Kimberly shook her head.
“Kids are better at listening to their instincts,” Mac explained. “When they’re tired, they sleep. When they’re frightened, they seek shelter. Adults, on the other hand, are always convinced they can regain control. So rather than get out of the rain or the cold or the sun, they keep walking, determined that safety is just around the corner. It’s exactly the wrong thing to do. Your odds are much better if you remain calm and stay in one place. After all, the average person can last up to five days with no water and up to a month without food. Wear yourself out walking, however, and you’ll succumb to exposure, fall off a cliff, stumble into a bear’s den, etc., etc. Next thing you know, the lost hiker’s dead in forty-eight hours, when any old schmuck should be able to last a week.”
Mac stopped abruptly. He looked at the map again, then his compass. “Hang on. Yep. We head off here.”
Kimberly came to a halt beside him and he could feel her uneasiness immediately increase tenfold. There was no clearly marked trail in front of them. Instead, the earth opened up, then plummeted down, a tumbling mass of boulders, bushes, and grass. Fallen trees lay directly in their way, overgrown with shaggy moss and brilliant ferns. Jagged branches stuck out dangerously low, while some kind of thick green vine covered half the trees in sight.
The woods were dense, dark. Kathy Levine was right: they held secrets that were both beautiful and deadly.
“If we get separated,” Mac said quietly, “just stay in one place and blow your whistle. I’ll find you.”
All the search-and-rescue operatives had been given shrill plastic whistles. One blow was to communicate between partners. Two blows meant a team had found the girl. Three shrills was the international call for distress.
Kimberly’s gaze had gone to the ground. Mac could practically see her eyes scouring each rock and thicket for signs of rattlesnakes or hornets. Her hand now rested on the top of her left thigh. Where she had the knife strapped, he guessed, and immediately felt his gut tighten with a shot of good, old-fashioned male lust. He did not know why an armed woman should be so arousing, but man oh man, this one was.
“We’re going to be fine,” he said.
Kimberly finally looked at him. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she said. Then she stepped off the path into the wild underbrush.
Footing quickly grew rough. Twice Kimberly slipped and tumbled halfway down a steep slope. Long, thick grass offered little traction, even for her hiking boots, and rocks and tree roots stuck up in the damnedest places. If she looked down for obstacles, then a stray tree limb would catch her up high. If she looked up high, she risked taking a fallen log in the shin. If she tried looking everywhere at once, she fell, a lot, regularly, and with generally painful, bloody results.
Within two hours, her legs wore a crisscross of scratches to match the ones still healing on her face. She avoided hornets, but blundered into a patch of poison ivy. She stopped running into dead logs, but twice twisted her ankles on slippery rocks.
All in all, she wasn’t enjoying the woods much. She supposed it should be beautiful, but to her it wasn’t. She felt the loneliness of this place, where the sound of your companion’s footsteps was swallowed up by moss-covered rocks, and even knowing there was another search party within three miles, she didn’t hear a peep. She felt the disorientation of the towering trees that blocked out the sun and made it difficult to get a sense of direction. The rough, undulating landscape meant they were often walking down to go up, or walking up to go down. Which way was north, south, east, west? Kimberly didn’t know anymore, and that left her feeling anxious in a way she couldn’t fully explain.
The immense size of the woods swallowed her up as effectively as any ocean. Now she was drowning in greenness, not sure how to get her head up, or which way to head for shore. She was a city girl who was way out of her league. And in a place like this, so much could go wrong without anyone ever finding your body.
She tried to focus on the missing woman to distract herself. If the girl had started the night at a bar, then she was probably wearing sandals. Had she gotten smart and ditched them right away? Kimberly had already slipped several times in hiking boots. Sandals would be impossible. Bare feet not great, but at least more manageable.
Where would she strike out for first? Head down is what Kathy Levine had said; lost hikers seek the easier path. In Kimberly’s mind, this path wasn’t that easy. Having to pick and choose for footing required slow, laborious work. Maybe it wasn’t as aerobic as hiking up, but the muscles in her legs and butt were already screaming while her heart beat furiously.
