The Avenger Read online

  Warren patted his large gut. "'Fraid I'd have to give up more than cigars to get in your shape."

  Jack sat down, crossed one leg over the other, and tried to hide the unexpected surge of energy behind a casual pose. Hoping that Warren wouldn't notice something vaguely off in him, something that'd begun long before he got on that plane from Tel Aviv. "Let's get to the point, Warren. Your message was… cryptic."

  The Judge reached for a manila folder stamped "Invictus" in large red printing across the front, and beneath that the initials DLK in capital letters. Without a comment he pushed it across the desk. Jack glanced at the tab.

  "Your next assignment," the Judge said.

  "The last one was grueling. I need more Recovery before another one." Jack wouldn't voice the fear that had battered at him since the Africa mission. That he couldn't accept another assignment, that something was going wrong in his body that even the drugs couldn't fix.

  "I understand," the Judge answered calmly, "but this is an old case, revisited. It'll look familiar to you. Take a look at it, Jack. You don't want to pass it up."

  Jack opened the folder and scanned the contents. He removed the pictures from a clasped envelope attached to the inside cover and gazed at them for a long moment before letting them slip from his limp fingers to the glass desktop. The grainy pictures glared in the fluorescent light as a deep sense of foreboding washed over him.

  "You didn't get him, Jack," the Judge accused. "He's doing it again. Maybe he's taking up where he left off four years ago, or maybe he's starting all over again. I don't know." He paused before adding, "But if we turn it over to the locals, they'll just screw it up."

  "It's the same as the Peterson girl," Jack murmured.

  "You need to stop the son of a bitch this time," the Judge retorted. "Permanently."

  Jack read the clear subtext beneath the words. What happened four years ago was his fault. He felt a twitch spasm in his jaw as he reached inside his jacket pocket to pull out the vial of small white pills. Three weeks ago he'd begun taking the medication so necessary for his Recovery. They seemed ineffectual so he'd begun increasing the dosage.

  He hesitated. "I need more time to recuperate."

  "Hell, no one could blame you for washing your hands of the whole shitty mess, but you know the case, the victims."

  Jack uttered a muffled curse as he met the Judge's implacable stare. For a wild moment he considered refusing, standing up to Invictus, storming out the door. But resignation weighted his shoulders like a heavy mantle. He replaced the white pills and extracted a slender bottle from his other pocket. The dark red tablets inside gleamed like tiny poisoned apples.

  He drew in a deep breath. "When?"

  "Body was uncovered two days ago, but the victim's been dead longer than that."

  Jack shook a single small red tablet from the bottle, eyed it thoughtfully, knowing it would counter the white Recovery pills. "Where?"

  "Utah, near the northeastern Nevada border. A military testing facility located in the Utah salt flats."

  Jack popped the red pill in his mouth and swallowed it dry. "Military? That's gutsy."

  "No one ever claimed he didn't have the balls of a bull."

  "I'll start there. Make sure it's identical to the Peterson killing, not a copycat."

  The Judge retrieved a paper from his middle drawer. "If you find another note, there's a woman in California who can translate." He shoved the page across the desk. "The broad's a first-rate linguist and expert in all that Latin and Greek crap."

  California? Jack reached for the paper and read the full name – Dr. Olivia Gant. Olivia? Electricity sizzled through his body as he thought of the vision he'd experienced in Tel Aviv.

  Olivia? Had to be a coincidence.

  Did the Judge even remember the girl's name all these years later? Hell, it'd been a lifetime ago. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask right out, but instead he said, "Ancient Studies."

  "What?"

  "All that Latin and Greek crap – Ancient Studies."

  "Oh, yeah." Warren scraped his knuckles over his bald scalp and lifted his brows to meet his receding hairline. "Damn women, hard as hell to work with. Gant keeps turning Higgins down. If you can get her on board, fine, but if not, there's a short list of backup names." He jutted his jaw towards the paper.

  Jack stared without seeing across the room to the distant scene framed by the window, the Judge's words a rumble in the background. It'd been nearly two decades since Jack had left California. What'd happened to her? Was she still there?

