Styles had respect for Beth and valued her opinion. She’d joined the field office at Rattlesnake Creek under a cloud of uncertainty. She’d failed a psych test after the bloody murder of a kid killer she’d been following. The notorious and almost mystical Tarot Killer had gotten to the killer and cut his throat before he raped and murdered his last victim. Beth had come along moments later and tried to save the perp’s life. Personally, he wouldn’t have bothered but he tended to do things his way, most of the time. With Beth around he had to pull his head in and act as an example. He’d found her blunt, very professional, although unconventional in her approach to law enforcement. She went in boots and all, as if lacking any fear, to catch a criminal. In fact, she was much like him.
Although Beth was like a chameleon. She’d been working undercover for a time and excelled in disguises, was proficient in many occupations, including pole dancing, and had passed as a young prostitute at one time. Her slim build and blonde hair made her look much younger than her late twenties, and with the application of makeup, wigs, and contacts, she’d fooled him more than once. Yeah, Beth was an asset, but a slightly eccentric one. In fact, one day he admired her and other days she scared the heck out of him.
“Look at these images.” Beth opened a file with images lined up to show the progression of age of a young girl to a woman in her late thirties. “These have a ninety-nine percent chance of being Ginny, but this woman’s name is Rene Shoebridge. She lives out of Louan. It says here she is married to a security guard. That’s about all I have apart from her high school and college records. Seems she stays at home, no jobs, zip.” She opened another image. “This is all I could find on him, although it looks like he’s wearing some type of disguise, unless men wear their hair like that in Louan. He looks way older than her and I discovered she has a child by the name of Billy.”
Excitement and trepidation gripped Styles in equal measure. He stared at the images, zooming in to look closer. His heart raced. The woman could be Ginny. She looked like his mom. Emotion gripped him in an uncontrollable wave. He swallowed hard. Could this be true? Was this really Ginny? He noticed Beth’s concerned stare and pinched the bridge of his nose to stay a headache and leaned back in the chair. “Ninety-nine percent chance of it being her? That’s incredible.” Beside him his dog, Bear, a Belgian Malinois, whined and rested his large head on his knee as if sensing his anxiety. “I gave up too soon. I should have kept on searching.”
Concern gripped him. Maybe after all this time, Ginny didn’t want to be found. He gave Beth a long look. “Why didn’t she try and contact the family?” He gestured to the images. “She attended high school. It’s plain she wasn’t being held against her will.”
“Hmm.” Beth leaned back in her chair and clicked the top of a ballpoint pen on and off while eyeing him with annoyance. “You’re not looking at this logically, and blaming yourself is crazy. Someone obviously abducted her. The case before I came here: A young girl had been groomed by a cleaner at the school to trust him. When he told her that her parents had been in a car wreck, she went with him willingly.” She eyed him critically. “Do you recall anyone coming by often or anyone at school hanging around Ginny?”
Absently stroking Bear’s ears, Styles allowed his mind to drift back twenty-five years. Not many people visited his home. His dad wasn’t sociable, apart from chatting to the other fathers at the Little League baseball games. He didn’t recall anyone hanging around or talking to Ginny at all. He shook his head. “Nope. I can’t remember anyone at all. The cops asked me the same question at the time, and thinking back, I really don’t believe Ginny would allow any man to get close to her. Mom was always warning her about men.”
“It could have been an opportunistic abduction.” Beth placed the pen on the table and met his gaze. “The perp was driving by and saw you walk into the woods. He decided to see if he could grab Ginny. Most would murder or rape them right away but when you ran away and left her alone, maybe he told her he’d seen you somewhere and offered to help look for you. She could have gone with him voluntarily. What you don’t understand is these men have so many aces up their sleeves and kids are vulnerable. They know how to charm a kid and convince them to go with them. They’ve lost a puppy, they have candy in their vehicle, so many ways to make the kid go with them.”
Shaking his head, Styles stared at her. She didn’t know Ginny. “There is no way she went voluntarily. She knew about stranger danger.”
“So where were you?” Beth wrapped one hand around her coffee cup and then brought it to her mouth for a sip and eyed him over the rim. “If she didn’t go willingly, how come you didn’t hear a scream? You didn’t see anything either, did you?”
Standing and dashing a hand through his hair, he spun to face her. “I was hiding. It was a joke and, no, I didn’t see or hear anything. I was down alongside the river hiding in the rocks. The rush of the water would have covered any noise.”
“So why are you blaming yourself constantly?” Beth raised both eyebrows. “You were a young kid, pranking your sister. That’s normal behavior for an eight-year-old. You’d played at the same place many times previously and nothing bad happened. You believed it was a safe place to play and so did your parents, so why do you blame yourself for something that was out of your control?”
Styles recalled the beating his father had given him when he returned home without Ginny. His mother’s accusations about being irresponsible and blaming him for her disappearance. The arguments that followed and his father leaving home and later taking his own life. He blamed himself for everything that had happened. It was his fault and he should not have left her alone. He lifted his gaze to Beth. “My parents blamed me. The following two years after her disappearance, my parents’ marriage fell to bits. My father left home and later took an overdose of prescription drugs. My mom told me that it was my fault. If I hadn’t left Ginny alone that day, we would all be happy.”
“That is one heck of a burden to put on a small child.” Beth’s expression turned sympathetic. “It’s just as well you haven’t got psychopathic tendencies or maybe you would have ended up a serial killer.” Her mouth curled up in the corners. “Take it from an expert, you were not to blame. When we find the man who took her, you can take out your frustrations on him and I’ll watch.” She snorted and held up one finger. “No, wait a moment. I’ll definitely help.”
