Danielle lived in a small two-bedroom post-WWII house in Glendale only blocks from the mail drop. Two Glendale PD squad cars, a locksmith, and two teams of FBI agents were already there when Ken and Lucy arrived. One of the FBI agents, who identified himself as SSA Tim Nelson, said, “We didn’t attempt contact, as you asked, but we haven’t seen any movement in the house, and a neighbor informed us that Ms. Sharpe left the house shortly before noon today and she hasn’t returned. She’s driving a silver Nissan Altima with new dealer plates.”
“Thanks, Tim,” Ken said. “Do you have an extra vest for Kincaid here? She’s from out of the area and doesn’t have her gear.”
Tim nodded and motioned for Lucy to come to his trunk. “It might be too big.”
“Thanks,” Lucy said and put the vest over her T-shirt and left her blazer in his trunk. FBI was printed on the back and front in large yellow letters. She adjusted it. Big, but not cumbersome.
Ken, Lucy, and Tim approached the front door. Tim had Glendale PD covering the back. Ken knocked on the door. “Danielle Sharpe, this is the FBI. We have a search warrant for these premises. We’re coming in.”
He waited to make sure she really wasn’t home, then Tim had the locksmith crack open the lock. They entered the premises, guns drawn, and did a complete search of the house.
“Clear,” they called out one by one.
They met back in the living room. “I’ll clear the garage,” Tim said and left Ken and Lucy to begin the search.
They both pulled on gloves and Lucy found the light switch.
The house was sparsely furnished. There were no pictures on the walls, nothing personal. A television was in the corner, a couch, and a coffee table. The far wall had a faint stain on it. Lucy approached, at first thinking it might be blood, but when she got closer she realized that it was a wine stain. On the floor was a broken wine stem.
“She threw a full wineglass at the wall.” Lucy touched the carpet. “It’s dry.”
Ken was in the kitchen. “She drinks a lot of wine—the recycling bin has twelve, no thirteen, empty bottles.”
“She may not have emptied it recently.” But it also could be part of her process, building herself up to take another human life. Yet Lucy didn’t see how she could be intoxicated and still be sharp enough to commit these murders without leaving any evidence.
“Refrigerator is almost empty—a couple of take-out boxes,” Ken said. “Cabinets—looks like my first apartment. Minimal dishes, glasses—just enough to get by.”
Lucy opened the first door—it was a den. Danielle spent far more time in here—there were books and photo albums and the distinct smell of sour grapes. The desk was a mess. Two wineglasses with residue were positioned on the bookshelf.
Lucy went through the papers on the desk. A photo album had been destroyed—pictures cut out and shredded. Lucy put a couple of the photos back together—they were of Danielle and her ex-husband. The photos of Matthew were still intact, yet if one of his parents was in the photo, they had been cut out.
Both Richard and Danielle.
What did that mean? Was she suicidal? Had she already killed herself? Something had tipped her off—she wasn’t sick, she wasn’t home, she hadn’t returned Nina Fieldstone’s call, and she likely had a gun.
Lucy’s phone rang and she jumped.
“Hello?” she answered.
“This is Richard Collins.
“Mr. Collins. Do you have information?”
“Danielle just called me. It wasn’t a long call, and she sounded … strained.”
“What did she say? Did you record it?”
“Yes, the FBI recorded it. She asked me if I had betrayed her again. Then she told me to kill myself. What’s going on?”
“Has she ever told you to kill yourself?”
“No, I mean, she told me repeatedly that I should have been the one to die, but not like this.”
“We’re looking for her. Stay put, Richard, okay? Stay in your house with your wife. The FBI will stick with you for tonight, just in case.” Lucy didn’t see why Danielle would go after Richard now, after twenty-three years, but something had tipped her off. Then she realized.
“Richard,” she asked, “when we talked yesterday you said she left voice mails, but you only talked to her once.”
“Yes, so?”
“What about the other times she called? Five years ago? Before then?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Did you talk to her every time she called, or not?”
He paused. “No, I usually only answered the phone once or twice. Then I started sending all blocked calls to voice mail. It got to be … stressful for me.”
“Thanks. If she calls again, let me know immediately. I’ll get the tape from the Denver office.” Lucy wanted to listen to her voice.
Ken said, “I have it—they sent it to me.”
He played the recording. It was short—not even a minute long.
“Betrayed me again,” Ken mumbled. “What does that mean? They’re not married, they haven’t been.”
“She knows he’s talked to us.”
“How?”
“Because he’s been answering all her calls. That’s something he hasn’t done in the past. She’s not an idiot, it’s a change, and any change of behavior she’s going to pick up on. I think she realized it last night when she talked to him, which is why she left this morning. And last night she sounded intoxicated, she may have needed time to sober up and plan. She’s not irrational—not in the way we might think. She had a plan, but now she changed it. Just like she had a plan for Jonah Oliver, but had to change it when his babysitter confronted her.”
