Closer Than You Think

  Deacon didn’t think he’d yelled so much in years, maybe ever. Not that it had done any good. Greg had simply turned down his hearing aid, which had made Deacon literally see red.

  He was glad the victim had been discovered, for her sake, of course, but also for his own, because the call to the crime scene had forced him to walk away from his brother before he’d done something unforgivable. He’d seriously wanted to slap the smirk off the kid’s face. He didn’t think he’d have done it, but the very idea that he’d been tempted left him rattled.

  He couldn’t afford to be rattled. He had a job to do. He pushed his guilt and worry aside. His focus had to be on the young woman who’d been assaulted and left to die.

  Out here, no one watched through lace curtains. Whoever had left the victim had counted on that. Had counted on the fact that there were trees as far as the eye could see on either side of the pitted and potholed road. That beyond the trees to the south ran a lonely stretch of the Ohio River, miles away from the bars and restaurants of the Cincinnati riverfront.

  That the victim had been discovered at all seemed like a miracle.

  Deacon found miracles suspicious. The initial report stated that the victim had been found by a woman who’d swerved to avoid her, wrecking her vehicle. But there didn’t seem to be any good reason for anyone to be on this road. It was too cold for most hikers and campers, and deer season hadn’t started yet. He hoped the first responders hadn’t let the woman leave. He had a few questions for her.

  One of the local cops had strung yellow crime-scene tape across the road. Ducking under it, Deacon started toward the flashing lights of the two sheriff’s department cruisers, parked on either side of an ambulance whose back doors stood open, revealing the woman sitting inside.

  Red was his first impression. Dark red hair the color of Bordeaux framed a pale but pretty face. Her cheek was smudged with blood, her forehead bandaged.

  Not the victim. He knew she was already on her way to the trauma unit in Cincinnati.

  This, then, had to be the Good Samaritan. About thirty years old, she sat huddled under a brown blanket. Her green skirt stopped an inch above the bandages that covered her knees. She wore thick white socks on her feet, leaving her lower legs bare.

  Very nice legs, in fact. Shapely calves that he would have had to be blind not to notice. Deacon had issues with his eyes, but impaired vision had never been one of them.

  The woman’s deer-in-the-headlights expression might have simply been leftover shock, but as her gaze was focused on him, Deacon doubted it. He got that reaction a lot.

  ‘Hold it right there, buster.’

  Deacon stopped abruptly when a uniformed officer blocked his path. The officer eyed him with a mixture of incredulity, fascination and contempt. Another reaction that Deacon got a lot.

  ‘You can’t come through here, buddy,’ the officer said. ‘Please get back in your vehicle and go back the way you came.’

  I’m not your buddy, friend leapt to the tip of Deacon’s tongue, but he bit it back. Going for his badge with one hand, he took off his wraparound glasses with the other and fought not to squint at the intense glare of the setting sun. Leveling the officer an unamused stare, he gave the guy a few seconds to react. Wait for it, wait for it . . .

  The officer didn’t disappoint, flinching when his eyes met Deacon’s. ‘What the f—’

  ‘Special Agent Novak, FBI,’ Deacon interrupted, showing his badge. ‘Update, please.’

  The officer’s eyes narrowed as he scanned Deacon from head to toe. ‘Nice contacts, asshole, but Halloween’s over. Now move along and take your fake ID with you.’

  Dammit. I really hate Halloween. Deacon had come to depend on that flinch. Had spent years honing the image he projected, maximizing the window of distraction his slightly less-than-normal irises offered. But Halloween ruined his rhythm, totally axing his advantage.

  Now all he had left was his bubbling personality. Shit.

  ‘Officer,’ he said, lowering his voice to a menacing growl, ‘I do not have time for this. Who’s lead here?’

  ‘I am.’ The dry reply came from an older uniform. ‘Deputy, get back to your post.’ When the younger officer was gone, the older man leaned forward to study Deacon’s badge, then straightened to meet his eyes. No flinch. Just a disbelieving blink from which the sheriff recovered quickly. ‘Sorry about that, Agent Novak. I’m Sheriff Palmer. We, uh, don’t get many FBI agents around here.’ And none that look like you went loudly unsaid. ‘I have to admit that I’m surprised to see you. I called CPD, not the FBI.’

