The two agents watching the Fieldstones’ weren’t in their vehicle. “Dammit, I told them to check on the family—how’d they get ambushed? Why didn’t they call for backup?”
“We don’t know what happened.” But Lucy knew time was not on their side. Last contact with the agents was ten minutes ago. She’d told Ken they needed to check on the family immediately; he’d acted based on her advice. Because he trusted her.
Now two agents were in danger. Or already dead.
Tim Nelson was calling in FBI SWAT. Their ETA was a minimum twenty minutes. Lucy didn’t know if the family had twenty minutes. She didn’t know if they were already dead.
“I have to go in,” Lucy said.
“Fuck no,” Ken said. “I’m not putting another FBI agent in the line of fire.”
“She’s going to kill them. She knows she’s not getting out of this and she has nothing to lose. She’s been spiraling down for twenty-three years, Ken—she’s been careful, methodical, but one thing changed: her ex-husband started talking to her. She sensed there was something wrong, and even if he didn’t say something specifically to set her off, she unconsciously knows that something is different. And this family is different. The mother was having an affair. It’s a deviation. Kevin cannot die. I can’t let him die.”
“You’re not going in there and risking your life.”
Lucy pulled out the photo of her and Justin playing at the park the afternoon before Danielle killed her nephew. “This is my card inside. She will know who I am—I can talk her down. Make sure the agents are alive. If anyone needs medical help, I will try to get them out. Ken, we can’t sit here and wait for a tactical team! There are three and potentially five hostages inside. Dead? Alive? Danielle Sharpe has drugs, a gun, and nothing to lose.”
Tim Nelson came over to them. “Glendale PD is working with us until the sheriff’s deputies arrive. They’ve blocked off the street both sides, and are notifying the neighbors to stay indoors. SWAT is nineteen minutes out—I had them on call, so they were ready to roll.”
“Nineteen minutes is too long—I’m a hostage negotiator,” Lucy said. “I’m a rookie, I’m not supposed to negotiate without a senior negotiator, but I don’t think we should quibble about the damn bureaucracy when everyone in that house will be dead in nineteen minutes if we don’t do something now.”
“Agent Kincaid, I don’t think you can make that call,” Nelson said. “Going in blind, without intelligence, is going to put another life in danger.”
“A word,” Ken said to Nelson and pulled him aside.
Lucy knew she was right—Danielle had changed her MO. She went into the house because she knew law enforcement had tracked her down. The calls to her husband coupled with the agents taking Kevin from his grandmother’s house gave it away. So she went to her Plan B—Danielle already knew about the alarm, knew how to bypass it. Nina Fieldstone probably didn’t realize that Danielle might have the alarm code. Danielle was inside the house when she called her husband the last time.
Did you betray me again?
Only this time, it was a different betrayal. Instead of another woman, it was talking to the police.
Ken and Nelson came back. “One condition,” Nelson said. “You get her on the phone. I’m not sending you anywhere near that house if I don’t know that the hostages are alive.”
Lucy nodded. How could she get Danielle to pick up?
She dialed the Fieldstones’ house phone. It went to voice mail after six rings. She tried Nina’s cell phone; it went direct to voice mail.
“Bullhorn?” she asked Nelson.
He retrieved one from his trunk. Lucy took a deep breath and spoke into the bullhorn.
“Danielle, my name is Lucy Kincaid. You know me. Justin called me Lulu. No one else has ever called me Lulu. Pick up the phone. I need to talk to you. You owe it to me to pick up the phone.”
She nodded to Ken, who called the house phone again. It rang four times. Lucy thought she was too late, that they were already dead.
On the fifth ring Danielle answered.
“Are you lying to me?”
The phone was on speaker, and Lucy motioned for everyone to quiet down.
“No, Danielle. I found the picture of me and Justin playing in the park. I was playing in the sand and didn’t feel well. I didn’t remember until today that Justin called me Lulu. I blocked it out because I miss him so much.”
“I need more than a photo. How do I know it’s really you and you’re not just lying to me like everyone else?”
Lucy considered what she wanted. What would she know that the average person wouldn’t know?
“You know it’s really me, Danielle. I was born two weeks before my nephew. Nelia was twenty-two when she had Justin, she got pregnant in college—just like you. She married Justin’s father—just like you married Matthew’s father. And Andrew had an affair just like Richard had an affair. I don’t know how to prove to you I am who I am.”
