Читать книгу Eternal - V.K. Forrest - Страница 7

The cell phone on the car seat beside her rang, but Fia didn’t pick it up. The little screen identified the caller as máthair. It was the fifth call from her mother in the last two hours. One of her brothers had also called, as had her uncle. She hadn’t even known Uncle Sean had her number; he probably hadn’t, until her mother gave it to him.

The phone stopped ringing, was quiet for a moment, then chirped accusingly, signaling that yet another message had been left. The screen flashed. Seven messages. “Fine,” she muttered. “Perfect.”

Fia downshifted hard, engine-braking the BMW down the exit ramp off Route 1 before stomping on the gas pedal out of the curve. She had decided it would be better that she not speak to her mother, or her uncle, or anyone from Clare Point until she saw the crime scene. Her first loyalty had to be to the Bureau. She knew some family members wouldn’t understand, but if she was going to find out what happened to Bobby McCathal, she had to be an FBI agent first, Kahill sept member second. She had to follow investigative protocol, and that meant not allowing her mother to cloud her thinking with any doomsday proclamations, or her uncle with his armchair Discovery Channel police procedures.

As Fia left the interstate behind, the terrain changed quickly from soy beans, corn, and sorghum to pine and hardwood forest. The road surface morphed from pale cement to shiny blacktop, then crumbling blacktop as the woods crept closer until it surrounded her. She flew past a state sign marking the west boundary of the Clare Point Wildlife Preserve. The needle on the speedometer slipped up over eighty-five. Littering in the preserve was a three-hundred-dollar fine. Speeding was practically a Kahill birthright.

Fia turned up the air-conditioning in the car and pushed her sunglasses back up her nose. Shadows from the trees fell across her windshield; patterns of light and dark danced on the glass. It was the last week of August. Central Delaware was still hot as hell, but at least the humidity was not ungodly high. The tourist season was almost over. Most of the students had gone back to college or school or begun sports training so there would be few visitors on a Wednesday. The fewer the better.

She followed the winding road, wondering what could have happened to Bobby McCathal. She needed to get to the bottom of this quickly, but absolutely nothing was coming to her. Possibilities flitted through her mind, but she was having a difficult time focusing as she fought that familiar feeling of inadequacy that was always part of returning home.

What was wrong with her? She was thirty-five years old, well respected in her field, and yet she allowed these people to make her feel like a child. As if she wasn’t good enough, as if nothing she did would quite meet their approval. “Sweet Mary,” she breathed softly.

The woods opened up, the road widened, and Fia passed the hand-carved wooden sign, embellished with a shamrock and a cattail, welcoming visitors to Clare Point. The state road fed directly onto Main Street, which ran west to east, straight down to the bay. Both sides of the street were lined with Victorian houses, pink—Sorry, Aunt Leah, salmon—baby blue, pale yellow, their gingerbread molding painted in contrasting pastels of peach, teal, and lavender. The colors were silly, like a bag of Jelly Bellys spilled on carpet. But the tourists, especially the blue-haired ladies, marveled at the authentic turn-of-the century houses. The hometown atmosphere they helped to create brought in ninety-five percent of the town’s annual income in three short months.

There were no parking meters in front of the Clare Point post office; it was a friendly town that welcomed visitors…well, at least from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The post office was the only stone building on the street. Built in the thirties, with gray sandstone slabs hauled south in pickup trucks from Pennsylvania, it had originally been a bank. It was an auspicious building, solid, formidable, secure. From its WPA “historical building” cornerstone, to its ever-present American flag flying overhead, it had always seemed like a safe place to Fia. As an old woman, she had even spent a night here during Hurricane Hazel.

Where had that protection been last night when Bobby needed it?

Uncle Sean’s blue police cruiser was the only vehicle parked in front of the building. She pulled the parking brake, grabbed her cell phone and digital camera, and climbed out of the car, tucking the items into her suit jacket pockets. Yellow crime-scene tape danced in the bay breeze, blocking the stone steps leading to the double doors. She wondered where the tape had come from. They hadn’t needed crime-scene tape in Clare Point since its invention.

Glancing up, Fia saw Anna Ross and her sister, Peigi, both in their mid-sixties, at the far end of the sidewalk, talking quietly. She turned away quickly, not wanting to catch their eye. When they spotted Fia, they hurried toward her, calling her name, but she ducked under the tape and made it up the steps ahead of them. Inside the post office, she swung around, closing and locking the doors behind her. She pulled down the old-fashioned shade.