  ‘I work a joint task force with CPD – MCES, the Major Case Enforcement Squad. We cover homicide, abduction, and assault.’ Deacon had joined the newly formed squad the month before. CPD wanted an FBI member with joint task force experience, and Deacon had needed to come home, so his transfer from the Baltimore field office to Cincinnati had been a mutually beneficial one. ‘What’s the status here?’

  ‘We responded to the 911 at 5.14 P.M., eight minutes after it was called in. The victim was lying in the road, bleeding. Her face was bruised and she had a bullet hole in one thigh and stab wounds all over her torso. Deep enough to hurt, but not enough to kill.’

  ‘Her abductor was playing with her,’ Deacon murmured, stowing his anger.

  ‘Yeah. We haven’t found any ID around the scene. No clothes either, or personal effects.’

  ‘Did she at any point regain consciousness?’

  ‘No. When we got here, she was unresponsive. She was nude, but the woman who found her covered her with her own coat. She was also standing guard over the girl.’ Palmer lifted one eyebrow. ‘With a fully loaded .380.’

  Surprised, Deacon turned to check the woman out more thoroughly. She was watching him, the stunned look gone from her eyes. Now he saw only intelligence. And a guarded calculation that put him on alert. ‘Was it her gun?’ he asked Palmer.

  ‘She said it was, and based on her grip and stance, I’d say she knows exactly how to use it. When I bagged it, she didn’t argue.’

  ‘Had she seen anyone around the girl? Anyone coming or going?’

  ‘She said she hadn’t, but she might have been in shock. When I asked for her weapon, she handed it over, then collapsed. Not a faint, but like her legs wouldn’t hold her up anymore.’

  ‘Is she hurt?’

  ‘Cuts and bruises on her hands and knees and a nasty gash on her head. She said she swerved to keep from hitting the victim, went down that embankment. This way.’

  Feeling the woman’s watchful gaze as he walked away, Deacon followed the sheriff to the edge of the road. For a moment he stood there and gaped. He’d expected a small wreck. He hadn’t expected this. A red Jeep rested on some trees halfway down the embankment, looking like it had been hit in the side with a wrecking ball. The embankment was not only treacherously steep, but rocky as well.

  He looked back in disbelief at the Good Sam. ‘She climbed up here from down there?’

  The sheriff shrugged. ‘Unless she has wings or stashed a helicopter, she climbed.’

  ‘Was anyone with her?’

  ‘She says no. I checked it out myself once we’d secured the scene up here. I didn’t see any other footprints and there’s no one else in the vehicle. I have to admit that the climb back up was a challenge. I asked her about it and she said she used to wall-climb at the gym.’

  ‘Interesting.’ Deacon noted the tire tracks and broken trees that showed the Jeep’s path down the embankment. The tracks were pointed head on to the trees at first, but a wide swath of disturbed dirt indicated that she’d turned a tight circle at the last moment, slamming into the trees from the side. It wasn’t a move that many people could have accomplished, especially under stress. The Good Sam had serious driving skills.

  He pulled a pair of binoculars from his pocket. The fading light made it hard to focus, but he was able to make out the Jeep’s Florida plates, making him doubly suspicious as to why she’d been here to begin with,
on a road that didn’t even show up on the map as having a name.

  He turned to study the skid marks. ‘She tried to stop.’

  ‘She claims she wasn’t speeding,’ Palmer said. ‘Skid marks appear consistent with that.’

  The thick marks started about twenty feet from where an evidence marker sat in the middle of the road. ‘That’s where you found the victim?’

  ‘Yes.’ Palmer pulled a small digital camera from his pocket. ‘I took pictures before the medics transported her.’

  Deacon clicked through the photos, grimacing at the girl’s wounds. He’d seen worse, but not by much.

  ‘I’ll need copies of these, please,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve already uploaded them to our server. I can email them to you.’

  ‘That’d be great, thanks.’ Sweeping the tail of his leather trench coat to one side, Deacon crouched beside the marker. It was a move that had become second nature over the years. He and his coat had been together a long time.

  The asphalt had dark, wet patches. ‘She bled a lot,’ Deacon murmured.

  ‘Woulda bled more, but the Good Sam did some decent first aid. Applied pressure to the wound with her scarf.’

