Page 15 of So Savage (Faith Bold #21)

The first gray of dawn was starting to peek over the eastern horizon when Faith and Marcus arrived at the Duluth National Air Guard Base. The night had moved far faster than Faith expected.

So had their killer. While Faith and Marcus were busy inadvertently busting a drug distributor, the killer was taking his next victim.

It wasn’t hard to find the crime scene. All they had to do was follow the flashing lights of the military police vehicles.

They were met outside by a uniformed military police officer, a master sergeant with a bushy handlebar mustache and a look of barely checked rage. Faith didn’t blame him. Someone had invaded a U.S. military base and taken one of their own right under their noses.

The master sergeant introduced himself as Master Sergeant Hostler. He gestured to the scene behind him. “Everything went down over here. My patrol officer heard a shout and ran over here to find the dog unconscious and the handler gone.”

“When did this happen?”

Hostler's lips thinned. "Four hours ago. We've spent all four of those hours scouring every inch of this base. We also contacted the Airport Police next door to check the airport. We haven't found anything. Not a trace of Sergeant Delgado or her captor."

Faith frowned. They had spent all of that time pursuing a false lead meanwhile the real killer had just taken a victim? “Why didn’t you call us? This is an FBI case in partnership with Duluth PD.”

“We wanted to find her,” Hostler countered. “If there was even a chance she was still alive, we wanted to take that chance.”

“We could have helped,” Faith insisted. “We could have put out an APB. We could have gotten the other branches’ MPs involved.”

Hostler squared up defiantly. “I wanted every available officer working to find Sergeant Delgado. As long as there’s a chance she’s alive, that’s our priority.”

“We could have all looked for her,” Faith said through gritted teeth.

“That’s enough,” Marcus said firmly. “Now is not the time to worry about blame. Master Sergeant Hostler, please give me the full name of the missing airman.”

Hostler and Faith both took deep breaths, then stepped away from each other. Hostler turned to Marcus and replied, “Technical Sergeant Maria Delgado. She’s the best K9 handler in the entire Air Force. She’s won the Air Force K9 competition four years in a row and won the DoD invitational on top of that.”

“Where’s her dog,” Faith asked.

“In an ambulance on his way to an animal hospital. Actually, he’s probably there already.”

Faith nodded. “I want the results of their examination the moment they have them. We need to confirm that this is the same guy.”

Hostler’s brow furrowed. “What for? Why wouldn’t it be the same person?”

“We just found a guy with a bunch of dart guns and tranquilizer darts,” Faith replied. “But we were interrogating him while you were searching for Sergeant Delgado, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s not him. However, we’re exploring the possibility that there’s more than one shooter.”

Hostler sighed. “Jesus. How many?”

“We don’t know. Possibly still one, but I need to know what her dog was shot with. And Master Sergeant, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t feel a need to question every decision I make.”

Hostler turned beet red, the flush clear even in the low light. "Yes, ma'am."

“Can you describe Sergeant Delgado?” Marcus asked.

"Five-five, one hundred thirty pounds, athletic build." Marcus lifted an eyebrow, and Hostler's flush deepened. "She is also the top boxer in the Air Force. I've seen her on the cover of Air Force Magazine."

Marcus lifted his hands halfway to show it was all the same to him. “Hair and eye color?”

“Brown and brown. She was wearing her battle dress uniform and her winter coat and gloves.”

“Wonderful. I’ll put the APB out.”

“Who called it in?” Faith asked. “Are they here?”

“Wayne!” Hostler barked.

A young MP jobbed over to them, stopping ten feet away and saluting crisply. “Yes, Master Sergeant?”

Hostler pointed at Faith. “The lady wants to ask you some questions.”

“Special Agent Faith Bold,” Faith said. “Can you walk me through exactly what happened?”

Wayne nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I was patrolling the exercise field when I saw a flash of light.”

Faith tilted her head. “A flash of light?”

“Yes, ma’am. Like from a flashlight beam.” He moved his own flashlight in a half-circle up and then down. “Like that.”

