“WE NEED TO FIND IAN,” Vivi said, calling out to Nick from the bedroom. Tugging on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, she glanced down at her boots. On any other day she wouldn't think twice about pulling them on, but she was beginning to feel a sense of urgency. And she'd been around long enough to know not to ignore her intuition. Casting her boots aside, she slipped on a pair of sneakers and, after checking her weapon, she strapped on her ankle holster and slid the gun inside. She hoped she wouldn't need it, but she'd rather have it and not need it than the other way around.
“I'll drive you into town, and we can check for Ian at the station, then head to Frank's. In the meantime, you can keep trying to reach him on his phone,” Nick said.
She tried two more times on their drive in; it wasn't like Ian to not answer. But then again, if he was back out on patrol for some reason, there could be any number of explanations for why he wasn't answering, from being in a location with no coverage to being in the middle of something else—like dealing with a car accident or policing his town.
All three officers were at the station when they arrived, but none of them had seen Ian since he'd gone off with the twins and Travis for breakfast. Walking down Main Street toward Frank's Café, Vivi called Naomi.
“Are you guys still at Frank's?” she asked.
“Uh, no. Brian and I are here at The Tavern working. Ian went with Travis to scout some of the local farms. He said he had a few hours before the evidence from Joe Adams's apartment arrived, and it was a nice day, so they headed out somewhere. Why?”
“Because I can't find him,” Vivi said and then told Naomi her new belief that Joe Adams was not the serial killer and that they needed to keep looking.
“Call Travis, and in the meantime, I'll try to track Ian's cell. If it's still on, I should be able to find it.”
“Is that legal?” Vivi paused.
“Do you really care?” her cousin countered.
“Just let me know,” she replied.
“I will. And by the way, you should know we had a very interesting breakfast with Deputy Chief MacStudly. He kind of likes you, you know. As in, I think he'd like to take you to the church, if you know what I mean.” Vivi could hear the grin in her cousin's voice.
She also had no problem envisioning her cousins interrogating Ian on the subject. She felt a little bad for him, but then again, he had chosen to go with them to eat, so he'd gotten what he'd deserved. And there was a little girly part of her that liked hearing what Naomi said.
“Nice, Naomi. I'm glad to hear your interrogation techniques are still getting you results. Now, please go find him, so I can check to make sure he hasn't gone into hiding from you all.”
Naomi laughed. “Not hardly. He doesn't hide from anything. But I'm on it. I'll call you back as soon as I have anything.”
Vivi and Nick headed back to the station, calling Travis on their way and not getting an answer. When they arrived, they updated Wyatt, Marcus, and Carly. None of the information they'd accumulated upstairs had been removed, so they all made their way back up to see if, on what felt like their thousandth viewing, they might discover something new.
She stared at the information on the board, intentionally focusing not on the images of the women, but on the data scribbled on the white background. Sometimes she could find patterns this way. Something fluttered in the back of her mind when she let her eyes fall on the date the second victim disappeared. She couldn't quite grasp it though and was moving on to the third when her cell rang.
Travis's number popped up and while she was glad to get ahold of at least one of the men she was looking for, she wished it was Ian on the other end of the line. She hadn't bothered to ask Carly or any of the others to try and trace Ian through his car since she knew he was with Travis—at least in talking to her old, family friend, she might get the information she needed.
“I just saw you called. I left my phone in the car when I stopped to take some pictures. What's going on?” he asked after they'd said their hellos.
“Naomi said you and Ian went off together to look at some potential sites. Is he with you?” she asked.
“No, he's not. I dropped him at the hospital. Have you tried his cell?”
“Yes, and he's not answering.” Frustrated, she let out a deep sigh. “I've called him three times in the past forty minutes,” she added.
“It's probably only been a few hours since you've seen him, so please tell me you aren't pining for him already. You hardly know him all that well, anyway,” he responded. “I know you better.”
Surprised at Travis's interpretation—or misinterpretation—of the situation, Vivi paused for a moment before answering.
“We've had some evidence come in that changes things for the case we're on, and I need to find him. What time did you drop him off at the hospital?” She kept her voice intentionally cool, reminding Travis that there were bigger issues at stake than her love life.