  It seemed their Good Sam had all kinds of skills. ‘What’s the Sam’s name?’

  ‘Faith Corcoran. Says her ID is in her handbag, still in the Jeep. We don’t get many out-of-towners this far out. Seemed a little odd that she’d be here at the same time as the girl.’

  ‘And toting a .380, no less,’ Deacon said dryly.

  A slight nod. ‘The thought crossed my mind,’ was the sheriff’s equally dry reply.

  Deacon came to his feet and carefully walked to the other side of the road, his eyes on the pavement. There was a smeared path, dark and wet, that stretched from the marker to the shoulder opposite the side the Jeep had gone down. ‘The victim came this way.’

  ‘Crawled from the shoulder where they dumped her. She had dirt on her hands and knees.’

  Deacon dug his Maglite from his coat pocket and, aiming the beam at the shoulder, started walking away from the scene into the setting sun.

  ‘We didn’t see any signs of tire treads on the shoulder or in the grass,’ the sheriff said. ‘Whoever dumped her stayed on the road.’

  ‘They might have, but she didn’t,’ Deacon said, focusing his light on the grass at the shoulder’s edge. ‘There’s blood here.’

  ‘Where?’ the sheriff demanded, then propped his fists on his hips as he looked at the illuminated grass. ‘I’ll be damned. Those eyes of yours function just fine, Agent Novak.’

  ‘They do indeed,’ Deacon murmured. People sometimes wondered if his unique eyes had impaired – or enhanced – vision, but they didn’t. He had a sensitivity to bright light, but other than that his eyesight was only average, though he’d taught himself to notice changes in color, texture. ‘I think the victim came from the woods.’

  He paused at the sound of approaching vehicles. A few seconds later, the CSU van came around the bend, followed by a sedan that looked like his partner’s. But Detective Scarlett Bishop was supposed to be at the hospital with the victim. Unless the victim could no longer give a statement.

  Shit. Please don’t let that girl be dead.

  ‘Now that CSU is here, they can set up lights. Excuse me, Sheriff.’ Briskly Deacon walked toward the sedan, slowing as he passed the Good Sam in the ambulance. She’d been leaning forward so that she could see around the ambulance doors, watching him. Now she sat back so that her face was in the shadows. She appeared to be worried.

  That wasn’t good. His attention swung back to the sedan, his eyes narrowing in confusion. The person who emerged was not Bishop.

  Cincinnati, Ohio, Monday 3 November, 5.45 P.M.

  Detective Scarlett Bishop stood against the wall of the ER cubicle, watching the trauma team prepare the victim for surgery. The rape kit had been positive, which hadn’t really surprised anyone, since she’d been found nude.

  Locking her gaze on the victim’s face, Scarlett looked for any sign of consciousness, but there was nothing. She’d tried to talk to the girl three times already, with no success.

  The nurse standing at the victim’s head stepped away and Scarlett slipped into the vacated space to try again, leaning close to the young woman’s battered face. ‘Sweetheart,’ she said, quietly but urgently, ‘I need you to wake up, just for a minute.’

  ‘We’re moving her in less than a minute, Detective,’ the doctor warned.

  ‘Okay, okay.’ It would be easier if she knew the girl’s name. ‘Honey, please, wake up.’ Scarlett let her desperation come through her voice. ‘I need to know your name.’

  The victim’s eyelids fluttered and Scarlett sucked in a breath. ‘Faith,’ the girl whispered.

  ‘Detective, we’re moving her.’

  Scarlett shot the doctor a silent plea for a few more seconds. ‘Your name is Faith?’

  The young woman shook her head weakly. ‘No. Need faith.’

  Oh no. Scarlett’s voice softened. ‘You want me to call a priest?’

  The girl’s jaw clenched infinitesimally. ‘No. Faith. Fry.’

  ‘All right,’ Scarlett soothed, although she had no idea what the young woman meant. Or even if she spoke English. It sounded almost like she was saying fith-fry. Fish-fry? No, that couldn’t be right. ‘Who did this to you?’

  Tears filled her dark brown eyes. ‘Krin . . . Krin . . .’

  One of the monitors started to beep and the team flew into action.

  ‘BP’s dropping,’ a nurse said. ‘She’s going into V-fib.’

