[20]
Quinn knocked on the adjoining door for the third time since the lights went out. Again, Maddy didn’t answer. The first time, he’d assumed she was taking the shower she’d said she wanted. He’d waited a few more minutes and knocked again. Then again. Now he was getting worried. “Come on, Maddy. Answer the door. I’m sorry! Let’s go swimming!”
He frowned. That wasn’t like her. To ignore him. He grabbed the spare key she’d given him for safety reasons and walked out in the hallway to open her door. “Maddy?” He peered in and didn’t see her. Listened. The shower wasn’t running. He checked just to be sure, calling her name so as not to scare her. She wasn’t in the room. But her phone was. He picked it up off the bed, opened the adjoining door, and stepped back into his room. Then had a thought. He looked back at the small kitchen area. The ice bucket was missing. Relief flooded him. She was probably getting ice.
A knock on his room door spun him around. He walked over to it and looked out the peephole, but could see only a shadow of a man standing there. “Who is it?”
“Um . . . yeah. Someone named Maddy told me to come to this room and tell you that she needs your help.”
Knowing it could be a trap, Quinn pulled his weapon from his shoulder holster and yanked the door open a crack, using it to shield himself. He peered around it. Thanks to the light coming in the end window, he could see a little more of his visitor. “Where is she?”
“I think something happened in the stairwell.” He pointed. “There was a guy. It looked like he pushed her, but she caught herself about the time I opened the door.”
Still aware it could be a trap of some kind, Quinn stepped into the hallway, holding his gun slightly behind him. “Which one?”
The man pointed. “The guy ran up and she followed him while she was yelling at me to come get you.”
He couldn’t take any chances. “Call 911 and tell the dispatcher Quinn Holcombe is requesting backup from Sheriff Danvers, got it?”
“Quinn Holcombe. Sheriff Danvers. Got it.” The man was already tapping his screen. Quinn raced down the hall toward the exit, pushed open the door carefully, and scanned the interior as best he could in the limited light. When he didn’t detect any immediate danger, he bolted up the stairs. He thought he heard footsteps, but didn’t know if it was a guest or Maddy and the man after them.
“Maddy?” he called.
“Up here!”
He followed the sound of the pounding feet. Heard a door open, then close. Then open. “Going to the roof!” The door shut again. Quinn gritted his teeth and took the stairs two at a time.
He burst through the roof door and ducked low just in case someone decided to start shooting. Bolts or bullets, he didn’t care to be hit by either. “Where are you?” he called.
“Fire escape!”
He followed after her, heart pounding the blood through his veins. He rounded the air-conditioning unit just in time to see the figure Maddy was chasing jump off the roof.
And then saw Maddy follow. “Maddy!”
Quinn put on an extra burst of speed and came to the edge. His heart rate slowed slightly when he spotted the two going down the fire escape of the attached building. He jumped the three feet to the next building and grasped the wrought iron railing. By the time he was halfway down, the man in the baseball cap was on the sidewalk and racing for the street.
Maddy was right behind, but limping as she ran. She held her left arm tucked against her side. Quinn was amazed she’d made it this far. The sirens’ wail registered, drawing closer. His friend from the hallway must have done his job.
Quinn pounded after Maddy and caught up with her. “I’ve got him.”
“But I want him.”
“Call in our location.” Quinn snapped the phone into her hand and sped past her, confident she’d keep coming as long as she could. On the street, he saw the man dart around the corner of a store. Quinn bolted after him, rounded the corner. And skidded to a stop. The empty alleyway glared at him. He spun in a circle. No sign of the guy.
“Where did he go?” Maddy leaned over and tucked her sore arm under her once again. Her breaths came in short pants.
“I don’t know. In the back of one of these buildings.” He hurried to the door of the first building while Maddy went to the one on the opposite side.
She turned. “Locked.”
“Open.” Quinn stepped inside and found himself in the kitchen of a restaurant. He went to the nearest person. “Hey, did a guy just come through here?”
The fellow shrugged. “I don’t know. I just walked in here.”
Quinn groaned and turned to the next person. “You?”
“Yeah. He went out the front.” The man turned to the others in the kitchen. “Whoever didn’t lock that back door, you’re fired!”
Quinn and Maddy didn’t waste any more time. They bolted for the front entrance. Once outside, Quinn stopped again when he found himself in the middle of a bustling crowd of moviegoers who’d just exited the theater.
Quinn wanted to slam his other hand into the building. He resisted. “He’s gone. We’ll never find him in this.”
“I hear the sirens,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Let’s get back to the hotel and let Sheriff Danvers know what’s going on.” She sucked in another breath. “If he wants to kill you first, why does he keep coming after me?”
