Page 29 of A Dead Man’s Pulse (Trident Security Omega Team #1)

An hour later, his new masterpiece was naked, blindfolded, and restrained spread-eagle on the old hospital bed in the sparse, one-room building in the woods bordering Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge.

It had been used as a utility building a few decades ago, but then abandoned when a new one had been built a mile closer to the main road at another turnoff.

The only other items in the concrete structure were a cabinet that held his tools and a St. Andrew’s cross where his scenes took place, where his masterpieces came to life and then met their deaths at his hand.

He was their Master and their executioner, and only he said when enough was enough. No one else. Him. The ultimate Dom.

Following Captain Bowman from TPD’s Special Ops Division through the lobby of the FBI building, Ian and Devon flashed their government IDs to the armed guards manning the metal detectors.

All three men were waved around the full-body scanner—the guards knew them by sight now and were aware of the weapons they were carrying—before approaching the bank of elevators.

While they waited for a car to open, Ian tilted his head side to side, cracking his vertebrae.

He’d gotten very little sleep last night and neither had Angie.

They’d only gone to the club to celebrate Colleen’s birthday, otherwise, they would have spent the Wednesday night at home.

They’d only been home an hour or so, when Angie had made a beeline for the bathroom.

They’d thought her nausea was a thing of the past as she entered her second trimester, but apparently, Little Bit hadn’t liked something Angie had eaten, and she’d spent half the night in the bathroom.

After her stomach was empty, the dry heaves had continued, and Ian had to make a 2:00 a.m. run to the store to get saltines and ginger ale for her.

When Ian had left their bed this morning, Angie was still sleeping, so he’d asked Kristen to check on her for him in a little while. The task force meeting was scheduled for 0900. After that, he’d be able to go back to the compound and catch a catnap for a bit.

The bell above the middle elevator car dinged, and when the door opened, Parrish came rushing out with two other agents on his heels. He spotted Ian, Devon, and Bowman immediately. “Good, you’re here. We might have another missing submissive.”

“Shit,” Devon spat. “Who?’

Sympathy crossed the special agent’s face, and Ian’s stomach roiled like Angie’s probably had last night. He knew what the man was going to say, but he didn’t know the who . “It’s a Covenant sub, isn’t it?”

Parrish nodded as the blood drained from the faces of both Sawyer brothers. “We’re not a hundred percent sure yet. Georgia Branneth didn’t show up for work this morning. Her purse and keys are in the house, but there’s no sign of her car.”

“That’s because it’s at our compound,” Devon informed them. “It wouldn’t start last night so Tiny drove her home. I told her I’d have Babs check it for her.”

“Tampered?” Ian asked.

His brother shook his head. “I don’t think so. Looked like the alternator was shot, but I can have Babs check now.”

When he pulled out his phone, Bowman stopped him. “Hang on. If it was tampered with, it’s evidence. Let’s do it by the book. I’ll get patrol over there and tow it back to the PD garage.”

Devon nodded. “All right. I’ll let her know they’re coming and to make sure no one touches it.”

“On the way to Branneth’s house, give your man, Daultry, a call and have him respond there too. I want to know everything that happened after he left the club with her last night.” With a hand gesture, Parrish got them all walking back toward the building’s main entrance again.

Ian was glad the fed gave no indication Tiny was a suspect, because he’d put their friend and employee last on a list of over a million suspects before he even considered him to be their killer.

If anything, Tiny was going to be devastated when he found out what happened. If Georgia had been kidnapped.

By the time they reached Georgia’s small, ranch-style house, there were three patrol cars, two unmarked vehicles, an FBI Evidence Response Team Unit (ERTU) van, and, unfortunately, two news vans. Ian was certain more were on the way.

The uniformed officers had already begun to hang the yellow tape around the property, and their vehicles had blocked the road, so the press was stuck behind them, unable to get good shots due to the high shrubs blocking the view of the house.

A patrol officer put his vehicle in drive and moved it a few feet to let Bowman, Parrish, and Ian’s vehicles into the restricted area, before blocking the way again.

Before climbing out of his SUV with its darkly, tinted windows, Ian took the Tampa Rays baseball cap Devon had retrieved from the backseat, and placed it low on his head, hiding his facial features from the news cameras.

His brother donned another cap. The last thing they needed in their businesses was to be identified while investigating a crime scene.

Getting out of the vehicle, they strode purposely toward the front steps of the house—at least there they were out of camera range—and met with Bowman, Parrish, and the other feds.

There was also a woman Ian didn’t recognize standing next to SA Novik who made the introductions.

“This is Ms. Branneth’s friend and vice principal at the high school, Janet Benson.

Ms. Benson, this is Special Agent in Charge Colt Parrish, Captain Al Bowman, and investigators Ian and Devon Sawyer. ”

Parrish gently shook the pale woman’s hand. “I’m sorry we had to meet this way, Ms. Benson, and I know you’ve already told your story more than once already, but please start at the beginning.”

Taking a shaky breath, Janet told them what little information she had.

“All I know is she sent me a text at fourteen minutes after midnight to say she was getting a lift home from the club she goes to because her car wouldn’t start and asked me to pick her up on my way to school today.

I pulled up at ten to seven and honked the horn.

When she didn’t come out, I rang the doorbell and called her cell and got no answer.

I thought maybe she got her car started and forgot to tell me, so I drove to the school.

When she didn’t show up before the first bell, I swung by my house to get the spare key she gave me last summer to water her plants while she went on vacation, then came back here.

When I saw her purse with her keys and cell phone in the foyer, and her nowhere to be found, I called 9-1-1.