  After another moment's silence, the Judge asked sharply, "Are you on board with this?"

  "Do I have a choice?"

  "Hell, Jack, I want all my agents to feel they can refuse if they want to. Sometimes I wish I could say no myself." The Judge braced his fists on the desk top, his color high. "But there's too many bad guys out there waging war against good people, against America! We can't afford to withdraw just yet." The inflated language underscored the Judge's passion for the Invictus cause.

  Jack rose and straightened his jacket lapels. "Last mission took me nine weeks to recover, Warren. You don't want to fuck me up on this."

  The Judge's face remained impassive, but Jack caught the flicker of concern cross his broad features. In a moment it was gone, and he was sure he'd imagined it. The Judge wasn't afraid of anyone, he thought. Even his protégé with all his damned extraordinary gifts.

  Jack strode out the door, ignoring Myron Higgins' startled look. Standing in front of the elevator doors, he got a full look at his reflection in the shiny chrome. The signs of the Change were evident already from the one red pill. He didn't know what he'd find in the salt flats or California, but he wanted to be ready. The darkened skin, the pupil pinpricks in the bright light, the slight extra weight and inches of hard, muscled flesh on his already fit body were noticeable only to him.

  Too damn soon for another Change, but what choice did he have?

  *

  Jack's Prima phone rang while he waited to board his flight to Salt Lake City. He checked the display and depressed the call button. He didn't waste time identifying himself. Warren Linders' deep voice rattled over the line. "Change of plans."

  "How so?"

  "Got a lead shows our boy might've made it to California. Damn convenient of him. Contact the Sheriff in Bigler County, get his cooperation."

  "Are you sure it's our man?"

  "Maybe, maybe not, but you gotta go to California anyway. Check it out."

  "What about the Utah scene?"

  "Make it brief. Rent a car in Salt Lake." A pause while Warren no doubt checked his facts. "It's a ten-hour drive to Sacramento. You can approach the Gant woman there. I have a feeling you'll be in the hippie state for a while."

  Jack snapped the phone shut without commenting.

  On the flight to Salt Lake, he sank into his first-class seat. Traveling over twenty-four hours straight – from Tel Aviv to Baltimore to Salt Lake – was grueling and reinforced his concern about another assignment. He stared at the tremor in his hands, knowing – drugs or no drugs – his body was unprepared to rev up again. Instead of reverting from hunter to normal state, he was transforming into a predator again. The mere idea of a hunt fueled the adrenaline, boosted oxygen and glucose levels. This see-sawing was dangerous, but the Invictus doctor had happily reconfigured Jack's drug dosage.

  Lucky Jack. He was a human medical experiment.

  After the plane reached its altitude and leveled off, he removed his PDA from his pocket, checked for messages. Nothing. He breathed deeply, pressed his fingers into his temples, and contemplated the single failure of his career.

  He'd been stupid to believe the killer had stopped so suddenly four years ago. Three victims had been killed in a six-month period. Then no activity at all. Jack had made an uneasy peace with himself. And now it looked like the son of a bitch had started again.

  Occupying a window seat, he glanced across the aisle to the opposite seat
s. Empty. The adjoining spot also was vacant. The high seatbacks provided sufficient privacy. Reaching for the briefcase wedged beneath the seat in front of him, he extracted the first of three caramel-colored folders. He pulled out an envelope, untied the clasp, and shook the photos onto his laptop tray.

  Case number SX-28904, Laura Jean Peterson, Caucasian female, age nineteen, DOD approximately August 7. Cause of death: suffocation. She was a freshman at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

  Laura Peterson's body had been discovered fourteen days after she was reported missing. Traces of a sedative were in her bloodstream. Her naked body was dumped in a wooden box and the crate buried in a tobacco field outside Richmond, Virginia.

  She'd ripped the nails off both hands, trying to claw her way out of her crude coffin. Her knees and feet showed skin scrapes and dried blood. Buried alive, Laura Jean Peterson had taken nearly four hours to die.

