The Coldest Fear Read online

  If she somehow managed to live through what was coming next, her shrink would no doubt insist she return to weekly therapy sessions. After all, someone as broken as Bobbie Sue Gentry, who’d lost her husband and her child not even a year ago and her partner of seven years just two months back, couldn’t hope to rebound so quickly. Nearly being raped and having a dear friend murdered all within the past forty-eight hours was more than any human should have to bear. She would need months, maybe years of counseling. Or maybe all the loss and devastation had piled so high on the shattered pieces of her heart that she was beyond the point of no return.

  Her gut clenched. Could she trust her instincts at this point?

  This wasn’t the time for second-guessing. Focus on what you came here to do.

  Bobbie closed the massive door and put her back against it. Take a breath. Another. No metallic odor of blood. No lingering scents of a dinner the owner may have had hours ago. Did Zacharias have his evening meal prepared in the kitchen by a personal chef? Or did he eat out?

  The oppressive silence sent another shot of adrenaline into her blood. Did any member of Zacharias’s household staff live in the residence? His wife had divorced him years ago and his children had grown up and moved across the country, no doubt to separate themselves from images of bloody, mutilated corpses arranged in grotesque venues for a depraved mind to capture on a painter’s canvas.

  She wondered if his money brought Zacharias much comfort when he turned out the lights all alone each night.

  Alone...exactly the way you do, Bobbie.

  The sound of Nick’s voice whispered across her senses reminding her that for just a little while she hadn’t been alone.

  Survey the scene, Bobbie. This was not the time to be distracted.

  Why wasn’t Zacharias’s security system singing a warning about the open door? Bobbie glanced at the dark keypad on the wall not three feet away. Evidently he’d left in a big hurry and hadn’t bothered setting the alarm or checking the door.

  Or had someone gotten here ahead of her? Someone who wanted more than to ask a few questions?

  The extravagant lock on the door appeared undamaged. As for visitors, the feds as well as the local police had questioned him in the past forty-eight hours.

  Did you take off right after that, Zacharias?

  Seemed strange that a surveillance detail hadn’t been assigned to keep an eye on their one potential lead to finding Weller. She shook her head. Maybe the problem was that the FBI and the task force created to recapture Weller were far too focused on proving Nick was somehow involved with his father’s escape. No matter that he’d been debriefed by the feds scarcely twelve hours ago and cleared of any wrongdoing in Devine’s death by Montgomery PD, the suspicion about his connection to Weller lingered. In part because Nick had spent most of his adult life living in the shadows, finding the killers no one else could. Even trained and experienced members of law enforcement at times feared what they didn’t understand. Nick Shade was innocent of his father’s crimes. He had turned his back on Randolph Weller years ago after finding him in the process of creating art from his two most recent kills. Worse, he’d discovered that Weller had murdered his mother when she learned her husband’s despicable secret. Nick’s entire life up to that point had been a lie.

  As true as it was that both Bobbie and Nick had suffered some seriously fucked-up heartbreak, the big difference between them was that she’d at least had a real family who cared about her. Nick had never had anything real. The people who should have taken care of him had let him down.

  I will not let you down, Nick.

  Bobbie forced her full attention to the here and now. “Where the hell are you, Zacharias?”

  There was always the possibility that the feds had been watching the attorney and were even now following him to see if he would lead them to Weller.

  The truth was she hadn’t driven all this way simply to see Zacharias. She didn’t even care if he’d taken his millions and fled. Speaking to him wasn’t actually necessary. All she wanted was to find any files on Weller that Zacharias might have in his home office before those files and any other notes were confiscated by the task force on his trail. Zacharias was a brilliant attorney. He had endless connections in Fulton County. The man would know all the ways, including attorney-client privilege, to challenge any attempts to seize his files or warrants to pilfer through his home or his phone records.

  “But you can’t outmaneuver the feds forever,” Bobbie murmured. Which was exactly why the man would disappear very soon if he hadn’t already.

  She glanced around the cavernous entry hall. She was here, the door was unlocked and the place appeared deserted—might as well have a look around. Zacharias had called her to Atlanta less than two weeks ago. No one could prove she hadn’t been in his house previously if her prints were found.

  There could be security cameras.

  After bumping three switches with her elbow, the giant chandelier spilled light over the marble floors. The cool gray paint on the walls spread out to meet the gleaming white trim and lent a cold feel to the space. A massive painting of Zacharias and his family, obviously commissioned a dozen or more years ago, served as the focal point. A round table of mirrored glass sat in the center of the hall, directly beneath the chandelier. The large vase stationed there was filled with cut flowers. The once lush and richly colored petals had browned and now littered the tabletop. A man of means living in a house like this one would certainly have a cleaning staff.

  Had he sent them all away before he took his own leave?

