Stalked

She nodded ruefully. Apparently they weren’t the only ones who had been hiding something from the people around them.

So had Haley Cooke, the seventeen-year-old girl whose background had revealed a popular, straight-A student whose most dangerous pastime seemed to be standing on top of a cheerleading pyramid.

What had she gotten involved in that she thought would get her killed?

* * *

The Neville, Virginia, police station looked interchangeable with hundreds of other stations Evelyn had been to in her BAU tenure. But the detective standing in front of her in figure-hugging blue jeans and an elbow-length red blazer better suited to an afternoon luncheon than hiding the Glock at her hip definitely didn’t resemble the average police officer.

“Detective Sophia Lopez.” The woman held out her hand, complete with deep red polish, and stared expectantly at Evelyn. She was already tall—topping Evelyn’s petite five-foot-two by at least eight inches—but a pair of high-heeled boots gave her an extra boost. Her long, dark hair dangled in a loose ponytail that seemed impractical for crime scenes, and her bright red lipstick looked out of place in a police station. But her intense stare was 100 percent cop.

“Special Agent Evelyn Baine,” she replied, shaking firmly.

To the mostly male officers around them, they probably seemed to have a lot in common. Two women in law enforcement—one biracial and the other Latina—giving the typical first-impression handshake. Hard, so the other person would know they weren’t to be messed with. Matched with solid eye contact, projecting seriousness.

But if Sophia’s clothes were similar to a clerk at a trendy boutique, Evelyn dressed more like the male officers, in a baggy, solid-black pantsuit. Her heels were always under two inches; enough to give her a little extra height, but not so high she couldn’t run in them. While Sophia seemed to want to stand out, Evelyn liked to blend in—hide in the background where she could watch and analyze everyone.

She studied the detective in charge of the Haley Cooke case, taking in the incongruities, trying to decipher her from just a greeting.

She didn’t just profile the predators, although that was in her official job description. To do it well, she also had to figure out the personalities of the other law enforcement officials on the case. Figuring them out fast made for an easier working relationship, usually a better reception to her profiles. Especially since the head detective wasn’t always the one requesting her presence. Often, that pressure came from above, such as a police chief or a mayor, and usually because of media attention.

As Evelyn tried to work an instant profile, Sophia’s steady stare broke, a wide grin stretching across her face and making all of her uneven features seem to come together. “All right. That’s enough posturing. We’re both hard-asses and we both know it. Come on. I’ll show you what we’ve got on the Haley Cooke case.”

She spun, striding down the hallway at a pace that had Evelyn jogging to keep up.

At the end of the hallway, Sophia shoved open a door and ushered Evelyn into a room the size of a janitor’s closet. It smelled like a janitor’s closet, too, as though it had been used to store cleaning products until very recently. The scent of bleach made Evelyn’s eyes water, and she blinked it away before taking in the pictures and timelines tacked to every available wall space.

Sophia pushed back a pair of chairs and a small folding table that took up most of the room. “I know. It’s a pathetic amount of space to devote to the investigation of a missing teenager. But it’s what I’ve got. So I work with it.”

Evelyn nodded, not saying this was more space than she’d expected, given that the case was a month old and the leads were nonexistent. Then again, Neville, Virginia—home to approximately ten thousand people in the summers and thirty thousand when the local university was in session—probably didn’t see very many missing-persons cases.

The BAU, on the other hand, was inundated with countless missing-persons investigations. Rarely did Evelyn consult on a case with only one victim. But every so often, one would come along where the investigation was getting nowhere, and if the perpetrator was a stranger, a profiler could change everything. A regular investigation would struggle to find a kidnapper who had no connection to the victim’s life, but a profiler could do it.

“You want me to put that in our fridge?” Sophia asked.

Evelyn glanced down at the Styrofoam take-out container still clutched in her hand, dinner she hadn’t had a chance to eat. “Thanks,” she said, handing it over as her stomach growled.

After Sophia left the room, Evelyn spun in a slow circle, studying the images thumbtacked right into the drywall. At the center of most of them was Haley Cooke. Seventeen years old, a junior at Neville High School. The media loved to refer to her as “all-American.”

Blonde, blue-eyed, with a smile on her face in every picture Evelyn had seen. People probably couldn’t help returning that smile.

Evelyn had a sudden flashback to another blond-haired girl, one who’d never had the chance to grow up. Cassie, her best friend, whose disappearance had sent Evelyn into profiling. Was this how she might have looked if she’d made it to seventeen?

