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  Scott dropped the photos to his side. ‘All right, I’ve got your ride out front. He’ll take you back to your motel, drop you with some dinner, then we’ll be sending an Agent Carter to take you to the airport. He’ll have your boarding passes.’

  Steelie detoured to say goodbye to Greg’s students while Jayne preceded Scott into the house. As she mounted the back stairs, she noticed it was getting dark. She turned on her flashlight and felt the chill of that house go into her bones again. She could barely believe she actually knew the person who lived here or was responsible for what was in that yard. That partial hand bothered her. Where was the rest of that person?

  She came out the front door of the house and was halted by the scene in the street directly ahead: men, women, and children, dressed in exercise clothes, school uniforms, suits. They were holding lit candles and something else . . . Jayne gradually perceived that they were photographs but only photos of women. Some portraits were big, while others were snapshots; women holding children, women laughing, women looking dubiously at the camera, women in graduation clothing. Women who were alive. Alive but missing.

  Then Scott was in the doorway next to her. ‘They already know, Jayne. Or they suspect. I recognize some of the relatives of the women who went missing on my watch.’ He set off for the tent.

  Jayne looked at the relatives one last time. She felt they were identical to a group who’d waited for the bodies strapped down in the back of their UN truck in Kigali in 1996 after an exhumation. Everyone is the same, everywhere. Jayne followed in Scott’s footsteps, feeling like she could be in Kigali, walking into the UN’s old morgue tent, then stripping off mask, booties, gloves – just like this. Putting everything into red biohazard bags – just like this. Movements so familiar, she could have done them in her sleep back then. Now, inside this tent, she couldn’t tell where she was, what year it was. She could go out and find that it was 1996 again and Gene would be there; everything was the same and the families were waiting.

  She hesitated and Scott said, ‘Follow me. When I stop to talk to the relatives, keep going to my right. The black Suburban down the street has an agent in it, waiting for you. Just get in.’

  Jayne followed him out into the deepening darkness. She noticed a television camera when a bright lamp came on to focus on Scott. She heard Scott announce his name and title and tell them that there was no official information yet. She kept walking, focused on the dark bulk of the Suburban in the distance. Then a hand pulled her to the side.

  THIRTY

  Half-empty pizza boxes sat in the middle of the conference table in the FBI briefing room. Agent Mark Wilson chewed anti-gas pills as he watched the CCTV tape of King’s van pulling away from the airport with Eleanor Patterson in the passenger seat at 5.08 p.m. He had lost track of how many times he’d examined the footage but he kept doing it in the hope that he would glean some clue as to where King was now.

  Agent Angela Nicks watched Mark from her seat at the head of the table as she tapped a pencil against the papers in front of her. She had drawn circles around King’s name and the names of the missing women and what they knew about each. She was looking for ways the circles might overlap and give them a lead on where King could be hiding now. So far, it wasn’t working too well. The modus operandi that King had displayed at the airport with Eleanor Patterson appeared to be the only time he had used it. They didn’t know how he might have adjusted the MO when he wasn’t at the airport but he had got the women back to his house somehow. Angie switched to tapping the eraser end of the pencil against the tip of her nose. She knew that sometimes worked.

  Agent Scott Houston was temporarily not thinking about King as he used the computer to connect to the Internet and check on the status of the return flight Jayne was due to board that evening with Steelie. The Internet connection was slow and he waited, emptying his brain as he stared at the screen. He was about to ask Angie and Mark if the connection was always this slow these days and then he realized something.

  ‘Did anyone check the Agency Thirty-two One email account for the messages from King?’

  He was met with silence, which was enough to get him to bail out from the airline website and switch to the Web-based 32/1 account. Mark came over with the password that Jayne had left with them and Scott typed it in. After a pause, the inbox appeared.

  ‘Jesus.’ Scott sat up straighter.

  ‘What time zone is that stamp?’ Mark pulled up a chair.

  Angie and Eric immediately came over.

  Mark explained, ‘King sent them a message today. Depending on what time zone the account’s set to, he might have sent it just a few hours ago.’

