The Last Time I Saw Her (17 page)

Charlie was instantly drenched in cold sweat. Her stomach went into full revolt. Shoving away from Michael with both hands, she barely made it to the edge of the pavement before dropping to her knees and vomiting in the scruffy grass.

“Goddamn it.” Michael leaned over her, pulling her hair back away from her face, holding it for her and adding a string of choice curse words as she vomited again.

“You know that—spirits affect me like this sometimes,” she managed when she was done.

Michael was still leaning over her, keeping her hair back out of her face. “Yeah, I do fucking know. Take a couple of deep breaths.”

Charlie did.

“Here.” Michael thrust something at her. “Dude had some napkins in his pocket.”

Charlie accepted what she discovered was a wad of paper napkins and wiped her mouth.

“I don't suppose you have any water?” she asked over her shoulder. To her consternation, her voice sounded shaky.

“Sorry, babe. We can probably get some around here somewhere.”

Charlie nodded. A moment later, she felt recovered enough to let Michael pull her to her feet.

“He was just a kid.” Charlie leaned tiredly against him. It felt good to rest her cheek against the solid warmth of his chest.

“I know.” Supporting her with an arm around her waist, Michael tucked her hair behind her ears as she tilted her face so she could look up at him.

The dead cop walked out through the tent again. With a muttered “Oh, God,” Charlie turned her face away—and found herself looking right at a tall man in a dark suit who emerged from the operations center. He hesitated for a moment, as if he was surprised by what he was seeing, and then came striding toward them. The light was behind him, but—

“Charlie?” His voice was sharp.

She'd known who he was even before he spoke. The lean build, the black hair—“Tony!”

Charlie didn't know why she was even surprised. Of course Tony had heard about what had happened. Of course he had come. First of all, he was her friend, and he was that kind of guy. Second, he was as serious about his work as she was, and catching serial killers was his job. For this, he would have reactivated himself from sick leave without a second thought. At this moment, there were three of the most notorious serial killers in the country loose on the mountain behind them. When he'd set out, there would have been five of the human predators at large. With hostages, including eight teens and—her.

“Is everything all right?” Tony's voice was still sharp. Charlie realized that she was leaning against Michael with her arms wrapped around his waist and his arm tight around hers. His hand that had just finished tucking her hair behind her ears now rested on her shoulder. He'd stiffened when Tony had called her name, and was now looking at Tony just as she was, although she imagined his expression was very different. The two of them presented an unmistakably intimate picture, she was sure. If her world had been as normal as everyone else's, this wouldn't have been a problem. Michael would have been Michael, the man she was in love with, her guy, and she would have introduced him to Tony as such and that would have been that. Unfortunately, Michael was dead and inhabiting Hughes's body. More unfortunately, Tony was well aware that she had met Hughes only the day before and that she suspected him of being a serial killer. The reason he was aware of all that was that she had told him so herself, which if she had foreseen the turn events would take she might not have done, but what was it they said about hindsight? She was also almost certain Tony knew what Hughes looked like and was thus able to identify him now. A photo would have been part of the investigative file she'd asked him to put together for her.

Which made the fact that she was clinging like a barnacle to a boat to the man who Tony thought was Hughes a little hard to explain.

“She's sick,” Michael said, exhibiting more presence of mind than she possessed at the moment in coming up with such a semi-reasonable explanation for their embrace. Charlie could feel the increased tension in his body—he had some issues concerning her relationship with Tony—but his voice was even. “She's had a hell of a day. For starters, she was pushed out of a moving bus and hit the pavement hard. She needs to be checked by a doctor.”

“You're Rick Hughes,” Tony said, approaching. His left arm was in a sling, Charlie saw, a reminder of the bullet wounds that had nearly killed him. The darkness made his expression—and Michael's—impossible to read. There was no inflection at all in Tony's voice. Which told her a great deal: he didn't like seeing her in the supposed Rick Hughes's arms.

Why was nothing in her life ever simple?

“Yeah,” Michael replied as Charlie pushed away from him. He made no attempt to keep her.

“Tony Bartoli, FBI,” Tony introduced himself, and the two men exchanged a perfunctory handshake. Michael knew exactly who Tony was, of course, and also knew way more about Tony than Tony probably would be comfortable with if he was aware of it. As the handshake ended, Tony slid a hand around her elbow, deliberately drawing her away from Michael.

