He quickly turned his attention to Director Miller, already dreading the job he feared was ahead of them all. On the wall behind Miller was a whiteboard/bulletin board that at the moment was covered with a large sheet of blank white paper.
The silence in the room shattered as Miller turned to the board and ripped off that paper. The whiteboard side was pristine, ready for dry-erase markers to get to work, but the bulletin board was papered with perfectly aligned photos of the missing people.
Alexander’s heart squeezed tight as he looked at the photo of seven-year-old Macy Connelly and then moved to a picture of his dark-haired, handsome friend, Jackson. There were a total of seven pictures of people who had seemingly vanished from the face of the earth over the past couple of months.
These weren’t ordinary people, four of them were seasoned FBI agents, one a respected sheriff, one a beloved wife and one a precious little girl. There was circumstantial evidence that they’d all been taken unwillingly from their homes.
“We have a problem,” Miller said, his voice booming in the room. “We have seven missing people, no bodies, no ransom notes and you all are going to find out what has happened to these people. Officially, you are now a task force working solely on this case.”
“Why here and not in Kansas City?” Alexander asked, knowing that two of the people had disappeared from the small town of Mystic Lake, just outside of Kansas City.
“Because this morning we believe we received communication from the perp.” Miller moved to the board and tapped what was obviously a copy of a note that was pinned there. “For those of you who can’t see from where you’re seated, it reads, ‘Right under your nose I work my plan, to become the best killer in the land. I’ve collected my research subjects two by two, and the world will shudder when I’m through.’ It’s signed by the FBI-trained serial killer.” Miller looked disgusted.
Several of the other men muttered curses beneath their breaths and shifted in their seats. Right under your nose—that implied the perp was somewhere here in the Baton Rouge area. Alexander’s stomach muscles knotted. Research subjects—that sounded like some crazy mad scientist who was taking apart the brains of his victims, he thought grimly.
As he listened to Miller give the condensed version of each of the crimes, he focused intently and tried to keep his gaze from the woman across the table.
He knew these particular crimes had stymied the law enforcement officials in Bachelor Moon, a small town not too far from Baton Rouge, and in Mystic Lake, Missouri. There had been no clues, no forensic evidence, nothing to indicate whether the vanished were dead or alive. The note, if it could be believed, at least indicated that the person responsible was someplace in this area...right under their noses.
Already adrenaline surged through him, the eagerness for the hunt and the anticipation of the chase. As one of the agents passed around thick folders to each of the people in the room, Alexander glanced up and his gaze met Georgina’s.
Her green eyes appeared electrified and he knew she felt the same flood of energy, the readiness to get to work, that he did. He tried not to remember that her eyes had also lit up like that when they were making love.
They had been married for two years and the amount of information he knew about his ex-wife could be written on a small cocktail napkin.
He frowned and focused on the contents of the folder he’d been given. It was filled with the details and reports of the FBI agents who had originally investigated each event.
“Harkins,” Miller said, the stern voice pulling Alexander from his reading.
“Sir?” he replied.
“I’m appointing you lead on this. Every agent will report to you, and you will report to me.”
Dread mingled with the faint tease of potential redemption. The last time he’d taken lead on an important case, a young woman had been murdered a single minute before his team had arrived, and soon after that debacle, his marriage had failed.
He’d been plunged into a depression that had lasted for weeks, haunted by the face of the murdered woman and later enduring the pain on Georgina’s face as she’d told him she needed out.
He knew he was a good agent, one of the best, and he also understood that his director was showing his complete faith in him by giving him the lead in a case of such importance.
“Thank you, sir,” he replied. He stared down at the reports in front of him. Although he didn’t have a marriage to lose this time around, he was intensely aware that seven people were depending on him doing the best job he possibly could to lead this task force to save them.
* * *
GEORGINA WAS ACUTELY AWARE of Alexander’s presence from the moment she’d entered the conference room. He was a force of nature, emanating energy as his blue eyes focused on his surroundings.
Miller had left the room and Alexander had moved to take his place at the head of the conference table. He looked confident and at ease, but she knew him well enough to recognize how important this case was to him.
It was important to her as well. It was the biggest case she’d ever worked and, as the only woman in a roomful of men, she was desperate to prove that she was more than up to everyone’s standards.
She’d spent her five-year career with the FBI trying to raise herself from being a good agent to a great one and this was the kind of case that could make that happen for her.
“We’ll spend our first couple of hours here going over the contents of the folders and getting familiar with what’s already happened and where we are now,” Alexander said. “We’ll start with what happened in Bachelor Moon.”
She listened to his deep rich voice detail the fact that former FBI agent Sam Connelly, his wife Daniella and Daniella’s seven-year-old daughter had disappeared during what had appeared to be a late-night snack session in their kitchen. Cookies and milk had been half consumed and a chair had been overturned, indicating that something untoward had occurred.
Although he looked calm and focused, she knew the torture he’d suffered the last time he’d been lead on a case that had gone bad. It had been a torment that had highlighted all her failings as a wife—as a person—and had ultimately forced her to make the decision that he was better off without her.
But that was then and this was now, she reminded herself. She couldn’t dwell on the past, she needed to get her mind in this game, to prove she was as good as, if not better than, every other agent in the room.
“The second disappearance occurred in Mystic Lake, Missouri,” Alexander continued. “Amberly Caldwell, an FBI agent, and her husband, Cole, the local sheriff disappeared from Cole’s home. Our own Jackson Revannaugh was sent to Kansas City to help in that particular investigation. And then, as you all should know by now, three nights ago Jackson and his girlfriend, an FBI agent from Kansas City, went missing.”
“How do we know that Jackson just didn’t take his honey off somewhere for a few days?” Agent Nicholas Cutter asked. “He was on vacation for another week or so, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, but according to the agents who investigated Jackson’s house last night, all their identifications, their weapons and personal items were still in the bedroom where we assume they were sleeping,” Alexander replied.
Georgina shot a glance at Nicholas. He was relatively new to the bureau and already had a reputation for being a hotshot wanting to make a name for himself. While she shared the same desire, she was a team player and she wasn’t sure that Nicholas cared about any team.
She rarely made snap judgments about anyone, but the first time she’d met Nicholas Cutter, she hadn’t particularly liked him. Still, she was a professional and never, ever let her personal feelings show. In her job this ability was a blessing. In her personal life it had been a curse.
“I want you all to take some time