Evelyn pushed the bittersweet thought aside and focused on Haley. Her routines, her relationships, her personality—they would all contribute to Evelyn’s victim profile. That would help her figure out who could have grabbed her.

“Loved by everyone” was another thing the media constantly repeated about Haley. Whether it was because her mother had cozied up to all the local news stations or because the complete lack of clues had captivated the country’s interest, Haley’s face had become very well-known.

Which made it even more unusual that no one had seen her since she’d walked into that high school a month ago. Unless she’d never come out because she’d been killed there. But if that was true, surely they’d have found a body by now.

The case was bizarre. Although the BAU specialized in bizarre, this one had given Evelyn a bad feeling from the moment she’d seen the case file. A beautiful young teenage girl goes missing without a trace. The ending wasn’t usually positive.

From the limited information in the case file a month ago, there’d been no way to give a solid profile, but her gut had screamed “stranger abduction.” Since Haley had predicted her own death, though, it seemed her gut had been wrong.

“Here,” Sophia said, and Evelyn turned to find the detective holding out a flimsy cup. The smell of overcooked coffee filled the small room.

Instead of telling Sophia she didn’t drink coffee, Evelyn smiled her thanks and took the scalding-hot cup. “Why don’t you give me the highlights? And let’s look at the note the mother found. Can we confirm Haley wrote it?”

“Haley’s mom says it’s her daughter’s handwriting.” Sophia perched on top of the folding table, making it creak loudly underneath her. “Most of what we know you’ve probably already seen on the news. It’s as though someone plucked her out of thin air. Poof. Gone. Forensics is giving us nothing at the scene.”

“Who else was around?”

“Her boyfriend drove away after he dropped her off, and the cheerleaders on the field saw him leave. Otherwise, there was a coach on the field, and some students in the library with a teacher. None of them saw her inside, and no one saw her leave the school, but when her friends went inside, they couldn’t find her.”

“What about other exits?”

“Yeah, there are others, but the way the school is situated, it’s not likely she could have left without being seen. You’ve basically got the front entrance—where Haley was dropped off—near the main road. On the right side, you’ve got the field where the cheerleaders were practicing. They can see the front entrance from there. Then, on the left, you’ve got another open field the school uses for soccer and other sports. That one butts up against a neighborhood. Some wooded area in between, but not much. Then the back—faculty parking, service entrance. Probably the least visible, but that leads out to a side street. No one saw Haley leave that way, either, though they might not have. Still, it happened fast for an abduction.”

When Sophia took a breath, Evelyn cut in. “How far were the locker rooms where she was supposed to be from the back entrance?”

“Not close. Someone would have had to know exactly where she was, gone in and grabbed her and then subdued her fast, without making noise. The library is fairly close to the locker rooms, at least close enough that they surely would have heard if Haley screamed. Then...this person would have needed to carry Haley out without anyone seeing. Doable? Maybe. But unlikely.”

“Either someone was prepared to take that kind of risk, or Haley went willingly, at least at first,” Evelyn said. “What do you make of the note?”

“Ah, the note.” Sophia swiveled on the table and pulled the evidence list out of the box. “One sentence.”

Evelyn took the list and looked at the description for the last item, the notebook. The matter-of-fact words sent pinpricks down her spine. “‘If you’re reading this, I’m already dead.’”

“Yeah. Ominous.”

“And there was nothing else in the notebook? No other information?”

“None. We even checked for indentations in case she’d written more and then torn the pages out, but there’s no indication of that.”

“Did you run the note for prints?”

“Yep. We found Haley’s prints. And Linda’s—Haley’s mom. That’s it.”

“And the mom just found it today?”

“Yes. Between the box spring and the bed frame.”

“So, you guys missed it when you checked the room?”

Sophia frowned.

“What I’m asking,” Evelyn clarified, “is could it have been put there after Haley went missing? Could it have been planted?” For a case this high profile, a month was a long time for such a key piece of evidence to go unnoticed.

“I don’t know. We checked under the mattress. Could we have missed it? Yes. I mean, it was jammed in an odd location. And we were there to learn more about Haley. We were looking for any hints of what could have happened, get a sense of her personality, her secrets. We weren’t taking everything apart—we were trying to be sensitive to the family. Could the note have been put there after we searched the room? That’s also possible. But if someone planted the note, then why?”