  Scott had clicked on the message, whose subject line was, ‘Hi from SF.’ They read the message on screen.

  Jayne: bk yr way nxt wk. Dinner? GK

  Angie leaned in closer to the screen. ‘That’s not an email; it’s a text message.’

  Scott gestured at the screen. ‘It’s an email. It came on email.’

  ‘But it came from a cell phone,’ she persisted. ‘Look, hit Reply. See what happens.’

  Scott followed her instructions and the ‘To’ field was filled with an email address made up of letters and enough numbers to resemble a telephone number.

  ‘Angie, can you—’ Scott turned but she had already put her cell phone to her ear.

  ‘Tech Unit? I need a check on a cell number. This is Priority One.’

  Standing at the dressing table in the motel room, Jayne placed the candle in her briefcase and thought about the woman who’d stopped her in the street by Gene’s house. She hadn’t looked very old but her skin had made Jayne think of parchment. She’d been holding a photograph, its subject obscured by her fingertips, and she’d smiled at Jayne but kept a hold on her arm until another woman joined them.

  The second woman was the color of chocolate and held an unlit candle, which she offered to Jayne. She’d accepted it with a nod. Then the two smiled and turned away as though their work was done and in that moment, Jayne had no longer felt confused about what year it was or where she was. It was where she always was and where she always would be: halfway between the living and the dead, helping to work a link that transcended time and space because the need for it was timeless and crossed all borders. It existed wherever the living searched for the missing and wherever people died deprived of their names. Jayne had held the candle on the ride to the motel and now she would carry it home to Los Angeles.

  She heard the knock at the door that she and Steelie had been expecting. Agent Carter had arrived to drive them to the airport. She glanced at Steelie, who was zipping up her own bag, and crossed to open the door.

  The man standing there was dressed in motorcycle leathers and helmet, which was unexpected. He raised the visor and said, ‘Hello, again.’ Even before she heard his voice, she recognized Gene’s eyes.

  She abruptly and belatedly shoved the door closed but it bounced back at her fast and she was pushed off balance. As she stumbled backwards, she was aware of Steelie charging Gene with a cry that sounded far away and of him coming across the threshold, and then her vision went gray at the edges, closing down further and further, until there was nothing.

  Scott had ceded his seat in front of the computer to Mark, who’d navigated into the Settings page of the Agency 32/1 email account.

  ‘There.’ Mark pointed to the screen. ‘The account is on Pacific time. But incoming messages could still be stamped with the time at the sender’s location.’ He looked up at Scott. ‘Do we believe this? That King’s in San Francisco?’

  Scott was standing with his arms crossed, watching Angie on the phone with the Technical Support Unit. ‘No. No way. I don’t know what game he’s playing but he’s here in Atlanta. We tracked him here in Wayne Spicer’s car.’

  Eric said quietly, ‘We don’t have a firm ID from the EMT’s or anyone else who saw the driver of the Spicer car.’

  Scott gave his partner a withering look and Eric put his hands up
in surrender. Just then, Angie turned toward them, a hand raised with a finger in the air as she listened to her phone. They turned toward her expectantly.

  ‘OK, OK,’ she said, then covered the mouthpiece of the phone as she addressed the three men. ‘The text message was sent from a cell phone today at one-oh-seven p.m.’

  Scott walked up to her. ‘Is it turned on right now? Can they track it?’ He all but took the phone from her hand.

  ‘It doesn’t need to be turned on – hang on.’ She listened to her phone, thanked the person on the other end and then cut the call. ‘OK, the cell doesn’t need to be turned on for the phone company to ping it and get a location within one hundred feet. But first we gotta get a warrant out to the phone company.’

  ‘This is bullshit!’ Scott fumed. ‘This is high priority, did you tell them that?’

  ‘We might have another way.’ She exchanged a glance with Mark. ‘Look, the D’s in Missings at Atlanta PD have the technology to ping cells.’

  Scott looked at each of the agents in turn. ‘Missing Persons? You know any of those detectives?’