“How long it take to drive here?” Sean Kahill still had a slight Irish brogue, even after all these centuries.

Fia turned around. The question caught her off guard. It just seemed, well…bizarre, under the circumstances. But her Uncle Sean had always been that way. He’d never been very good at focusing.

“I’m sorry it took me so long.” Less than five minutes in town and she was already apologizing. “I had to stop by my place. Grab some clothes and get someone to feed my cat.” She pulled off her dark sunglasses and tucked them into her breast pocket. As she walked toward him, the heels of her boots clicked crisply against the polished stone floor, and echoed off the walls of the lobby.

She could smell the blood in the building. Taste it.

And smoke was there too, with a putrid, undeniable undercurrent. She swallowed hard. Of course, she had known. But still…she hadn’t been prepared. How did one prepare for the stench of burnt flesh?

She met her uncle’s gaze. Sean Kahill was a tall man, like all the other Kahills, probably six-five in his prime, now with a slight paunch. In his early sixties, he had salt-and-pepper hair he kept cut short, military style. His dark blue uniform, with short sleeves and a shiny gold badge, was slightly rumpled.

“Tell me what the hell happened here, Uncle Sean.” Fia already had had enough small talk. “And let’s keep this strictly business. Strictly police protocol.”

There were no signs of a fire in the lobby. No sign of any disturbance whatsoever. The center island, with its REGISTERED, RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED stickers and HOLD MY MAIL slips, was neat and orderly. All the cheap black plastic pens attached to their metal chains were in their appropriate holders and free priority-rate envelopes of different sizes were stacked neatly on the counter. “How could this have happened?” she murmured. “How could Bobby—”

Fee, ye musn’t—

It took her a second to register that she had heard him telepathically, rather than audibly. Nonetheless, his tone made the hair on her forearms bristle.

There was a sound of male footsteps. Someone else was in the building. One of her uncle’s patrolmen?

Her uncle cut his eyes to his right. Fia breathed deep. She could smell him. A human! A stranger. She saw him walk through the door from the back of the lobby. She rapidly made eye contact with her uncle again. Who?

Her mental telepathy was rusty. She rarely used it, even when she was in town. It just didn’t seem…appropriate in the twenty-first century.

“Special Agent Duncan,” Sean Kahill announced in a strained tone. “This is my niece I told ye about, so I did.”

It was the face more than the name that knocked Fia mentally off-balance. She felt, for a moment, as if she were free-falling.

He had classic good looks: high cheekbones, a patrician nose, and sensual lips. His sandy blond hair was no longer shoulder length, yet it was a color she had not forgotten. Could not. But it was those green eyes of his that pierced her heart. Her mind. And every bit of hatred she could muster.

Even in the charcoal gray tailored suit, he could have walked right out of the sixteenth-century Highlands.

Fia mentally caught herself in her downward spiral and yanked herself upward. She struggled to make herself heard in her uncle’s head. Centuries of survival instinct kicked in. In a situation like this, appearance was everything. Special Agent Duncan? Uncle Sean, what are you talking about? Who is this? Why does he look so much like—

“Some…mix-up, I think. Something about jurisdiction,” Sean said in an odd, vaguely official-sounding voice. Ah, now, I’m sorry, my colleen. Don’t know why he looks so much like him. But I tried to warn ye he was here. Called the number yer mother gave me.

“Special Agent Kahill, Philadelphia Field Office.” Trying to rapidly process on multiple levels, Fia offered her hand to the stranger. She couldn’t tear her gaze from his face. Couldn’t quite catch her breath.

Ian, she thought, a sob of emotion rising in her throat.

No, of course not. She choked it down. That was ridiculous. Ian had been dead for centuries.

She regrouped, refocused. Uncle Sean, this isn’t safe. This man can’t be here. He puts us all at risk.

“Special Agent Kahill.” The one who also called himself Duncan shook her hand firmly. “Chief Kahill was just telling me that you were coming.” He released her hand, bristling. His tone was curt, challenging. “I’m sorry you had to drive so far for nothing. I understand your concern due to your relationship to the deceased, and to the chief here, but Baltimore’s jurisdiction—”

She cut in. “I was sent by the Philadelphia Field Office to investigate this crime scene, Special Agent Duncan.” Her tone was even crisper than his. She needed to send him on his way as quickly as possible.

