Scene of the Crime: Baton Rouge

“Chalk up another one for the good guys,” he replied.

Georgina tried to relax against the seat, but it was difficult to find any relaxation at the moment. Her heart beat with a quickened rhythm. She assumed it was caused by the knowledge of the case she was now working and not how Alexander’s familiar cologne filled the air.

“You met Jackson’s new girlfriend?” she asked.

“I had dinner with the two of them last Sunday night, and then we were supposed to meet for drinks on Tuesday evening. When they didn’t show and I still couldn’t get hold of Jackson all day Wednesday, I knew in my gut that something was wrong. Last night, at my urging, Miller sent a couple of agents over to check on Jackson, and that’s when they discovered they were gone, but all of their personal items were still there.”

She saw the tightening of his fingers around the steering wheel and knew he had to be worried sick about Jackson’s well-being. “What was she like? The woman from Kansas City?”

“She’s Special Agent Marjorie Clinton.” A hint of a smile curved his lips. “She’s everything that Jackson isn’t...she likes healthy food, she thinks he’s full of baloney most of the time and it’s obvious they are crazy in love.”

“Jackson needs a good woman in his life,” she replied.

“It appears he’s found her.” He frowned. “Now all we have to do is find them.”

“It isn’t possible they flew back to Kansas City if their identifications were left behind,” she said, thinking out loud.

“They wouldn’t have gone anywhere without his wallet and her purse, both of which were left at Jackson’s place. And they definitely wouldn’t have gone anyplace without their weapons.”

“Any sign of a struggle in the bedroom?”

He shook his head, the late-afternoon sun gleaming on his black hair. “I haven’t been to the scene, but according to the two agents who checked it out last night there were some bedcovers rustled, but no real sign of a violent struggle and, trust me, Jackson would have put up quite a fight. I’m hoping maybe you and I can find or see something they missed that might give us a clue.”

“There weren’t any clues found in Bachelor Moon or Mystic Lake,” she replied.

A new knot of tension formed in his jaw. “Don’t remind me.” He pulled into the driveway of the luxury apartment complex where Jackson lived.

The Wingate apartments were set up more like condo units and definitely were for the wealthy who didn’t want the responsibility that came with owning a home.

Jackson’s unit was on the end of the last building in the complex, bumping up against a heavily wooded area and attached by a common courtyard entrance to the unit next door.

“Any sign of forced entry?” she asked as the car came to a halt.

“Not according to the initial walk-through.” He cut the engine and turned to look at her, his blue eyes like hard-edged sapphires. “We either have a perp who is an expert at picking locks or, knowing Jackson, it’s possible he went to bed without checking that all the doors were locked. He always thought he was invincible.” Frustration deepened the tone of his voice.

“Then let’s just hope that whatever has happened to him, he remains invincible,” she replied.

He cast her a quicksilver smile that lingered only for a moment, just long enough to whisper heat through her. “Let’s get inside and see what we can find.” He opened his car door and was halfway to the courtyard entry as she hurried to catch up to him.

They had just reached the fence that led to the courtyard when a figure stepped out of the woods. Alexander filled his hand with his gun in the blink of an eye and then muttered a curse and jammed it back into his shoulder holster.

“Jeez, Joe, do you want to get yourself shot?”

FBI agent Joe Markum stepped closer to them with a wry grin. “Jeez, Harkins, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“You know my motto...shoot first and ask questions later,” Alexander replied. “What are you doing out here?”

“I was assigned late last night to sit on the place to make sure nobody except appropriate officials gained access. Somebody should be arriving soon to take my place, but I’m assuming it isn’t you two.” He nodded to Georgina with a friendly smile.

“We’re here to investigate,” she said. “Miller formed a task force this morning and Alexander is leading it.”

“And we’re hoping to find something that was missed last night,” Alexander said.

“Knock yourselves out.” Joe gestured toward the front door. “It’s unlocked and there’s protective gear in boxes on the porch.”