” By this point, tears were rolling down her cheeks.

“I-I know the type of club she belongs to . . . but no one else at the school does. She was afraid someone would find out, and she’d lose her job, which is why she went to that private club .

. . um . . . The . . . The Covenant, I think it’s called.

She never went to the public ones.” Her gaze bounced from one person to the next.

“You—you think that serial killer has her, don’t you? ”

None of them wanted to be the one to confirm that, but Parrish sucked it up and did his best to sugarcoat it. “We don’t know, yet, Ms. Benson. Yes, she fits the profile, but so far, all the victims were taken from their driveways. It appears Ms. Branneth made it inside—”

“She did make it inside—I walked her to the door myself and made sure she locked it and set the alarm.”

Ian turned to see his employee and friend marching toward the group.

Tiny looked like he’d driven through hell to get there, his face filled with concern and guilt.

Not because he had anything to do with Georgia’s disappearance, but because he’d been the last one to see her—well, almost the last person to see her.

At Ian’s request, Devon hadn’t given Tiny any of the few details they’d had so far when he’d called to tell the man to meet them at Georgia’s house because she was missing.

Nor did Devon ask for any details of what had happened in the wee hours of the morning.

They needed to hear what happened from his recollection without tainting it with anything that was said or implied to him.

Usually, a missing person case like this would require at least twenty-four hours before being investigated, but since the submissive fit the profile, they were waiving the normal waiting period.

Before Tiny could say anything more, Parrish held up his hand to stop him before addressing his agents.

“Novik and Davis, please take Ms. Benson back to the office and get a full statement from her, along with a list of friends and family. You know the drill. Ms. Benson, we’ll do everything we can to find out what happened to Ms. Branneth.

Any information you can give the agents to help us will be greatly appreciated. ”

As the two agents escorted their witness from the scene, a crime scene tech exited through the front door. “SAC Parrish. We found something around back.”

He pointed to the side of the house, indicating they should walk around instead of through the building.

At the back door, another female tech was dusting it for prints while another male tech marked off two footprints in the soil next to the patio.

Parrish started with the latter. “A set or two different?”

The man glanced up from his work. “Two different. One’s about a size fifteen and the other is a size twelve.”

“The fifteen is probably mine. I walked around the house last night with my flashlight to make sure she’d be safe.

” Tiny’s eyes watered, and he turned his head to the side for a moment to regain his composure.

It bothered Ian to see the big man, who would never hurt a woman, get so emotional because one in his care had possibly been kidnapped by a serial killer.

“I didn’t see anything. I locked her in my truck while I walked around, and then escorted her to the door.

It’d been locked, but I noticed she had an alarm that wasn’t set.

She said she sometimes forgets to set it.

Damn it! I should have searched the house. Fuck! This is my fault!”

“Hey, Tiny,” Devon said. “Man, look at me, damn it. This is not your fault. If you’d seen anything that made you think she was in danger, you never would have let her in the house alone.

You know how easy it is to buy a jammer for security systems. He could’ve gotten in after she set the alarm and you left .

. . all it takes is the right equipment.

” He was right—even some of the best systems out there weren’t completely un-hackable.

There were numerous ways to bypass a system if you did some research.

“Hell, for that matter, we don’t know if she left the house after you drove off.

We don’t know anything right now. You can’t beat yourself up.

If I was the one to drive her home, without something triggering my Spidey-sense, I would have done exactly what you did. ”

It was obvious the man wasn’t convinced, but he nodded in Dev’s direction anyway as Parrish pointed at the female technician. “Any prints on the door?”

She shook her head. “No . . . but it looks like someone was wearing gloves and smudged the ones that would normally be there. The lock’s been picked.

It’s not obvious though. There’re no scratches on the surface here .

. .” She indicated the brass surface plate of the deadbolt around the keyhole.

“. . . but with the magnifying camera I can see some inside the lock, otherwise, I would have missed them.” Her last words were directed toward Tiny.

She’d obviously overheard his guilt-ridden statements moments earlier and was trying to reassure him there was no way he could’ve spotted the damage to the lock.

The only way she’d been able to see the scratch marks left by a lock pick set was by using a camera so small it could fit on the head of a ballpoint pen.

“I’ll contact our list of locksmiths to make sure no one came here on a lockout call. ”

Twenty minutes later, there had been no more obvious evidence found although the techs were vacuuming and swabbing for trace evidence throughout the interior of the house.

Devon volunteered to accompany Tiny to the FBI office where he’d be interviewed fully, so Ian could return to the compound and check on Angie.

The eldest Sawyer brother was not looking forward to telling everyone, especially Boomer, that Georgia was missing.

Before Kat Michaelson had come out of the Witness Protection Program, in desperate need of her now husband’s help—he hadn’t known she was alive after “dying” twelve years earlier—Boomer had played a few times with the pretty divorcee at The Covenant, and they were still friends.

Stopping at the driver’s door to his truck, he glanced back up at the little house.

Bile rose in his throat. During all these months the sick bastard had been kidnapping and killing submissives, Ian had sworn he’d be damned if one of The Covenant’s subs was taken.

He’d made sure all the club members took every possible precaution.

But it hadn’t been enough. They had approximately three days before Georgia Branneth’s tortured body was found, posed somewhere public in or around Tampa.

Opening the door, Ian climbed in and cranked the ignition, starting the engine. But instead of putting the vehicle in drive, he punched the dashboard, ignoring the pain shooting through his hand and arm. “Son of a fucking bitch. When we catch you, death will be too good for you.”