Before He Takes

He gave her a roll of his eyes and a playful frown. “You’ve got to have some sort of first reaction. What is it?”

While she didn’t want to offer her thoughts only to be proven wrong later on, she appreciated the effort of jumping on things right away. It showed that he was indeed the hard worker and committed agent McGrath painted him to be—the same kind of worker she had kind of hoped he was.

“I think the fact that these are being called disappearances rather than murders gives us some hope,” she said. “But given that the victims are all being taken from rural roads also tells me that this guy is a local that knows the lay of the land. He could be kidnapping the women and then killing them, hiding their bodies somewhere in the forests or some other hiding spot only he knows about.”

“You read deep into this yet?” he asked, nodding at the folder.

“No. I haven’t had time.”

“Help yourself,” Ellington said, handing it over.

Mackenzie read over the scant information as the flight attendants walked through the safety lecture. She was still studying it moments later when the plane took off toward Des Moines. There wasn’t much information in the file, but enough for Mackenzie to map out an approach to take when they got there.

Delores Manning was the third woman to be reported missing in the past nine days. The first woman was a local, reported missing by her daughter. Naomi Nyles, forty-seven years of age, also taken from the side of the road. The second was a Des Moines woman named Crystal Hall. She had a slight record, mostly promiscuous stuff in her youth, but nothing serious. When she was abducted, she had been visiting a local cattle farm in the area. The first case had shown no traces of foul play—just an abandoned car on the side of the road. The second abandoned vehicle had been a small pickup truck with a busted tire. The truck had been discovered in the midst of having its tire changed, the jack still under the axle and the flat propped against the side of the truck.

All three instances appeared to have occurred during the night, sometime between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. So far, nine days after the first abduction, there was not a single shred of evidence and absolutely zero clues.

As she usually did, Mackenzie scanned the information several times, committing it to memory. It wasn’t hard in this case, as there wasn’t much to take in. She kept going back to the pictures of the rural settings—the back roads that wound through the forests like a massive snake with nowhere to go.

She also allowed herself to slip into the mind of a killer using those roads and the night as cover. He had to be patient. And because of the darkness, he had to be used to being by himself. Darkness would not concern him. He may even prefer to work in the darkness, not only for the cover but for the sense of solitude and isolation. This guy was probably a loner of some sort. He was taking them from the road, apparently in different stressful situations. Car repair, busted tires. That meant he was probably not in this for the sport of killing. He just wanted the women. But why?

And how about the latest victim, Delores Manning? Maybe she was a local with a past history of the area, Mackenzie thought. Either that or just brave as hell to travel those back roads at such an hour…I don’t care how good a shortcut it is, that’s pretty reckless.

She hoped this was the case. She hoped the woman was brave. Because bravery, no matter how staged, could often help people deal with tense situations. It was more than just a badge of honor, but a deep psychological trait that helped people cope. She tried to envision Delores Manning, the up-and-coming writer, winding down those roads at night. Brave or not, it simply wasn’t a pretty picture.

When Mackenzie was done, she handed the folder back to Ellington. She looked past him and to the window beyond where white tufts of clouds were drifting by. She closed her eyes for just a moment and took herself back there, not to Iowa but to neighboring Nebraska. A place where there was open land and towering woods rather than mangled traffic and tall buildings. She didn’t really miss it but found that the idea of returning to it, even for work, was exciting in a way she did not fully understand.

“White?”

She opened her eyes at the sound of her name. She turned to Ellington, a little embarrassed that he had caught her zoning out. “Yeah?”

“You sort of went blank there for a minute. You okay?”

“I am,” she said.

And the hell of it was that she was okay. The first six hours of the day had been physically and emotionally draining, but now that she was sitting down, suspended in the air and with an unlikely temporary partner, she felt okay.

“Let me ask you something,” Mackenzie said.

“Shoot.”

“Did you put in a request to work with me on this?”

Ellington didn’t answer right away. She could see the cogs turning behind his eyes before he replied and wondered why he might have any reason to lie to her.

“Well, I heard about the case and, as you know, I have a working relationship with the field office in Omaha. And since that’s the closest field office to our target in Iowa, I threw my hat in the ring. When he asked if I minded working with you on the case, I didn’t argue.”