“Thanks,” Alexander said and together he and Georgina walked through the gate and to the front door where a box of booties and latex gloves awaited whomever might venture into the house.

Georgina pulled on the protective gear and once again her heart began to beat faster. She’d never been in Jackson’s home before, but it was the fact that she was about to enter what they’d already determined to be a crime scene that had her adrenaline flooding through her.

As she followed Alexander into the house, she tried not to notice how his lightweight suit jacket pulled over his broad shoulders, how his black slacks fit perfectly around his slim waist and down his long legs.

She tried not to remember what it had felt like to dance her fingers over his naked muscled chest, how her legs had often twined with his when they’d made love.

They had been great in the bedroom. It had only been when they got out of bed that she hadn’t been able to get the relationship right. She firmly shoved these thoughts out of her mind as they entered Jackson’s living room.

Jackson was the epitome of a Southern man and his furnishings reflected the style of warmth and invitation that would have done any Southerner proud.

The oversize sofa was a rich burgundy and gold print, flanked by burgundy wing-backed chairs. The coffee table was a large square of wood that held a gorgeous floral arrangement. The room was beautiful, but obviously rarely used and not the center of the home.

“Nothing looks like it’s been touched in here,” Alexander said as he moved into the next room, a large great room more casually decorated and obviously the space where Jackson spent much of his time.

A huge flat-screen television hung over a stone fireplace and two leather recliners provided the perfect places to sit and watch a movie or dancing flames. Again, it appeared as if nothing untoward had occurred in this room. There was no sign of a struggle or anything amiss.

Neither of them spoke as they entered the kitchen with its large table and variety of pots and pans hanging from a baker’s rack on the wall. Everything was neat and tidy and she watched as Alexander dragged a hand through his dark hair.

“I guess the report we got that they were taken from their bed is true. Nothing seems to be out of place down here. We should head upstairs.”

She nodded and once again found herself following him up the stairs that led to three bedrooms and two baths. The first two bedrooms and the hallway bathroom showed nothing untoward.

She felt her entire body tense as they approached the master bedroom. She stepped into the room just behind her partner. The king-size bed was unmade. The sheets trailed off to the floor on the closest side of the bed to the door.

“That bedding doesn’t look normal to me,” Alexander said as he stood still as a statue, his gaze lingering on the bed.

“By the way the sheets are hanging off, it looks like somebody was dragged from the bed,” Georgina observed.

“I agree.” The knot in his jaw throbbed as he pointed to the farthest nightstand. “But, how could anyone drag them out of bed when Jackson had his gun right next to him.”

The gun was on the nightstand next to a silver-and-black lamp, an easy reach even in the darkness of night. “Maybe he drugged them? Drugged the food they ate before they came to bed? Slipped something in their drinks?” Her mind raced to make sense of the scene.

“I’ll have the crime scene guys come back and check everything that’s in the refrigerator to see if they find anything tainted by drugs.”

He remained standing at the foot of the bed, staring at the room as if in a trance. Georgina did nothing to break his focus. She knew this was part of his process, this concentration that he used in an effort to see the crime as it happened, to understand any clues that might have been left behind.

She wondered if he still had nightmares. If somebody was seeing to it that he ate right. She’d heard no rumors that he was dating anyone, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t. He’d had two years to move on, and two years was a long time for a man to be alone, especially a man as vital, as alive as Alexander.

“Were the lights on or off?” He finally broke his trance and turned to look at her. “Do you remember from the report if the lights in here were off or on when the first agents arrived on scene?”

She frowned thoughtfully, trying to picture the initial report. “Off,” she finally replied. “Jackson is a big man. If they were both somehow drugged, then how did our perp move their unconscious bodies from here to a waiting vehicle down the stairs and outside?”

Alexander looked closely at the carpeting around the bed where the covers trailed to the floor and then stepped out of the room and stared down the long hallway toward the staircase.