“Baltimore has jurisdiction.” He repeated it as if he thought she was too stupid to understand the first time.

It was Ian’s voice, and yet not quite his voice. The Highland burr was gone. In its place was an authoritative American antagonism.

“I’m pretty clear on the jurisdictional lines,” she responded. She was back on her game now, knew she could think her way through this.

Did you call the wrong phone number, Uncle Sean? Does Uncle Bill know this ass is here? Uncle Bill’s office called my office and spoke with my boss directly. “The mistake must have been made in your office.” Fia never broke eye contact with the agent. She gave him her best condescending smile. “I guess you better call in, see where the snafu in your office was. Arrangements were made before I left Philadelphia. I believe it was a special request through Senator Malley’s office.”

Ah, now, I didn’t know what to do. Who to call. Her uncle’s thoughts were shaky. Emotional. Gair said it couldn’t be handled from inside. Not with Bobby dead in the post office. A federal building and all. Gair said we’d have to take our chances. Sean pressed the heel of his hand to his barrel chest. Jezus, I got heartburn.

Special Agent Duncan hadn’t moved. He just stood there, frowning. She didn’t blame him for being PO’d. Had the tables been turned, she’d have been as mad as hell to have him walking in on her crime scene. But no one was getting any slack from her, not today, not ever.

She turned her full attention to her uncle, making an event of removing a small notepad and pen from her pocket. The other agent flipped open his cell and walked away.

“Let’s start at the beginning, Chief Kahill,” Fia said. Just answer the questions I say aloud, with verbal responses, Uncle Sean. “Who found the body?”

I…I’ll try. “One of my officers. His…Bobby’s wife called in ’bout six this morning. Said Bobby called her around seven last night saying he was going to work late. But he never arrived home.” You know Bobby. He likes to diddle Mary Dill, Tuesday nights. They have a regular arrangement. Only he never made it there, either. I called and checked. “So I sent Patrolman Mahon Kahill over.”

“After the call came in at the station at 6 A.M., you sent Patrolman Kahill directly to the post office?”

“To check on Bobby, that I did.” Had no idea. Thought maybe the fool had gotten drunk, just fallen asleep or some nonsense. Missed his date with Mary.

Again, Fia heard the emotion in her uncle’s thoughts.

Had…had I known, I’d never have sent the kid. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t. Where to even start looking for the head.

Looking for the head?

She gripped her pen. She could hear the Baltimore agent talking on his cell, his voice sharp. But he was still close enough to monitor her and Uncle Sean’s conversation if he wanted to and she had to be careful.

Looking for the head? She couldn’t shake the thought.

She’d forgotten how challenging it could be to have a conversation with or for the benefit of a human, while carrying on a mental conversation with another vampire.

“And…and what did Patrolman Kahill tell you he discovered when he came looking for the deceased? I assume he radioed in,” she said. Of course, Bobby had to have been decapitated. It was the only way to kill a vampire. But his head was missing? How had that information not been conveyed through her office? And where was Bobby’s head?

“Ye want to see where it happened, do ye?” Sean pointed beyond the lobby, toward the back. I didn’t know what else to do, Fee. Didn’t even know where to start. His wife was so upset. Mary, too. Hardest visits I’ve had to make in four hundred years.

“We can go have a look,” Fia agreed. “But I’ll still need your full statement. I can get it later, though, back at the station.” She glanced in the direction of the open door. “In the back room?”

“Right through here. Back door into the alley was unlocked, it was, so anyone could have gotten in. Not that locks—”

Be careful what you say, Uncle Sean. The human is listening, Fia warned.

“…Not that locks mean much. Not these days, they don’t,” Sean bumbled.

“You’re not serious,” the Baltimore agent barked into his phone.

Fia glanced over her shoulder at the Ian imposter as she followed her uncle into the large, open mail-sorting room. She halted as all at once the smell of burnt human flesh filled her nostrils and the meaning hit her again. Bobby was really dead. Her stomach did a somersault. Oh, Bobby…

There was a large charred spot on the floor. Blackened goo still puddled haphazardly, blood, tendons, sinew, muscle, and ligaments melted, burnt, and gluey. A gelatin of what had probably been paunch fat had bubbled on the floor and pooled into a translucent smudge.

