Page 93 of Deadly Secrets
Had Weber somehow escaped them? Roman didn’t seem to think so, his foot buried in the gas pedal, the barren landscape of southern California a dark hole of the unknown waiting for them.
As Roman sped through the darkness, a call from Nadia came through. He punched his Bluetooth. “What d’ya got for me, Fernandez?”
“Weber’s place is clean. Too clean. All I can find out about him is he’s finishing a Master in Business. No job, and he travels a lot. His passport is filled with stamps from Europe. I’ve found nothing to tie him to the murders, nothing illegal at all. Not even a stash of weed. Shane is combing through his laptop, but he doesn’t have so much as a porn site in his history. I hate it when serial killers don’t leave evidence lying around.”
Maybe he wasn’t a killer. “We need something solid. Right now, all we have is a video of Jamison getting in his Tahoe and him evading us. At best, it’s circumstantial and weak at that. Unless we find a murder weapon, Jamison’s blood in that vehicle, or Weber confesses, we’ve got nothing to tie him to the kid’s murder or The Reverend.”
“I’m on it, boss, but The Rev and his followers didn’t take trophies that we know of, and we aren’t sure what they used to carve those sigils on their victims’ foreheads. I’m looking for a needle in a haystack.”
Ahead, Roman saw the faint taillights of a car. Was that Weber? They had no way of knowing this far out. There were no traffic cams, and endless stretches of highway enveloped in darkness. Only the lights from their cars and the moon overhead helped to break it up. “I need that needle asap.”
A heavy pause. “I’ll find it for you.”
That’s what he liked to hear. Each of the members on his team were there for a purpose. They had a nose for evidence, analytical brains that could outthink criminals, and a drive that matched his own to bring justice to the world. He pushed them because that’s what made their skills rise to the surface and shine over and over again.
“I don’t like this,” Brooke said.
He reached over and grabbed her hand. “None of us do, but this is where shit gets real. It’s one thing to sit in an office all day and try to connect the dots when you don’t have all of them. It’s another when they finally lead you to the criminal you’re after and you have to chase them down.”
“I get that. Anthropologists and archeologists do the same thing when we search for a lost civilization or colony. There’s only so much you can do at a desk. Eventually, you have to put boots on the ground and start digging. But…”
“The people you’re digging up don’t fight back, do they?”
She chuckled but it was from nerves, not humor. “Exactly. I don’t understand why Weber attended my lecture the other day or broke into my car and stole my stuff. He’s not old enough to be my childhood attacker, so how does he know about the sigil?” She put her other hand to her head and rubbed. “I’m so confused.”
They passed the outpost he’d taken her to just a few days ago. So much had changed in such a short period of time. He gave her hand a light squeeze before he made the turn toward theMalditosite. Up ahead, he saw the flash of brakes before they disappeared into the dark again. “We’re going to get some answers for you.”
As his entourage left the highway, he slowed and spoke to his team and Clyffe via the comms through his Bluetooth. “The site is a few miles ahead if he’s going back to the scene of the second mass killings. We don’t know what we’re driving into here, so everyone be vigilant.”
Roman killed his flashers and asked Clyffe and the state troopers to do the same. Sirens went silent as well. It wasn’t like they could sneak up on the guy, but at this point, low profile was better, especially if Weber had any friends waiting for them.
“You agree with Polly, don’t you?” Brooke’s voice was barely above a whisper. “This is a trap.”
“Weber’s been a little sloppy, but not stupid up to now. Why risk exposing himself at the crime scene?” Roman couldn’t name it, but the way the guy had met his eyes and snapped off that two-finger salute had been a taunt.Come get me. “He either thought he was too clever to get caught or he intentionally showed himself as a dare. I’m betting on the latter.”
“But I still don’t get the connection to me and the sigil. How could he know about it?”
“My best guess is your attacker is now The Reverend and he sent Weber to stalk you.”
Malditowas only a few hundred yards ahead now. The bowl of mountains rose around it, tree copses and cacti rising like skeletons into the sky throwing shadows everywhere. Roman eased the Jeep onto the dirt road, bumping over errant rocks and potholes, his headlights picking up the squatters’ camp and the boulders sitting like silent observers in the ring.
Like ghosts.
“Those poor people,” Brooke said. “Thinking they’d found salvation and a new life here and all they got was death.”
She shouldn’t be here. He should have left her back in town. Not only was it too dangerous for her, it was too hard on her soul.
The old familiar feeling of helplessness rose in his chest. The night of Percy’s death rolled around inside his brain like a pinball, shooting off one side to crash into another. There was a line he should have drawn that night. He hadn’t and it had gotten Percy killed.
Now he was repeating the same damn thing over again. Would he never learn?
Tell her. He owed her the truth about Percy. About all of it.
But before he could open his mouth, his lights landed on a man sitting on one of the boulders.
Weber.
Weber swung his hands up in a show of surrender and for a split-second, Roman breathed a sigh of relief. The man knew he was caught, didn’t want to make things worse for himself.
And then he saw the glint of light off metal, his brain yelledtrap, and bullets rained down like hellfire around them.