But what exactly was she going to do?
Lucy looked around the room. She noticed there were seven photo albums on the top shelf of the bookshelf that all matched the one that was torn apart on her desk. She took them down. Inside all the pictures of Richard had been cut out, but Matthew’s pictures—and Danielle’s pictures—were intact. “She might have kept a diary, kept something that can help us find her.”
“I’ll take the desk.”
Tim Nelson turned in to the doorway. “You gotta see what’s in the garage.”
Lucy and Ken followed him out the back door. An officer guarded the door, and another was standing by the side door into the small, detached garage. The lone window had been blacked out.
The garage was set up as a war room—one wall were photos of Kevin Fieldstone and his parents. Kevin with his grandmother after school. Kevin going into his house. Kevin playing on the playground at school.
Pictures of the Fieldstone house. Of Nina at work. Of Tony at a party. Of another woman, older, blond, pretty. Of Tony and the woman in bed.
Of Nina and a woman in bed.
Hundreds of photos, all printed at home on photo paper. A computer stood in the corner of a workplace. A color printer next to it.
Lucy turned and couldn’t stop herself from gasping.
The other wall had photos of Danielle’s previous victims and their families. A stalker’s paradise. Photos of people having sex, but it was clear they were taken either through a Web camera or a zoom lens. Lucy grew increasingly uncomfortable, and then she recognized a much younger Andrew. Andrew with Nelia. Andrew with Justin. Andrew naked in bed with another woman.
Lucy couldn’t process any more when her gaze rested on a photo of her and Justin nearly twenty years ago. Playing at the park where Justin had been buried.
She heard Tim and Ken talking, but didn’t hear any words.
She remembered that day vividly. She didn’t realize how vividly until now—it had been the last time she’d seen Justin alive. The day he died.
* * *
Lucy sat in the sand and pushed the grains back and forth with her shovel. She didn’t feel good, her stomach hurt and her head hurt and she just wanted to go home.
Justin plopped down next to her. “Wanna play tag?”
“No.”
“Climb trees?”
“No.”
“Ask Santa for Christmas presents?”
She looked up at him and wrinkled her nose. “It’s June, months before Christmas.”
“I’m gonna ask Santa for a Nintendo. Or a Game Boy. I don’t know which one’s better. But if I got a Nintendo we could play together.”
“You should ask Patrick. He plays video games all the time. He knows about those things. He’s really smart.”
“Uncle Patrick said he’d help coach my baseball team. Isn’t that great? He said he’d come to at least one practice a week and help with batting. He had a three-sixty batting average last year. Daddy said he’ll probably get a major league contract when he graduates if he keeps it up. Wouldn’t that be cool? If he plays for the Padres? And we can get free season tickets? They do that, right? Give the players free tickets for their family?”
“I’d think they would,” Lucy said. She sighed.
“Hey, are you okay, LuLu?”
“I feel sick. But don’t tell my mom, because she’ll tell your mom and you’ll have to go home.”
“Grandma calls my mom nervous Nellie.” Justin giggled. “Nellie, because her name is Nelia.”
“I think it’s an expression,” Lucy said. “I’ve heard it before.”
“I think it’s funny.”
“Can you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“I really want to go home, but I don’t want my mom to know I don’t feel good because then she won’t let me go swimming tomorrow. I don’t want to be stuck inside all day. But if you tell her you’re hungry or something, she’ll take us home.”
“You look green.”
“Do not.”
On the way home from the park, Lucy threw up in the bushes and started crying, and when they got home her mom took her temperature and it was 102. When Nelia called to say she was going to be late, Lucy’s mom mentioned in passing that Lucy was sick and in bed. Nelia asked Carina to pick up Justin and watch him.
And that was the last time Lucy had seen her nephew—her best friend—alive.
* * *
“Lucy, you okay?”
Ken was right behind her.
“Do you see something important?”
Lucy cleared her throat and squeezed her eyes shut. “I—dammit.”
She stepped out of the garage. She had to, her emotions were so overwhelming she almost didn’t know how to process them. It was dark; at some point the sun had set and only a faint blue was evident in the west.
She sat down on the ground and put her head between her legs. She didn’t even know how she felt. Rage? She had it. Sorrow? Yes, in spades. And helpless. Absolutely helpless, and she didn’t know why.
She felt seven again.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, but Ken came for her. “We can’t get into her computer. Nelson is calling in the cybersquad. There may be something that tells us where she went.”
“Did you find a gun?”
“No.”
“She’s going after the Fieldstones.”
“I just got off the phone with the two agents sitting on them. They took them home—they have an alarm system. All’s clear. They’re sitting out front keeping an eye on the place.”
“She has a plan. Something tipped her off—her ex-husband talking to her, seeing the agents pick up Kevin this morning. She’s circling around. You saw her den, and this … this obsession. How long until we get into her computer?”