“Are you okay? You shouldn't have come.” Charlie looked up at Tony reproachfully. He was six-one, one-ninety, and handsome, with a lean, expressive face, even features, and coffee brown eyes. It was hard to tell through the darkness, but she thought he looked tired and kind of drawn around the eyes and mouth. No surprise, given the wounds he had suffered, but still she hated this evidence that he hadn't yet recovered. She and Tony had been through a lot together, and she was immensely fond of him. She hugged him. “How are you feeling?”

He returned her hug with his one good arm. “A lot better as of about twenty minutes ago, when we got the call that you'd been found alive. You got pushed out of a moving bus? Are you hurt?”

“I'm fine. I'll tell you all about it later.”

Charlie wasn't looking at Michael, but she could feel him watching the two of them. Because he'd been there throughout the whole thing, he knew every detail of her relationship with Tony, and she was pretty sure he also knew that as much as she might wish it were otherwise, he had nothing to worry about: Tony was not the man who could make her heart go pitter-pat on sight. Still, she was picking up a vibe from Michael as he watched her with Tony that she couldn't quite interpret. Not anger, not jealousy, but—something. What?

“I'm actually really glad you're here,” Charlie said to Tony, choosing to ignore the crosscurrents in the air in the interest of passing on the information she possessed as quickly as possible. “You can cut through the red tape for me.”

“Red tape?”

“Red tape,” she confirmed. “There's no time for me to go through half-a-dozen different people.” The exhausted heaviness in her legs made moving an effort, she discovered, as she pulled away from him to head for the tent, but she moved anyway. She threw a quick “Come on” over her shoulder at Tony as she went.

He caught up with her. “Where are we going?”

“The tent,” she replied, adding, “I have information for whoever's in charge of trying to rescue the hostages. Three of the men being hunted are my research subjects: I know them well. Two of them—Abell and Torres—will die and kill any hostages they're holding before surrendering. The third, Ware, will do whatever they tell him. A full-out assault on the barn where they may be holed up will almost certainly result in everyone inside being killed. They need to try something else first. Negotiations, snipers, I don't know, but something else.”

She was still slightly nauseated and her knees were wobbly and her mouth felt like it was stuffed with sour-tasting cotton balls, to name only the most immediate of her physical concerns, but this information couldn't wait any longer, because if it did it might be too late to do any good.

It might already be too late to do any good. But she had to hope that if the hostages were in the barn, they were still alive, and that it would take a little time for the rescue force to get set up.

“Are you sure you're okay? Because you don't look okay.” Tony's hand slid around her elbow again as he looked at her in concern. They were just walking into the rectangle of light that was spilling out through the open tent flap, and he was getting his first good look at her. This close to the tent, the jumble of voices emanating from it was audible. There was a lot of activity in the parking area around them, and she could hear that, too.

“She needs to see a doctor,” Michael said for the second time from a few paces behind them. “She was puking her guts out back there in the grass.”

Charlie's lips tightened. Of course, Michael knew that the reason she'd just vomited wasn't anything a doctor could do anything about, but he thought she needed to see one and was using that as an excuse to get Tony to pile on with him. Not that she would explain any of this to Tony.

“I'll see a doctor as soon as I make sure this information is given to the right people,” she said. It occurred to her that she wouldn't be quite that impatient with Hughes, whom she barely knew, but it was too late. She moderated her tone. “It might not make a difference, but…it might.”

The thought of what could be happening to the remaining hostages at that very moment was enough to make her want to jump out of her skin. Any slight help she could give them, she meant to provide.

“Lee Hintz with the Virginia State Police is in charge here. I'll take you to him.” Tony's hand tightened on her arm, and he swept her into the tent and over to the chalkboard surrounded by cops she'd spotted when she'd first looked through the flap. It was still surrounded by cops, but it wasn't a chalkboard, she discovered as they reached it. The angle and the uncertain lighting had misled her. It was a dry-erase board with the pictures of everyone who'd been on that bus affixed to it. Her picture, labeled
DR. CHARLOTTE STONE
and captured from her driver's license, wasn't particularly flattering. Hughes's picture was beside hers. It, too, appeared to have been taken from his driver's license, but because he looked exactly like Michael except in a jacket and tie, the picture was hot. The next picture was of Paris, whose last name, Charlie learned from its label, was Troyan. The three of them made up the first vertical row to the left. In the center, a larger group started with the chaperone. Her name was Tabitha Grunwald. The bus driver's picture was beside hers: Larry Carter. After that came Bree Hoyt. Then the boys, one after the other: Trevor Frost (the small, scared-looking kid), Blake Armour (he was the one who'd looked under the bus seat and told Paris she was too big to get out a window), Josh Watkins (the kid with the carroty hair), Kyle Miller (the heavyset kid), and Chris Thomson. Charlie frowned as she saw that the picture of the sixth boy, Ben Snider, had been moved to the other side of the board. Dead now, his picture had been grouped with those of Frank Macy, the buzzed blond prison guard, and Rob Weise, the other prison guard.