This was typical Beth. Her wonderful dark sense of humor took some getting used to, but after a year working with her, he’d started to see her in a different light. Beth hated abusers with a passion, and he understood that every joke she made carried an underlying truth with it. If she found a pedophile, in truth, she’d like to mess them up real bad, but her badge prevented her from acting. Luckily, she’d be satisfied with bringing them to justice. He smiled at her. “Well, I guess we can hope that he comes at me and I have to defend myself.”
“I have to admit that using a weapon is counterproductive if you want to get revenge.” Beth picked up her pen and twirled it in her fingers. “A good old street fight is much more satisfying. Like you said, in a street brawl there are no rules.” She chuckled. “We’ve been in a few of those and didn’t kill anyone. I’ve come to the conclusion that no one takes any notice of an FBI badge around these parts. Every time we run into a group of angry men, it’s game on. Do you figure it’s the same out at Louan?”
Styles thought for a beat and then shrugged. “I’m not sure. Louan is a wealthy town. They mine sapphires, so there will be miners the same as here. One family seems to run the town. The law enforcement is the sheriff and his four sons. I heard lately that they had taken on a couple of extra deputies, so maybe they keep the miners under control.”
“How do you want to do this? I have a current address and it’s not far in the chopper.” Beth spun in her chair to look at him. “The problem is, without DNA we don’t have any proof this is Ginny and we can’t really go by her house unannounced and start demanding answers.”
Styles nodded. “Yeah, we can. It’s a cold case and you have new evidence.” He smiled. “I’ll run it past the director to ensure my involvement in the case doesn’t create a conflict of interest.” He went to his desk to make the call.
After explaining the situation, the director wanted to speak to Beth as well, and Styles put his phone on speaker.
“Have you looked into the background of Rene Shoebridge?”
“Yeah, I can’t find anything before high school.” Beth brought up a screen of information on her computer. “The records at the high school state that she was homeschooled. Her maiden name is listed as Rene Blackstone. Everything looks legit. Whoever faked her documents is very good. This type of coverup would be expensive and not what I’d expect from a pedophile. He’s gone the extra mile to keep her for himself, and it’s very unusual for them not to tire of them once they get older.”
The hairs on the back of Styles’ neck stood to attention. “Blackstone was the name of the town we lived in when she disappeared.”
“Okay, that’s good enough for me. Notify the local sheriff that you are in the area and investigating a missing persons case. I don’t believe that your involvement constitutes a conflict of interest in your sister’s case. Her case is outside the statute of limitations. However, if this person is still abducting children, I would expect you and Agent Katz to bring them in. Good luck, Styles. I hope you find your sister.”
Styles disconnected and smiled at Beth. “Pack a bag. I’m planning on staying until we get answers.” He glanced at his watch. “Wheels up at eleven.”
TWO
Ice crunched under Beth’s boots as she crossed the blacktop to Tommy Joe’s Bar and Grill. It surprised her that she’d finally slipped into life in Rattlesnake Creek. The small mining town was totally different to her time in DC. A city girl at heart, she at first found it difficult to fit in with the laid-back local culture. Harder still to keep her dark side from emerging in front of Styles. Her need to remove unstoppable monsters permanently didn’t come under the FBI’s code of conduct. Constantly under Styles’ supervision, she needed a place to escape his scrutiny and had purchased a cabin in the woods. As far as Styles was concerned, she spent her downtime painting pictures of the local landscape or visiting antique stores. In fact, she did do the latter as a cover to allow her to slip away in the guise of the Tarot Killer to hunt down predators who had slipped through the net of justice.
She’d grown to like Styles. He was as honest as the day was long, strong and dependable. In fact, he was a good friend and she hated deceiving him, but he’d never understand the psychopath lurking below her FBI agent persona. Heck, she didn’t understand why she had the urge to kill monsters, but she figured her abusive time in foster care had fueled the fire. Her father was in prison for life. Known as Cutthroat Jack, he’d murdered her mother in front of her. The need to get vengeance had burned inside her for many years, like an out-of-control rabid dog, but since joining the FBI, she’d gained control of her urge to kill and diverted it toward violent criminals who had eluded the law. These people continued to rape, murder, kill, or enslave because of the protection around them. She’d seen many criminals set free because of friends in high places during her time in law enforcement. These elite unstoppables became her targets. It was never a case of taking the law into her own hands. She followed rules, and one was to witness the crime. If there was no legal way to stop the monsters, she’d stop them even if it meant becoming a victim.
Beth’s research into the disappearance of Ginny had opened doors that she hadn’t expected. Snippets of information had emerged on the dark web, leading her to suspect that Styles’ sister was only the tip of the iceberg. Finding her and discovering a few scraps of evidence might lead them to a pedophile ring that encompassed the entire country. Many cases of missing children remained unsolved. In one of their recent cases, the perpetrator always abducted two girls. He’d murdered one and sold the second into slavery. Try as they may, the FBI had not been able to locate the second girls who went missing, although they knew their fate as one of them was found dumped in San Francisco Bay dressed as a sex worker.
In Black Rock Falls, a group of men had purchased young girls from foster parents as sex slaves. The resulting babies, it was assumed, they’d sold to an adoption agency, the name of which remained a mystery. The web of secrecy surrounding this group of people was unbreakable. They covered their tracks so well even the most proficient of cybercrime experts had not been able to discover their whereabouts. The key that would unlock the information that Beth needed to proceed was hidden in the memories of Ginny Styles.