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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

A ddie rolled over on the ground. Arms stretched out on the ground in front of her. She aimed at the fleeing figure, her finger on the trigger.

A door opened across what amounted to a cul-de-sac. An older man in a bathrobe stood with light behind him, silhouetted in the glow from inside his cabin. Addie moved her finger off the trigger of her weapon.

The guy who’d shoved her off the porch raced between two cabins and disappeared into the dark.

“Special Agent Franklin!”

Addie winced. She clambered to her feet, the gun at her side.

In jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, McCauley came over to her, one hand on his holstered pistol, a thunderous expression on his face. “What just happened?”

“He shoved me and ran. He’s fast.” Addie touched the back of her hair and winced.

“You need an ambulance?”

“No.” She didn’t shake her head. Instead, she turned to the cabin.

McCauley’s hand landed on her shoulder. “Ready.”

Addie stepped into the cabin and swept left to right.

The place was one open-plan living and dining area with the kitchen in the left corner. One door at the far end. “That was locked.”

It had been. She and Jake had tried to get out during a time where they’d been free—not tied to chairs.

She shook her head, dissipating memories. “Clear.”

“Clear.” McCauley motioned to the door secured by padlock the last time she was here.

Addie avoided the memories that tried to surface when she looked around and grasped the handle. McCauley stood ready. She opened the door and covered him while he went in first.

“Clear.”

She stepped after him into the room. “Bathroom?”

He nodded. They repeated the sequence where he opened the door and her going first, which meant she got hit with the smell before he did. The sharp tang that meant fresh blood.

McCauley shifted behind her. The proximity made all her instincts fire, but she shoved off the tension that would only get worse. “We need the ME and the crime lab. Officers to secure the scene.”

“Copy that.”

Addie took a step back, out of the bathroom. She checked under the bed and in the closet, unwilling to deal with any surprises from anywhere. There had been far too many of those since she got back.

Captain McCauley seemed like a decent guy and a good cop—except he hadn’t pushed back when the finger of suspicion pointed at Jake. But she didn’t know him. Couldn’t trust him.

She grabbed her phone and sent Mona a text. Asked for a photo of this Austin guy she’d been seeing. Addie tried to feel sympathy, but when the guy was a messed-up predator at best and at worst something far darker, she wasn’t exactly going to get upset he could very well be the man dead in the bathroom.

The text came back seconds later. A shot of Mona and the guy Russ had restricted her from seeing.

Addie winced.

“What is it?”

She enlarged the picture to show only Austin and turned the phone to McCauley.

“You know this guy?”

Addie moved into the bathroom. Holstered her gun as she went. The bathtub was full, though the level remained four inches from the top. The occupant’s identity had yet to be confirmed.

“Nasty.”

Addie agreed with McCauley’s observation. “This needs to be confirmed by the ME, but it’s him.”

The man in the bathtub had his head and shoulders out of the tub, the torso covered in cuts and slashes. Defensive wounds on his forearms, where the knife had cut him as he lifted his hands. Tried to fight off the attacker.

Blood-soaked water had spilled on the floor and tracked onto the rug.

Addie crouched. “Might be a footprint.”

“You gonna tell me who this guy is?” McCauley set a hand on his waist.

She wasn’t sure how to answer without making it clear someone close to her who knew Austin. Her association with Jake hadn’t helped either of them.

“I have an informant.” They’d find out soon enough it was her sister. “That’s why I knew this guy was obsessed with what happened to Jake and me.”

McCauley said nothing.

Addie turned to get a read on him just in case she needed to protect herself. But the look on his face was something else. “What?”

“Just figured you’re probably counting it a good thing there’s no way I can pin this on Jake.”

“Do you want to?” The guy was laid up in bed with stitches in his belly. Both her and McCauley knew there was no way he could’ve done this.

“Honestly? It depends how long this guy has been dead.”

Addie bit back what she wanted to say. Was it worth telling him that Jake didn’t do this in no uncertain term s ? She doubted he’d believe her even if he couldn’t have—considering his injury.

The police in Benson would consider her compromised by her association with Jake. Maybe they already did.

Okay, fine. They definitely did.

McCauley worked his mouth back and forth.

“What is it?”

“Fine.” He sighed. “We think the fingerprint was planted on Celia’s body. It didn’t get there by accident.”

Addie wondered how long she should wait before requesting the Benson Police Department offer Jacob an apology.

She’d figure it out later. Right now they had a dead young man to deal with. “This guy wasn’t killed too long ago.”

“How’d you know?”

“Aside from the fact that guy shoved me off the porch? Most likely the killer, and not an opportunist.” She let that hang like a question even though it hadn’t necessarily been one. “The water in the bathtub is still warm.”

McCauley’s head snapped around to the tub.

Addie walked from the bathroom with a satisfied grin on her face. She’d seen the steam coming up from the water, which apparently the captain hadn’t. No way could they pin this on Jake. Not if Austin had been killed recently enough, the water in the bath hadn’t even had a chance to cool.

That made her feel better than anything else had in a long time.

