LOST CREED: (Book 4 Ryder Creed series)

  “What’s that smell?” she whispered. The breeze brought a whiff of something that wasn’t there before. It was strong enough to sting her eyes.

  She could see Pakula noticed it, too.

  “Smells like ammonia?”

  Then through the earbuds she heard whispered curses.

  “Tripwire. Damn it!”

  “He knew we were coming.”

  Suddenly, someone shouted from the front yard.

  “Runner. We’ve got a runner.”

  “Stay here,” Pakula told her. “Watch the back of the house.”

  Then he took off toward the shouting, disappearing around the trees. She could hear other voices coming from the front yard, a crash of wood, maybe even glass. And then a flash of light.

  Pakula wasn’t gone but a minute or two when Maggie saw movement at the back corner of the house. Close to the ground she could see a shadow in the moonlight.

  Someone was crawling out of a basement window.

  Chapter 4

  Maggie followed a fence line that separated the cornfield from the backyard. She hoped the noise coming from the front yard overrode her rapid breathing. She also hoped that the dew-covered grass didn’t turn her quick steps into a slip and flip onto her backside.

  Just as the man was pulling his legs free of the small window, Maggie was at the corner of the house. She had her weapon pointing at his head when she yelled, “Not so fast. Stay on your knees and put your hands behind your head.”

  The man’s head pivoted up to look at her. His eyes were wide with surprise. Even in the dim light and through the scraggly beard, Maggie recognized him from his mugshot.

  “Good evening, Mr. Dunn?”

  Slowly he put his hands up, lacing his fingers together behind his head. He didn’t attempt to get up off his knees. Then Eli Dunn did something that sent a shiver down her spine. He smiled at her. Not just a grin but a big, bold smile with a look that said she had no idea who she was dealing with.

  “Seriously? A woman cop?” Dunn said, shaking his head and still smiling. “Hell, this is my lucky day.”

  He made no attempt to resist. Even when Maggie fumbled with the flex-ties, he held still, keeping his wrists together to make it easier for her. He seemed amused by her clumsy efforts. She pulled the plastic tight, maybe too tight, wanting to wipe that smile off his face even if she had to replace it with a grimace.

  She was an expert in forensics and profiling criminals, digging into their psyche, dissecting the evidence they left behind and predicting their next move. Usually by the time she arrived at a crime scene there were only dead bodies to process. The killer was long gone. She wasn’t used to apprehending and cuffing the criminal.

  “Up on your feet,” she told him. “Slow and easy.”

  “So that’s the way you like it?”

  The breeze chilled her, she convinced herself. Not his words. And she kept her weapon leveled at him. There was nothing clumsy in the way she handled that. She had worked hard to make sure she was an expert marksman. She hunted serial killers for a living, and more than one had tried to turn the table and come after her. She couldn’t afford to not be prepared, and yet, when Eli Dunn began sniffing in her direction, there was something terribly unsettling in his gesture.

  “You sure do smell good.”

  “Let’s join the others,” she gestured for him to keep moving to the front of the house. She couldn’t tell if he was high.

  He held his nose up and sniffed again. “My alarm system,” he told her, standing in place and watching her face with small black intense eyes, hard and cold, waiting for her reaction. He looked like a scraggly-haired, lanky teenager wanting to impress her with his latest prank. “Ammonia. That’s how I knew you were coming.”

  “Mr. Dunn, I must advise you, that anything you say can be used against you—”

  “Course, if I knew a pretty thing like you was out here waiting for me, I would have invited you in.” He winked at her. “You and me could have had a real good time.”

  She kept her face from showing her revulsion.

  “We still could.”

  “Let's move.” When he didn’t move, she shoved his shoulder.

  “Oh, I do like a strong woman.”

  “Maggie?”

  Pakula came around the corner of the house, and Eli Dunn suddenly dropped his head, chin to his chest. Even his shoulders slumped forward as if he could curl himself into a smaller frame, playing the whipped victim. As Pakula approached, Maggie noticed Dunn’s smile was also gone.

  “What the hell?” Pakula said.

  “Mr. Dunn was trying to escape out the back window.”

  “Dunn?” Pakula flicked on his flashlight and shot a beam into the man’s face. “I’ll be damned.”

  They marched him around to the front of the house into the blinding light. Floodlights now illuminated the front yard. Headlights weaved through the trees, up the driveway as more law enforcement joined them. Windows lit up inside the house, one after another as the team conducted their raid. She could hear their shouts to each other as they cleared each room.

  Pakula waved to a deputy who took Dunn by the elbow. As Eli Dunn was being led away he looked back over his shoulder at Maggie. In the lights, the toothy grin was bright white surrounded by dark beard stubble. No chance Dunn was a meth user, but she wouldn’t rule out the man was flying high on something else. Those dark, cold eyes convinced her that she was correct about one thing—this man wasn’t some petty criminal.

  “So if Dunn was going out the back, who was the runner?” Maggie asked.

  Pakula winced and tilted his chin toward an SUV with BUTLER COUNTY SHERIFF DEPARTMENT on the side door. Now, she saw that the back door remained opened. A woman officer was talking to someone inside. When she got a better look, Maggie was startled to see the skinny legs, knobby knees, and bare feet.