  He fingered the photo of her at her high school graduation. Others of her body in the ignominious, shallow grave like an indigent in Potter's Field. No signs of physical assault, no rape, no possible reason why someone drugged a nineteen-year-old girl and buried her, still breathing, in a remote, shallow grave.

  Rummaging through his briefcase, Jack retrieved the thin file the Judge had given him. It contained little beyond the coroner's report and the photographs. The girl found at Mammoth Proving Grounds in Utah hadn't yet been identified. Nevertheless, the similarities between her and the Peterson girl were unmistakable. Both girls were drugged and stripped of their clothing.

  Both were buried alive and died of suffocation. Jack didn't need more convincing.

  *

  By the time Jack investigated the death at Mammoth and drove as far as Reno, he decided to grab a motel and a few hours of sleep. Refreshed and feeling more himself, he rose early the next morning and ordered room service. While waiting for breakfast to arrive, he showered and shaved, then set up his laptop to work at the businessman's desk tucked into the corner of the motel room. By the time the food arrived, he'd reviewed the first murder case again.

  The perpetrator of the initial three cases had chosen victims whose families filed missing persons reports. A college student, an attorney, a waitress. But there was no such report on the unidentified woman buried on the Utah federal property.

  After the room service attendant set up breakfast and left, Jack sat at the desk, chewing on a bagel with cream cheese and sipping black coffee while he examined the second victim's folder. Case Number SX-29201. Henry Walker, male, age twenty-nine, death by exsanguination, January 23, the year following the first murder.

  The body was discovered hanging on a crude cross, made of intersecting pairs of two by fours. Walker had been drugged and strapped to the beams with bailing wire, and he was very much alive when the first nail pierced his wrist. Autopsy showed that a minute nick in the femoral artery quickened the slow bleed from wrists and feet and hastened death. Walker's remains were found in an auto dismantling yard thirty-five miles southwest of Las Vegas.

  Jack shoved the breakfast plate away and added several comments into his laptop.

  The third victim was Angela Buckley, beaten to death with a hard, metal club, possibly a tire iron or pipe. Metal shavings were found in the wounds. Her head and torso were so badly damaged that she had to be identified through dental records. The body was discovered less than forty-eight hours after she was reported missing May 15, the same year as the Walker man. She was a thirty-one-year-old waitress from South Bend, Indiana.

  They'd believed she was the killer's final victim.

  Jack put the file aside and opened a fourth, slender envelope which contained copies of the Latin notes they'd received from the killer, notes the Gant woman could help with – the woman whose first name Olivia had to be a coincidence because even the Judge wasn't that manipulative.

  As the lead investigator, Jack hadn't believed the cases were connected until the notes arrived. The first one came after Henry Walker's death and was mailed from Plano, Texas. No useful prints on the letter or envelope, no clues of any kind. The note was word-processed on standard bond paper with an ink-jet printer.

  The Quantico profiling team speculated that the killer, impatient with the behavioral unit's slow investigation, was taunting them. Inside their ranks, they named the UNSUB the DLK for Dead Language Killer. The profilers pointed out the inherent dark humor in the old chant, "Latin is a dead language, dead as dead can be, it killed all the Romans and now it's killing me."

  Having never studied Latin, Jack figured the bastard was just showing off.

  He had no way of knowing which note referred to which death, but Jack decided to take another look at the victims' backgrounds. Both Walker and Buckley were squeaky clean in every way – finances, criminal background, relationships – but the Peterson girl had an astonishing sexual history. It was a slim lead, but Jack took it. They interviewed boyfriends, girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends. Anyone with whom Laura Jean had a relationship, sexual or platonic.

  They discovered that at least half a dozen young men and two young women admitted to some kind of sexual encounter with the victim. Each one, however, had a solid alibi for the time in question. Jack's slim lead ground to another halt.

  He mentally ran through the first three cases – Peterson, Walker, Buckley. Finally, a fourth death, mimicking the first – the woman buried alive in the salt flats of Utah. No evidence, no note, no toxicology yet. Were they connected? Was this a copycat? Or was Jack's old nemesis starting again?