  Angie’s mouth was set. ‘I’ve got a couple of favors I can call in. It might not be enough.’

  ‘If they’re like other detectives I know, they’ll scratch you this time if you’re ready to scratch them next time. What’s it gonna take, Ange?’ Scott implored.

  ‘Let me make some calls.’ She turned to leave the room.

  Eric was hard on her heels. ‘I’ll start the warrant process in case we need it.’ The door slammed behind them.

  Scott gave Mark a questioning look.

  Mark responded, ‘She’s got some history with the head of that unit.’

  ‘Personal or on the job?’

  ‘Both, but that’s not where the favors are. She helped them out on a case so she’s going to be calling that favor in. But because there’s some personal stuff, she’s not going to like doing it. You know Angie.’

  ‘She left him, then?’

  ‘Hey, I didn’t say anything.’ Mark gestured at his own chest as he got up. ‘Did you hear me say something?’

  ‘She’s not going to forget it was me that had her call in the favor, is she?’ Scott grimaced to himself as he followed Mark out of the briefing room.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Jayne blinked her eyes open and felt total confusion about where she was. Her head hurt and her mouth was dry. She tried to swallow and felt cloth – a gag? – holding her mouth open and wicking her saliva away. She instinctively raised her hands to remove it but discovered she was lying on her arms and they were bound behind her. She looked up and saw a doorway she didn’t recognize. And then it all came back. The motel, Atlanta, Gene. Oh, God. She shivered convulsively and raised her head to look down the length of her body. She saw duct tape binding her ankles and then noticed movement across the room.

  Gene was dressed entirely in white Tyvek with the hood pulled over his hair and surgical gloves on his hands, eyes staring wide as he bent over Steelie – Steelie! – stomach-down on the bed, arms tied behind her back, her face turned away from Jayne. And then she registered the sounds. Gene grunting with exertion, the noises coming from lips thinned with effort, interspersed with higher-pitched sounds that had to be coming from Steelie as he tied a gag at the back of her head.

  Suddenly, Steelie kicked out at Gene with her bound legs and managed to connect with his lower back. He muttered something and stepped away from the bed to yank at her legs, pulling her backwards. As she slid off the mattress, she twisted to avoid landing on her face and the movement allowed her to see Jayne. They locked eyes and when Jayne saw tears in Steelie’s, her own instantly welled up but the connection was quickly lost as Gene yanked Steelie up to her knees. She bucked and twisted, so he clamped her against him as he groped her body roughly, his fingers spread wide.

  Jayne screamed but the sound went nowhere, trapped by her dry throat and truncated by the gag. She frantically rolled to the left but couldn’t get past her own shoulder to get up. She cried out once more in desperation, heart pounding, and craned her neck again. Steelie was trying to slam her head backwards into Gene’s face as he bent over her. Jayne felt a surge of hope. That’s it; get him, get him.

  But Gene just strode forward, pulling Steelie on her knees until she was against the edge of the bed. He pushed her over easily, using one hand to keep her head buried in the covers as he used the other to pull open all the snaps on Steelie’s cargo pants. Jayne’s eyes widened. Christ! She had to get him away from Steelie. She looked around wildly and saw the bathroom window was open. Hoping he would follow her if he became afraid she could raise the alarm from the bathroom, she started pushing backwards over the threshold, making as much noise as she could.

  She looked back to see if Gene had noticed her and almost stopped breathing when she saw that he was smiling to himself. But then she saw why. He’d located Steelie’s cell phone in one of her pockets. He’d been frisking her – violently – but he’d found what he wanted and had stopped. Dragging her by the neck to the head of the bed, he began tying her to the frame, keeping her face to the wall.

  Jayne felt her lungs start to function again and she threw her energy into rolling to the right this time, hoping to get all the way over on to her stomach, but her knees smacked into the side of the bathtub with a loud thud before she completed the revolution. Almost immediately, she felt a foot on her ribcage, rolling her on to her back again.

  She tried to yell, ‘Get off me’ but it came out as unintelligible noise so she was left simply glaring at Gene. There was a large bruise between his eyes that had leaked blood into the whites, making his pale irises yet more preternatural.

