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10:30 p.m.
They’d searched the entire precinct. The evidence, the case files—everything was gone. No one in the department had wanted to touch the case, even after all these years, but none of them had seen someone from the BAU with it either. A full audit of evidence had gone into effect, bringing the entire station to a standstill. The evidence room was locked at all times, not to mention covered by hallway surveillance cameras. And yet when Boucher had tried to pull the footage, the camera had conveniently been angled in the wrong direction for the past three days. There was little chance someone outside of the department or BAU had taken the evidence. Something was going on here, and Leigh couldn’t help but wonder if Chief Maynor had a part in it, but exhaustion was winning out.
Her follow-up with the medical examiner’s office and Dr. Jennings’s neighbors had taken most of the day with little to show for the effort. Nothing had stood out to the dozen or so people Leigh had questioned.
Dr. Roxanne Jennings had been friendly enough, coming and going at all hours of the day but mostly kept to herself. Made sense. As the only pathologist in Concord, she would’ve been on call 24/7, leaving no time to forge real friendships or hold down a romantic relationship. No family in the state. All Leigh had been able to locate was a cousin out west, who’d fallen out of touch. Neighbors had described Dr. Jennings as open with a good sense of humor, yet… off. Not for any particular reason other than what she did for a living. What kind of person wanted to handle dead bodies all day?
Leigh could relate. It’d been one of the primary reasons she’d stopped trying to connect with the people in her apartment building, at the gym, or through coworkers. Because what kind of person went out of her way to study serial killers year after year? This murderous thing had shaped her whole life, reaching its tendrils down into every area. Even those that shouldn’t have been touched by it.
Leigh glanced at her phone on the hotel room desk for the hundredth—or was it the two hundredth?—time. Willing it to ping. To light up. To do anything but sit there like a brick. Elyse had done as she’d asked. She’d stopped trying to contact her. Stopped caring. Only this time, Leigh had brought it on herself, hadn’t she? She’d been the one to draw the line between them. Not the other way around.
But that deep need—the one that drove her to shut down the possibility of a hysterectomy in the first place—was clawing to the surface the longer her screen remained dark. It promised that if she just made the effort, she could have everything she wanted. That someone out there really could understand how… broken she’d become and maybe feel the need to help piece her back together.
“You’re going to regret this.” Leigh grabbed for her phone off the desk and tapped the received message from Elyse. She’d tried to delete it, to put it out of her mind, and move on with her life and this case, but something she didn’t understand at the time had stopped her. She hit the call button and pressed the phone to her ear.
The line picked up, but there was no voice on the other end.
She’d have to be the one to take the first step. “My brother was murdered. My father went to prison for it, and my mother shot herself because of it. You wanted to know why I don’t want the surgery? Because I want it all back. I want to feel the way I did growing up, surrounded by family, knowing we had each other no matter what, and that I was important to someone. And if I go through with a hysterectomy, I lose any chance of that.”
The words were out there now. They’d escaped faster than her brain could keep up, and her internal critic had lost control. The following silence pressurized between her shoulder blades until she couldn’t hear anything but Elyse’s breathing through the line.
This was the part when the physician’s assistant would realize what she’d gotten herself into. Where she’d apologize, making it sound as sincere as possible, before distancing herself from the conversation and from Leigh. Someone would be at the door. There was a call on the other line. She was right in the middle of cooking dinner. She’d heard them all. And Leigh would believe her. Because that was the only thing she could do to bury that part of herself all over again.
Seconds distorted into a dark fluid.
“How can I help?” Elyse finally said.
Time seemed to freeze as Leigh processed her words. She’d forgotten how to breathe right then. That… She hadn’t expected that. A flurry of nervous energy took hold as she opened her mouth to respond, but she’d suddenly forgotten how to speak, too.
“Leigh? Are you still there?” Shuffling broke through the line as though Elyse was checking to make sure the call was still connected.
“Yeah.” Blood rushed to her head. She didn’t know how to do this anymore. Two decades of isolation had corrupted her social skills, and she felt like she was drifting in open water without a life preserver or any sight of land. “I’m still here. I just…”
Leigh stared at the hotel’s light textured wallpaper meant to imbue calm and a sense of relaxation, and it worked. The denial, the anger—it’d slipped free until there was nothing left to clutch on to. The cancer was back, and she couldn’t ignore it if she still wanted all those things she’d been forced to put on hold. It was time to make a choice. Forward. “I wanted to ask about a second round of radiation. I’ve done it before. I know what to expect. I’m on assignment here in Concord, but I can make it work.”
“The cancer is more widespread than last time, Leigh,” Elyse said. “Dr. Wilson told me a second round of radiation might slow it down, but it’s not your best option.”
“There has to be something else. Some other treatment or study.” She’d take anything at this point. Anything other than losing her only shot at a family. “Please.”
Elyse didn’t answer for a series of breaths. Holding Leigh’s entire future in her response. “I’ll do some research. See what I can find. I can’t make any promises, but if you’re sure about this, I’ll do whatever I can to find a solution for you.”
“I’m sure.” The vise around her lungs released then, and Leigh took her first full breath since Elyse answered the call. “And thank you. For not hanging up on me.”
“You’re welcome.” The cheeriness that’d once grated against her nerves was back, but this time, Leigh took it for what it was: hope. “But I’m going to need something from you in return. Just… call me if you need to talk. Okay? Don’t try to do this alone.”
Straightening, Leigh tightened her hold on the phone. Her automatic defenses fed into the discomfort at the thought of reaching out to a practical stranger, but Elyse had made her point clear. She’d been through this before. Had lost a daughter because of it. If there was one person who might understand that need for a family, it could be a physician’s assistant who’d been in the room while Leigh tried to keep a gown tucked around her bare ass. “Thanks.”
The call ended from the other line.
She redirected herself to the edge of the lumpy hotel bed, setting the box Chris Ellingson had gifted her between both hands. Flashes of that night—of the fire and the man in her bedroom, of the ashes where her childhood home had once stood—seeped past her defenses. She’d tried to fight them off, but she’d reached her physical end. Officer Donavon Pierce had yet to show his face at the station since, citing personal matters according to Boucher, but without proof he’d been the man behind the mask—all of which had gone up in flames—she couldn’t tip her hand. Not yet, but it was coming. A man capable of arson and terrorizing an FBI agent had no place in law enforcement, as far as she was concerned.
Sleep tugged at her sore muscles while the blisters along the front of her shins screamed for a change in dressing. There was no avoiding it. She would have to surrender sooner or later, and the longer she pushed it off, the higher chances of making a mistake skyrocketed.
The hotel room wasn’t much different than the one she and the team had searched this morning. Dark, quiet. No fireplace, but she didn’t need amenities. A pillow and a bed were enough. Late nights in the office, right when she was on the brink of unraveling another piece of a puzzle and with only the hum of her computer to keep her company, a desk worked great, too. She pressed the opposite corners of the package into her palms, her heart rate steady behind her ears. This place was too quiet. There wasn’t even any noise coming from the shared doorway between hers and Boucher’s rooms.
The case had pummeled them in a matter of days. Seemed no matter how much progress they’d made, the unsub was determined to unravel it. And he was doing a damn good job.
Her phone vibrated from where she’d plugged it in on the side table. Unknown number. Tapping the screen, she answered. “Brody.”