  Jack pushed back from the desk, saved his data, and closed his laptop. He sucked in a deep breath as he felt another rush of adrenalin enhancing his body's chemical changes. He turned his hands, palms upward. Piano fingers, he'd once considered them – long ago when he entertained such youthful fantasies. The slender fingers that used to play with such fluidity were now fleshy pads, calloused and swollen.

  He glanced at his wristwatch. He had a moment to peruse the Gant woman's dossier. PhD in Ancient Students, Greek and Roman history and culture. Linguist extraordinaire, according to Myron Higgins, the Judge's assistant who had approached Gant two months ago. She refused in June and again in July, cited school bylaws prohibiting outside consultations by their professors. She was supposedly some kind of whiz kid in her field, on sabbatical from the University of California at Berkley to teach at Our Lady of Fatima University, a private Catholic college in southeast Bigler County.

  Jack looked over her teaching schedule. He still had a two-hour drive to Sacramento and thought he could catch her on break. He'd drop in without an appointment. Although he had no leverage to use on the Gant woman, he knew everyone had skeletons in the closet. If he couldn't persuade her with his charm, he thought wryly, he'd find another way to get her assistance.

  He always did.

  Chapter Six

  Dr. Gant's office at the university was the second door down a well-lighted hallway in St. Joseph's Administration Building. Jack lingered at the entrance and examined the small, crowded office.

  The woman bent over a file drawer, her light gray sweater riding up from the waist of a black skirt to expose a strip of smooth flesh. From an ancient boom box resting on a corner file cabinet, James Brown crooned about not wanting to be alone tonight. The view and the music jarred some ancient, buried memory that Jack briskly put aside as he rapped on the open door.

  He recognized her the second she turned to face him. A giant fist squeezed his heart, his throat spasmed and choked off air, and the soul he'd been sure he no longer had shriveled with momentary shock. He saw at once the gangly girl inside the self-possessed woman who turned to greet him, and another long-suppressed image slammed him with gale force. The young girl who'd whispered his name in the night. Bundled in layers of clothing that she removed one item at a time, all sad innocence and sure purpose. The soft pleading in her voice when she begged him to…

  Shit.

  For an endless moment, his feet riveted to th
e spot. A sickening fear smacked him in the gut. Fear that every dirty misstep of his life dangled in plain view – hung out like so much soiled laundry – and barred any hope of salvation.

  Not that he'd believed in heaven or redemption for a long time. But still…

  "Oh my God," Olivia said, her pretty face a mask of stunned confusion.

  Not pretty, he thought, but striking, interesting. High cheekbones and clearly defined brows. Green eyes set far apart, wide and large in a smooth face. Dark hair now wound tightly in a knot at the back of her head, but which he remembered tangling riotously around slender shoulders. A small woman, with fragile bones covering a steely determination.

  Time resumed as Olivia sank into the worn office chair behind a utilitarian desk and regarded him with a wide-eyed expression. "Jackie Holt."

  Astonishment, bewilderment, and another indefinable emotion crossed her face until she shut it down. Shut it down hard, he could see by the set of her jaw and the flash of those brilliant eyes sharp as cut glass. Impossible that the full, soft lips he remembered now thinned to taut rubber bands, stretched so tight they threatened to snap back viciously.

  "Jackson Holt," she repeated.

  Under the visual indictment, he remembered with regret the throb of his youthful desire. But God, she'd been so desirable. So sure as she'd insinuated herself into his life in a way neither of them realized would change him forever.

  Anger flashed across her face before she narrowed her eyes and shut that down too. "What do you want?"

  As the facts clicked into place, Jack berated himself for being the worst kind of idiot. He wondered if his subconscious had deliberately tricked him. But he hadn't known an Olivia Gant. Only Livvie Morse, at a time when the sun rose and set in a fourteen-year old, too-skinny girl with doe eyes and a haunted look.

  Had the organization discovered Professor Gant was the same girl from Jack's childhood? Impossible to think the Judge wouldn't check every small detail. No coincidence then that they ended up here together. But why?