She heard Travis sigh and knew he felt bad. “Sorry, Vivi. That was uncalled for and I know you better than to think you'd act like some love-sick teenager. It's been a long few days. I dropped him off about fifteen minutes ago. Maybe he's in a location where he can't use his cell?”
She ended the call quickly, not wanting to get into a longer discussion with Travis at the moment. But as she turned her attention back to the board, his words kept floating in her mind. You hardly know him all that well anyway. I know you better.
Like gears coming together, thoughts suddenly began to fall into place. She looked at the dates of the victims again. Victim one, raped and strangled in southern Maine—July. Victim two, June of the next year. By the time she reached victim six, she felt like she was going to throw up.
“Viv?” Nick said from beside her. She looked away from the board. Everyone in the room had stopped what they were doing and was now staring at her. She opened her mouth to say something and was, thankfully, cut off by the sound of her own cell. She wasn't ready to voice her thoughts yet. She wasn't ready to let herself even think them.
“Vivi?” Naomi's voice cut through the haze.
“Yeah?”
“I have Ian's cell at some farm out about four miles as the crow flies from his house. I pulled up the satellite maps and it looks like there's a barn there. It looks to have been built recently and not at all the kind of place Travis said he was looking for, so I don't understand what Ian would be doing there.”
Vivi's heart sank. “Can you tell if his phone is moving?”
“Not if it's moving a couple of feet here or there, but if he moved more than, say, thirty feet or so, I would see it.”
“And has it? Moved?”
“Vivi, what's going on? Is something wrong?”
“Just answer me. Has his phone moved since you located it?”
“Uh, no.”
When she'd lost her brother and her parents in the same day, there had been no fear, just the searing pain of loss and sorrow because it had all come as a surprise. But she knew that what gripped her now was an entirely different kind of emotion, a sense of panic and terror she had never, in all her life, experienced before. Because she knew very well what could happen next.
Think, she ordered herself. Forcing in a deep breath, she tried as best she could to focus. There could be any number of reasons Ian's phone wasn't moving, but of the two that came to mind, neither were any good. Either the phone was on Ian and Ian wasn't moving, or the phone had been tossed. That it was simply lost wasn't a viable option in her mind, since she knew he clipped it to his belt and it would never just fall off.
“Okay,” she took a deep breath. “Give me a second.” Turning to Nick she motioned to his cell. “Call Jesse Baker at Riverside hospital and see if Ian is there.” Without question, Nick did as she asked. While he was on task, she returned to her call with Naomi.
“Naomi, can you tell me where Travis's phone is?”
“Uh, sure, but why?” Vivi heard the question even as she heard Naomi clicking away on her keyboard, but her attention was on Nick whose eyes kept darting in her direction.
“Thank you, Jesse. No, everything is fine. Yes, please do let us know if he shows up.” Nick ended the call and looked at her with a shake of his head. “No, he hasn't been by since we left yesterday.”
“Vivi?” Naomi brought her attention back to the phone. “This is really weird but Travis is with Ian. Or, at least according to what I'm seeing, their phones are together. I mean, I know they're supposed to be together, but Travis is looking to scout locations for a Revolutionary War–era movie. What would they be doing in a barn made of corrugated metal?”
That was the question Vivi didn't want to think about.
* * *
“Viv, talk to me,” Nick ordered as they followed the directions to the barn Naomi had sent them. Marcus, Carly, and Wyatt were in the cruiser behind them. Vivi felt a sense of urgency to the core of her bones, but at her orders there were no sirens. If Travis and Ian were in there, she didn't want to make the situation worse by ratcheting up the tension. Nor did she want to give Travis any cause to do what she was certain he intended.
“It's Travis we're looking for, Nick. He's the one who killed all those women, the one who went after Ian last week.” God, it hurt to say those words. She could feel Nick's doubt, and she could hardly blame him. She hadn't quite wrapped her mind around it either, but she knew she was right.
“Travis?”
“Yes, he said something to me on the phone a little while ago. He said he knows me better and that I hardly know Ian at all.”
“He has a point, Viv. It seems an awfully big leap from that to him being a serial killer and Ian being in danger. And you do think Ian is in danger right now, don't you?”
