know the right answers to give?”
Because I do.“Jase joined the FBI because he wanted to know more about the investigations themselves.He wanted to know how to commit the perfect crime.From what I can tell, he’d seen murderers get convicted over and over at his practice, and he wanted to know how to avoid falling into that trap.The man had the urge to kill.It kept growing and growing inside of him.He joined the Bureau, started watching agents hunt predators and then one night…” Oliver stopped.So many lives destroyed.“One night he came across Casey Gallows.She looked like his mother.She flirted with him even as she held white flowers in her hands.”A detail they’d only recently learned.
Oliver had thought that the killer gave Casey the flowers.Instead, she’d picked them up from a vendor on the street.The vendor had come forward after Jase’s death and made a full statement to the FBI.Apparently, he’d made a statement previously…to Jase.And Jase had made sure that evidence never saw the light of day.
He was sabotaging the case left and right.Destroying evidence.Planting evidence.Telling witnesses what to say and what not to say.The waitress at Side Strip?After Jase’s death, she’d come forward, too.And confessed that the “scary FBI agent” had told her to identify Lane Lawson in the photo lineup.Therehadbeen a dark-haired, Caucasian male buying drinks for the ladies at the bachelorette party that night—just a random stranger.Not Lane.
“You weren’t the only one he set up.”I suspected something was off.Just didn’t get the facts soon enough.“Remember Memphis Camden?”
Lane winced.“How can I forget?Pretty sure he’s gonna try kicking my ass when I get out of here.”
“Oh, there is no pretty sure about it.Memphis holds a grudge.He will kick your ass.”That warning only seemed fair to give.
“I didn’t want to hurt him,” Lane confessed as his gaze cut away.“The man was huntingme.I just tried to get to my sister so I could protect her.And I left Memphis with a knife to cut his way out.”
According to Memphis, you left him with a sorry-ass butter knife.“You also left him locked in a freezer.So, what you have there would be a kidnapping charge—”
Lane swore.His angry stare returned to Oliver.
“That’s what happens when you tie someone up,” Oliver informed him.“And lock said person in a freezer, even if the freezer isn’t working.Kidnapping and assault.Lucky for you, Memphis doesn’t want charges pressed against you.He’s calling it all a misunderstanding.”
Lane’s eyes—green like Lark’s but so different at the same time—widened.“I’m going to owe that man my soul.”
“Oh, absolutely.”Memphis definitely held a grudge, and he also always remembered who owed him anything in this world.“Expect him to collect at the earliest opportunity.”
“His buddy Midas already slugged the hell out of me.”Lane rubbed his stubble-covered jaw.The bruising there had long since faded.“Felt like a freight train hitting me.Can’t we call that even?He hit me a hell of a lot harder than I hit Memphis.”
“Don’t think that is gonna be equal in Memphis’s world.”No, he suspected Memphis had plans for Lane.
And, not that he was telling Lane this, not right now, but…Oliver suspected Memphis might even admire Lane a little bit.The prison break had impressed him.Memphis always appreciated it when someone could get in and out of a location without being detected.“I had Memphis search Nate Quest’s hotel room.BeforeNate went off radar and showed up at Lark’s old florist shop.”
“You had your buddy do an illegal search?”Lane whistled.“That’s what you’re telling me right now, Mr.FBI hotshot?”
“I’m telling you that Memphis turned up the rope, two knives, and Lark’s home address in Nate’s room when he happened to be looking there.”Because I told him to look.“He didnotturn up a syringe.And yet, a syringe is the smoking gun that Jase told everyone about.Told everyone and even had the crime scene techs photograph it.In the photos I saw, the syringe was right on top of the rope so it would have been utterly impossible for Memphis to miss it.”But Memphis swears the syringe wasn’t there.
Oliver believed Memphis.
“So…” Lane drew out the pause.“Jase framed Nate, too.”
“Yes.He framed Nate.”An incline of Oliver’s head.“Nate wasn’t the one who waited for Lark in her car.It was Jase.He planted the syringe because he was just doing his routine of leaving someone else to take the blame.”I think he expected me to kill Nate.If I’d done that, maybe he wouldn’t have used Blain at the end.Who the fuck knows?I can’t question the dead.
But he had been able to question the living.Nate Quest had surprised Oliver with the intel he’d revealed.Intel like…someone had been contacting Nate for months.Taunting him about Lark and Lane and telling him that Lane would go free.Pushing him closer and closer to the edge.
That someone?It would be the same person who’d urged him to get a room at a very specific hotel in Vegas.The same person who’d framed him.The same person who got off on playing with his vics.
A search of Jase’s place had yielded a ton of burner phones.He’d been using those phones to make contact with Nate.Calls that had pushed Nate until he snapped.
Jase gave up his trophies to frame Lane, but Nate Quest was a walking, talking trophy.Pain in human form.Just talking to him or being near him had to remind Jase of Casey’s murder.Just as Lark had been another walking, talking trophy.Seeing her had let him relive his twisted moments of triumph over and over again.
But that nightmare had ended now.
