Page 91

CHAPTER THREE

Virginia

A ddie leaned back in her chair. She tapped her pen on the desktop and compiled her thoughts. Except that there weren’t any. Her brain didn’t want to think of anything. It was blank.

Sure, Zimmerman had told her not to come in. Technically it wasn’t tomorrow. She had a report to write and figured maybe he might've forgotten that order by the time she finished.

Meanwhile, the entire team sat around the office writing up their reports from the café operation. The suspect was being interviewed. She hadn’t done anything since she sat down.

Now she had to wonder what was wrong with her.

Not that she’d let anyone else know there was a problem. Zimmerman may or may not let her in there to talk to Benning as part of the interview. It wouldn’t have anything to do with whatever issues she did or didn’t have. Addie still wasn’t going to hold her breath that he’d ask her. Not after that conversation they’d had at the scene.

She tuned out the buzz of people moving. The general office chatter. Her profile for William Benning indicated it was unlikely she could persuade him to give up the location of the bodies he’d buried. Might not be impossible, though.

The seven they had discovered were in locations that held no connecting pattern, no way to predict where another would be.

The phone on her desk rang.

She picked up the handset. “Special Agent Franklin.”

Dead air greeted her.

Someone had her extension and felt the need to call her whenever they wanted to disrupt her train of thought and interrupt her work. Always a blocked number. Even the tech guys couldn’t figure out where the calls had originated. Someone spoofing the IP, calling over the internet.

She sighed. It hardly helped to dissipate the weight of exhaustion and frustration. She replaced the phone.

Addie had to contend with the frustration over unanswered questions with every case. Usually, she went for a run to bleed off the tension. Knowing there were possibly five young women out there who might never be found. Or, if they were, it was because of happenstance and no other reason.

Addie shoved her chair back and headed to get a drink. She should get water, but the truth was she would pour a cup of old coffee, and she knew it. The profile she had on herself was the skinniest she’d ever done, but there were some key details on it. The rest she didn’t want to know.

One of her colleagues, Bill from Albuquerque, left the kitchen with his own cup. He lifted it in salute.

“Hey.” She passed him and headed inside. They’d learned early on she had a hard time with small talk. Addie tended to answer only the question she was asked and didn’t volunteer much else in terms of information. She wanted to do her job— solve the puzzle. She wasn’t here to make lifelong friends. She wasn’t wired that way.

Being relational meant attention. It meant people realized she wasn’t worth sticking around for.

Sometimes attention led to…

She shook off the rush of memory laced with the tang of fear that not even coffee could get rid of when everyone knew coffee was magical.

Addie poured a mug anyway. She drank it black to have the most coffee in the mug possible. It burned going down but in a good way.

Considering she could muse about coffee for hours on end, she headed back to her desk. The murder board on the wall had been covered with victim photos, crime scene information, and an entire section on the suspect list they’d compiled.

It all pointed to one person: William Benning.

She should be satisfied he was in custody. Instead, Addie blew on her coffee and studied the other suspects. Benning could have a co-collaborator. A protégé, or mentor. She dismissed several possibilities as she’d done throughout this case. Each one still went on a list because occasionally, her assumptions were proven wrong.

“I need to show you something, Addie.”

She spun around, careful not to spill her drink. Special Agent Mills, the newest member of the task force, had paled. “Everything okay?”

“Come on. I’ll show you.” Mills headed back to her desk and sat.

Addie looked over her shoulder.

“Carova Beach Fire and Rescue in North Carolina pulled a body out of the surf this morning. A young woman washed up just after five.” Mills pulled up a photo.

The woman had been a blonde, but the body was marred and bloated. Given the markings, Addie motioned to it. “Same M.O?”

“Preliminary indications are that this is one of Benning’s victims.”

Addie wasn’t sure that connection could be made at this juncture. She drew the line at giving killers fun nicknames that sold more newspapers or got more hits on social media. Publicity killed their ability to investigate when everyone had a bias over what they’d seen or heard or what a friend heard from another friend.

They’d succeeded in keeping this case out of the media. For the most part.

She struggled to formulate a question but managed it. “Has an ID been made?” Addie studied the photo.

Mills flicked the window to the police report. “The ME has the body, and I requested the DNA be run to see if it’s a match to any of our missing women. But this one has been dead only hours.”

“So it could be someone we didn’t yet know is missing. Someone Benning took in the last few days.”

“Before we started to follow him.”

Addie nodded. Had it been days?

Mills worked her mouth back and forth. She glanced up and frowned. “You okay?”

“Just tired,” Addie said. “But no more than anyone else here.”

“We’ve all been working pretty well around the clock the last few weeks.”

Addie nodded. “He’s in custody now. We can get this case sewn up, we’re all good to take that long weekend.”

Zimmerman wanted everyone to have a few days off instead of ordering Addie to take a couple of weeks.

Like that would solve her problem.

“I’m looking forward to a break.”

Addie didn’t even know what that might feel like. Who cared about rest? “Send me what you have. I’d like to look at it.”

Mills nodded. “Will do. You wanna drive down if it’s one of his?”

She shrugged off the question—or tried to. Mills wanted to be, what? Friends? “I’ll be here until Benning isn’t, at least. I want to finish up with him.” If Zimmerman let her.

Someone else could do the leg work if there was another victim. Tonight was the first time she’d gone out with the team on an operation in a couple of months. They compiled the evidence, and she formulated a picture of their UNSUB—an unknown subject, the label for an offender they hadn’t identified yet.

If she needed to speak personally with a witness to get a better picture, she’d do it. But it wasn’t often necessary when the people doing the interviews were highly trained FBI agents. They produced quality work. This team was the best.