“We didn’t know whether we should clean that up, we didn’t,” her uncle apologized.

Fia patted his arm, thinking old men shouldn’t have to deal with this. She let her gaze drift over the scattered ashes that had obviously been paper. Envelopes. Newspapers. Mail…She could smell the accelerant, gasoline probably.

You’re sure the head isn’t here somewhere? She moved a piece of charred paper with the toe of her boot.

I’m sure. Not the head or the feet.

She stared at him. “His feet are missing? Sweet God—” The words were out of her mouth before she realized she was speaking out loud in response to something Sean had said silently. Glancing over her shoulder in the direction of Agent Duncan’s voice, she just hoped he wasn’t paying too close attention. She pulled her camera out of her pocket and flipped the power switch on.

I understand the head, Uncle Sean, but why the feet?

I can’t say, Fee.

“So the body was discovered by Patrolman Kahill minus the head and feet, with no sign of either in the vicinity,” she said aloud, again refocusing.

“I got all my available men out looking for the body parts or any blood trail. Pictures, I have, back at the station. Knew ye’d want to see just what things looked like before Bobby…before we removed the body,” Sean said.

Mahon’s got one those fancy digital cameras, he does. Shows the pictures right on the computer. Didn’t think they should go to the drugstore. I never liked how those pictures came out of that machine anyway. Our faces are always kind of hazy. Why do ye think that is, Fee? Imprints of a man’s soul?

I don’t know why, Uncle Sean!

She didn’t mean to snap at him, but the hurt look on his face shamed her. I’m sorry, she thought. I’m as upset as you are. Let’s just get through this, OK, Uncle Sean? “I’d still like to take some of my own photographs, if you don’t mind,” she said aloud.

She turned slowly, surveying the entire room. It was only twenty-five by thirty feet. Eight-foot tiled ceiling and pale government-green walls that appeared to have been painted recently. Everything as neat as a pin, just as in the lobby…except for the obvious.

Fia heard Duncan snap his cell phone shut out front and footsteps followed as he approached, their echo booming in her head. She clicked the shutter, barely bothering to look at the viewing screen on the camera.

Click, click, click. She took photographs of the charred, gory spot on the floor. The ashes of the mail. Other than an overturned mail cart, and a stool Bobby could have been sitting on, very little else looked disturbed.

She looked up and, spotting a few drops of blood spray on the ceiling tile, she pointed the camera lens and clicked again. She expected more blood. Remembered more…

“Looks like we’re stuck with each other, Special Agent Kahill.” Duncan walked through the doorway, sounding as if he was trying to speak through clenched teeth. “My SAC talked to your SAC and decided this would be a bipartisan investigation.”

Great, Fia thought. She’d been afraid of that. Uncle Bill’s office was probably able to request her without riling any suspicions, but she guessed the senator wasn’t willing to put up a fight when the Baltimore office screamed “No fair!” He had his own causes to protect. She continued to take photos, not looking at Duncan.

“The accelerant was probably gasoline. Easy to obtain without suspicion. Easy to carry. Mail was used to build the fire.” He walked over to stand beside her, sliding his hands into his pants pockets. He sounded as if he was narrating one of her uncle’s favorite police-procedural TV shows. “An amateur. The fire wasn’t hot enough to burn much more than the skin and some fat. You want to completely burn up a body, the fire’s got to be a hell of a lot hotter than this one was.” He glanced overhead, then at Sean. “Fire alarm go off, Chief?”

Sean shook his head. “Battery’s probably dead, it is. Bobby didn’t get up on ladders, lest he absolutely had to, bein’ the big man that he was.”

Duncan frowned. “We’ll check for fingerprints on the smoke detector, see if the batteries were taken out.”

“Uh, have to get some more print powder before we lift any more prints. We’re out.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Duncan looked at Fia, but she didn’t respond.

“We don’t lift many fingerprints around here, Agent Duncan.”

He exhaled. “And I don’t suppose there was a burglar-alarm system?”

“Never needed one,” Sean answered.

Fia pressed her lips together. Everything Duncan had said, a rookie just out of the academy would have been able to deduce. So far, she wasn’t impressed. “No gas can found?” she asked her uncle. “Not in here, not in the alley?”