  ‘That’s it, Detective!’ the doctor snapped, issuing a string of orders to the team as they pulled the stretcher out of the bay and rushed it to the elevator.

  Scarlett pulled out her phone, dialing her lieutenant’s info man as she walked to the ER’s exit. ‘Crandall, this is Bishop. Can you check the missing persons list for anyone named Faith? She’s five-ten, dark hair to her shoulders, possibly Hispanic.’

  ‘Just a second,’ Crandall said, his keyboard clacking in the background. ‘No. We have a Fawn and a Fiona. No Faith.’

  ‘I knew that was too good to be true,’ she muttered. ‘I ran a check based on the medics’ description before I came over here and came up empty. I was hoping for something new.’

  ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘Twenty-five minutes or so. Why?’

  ‘Because there is a new report, uploaded fifteen minutes ago. Arianna Escobar, seventeen years old. She fits your description and was last seen on her campus at King’s College, where she’s a freshman. I have a photo. Hold on, I’ll send it to your phone.’

  Scarlett ran to her car and was buckling herself in when the photo came through. It took her a moment to find any similarity between the girl in the photo and the victim she’d just seen. ‘Man, the bastard did a number on her face. It’s hard to tell if it’s the same girl. I think it is. Who filed the report?’

  ‘Her roommate, Lauren Goodwin. She’s in Harrison dorm. I’ll send her cell number to your phone.’

  ‘Thanks, Crandall. Let Isenberg know I’m headed to the college, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘She’ll want to know the girl’s status.’

  ‘They were charging the paddles when they rushed her into surgery,’ she said, trying to ignore the twinge of guilt. If she hadn’t kept the girl talking . . . And she hadn’t even gotten anything useful for having risked the girl’s life. ‘Cross your fingers.’

  ‘I’ll pray.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Scarlett said flatly. ‘You do that too. I’ll call when I have something.’ She hung up, annoyed with herself for having snapped at Crandall, but the whole prayer thing rubbed her wrong. It didn’t seem fair that some people’s prayers came true and others’ didn’t.

  Let it go, Scar. Her phone buzzed, a text from Crandall with a phone number for Arianna’s roommate. Thx, she texted back and then dialed Lauren’s number.

  Mt Carmel, Ohio, Monday 3 Novembe
r, 6.10 P.M.

  When his partner didn’t emerge from the vehicle, Deacon was surprised, but he was shocked when he saw Adam Kimble get out instead. Adam had been part of Isenberg’s Homicide Unit prior to the formation of MCES, when he’d moved to Personal Crimes – CPD’s euphemism for sex crimes. The more delicate term didn’t diminish the ugliness that the PC squad dealt with on a daily basis. It seemed to have taken its toll on Adam.

  The man who now scanned the crime scene with a hardened expression was a far cry from the boy who’d grown up in the house next door to Deacon’s. Their mothers had been sisters who’d given birth to their sons only two months apart. Best friends from the time they could crawl, Adam had been Deacon’s partner in their childhood adventures – the ones that had had the neighborhood sentries reporting to their mothers. In school, Adam had defended Deacon and his sister from the bullies who had hassled them for their unusual appearance. Deacon had been too scrawny to fight back then. When his growth spurt had finally hit, it was Adam who’d taught him how to use his new muscle to defend himself. His cousin had been there for him during the most traumatic events of his life.

  Even the fact that Deacon was with MCES was Adam’s doing. When Greg’s behavior had become so serious that Deacon needed to come home, Adam had not only made sure his cousin got the heads-up on the new task force, but had personally and enthusiastically recommended him to MCES leader Lieutenant Lynda Isenberg, who was now Deacon’s boss.

  But then something had changed – and whatever it was, it was epic and sudden. Adam had completely avoided him since he’d arrived from Baltimore. Deacon didn’t take it personally, though. Instead, he worried, because Adam was completely avoiding everyone, including his mother, Deacon’s Aunt Tammy.

  Based on Adam’s current scowl, whatever was bothering him had taken a turn for the worse.

  Oh no. Deacon remembered his aunt’s pale face as he’d fought with Greg. Not again. Aunt Tammy’s heart attack had been the catalyst for Deacon coming home. ‘Is your mom okay?’