“Hour, maybe two. I don’t have an estimated time when the ERT unit will be here.”
“I’d like to call an expert.”
“Your husband.”
“He’s worked with the FBI before, and we have a warrant to get into her computer.”
“He’s in San Diego, right?”
“He can do it remotely—I’m almost positive.”
“Call him.”
* * *
Lucy had Sean on speaker. He walked her through which cable to use to connect her phone to Danielle’s computer so he could hack into the hard drive. In less than five minutes, he’d opened her computer up to the FBI.
“That’s pretty damn amazing,” Ken said to Sean.
“Thank you,” Sean said. “What are you looking for specifically?”
“Any clue as to where she is now,” Ken said.
“Search histories? Purchases?”
“We have the airports alerted, but it would help if we knew if she bought a ticket. Does she have a cloud account and if so when was the last time she uploaded anything?”
“Not bad, Swan,” Sean said.
As they watched, the computer screen flipped through a bunch of programs and suddenly photos scrolled across the page. Lucy saw one of the two agents with Kevin.
“Stop, Sean.”
Ken said, “Well, shit, she was outside the grandmother’s house.”
“She saw the agents. They may have been discreet, but she knew.”
“Good news, bad news,” Sean said. “I can tell you that her phone is not operational—it’s set to sync with her cloud account every hour, and the last time it pinged was at four.”
“She called her husband at about four forty,” Lucy said.
“That’s an hour after these photos were taken. She called her husband? Okay, hold on a sec.”
The screen shifted and Sean was working within the operating system. A minute later a map popped up. “She made the call to her husband within a thousand feet of this point.”
“You didn’t hack—” Ken began.
“No, because she syncs her entire phone to her cloud account, which is cloned on her hard drive. All the data gets copied over. You just have to know where to look, then convert the code.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It’s why I get paid the big bucks,” Sean said.
Lucy zoomed in on the map. “Ken, that’s the Fieldstones’ neighborhood, and their house is in the middle of that circle. We have to get over there, she’s watching them.”
“Thanks, Rogan, appreciate the help,” Ken said. “You can write this all up for my report, right?”
“I know what you need. Lucy? You can disconnect your phone—I removed all security protocols on Sharpe’s computer so that your people can dig deeper.”
Lucy picked up her phone and took Sean off speaker. “I have to go.”
“Be careful. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
* * *
Max was duly impressed with Sean Rogan. They’d been sitting in the lounge for the last four hours alternatively working on their respective laptops and talking. She hadn’t been able to get him to say much about Lucy personally, though he shared a few stories. Didn’t give Max much insight into what exactly made these two people tick, but she enjoyed them. Sean didn’t repeat the warning he issued on Thursday, which Max respected. He didn’t treat her like an idiot.
When he hung up with Lucy, she said, “You’re really good.”
“I know.”
She laughed. She appreciated well-placed confidence. “Do you work often with the FBI? Private consultant?”
“When they need me.”
“How close are they?”
“Close.”
“You’re worried about Lucy. She seems to be a woman who can take care of herself.”
“I am, and she is.” Sean stared at her, as if trying to read her intentions. “Lucy trusts you. Why, I have no idea, but she does.”
That only partly surprised Max. She’d thought she and Lucy had developed a good working relationship, but from the beginning she recognized that trust wasn’t something that either of these people gave freely.
Sean continued, “Danielle Sharpe is most likely in the Fieldstones’ house.”
Max almost jumped out of her seat. “What? Lucy said that?”
“I did. Lucy knows—I didn’t have to tell her. It’s obvious, and Lucy fears Sharpe is going to up her game and take out the whole family. She’s been working up to it.”
“Why isn’t Lucy in the BSU? Arthur—my friend Dr. Arthur Ullman who is retired from the BSU—said they take only the best and brightest with that certain extra that makes them good profilers. And you can’t tell me that Lucy doesn’t have that extra. She has it in spades.”
Sean didn’t say anything for a minute. He was looking at something on his phone, but Max couldn’t see what it was. Or was he thinking about what to tell her and how to say it?
He said, “There’s only so much darkness a person can take before it consumes them.” He looked up from his phone and his dark, vibrant blue eyes spoke volumes. Max had never believed in true love and soulmates and all that romantic bullshit. Until now.
There was nothing Sean Rogan wouldn’t do for his wife. And it was clear the feeling was mutual.
He turned his phone to Max and she read the text message from Lucy.
The agents aren’t responding and we can’t reach the Fieldstones. Ken and I are on our way with L.A. FBI. We don’t know yet if we’re dealing with a hostage situation or something far worse. I’m going in to talk her down. I will be okay, but … well, I love you.
“I’m going to L.A.,” Sean said. “If you can be ready to leave in five minutes, you can join me.”