He shook his head, reaching for his handkerchief in his back pocket. No, but I once saw this case on that Cold Case Files where this guy—

She snapped another photo. Please, Uncle Sean…

“Perp brought it with him; he meant to start a fire,” she intoned, silencing the camera. She tried to take in the entire scene, attempting to concentrate on the crime and not her uncle’s rambling and not the man standing beside her, who was as close to a ghost as she had ever seen.

“Maybe there was something here the killer wanted, or didn’t want to leave in the post office,” she continued, nodding in the direction of the canvas mail cart lying on its side. “Perp wasn’t expecting the postmaster to be working late. Came in, surprised him. Maybe Bobby was sitting on that stool, back to the rear door. Perp figured he had to kill Bobby so there’d be no witness.”

“Maybe. Of course, the cash is missing, too, bank bag and all,” Duncan one-upped her.

Fia glanced up at her uncle. They hadn’t gotten that far in her questioning, but she didn’t like surprises. Not this guy springing them on her. “Could be motive,” she agreed. “But decapitation? Setting the body on fire? Talk about overkill to steal a bank bag that couldn’t have had more than a couple hundred dollars in it. And why take the head and the feet? And how the hell did he cut them off?” Her last words were as much for her own benefit as his.

“Perp was probably strung out on PCP. I’ve worked some pretty gruesome murders where—”

“I have, too, Special Agent Duncan.” She looked him in the eye. “But this is my first with stolen body parts. Yours?”

He seemed unable to tear his gaze from hers for a second, then looked away. “Yeah.”

She’d gotten him on that one.

He freed his hands from his pockets, walking around to the other side of the black, bloody soot ring that marked where Bobby’s body had lain. “There’s no point in speculating why the body parts were taken. Not until we have all the evidence.”

It was easy for him to say. He didn’t understand what the decapitation meant to one of them.

“You say you have photographs at the station, Chief?” Fia looked up at her uncle, who was beginning to pace now. “I imagine Special Agent Duncan would like to see them.”

“Actually, I was able to get here in time to see the body before it was removed.”

Fia glared at Sean who was wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. It was her turn to grit her teeth. You’ve got to tell me these things, Uncle Sean. I feel like I’m coming in way behind.

“I see.” It sounded so lame. She cleared her throat. “Then why don’t we go to the station, so I can have a look at the photos.” She looked to Duncan. “It’s going to take us a full day to process this scene the way we’re going to want it processed, and we are going to need that print powder. The chief can put in an order as soon as we get to the station.” She looked to Sean. “The back door is locked now, correct?”

“Course, Fee, what kind of fool do ye think—” Sean cut off the last of his sentence, tucking the handkerchief back into his pocket.

She shifted her gaze to Duncan, slipping her camera into her pocket. What a mess. How was she going to do this? Investigate Bobby’s murder and keep Special Agent Duncan out of the town’s business? She couldn’t believe Uncle Bill had let the Baltimore office send an agent. But maybe Gair was right. Maybe because this was a federal building, they wouldn’t be able to keep the murder under wraps.

Fia looked to her new so-called partner. “Care to go back to the station with me, Special Agent Duncan?”

“We drove over in my car.” Sean gestured in the direction of the front door.

He drove two and half blocks? Fia almost laughed aloud, though it really wasn’t that funny. Sean didn’t like to expend any more energy than absolutely necessary, except when it came to lifting a pint of ale.

“He left his in the station parking lot,” Sean continued to ramble. Drives an unmarked Crown Vic. Nice car. V8 engine. How come you don’t get a Bureau car, Fee? Came in your own, didn’t you? I could hear the Beemer engine. Runnin’ a little rough, she is?”

Fia turned away from her uncle, blinking to block his thoughts. If she wasn’t careful, she’d find herself wrapped up in a mental conversation involving maintenance schedules of BMWs built before 1998. Something he’d learned on the Speed Channel.

“I think I’ll walk,” Duncan said. “Care to join me, Special Agent Kahill?” He waited.

Apparently, he wasn’t going to give her a chance to speak with her uncle alone. Not yet, at least. She exhaled and started for the front lobby. “Meet you there, Chief.”

