Buried Page 19

  “I’ve got to take a call,” Sayer called down and then headed away from the balcony for some privacy. She faced the wall and spoke softly. “Hey, Adi.”

  “Hi, Sayer. How’s the case going?”

  “Fine, fine. How’s the I’m-going-to-college celebration there?”

  Adi laughed, which made Sayer smile. When she’d first moved in, Adi had been surly, angry at the world. Not that Sayer blamed her after what she’d been through. But slowly over the past few months she’d actually begun laughing occasionally. It made Sayer feel like they might both be doing something right. Now she just had to not fuck this up.

  “My friends took me out for Thai food last night.”

  “Nice,” Sayer said.

  “I’ve also got a surprise for you when you get home.…”

  “You do? I can’t wait.” Sayer didn’t say more, letting Adi get to why she called.

  “So, uh … I’m calling because I have a question for you … I’m … I mean, I’ve been talking to my counselor … about college, and then the applications, and financial aid, and I was wondering if…” She jumbled her words together.

  “Slow down, Adi. Nana called me last night and told me what’s up.”

  Adi blew out a hard breath. “Ha, I should’ve known she would do that. So, what do you think?”

  “Of course, I’d love to make everything official. Nana e-mailed me this morning to let me know she’s already got a lawyer in mind,” Sayer said. “Nothing would make me happier.”

  Adi let out an emotion-laden sigh.

  “Thank you.…”

  Bang!

  A gunshot exploded from below.

  Bang, bang, bang!

  Max and Kyle both shouted as the gunshots continued.

  Their chaotic voices echoed upward.

  “Get down!”

  “Gun!”

  Sayer’s entire body went into high alert, heart roaring in her ears.

  She dropped the phone and slid out her Glock as she ran in a crouch toward the edge of the balcony. She scanned the room below.

  Max pressed himself against the back wall, but she couldn’t see Kyle, who was directly below her.

  “Down, Kyle!” Max shouted, firing toward the door. The door was just out of sight, so she couldn’t see who Max was shooting at.

  Another bang from the direction of the doorway. Kyle let out a sharp grunt. The wet sound of someone being shot sent Sayer flying down the stairs.

  Kyle lay just at the bottom, crawling for cover. Blood seeped from his head onto the threadbare green carpet.

  Max crouched behind a low shelf, clearly about to dash out and grab Kyle.

  Max and Sayer locked eyes for a brief moment. He lifted his chin toward Kyle. She pressed herself against the wall and nodded toward the door.

  Go, she mouthed as she leaned around a corner and pulled the trigger twice.

  With her gunfire as cover, Max dove for Kyle and dragged him behind the nearest shelves.

  Low and fast, Sayer circled toward the door, gun steady.

  Footsteps echoed from the hall. The shooter was fleeing her approach.

  “FBI. Freeze!” she shouted, but the shooter was off and running.

  Sayer switched into pursuit mode and unleashed her full speed.

  She cleared the doorway just in time to see the figure at the end of the long hallway, nothing but a blur of black clothes.

  She steadied her gun, still at a sprint, and squeezed the trigger. The gun thudded in her hand with a bang as the figure disappeared around the corner.

  Moments later, Sayer rounded the same corner.

  Nothing.

  Open doors lined the next hall, and Sayer moved, steady and quiet, clearing each doorway. The shooter could be lying in wait anywhere.

  By the time she got to the end, she knew he was gone.

  She followed the curving hall around until it emptied into the grand entryway. The front door hung wide open, wind blowing rain in across the marble floor.

  “Dammit,” she said, jogging outside.

  Sayer ran onto the manicured lawn in the now heavy rain. Standing in the downpour, she turned, eyes roving in a circle, but the heavy rain created a gray curtain obscuring everything. The grass squished under her boots, too sodden to leave footprints she could follow. She had no idea which direction the shooter had gone.

  Sayer hurried back to help Kyle and Max.

  Kyle leaned against the wall. Max knelt over him, pulling off his own shirt. With his teeth, Max tore a strip off his T-shirt and tied it around Kyle’s head.

