Special Agent's Perfect Cover

He paused dramatically for effect as the moment sank in, then said, “Yes, my dear, I am sure that you are more than qualified to fill that position, and may I say how very happy I am that you have come around and decided to come join us.” He’d taken her hand between his and though his smile had never wavered, it had sent chills through her. Chills she wasn’t quite sure how to dodge. She’d never felt more of a sense of imprisonment than she had at that moment.

“You will be a most welcomed addition,” he had assured her.

She remembered thinking, Over my dead body, and she had meant it.

The problem was she was fairly certain that the coda, although silently said, would not be a deterrent to Grayson. He was a man who allowed nothing to stand in the way of his plans. To that end, he was perfectly capable of cutting out a person’s heart without missing a beat.

She had to get Mia away from here. And she would, even if it wound up being the last thing she ever did.

Chapter 2

“Hi, Doc. This is going to have to be quick. I’ve only got a few minutes to spare,” Hawk said by way of a greeting as he walked into the county coroner’s office.

In reality, since Micah hadn’t shown up for their appointed meeting, he should have skipped coming here altogether and gone on straight to Cold Plains. But the coroner had called, saying there was something that he needed to tell him. And if he was being honest and had his choice in the matter, he would have gladly stalled and remained here indefinitely, at this temporary FBI outpost. But he didn’t have a choice, and he could only spare a few minutes.

At this point, he would have welcomed being sidetracked by anything, and this included an earthquake, a tornado or a tsunami, none of which ever occurred in this rough-and-tumble region of Wyoming. But although he would rather do anything than go on to Cold Plains to investigate exactly how these five murdered women were connected, Hawk was first and foremost a dedicated FBI agent, and he wasn’t about to let any of his past personal feelings get in the way of his trying to solve this case.

Not bothering to shrug out of his jacket, Hawk crossed over to the coroner. He’d only met the man a few days before but the coroner took his job very seriously.

“Why did you call me?” Hawk asked. “Did you find out anything new?”

“Not exactly,” Dr. Hermann Keegan replied, measuring his words out slowly, as if he wanted to be sure they were absolutely right before he uttered them. He looked at Hawk over the tops of his rimless reading glasses. “Actually, what I found was something old.”

His mind on the ordeal that lay ahead of him, Hawk had very little patience with what sounded like a riddle. “Come again?”

“Once the fact that they were all connected came to light, I pulled the autopsy records of the other four victims,” he explained. “Were you aware of the fact that the ‘tattoo’ the deputy coroner found on victim number two’s right hip washed off when he was cleaning the body?”

Victim number two was the only female they hadn’t been able to identify yet. All the others had names, but this one was still referred to as Jane Doe four years after she’d been discovered. The woman’s DNA and fingerprints turned out not to be a match for anyone currently in any of the FBI databases.

“Tattoos don’t wash off,” Hawk pointed out.

Doc Keegan smiled, making his spherical, moonlike face appear even rounder. “Exactly. According to the notes, the letter, a d, appeared to have been drawn in with some kind of permanent, black laundry marker or maybe a Sharpie.” He raised his eyes to Hawk’s. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Hawk answered crisply. “Either this woman had a penchant for marking up her body—or she wasn’t really one of the cult’s followers but was pretending to be for some reason.” Being a law enforcement agent, the first thing that struck him was that Jane Doe might have been one, as well. “She might have been undercover,” he concluded.

Keegan’s head bobbed up and down. “My money’s on that.”

Hawk looked at the five manila folders that were fanned out on top of the coroner’s extremely cluttered desk. Each was labeled with the name of a different victim. Besides Jane Doe, there was Shelby Jackson who had been found first in Gulley, Wyoming, five years ago, Laurel Pierce, found in Cheyenne three years ago, Abby Michaels, discovered in the woods outside of Laramie last year and Johanna Tate, found in Eden last week.

Johanna Tate.

Micah’s former girlfriend, Hawk suddenly remembered. The name had been nagging at him ever since he’d heard the news. Was that why Micah had called him? Because of Johanna?

Did Micah know more than he’d alluded to? Had he decided to take matters into his own hands? Going outside the law had become a way of life for him, and he would have thought nothing of avenging Johanna’s murder. Had it backfired on him because he’d let his emotions get in the way?

Damn it, he needed answers, Hawk thought, frustrated. Nodding toward the folders, he asked, “Mind if I take those with me?”

Stepping away from Joanna Tate’s lifeless body he’d finished sewing together, Keegan scrubbed and then pushed the files together into one pile. “Be my guest,” he told Hawk. “I’ve already made copies of them for you.”

Hawk scooped up the files. Already familiar with all the victims, he wanted to review the files in depth and was grateful to the coroner for making copies for him. Still stumped, he needed all the input he could get his hands on.

“You’re pretty thorough,” Hawk commented.

Keegan raised his slopping shoulders and let them fall again. “I’ve got the time to be. This is the most amount of action this office has seen in a very long while.”

“What do you do the rest of the time?” Hawk asked, curious what occupied the man’s time when he wasn’t conducting an autopsy. He sincerely doubted that Wyoming was a hotbed of homicides.

Keegan’s answer surprised him.

“I’m a vet,” the older man replied. “Technically,” he explained as a look of disbelief came over the special agent’s face, “I don’t even have to be a doctor of any kind in order to become a coroner. I just have to be unusually observant and display a high tolerance when it comes to the dissection of dead bodies. Like this one.” He nodded at the draped body on his steel table.

“Good to know,” Hawk quipped. Holding the files to his chest, he crossed to the door. “Thanks again for these.”

“My pleasure,” Keegan answered, adding, “so to speak.”

Closing the door behind him, Hawk blew out a breath. “Yeah,” he muttered to himself in a low voice. “So to speak,” he echoed.

He squared his shoulders and made his way out of the building and back to his car. He was all out of excuses and reasons to delay his departure. He’d already gotten in contact with his team and told them to temporarily set up a “satellite FBI office” in a cabin several miles out of town.

They were probably already there, he thought. Now it was his turn. Hawk turned his key in the ignition and listened to his car come to life.

Next up: Cold Plains.

Ready or not, here I come.

Carly was standing outside the school where she had so recently taken a position, supervising the children as they made the most of their afternoon recess.

That was where she was when she first saw him. First saw the ghost from her past.

That was what she initially thought she was seeing, a ghost, a figment of her wandering imagination. A momentary hallucination on her part, brought on by a combination of stress and anger and the overwhelming need to have someone to lean on—just for a little while.

For her, the only one she had ever had to lean on had been Hawk, but that had been a very long time ago. At least ten years in her past, she judged.

Maybe even more.

The bottom line was that there was absolutely no reason for her to see Hawk Bledsoe getting out of a relatively new, black sedan. The vehicle had just pulled up before the pristine edifice which housed The Grayson Community Center as well as the living quarters of several of Samuel Grayson’s top people.

Or, as she was wont to think of them in the privacy of her own mind, Grayson’s henchmen.

Her mind was playing tricks on her, Carly silently insisted. Any second now, this person she had conjured up would fade away or take on the features of someone else, someone who she knew from town. Someone she was accustomed to seeing day in, day out.

She waited, not daring to breathe.

He wasn’t fading. Wasn’t changing.

Suddenly feeling very light-headed, Carly sucked a huge breath into her lungs.

Ordinarily, fresh air helped clear her head. But it wasn’t her head that needed clearing, it was her eyes, because she was still seeing him.