“I do. I think Travis is obsessed with me and is going to do something to Ian I don't even want to consider, because he knows how Ian feels about me, he knows what we mean to each other. And, as to the other, as to being a serial killer, his words kept bothering me, and then when I looked at the dates the victims had all gone missing, I realized that, for those I could remember, Travis and I had had very similar arguments just before each of them.”
“As in, you would do something, the two of you would argue, and then he'd go out and kill someone?”
“I think it's probably more complex than that, but that's what I'm working on right now. I think after every argument he'd go out and kill someone who looked like me.”
“Because he couldn't have you. Or control you.” Nick went silent for a moment as he sped along the country road, driving like he'd lived there his whole life. “I might be able to buy that, but tell me why the arguments would spur the behavior? ”
“The only two things Travis and I ever argued about were men and me doing things he didn't agree with, usually things that took me away from Boston.”
“Away from him and out into a world he couldn't control, which left him feeling helpless and impotent.”
“That's my thinking.”
“Viv, you know this all still sounds a little crazy. Not that you may not be right, but if you are, it's going to devastate your family.”
“I know, Nick. Believe me, I know. I can't,” Vivi paused and intentionally reined her emotions back in, “I can't think about that right now. Right now, I just want to be sure Ian is okay. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. But if I'm right, the conversation Ian had with Travis and the twins this morning could have pushed Travis over the edge.”
“What conversation was that?” Nick asked, pulling onto the long, gravel driveway that would take them closer to the barn.
“Naomi said Ian was talking long term, maybe even marriage. If it is Travis, he's already taken a shot at Ian, and that was just because we decided to stay in the same house. If his mind is so tainted, so unhinged, that he'd do that, I don't even want to think about how he might handle the idea of me getting married.”
Nick pulled to the side of the road, still a good distance from and out of sight of the barn. The others pulled up behind them.
Nick put a hand on her arm, stopping her from getting out. “Viv, luv, I don't think you're the right person to be going in there. If it's you he wants and you who sets him off, if you walk in there and aren't able to hide your fear or feelings for Ian, it may set things in motion in a way you don't want it to.”
Vivi knew this, it was actually her worst fear right now—well her second-worst fear, her first being that Travis had already taken out his frustration on Ian. But it had to be her because she was pretty sure that, at this point, she was the only person who had any chance of reaching Travis. Once he understood that she and the entire team suspected him, he'd have nothing left to lose and she was hoping, that his feelings for her, no matter how warped, would slow him down enough that one of the others would have a chance to intervene.
“It has to be me and you know it. I know I'll be a sitting duck when I walk from here to the barn. I'll be out in the open and exposed. We don't know if he has a weapon, but we should assume he does and that he's not afraid to use it. I'll need you to cover me and lead the rest of the team. I won't be able to carry a weapon, because I don't want Travis to see me as a threat.”
Nick's jaw ticked. He didn't like it, but at this point, there was no other way.
“Fine,” he finally conceded. “But you don't go in until I get the others on the ground and in a position where they can assist if it comes to that.” They climbed out of the car and met the three officers. Motioning them all into a copse of trees, Nick started issuing orders. Nick would cover Marcus as Marcus scoped out the barn. Once they had a general idea of the layout, Nick would put folks in place and only then would Vivi be allowed to move toward the barn. The wait was torture, but she knew it was the right thing to do, for her and also for Ian.
Using a scope to look through a window, Marcus spotted Ian inside, lying on his side with his feet and hands bound. As this bit of news crackled softly over the radio, Vivi's stomach plummeted; it crashed even more when Marcus reported that Ian wasn't moving. Vivi forced a breath in and told herself he wasn't moving because he was tied up, not for any other reason. So focused on maintaining control over her own self, she didn't even notice that Nick had already processed Marcus's intel and positioned Carly and Wyatt.
“Give me forty-five seconds to get into position then start walking toward the barn,” he directed.
“And so help me god, do not let anything happen to you. MacAllister would never forgive me and, as much as I hate to admit it, I kind of like it here and wouldn't mind coming for a visit or two, which isn't as much fun when you're on the police department's shit list.”
Despite everything, a smile crept onto her lips. “Thanks, Nick.”
He gave her one last look, nodded, then vanished into the woods. Vivi glanced down at her watch and began to plan what she might say to the man she had played with as a child, the man she had grown up with and thought of as family. The man she now believed killed so many women because of her.