When Shadows Fall Read online

  He ignored the looks from the rest of the team. They’d been a little cold to him since he returned a few weeks ago, not understanding why he’d thrown away a chance to work full-time on the JTTF—the Joint Terrorism Task Force. They’d kill for it.

  Let them have it. He was better suited to this. Death and mayhem one-on-one, not for a higher cause, but for personal gain. He understood it. He’d lived it for so long, he flat-out got it.

  Armstrong shot him a look. “Glad you could join us, Detective Fletcher. Are you up to speed?”

  Fletch nodded. He wasn’t, all he knew was what he’d learned from the news in his car and Hart’s texts, but he wasn’t about to admit that. “Let’s begin our evening update. The child has been missing for seven hours now. There have been no sightings, and damn few calls about this little girl. We’re working the media angle hard. The tip line is going out on the local news right now, so expect this all to change. The FBI’s child endangerment team is lead on the case—this is Special Agent Rob Thurber and Special Agent Jordan Blake. They’ll take it from here.”

  The lights dimmed, and a picture flashed up on the screen, a three-foot-high shot of a beautiful little girl, hair a pale red, eyes blue as the sky. She was smiling, missing her two front teeth, and seemed so damn happy, and so alive, Fletcher could barely stand to look at her. The thought of those eyes staring unseeing toward the heavens made him swallow, hard. She looked vaguely familiar, but she was a kid—they all looked alike at that age, still pudding-faced and round, before their bones started pushing out of the skin to form their permanent features and identities.

  Blake nodded at Armstrong. Fletcher watched her move toward the mike as though she’d done this a hundred times. She was pretty young to be putting off the been there, done that attitude. But she cleared her throat before she started to speak and wiped an invisible hair back from her face, a tiny self-conscious gesture, and Fletcher realized he was wrong. She was scared to death. It made him root for her.

  “Thanks, Captain. We appreciate all your help here. As you know, Rachel was last seen by the main zoo entrance on Connecticut Avenue. Her nanny was talking with another nanny, and swears she only took her eyes off her for a second. We’ve done a background check on the Stevenses’ nanny. She’s Guatemalan, here legally, and so far, everything she says checks out. She seems to be a cautious and concerned player, not a suspect.

  “There are cameras galore in the area, but a sweep has turned up nothing. Metro canvass is still ongoing, but they haven’t drummed up any leads, either. Whoever did this was very careful, and managed to keep off-video. We’re set up on the family’s home phone and cells in case a ransom demand comes in, and my team has started deconstructing the Stevenses’ lives to see why someone might want to take their little girl. Because this seems like a professional snatch, we’d like to think there will be a ransom demand.”

  Fletcher put up a hand. “A professional snatch? Agent Blake, what do the parents do?”

  She nodded at him in appreciation. “Mr. Stevens works for an aerospace company in Bethesda, Lockheed Martin, and Mrs. Stevens is a legal attaché to the State Department. She is currently out of the country, and is expected back late tonight. They both have high-level security clearances and work with classified materials.”

  Agent Blake’s demeanor, the mother’s job at the State Department, the idea of a professional kidnapping... It sounded to him as though Mrs. Stevens might be working for more than the State Department, maybe was a CIA asset. They were thick as flies around town lately, it seemed. Which upped all this to the next level. If this wasn’t a sicko after a little girl, but a terrorist trying to make a point, they could be dealing with a whole new level of crazy.

  Agent Blake continued the briefing, running through the protocols her team had in place. Fletcher listened with half an ear. Snatching a little girl off a busy street in the middle of the day was quite a feat. There had to be more than one person involved. He knew the area where she’d gone missing. It was heavily populated, busy, two Metro stops nearby, lots of foot traffic and vehicle traffic. The National Zoo hosted daily field trips; there were busloads of excited kids running around. Add in the usual contingent of people wandering the streets and he could see why they chose the zoo to snatch her from. It was busy and crowded, and in all the confusion, a single kid could disappear easily.