  “The kid’s tall but I’m guessing he can’t be much over thirteen,” Pakula said. “Fourteen at the most. He said Dunn pushed him out the front door. Told him to run and keep running. He’s naked except for his jockeys. I think he’s loaded. Or stoned. Barely looked at me when I gave him my jacket.”

  Only now did Maggie realize Pakula was in shirtsleeves.

  “If you hadn’t been in the backyard,” he told her, “this little stunt may have worked.”

  “Pakula. O’Dell.” Special Agent Stevens waved to them from the front door. “You gotta see this.”

  From the tone of his voice, Maggie guessed her suspicions about Eli Dunn were right.

  Chapter 5

  The inside of the house smelled like bleach. But Maggie noticed it was distinctively different than the ammonia that still lingered in the air outside. Even if Dunn hadn’t told her about setting alarms, this new odor convinced her the man knew they were coming for him. So why hadn’t he left? Maybe he had been tipped off about a police raid, but he didn’t know exactly when. He knew enough in advance to clean house.

  She could tell Pakula and Stevens were thinking along the same lines.

  Footsteps pounded up and down the wooden stairs. She heard doors pushed open with such force they were slamming into walls. The team was still clearing the upstairs and basement. Stevens, however, was leading Pakula and Maggie down a narrow hallway to the back of the house. As she followed, Maggie took in everything around her.

  The walls were bare, the carpet well worn. Through doorways, left wide open by the advance team, she glimpsed sparse furnishings. One bedroom had only a mattress on the floor, the bed sheets left in a tangled mess. A small bathroom was missing a shower curtain giving her a clear shot of the open stall with a drain in a concrete floor. The scent of bleach hit her nostrils as she passed, the scent so strong that it made her eyes water.

  “The runner was the only one here with Dunn,” Stevens told them as he turned down another long hallway. “But
there’re mattresses and bedding upstairs and cots in the basement. All the doors have deadbolts that work from the outside of the rooms.”

  He pointed to one of the open doors as they passed, but Maggie wasn’t interested in the locks as much as she was in the stark bedroom. A single light bulb illuminated the white walls and plain sheets pulled tight and tucked neatly. Even the pillow was fluffed. This room had linoleum instead of the worn carpet and it was tiny with only enough room for the mattress. Her first thought was that Eli Dunn had created prison cells within the old clapboard farmhouse, utilizing every area even what may have once been a closet.

  Finally Stevens led them through the last door before the end of the hallway.

  “It was locked and padlocked,” he told them, explaining why the door was now splintered and hanging by one hinge.

  Compared to the other rooms, this one was messy with empty takeout containers on the desk. The worn sofa was too large for the space. A bookcase overflowed with books and folded maps. Stacked cardboard boxes made a leaning tower in one corner. Maggie’s eyes darted back to the desk and the clean spot in the center where a dustless rectangle remained after something was removed. Something like a computer, and she felt the disappointment in the pit of her stomach.

  None of this, however, was what had drawn Stevens’ attention. Unlike every other room in the house where the walls had been left bare, in here, the walls were plastered with photographs and newspaper clippings. A huge corkboard in the middle had obviously not been large enough for the magnitude of its job. It was overloaded, thumbtacks driven through several layers.

  “Son of a bitch,” Pakula said under his breath.

  The news clippings were mostly yellowed, a few with torn edges, others looked to be photocopies. Some of the photos were blurry and faded or too dark to see the faces. But Maggie didn’t need to see details to know the subjects were young, some just children, others teenagers. Both boys and girls. A collage was made of different sizes of Polaroids, glossy colored prints, black and white matte finish, and colored copies printed out on plain white paper.

  There were so many of them.

  Maggie felt like she’d swallowed acid. She needed to keep focused. Her eyes scanned the room, but she didn’t see any electronic devices.

  “Did your men find a computer?” she asked Stevens, breaking the silence inside the room. She was still hoping they had already grabbed the laptop computer that had obviously occupied the center of the desk.

  He shook his head, but he didn’t look away from the wall. “They can’t all be his victims, can they? Is it possible he collects or takes their pictures before he sells them?”

  The photos were thumbtacked so they overlapped to accommodate the volume. In some instances all that could be seen were triangles with an eye and nose, a forehead with bangs or only lips with a chin. They looked like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

  Maggie started to turn away. Had they looked for hiding places where Dunn could have stowed the computer? But something on the wall caught her eye and she leaned in for a closer look.

  At the bottom left corner of the corkboard was a Polaroid pinned over two other photos, stabbed through the white edging. The boy and girl had their arms wrapped around each other as they smiled for the camera. But it wasn’t the image that stopped her. What grabbed her attention was the bold cursive in the white area below the Polaroid photo. Someone had labeled the memory in blue marker:

  Brodie and Ryder,

  10-12-01

  One of those names alone would be unusual. Both of them together could not be a coincident.

  Maggie’s knees threatened to buckle.

  “What is it?” Pakula asked.