Quinn raised a brow. “Good question.” His phone rang and he glanced at the screen. “It’s Bree.”
“Go ahead. I’m going to report in where we lost him.” She got on her phone and Quinn turned his attention to his partner.
“Hey, Bree, what’s up?”
“Hey, you sound a little winded. You okay?”
“Just fine. What do you need?” He’d tell her about this adventure later.
“I’ve been a busy bee doing background checks on all of the agents Maddy used to work with. The ones in the picture, anyway.”
“Good. And?”
“No one’s ringing a bell.”
“Don’t get me wrong. There are strong feelings where she’s concerned. There are those who believe she set up their loved ones to get ambushed, but truthfully, there’s no one who could pull off this stunt. That took some serious planning, not to mention traveling to Florida and back. No one fits that MO. And none of them have traveled to Florida—at least via commercial air travel—in the past year. And none of them have a pilot’s license.” She paused. “Not that they couldn’t hire a private plane, but I don’t think anyone did.”
“Okay, thanks for looking.”
“I also talked to a Nel Tarrington. Through some intense investigating, I learned she and Maddy were pretty close. She didn’t come right out and say it, but I think she’s running her own investigation into what happened with the ambush and who was behind it. She had only good things to say about Maddy—and she wasn’t the only one, but I really think we need to focus our energies on the victims found in the mass grave and who they knew.”
“Okay. Keep searching. I’ll fill Maddy in.”
“I told Special Agent Tarrington that we’d help look into the accusations made against Maddy and she said we were welcome to do whatever we could. But I keep coming back to the fact that we offered once before and Maddy said not to waste our time. I don’t want to butt in where we’re not wanted.”
“I think if you find the person who set her up, then she’s not going to be mad.”
Maddy glanced up at him and narrowed her eyes, but didn’t protest.
There was a slight pause. “Okay, we’ll go with that instead of the victims,” Bree said. “Stay safe.”
“Working on it.”
He hung up and found Maddy with a frown on her face staring at her phone. Two police cars, sirens blasting, zipped past them, lights glowing in the night. “What is it?” he asked after the ear-piercing noise faded.
“I told them where we lost him. Then my phone beeped with a text from Katie. We’ve got the link for victim number two.”
“Great. What is it?”
“He was a character witness at a trial.”
“Number two is the biblical number for witness or support, right?”
“Yes.”
“Which trial?”
“David Rhymes.”
Quinn felt his world tilt.
Maddy watched the color drain from Quinn’s face. “David Rhymes,” he said. “The serial-killer-I-put-away-six-years-ago David Rhymes. The one who killed Ashley Gorman? That David?”
“That very one.”
He ran a hand through his hair, paced two steps up the sidewalk, then back to stand in front of her. “Come on, we need to get out of sniper range. Let’s get back to the hotel where we can think.”
She agreed. Together, they walked and watched over their shoulders, but made it back to the hotel with no further incidents. “The lights are back on,” she said.
“Apparently someone thought they were being funny and messed with the circuit breaker outside,” a woman standing near the door said. “They got everything back on about five minutes ago.”
They took the stairs to Quinn’s room, not wanting to chance another power outage and getting stuck on the elevator. Quinn slipped to one side of the door and Maddy went to the other. She knew exactly what he was thinking. He wanted to clear the room in case the guy had doubled back, claimed he was the room’s occupant, and managed to talk his way into a key. Stranger things had happened. Quinn swiped his key and pushed the door open. Maddy rounded the doorframe, weapon aimed into the room. She stepped inside. Quinn did the same. He motioned he was going to check the bathroom. She stayed silent and covered him while he opened the door. “Clear,” he said. Next they did the same with her room.
“Clear all around,” Maddy said and holstered her weapon. She followed him back into his room.
Quinn rolled his shoulders, then dropped his key on the dresser and took a seat at the table. He pulled his laptop over and opened it. “Gerald Haynes. One of the character witnesses,” he said. “I remember him now. I don’t know why I didn’t recognize him or his name right off, but I don’t think I was in court the day he testified.”
“Quinn, how many character witnesses have you listened to? How many trials have you sat through?”
“I know, but this one . . .” He shook his head. “David Rhymes was special.”
“Why?”
“Because I let him go,” he said softly.
“You personally? Or the DA?”
“Well—”
“That’s what I thought. But you caught him again.”
“Yes, but it was awful for the families of those women, girls really. When I let him go, I had to look them in the eyes and tell them I knew he was the killer, but I’d been instructed to get more evidence.” He sighed. “And in the meantime, I had to let him go.”
Maddy sat up straight from her position on the couch. “So he killed Ashley before he was arrested for the final time.”
Quinn rubbed his eyes. “Yes.”