He turned back to Georgina, a deep frown cutting across his forehead. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe they weren’t drugged at all,” she said thoughtfully. “Maybe the perp just got the drop on them, appeared in the doorway with a gun pointed at Marjorie, making it impossible for Jackson to take a chance at grabbing his own gun.”

“Maybe,” he replied absently. “Let me take a look in the master bath to see if there’s anything there and then let’s get out of here.”

He disappeared into the bathroom and Georgina felt his pain, his worry for his friend resonating in her heart. He’d been given a huge job, made all the more important because his good friend was now one of the missing.

The Gilmer case had given him nightmares and thrown him into a black hole that she feared he would never climb out of. If he was unsuccessful on this case, she feared it would completely and utterly destroy him.

* * *

“IT’S SIX-THIRTY, you want to stop by Nettie’s and grab something to eat and talk about all the things we don’t know about this case?” he asked Georgina when they were back in the car and headed away from Jackson’s place. “I don’t know about you, but I haven’t eaten anything today except a bagel early this morning.”

She hesitated only a moment before replying. “Sure, Nettie’s sounds like a plan. Besides, if I say no, you probably won’t eat anything tonight.”

He smiled tightly. “I always did hate to eat alone.”

The restaurant was a favorite place for the FBI agents to grab meals as it was only a block away from the building where they all worked. The prices were reasonable, the portions generous and the food was delicious.

He tried to fight against the discouragement that attempted to work its way into his psyche. He’d hoped to find something at Jackson’s place, but given the fact that the other two crime scenes had yielded nothing in the way of clues, he shouldn’t be surprised that nothing had been found there, either.

Reminding himself that he’d had the case less than twenty-four hours, he wanted to eat and then take the files he had on the previous cases home to study them all again.

Before they’d all left the office, he’d told the team to be in the war room at seven the next morning, even though it was Saturday. Weekends and holidays would have no meaning at all until this case was solved.

The fact that nobody from the team had contacted him while he and Georgina had been gone meant none of them had anything to report. Hopefully by morning that would change.

They remained silent on the rest of the drive to the restaurant. He knew it was probably a mistake partnering himself with Georgina, given their history. He also knew how bright, how dedicated she was to the job, and that because of her knowledge of him and his habits, she’d make the perfect partner.

He pulled into the crowded parking lot. Nettie’s on a Friday night was busy, but he hoped that he and Georgina could grab a booth in the back where they could talk in relative privacy.

Nettie’s had an identity issue. While the food was more along the lines of home cooking, the interior was dim, with candles lit at each table as if it was pretending to be a fine-dining place.

Nettie greeted them at the door with a wide smile. “Two of my favorite agents,” she said. She was a testament to the good food she served. Short and wide with brassy red hair, it was rumored that she’d once scared away a young would-be thief by wielding a large wooden spoon and threatening to spank his ass clean off his body with it.

As Alexander had hoped, she led them to a booth in the back of the restaurant where the noise of the other diners was less audible and he and Georgina would be able to talk without shouting.

The moment they slid into the booth across from each other with the candlelight glowing on Georgina’s face, a sense of déjà vu struck him and brought with it a sense of loss he’d never quite recovered from.

They’d eaten out often during the early days of their marriage in places where candlelight had bathed her beauty in a golden glow. At those times her eyes had glimmered with a love that had showered him with warmth.

Now that glimmer was gone and in its place was the pleasant but focused gaze of professionalism. As it should be, he reminded himself.

The waitress arrived with menus and to take drink orders. Georgina went with a Cobb salad while he ordered a steak and baked potato. They each ordered a glass of wine.

“This is going to be a tough one,” Georgina said. “FBI agents in two different locations haven’t come up with any clues to help apprehend or identify a suspect.”

“True, but we possibly have something they didn’t have,” he replied.

“The note.”

“Exactly. If it’s the real deal, then we have the first communication from the unsub and I’m hoping it won’t be the last.”