  What a couple of days. The eyes of the dead boy from yesterday crept into his thoughts, and he looked at the notepad in front of him to realize he’d drawn that crime scene, captured the boy’s empty, horrified look quite well.

  “Fletcher? Yo, earth to Fletch?”

  Hart was poking him in the ribs with a pencil.

  “Stop it, you jerk.”

  Hart pointed toward the front of the room, where their boss, Captain Armstrong, stood frowning at them, hands on his hips in exasperation.

  Fletcher raised an apologetic brow. He ripped off the page and balled it up. “Sir?”

  “Fletcher, I need you to run point with Agent Blake. If you’re through with your nap, that is.” The homicide detectives tittered, and the FBI agents had the audacity to look amused.

  Fletch gave them a lazy smile. Go ahead, laugh it up. You’ll regret it later. “No, sir. I’m fine. No problem.”

  “Good. Come on, people. Let’s get our asses in gear and head out. Find this girl. We don’t need another hit this year.”

  Another hit. They all knew what he meant. D.C. had been under siege from terror attempts and drug wars for the past few months, and it was wearing on everyone. You could only keep your people on high alert for so long before things began falling through the cracks. It was one of the reasons Fletcher begged off the JTTF. The pressure there was obscene.

  They all got to their feet. Armstrong called out, “Fletch, my office, please,” and there was a round of boos and hisses. Fletch flipped his colleagues the bird and went to his boss’s glass-walled office.

  “Shut the door,” Armstrong snapped.

  He did. “Sorry about that, Cap. I’ve had a lot going on.”

  “I know. What were you doing in Lynchburg?”

  “Chasing a dead end, I think. Dr. Owens received a letter from a dead man asking for her to investigate his murder. I wanted to be sure nothing went south. She posted the guy, sent some lab work up with me. I don’t see it going too far.” He hoped.

  Armstrong sat behind the desk and smoothed his fingers across his mustache. “All right. This kid who drowned yesterday? They’ve got a preliminary ID. Name’s Oscar Rivera. Catholic University, good kid. No known connections to anything that should have gotten him killed. FBI sent over the news, but they’re handling the case. They think it might be related to another couple of murders they’re working on. We’re off the hook there.”

  “I figured it was part of something bigger. That was way too creepy to be an accident.”

  “They’re thinking it’s drug cartel related, but with a sweet kid like Rivera, I don’t know. It doesn’t fit.”

  “Saw the wrong thing at the wrong time, maybe.”

  “Maybe.” Armstrong went quiet, then leaned back in his chair and stroked his mustache. What hair he didn’t have on his dark, shiny head was more than accounted for on his lip. “Fletch, are you still with us?”

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  “You know exactly what I mean. You had a taste of how the other half lives during your sojourn at the JTTF. Is working homicide going to be enough for you?”

  “I wouldn’t have asked for the transfer back if I wasn’t sure I wanted to be here.”

  “I know you wanted out before you left. You’ve made it clear you plan to put in your twenty and move to greener pastures. And that anniversary is going to be here sooner than you think. But if you want to stay, Fletch, stick around a few more years, I’d like to put you up for lieutenant. And God help me, I wa
nt to give you your own squad.”

  Armstrong’s jaw was set, as if he knew what Fletch would say, since he’d said it so many times before. No way, sir. I can’t even think about it, sir. I want out as soon as my date comes, sir.

  Lieutenant. His own squad. Autonomy.

  Fletcher surprised them both by saying, “I appreciate the opportunity, sir. So long as Hart gets to be my lead detective, I’m in.”

  Armstrong’s face split in a smile, a rare enough occurrence it felt like the sun breaking through after a month of clouds. “Good man. I’m glad to hear it. Now, get out there and help the FBI find Rachel Stevens.”

  Fletcher went back to his office with a spring in his step. He’d made the decision in a split second, and he knew it was the right one. When Armstrong said Lieutenant he’d actually felt a click of yes, this is the right thing to do.