She bit her lip and moved to sit across from him at the table. “Anyone who vowed revenge?”
“Of course.” Quinn met her gaze. “Her father, Leonard Nance.” He leaned back. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize him. I mean, I had twinges of ‘that guy looks a little familiar,’ but—” He tapped a few keys on the keyboard, then spun the laptop toward her. “This is what he looked like when I last saw him in the courtroom.”
A well-manicured, well-dressed man stared back at her. But when she saw the eyes, she knew the two men were one and the same. “That’s how I remember him too. I remember seeing him on the news, spouting his hatred for inefficient law enforcement.” She leaned forward. “So what’s he doing hanging out with the sheriff, being all helpful and stuff? How is it he’s here where all these people are found murdered? There’s no way you’ll convince me that it’s a coincidence. He’s our killer, isn’t he? He’s the one who brought us here.”
Quinn stood. “I don’t know, but it’s sure looking like it.”
She frowned. “But it wasn’t the same guy in the hallway. The guy who tried to snatch me had short red hair and a scar on his face. Then again, it was definitely his voice. I’ll never forget that voice.”
“He could have worn a wig.”
She nodded. “True.”
“But the guy I saw on the island didn’t have a scar.”
“He could have used some makeup or something to give himself one.”
Quinn shook his head. “I’m going to call Danvers and see if he’s managed to pick up Tabor/Nance yet.” His phone rang as he started to dial and he looked up at her. “Well, how about that? It’s Danvers.”
He pressed the speakerphone button. “Hello?”
“I’m at your door. Let me in.”
Maddy crossed the room, checked the peephole, then opened the door. Sheriff Danvers stepped inside and shut it behind him. “We lost him.”
Maddy rubbed her hands together. “Did you pick up Tabor?”
The sheriff shook his head. “No. Unfortunately, no one seems to have seen him since you two ran into him at the restaurant. We checked his home and the transport shop. Neither his son nor his wife have seen him since early this morning and he’s not answering his cell phone.”
Maddy tapped the table, thinking. “You think he found out you were looking for him and ran?”
“Maybe, I don’t know. I can’t imagine how he would have even known that I wanted to question him.”
“Word seems to get around this little place quite effectively, Sheriff.”
“You mean the fact that someone figured out you were staying here and attacked you in the hotel?”
“Yes. Keeping a low profile didn’t exactly work for us,” Maddy said.
He shook his head. “The only people we can connect that to are Brad and Tabor.”
“And if one of them told the killer about our presence, he would have had plenty of time to hop in his plane in South Carolina and arrive in time to attack us.”
“Or if Tabor is the killer,” Maddy said, “he still would have had enough time to fly home and be here in time for us to run into him at the restaurant.”
“Could have been someone in your department,” Quinn said.
“You mean one of my guys is behind letting a killer know you’re here?” He laughed. “Not likely.”
“I’m not saying on purpose, but a slip of the tongue in the wrong place to the wrong person, or maybe not even aware someone is listening to your conversation about the two out-of-towners who have returned to help with the case?”
The sheriff shook his head and hitched his pants. “I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened, just saying I doubt it.” He sighed. “Most likely someone saw you down at the marina and word spread. Or Brad told someone. Whatever happened, the word is out. But there’s another thing too. Tabor has a history. Every so often he goes on a binge.”
“Drinking?” Maddy asked.
“Yes. He still hasn’t come to terms with Ashley’s death. Most of the time he does all right, but every so often . . .” He clicked his tongue and gave a slight shrug.
Quinn pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah. He was drinking when we ran into him at the restaurant, but said it was his only one because he had a ferry.”
“If he had a ferry, then he would have been fine. He’s never put a client in danger due to his drinking.”
“But after he was finished with the ride?”
“Then I imagine he might have put away a few more and he’ll go home and sleep it off.”
“And it’s also possible he found out you wanted to question him and took off. The more we look at this, the more it looks like Robert—Leonard—is our killer.”
The sheriff shook his head. “He’s a grieving father, but a killer?” He heaved a sigh. “All right, let’s meet in the morning. I’ll have two deputies stay the night. One outside the hotel in his cruiser and we’ll plant the other one in between your doors. I’ll give ’em an extra day vacation or overtime, their choice.”
“You’re sure you can spare the resources?” Maddy asked.
“Well, I sure can’t have you two getting killed on my watch.”
“Appreciate the concern.”
“I am. Very concerned.” He slapped Quinn on the shoulder and headed for the door once more. “I’ll let you know when we’ve got an ID on the bodies.”
“Wait, what? Did you just say bodies? As in, plural?” Quinn asked.
“I didn’t mention that yet? Sorry. Yeah, there wasn’t just one in that grave. There were three.”