She unfurled the cloth napkin to reveal her silverware and placed the napkin in her lap as the waitress arrived with their wine. “I don’t want to be negative, but you know it’s possible that note is from some crackpot, or that single note will be all we get from him,” she replied once the waitress had left the table.

“I know, but I’ve got a gut feeling that this guy is the real deal and at a place where he wants to crow about his victories.”

She smiled. “Rumor has it that your gut is rarely wrong. It will be interesting to see if he makes any more contact with us.”

They sipped their wine, falling into a silence that he’d often experienced when married to Georgina. She’d never been good at small talk, as if afraid she might somehow give away a piece of herself she could never get back.

“How’s life treating you?” he asked, perversely forcing the small talk issue while they waited for their meals to be delivered.

“Fine. I spend most of my time at work, which is how I like it.”

“Are you seeing anyone?”

She raised one of her dark eyebrows wryly. “I don’t have time to see anyone, and in any case I’m not looking for a relationship. What about you?”

He shook his head. “There’s nobody in my life. Like you, I work so much it’s hard to even think about starting a relationship with anyone.”

He didn’t say it aloud, but the truth was that the woman across the table from him had burned him so badly he had no interest in getting close to the fire ever again.

“I have a feeling we’re all going to be putting in a lot of hours with this one,” she said, deftly turning the subject back to work issues.

“I can’t help but think that somehow there’s a connection between the victims...the FBI agents who were taken. It has to be a connection beyond the fact that they were FBI agents—perhaps their specific expertise—otherwise why take Sam Connelly from Bachelor Moon? Why go all the way to Missouri to snatch Agent Amberly Caldwell and then come back here to take Jackson?”

“So, you believe the people who were taken with the agents weren’t just collateral damage?” she asked.

The conversation halted as the waitress appeared with their dinners. Alexander waited until she’d moved away once again and then replied, “They could be some sort of leverage. There’s no better way to get a man to talk than to threaten his wife or his child.”

“But, Sam was a retired agent. He hadn’t worked actively as an agent for some time,” Georgina reminded him.

“True, but he left the agency with the reputation of being one of the best profilers in the country.”

Georgina took a bite of her salad, a tiny frown of concentration dancing across her forehead. “Is it possible that somehow Sam, Jackson and Amberly all worked a case together?”

“Sam and Jackson might have worked together in the past, but I can’t imagine how Amberly figures in. She wouldn’t have been a part of any investigations that Sam and Jackson might have worked here in Louisiana.”

“Even peripherally?”

He gazed at her thoughtfully. “I don’t know. That’s definitely something we should check out. We need to find out about any cases Sam and Jackson might have worked together and how, if at all, Amberly might figure in.”

“Maybe Nicholas and Frank will have something for us tomorrow morning,” she said.

“The sooner the better,” he replied.

They fell quiet as they focused on their meals. Alexander found himself remembering all the silences that had filled the two years of their marriage.

For the first six months or so, Alexander hadn’t noticed it. Captivated by her passion, eager to share who he was as a man, what he wanted for their future, he’d talked enough for both of them. He’d been crazy in love with her and thought she’d felt the same.

It was only after she’d left that he realized the marriage had been a one-sided disaster. They were great in bed, they could talk late into the night about the cases they were working on, but when the conversation turned personal she grew silent.

He knew her parents were alive and that she had two older sisters, but she was estranged from all of them. She never told him what had caused the estrangement, in fact had told him she rarely thought about her family.

She knew everything about his childhood, but he knew nothing about hers. She’d been adept at changing the subject when the conversation got too personal and he’d been too crazy about her to mind.

When he’d decided to partner with her on this case, he’d thought he was choosing her because he knew her work ethic matched his own and he believed she was one of the brightest agents on the team.

Now, as he gazed at her across the candlelit table, he wondered if there wasn’t more to his decision. Perhaps he not only wanted her by his side to help in the investigation, but maybe he was also hoping that by spending more time with her, he would finally unlock the mystery of Georgina.

