Let’s see. We have sight, sound, and taste left. It didn’t take her long, for almost immediately, a vision of Conrad Barker formed in her mind, along with the sound of her own screams. She wanted him dead so badly… she could taste it.

  The prosecutor rose to object, but thought better of it and sat back down.

  The thought exercise made her laugh unexpectedly, and she saw a road sign up ahead that bore the name of the address Gail had given her. As she turned left onto it, she saw that the pavement ended about fifty feet in from the highway, and soon there was a cloud of dust billowing up behind her.

  If she disliked being in Greenville, she absolutely hated being in the less populated suburbs, because they were the last sign of civilization before getting into truly deep country. Wooded seclusion brought only bad memories, and the sound of the dirt beneath her tires was conjuring demons that she could not entertain at that moment.

  The dirt road was long, and the houses on it were spread out nicely. Although Dan and Nicole lived in the heart of Denver, and like all of their neighbors, she’d always been glad that Dan had been able to find them a house with a big yard, which pushed the nearby residents back to a comfortable distance. As she made her way along, she looked at the mailboxes for the number Gail had provided but found that many bore no markings whatsoever. Fortunately she spotted Gail’s Toyota tucked beside a small house, simple in design and painted a pale yellow color that was pleasing to the eye without actually drawing attention to itself.

  She pulled the Rogue alongside the compact car and killed the engine. Out of habit, she checked the magazine of her H&K, and seeing that it was full, slapped it back into place. She got out of the SUV and stood with her back facing the open drivers’ door, slipping the automatic into the back of her waistband, then smoothing her long top over it. She walked to the door.

  Gail had no doubt heard her coming down the dirt road, as wheels on the hard-packed but still arenaceous thoroughfare made a much louder sound than they did on smooth pavement. The half-mile long trail of disturbed road dust was probably a bit of a tip-off as well. In any case, she opened the front door as Nicole approached. Cole could see that the handler was studying her face.

  “I know you mainly by reputation, and that’s a pretty epic, but I’m not confident enough to make a guess at whether you contacting me this quickly was good or bad.”

  Cole couldn’t help but smile. For the most part, the tools of the handler’s job consisted of facts, evidence, educated speculation, and hardware. Gail had all that well in hand, and possessed a healthy dose of genuine compassion. Nicole put her hand on the younger woman’s shoulder and said, “It’s all good, and for that I have you to thank.”

  “Well, me, my crew, and an absolutely fucking huge bag of luck.”

  “I have a good friend who would be bringing up the topic of karma right about now. We’re a long way from ironing this all out, but we have Clyde Davis, the amoeba who dared to kidnap my daughter – my daughter! – under a constant tail, and when the time is right, he’ll face justice. So, yeah. Karma.”

  “I’m down with the big K,” Gail said, stepping aside to allow Nicole into the house.

  Cole looked around the interior of the small house. Usually, initial meetings with a handler occurred in a public place, but after that, any subsequent encounters would happen in a private dwelling. Cleanup Crew had invested a very large amount in safe houses. There was a division dedicated to them, staffed by realtors, real estate attorneys, and other key people whose specialties related to the procurement and sale of houses.

  And Nicole had seen hundreds of them, but never one like this. Safe houses were minimally furnished and in general devoid of character. This place oozed with it. As Gail led her into a small, comfortable den, Nicole stopped to admire a particularly exceptional reproduction of a Van Gogh sunflower.

  “I’ve always loved these still-lifes. The colors seem so much… more? Does that make sense?”

  “The yellows are far more yellow than yellow should ever be.”

  “Exactly! Have you ever seen any of his originals?”

  Gail nodded enthusiastically. “I saw ‘Starry Night’ at the MOMA in New York when I was in high school. He applied the paint so thickly that you could tell it still wasn’t dry.”

  Nicole laughed. “I saw it last summer. It still hasn’t dried. This doesn’t have the feel of one of our safehouses, Gail. It’s not nearly… what’s the word?”