  He smiled down at her, a bag in one hand. ‘Thanks for getting yourself in here. This is exactly where I want you.’

  He closed the window and opened the bath taps to full blast. When the water hit the empty tub, the initial noise was deafening and she had a frightening image of Gene drowning first her, then Steelie. But he sat on the tub’s edge, keeping a foot on her while retrieving an object from his bag. Jayne couldn’t see what it was because his hand was clasped around it but the glimpse between his fingers suggested a grenade.

  He leaned toward her and held the object to her ear, pressing it to her skin. ‘I will remove your gag. If you start yelling, I pull the pin on this baby, which gives me time to leave and you time to die. Got it?’

  The object was cold enough to be metallic but it could have been hard plastic and ‘pins’ only meant grenade to her. She tried to look at what he was holding to her head but he wouldn’t let her. Now she understood that the faucets were blasting in order to cover some conversation he intended to have with her; to get some piece of information from her before killing them like he must have killed all the others. She wanted to cry, to give up. She closed her eyes.

  ‘I said, got it?’ He jammed the object even harder against her ear.

  She forced her eyes open and nodded.

  He pulled her gag down and in so doing, leaned his foot hard on to her diaphragm, making her convulse as her stomach muscles tensed. He looked at her like she was a specimen in a dish and then tut-tutted her. ‘Jayne Hall. I’m surprised you didn’t recognize my MO the second you came to the freeway in LA.’

  She actually felt her eyes darting around in their sockets as she took in the implications of his words. She tried to produce some saliva and swallow. ‘How did you know I was there?’

  ‘I was watching you. And I must say, for an “expert”, you didn’t put two and two together at all because I haven’t changed my cuts since Kigali.’

  Jesus. He really did kill that woman in Rwanda. ‘I didn’t know about Kigali.’

  Gene cocked his head. ‘You surprise me. I was sure Gerrit would have sent you the crime scene photos. It was such an unusual crime for Rwanda at the time. Quite evolved compared to all the other killing.’

  Jayne couldn’t hide her disgust.

  He rolled his eyes. ‘You’ve
always been too soft, Jayne. I listened to you talking to your so-called clients—’

  She felt her cheeks flush. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Why don’t you just tell them that if their daughter’s missing, she’s already dead?’

  ‘You’re the one who bugged my phone?’

  ‘You shouldn’t give them false hope like you do.’

  ‘Was it you? Why did you come and see me? I don’t understand.’ Jayne knew she sounded needy and plaintive but couldn’t help her tone. Details from the past two weeks were jostling for position in her mind.

  ‘I wanted to know what you knew.’ He gestured with the object clasped in his hand and Jayne was finally sure: it was a grenade. Small, dusty, lethal. ‘I needed to know how much time I had before I had to go to ground. And everything I heard put me at ease. You suck at your job as bad as Houston does. And I would’ve left you alone, given how incompetent you are, but then you told Houston about me. Now you have to pay for that.’

  Jayne felt a frisson of fear. What was he talking about? ‘I–I didn’t tell him anything.’

  ‘You were never a good liar, Jayne. I saw you at my mother’s house. You were there today, leading Houston right in.’

  ‘But I wasn’t! He found you and your house himself!’ She was almost shouting over the noise of the open faucet.

  ‘Spare me. He’s an agent. He can’t find his own asshole without help.’

  He suddenly sounded petulant and Jayne saw a way in. Gene wasn’t crazy, or maybe he was, but there was some logic behind it. She tried to push down her fear and changed her tack, her sole focus keeping Gene talking long enough for the FBI driver to arrive and end this before Gene did something even worse. She didn’t know what time it was, but the airport pick-up had to be any minute now.

  ‘You’ve got some issue, don’t you?’ She was trying to sound conversational, as though she wasn’t lying on the floor trussed up in twine and duct tape, but her underlying fear was making her shiver and her voice was uneven and trembly. ‘Some kind of grudge against agents. What, did you apply and they wouldn’t take you? Too old, were you?’