Jacob would recover. Hopefully, by the time he’d done that, she’d have cleared up who the real culprit was for Celia Jessop’s murder.

Or the rest of her team would have.

She had to at least admit to herself that this was far beyond personal. Stella and Kyle, the two agents who’d been sent over from the field office.

The string of as-yet-unsolved murders were cases she would work like a professional. The only issue was that anything even remotely connected to Jake was a blind spot of personal involvement where her emotions had no anchor and simply jumped to his side of things.

Her mind might be able to consider logic and reason where he was concerned. Her heart? Different story.

The FBI agents who’d been sent to help her could keep things grounded. She didn’t need to be at the forefront in this. No matter what that did for her prospects of a promotion, or coveted assignment, or whatever this whole thing was about.

That stuff wasn’t even on her radar, not when she was back in Benson. This place enveloped everything. It was why she’d left in the first place.

She wandered to the fireplace. The flames were low, headed for a smolder. The corner of a printed page lay in the ash, partially burned. Addie pulled a pen from her pocket and used it to shift the page over. Beneath it was a photo—her photo. The image of her that occupied her personnel file with the FBI.

“Anything?”

Addie straightened out of the crouch. “Yeah, the crime lab will need to see what they can salvage.”

“You think it’s connected to Celia and the open cases?”

She scrunched up her nose for a second. “Doesn’t fit the same MO. It might turn out there are enough correlations it’s the same guy, but I’m guessing this wasn’t planned.”

How would Austin know the killer anyway, unless he had something to do with it?

“He would’ve been a kid when Jake and I were seniors.” She could rule him out as the accomplice.

“We can find his phone, pull his call history and the messages we’re able to salvage. Dig into his social accounts. See what we can find.”

Addie circled the room again to see if the killer might’ve taken something of Austin’s. Cleaned up yet more evidence. She doubted it was Austin who set that fire, but it might not be possible to tell either way.

Addie lifted the couch skirt and looked underneath. The crime techs would search every inch of the cabin, but she didn’t like standing around doing nothing until they showed up.

“Anything?”

She settled into her crouch and pulled her phone for the flashlight. What was illuminated gave her the answer. “Yes.”

“Gloves?”

She turned to him. “You have some on you?”

McCauley handed over a pair. “Grabbed them from the car when I called it in. Reinforcements should be here in a few. Then how do you feel about searching for whoever ran off?”

“Not sure how far we’ll get. Whoever they are, they’re probably long gone by now.”

“Worth a look. Maybe they dropped their wallet.”

Addie tugged the phone from under the couch and straightened. “That happen to you a lot?”

McCauley shrugged. “I’ve been a cop a long time. You’d be surprised.”

“Were you on the force when…” She didn’t even want to say it aloud. Not when things were so fresh.

They always looked different in the light of day. But standing here in the same cabin? She had to fight the shudders even if it looked nothing like the same one where they were held. The walls were different. The floor, the kitchen and all the furniture. She could almost pretend she’d never been in here before.

Except for the window.

Addie couldn’t fight it off anymore and shuddered.

“You found a phone?”

She handed it to McCauley. “Not sure what we’re gonna do if we need his fingerprint to unlock it.”

“How about your informant? Maybe they know the code.”

Addie sent her sister a message. “Just so you don’t think I’m hiding anything from you, this guy is my little sister’s boyfriend. Russ made her break up with him a couple days ago.”

“You think she’ll consent to an interview?”

“Ask Russ. She’s seventeen.”

“Understood.”

Addie’s phone buzzed. She deciphered the message. “Show me the screen.” What came up was a grid of dots to draw a pattern. She slid her finger across in the way Mona had described and the phone unlocked. “Guess it’s his.”

She moved so she could see the phone over his shoulder.

McCauley pulled up the messages. “Not much that’s recent except the ones from ‘Mom.’”

“What about calls?”

He tapped the phone icon and pulled up recent calls in and out. “Huh.”

One was from tonight. “What is it?”

“That prefix is usually PD phones.”

Addie used her own phone to dial the unlabeled number in Austin’s phone. In hers it came up assigned to a name. “Hank Maxwell.” She registered the time of the call and looked up at McCauley. “Any reason your detective would have direct contact with a victim in the last hours of his life?”

“Could be several reasons.”

“Tell me the last time you saw Hank Maxwell.”

McCauley hedged.

“You have no idea where he is.”

“Doesn’t matter. Whatever he does, he’s covered.”

Addie figured that was a brotherhood way of operating as cops. But if the person in question had committed a crime, how far did they go to keep it under wraps? Perhaps years, and the offender had a list of people he’d murdered when the urge overcame him, and he couldn’t avoid it any longer.

Red and blue flashing lights lit up the front window and open door.

Addie lifted her chin to convey everything McCauley needed to know in her expression. Cop to cop, if that phone disappeared or Hank’s number was suspiciously absent from the call list logged as evidence? They were going to have more issues between them than they already did.

“Thanks for coming out here with me. I appreciate the backup.” Addie could see she’d surprised him with that but didn’t drag it out.

She took a step toward the door. “I’ll go wake the owner. Let her know what happened.”