  It meant more work, more hours, more responsibility, but for some reason, he wanted it. He wanted it bad.

  He dialed Andrea Bianco, head of the D.C. JTTF. They’d met while Fletcher was attached there for a case, and had been very casually hanging out. He didn’t want to call it dating. He liked her, maybe even a lot, but Fletcher wasn’t exactly the settling-down type. He’d done that once to disastrous results, and vowed never to take things to the next level again.

  Of course, he’d have been willing to make that particular sacrifice for Sam Owens, but he knew, deep down, he would have ended up hurting her, and she him.

  Andrea answered in a rush of “Hi, how are you I’m running out the door is it important or can it wait,” the words smashed together, breathless and excited, and he said, “Yeah, sure, but—” and she said, “Okay, great,” and hung up without saying goodbye.

  So much for that.

  She had a seriously heavy duty job, with responsibilities he couldn’t be paid enough in the world to handle. He didn’t want it. Being at JTTF was a straight line into cardiac arrest.

  Maybe he’d catch her later, but he was going to be tied up, too. No matter. This was the reason he didn’t want to be tied down, ever again. Dating other cops was hard, but the only way a romance worked in this field was with someone who understood the hours, the devotion, the insanity and the horror.

  He plopped down at his desk and pulled up his email. Nothing from Lynchburg. Damn it.

  Hart knocked on the door.

  “Hey, princess, ready to go chat with the looker from the FBI? Hey, why do you look all googly-eyed and happy? Did Armstrong suck—”

  “And that’s enough out of you, young man. I just agreed to take over your lowly ass. You’re looking at your new homicide LT. And my first administrative move is to promote you, if you’ll take my spot as lead.”

  Hart grinned, the muscles in his neck flexing. “Hell, man, that’s great news. You deserve it. I deserve the bump, too. When is this blessed occasion taking place?”

  “Next round of promotions, so next week, maybe.” He stood, clapped Hart on the back. “Come on, let’s go hook up with the FBI folks and find this kid. I remember the chick’s name. What’s the dude’s again?”

  “Rob Thurber. He’s a lifer, been there for twenty years. He—”

  “Rob Thurber? God, that name sounds so familiar. Where did I see it?”

  And then it hit him. The will. Savage’s bloody will. Rob Thurber was the name of one of the beneficiaries.

  Chapter

  25

  Bethesda, Maryland

  FLETCHER AND HART followed the FBI agents to the Stevens house out in Bethesda. On the drive over, Fletcher made a couple of calls, used his contacts to get a background on Rob Thurber. He didn’t want to go into the conversation about his relationship with Timothy Savage totally blind.

  Thurber was, by all accounts, a straight shooter. Dedicated to the cause, he’d been an agent for twenty-five years, applied early, right out of school, and had served in several capacities within the organization. He was part of the Behavioral Analysis Unit tasked to the child endangerment team. He was their profiler, the one who looked at the victims and told you what sort of person would be interested in lifting them from their lives.

  He’d asked a couple of quick questions about Jordan Blake, as well—she, too, was a lifer, though she was twenty years younger than Thurber and just getting her feet wet. But she had a track record of solves, a knack for finding missing kids, so she was running the show.

  They seemed like solid people. So what was Thurber’s connection to Savage?

  Nothing to do but ask the man face-to-face.

  He debated calling Sam, telling her he’d found a possible heir, but decided to wait until he talked to Thurber himself, determine if it was a fluke or a coincidence, or if he was the real deal.

  Fletcher didn’t believe in coincidence.

  And the backdrop of this missing kid was sure to keep things interesting. Fletcher knew the odds weren’t good for Rachel Stevens, and he felt immediately guilty for thinking it. The longer she was missing, the bigger the chance she was gone forever. This was a noncustodial kidnapping, the worst possible scenarios at play. It would break his heart, if he let it. He couldn’t afford to. He had to stay detached, stay focused. If he let himself think about what might actually be happening to the little girl, he wouldn’t be worth a flip. He had to do his best to find her before the worst happened.

