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Morgan opened the door for Jake on a sultry midmorning that begged for storms.
“Come in. Should I make coffee? Are we going to need it?”
He shut the door behind him. “Why don’t we go for something cold. Your ladies around?”
“No, they’re at work.”
Whatever he’d come to tell her, it was bad. She felt the bad crawling under her skin.
“I don’t think the sun tea’s finished yet, but we’ve got Cokes.”
“That’ll be great. Morgan, are you okay hearing about Rozwell from me? You can contact the FBI if you want it straight from the source.”
“I appreciate you taking the time to tell me yourself.” Steady, she thought, look how steady her hands were as she filled glasses with ice. The panic days were over.
“He killed someone else, didn’t he? I can just feel it knotted in my stomach.”
“Yes. Why don’t we sit down here and I’ll tell you everything they gave me. I’ll tell you what happened yesterday in Nevada.”
“Nevada. So they were right about him going south. I like knowing they were right. It’s something.”
As he told her, Morgan sat back, stunned. “I can’t see it, I honestly can’t see him living in some prepper’s cabin in the middle of nowhere. I can see him killing her, and I’m sorry for it, but the rest?”
“You broke him. That’s my take on it. You broke his streak, andthat broke him. I’ll give credit to the FBI, and Beck’s solid instincts, but she and her partner would be the first to admit hitting that town the same morning Rozwell came in for supplies was just blind luck.”
“And they think he was there a couple of weeks?”
“Close to three. They’ve tracked his victim to her last trip into town. It’s not unusual for no one to see her for a month, even more. They have her coming in to sell eggs, milk, some leather goods. She bought supplies, gassed up her truck nearly three weeks ago. And they’ve tracked Rozwell back to a motel about thirty miles away, up until the day she went into Two Springs.”
“I see. I see.”
“She was active in online groups—preppers, survivalists, religious fringes. As they see it, he kept that up off and on, but they tell me they can see subtle differences in her posts and responses starting nineteen days ago—the night after she went in for supplies.”
Jake hesitated, then went on. “They’ll do an autopsy of the body, and may be able to determine when she died. Morgan, every person they interviewed that had any contact with him yesterday stated they saw something wrong in him. He either couldn’t hide it, or didn’t bother. She had guns, Morgan. A shotgun, a rifle—they found spent shells scattered around. And she habitually carried a Colt on her hip.”
“A lot of good that did her.”
“The point is, he took them. He left an AR-15, so we can be grateful there, but he has the rest. And he bought ammo for the Colt when he went to town. He’s never used guns before.”
“He’s not the same as he was before.”
“The profilers agree with that. Everything they found at that cabin says he’s lost control.” Because he considered them friends, because she would become a kind of sister to him, Jake reached for her hand.
“Their thinking is he’ll have no choice but to come here.”
“Part of that’s a relief because you’re always waiting to hear the door creak open, to see the monster leap out. It’s always there, Jake, no matter what I do. It’s like some rodent tunneling holes under a garden. It looks settled and pretty, but it’s all just waiting to collapse.”
She looked down at her drink, then up into his eyes. “You’re worried, since he took the guns, he’ll just shoot me. When I’m goingout to my car or running errands. He won’t. He can’t. It’s too fast and final.”
“He’s not the same as he was,” Jake repeated.
“No, but you can’t change who you are at the base, in the core. He needs to hurt me, to see me afraid. He has to pay me back for everything that went wrong for him since… since Nina.”
After giving herself a shake, she reached for her drink.
“I can’t believe I only knew him for a couple of weeks, and I see him so clearly. The idea of him living the way you said for weeks… No, he has to pay me back for that. Killing me isn’t enough unless I suffer first.”
“I can agree with you and still worry I’m wrong.”