  Had he noticed that she was holding her breath? Did she look as sick to her stomach as she felt? She pointed to the photograph.

  “I know someone named Ryder.”

  Both men stared at her. She glanced at Pakula. His eyebrows went up. His hands gestured for more of an explanation.

  “His sister, Brodie disappeared in 2001 from an interstate rest area.”

  This time Pakula turned and leaned into the corkboard. Stevens stayed put, hand to his chin as he tilted his head at the same angle as the photo to read the handwriting.

  “She was eleven and he was fourteen,” Maggie told them in almost a whisper.

  “Coincidence?” Stevens suggested.

  Maggie didn’t believe in coincidences. She pointed to the photograph again and said, “Take a look at the date.”

  “10-12-01,” Pakula read out loud then added, “Holy crap.”

  Chapter 6

  Florida Panhandle

  By the time he got out of the woods, Creed was out of breath. The back of his T-shirt was drenched in sweat. His heartbeat pounded in his chest. Jason and Scout had waited for him at the edge of the tree line. When the kid saw Creed’s face he did a double take then started searching the path.

  “Is the bear following you?” Jason wanted to know.

  “No, it stayed put. Went back to eating.” Creed rushed past the handler and his dog.

  “Then what’s going on?” Jason pressed.

  This time Creed stopped and turned back. “Sorry. Hannah texted me. Something about a phone call. I’ll fill you in later. You and Scout did good,” he added, knowing Jason needed the kudos but would never ask. Creed was anxious to get to the house, but this was just as important. “You’ve done a really good job with him. Scout’s ready.”

  “Really? You think so?”

  “Doesn’t mean you let up on the training.”

  “No, of course, not.”

  “Cut out the treats.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “He’s ready to be in the field,” Creed told him, pleased to see a rare smile from the kid. “When I finish with Hannah, you and I need to figure out how we can bear-proof the kennels.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Sure. We just need to be creative.” At least he hoped it was possible, Creed thought as he turned and headed to the main house.

  He slowed down his pace. He needed to concentrate and focus on getting his breathing back to normal. He didn’t want Hannah to see what Jason must have seen on his face. And he certainly didn’t want to trigger the nightmare loop that had played inside his head too many times over the course of the last sixteen years. But he knew it was too late.

  He felt the stab at his temples. And then came the rush in his ears, a steady humming sound. In his mind he could already hear the rain drumming on the roof of the car, the football game blaring on the radio, the volume getting louder and louder so it could be heard over the dog’s barking.

  His dad didn’t want to miss the last minutes of the game. Alabama had been ahead most of the game, but now suddenly, they were on the verge of losing in the last minutes. His dad was already pissed that they had to listen to it on the car radio, instead of watching it at home in his living room. To make matters worse, Brodie needed to go to the bathroom, so their dad pulled into the busy rest area along the interstate.

  In his mind, Creed could hear the hissing of air brakes. The scent of diesel filled his nostrils. It could still make him nauseated. He was never sure how that was possible but after this many years, this many times, he didn’t question it anymore. He just wished it would go away.

  Creed stopped in his tracks. Squeezed his eyes tight and shook his head. The replay of that night including all the sights and sounds and scents came back so easily as if it had happened only yesterday. Creed had started his K-9 business in the hopes of one day finding some answers. It was an honorable mission, but gut-wrenching, because every time he helped find the body of a little girl or a young woman it brought back the panic of that night. He no longer believed that anything short of finding Brodie’s remains, would offer any relief. And even then, how could he possibly find relief?

  He went
in the back door of the house, entering the kitchen. Immediately, he was struck by the scent of cinnamon and fresh baked bread. Hannah looked over at him from the counter where she was mixing a concoction that filled the air with a heavenly scent that reminded Creed of the holidays.

  “She said she’d call back within the hour,” Hannah said. “You want coffee? I just made a fresh pot.”

  “She?”

  “Maggie O’Dell.”

  He opened a cupboard and pulled out a mug to give himself something to do. When he went to pour the coffee he noticed a slight tremor in his hand and turned so Hannah couldn’t see it. Creed had worked with Maggie several times. Last spring they ended up in an isolation ward together after being exposed to the bird flu virus.

  They talked on a regular basis though mostly by phone. They were friends. Friends? Was that what they were? Actually, they’d shared too much to be only friends, and there was way too much electricity between them, but that’s where they kept their relationship. Creed tried not to think about it. It was what it was, and he had decided that wouldn’t change until or unless Maggie wanted it to change.

  “What exactly did she say?” Creed asked when he realized Hannah wasn’t going to tell him without him asking.

  “I don’t want you to get all riled, okay?”

  She emptied her hands and placed them on her ample hips, a gesture usually reserved for lectures or sermons. But Creed met her eyes and caught a flicker of alarm before she replaced it with concern.

  “All she told me was that she had some questions for you about Brodie.”

  He held her gaze, weighing whether or not she was holding anything back. The two of them were brutally honest with each other. Hannah was his business partner but in the last seven years she had also become his family, his confidant, even his moral compass. She wouldn’t lie to him. She couldn’t lie to him.