  “Sterile and boring and horrible?” the handler offered.

  “Exactly! Although that’s three words,” Nicole said with a chuckle.

  “This is actually not a CUC property. It’s my house.”

  Nicole couldn’t reply immediately. She had never been in the home of a handler before. Most insisted upon that boundary. It was essential for them to have a place apart, where they could retire to escape, as well as they could, the realities they faced daily. Gail bringing Nicole here was a gesture of great trust. Seeing that the cleaner didn’t really know what to say, Gail explained.

  “I’ve never had anyone from the company here before, but I just cannot even begin to imagine what you and Dan have just gone through. You dealt with that, got your daughter back, and, I’m guessing, haven’t bothered to sit down, except in the car on the drive here. Yet you’re ready to go again. I guess I just felt like if I’d been through the same sort of thing, I’d like someplace comfortable to sit and hear my briefing.”

  “You’re all right, Gail,” Nicole said. “Let’s get to that briefing.”

  “Of course.” Gail slid an iPad from under the tired but very comfortable sofa on which she and Nicole sat. She tapped in a pin and opened a folder labeled “Porn.”

  Nicole laughed and said, “Maybe if you want your folder to go unnoticed, you might try a title that’s a little less conspicuous?”

  “Anyone who knows me wouldn’t even think twice about it,” Gail said. “Every device I own has a folder on the desktop with that name.”

  Nicole was already scanning the contents of the folder, seeing several image files as well as some text documents. “If that is what’s in this folder, what is in all of the other, like-named containers?” she asked.

  “Porn,” Gail said matter-of-factly, tapping the first image to open the file. A picture of a portly man wearing a very pristine-looking lab coat. He looked to be in his forties. His hair was cut very short – it may have actually been regrowth after being shaved. He had a thin moustache, a little elongated at the ends with…

  “Is that moustache wax?” Nicole asked, pointing to the sharp tips of the facial hair.

  “It’s something,” Gail said. “I don’t know if it’s moustache wax or Crisco, but he’s got some kind of gunk on there.”

  “Kinda gross. He gives me the impression of a 1930s movie villain. The bad fiancé that the hero saves the girl from.”

  “I thought evil landlord.”

  “Bingo! I take it that’s the mark.”

  “It is. Dr. Nathan Lewis.”

  “Looks like a hospital portrait. Which one is he affiliated with?”

  “Shriners,” Gail said.

  “The children’s hospital. Of course. Which is probably how he got connected with young athletes.”

  “Yes. The coaches at J.L. Mann reached out to the hospital for a recommendation, looking for a trainer for the girls’ volleyball team. That was his in. From there, he worked with teams at Greenville Senior High and Southside High. For some reason, it wasn’t until he started working with the Southside girls’ softball team that the first whispers were heard that something was going on. But every time there was the faintest rumbling, it got shut down, and there was never any evidence for the cops to follow. None of the athletes have ever publicly said a word about anything untoward.”

  Nicole’s brow furrowed. “Then how did word reach CUC? What sort of data are we working with?”

  Gail sighed. “Mostly the same scraps and rumors that were presented to the police by a couple of anonymous sources. The difference being they, meaning the cops, don’t seem to have any interest in looking closer. Oh, and we have Megan.”

  “Megan?”

  “Megan Brockway, star player for the Tiger’s softball team.”

  “Brockway. I know the name,” Cole said, inadvertently allowing a hint of bile into her voice. Gail missed, or ignored it.

  “Yup, old Greenville family. Most of them are one-percenters, but Megan’s branch of the tree has been cut off.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Megan’s grandfather was Clark Brockway. I don’t know if you know about the Hartwell Mangler?”

  Nicole, as fond as she was becoming of Gail, immediately went into full-tilt poker-face mode. “Not familiar,” she said.

  “It was back in the mid-1990s,” Gail began. “Just after New Year, Clark and nine others were found dead in a burned-out shack around Lake Hartwell, all with one common characteristic.”

  “Scary! What was the common characteristic?”

