Into the Night(72)

But they were in the Smokies...too much ground to cover. Too many places for a person to vanish.

“The perp stopped calling you,” she said.

Bowen’s lips thinned. “Yeah, no more fucking taunts.”

“But why? Why stop? He was pulling you in constantly, and now you’ve got nothing but radio silence.”

He moved toward their board—their victims were on that tactical board. Daniel Haddox. God, it was still hard for her to think of him as a victim. When she saw his face, she just remembered what a cold, sadistic bastard he’d been.

“I wanted him dead,” Macey whispered as she stared at Daniel. “I wanted that for so long.” And she’d gotten what she wanted. Time for her confession. “I went to Jonah. I knew he was working on a program to predict the behavior and identify the location of serials. I wanted Daniel Haddox to be his test dummy. I gave him every bit of information I had on Daniel. Everything I knew...” She turned to look at Bowen. “And he turned up nothing.”

Bowen’s face was hard. “Macey...”

“He turned up nothing because Daniel had vanished so completely. I even began to wonder if he was dead. There weren’t any victims who fit his profiles. I mean, I know that Daniel liked to hide the bodies, so Jonah and I were focused on the missing. On people who’d had recent surgeries or any genetic abnormalities—the things that used to make prey stick out for Daniel. But we weren’t turning up any hits. We couldn’t find missing individuals to fit our profile. We knew Daniel wouldn’t have turned away from medicine. He had to be practicing off the grid, so we figured he’d gone to a rural area or maybe...maybe he’d fled the country.” That had been her suspicion. “If he’d gone to Mexico and set up shop, we weren’t ever going to find him and we wouldn’t be able to find his victims, either.”

“But he hadn’t gone to Mexico.”

“No.” Her lips pressed together, and then she said, “And Jonah’s program—it didn’t predict where he was. We only found Daniel because Dr. Lopez recognized the wounds on Gale’s body. Dr. Lopez is the one who notified the FBI. She put the wheels into motion for us.” She reached out and curled her hand around his arm. “Do you see what I’m saying? The whole program that makes Jonah a suspect...it doesn’t work. That’s why he didn’t go to Samantha with it sooner. He wasn’t able to find the serials.”

But a serial had found him.

“The hacking, Mace,” Bowen murmured, his voice gruff. “It went back to his personal computer. Not his work computer, but the laptop he kept at home. The guy was prying into all of our files.”

“That doesn’t make him a killer. We need to look at him as a victim.”

“Right now, I think we’re looking at him as both.”

But they weren’t finding him. “He’s in these mountains, somewhere,” she added. “And we know the perp we’re after doesn’t keep his prey alive for long.”

Bowen shook his head. “No, he doesn’t.”

“He was calling you,” Macey said again. “Each time. But something changed. Something made him stop. What? What was it?”

He glanced down at his watch. “Peter Carter should be awake now. The guy hasn’t asked for any lawyer yet—”

Mostly because he’d been unconscious and in surgery.

“—so this is our chance. We can go to that hospital and grill the bastard.”

Right. She nodded abruptly. Her hand slid away from his arm, but his hand flew up, and his fingers curled under her chin.

“This is going to get even worse before it gets better.”

They both knew that.

“I will have your back. I will stand with you no matter what comes our way. You can always count on me.”

Her chest seemed to burn. “And you can count on me.” Didn’t he see that? With them, the trust cut both ways. She trusted him more than she’d ever trusted anyone.

She turned for the door and she’d only taken a few steps when her gaze met the golden stare of Samantha Dark. Macey stopped short.

“Agents,” Samantha said, but her voice was weary. “We need to talk.” She shut the conference room door behind her. “Clear the air a bit.”

“Jonah—” Macey began.

Samantha held up one hand. “There is no doubt that he accessed confidential FBI files. And that he’s been accessing them for some time.” Samantha’s eyes were lined with dark shadows. “I spent two hours at his home last night. He’d been keeping journals on all of the agents in my unit. He was profiling you all.”

Shock pushed through Macey.

“I don’t think he took well to not making the original cut for the team,” Samantha continued with a tired shake of her head. “So it seemed he wanted to find out just why you all were deemed to be better agents than he was.” She rubbed a hand over the back of her neck. “I hate to say this—God, I hate it—but everything I turn up on Jonah seems to indicate that he fits the profile for the perp that we’re after in Gatlinburg. Even the way this killer has been competing with the FBI, the way he’s so zealously hunted down serials...it’s like he was trying to show us he was better.”

“That he should have made the fucking team,” Bowen said grimly.