  “He got away,” Sayer said as she crouched next to Kyle. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” Kyle looked furious. “Someone shot me,” he growled.

  Sayer understood the reaction. When you got shot, angry was better than scared.

  “He’ll be okay,” Max said. “Looks like a graze to his head. I’ve already got EMTs on the way. You get a look at the shooter?”

  “No.” Sayer took a deep breath to calm the fading adrenaline rush. “I think he knew where he was going. Knew the layout of the place.”

  Kyle’s burning gaze intensified.

  A faint sound drifted down from the balcony above. Sayer was about to draw her gun when she realized it was Adi’s voice.

  “Sayer! Sayer!”

  She ran upstairs and grabbed the phone that she had dropped when the shooting began. “Adi!”

  “Sayer, oh, my god, Sayer.” The panic in her voice made it gravelly. “Are you okay? Were those gunshots?”

  “Yeah, but I’m fine. Everyone is okay. Sorry, I just dropped the phone.”

  Adi sobbed into the phone. “Oh, my god, Sayer, oh, my god.” She cried uncontrollably.

  “Hey, hey, Adi. I’m really okay. Everything is all right.”

  “I just thought…” Adi tried to catch her breath. “I just thought that I’d lost you too.”

  Sayer comforted Adi as much as she could as guilt burned a hole in her gut. Was she doing the right thing, bringing Adi into this kind of life?

  UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL, CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA

  Max and Sayer hovered outside the emergency room while Kyle got stitched up. Max wore a boxy blue hospital shirt that pulled across his shoulders. They both pressed themselves against the wall, trying to stay out of the way of the busy staff.

  The doctor finally came out, beaming. “Chief Nelson’s going to be totally fine. He’ll have one hell of a headache and needs to keep his stitches clean, but the bullet only grazed him. Skimmed right along his skull. He got lucky as hell. Millimeter to one side, and he’d be dead.”

  After the doctor left, Max took a deep breath and tugged at the awkwardly fitting shirt. “Well, that was more exciting than I expected. Though I’ve got to say, our UNSUB has a pretty lousy track record. First he tried and failed to set you and Dana on fire, then tried to shoot Ezra and missed, and now he barely managed to graze Kyle.” Max’s phone buzzed and he read the text. “I sent Piper and a Rockfish officer up to the archives. Looks like they’ve already finished gathering anything that could be the right police records to bring to the ranger station along with Kyle’s cruiser.” Max looked up at the operating-room door. “Glad he’s going to be okay. And since I sacrificed my favorite T-shirt to stop his bleeding, maybe he won’t hate me quite as much.”

  Sayer realized that Max was rambling, the aftereffect of his second adrenaline rush of the day. She nodded, distracted, unable to stop replaying the sound of Adi’s frantic sobbing on the phone. She tried to refocus on the case.

  “I guess we can at least cross Kyle off our list of suspects, since our UNSUB did just try to kill him,” Max said.

  “Silver lining, I suppose.”

  Max looked up at the fluorescent lights with displeasure. “Hey, let’s go out and get some air while we wait for Kyle.”

  As they stepped out onto the portico, a small cluster of reporters rushed toward them, calling out questions, cameras up.

  “Agent Altair, will Chief
Nelson live?”

  “What happened at the archives?”

  “Did the attacker get away?”

  “When do you testify at the Quantico Hearings?”

  Without a word, Sayer and Max swung around and went right back inside. The reporters clustered around the door but knew they couldn’t enter the ER.

  “Well, shit,” Sayer said. “I should probably call Assistant Director—” As she spoke, her phone buzzed. She answered.

  “Sayer!” Holt barked. “What the hell just happened down there? Is everyone okay?”

  She could hear the genuine concern in Holt’s voice.

  “Everyone’s fine.”

  “Who was shot?” Holt pressed.

  “The Rockfish Gap police chief was just grazed. He’ll be totally fine.”

  “So much for sending you on a case where no one is shooting at you.” Holt did not sound amused. “What the hell happened?”

  “We were at the archives looking for the police report for that young woman that went missing back in 2002.”

  “And someone just opened up on you?”

  “Exactly. And they knew their way around the archives.”

  “Did you see him, or her?”