“I see. So you saw a flash of light. You heard a shout too, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Male or female?”

“I believe male, ma’am.”

Faith shared a look with Marcus, who was on the phone with dispatch. That shout had likely come from their killer. “What did you do then?”

“I radioed in the call and waited for backup.”

Faith frowned, and Hostler said, “It’s our policy that our officers always wait for backup.”

Faith had never been fond of waiting for backup herself, but she couldn’t fault Wayne for following his orders. She could, however, fault the people who gave him those orders.

“Is there a reason you have your officers patrol solo when they can’t do anything about a crime in progress?”

“Would you like to enlist?” Hostler retorted. “We could use more personnel.”

Faith, let it pass. "How long did it take backup to arrive?"

“Three minutes. But…”

Wayne looked sideways at Hostler. Faith read between the lines and said, “Walk with me.”

Wayne nodded and followed Faith away from the cluster. Turk trotted ahead of them. He lowered his nose to the ground, then looked at Faith.

“Go ahead, boy,” Faith said.

Turk dipped his head, then started off. Faith turned to Wayne. “You didn’t wait for backup.”

“No, ma’am. Whatever was happening, I thought it was happening right then. I ran for the scene, but I was too late. Whoever was there was gone. I called for backup after I got here.”

Faith nodded approvingly. “Good man. What did you see when you arrived?”

“I saw the K9 on his side. He was breathing, but he wasn’t breathing well. His pulse was thready, and his eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing anything.”

Faith frowned. That was different from the previous K9s. They had been asleep, but these symptoms sounded like respiratory distress. “What breed is Delgado’s unit?”

“Dobermann, ma’am.”

“You don’t need to call me ma’am. A Dobermann, you said?”

“Yes, m—yes.”

Interesting. Dobermanns were big dogs. On average, they were twenty pounds bigger than German Shepherds and forty pounds bigger than Malinois. Maybe the killer had increased the dose and overshot the mark. Or maybe there was more than one shooter, and this one wasn’t as knowledgeable as the last one.

“There was something else, ma—Special Agent.”

“What’s that?”

Turk barked, and looked at them, wagging his tail. Often, that motion meant happiness, just like in any other dog, but Faith knew Turk very well and recognized this movement as one of concern. She ran to him, Wayne following. When she reached him, she had a good idea of what Wayne had found.

“As you can see, there’s not enough blood for someone to have died here,” Wayne replied. “Just the little bit here, and some drops scattered over about a fourteen-foot radius.”

She raised an eyebrow. “About a fourteen-foot radius?”

“I’m good at spatial awareness, ma’am. I’m planning to become a drone operator eventually.”

“You’re sure? I think you could have a good career in law enforcement.”

He glanced back at the main group, where Hostler was arguing with Marcus about something. "I just don't enjoy working with Master Sergeant Hostler. Please don't tell him."

"I might tell him he's an asshole," she replied drily, "but I'll leave your name out of it. So you responded to the scene and found blood but no footprints?"

He shook his head. “A lot of Delgado’s footprints, but none of her attacker. It looked as though he’d tied ropes around his boots.”

“Ropes?”

“Yes. It’s a trick I’ve seen some people use when infiltrating enemy territory before. Well, I haven’t seen it, but my brother is a Green Beret. He told me that in Syria, the ISIS fighters would tie cords or strips of cloth over their shoes to make them quieter when they were sneaking into urban areas or military outposts.”

Faith nodded. She’d heard of similar tricks. “And there’s no sign of vehicle tracks anywhere?”

“No.”

That almost certainly meant a male. It was over a mile to the nearest exit, and while a large woman theoretically could carry a woman Delgado’s size out of the base, more than likely, the killer would be a man.

That meant it was possible there was only one killer after all, the same man who had killed Walsh and left bootprints. Maybe he'd learned his lesson and been more careful this time. Or maybe there was more than one killer, and the mastermind behind all of this was some evil vet or K9 supervisor.

“Faith?” Marcus called.

Faith turned to the detective, who jogged closer, his breath escaping in small jets of steam as he approached. Faith was too focused on the case to feel the cold before, but now it seared her lungs and chilled her face.

