Page 83 of The Devoted Game

“Now that,” Arnold said, his big frame looking even larger with the cockiness that went hand in hand with knowing something no one else did, “is the really creepy part. Come this way.”

He led the way to a bedroom farther down the hall and to the right. A woman wearing a flannel nightgown lay in bed. If she had slept through all this, then she was on heavy drugs.

Ryan approached the bed cautiously.

“Don’t worry,” Arnold called after him, “she’s dead.”

Ryan studied the body. Damned good condition if she’d been dead two years. A dozen bottles of prescription medicine sat on the table next to her. Transplant patients required lots of drugs, immune depressors, blood thinners. He didn’t know all the names, but he didn’t have to. The picture was crystal clear.

“Mummified?” Grace asked as she moved to his side. “Looks like she’s been coated in plastic or some kind of clear varnish.” Ryan touched one smooth cheek. “At least now we know why Dr. Trenton’s office didn’t get a call back when things didn’t go well. Fincher wanted to keep her at home.”

Pierce joined the party. “Fincher’s not going to be too happy when he finds out we’ve taken her away.” His gaze locked with Ryan’s. “We’ve got to finish this fast. He’s already a couple of steps ahead of us. If he comes back here before we find Agent Worth, you know how this will end.”

Like I need anyone to remind me.Ryan turned to Grace. “Search the rest of the house with Arnold. Pierce and I are going back to that office to see if we can find anything that will help locate Worth.” Ryan shifted his attention back to Pierce. “Fincher will stay hidden somewhere near the scene where he’s holding Worth until Grace and I come to rescuehim. He likes to watch us do it. We can’t do anything until we know where to go.”

That was the hell of it ... the clues sucked this time. The manic ramblings of adevoted fan.

3hours, 15minutes remaining...

4:45 a.m.

In Fincher’s office, Ryan found the cemetery map, the information regarding the sealing of tombs, the newspaper article related to the controversy with the Wellborne family. There was a schematic for Sloss Furnaces, created for the preservation board. A complete blueprint for the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church related to last year’s restoration efforts. But nothing on where Worth might be now.

Grace and Arnold had come up empty-handed in their search of the rest of the house. The third room, at the end of the hall, was a kid’s room. From the look of things, it was just as it had been the last time the Fincher boy had slept there.

Pierce had Agent Pratt on speakerphone.

“Any historic buildings recently abandoned, maybe scheduled to be demolished to make way for new construction?” Ryan inquired. Time was running out fast and they had nothing.

“We found three,” Pratt reported. “An old military plane hangar that was deemed unsafe and beyond restoration. A piece of residential property that was supposedly used in the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. And the oldMagic City Newsbuilding. But that last one is still up in the air. The Preservation Committee is lobbying hard to save the oldNewsbuilding.”

“Which ones are brick and mortar?” Ryan was reasonably sure he could count on that part of the email as literal.

“The residence that might be part of the Underground Railroad and theMagic City News.”

... In the end, it is only the truth that really matters, not the story at all. Not even a century of stories ...

“Wait.” Ryan mentally chewed on that a moment. “Is theMagic City Newsstill in operation?”

“Definitely,” Pratt said. “They built a new building and want to demo the old one for a parking lot.”

“But you say that’s not scheduled,” Pierce reiterated.

“No, the Preservation Committee is trying to save it.”

... Amid a cloud of controversy, the old sometimes falls ...

“How many floors is the old building?” Ryan was itching to get moving. The tension churned inside him. This had to be it.

“Five plus a mezzanine.”

Definitely a lethal fall.

“They misspelled his son’s name.”

Ryan’s attention swiveled to Grace, who was reading another of the articles plastered on the wall. “Show me.” He moved to her side, looked at the line in theMagic City Newsarticle about the bodies found at the construction site. “Daniel Fitcher,” he muttered as he shook his head. “Looks as if they focused more ink on showing how Byrne employed hundreds of Birmingham citizens in his construction companies than on covering the murder of two young boys.” Ryan touched the misspelled name. “That’s the place. He’ll be waiting somewhere close by, watching for our arrival.”

Grace nodded her agreement. “Just the two of us this time.”