Sean followed them outside, locking the front doors behind them. At the bottom of the steps, Fia ducked under the yellow tape and turned right on the sidewalk. A car passed. A cousin waved. She didn’t wave back.

“Pretty weird. So many of you related in this town.” Duncan glanced in the direction of the passing car as he caught up with her. “Lot of Kahills to keep track of.”

She stepped off the curb and started across the street without looking either way. She didn’t have to look. She could easily hear the cars two blocks over. “My family’s been here for a long time, Special Agent Duncan. We have a big family.” She shrugged. “So a lot of us have the same name.”

The redhead made it somehow seem simpler than Glen sensed it was. Not that he was fortunate enough to be one of those agents with a sixth sense. But something was a little odd here; he just couldn’t put his finger on it.

Maybe it was merely his imagination. His irritation. When he called his SAC back in Baltimore, Krackhow had made no bones about the fact that Special Agent Kahill would not be removed from the case. It was out of his hands, he had brusquely told Glen. The order came as a result of a request out of Senator Malley’s office. Case closed. If Glen wanted out, Krackhow would send over another agent.

Of course Glen didn’t want out. A decapitation in a federal building? Missing body parts? It was the kind of case most agents dreamed of their entire careers. Certainly more exciting than the identity-theft unit he’d been working in. But it still pissed him off that the redhead would be assigned to the case, out of her jurisdiction, just because somebody knew someone who knew someone else in Senator Buttinksky’s office. The Bureau his father had grown up in had been that way, àla J. Edgar, but this one wasn’t supposed to be. Things were supposed to have changed. Like bureaucracy ever really changed….

He had to hurry to keep up with her. Those long legs of hers covered a lot of real estate with each step. He couldn’t deny that she was one of the most strikingly beautiful women he had ever seen. She sure didn’t look like most G-men. Besides having a bombshell figure, she had that dark red hair that no way came out of a bottle. Her skin was pale, like many redheads, but so flawless it was like porcelain, with the tiniest sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her perfectly upturned nose. Her full lips seemed naturally red, but her eyes were what really drew him. They were the strangest color, pale blue with flecks of indigo. Eyes a man could lose himself in…if the woman wasn’t such a hard-ass, he reminded himself.

Special Agent Kahill was everything Glen despised in a female FBI agent, in any woman trying too hard to do a job society still saw as a man’s. Glen didn’t have a problem with female FBI agents, or cops, or even Navy SEALS, for that matter. He knew women who were better shots on the firing range than he was. Women with sharper intellects. What he had a problem with was the chip on the shoulder they always seemed to come with. It wasn’t enough for a woman like Fia Kahill to just do her job. She wanted to do it better than he did it, and she wanted to throw it in every man’s face. She didn’t want to be one of the boys; she wanted to be better than them.

He glanced at her, her face set with determination as she strode down the sidewalk. If they were stuck together on the case, he had to make the best of it.

He slid his hands into his pockets. “When I arrived, the body was just being removed. Chief Kahill said you had a local morgue.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Said the autopsy would be done here rather than in the state medical examiner’s office in Wilmington?”

“If that’s what Chief Kahill says.” She didn’t look at him.

It didn’t matter. The minute they’d stepped into the bright August sunlight, she covered those amazing blue eyes of hers with a pair of dark wraparound sunglasses.

“That just seems odd, doesn’t it? I would think an autopsy of this nature would go to the state medical examiner.”

“I can assure you Dr. Caldwell is fully qualified and licensed to perform the autopsy, Special Agent Duncan.”

She was using that curt tone with him again. It was really beginning to annoy him that she didn’t look at him when she spoke. “I’m not questioning the doctor’s credentials, Special Agent Kahill. I’m questioning procedure on a federal case.”

They had turned off the main street in town and were now approaching the police station. There were only two cars pulled up in front, his unmarked, and the chief’s old cruiser. All the other officers were, no doubt, out combing the streets for a head and a pair of feet right now.

She strode up the steps leading to the front door of the hometown police station that greeted “visitors” with a welcome sign. How many visitors did a police station get, he wondered.

“So call the state medical examiner’s office and verify it.” She pulled open the heavy door as if it was weightless.

Glen had to hold it as it swung back hard. All he could think about as he hurried to catch up with Fia Kahill was how thankful he would be to find this killer, and get the hell away from her and her weird little town.