Marcus slowed and said, “We just got a preliminary toxicology report on the dog. The compound was different this time.”

Faith’s eyes widened. “What was it?”

“An experimental compound that U.S. military veterinarians are testing in limited quantities. It contains phenobarbital and diazepam mixed with a synthetic compound that increases the speed of absorption. Dr. Parker confirmed that particular ingredient is identical to the compound that made the other darts work faster.”

“So why the new compound?” Faith asked. “Why phenobarbital and diazepam and not ketamine and xylazine?”

"Well, there are a few possibilities. The first is that xylazine is a drug that only has veterinary applications, whereas both phenobarbital and diazepam are in widespread use with human patients. It could be easier for the shooter to obtain those drugs."

Faith shook her head. “No, that still leaves the accelerating chemical. I can’t imagine that’s something you can get off the shelf.”

“It’s not,” Marcus confirmed. “Dr. Parker said that it’s possible to synthesize it, but it would take days and involve about nine pounds of ingredients for every CC of drug.”

“So it’s not likely the shooter had to pick and choose the easiest drugs to get to,” Faith summarized.

“And that leaves the other possibility,” Marcus continued. “There’s more than one shooter, and they each happened to have different darts on hand.”

Faith bit her lip softly. “I was thinking the same thing, but that still leaves the question of how they got the darts in the first place. Even if we assume that there’s an armchair quarterback running this whole thing, how does he or she have access to two different experimental drugs?”

“I have a hypothesis,” Marcus said. “I was thinking about it when I learned about the drugs in Daniel Ross’s apartment. Ross is the distributor, right? He receives drugs from producers and then gives them to sellers who deliver the individual products to buyers. I think our guy might be the distributor.”

“You think that the person behind this works maybe for a drug company, and he’s lifting some of the tranquilizers?”

“It’s possible. The primary connection between both compounds is the accelerating chemical. The primary difference is that one is a formula preferred by civilian agencies while the other is an experimental formula being tested by the military.”

“So this guy is working for the pharmaceutical company, skimming a quantity of each drug that’s probably within the margin of error and then hiring people to use it to kill other people?”

Marcus frowned. “It does kind of fall apart at the end there. That’s a lot of margin for error.”

"That doesn't mean you're wrong, though," Faith mused. "It could still be one killer." She nodded. "Occam's razor. The simplest solution is usually right. We have a killer who wants people dead and has access to both drugs but has to be careful about how much of each he uses."

“That sounds like a working lead to me,” Marcus concurred.

Fatih nodded. “All right. If you don’t mind, I’d like to rely on your expertise to lead the search party while I follow up on this new angle.”

“I’ll help,” Wayne volunteered. “I can get you access to anywhere you might need to go on the base. MPs can use emergency permissions in cases like this.”

“That’s fine with me,” Marcus said. “Thank you. Faith, you don’t think she’s still alive, do you?”

Faith doubted very strongly that Maria Delgado would be found alive, but she didn’t want to say that in front of Wayne. Instead, she said, “I think we shouldn’t lose hope. I’ve found people in dire situations like this one before. We don’t give up until it’s over.”

Marcus nodded grimly. “All right.” He handed Faith the keys. “I’ll get a vehicle from the base. If Hostler wants to pitch a fit, I’ll go over his head.”

“Thank you.” She called for Turk. “Come on, boy. We’re going back to the precinct.”

Turk dipped his head and followed, his head hung low. He was clearly upset that he hadn't found the killer yet. She reached down and ruffled his fur as they walked back to the police truck. "I know boy. I'm upset, too."

She’d put a brave face on it, but she was upset. Just when she thought she was going to escape a case without another victim. She could almost see West’s taunting grin.

That image made her wonder if, a thousand miles away, another killer was creating his or her latest "masterpiece."

Faith felt an awful lot like a wounded animal in the dark surrounded by wolves.

No, not wolves. Hyenas. Hyenas cackling madly as they circled and waited for the right moment to rush in and tear their victim limb from limb.