“Justin broke his arm. Which arm did he break and how?”
Bile rose in Lucy’s throat. Justin broke his arm nearly a year before he was killed. She was there, at the park, and she’d told him not to climb so high. Coming down he’d slipped and fell more than twenty feet. It was a clean break, healed quickly, but he had a cast for several weeks.
“His left arm. He fell out of a tree.” She closed her eyes. She wouldn’t have remembered if she and Max hadn’t gone back to the park last week. “He was buried next to that tree.”
“It is you.”
“Yes. I’m now an FBI agent and I really need to talk to you. Please, Danielle, let the family go and I’ll come in and we’ll talk. As long as you need to talk, I’ll listen.” She didn’t want to listen to the woman—she didn’t want to hear her justify why she killed Justin and all the other boys. She didn’t want to hear her justify why the Fieldstones needed to die.
“No.”
“They’re not going to let me come in unless you let the family leave. Can they leave, Danielle? Is anyone hurt?”
“You can have the two FBI agents. They’re in the garage. But Tony and Nina are going to suffer for what they have done to their family.”
“Wait—Danielle, we need to talk.”
“Fine, come here and talk, but they’re still going to die. You know they have to. You of all people know that they need to be punished!”
Lucy? Of all people? That made no sense. Was Danielle thinking of someone else when she thought of Lucy? Or was she truly having a psychotic break?
“We’re going to come in and retrieve the FBI agents,” Lucy said, “then I’m going to come inside.”
“No guns.”
“I’ll leave my weapon out here. Is Kevin okay?”
“He’s sleeping. He’s so peaceful. So perfect.”
Sleeping? No, it wasn’t even seven. Had she already drugged him?
Nelson was already in the process of retrieving the two agents from the garage. Lucy prayed this wasn’t a trap, but a minute later, they all came out. The agents had been duct-taped together. Danielle couldn’t have overpowered them—she must have used Kevin’s safety as a threat and forced Tony Fieldstone to do it.
A parent will do anything to protect their child.
And when they can’t protect them? Like Danielle? Is this what happened? A twisted vengeance to punish everyone else because she couldn’t punish the man who killed her son?
“I’m going in,” Lucy said. She handed her gun to Ken.
He looked worried. “This is suicide.”
“No, she said Kevin is sleeping. She drugged him, I’m certain of it. She’s waiting either for him to die, or for herself to build the courage to suffocate him. Get an ambulance here, tell them which drugs she’s used in the past, we need an antidote and paramedic—a doctor if they can get out here. I can’t let him die, and you can’t either. You know it.”
She prayed Kevin wasn’t already dead.
“Wire,” Ken said. Another agent who worked with Nelson handed Ken a communications piece. “Pull up your shirt.
Lucy did, burying any embarrassment she had over the request. Ken taped on the thin wire, then handed her the mic. “I’ll let you attach this to your bra. It’s very sensitive, but small, she shouldn’t be able to see it. It’s wireless with a range of five hundred feet, so as long as you’re in the house, we should be able to hear everything.”
Lucy attached it and pulled down her shirt. Ken handed her a small earpiece. “You need to be able to hear us. Take your hair down, she won’t be able to see it.”
Lucy did what Ken said, and started up the front walk of the Fieldstone house.
“Can you hear me?” Lucy said quietly.
“Loud and clear. Don’t get killed, Kincaid.”
She didn’t plan on dying today.
* * *
Nina Fieldstone opened the door. She had a bruise on her face and dried blood on her mouth, but she was alive.
Nina closed the door as soon as Lucy walked in and locked it. Her hands were shaking and her eyes were wide and wild.
Lucy looked around. She didn’t see anyone else. “Go,” she told Nina. “Get out.”
“She’ll kill Tony. She told me to come down here and let you in but she’ll kill Tony.”
“She’s upstairs?”
“Kevin’s room. She was here all along!”
“Nina!” a female shouted from upstairs. “I’m counting.”
“Please,” Nina whispered, tears in her eyes. “I don’t know what to do—Kevin won’t wake up. I-I—”
“Follow my lead,” Lucy said.
Lucy told Nina to stay behind her. Lucy went upstairs. One door was closed. She pointed and Nina nodded.
Lucy knocked once on the door then slowly opened it.