She nodded, starting to feel almost guilty for wondering if he had any other reason for wanting the job. While she had been harboring some sort of feelings for him (whether strictly physical or somehow emotional, she had never been sure), he had never given her any reason to assume he felt the same. It was far too easy to recall coming on to him when she had first met him out in Nebraska and then getting rejected.

Let’s just hope he’s forgotten all about that, she thought. I’m a different person now, he’s far too busy to worry himself with me, and we’re working together now. Water under the bridge.

“So how about you?” she asked. “What are your initial thoughts?”

“I think he has no intention of killing the women,” Ellington said. “No clues, no showing off, and, like you, I think it’s got to be a local doing it. I think he’s maybe collecting them…for what purpose, I won’t speculate. But that worries me, if I’m right.”

It worried Mackenzie, too. If there was someone out there kidnapping women, he would eventually run out of room. And maybe interest…which meant he’d have to stop sooner or later. And while that was theoretically a good thing, it also meant that his trail would go cold without any further scenes to possibly leave evidence at.

“I think you’re right about him collecting them,” she said. “He’s coming after them in a vulnerable state—while they’re messing with cars or busted tires. It means he’s sneaking up rather than being in your face. He’s likely timid.”

He grinned and said, “Huh. That’s a good observation.”

His grin turned into a smile that she had to look away from, knowing that they had a habit of locking eyes and letting the stares linger a bit too long. Instead, she turned her eyes back out to the blue sky and the clouds while the Midwest quickly approached below them.

***

With very little luggage between them, Mackenzie and Ellington made their way through the airport without any trouble. During the tail end of the flight, Ellington informed Mackenzie that plans had already been made (presumably while she had been rushing to her apartment and then to the airport). She and Ellington were to meet two local field agents and work with them to get the case wrapped up as quickly as possible. With no need to stop by the luggage carousel, they were able to meet with the agents with no problem.

They met in one of the countless Starbucks in the airport. She let Ellington lead the way because it was apparent that McGrath saw him as the lead on the case. Why else would he leave Ellington in charge of knowing where to meet the field agents? Why else would Ellington have been given a proper heads-up, with plenty of time to comfortably make his flight on time?

The two agents were hard to miss. Mackenzie sighed internally when she saw that they were both men. One of them, though, looked like he was brand new. There was no way the guy was any older than twenty-four. His partner looked rather hardened and older—probably reaching fifty any day now.

Ellington headed straight for them and Mackenzie followed. Neither of the agents stood but the older one offered his hand to Ellington as they approached the table.

“Agents Heideman and Thorsson, I take it?” Ellington asked.

“Guilty,” the older man said. “I’m Thorsson, and my partner here is Heideman.”

“Good to meet you,” Ellington said. “I’m Special Agent Ellington and this is my partner, Agent White.”

They all shook hands in a way that had become almost tedious to Mackenzie ever since she had joined the bureau. It was almost like a formality, an awkward thing that needed to be done in order to get to the task at hand. She noticed that when Heideman shook her hand, his grip was weak and sweaty. He didn’t look nervous but perhaps a bit shy or introverted.

“So how far out are the crime scenes?” Ellington asked.

“The closest one is about an hour away,” Thorsson said. “The others are all within ten or fifteen minutes of one another.”

“Have there been any updates since early this morning?” Mackenzie asked.

“Zero,” Thorsson said. “That’s one of the reasons we called you guys in. This guy has taken three women so far and we can’t generate as much as a single scrap of evidence. It’s gotten so bad that the state is considering the use of cameras along the highway. The hurdle there, though, is that you can’t really keep over seventy-five miles of back road under surveillance with cameras.”

“Well, you technically could,” Heideman said. “But that’s a ton of cameras and a huge chunk of change. So some folks at the state level are only viewing it as a last-ditch effort.”

“Can we go ahead and see the first scene then?” Ellington asked.

“Sure,” Thorsson said. “Do you guys need to handle hotels and things like that first?”

“No,” Mackenzie said. “Let’s get to work for now. If you guys are saying there’s that much road that needs to be covered, we can’t waste any time.”

As Thorsson and Heideman stood, Ellington gave her a peculiar look. She couldn’t tell if he was impressed with her dedication to get out to the first scene as quickly as possible or if he found it amusing that she wasn’t letting him take the entire lead on this. What she hoped he couldn’t sense was that the thought of going anywhere near a hotel with Ellington made her feel far too many emotions at once.