  “Oh, you know, the usual sort of thing. They all had their severed peckers stuffed in their mouths when they were found.”

  “Yikes. Thus the ‘Mangler’ tag, no doubt. Did they ever catch the guy who did it?”

  “Nope, one of the great unsolved mysteries of South Carolina history. The killings stopped in ’97, I think. Got a little bit of national news play, but everybody gradually stopped talking about it when it appeared they stopped finding bodies. There was even some speculation that the killer was female, but nothing ever came of that theory either.”

  “All fascinating. And Megan Brockway’s grandfather was one of these unfortunates?” Nicole’s insides were trembling a bit and she hoped her bluffing-with-a-pair-of-threes face was holding up.

  “He was.”

  “You wouldn’t think that sort of thing would make the family turn against Megan, though.”

  “It’s definitely not fair, but there’s one more detail in the story that may explain it. You see, all of the murdered men were either well known or suspected pedophiles. Clark fell into the ‘well known’ category.”

  “So the money Brockways were probably a little sour on him and his descendants anyway.”

  “Probably. But anyway, Megan injured a hamstring last season, and good ol’ Dr. Lewis was called upon to rehab her through it. After the first visit, she told her father that Lewis was ‘creepy,’ but nothing more. After the second visit, however, she was able to tell him of her molestation at the man’s hands in graphic detail. Unfortunately, Dad dropped the ball. My theory has always been that due to his late father’s legacy, he was not willing to have another Brockway in the news dealing with the same subject. Whatever his reason, he basically told Megan she was imagining the whole thing.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I know, right? If you can’t turn to your own family for help, who can you turn to?”

  Nicole, growing even more uncomfortable, merely shrugged her shoulders.

  “Well, Megan found someone. It was a reporter at the Greenville News, one Madeline Fisk, who had apparently visited the school for some assembly or something. At some point, she’d given her email address, which Megan wrote down. She contacted the reporter and asked if she had any interest in hearing about a trainer who had abused her and might be doing the same to other student athletes.”

  “An email that would make any reporter worth her salt start drooling, no doubt.”

  “No doubt. Apparently, Fisk started poking around and she found out that Megan’s hunch that there were others was likely correct. She even drafted a story on the News’ network, which made it sound like she was ready to start naming names.”

  “So what happened when the story broke?”

  “That’s the thing. It never did. Before she had a chance to pitch the story to her editor, Madeline Fisk disappeared.”

  “Shit.”

  “Shit indeed,” said Gail. “If not for Darlene Mason, this whole situation may have gone unnoticed.”

  Nicole, at the mention of Darlene’s name, actually felt her pulse slow a little. “How did it come to her attention?”

  “Well, you know her pretty well, so it won’t surprise you that she’s done a thing or two with that computer system of hers that are pretty remarkable. One such thing is the ‘Crawler,’ which is a program she wrote specifically designed to troll the computer networks of news outlets all over the world. Not only does it monitor headlines, it also pokes into unpublished draft folders, all the time looking for certain keywords. Apparently, the first line of the draft read ‘A number of student athletes in the Greenville area have reported inappropriate behavior by consulting team trainer Dr. Nathan Lewis…’”

  “Yup. That’s the sort of thing Darlene would be looking for,” Nicole said with a nod.

  “Of course she dug much deeper, learning of the disappearance of the reporter, which seemingly went unnoticed, and she found no mention of the situation anywhere else. It felt to her that the man was being protected.”

  “And nothing since then has led anyone in CUC to believe anything different.”

  “True, which is both good and bad.”

  “How so?” Nicole asked.

  Now it was Gail’s turn to hesitate slightly. “Okay, I’m just going to say this. I’m not comfortable with the amount of evidence we have against this guy.”

  “Really!” said Cole, surprised at the revelation.

  “I wish I was. But the draft story only mentioned Megan by name, while implying several times that there were others involved.”

  Nicole’s demeanor changed visibly now. “Wait, so this whole operation in based upon one girl’s tip to a missing reporter?”