  “No visual on our UNSUB. Our next step is to see if we can figure out what the shooter didn’t want us to find in those records.”

  Holt grunted. “Okay, Sayer. You get this total mess of a case solved.”

  “We need more help,” Sayer said bluntly. “We need a task force. There’s a thousand threads here and not enough people to follow them out. Don’t forget, there’s a little girl still out there.…”

  The phone was silent for a long time and Sayer cringed, waiting for the explosion from Holt.

  Instead, Holt sighed. “I know there is. And I know you need more hands. But with everything here, we just don’t have the resources right now.” Her voice sounded heavy, tired. “Today might be my last day running Quantico, but I’ll see if I can pull some folks from another office somewhere. In the meantime, lean on the locals for help, rein in the chaos down there.”

  “On it,” Sayer said but realized that Holt had already hung up.

  She tucked away her phone as Kyle emerged, head swathed in thick white bandages.

  “Want us to drop you off at home on our way out?” Max tentatively offered.

  “Like hell I’m going home. Whoever did this just tried to kill me. Let’s go look through those records and see what this asshole didn’t want us to find.”

  SOUTHERN RANGER STATION, SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK, VA

  A cluster of media vans clogged the parking lot outside the ranger station. In the light drizzle, the reporters huddled close together under the small overhang just outside the front door. Murder, missing women and a missing child, a cave full of bones, a beleaguered FBI agent at the heart of a major scandal, and now a cop shot. It was a media heyday.

  Sayer, Max, and Kyle pulled up but made no move to get out of the truck, not wanting to face another wall of reporters.

  “Want me to run them off?” Max offered.

  “The park is public land, we can’t kick them out,” Kyle said.

  “Just completely ignore them and let’s get inside.” Sayer pushed open the truck door.

  They no-commented their way through the reporters shouting questions. Scowling, Sayer slammed through the front door of the station.

  Ezra greeted them just inside. He balanced against his walker and gestured at the media. “I see you’ve brought a few friends with you.”

  Sayer grunted with annoyance.

  “Well, I know you’re famous when you manage to bring out this many vultures before ten A.M.,” he continued.

  Sayer checked the time, surprised that it was still so early in the morning. After the attack on Ezra and Dana, the shooting at the archives, and their trip to the hospital, she felt like it should at least be lunchtime.

  “Well, we’ll have them on tape now.” Ezra pointed to a small camera hanging above the entry. “One of the park rangers helped me set everything up while you were down at the archives. I’ve got four cameras outside and six more inside, including one in the conference room. They’ll record everything that happens here. If anyone tries to break in, we’ll get one hell of a good look at them.”

  “That’s perfect, Ez.” Sayer put a gentle hand on his shoulder and could feel his muscles quivering beneath her hand. He was exhausted.

  “Ezra, this is Kyle Nelson, Rockfish Gap police chief. Kyle, this is Ezra Coen, FBI data wizard. Where’s Dana and Piper?” Sayer said to Ezra.

  “Dana’s still working on the bones. Piper decided to get started on the records.”

  “All right, then let’s join her in the conference room and get to work.”

  * * *

  The team stopped just inside the conference room door, staring at the massive number of boxes on the table.

  Piper sat hunched among the teetering stacks. “You told me to bring anything that might have the right records.…” She trailed off apologetically.

  “No, this is great, Piper.” Sayer strode to the table, ready to tackle the job. “Let’s get on it.”

  Max didn’t sit down. “You mind if I run Kona before I dive in here?” His body looked wound as tight as Kona’s. “I need to make sure she gets exercise every day or she goes a little bonkers.”

  Sayer nodded, understanding that Max also needed to blow off some steam from the shooting. Max practically ran out of the room, Kona at his hip.

  Ezra, Kyle, and Piper began pulling boxes open.

  “All right, we’re specifically looking for the records from 2002 so we can see Cricket’s missing persons report, see if they did any investigation. But I’d also like to look through anything from ’96 to ’02. Maybe someone saw something suspicious. There’s got to be a reason that our friendly attacker tried to stop us from getting these files.”

