Into the Night(70)

A few moments later, the cop escorted Dr. Lopez out of the lab and toward the waiting elevator. Macey and Bowen were left in the hallway. She walked over the tiled floor, her gaze drawn helplessly to the spot that had been marked by McKinley’s blood. Someone had done a very good job of cleaning the scene.

As soon as the elevator doors closed and Dr. Lopez was gone with her cop, Macey turned toward Bowen. “Jonah Loxley is missing.”

He shook his head, even as surprise had his eyes flaring.

“That was Tucker on the phone. He said Jonah left the museum and vanished. The only thing he found at the scene was Jonah’s cell phone.”

“Fuck.”

“Tucker wants us at the police station, right now.”

“He thinks the perp took Jonah?”

“He didn’t say, but what else could he think? This killer went after a cop, he went after the ME and now he’s taken an FBI agent.” He’d been taunting Bowen all along, and she’d feared he’d be the one attacked by the killer. Her hands were clammy. “He took one of our own.” The fact that Jonah was missing—that proved that Peter Carter couldn’t be the perp they were after. Had he killed his girlfriend? Yes, she believed he had.

But the man they were after...

He was still hunting.

He wasn’t in some hospital bed, under police guard.

He was somewhere in Gatlinburg, and he had new prey.

*

MACEY FELT AS if she were running on empty. She and Bowen rushed into the police station, and they found Tucker waiting on them. He gave a jerking motion of his hand and they filed into the conference room. As soon as the door closed behind them...

“Samantha Dark is on her way to Gatlinburg,” he announced flatly. “She’s going to be joining us for this investigation, but she’s actually been working on the case all along.” His gaze swept between them. “Samantha found...glitches, I guess you could say, in the FBI’s personnel files.”

“Glitches?” Bowen repeated as his brows shot up. “What kind of glitches?”

Tucker crossed his arms over his chest. “It was your file that was the red flag. Someone accessed it illegally. Dug into the reports on your talks with the FBI shrink, revealed the case history you had with Arnold Shaw—”

“In other words, someone ripped into my life.”

Bowen inclined his head. “Not just someone... The hack has been traced back to Jonah Loxley.”

Macey took a quick step back, shocked to her core. “What?” But then, before he could respond, Macey shook her head in denial. “There’s a mistake here. He wouldn’t do that—”

“No mistake. She thought he might be the patsy for someone else—that was her first suspicion, so Samantha pulled in a whole team of cyber analysts. They traced the hacks back to Jonah Loxley’s home. And these hacks? They’ve been going on for months. Ever since Samantha created her team.”

She could hear a dull ringing in her ears. But I trusted him. He was my friend.

She’d trusted him, the same way she’d trusted Daniel Haddox.

“Jonah hacked into the files of everyone on Samantha’s team,” Tucker said grimly. “And by the guy’s own confession to me, he’s been developing a program that will help him to track and identify serial killers, to find them when they’re hiding.”

Bowen swore. “Hiding...just like the Doctor. Like the Pyro.”

“They could have been test runs,” Tucker said.

Macey could only stare at them both, in shock. “You’re not serious.” Hacking into computer files at the Bureau was one thing, but what they seemed to be suggesting... “This is bullshit! He’s one of us! He’s missing now—”

“He’s missing.” Tucker nodded. “He went missing right after I threw my suspicions at him. Less than five minutes later, the guy went AWOL. That timing, it’s a little too convenient for me.”

It might be convenient, but that didn’t mean Jonah was a killer. “He is one of us,” she snapped. “I’ve been friends with him for a long time. He busted his ass to get on this team. He wanted to prove—” But she broke off because she realized her words weren’t going to help Jonah.

They’d only be another nail in his coffin.

But Bowen knew exactly what she’d planned to say. “He wanted to prove that he was a good profiler, right? That he could find the killers better than the rest of us. Us being the ones who’d originally been picked for Samantha’s team.”

Macey swallowed. “We need to find him. That’s our priority. We find him. We make sure he’s safe, then we can get answers to our questions.”

“You were the closest one to him, Macey.” Tucker began to pace. “You didn’t see any red flags? Anything that might make you think—”

“Think what?” she snapped back. “That he’s some kind of killer? No, no, I didn’t think that. I’ve never thought that.” She still couldn’t. They were just talking about suspicions, not facts. Not yet. “He wants to help people, same as we do.”

“He hacked into our files, Macey. He did that. The evidence is conclusive.”

“And we can question him about that, after we find him.” She shook her head. “Look, let’s focus here. We need security footage. I saw cameras all around the oddities museum. Let’s tap into them and see what happened.”