Photos of six of the eight escapees were in a row across the bottom of the board: Charlie mentally categorized that grouping as
still at large.
The two pictures that were together on the lower right side—Fleenor and Sayers—she knew were dead.

“Charlie, this is Major Lee Hintz,” Tony said. “Dr. Charlotte Stone.”

Charlie turned to see a compact man in his mid-fifties wearing a state police uniform, who extended his hand toward her.

“Glad for your safe recovery, Dr. Stone,” Hintz said as they shook hands. “This is a bad business.” He looked past her and added, “Glad to see you safe, too, Mr. Hughes.”

“Glad to be safe,” Michael replied, and they shook hands, too.

Charlie quickly told Hintz what she had come to say. He nodded. “I'll pass that on to my men up there now,” he said, and left them, presumably to do just that. Glancing around, Charlie saw that Michael was gone, and frowned. Where could he have…?

“Feel up to telling me what happened?” Tony asked. The tent was packed with people coming and going. It was noisy and slightly chaotic, but where they were, a little to the left of the board with the pictures, was a small oasis of privacy. Charlie spotted Michael on the other side of the tent, felt a flutter of relief, and leaned against the nearest table for support—there were no chairs—as she gave Tony a lightning recap of events. Everything to do with Michael, of course, she left out, along with most of the unnecessary details, including her confrontation with Abell and that she had punched Fleenor. While she spoke she kept track of Michael as he moved around inside the tent with the spidey-sense she seemed to have developed where he was concerned.

“Jesus. I can't begin to fathom how something like this could have happened.” Tony rubbed a hand over his forehead when she finished. “Hughes saved your life?”

Charlie nodded. “And Paris Troyan's.”

Tony frowned at her. “You still thinking he might be a serial killer?”

Charlie shrugged. Well, actually, yes, she did, but Michael was not Hughes, and for right now it might be better to skirt the issue.

“All I know for sure is he saved my life,” she replied.

Tony continued, “Because I went ahead and sent the coffee cup in your office to the lab. At least, I'm presuming the one on the outside corner of your desk was the one with his DNA on it.”

Charlie looked at him in surprise. “Yes, but—how in the world were you able to do that?”

Tony shrugged. “When I got to town, first place I went was the prison. See, all I knew at that point was that on the one hand, there'd been a mass escape from Wallens Ridge, and on the other hand, you, having been inside Wallens Ridge at the time, were missing. Those two things might or might not be connected. The last person you'd been seen with was Hughes, who I knew you had suspicions about. It was always possible that Hughes had done something to you under the cover of the fire and the prison break. I went to your office, which wasn't damaged, by the way. The fire in that wing was confined to the library. Anyway, I was in your office looking for anything that might provide a clue as to what had happened to you and was told that a messenger had arrived to pick up some DNA evidence you had made arrangements to send off. Remembering you telling me about it, I bagged up the cup and gave it to him, still thinking that possibly Hughes had abducted you and we might need to know real quick if there was a possibility that you were right about him being a serial killer. But then Hughes's car was found in the prison parking lot, and your car was found in the parking lot, and finally a witness was interviewed who thought he'd seen you getting on the school bus with the Scared Straight kids. When it turned out the witness was right, I almost found myself wishing you'd been grabbed by Hughes.”

Before Charlie could reply to that, Buzz and Lena—FBI Special Agents Buzz Crane and Lena Kaminsky, who made up Tony's team—came rushing toward them.

“Charlie! Thank God you're okay!” Buzz exclaimed. Five-ten and wiry in his FBI standard dark suit, with springy brown curls, a thin, sharp-featured face, and bright blue eyes beneath black-framed glasses, he was cute in a geeky kind of way. He enveloped her in a hug. Charlie hugged him back. “The boss here was freaking out.”

“I was a little worried,” Tony corrected, smiling at Charlie as Buzz released her. She smiled back. God, she really did like him so much! But the operative word there was
like,
not
love.
She now absolutely, positively, and without a doubt knew the difference, God help her.

“Bartoli rushed us down here so fast I forgot and left the iron on. I had to call my sister after I got here to turn it off.” Lena was giving her a frowning once-over. “You look like crap.”