Would the girl try to seek shelter? Someplace she could stay cool and not wear herself out? Mac had implied that staying put was the key. Be calm, in control, don’t just wander around in a daze.
Kimberly looked around her, at the arching trees, the looming shadows, and the deep crevices with all their unknown inhabitants.
She bet the girl had started out at a dead run. She bet she’d torn through these bushes and trees, desperately seeking some sign of civilization. She’d probably screamed for hours, wearing herself hoarse with the need for human contact. And when night had fallen, when the woods had filled with the louder sounds of bigger beasts and buzzing insects . . .
The girl had probably run again. Tripped. Fallen. Maybe gone headfirst into a poison ivy patch or into a hornets’ nest. And what would have happened to her then? Stung, terrorized, half-dressed, and lost in the dark?
She’d seek water, anything to cool her wounds. And because whatever lurked in the streams had to be less dangerous than the creatures that stalked the woods.
Kimberly halted abruptly, holding up a hand. “Do you hear it?” she asked Mac sharply.
“Water,” Mac agreed. From his backpack, he retrieved his map. “There’s a stream directly to the west.”
“We should follow it. That’s what Levine said, right? Hikers are drawn to water.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.”
Kimberly stepped left . . .
And her foot went totally out from under her. One moment she was on solid ground. The next, her leg shot out and she went careening butt-first down the slippery slope of grass. Her hip bounded over a rock. Her thigh scraped by a fallen log. Desperately she tried to get her hands beneath her, while vaguely she was aware of Mac shouting her name behind her.
“Kimberly!!!”
“Ahhhhhhhhhh.” Thump. Thunk. Another dead log reared up ahead, and she slammed into it with all the grace of a rhino. Stars burst in front of her eyes. A buzzing roared through her ears. She was acutely aware of the rusty taste of blood in her mouth where she had bitten her tongue. And then, all at once, her body caught fire.
“Shit. Damn. Oh, what the hell!” She was on her feet, slapping at her arms and legs. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt, like a million little fire ants biting her skin again and again and again. She bolted out of the weeds and went scrambling back up the hillside, grabbing at tree limbs with her hands while churning up the grass with her feet.
She made it fifteen feet back up and not a single inch of it helped. Her skin burned. Her blood roared. She watched helplessly as her body suddenly bloomed with a bright red rash.
Mac finally came crashing to a halt in front of her. “Don’t scratch, don’t scratch, don’t scratch.”
“What the hell is it?” she cried frantically.
“Congratulations, honey, I think you just found the stinging nettles.”
CHAPTER 26
Quantico, Virginia
8:05 P.M.
Temperature: 98 degrees
“SO WHAT DO WE HAVE?” Quincy asked. It was after eight o’clock now. He, Rainie, Special Agent Kaplan, and Supervisor Watson had taken over an unused classroom for their ad hoc meeting. No one looked particularly cheerful. For one thing, half of them were still wrung out from working the crime scene in this heat. For another, they had nothing to show for their fourteen-hour day.
“I think we still
have to look harder at McCormack,” Kaplan insisted. “In this business, you know there is no such thing as coincidence. And him being here at the same time one of his old cases heats up . . . That’s too much coincidence for me.”
“It was not coincidental, it was planned.” Rainie spoke up in exasperation. Her opinion on this matter was clear, and now she shook her head in disgust at Kaplan. “You spoke to his boss. You know what McCormack said was true.”
“People cover for their own.”
“So the entire GBI is in on the crime? We’ve simply gone from coincidence to conspiracy theory.”
Quincy held up his hand, attempting to cut off this argument before it got going. Again. “What about the ad?” he asked Kaplan.
“According to the Public Affairs Officer, the ad arrived yesterday, with instructions to run in today’s paper. The Quantico Sentry, however, is a weekly paper. Next edition doesn’t come out until this Friday. Besides, the officer didn’t like the look of the ad. Seemed like code to him, maybe something drug related, so he passed it my way.”
