So Close the Hand of Death. J.T. Ellison

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      That wasn’t the truth though. Baldwin didn’t like being left out in the cold, and that was exactly where he felt he was at the moment.

      Taylor was staring out the window, intensely quiet. He glanced over at her, worried. She was strung much too tight. Avoidance was one of the greatest attributes in her arsenal, and she was employing it to full effect now. The events of the past week were going to catch up with her soon.

      He could barely keep up with the insanity himself. The Pretender had weighed heavily on both their minds for the past year. He’d made contact for the first time after the Snow White case had blown up: a letter sent to their home. The letter stood out starkly against his mind’s eye, two lines full of threatening portent.

      An apprentice no more.

      You may call me the Pretender.

      He’d named himself: the fundamental sociopathic tool. The ones who named themselves were so narcissistic they were almost always caught. Almost always.

      The Pretender had disappeared for a while, then popped back up like a possessed jack-in-the-box. That was when the intimidation began in earnest—phone calls to their home and cell phones, more letters. He began getting involved in Taylor’s cases, always on the periphery, but always there. He’d become a malevolent presence in their lives for over a year, threatening, parading, seemingly unlimited in his access and information.

      There had been more to the profile that he hadn’t shared with Renee Sansom’s imposter. They hadn’t gotten into the Pretender’s vast online network of contacts, other killers, sadists, people who lived for cruelty and discord. Posing as a necrophiliac aptly named Necro90, he’d befriended the international duo of necrosadists, Il Macellaio and the Conductor. He egged them on, planted evidence at one of the Conductor’s crime scenes, and made sure Taylor knew he’d done it to help her.

      He seemed to love the control he got from manipulating others. Almost as much joy as he got from killing.

      They hadn’t taken the drubbing lying down. They were fighting back the only way they knew how, with justice, with their own team, their own tools. Finding the man who was threatening his woman was paramount. And Taylor hadn’t been privy to everything Baldwin knew.

      Kevin Salt, Baldwin’s computer forensics expert, had found the Pretender’s online signature and had been tracking his movements throughout the web. Kevin could follow him most anywhere; the IP addresses the Pretender used had been uncommonly consistent for the past few months. Salt documented everything, drew geographical profiles, and found the key that Baldwin was most concerned about. The physical addresses came back again and again to Nashville. The bastard was close.

      His influence was spreading again—the attack on the SBI agents had taken cunning, and time. He’d obviously been recruiting people to help him; whether they knew his real plans or not, they were unknown resources.

      Now he was ready. Whatever whacked-out strategy he’d been putting in motion was officially in play.

      How many people would have to die for the Pretender to be satisfied?

      Taylor had seen another mass attack today, and he knew she would blame herself. The Pretender was putting on a bloody show for her benefit, consistently placing the wounded around her, for her to see. Add to that her obvious but misplaced guilt over the shooting of her last suspect, and he was starting to wonder just when the dam was going to break.

      He could feel it building, the sense that things were moving quicker and quicker, that the world was spinning one-tenth too fast on its axis. If he didn’t grip down, hard, he might go spinning off with it, and that wouldn’t do. No, he needed to resolve this, and keep his woman settled, too. Because if Taylor were to come undone, he didn’t know if he could stand that. Seeing her in pain made his stomach throb dully, and each time the Pretender poked at her it made his eyes blacken with rage.

      The phone next to his chair buzzed discreetly. There was only one person who knew they were on this plane at this moment—his boss, Garrett Woods. Taylor glanced at him; he smiled with what he hoped seemed like reassurance as he answered the phone. “Hey, Garrett.”

      “Are you headed to Nashville?”

      “Yeah. Thanks for getting the chopper diverted. I’ll feel better having Fitzgerald close.”

      “Sure thing. What’s happening there? Where did it all go south?”

      Baldwin filled him in on what they knew so far, then asked, “Anything new from Nags Head?”

      “Other than the director wanting to know why in the hell a suspended FBI agent sent up a red flag for some rather expensive help after a mass shooting?”

      Baldwin groaned. “He found out?”

      “Baldwin, son, the whole country knows. It’s been on all the news stations. Both you and Taylor were on camera leaving the station.”

      “Oh.”

      “Yes, oh. Have you told her yet?”

      “Well, no.”

      “Baldwin, I don’t think I need to be the one to break this to you, but I’ll try, just in case you’re not thinking clearly. You need to tell her. Everything. Now.”

      He knew that. But he honestly didn’t know where to start.

      What would she like to hear least? That he’d been suspended while they did a deeper investigation into his biggest failure, the Harold Arlen case from 2004, when he’d made the massive mistake of not turning in his protégée, Charlotte Douglas, when he’d found out she planted evidence at a crime scene? That he’d gotten three good agents killed because he’d been stupid enough to start fooling around with Charlotte? That he’d gotten Charlotte pregnant in the middle of the biggest case of his career? That he’d only found out a year ago that she hadn’t aborted the child as she claimed, but gave birth and had seen him adopted? That he didn’t know where in the world the boy was, or even what name he’d been given?

      How was he supposed to tell his fiancée, the woman who held his heart, that he shared such an intrinsic, intimate link with another woman? He hadn’t cheated on Taylor, no, but would she ever forgive him?

      He looked out the window, at the stark winter landscape far below. Bleak and barren.

      “Yeah, Garrett. I’m on that.”

      “Seriously, Baldwin. You’ve got one hell of a woman there. You don’t want to fuck it up. So listen to me. I’ve covered your ass for the day, but that’s not going to last long. Get back to Nashville, and get your head down.”

      “I will. I promise. Has there been any other…news?”

      Garrett was helping him search for his son. It had been a year of fruitless starts and stops. He was still getting over the shock of the news: Garrett had found the documents in Charlotte’s desk after her death—the birth certificate, with Baldwin’s name scratched out in ballpoint pen, and a two-year-old’s posed picture. He would be five now.

      All Baldwin knew was that the child was a boy. There was no question the child was his, the boy had the same set of the shoulder, the same thick hair, but red like his mother’s. He’d inherited his father’s СКАЧАТЬ