  They dove into the boxes, working quietly together. Half an hour later Max came in, flushed from exercise and damp from the rain. He joined them without a word.

  With so many bodies in the room, the temperature rose slightly, and Sayer enjoyed feeling slightly warm for the first time in days.

  Absorbed in her work, Sayer jumped slightly when Ezra called out, “Aha!” He triumphantly pointed to a faded gray box. “Rockfish Gap police records.” He held up a thick file.

  “Great!” Sayer took the papers. “Let’s see.” She began skimming the faded copy of the first page. “Damn, these are from the 1950s.”

  “Hang on.” Ezra pulled open another gray box. And then another. “Uh, yeah, all of these gray boxes look like they have police records. Oh, there’s more.…”

  They all groaned as Ezra pointed to a stack of almost twenty gray boxes.

  “Wow, all right, let’s divide and conquer: 1996 through 2002. Let’s find ’em and start to dig through the police activity.”

  They finally found the missing persons report for Cricket Nelson. When Sayer flipped open the file, she let out a soft gasp at the photo of young Cricket. Her pointed chin. Wavy blond hair. Sparkling blue eyes.

  “Max, Kyle, neither of you told me that our modern victims look exactly like Cricket. She could literally be one of them.”

  “Sorry,” Max said. “To be honest, I’d almost forgotten what she looked like.” He looked over Sayer’s shoulder at the image. “Whoa, you aren’t kidding. She looks like their doppelgänger.”

  “And I hadn’t even seen the photos of the modern victims until just now.…” Kyle was clearly implying that Sayer should’ve brought him on board sooner.

  With a sigh of annoyance, Sayer went back to Cricket’s missing persons file. She read through the single-page report. Only the barest of details: eighteen, went missing right after graduation. It was clear the officer writing the report assumed she was a newly graduated young adult who ran away.

  “Dammit, nothing here,” Sayer grunted and went back to the box. “So what didn’t he want us to find?” Sayer tur
ned back to the police records. Missing dogs. A domestic dispute that ended with a bottle being thrown. A child’s stolen wagon. A loud noise that turned out to be mating raccoons. She began to wonder if she had led her team on a wild-goose chase. But what other lead did they have?

  * * *

  An hour later, Sayer put down the last file as Dana hurried into the conference room. “I’ve got news!”

  “Please tell me you have a lead we can follow, because there’s fuck all here.”

  “Boy, do I. Two leads, actually.” Dana shook the file in her hand, making her skull earrings dance. “First, we got the DNA back from our attacker this morning. Ezra, the report’s in your in-box.”

  “We know who attacked me?” Ezra eagerly clicked on his computer. As he read, his face contorted into an uncomfortable grimace.

  “Uh…” He glanced up at Kyle, then over at Max. “It’s a match to Kyle’s sister.”

  “Cricket Nelson attacked us this morning?” Max leaned forward in his chair.

  Ezra nodded, chin jutting with anger at the memory. “Which presumably means she’s also the person who shot at you at the archives.”

  Kyle touched the bandage on his head as a wild range of emotions danced across his face. His expression settled into genuine shock. “You’re telling me that my sister who has been missing for seventeen years just tried to kill me?”

  “Okay, I’ll admit, that’s … I mean, wow.” Sayer went to the murder board. Despite trying to keep an open mind, she had honestly believed that Cricket was probably a victim back in 2002. This attack changed everything. “There’s no doubt about the DNA results?”

  “Nope. They’re a clear match. She attacked Dana and me this morning. Took the DNA sample myself.” Ezra held up his hand and wiggled his fingers.

  “This certainly blows the idea of Cricket-as-victim out of the water,” she muttered to herself, staring at the photo of Hannah hanging next to the image of Jillian and Grace Watts. Eyes still on the smiling girl, she spoke loudly. “So, twenty-three years ago, someone starts ritually murdering people and dumping their bodies in a cave. That continues for six years until 2002, when Cricket disappeared. The murders stop the same year she ran, leaving behind a sword with her blood on it. Seventeen years later, she’s back and now we have two new murders on our hands. All of which suggests that Cricket could be our UNSUB in not just the old murders, but in the new ones as well.”