She headed back to her desk, rolling her shoulders as she walked, shrugging off the idea that she wasn’t the kind of FBI agent she wanted to be when she’d joined the FBI. The coffee hadn’t done anything to perk her up, which was her fault since it would never be coffee’s fault.

Zimmerman strode out the mouth of the hallway and spotted her. “You didn’t go home yet?” He glanced at the clock on the wall.

Addie glanced around. “No one else did either.”

He nearly said something else, caught himself, and motioned with a head tip to his office. “Sorry. That was unprofessional.”

He only said it for everyone else’s benefit. The entire office stared at the two of them like they didn’t know what was going on under the surface. Like they didn’t know she and Zimmerman had been a thing a few months ago.

“Thank you.” Addie had to acknowledge his apology. “I’m sure everyone would like to know how your conversation with Benning went.”

Zimmerman motioned again with his head. “Tomorrow.”

Addie followed him to his office and shut the door behind her.

He took of his jacket and hung it on the hook. “I thought you’d have gone home.”

“No one else did.” She didn’t fold her arms. Everyone watching through the glass would see her get defensive in response to his words. “Why am I repeating myself?”

“Because you’re burned out, and your mind can’t think of a better response.”

Addie frowned.

“I was serious about you taking time off.”

He had something else on his mind. She could tell. “When the case is almost done?” Addie asked. “It can wait. This team pulls together.”

“The team is no good if you’re off your game.”

Addie didn’t know what to say to that.

Zimmerman sat behind his desk. “Besides, the case will never be over. Not when another will begin before it’s wrapped. Then six years go by, and you realize you didn’t take a single day off. I’ve seen it before. And I won’t let it happen to you.”

“I’m doing my job. Isn’t that why the FBI pays me? Why they gave me this shiny badge?”

“You’re a hair from losing it. You yelled at Stevens yesterday.”

Addie winced. “They told him I’d sign that ridiculous book.” The rookie had been pranked good, but he hadn’t deserved her reaction. “I’ll apologize.”

“Yes, you will.” Zimmerman sat back in the chair. “I thought I could help you, but I don’t know now.”

“Maybe you can.” Addie braced herself. “My apartment building is being fumigated, starting tomorrow. I need somewhere to stay.”

Zimmerman winced. “Ellie and I…we’re trying again to see if we can make it work.”

“I’ll get a hotel room, then. It’s fine.”

“Everything on your desk is being handed to Clarenson upstairs.”

She started to argue, but he interrupted before she even got started.

“This isn’t coming from me.”

As if that was all they were to each other. Or had been . Their thing was past tense. “You can’t force me to go on vacation.”

Zimmerman lifted one brow. “You’d rather I suspend you? Or get the doc to sign off on mandatory leave?”

Addie pressed her lips together.

“You need a vacation.”

“What’s going on?”

“He got under your skin.” Zimmerman leaned forward. “You think any of us wanted to see that?”

She was the one supposed to be able to read the suspect. Put together the signs. Compile a profile that would lead to a conviction and the location of the missing women. If she dropped the ball and that didn’t happen because she was too tired to see the connections in the pattern?

Addie sank into a chair. He was probably going to fire her anyway, kick her off the team and give her some trash assignment where it didn’t matter that she wasn’t a good agent and didn’t have what it took.

“You’ve been going with this non-stop for months.”

“So has everyone else.”

“They don’t know what you know.” Zimmerman spoke quietly. “They don’t feel what every victim feels. Not the way you do.”

“I can do this job.” She had to try, didn’t she? She owed it to Russ to see if she could make him proud. After all, he was the only one who’d ever believed in her and stuck around.

“Yes, you can. But the question remains if you should .”

“And the answer is to shut me out? Leave me without the ability to give myself closure over this case?” She needed to know how bad this was.

He kept his mouth closed.

“What’s going on?”

Finally, Zimmerman got down to it. “You’re being reassigned.”

He’d decided to make a go of it with his wife. She was being reassigned. “What did you do?”

“This isn’t about us. Though we both have to admit the Office of Professional Responsibility would have a field day with the two of us.” Zimmerman winced. “Are you planning to rat me out?”

“Why am I being reassigned?”

“It isn’t a punishment.”

She folded her arms.

“I promise. That’s not the intention.” Zimmerman sighed. “I told them not to do this.” He shook his head. “Someone upstairs has their eye on you, but they want a clean slate first. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

Addie didn’t like the sound of that. “Where am I being sent?”

“The FBI recently opened a field office outside of Seattle.”

The only place she knew of outside Seattle was…. “No. I won’t?—”

“There’s nothing you can do. They need someone to run the branch, and yours was the name pushed to the top of the stack. You’ve got a new assignment in Benson, Washington.”

She stood. “I’m being exiled.”

“They want to see what you can do solo when you’re given a chance.”

Addie shook her head. “That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.” She was being set up so that everyone could see her fail.

Zimmerman frowned. “There’s been a series of strange cases over the last few years. The office in Seattle is stretched thin, and the bureau wants someone in Benson full time.” He lifted both hands. “It’s not forever.”

Home was the last place she ever wanted to be again. Facing the place that had destroyed the girl she’d been could fix what was broken in her. If it could be fixed. She didn’t know if it was even possible, but she wanted to be brave enough to try.

And yet, what was the point when it would only go up in flames?

“Someone is setting me up so I can fail, so I’ll be kicked out of the FBI.” She grabbed handfuls of hair on the sides of her head. “I should never have become a fed.”

Ivan Damen had taken everything from her. Addie had built the woman she was now out of that ash. But what good was it to try when she never succeeded? There was too much wrong with her.

“Addie—”

She gripped the door. “I’m being forced out and you know it.”