Kaplan pushed a photocopy of the ad in question across the table. It was a small, two-by-two-inch box, outlined with a black border and containing one block of text. The text read: Dear Editor, Clock ticking . . . planet dying . . . animals weeping . . . rivers screaming. Can’t you hear it? Heat kills . . .
“Why an ad?” Watson spoke up.
“Quantico Sentry doesn’t do letters to the editor.”
“What are the rules for ad submissions?” Quincy asked.
Kaplan shrugged. “The newspaper is a civilian enterprise, published in cooperation with the Public Affairs Office here on the base, so it covers anything topical to the area. Lots of local merchants advertise, charities reach out, services for military personnel, etc. It’s no different really from any other small, regional paper. Ads must be submitted typeset and with a payment. Otherwise, you’re pretty much good to go.”
“So our guy took the time to learn the submission requirements for an ad, but still didn’t realize the paper wouldn’t print it today?” Watson asked skeptically. “Doesn’t seem too bright to me.”
“He got what he wanted,” Quincy said. “It’s the next day, and we’re reading his message.”
“Pure chance,” Watson said dismissively.
“No. This man does everything with a purpose. Quantico Sentry is the Corps’ oldest newspaper. It’s part of their tradition and pride. Putting his message in this paper is the same as dumping a body on the base. He’s bringing his crime close to home. He’s demanding our attention.”
“It fits the pattern,” Rainie said. “So far we have the same MO as with the Eco-Killer, and now we have the letter too. I’d say the next step is pretty obvious.”
“And what would that be?” Watson asked.
“Call McCormack! Get him back in on this thing. He knows this guy better than we do. And, since there’s probably another girl out there, maybe we ought to get some experts looking once more at the body, let alone those little details like the rattlesnake, leaf, and rock. Come on. As the ad says, the clock is ticking, and we’ve already wasted the entire day.”
“I sent them to the lab,” Kaplan said quietly.
“You did what?” Rainie asked incredulously.
“I sent the rock, the leaf, and, well, the various snake bits to the Norfolk crime lab.”
“And what the hell is a crime lab going to do with them? Dust them for prints?”
“It’s not a bad idea—”
“It’s a fucking horrible idea! Weren’t you listening to McCormack before? We’ve got to find the girl!”
“Hey!” Quincy’s hand was up again, his voice loud and commanding across the table. Not that it did much good. Rainie was already half out of her chair, her hands fisted. And Kaplan appeared just as eager for a battle. It had been a long day. Hot, tiring, wearing. The kind of conditions that led to an increase in bar brawls, let alone a deterioration of cooperation in multi-jurisdictional homicide cases.
“We need to proceed along two tracks,” Quincy continued firmly. “So shut up, sit down, and pay attention. Rainie’s correct—we need to move quickly.”
Rainie slowly sank back down into her chair. Kaplan, too, grudgingly gave him his attention.
“One, let’s assume that perhaps this man is the Eco-Killer. Ep, ep, ep!” Kaplan was already opening his mouth to protest. Quincy gave him the same withering look he’d once used on junior agents, and the NCIS agent shut right up. “While we cannot be one hundred percent certain of this, the fact remains that we have a homicide that fits a pattern previously seen in Georgia. Given the similarities, we need to consider that another woman has also been abducted. If so, according to what happened in Georgia, we need to start approaching the evidence we’ve found on the body as pieces of a geographic puzzle.” He looked at Kaplan.
“I can arrange for some experts in botany, biology, and geology to look at what we have,” the special agent said grudgingly.
“Quickly,” Rainie spoke up.
Kaplan gave her a look. “Yes, ma’am.”
Rainie merely smiled at him.