The first person she saw was Tony Fieldstone. His entire body sagged in the desk chair in the corner of the room, wrists and ankles duct-taped. His head was bleeding from the scalp—likely pistol-whipped. Conscious, but clearly injured. His mouth had been duct-taped as well.
Lucy stepped over the threshold. Danielle sat on Kevin’s bed. She had a gun in hand; her hands were steady as she pointed the gun at Lucy.
Kevin lay under his blankets, but Lucy could see his face. He wasn’t sleeping; he was unconscious. If she used the same drugs as before, they could kill him, depending on the dosage.
But the good news was that Danielle was looking at his face. She was more than a little conflicted about killing him, and Lucy had to capitalize on that doubt.
“Let Kevin go,” Lucy said. “Let Nina carry him out.”
“No,” Danielle said. “We just need to wait a few more minutes. Then they’ll finally understand how selfish they are.” Danielle looked at Lucy for several seconds. “It really is you. You grew up very pretty.”
“I understand why you’re doing this, Danielle, and I’m here to tell you that you have no idea of the repercussions of your actions. I understand that Tony and Nina have failed as parents in your eyes. They betrayed their marriage vows. They put their needs and their careers before their son. Selfish, right?”
“You do understand.” She seemed surprised.
“You are so narrow in your focus that you have no idea the pain you cause to innocent people. To people like me.”
“You had parents who respected each other, who loved you. Your mother not only took care of you, but Justin, too, because your sister was too busy to be bothered with a child.”
Lucy had to let that pass, because if she defended Nelia or Nina or any other parent, Danielle would get angry and Lucy wouldn’t be able to gain her trust.
“You killed Justin to punish Andrew and Nelia. But you punished me, too. And my mother and father. And my other brothers and sister. And all the kids in my school who had to face the dark truth that one of their classmates and friends was dead. That one of their friends—the happy, joyful, smart Justin Stanton—had been murdered.”
“This isn’t about that,” Danielle said, but she averted her eyes, just for a moment.
“Look at me!” Lucy ordered.
Danielle straightened and scowled, but she looked at Lucy.
“I speak four languages fluently, and several others I can pass with. I wanted to be a linguist, or go into diplomacy. I was a championship swimmer—I won dozens of blue ribbons and swam for my college team. I thought I could put Justin’s murder behind me, but I couldn’t. I became an FBI agent. You did that, Danielle. You made me an FBI agent.”
It was clear Danielle hadn’t expected this conversation, nor had she seen the impact of her actions on anyone but the immediate family.
“My life changed the minute you killed my best friend. My mother—Justin’s grandma—cried every day for a year. She aged. My sister Nelia didn’t speak to me until last year—not once—because in the back of her mind, I was partly to blame for Justin’s death. Why? Because I got sick that day and my mom couldn’t keep Justin. When Carina fell asleep on the couch the night you climbed in through Justin’s bedroom window, it was because she was up late studying. She was in college, on a full scholarship, and she had to maintain good grades to keep that scholarship. That’s why she fell asleep after eleven at night. That’s why she didn’t hear you take her nephew out the window.
“My brother Patrick was a major league baseball prospect. Instead of pursuing a baseball career—something he had dreamed about ever since he could throw a ball—he joined the police academy and became a detective. My brother Dillon was in medical school and stayed longer in order to become a psychiatrist—a forensic psychiatrist—because he had a deep need to understand why people kill children. All this, because of you.”
As Lucy spoke, she was inching closer to Danielle. Danielle still had the gun. The gun was still pointed at Lucy, but Lucy had to take the risk. She might anger Danielle so much that she just pressed the trigger to make Lucy shut up, but Lucy had to push because this was the only way she could save Kevin’s life.
“Your selfish, immature, criminal acts touched all of us. I was seven and a half years old and I faced murder for the first time. Justin was closer to me than my own brothers and sisters. You took him away from his parents—and they suffered, so I’m sure you’re very proud of yourself—but you took him away from me. And I suffered. Your actions have far more consequences than your small, petty, selfish mind can process.”
“You do not know me! You have no idea what I have suffered!” Now Danielle was shaking. But she wasn’t looking at Kevin or Nina or Tony. She was looking only at Lucy. As if seeing her for the first time. Or maybe seeing herself.