  Gail nodded, her face still showing her displeasure with the situation.

  “Maybe I should talk to Megan myself,” Nicole said, not really relishing the thought of doing groundwork.

  “I’d say hell yeah, if the family hadn’t sent Megan to live with her mom’s relatives in California shortly after she’d talked to the reporter.”

  “So she’s gone as well.” Nicole set her jaw. “This is one fucked-up assignment. Tons of circumstantial evidence pointing to our guy, but none that I can really grab on to.”

  “And there’s a lot suggesting that our guy is being protected; in fact, there’s much more evidence that points to that theory. But I’m not sure I’m ready to clean the guy based on the fact that he’s part of a ‘good-ol’-boy network.’ If that were the case, I’d have to end ninety percent of the men in the South.”

  “Probably more than that. So what are you going to do?”

  Cole thought for a moment, and then her face darkened further. “Well, that’s the worst idea I’ve ever had.”

  Gail looked at her, perplexed. “What?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head emphatically. “I don’t even want to keep thinking it.” She paused, and Gail could see she was struggling internally. “Still…” she went on, “it would take away my doubts.”

  Gail found herself getting a little frustrated at the most respected cleaner in CUC (Oh, and the woman who also happens to be my boss.) But she also knew that sometimes a handler had to be gentle, other times less so.

  “Nicole, would you please tell me what the fuck you’re talking about?”

  Cole sighed. “I can’t think of anything else. So hear me out, because I’m working through this myself. Darlene sniffed out this case. Eventually, she realizes that while gathering intel that someone’s onto her. From that, they manage to connect her with me, and they kidnap my daughter and take her right to the location of my cleaning. See, all of that makes me like the job. Clearly, something is going on. But then there’s no hard evidence, because there’s no one we can talk to. That makes me hate it. But these bastards may have given me the one thing I need to know for sure.”

  “What?”

  “Jennifer June Porter.”

  Gail’s eyebrows rose and she shook her head. “Whoa. Wait. You lost me. At least I hope you lost me because…”

  “J.J. is a little older than these sorts tend to prefer,” she said, talking over Gail, “but she’s a very young-looking twenty. It pisses her off that people think she’s in high school all the time. She could pass for sixteen.”

  Gail suddenly realized that her unspoken fear was exactly what Nicole was dancing around. “No way! You can’t possibly think that involving J.J. is a good idea!”

  “It’s a horrible idea! I can only assume I’m sleep deprived or insane, because it sucks on multiple levels, not the least of which is that I’m asking my recently kidnapped daughter to put herself in a position of total exposure, perhaps literally. Also, considering the people involved in this nightmare, is there a chance that if I decided to go through with this insane idea, might Lewis recognize her?”

  “Well, that is a crazy idea…” Gail said, clearly hesitating at the end. “… however, as much as I hate to contribute to it, Lewis probably isn’t privy to what’s going on with J.J. They’re protecting him, after all, and he’s going to want to know as little as possible about the details of how they’re doing that. He just wants to be told he’s safe.” Gail stopped, and Nicole could see that she was beginning to formulate potential strategies, but suddenly, the handler shook her head. “Still, no! You can’t do it.”

  Nicole’s head began to spin in earnest now and she massaged her temples to attempt clarity. “I’ve got to think,” she said finally. “Email me with everything you have on this guy, including where he is at any given time.”

  Gail let out a sigh. “You’re the boss. I know you’ll do what you think is best. I would just hate to see your daughter involved any more than she already is.”

  “You and me both.” Nicole got up, handing the tablet to Gail as she did. “I need to get back and talk with Dan about this.”

  “I got the feeling from him that he’s a pretty protective papa,” Gail said.

  “He is. He’ll be even less likely than me to go along with this idea. Who am I kidding? He’ll hate it! Which is good, because he’ll probably be able to talk me out of it. Then my only problem will be coming up with a Plan B, because I’m not seeing a workable alternative.”

 

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