The Coldest Fear. Debra Webb
husband and her child not even a year ago and her partner of seven years just two months back, couldn’t hope to rebound so quickly. Nearly being raped and having a dear friend murdered all within the past forty-eight hours was more than any human should have to bear. She would need months, maybe years of counseling. Or maybe all the loss and devastation had piled so high on the shattered pieces of her heart that she was beyond the point of no return.
Her gut clenched. Could she trust her instincts at this point?
This wasn’t the time for second-guessing. Focus on what you came here to do.
Bobbie closed the massive door and put her back against it. Take a breath. Another. No metallic odor of blood. No lingering scents of a dinner the owner may have had hours ago. Did Zacharias have his evening meal prepared in the kitchen by a personal chef? Or did he eat out?
The oppressive silence sent another shot of adrenaline into her blood. Did any member of Zacharias’s household staff live in the residence? His wife had divorced him years ago and his children had grown up and moved across the country, no doubt to separate themselves from images of bloody, mutilated corpses arranged in grotesque venues for a depraved mind to capture on a painter’s canvas.
She wondered if his money brought Zacharias much comfort when he turned out the lights all alone each night.
Alone...exactly the way you do, Bobbie.
The sound of Nick’s voice whispered across her senses reminding her that for just a little while she hadn’t been alone.
Survey the scene, Bobbie. This was not the time to be distracted.
Why wasn’t Zacharias’s security system singing a warning about the open door? Bobbie glanced at the dark keypad on the wall not three feet away. Evidently he’d left in a big hurry and hadn’t bothered setting the alarm or checking the door.
Or had someone gotten here ahead of her? Someone who wanted more than to ask a few questions?
The extravagant lock on the door appeared undamaged. As for visitors, the feds as well as the local police had questioned him in the past forty-eight hours.
Did you take off right after that, Zacharias?
Seemed strange that a surveillance detail hadn’t been assigned to keep an eye on their one potential lead to finding Weller. She shook her head. Maybe the problem was that the FBI and the task force created to recapture Weller were far too focused on proving Nick was somehow involved with his father’s escape. No matter that he’d been debriefed by the feds scarcely twelve hours ago and cleared of any wrongdoing in Devine’s death by Montgomery PD, the suspicion about his connection to Weller lingered. In part because Nick had spent most of his adult life living in the shadows, finding the killers no one else could. Even trained and experienced members of law enforcement at times feared what they didn’t understand. Nick Shade was innocent of his father’s crimes. He had turned his back on Randolph Weller years ago after finding him in the process of creating art from his two most recent kills. Worse, he’d discovered that Weller had murdered his mother when she learned her husband’s despicable secret. Nick’s entire life up to that point had been a lie.
As true as it was that both Bobbie and Nick had suffered some seriously fucked-up heartbreak, the big difference between them was that she’d at least had a real family who cared about her. Nick had never had anything real. The people who should have taken care of him had let him down.
I will not let you down, Nick.
Bobbie forced her full attention to the here and now. “Where the hell are you, Zacharias?”
There was always the possibility that the feds had been watching the attorney and were even now following him to see if he would lead them to Weller.
The truth was she hadn’t driven all this way simply to see Zacharias. She didn’t even care if he’d taken his millions and fled. Speaking to him wasn’t actually necessary. All she wanted was to find any files on Weller that Zacharias might have in his home office before those files and any other notes were confiscated by the task force on his trail. Zacharias was a brilliant attorney. He had endless connections in Fulton County. The man would know all the ways, including attorney-client privilege, to challenge any attempts to seize his files or warrants to pilfer through his home or his phone records.
“But you can’t outmaneuver the feds forever,” Bobbie murmured. Which was exactly why the man would disappear very soon if he hadn’t already.
She glanced around the cavernous entry hall. She was here, the door was unlocked and the place appeared deserted—might as well have a look around. Zacharias had called her to Atlanta less than two weeks ago. No one could prove she hadn’t been in his house previously if her prints were found.
There could be security cameras.
After bumping three switches with her elbow, the giant chandelier spilled light over the marble floors. The cool gray paint on the walls spread out to meet the gleaming white trim and lent a cold feel to the space. A massive painting of Zacharias and his family, obviously commissioned a dozen or more years ago, served as the focal point. A round table of mirrored glass sat in the center of the hall, directly beneath the chandelier. The large vase stationed there was filled with cut flowers. The once lush and richly colored petals had browned and now littered the tabletop. A man of means living in a house like this one would certainly have a cleaning staff.
Had he sent them all away before he took his own leave?
Bobbie surveyed the room again. No sign of cameras. In Zacharias’s shoes she would have been far better prepared with a surveillance camera in every damned room as well as around the perimeter of the house. On the other hand, an attorney willing to interact with such depraved murderers probably harbored a serious God complex and didn’t want any electronic documentation of his movements or those of his visitors. With his most notorious monster no longer in chains behind those drab prison walls, Zacharias might not be feeling so high and mighty now.
“Mr. Zacharias? Are you home?”
Bobbie moved from the entry hall with its elegant curving staircase leading up to the second floor to the parlor on the right. She rubbed her arm against her side, pushing the sleeve of her sweatshirt down over her fingers before reaching under the nearest lampshade to switch on the light. The expected sophisticated furnishings were gathered around an equally stylish stone fireplace that spanned the full height of the room—at least twelve feet. She listened again before progressing across the entry hall to the next room, a library. Floor-to-ceiling rows of bookshelves stood where the fireplace would be and distinguished the room from its near mirror image across the hall. No sign of a struggle or that anyone had combed through the space. Other than the open front door, all appeared to be in order.
One by one Bobbie advanced through room after room, calling the owner’s name and bumping a light on with her elbow in each one. Clear.
Since she’d found no sign of foul play or of the homeowner so far, Bobbie suspected Zacharias had in fact gotten the hell out of Dodge. His statement about Weller’s escape had played over and over on every available media outlet the past forty-eight or so hours.
I am shocked and saddened by this turn of events. No one will be safe until Randolph Weller is caught.
“That includes you, Zacharias.”
Bobbie imagined he was well aware of the imminent danger. Under the circumstances, she had known finding him was a long shot but she’d had to try. He hadn’t been answering his phone. No-damned-body had been answering their phones—including you, Bobbie. Her calls to Nick as well as to Special Agent Anthony LeDoux had gone unanswered. Her instincts told her LeDoux was in one way or another up to his eyeballs in this, too.
As much as she wanted to trust LeDoux after what they’d been through together, she couldn’t. The secret the two of them shared was like an open, festering wound deep below the surface where no one else could see. Like cancer, eating them up one inch at a time and at the same time making them dangerously reckless.
Like not calling backup in a situation