“I have made my career out of studying sexual predators like Paul Borell who raped and murdered your son. I put men like Borell in prison—and in the grave if they fight back. I know your pain. I have felt it. You want other mothers to feel the pain that you feel. You could have stopped it. You could have gotten help, you could have forgiven your ex-husband, you could have done anything else but kill. Yet you choose to kill.
“What do you think Matthew would think of you now? He would have been thirty last week.”
“How—”
Danielle’s voice cracked. Lucy took one more step toward her.
“Do you think he would be proud of his mother? The woman who loved him? Or do you think he would be horrified that you killed four little boys in his name?”
“I—”
The gun dipped and Lucy pounced.
She leapt forward and grabbed Danielle’s gun hand, tightening her grip on Danielle’s wrist so hard she heard a bone crack. The gun fell from her hand as Danielle screamed in rage. She tried to hit Lucy with her free hand, but Lucy had adrendaline on her side. And her own inner rage fueling her. She pulled Danielle forward, keeping her off balance, and pushed her to the ground. She kicked the gun away with her left foot, then put her right knee firmly on Danielle’s back.
“Backup! Now!” she shouted. “And medics, stat!”
Danielle fought and cried underneath Lucy. Lucy didn’t dare take a hand off the thrashing woman to retrieve the cuffs out of her back pocket.
It didn’t take more than thirty seconds before Ken Swan and Tim Nelson came into the room. Lucy held Danielle down while Swan cuffed her. Nelson went over to Kevin and felt his pulse. “I feel a very faint pulse. I need medics up here!”
Two other agents came in.
Nina was sobbing and trying to reach her son. “Get them out!” Nelson ordered.
“I need to be with my baby! Kevin!”
“Get them out!” Nelson repeated.
Lucy searched Danielle. She found two syringes, one full and one empty. As soon as the medics came in, she handled them the vials. “She drugged the boy, you may need to confirm with what, but in the past she used a narcotic, likely chloral hydrate. We need to get him on a respirator stat.”
The paramedic said, “I have a doctor online. We need room in here.”
Ken wrestled a struggling Danielle Sharpe down the stairs. Nina and Tony were holding each other on the couch of their living room, two agents and a medic with them.
“This is your fault, Nina! You don’t deserve to have a son, you don’t deserve to have anyone!”
Ken pushed Danielle through the door. Lucy was behind them.
She’d found Justin’s killer.
She stopped walking and sat on the lawn, her back against the lone tree. She couldn’t take another step for fear of collapsing. She just needed a minute. She ripped off the mic and took the receiver out of her ear. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t want to listen to the chatter. She wanted—needed—silence.
You found Justin’s killer.
It wasn’t peace she felt.
She felt satisfaction that she had stopped a killer and saved Kevin’s life. Relief that Justin’s murder had finally been solved. And, yes, deep down, a modicum of peace.
But mostly, she felt a deep, numbing sadness.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, but she was grateful everyone let her be. Everything she said to Danielle was the truth, but it wasn’t something that she consciously thought about all the time. When she did remember Justin and her childhood, it was always bittersweet. Bringing it all up, talking about it, reminded Lucy of everything she’d lost because one person made one bad decision that spiraled into many bad choices. Evil choices.
But not everyone who loses someone can kill. Danielle had it in her all along, it just took the right trigger and she snapped.
Ken Swan came over to her and cleared his throat. “Danielle is on her way to jail. Kevin is stable and on his way to the hospital. Tony Fieldstone has a concussion and is in a separate ambulance. Nina is with her son. We’ll need to debrief them—I’ll give them a little time, but we should do it tonight. Are you up for it?”
“Yeah, I am. Just a couple more minutes?”
“Take all the time you need. You did good, Lucy. Really good. I, um, I didn’t know all that about your family.”
“It’s the truth. The butterfly effect, I suppose. One act of violence changes everthing.”
Ken spoke into his mic. “Let him through.” To Lucy he said, “Thirty minutes, then I should be wrapped up here and we’ll go to the hospital.”
“Thanks.”
She put her head on her knees and closed her eyes. She didn’t know how long she sat until she heard a familiar voice.
“Lucy.”
She looked up and blinked back tears she hadn’t realized had been falling. She smiled. “Sean.”
He sat down next to her and wrapped his arms around her. “Swan told me the basics. And the boy is okay.”
She nodded and put her head on his shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
She closed her eyes and let the peace finally seep in.