  Bobbie surveyed the room again. No sign of cameras. In Zacharias’s shoes she would have been far better prepared with a surveillance camera in every damned room as well as around the perimeter of the house. On the other hand, an attorney willing to interact with such depraved murderers probably harbored a serious God complex and didn’t want any electronic documentation of his movements or those of his visitors. With his most notorious monster no longer in chains behind those drab prison walls, Zacharias might not be feeling so high and mighty now.

  “Mr. Zacharias? Are you home?”

  Bobbie moved from the entry hall with its elegant curving staircase leading up to the second floor to the parlor on the right. She rubbed her arm against her side, pushing the sleeve of her sweatshirt down over her fingers before reaching under the nearest lampshade to switch on the light. The expected sophisticated furnishings were gathered around an equally stylish stone fireplace that spanned the full height of the room—at least twelve feet. She listened again before progressing across the entry hall to the next room, a library. Floor-to-ceiling rows of bookshelves stood where the fireplace would be and distinguished the room from its near mirror image across the hall. No sign of a struggle or that anyone had combed through the space. Other than the open front door, all appeared to be in order.

  One by one Bobbie advanced through room after room, calling the owner’s name and bumping a light on with her elbow in each one. Clear.

  Since she’d found no sign of foul play or of the homeowner so far, Bobbie suspected Zacharias had in fact gotten the hell out of Dodge. His statement about Weller’s escape had played over and over on every available media outlet the past forty-eight or so hours.

  I am shocked and saddened by this turn of events. No one will be safe until Randolph Weller is caught.

  “That includes you, Zacharias.”

  Bobbie imagined he was well aware of the imminent danger. Under the circumstances, she had known finding him was a long shot but she’d had to try. He hadn’t been answering his phone. No-damned-body had been answering their phones—including you, Bobbie. Her calls to Nick as well as to Special Agent Anthony LeDoux had gone unanswered. Her instincts told her LeDoux was in one way or another up to his eyeballs in this, too.

  As much as she wanted to trust LeDoux after w
hat they’d been through together, she couldn’t. The secret the two of them shared was like an open, festering wound deep below the surface where no one else could see. Like cancer, eating them up one inch at a time and at the same time making them dangerously reckless.

  Like not calling backup in a situation like this one.

  Exiling the warning voice honed by years of investigating homicides, she moved deeper into the house. Just off the kitchen and tucked beyond the family room, she found the attorney’s study. Bookshelves lined one wall. Framed photographs of the family that had abandoned him sat in a neat arrangement on one corner of the desk. The blotter was a clean, crisp expanse of white marred only by the fallen blooms from the floral arrangement that sat next to it, a smaller version of the one in the entry hall. To the right of the desk was a set of French doors.

  Open French doors.

  Shit. Bobbie’s fingers tightened on her Glock. She executed a three-sixty, scanning the room.

  No movement. No sound.

  For a moment she considered calling it in, but she had crossed the line coming into the house. There had been no true exigent circumstances. Knowing her chief, he’d put out a BOLO on her and the Atlanta PD would be on the lookout for her already.

  Check the files in the study and get the hell out.

  Zacharias could very well be on a private jet headed for some tropical island whose laws didn’t include an extradition treaty with the US.

  Or Weller had taken him.

  With the second set of doors left open, foul play was the more likely of the scenarios. No way two doors in this mansion had faulty locks. Even if Zacharias had been in a hell of a hurry, why leave both doors unlocked and open?

  Hold on. She hadn’t been upstairs. Was someone up there stealing his Rolexes and platinum cuff links at this very moment? Zacharias could very well be dead in his bedroom. It was the middle of the night after all. Bobbie braced her back against the nearest wall to ensure no one came up behind her. Too quiet. A thief would have heard her calling out to Zacharias.

  A spot on the floor near the desk snagged her attention, then another spot and another. Red wine maybe? Not so lucky.

  Blood.

  She visually traced the pattern of splatters, a stark crimson on the champagne-colored rug. The blood trail led around the large mahogany desk.

  Adrenaline stinging her senses, she followed the path her gaze had taken, glancing over her shoulder repeatedly and taking care not to step in the blood. The amount of blood increased exponentially as she drew closer to the other side of the desk, as if the bleeder had lingered there. At this point the urge to fish out her cell and call 911 was fierce, but she ignored it.

  Not yet.

  Behind the desk the trail of blood became a series of small puddles. The phone that had been blocked from her view by the floral arrangement had been dragged to the edge of the desk, the handset dangling from its curly cord. Blood was smeared on the keypad; crimson fingerprints encircled the handset.

  Holding her breath in an attempt to slow the pounding in her chest, she listened for the slightest noise as her eyes traced the path of blood that continued beyond the desk and out the open French doors.

  “I repeat, this is nine-one-one, what is the nature of your emergency?”

  Bobbie’s attention snapped back to the phone. What the hell?

  “If you can hear me...”

  She reached for the handset.

  “...we’re sending—”

  The dispatcher’s voice silenced mid-sentence.

  Bobbie twisted and leveled her Glock on whoever had entered the room.

  “What the hell are you doing, Bobbie?”