Quincy took a deep breath. “Two,” he said, “we need to explore some broader avenues. While I’ve read summaries of the Georgia case notes, it seems clear to me that they’ve never come close to knowing much about the killer. They generated a profile and a list of suppositions, none of which has ever been proven either way. I think we should start clean-slate, generating our own impressions based on this crime. For example, why plant the body on Quantico grounds? That seems clearly like a man who is making a statement against authority. He feels so invincible, he can operate even within the heart of America’s elite law enforcement agency. Then we have the UNSUB’s various letters to the editor, as well as his phone calls to Special Agent McCormack. Again this raises several questions. Is this an UNSUB seeking to reassert his feelings of power and control? Or is this a conflicted man, who is reaching out to law enforcement in the dim hope that he will be caught? Also, is the anonymous caller really our UNSUB, or someone else entirely?
“And there is a third motive we should also contemplate. That this killer’s game is not targeted at either the Marines or the FBI, but rather, at Special Agent McCormack specifically.”
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Kaplan grumbled.
Quincy gave the man his cool, hard stare. “Assume for a moment that the anonymous caller is the UNSUB. Through his comments, he brought Special Agent McCormack to Virginia. It stands to reason, then, that the UNSUB already had a plan of attack in mind for this area. And furthermore, as part of this plan, he knew of Special Agent McCormack’s whereabouts and thus made sure to start the game here. The ad in the Quantico Sentry would fit this pattern. As of Friday, the paper would be distributed all over the base. Surely McCormack would get the hint.”
Rainie appeared troubled. “That’s getting out there,” she said quietly.
“True. Killers rarely target a specific member of law enforcement. But stranger things have happened, and as the lead officer, McCormack was the most visible member of the Georgia task force. If the UNSUB were going to identify with a specific target, McCormack would be the logical one.”
“So we have two options,” Rainie murmured. “A garden-variety psychopath trying to mess with McCormack’s head. Or a more troubled, guilt-stricken nut who’s still murdering girls, but showing signs of remorse. Why doesn’t either one of these theories help me sleep better at night?”
“Because either way, the man is deadly.” Quincy turned toward Kaplan. “I assume you sent out the ad to the Quantico Sentry to be analyzed?”
“Tried,” Kaplan said. “Not much to work with. Stamp and envelope are both self-adhesive, so no saliva. Latent found no prints on the paper, and the ad was typeset, so no handwriting.”
“What about form of payment?”
“Cash. You’re not supposed to send it through the mail, but apparently our killer is a trusting soul.” br />
“Postmark?”
“Stafford.”
“The town next door?”
“Yeah, sent yesterday. Local job all the way. Guy’s in the area to murder a woman, might as well send his note, too.”
Quincy raised a brow. “He’s smart. Done his homework. Well, stationery is a good place to start. Dr. Ennunzio said that Georgia had sent him one original letter to the editor. I’d like you to turn over this ad to him as well. Perhaps that gives him two data points to consider.”
Kaplan had to think about it. “He can have it for a week,” he conceded at last. “Then I want it back at my lab.”
“Your cooperation is duly noted,” Quincy assured him.
There was a knock on the door. Quincy thinned his lips, frustrated by the intrusion when they were finally getting somewhere, but Kaplan was already climbing to his feet. “Probably one of my agents,” he said by way of explanation. “I told him I’d be around here.”
He opened the classroom door, and sure enough, a younger buzz-cut man entered the room. The agent was holding a piece of paper and his body practically thrummed with excitement.
“I thought you’d want to see this right away,” the younger officer said immediately.
Kaplan took the paper, glanced at it, then looked up sharply. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yes, sir. Got it confirmed fifteen minutes ago.”
“What?” Rainie was asking. Even Watson strained in his chair. Kaplan turned back to them slowly.
“We got an ID on the girl,” he said, and his gaze went to Quincy. “It’s not just like Georgia after all. Sweet Jesus, this is much, much worse.”
“Water break.”
“Soon.”
“Kimberly, water break.”
“I want to see what’s around the next corner—”
“Honey, stop and drink some water, or I will tackle you.”
Kimberly scowled at him. Mac’s face remained resolute. He’d halted ten feet back, at a boulder jutting out from the stream they were following down the steep slope.