Chapter Three

Georgina awoke the next morning just after five-thirty, her mind already whirling with the horror of the nightmare that had plagued her for years.

The dream was always the same. She was in a dark, small space, her stomach growling with hunger as the scent of food drifted in the air. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t escape the dark place except by awakening.

Never one to linger in bed, by the time six o’clock arrived she was showered and dressed and in the kitchen waiting for the coffee to quit brewing.

She had thirty minutes to relax until she’d have to leave to get to the FBI offices by seven. Minutes later she sat at her table with a cup of the fresh brew in hand. As she played over the events of the day before, the last thing she could find was any kind of relaxation.

Already she felt tension riding her shoulders, a knot of anxiety in the pit of her stomach. It was bad enough that they had a complicated case where they didn’t even know if the kidnapped victims were dead or alive.

As the only woman on the task force, she felt extreme pressure to overachieve, to prove herself to be the best that she could be.

It didn’t help that Alexander had chosen to partner up with her. He reminded her of her biggest failure, not as an agent, but as a woman. She couldn’t imagine why he would make the choice he did when he could have partnered her with any other member of the task force.

She sipped her coffee and stared out the window to the tiny fenced-in backyard. She had bought this small house three months after her divorce. It had been a bargain buy, as the place had been on the market for two years.

The Realtor who had sold it to her had explained that the small size of the two-bedroom house made it unappealing to any couple planning for a family or any family looking for a home.

It was perfect for Georgina, who knew there would never be a man in her life again, who knew there would never be any children. The spare bedroom was now an office, and she’d done little to decorate other than buying utilitarian furniture and hanging a couple of cheap landscape pictures on the walls.

She took another drink of her coffee and thought of the seven missing people and the note that had been sent to headquarters. If it was real, then it held a hint of crowing, of an ego that needed to be heard.

She could only hope that the ego needed constant feeding and the perp would maintain contact. It was often through some sort of communication that they got clues and found leads to follow in difficult cases.

At exactly six-thirty she left her small house and headed into work. Although it was only a fifteen-minute drive, she’d rather be a little early than late.

As she drove, she carefully kept her thoughts away from Alex. She had no idea how the past two years might have changed him and didn’t want to remember the man he’d been when she’d walked out on him.

She’d have to walk a fine line to remain strictly on a partner level and not allow herself to fall into anything personal. She couldn’t emotionally afford to make a second mistake where he was concerned.

The Baton Rouge FBI field office was located in an unassuming two-story building nestled between a dry cleaning store and a bank. She drove around to the back of the building where there was a large parking lot and pulled into one of the empty spaces. She grabbed the file folder that had kept her up reading reports and looking at photos far too late the night before, and then left her car.

The sultry morning air pressed oppressively against her chest. Or was it just the anxiety of the case and the uncertainty of working closely with her ex-husband?

The bottom floor of the building was dedicated to computer rooms and bookkeeping; the basement held storage and a cafeteria. It was on the second floor that agents actively worked at their own desks.

This morning she passed by her neat and tidy desk to head down the hallway to the conference room that now housed the task force. The scent of fresh coffee greeted her as she stepped into the room, finding Alex and Nicholas Cutter already there.

A large coffeepot had been set up on a side table, along with several boxes of doughnuts. The cliché of law enforcement at all levels. But Georgina knew as well as anyone that the sugar rush of a doughnut and the caffeine of a hot cup of coffee often provided the energy needed to get through long hours.

She smiled at the two men as she entered and sat in the same chair she’d sat in the day before. While Nicholas looked energized and eager, Alex’s face wore the faint lines of fatigue. Like her, he’d probably been up most of the night going over the files of the previous kidnappings.

Before either of the two men had a chance to greet her, other members of the team began to arrive and soon the room was full. Once they’d all found seats, Alex eyed them with a weary resignation. “How many of you saw the news this morning that broke the story that a seven-man, one-woman task force had been formed to investigate the disappearances of FBI agents?”