  Special Agent Anthony LeDoux. His fingers still rested on the switch hook in the phone’s cradle, severing the connection.

  “What the hell are you doing, LeDoux?”

  Better question, how the hell had he sneaked up on her like that? Sleep deprivation is making you sloppy, Bobbie.

  The agent held up his hands. “How about you put your weapon away and we’ll talk about the reason we’re both here?”

  She glanced at the open doors. “We should be looking for whoever all that blood belongs to, not debating our respective motives for breaking and entering.”

  “I’ve already looked around inside and out,” LeDoux said. “No one’s here. I’d be gone, too, except as I headed for the back door I heard someone come inside. I hid in the pantry you walked right past. You’re losing your edge, Detective.”

  Anger and frustration seared through Bobbie. “Fuck you. Where’s Zacharias?”

  “I can tell you that the illustrious task force assembled to find Weller doesn’t have him.” He shook his head, his face tightening with distaste or something on that order. “I can’t believe the son of a bitch wasn’t under surveillance.”

  Bobbie glanced at the open doors again before shifting her attention back to LeDoux, only then realizing her Glock was still aimed at his chest. Deciding she wasn’t ready to surrender the upper hand, she held her bead on the FBI agent. His story was a little too pat for her comfort. He just happened to be going out of the house as she was coming in? The only time she had witnessed timing that perfect was at a Broadway play she and her husband, James, had attended when they’d gone to New York City for Christmas the year before Jamie was born.

  LeDoux was lying.

  So she asked him again, “If Zacharias is gone, who bled all over the carpet? The blood’s not even dry.” Though she hadn’t touched it, she had seen enough to know the dull, blackness of blood that had been spilled and then sat there for a while. Her gaze narrowed. “Who made that 911 call?”

  LeDoux laughed. “I got no idea where the blood came from. As for the call, that was me. The phone was already off the hook, I just selected line one and entered the numbers. I figured it was the least I could do.”

  A couple of scenarios elbowed their way into her thoughts, neither of which included his story. She restrained the urge to bombard him with the questions pounding in her brain. “You have no idea where Zacharias would go?”

  “If I had a fucking clue where he or Weller might be, we wouldn’t be having this friendly conversation.” He sent a pointed look at her weapon.

  Judging by the dark circles under his eyes, he’d had about as much sleep as she. His jeans and sweater were rumpled as if he’d been wearing them a couple of days. He hadn’t shaved recently and those bloodshot eyes provided considerable insight into the sustenance he’d chosen for survival lately.

  “Have you heard from Nick?” Jesus Christ, the blood could be Nick’s. Fear spread through Bobbie’s chest like fire through a drought-stricken forest. Nick would no doubt have come to Zacharias looking for answers.

  Don’t you dare die on me, Nick Shade. Too many had died already, damn it.

  “Not a word.” LeDoux hitched his head toward the open door. “We should get the hell out of here. Now.”

  This didn’t feel right. Bobbie split her attention between the French doors and the agent she didn’t completely trust. “What we should do is have another look around. The bleeder can’t have gotten far without help.”

  “You’d better rethink that strategy.” LeDoux nodded toward the phone. The dial tone had turned into a recorded warning: If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try your call again. “Atlanta PD will be rolling by now.”

  “We’ll need to give a statement,” she countered. The bloody handprint on the handset, the red smudges on the keypad held her attention for an extra beat. What was she missing here? Her focus swung back to LeDoux. He stood a mere three feet away without a visible speck of blood on his pale gray sweater and faded jeans. No way he’d carried or dragged a bleeding victim out of this house.

  “They’ll be looking for someone to blame for whatever happened here,”
LeDoux countered. “We both want to find Weller. And we both want to help your friend Shade.” He gestured to the bloody mess. “The questions and the investigation will keep us on-site for hours if not days, and time is our enemy.”

  Five then ten seconds elapsed while she weighed her options. He was right that the 911 operator would have already dispatched the police. Standard operating procedure for 911 hang-ups. Bottom line, LeDoux had a valid point about the other, as well. She couldn’t afford the delay.

  “Fine.” She lowered her weapon. “We’ll do this your way, but if you’re lying to me, LeDoux—”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you, Bobbie. Not when it counts.” He held her gaze a moment, then headed for the door.

  Maybe she was a fool, but she followed him.

  Outside, the blood trail was lost to the darkness. “My car’s parked on the street in front of the house,” she said. “I’ll follow you. Where’re we going?”

  LeDoux headed toward the street. “I’ll hitch a ride with you,” he called over his shoulder. “I took a cab.”

  Bobbie watched his retreating back until he’d disappeared into the darkness beyond the landscape lighting. There were only two or three logical explanations for taking a cab anywhere. You either didn’t have personal transportation or you were too inebriated to drive. Since LeDoux didn’t fall into either of those categories at the moment there was only one plausible explanation for his actions.

  He didn’t want any potential witnesses able to ID his vehicle.