  They took a final turn into a small, neat neighborhood. The Stevens home was a modest two-story brick house with a professionally landscaped and maintained yard on a cul-de-sac. There was a lot of activity on the street: neighbors taking cover in the shade of large, leafy trees, children at play signs at the intersections. This was a good area of town, perfect for young families, and normally untouched by a tragedy of this magnitude.

  There was a chalk drawing on the asphalt in front of the house—a big pink heart with the words We Love You, Rachel underneath. A few teddy bears and batches of flowers were leaning against the black wrought-iron mailbox post, forlorn on the ground, and the neighbors who weren’t already gathering peeked out from behind their curtains every time they heard a car.

  Fletcher saw a satellite truck make the turn behind them. The media were here, too. Great. Let the cacophony begin.

  He put the Caprice in Park. “You ready for this?”

  Hart nodded. “Better go in before the gauntlet arrives. The minute the 6:00 p.m. broadcast goes live, this place will be overrun with newsies and the tips are going to start flowing in.”

  They followed the agents up the front walk. Before Thurber had a chance to knock, a dark-haired man with a long nose and thin, round silver wire glasses opened the door. His eyes and the tip of his nose were red, but he seemed to be holding it together. At the sight of the agents, his expression changed—hope and dread spilling across his face, etching so deeply into the lines of his skin he seemed like a detailed painting instead of a real person.

  His voice shook. “Is there news?”

  Agent Blake shook her head. “Not yet, sir. May we come in?”

  Stevens’s expression fell. He sniffed once, then melted back away from the entrance, and the four cops trooped in. He shut the door behind them and gestured to the living room.

  While the house looked tranquil on the outside, inside it was humming with activity and was packed with people: agents running wiretaps, a grandmotherly looking woman who was crying quietly—Fletcher recognized her as the nanny—a couple of teenagers. They all looked up expectantly, then realized these were simply interlopers—there was no news—and went back to their business.

  Stevens brought them to a small den off the more formal living room, a library and office space. There were two comfortable sofas facing each other, and a desk at the head. He sat on the edge of the desk, and everyone else arranged themselves on the sofas.

  “What’s happening?” Stevens asked.

 
Special Agent Blake took the lead. “Sir, this is Detective Darren Fletcher, and Detective Lonnie Hart, both with D.C. Metro. They’re going to be helping with the investigation. I’m sorry to say we don’t have anything new. The tip line should be out now, and I know you want to get the reward under way. Like I mentioned, we don’t want to go with that just yet. Let’s give it a day and see where we are.”

  Stevens was wild-eyed, a man trying very hard not to tip over the edge. “Give it a day. A day? What you’re really saying is you think she’s gone. You think my little girl is gone.” He got up and started to pace. “What are you doing to find her? Why are you all here, in the house? Why aren’t you out on the street, looking? I need to get out there. I need to go look for her. I can’t wait around here anymore.”

  He started out of the room and Jordan captured his arm. “Sir, Mr. Stevens, I know this is difficult. You’re doing great. We are doing everything possible to find your little girl. Please, don’t give up hope. The more we look into this, the more it looks like a professional kidnapping, not just a random event.”

  He stopped cold. “Why do you say that? What in the world makes you think a pro took Rachel?”

  “Both the cleanness of the snatch and the nature of your work, sir, and your wife’s. You’re both cleared for Top Secret classified materials. Your wife’s position at the State Department is quite sensitive. The kidnapper managed to disappear Rachel in the middle of a busy city street with no one the wiser. It’s not like she wandered off the beaten path, and vanished. She was taken. There one minute, gone the next, as your nanny stated. It’s risky to take a child in the middle of a crowd like that, so whoever did it knew what they were doing. They’d most likely been following the family’s routines for days, getting a sense of how things work.”

  The cords in Stevens’s neck stood out; he was about to completely blow. “So you’re saying there are professional kidnappers out there, roaming the streets, just waiting for us to turn away so they can snatch our kids? I don’t buy that for a second.”