Wynwood drove in the opposite direction, nearly disappearing from view before Nate eased out of their spot to follow him.

  “Maybe he’s going to lunch.” She didn’t have to check the time to know it was well past noon. Her stomach reminded her it was empty.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” Nate said.

  As the landscape rolled past, Lara replayed the earlier conversation with the PI. He hadn’t seemed all that surprised to see her. Had he been watching her all this time? Reporting to Franklin about his daughter?

  Deep inside a shudder quaked through her. Was her father really the Butcher? No matter how often she asked herself this, she couldn’t fully grasp the obvious answer.

  Maybe the DNA found at the scenes was her father’s but someone else was the Butcher. The idea popped into her thoughts and had her heart racing. She and Nate as well as the law enforcement agencies involved in the Butcher case had considered this concept. It wasn’t impossible.

  What if it was Wynwood and he was setting up his old friend to cover for himself?

  But then why had her father faked his death and abandoned his wife and child?

  None of it added up. Going down that path—trying to prove her father wasn’t a killer and her mother hadn’t suspected a thing all these years—was a mistake. Lara was smarter than this.

  Wynwood’s journey ended at a small bungalow on Marcia Drive in West Nashville. Nate parked two houses away in the driveway of a for sale and obviously vacant property. As long as some realtor didn’t appear for a showing, they were safe. He backed into the dilapidated carport and shut off the engine. It wouldn’t be long before the cold invaded the car which made Lara grateful she’d kept on her coat.

  Their view of Wynwood’s house might have been obscured were it not so late in the year. Leaves were long gone, leaving only the spindly branches of trees. The house on the other side of their target was already decorated for Christmas. A huge blow-up Santa stood in the middle of the yard.

  The house where Wynwood apparently resided was the same address as the one on the Christmas card sent to her mother thirty years ago. Odd, Lara decided, that he’d felt confident in remaining exactly where he was all these years. Did that mean he had nothing to hide? Nothing to fear?

  “Any luck on your list of followers?”

  Nate’s deep voice pulled her from the worrisome thoughts. She blinked, re-centered her thoughts. “I have it down to three, possibly four.”

  The truth was, two of the four had been following her blog since she started. Whether or not that was telling, she had no idea but it certainly begged for further consideration.

  “These are people who’ve been with me since the beginning,” she explained when he appeared to wait for her to do so. “I’ve had no reason not to believe they were genuinely interested in my blogs.”

  Of course, that didn’t mean anything. She knew this. Stalkers could remain kind and sincere for years before striking.

  Been there, experienced that.

  Her one and only stalker had disappeared into thin air after her escape. Was it possible he was the one who’d sent her the text messages and emails the other night?

  More likely he was dead. At least that was what the detectives on the case had thought. Deep down, Lara did as well. Someone as obsessed with her as Medford had been wouldn’t just decide he wasn’t interested anymore.

  “Do you think Franklin could have had anything to do with Medford’s disappearance?” she ventured. If her father had been watching her all this time it was possible…wasn’t it?

  Jeffrey Medford was the forty-year-old self-professed wanna-be serial killer who had stalked and abducted Lara. While he held her in that basement he’d told her about his fantasies. He’d dreamed of killing her a thousand times, he’d explained. But she was too important to kill. Whatever that meant.

  She clenched her teeth, pushed away the memories. Images from her daring escape flashed one after the other in her head before she could suppress them.

  When Nate didn’t immediately respond, she turned to him. His gaze was fixed on the Wynwood house, but he shifted it to her long enough to say, “It’s possible.”

  Lara forced herself to relax and to look at the idea objectively. “This is assuming Franklin has any nurturing feelings toward me or anyone else.” Perhaps, if he had done anything of the sort it was more about territory. She was his territory.

  Not that she cared either way. She did not. If her bio father was the Butcher, then he was evil incarnate. As Terry’s wife had said, he sat at the top of the evil scale. Lara was only curious.

  She’d always been curious about murder and those who committed such atrocities.

  …the two of you think exactly alike.

  Lara forced the words away.

  Rather than dwell on Patrick Franklin or the man down the street, she reached behind the seat and retrieved her laptop. “I’ll carry on with my research into the followers I mentioned.”

  “I should have brought coffee,” he said with a chuckle. “These surveillance details can be long.”

  Lara stretched into the back again, fumbled around in her bag until she found what she was looking for. “Water will have to do.” She handed a bottle to her friend and then reached for one of her own.

  She placed her water bottle in the console between them, pulled her legs up into the seat and crossed them before settling her laptop there.

  “You told me once about walking off from your mother at a playground.”

  Opening the screen, she turned to Nate. “We had that conversation right after you came back from London.”

  After she’d escaped Medford. Nate had wanted to see her, but she’d needed to be alone. Except for her mother who refused to leave her side. Mary Franklin had rushed to New York and stayed, demanding results during the forty-eight hours her daughter was missing. After Lara’s escape, she’d insisted on bringing her home to Tennessee. Needing refuge, Lara hadn’t argued. After nearly a month together, they’d both been ready for a break. Lara had returned to New York and thrown herself into work.

  Nate gave a nod. “It was one of those late-night calls.”

  He’d called her every night. If she refused to allow him to visit, he wanted to hear her voice every day, he’d said. In truth she wouldn’t have minded meeting him for the first time back then, but she’d been a mess emotionally. She hadn’t wanted their first meeting to be in the middle of an emotional tangle.

  Didn’t want it to be like this but here they were.

  “I remember,” she said. “After the abduction, my mother reminded me of that day in the park. She told me that while I was missing—with Medford—she couldn’t stop thinking about the time when I was four and wandered off.”

  Her mother had explained how she’d been terrified when she finally found Lara in the woods. Lara had followed a rabbit. She vaguely remembered the rabbit and the forest. In her mind she could see her feet, clad in those little black and white saddle shoes her mother adored, lumbering through the fallen leaves and undergrowth. She’d never been in any danger as far as they knew, but for more than half an hour her mother had not known where she was or if she was okay. Eventually, Lara had heard her mother’s voice and followed the sound to her. Somewhere along the way she’d lost one of her shoes.

  Mary Franklin had looked just as pale and shaken when she appeared at the precinct when Lara was found after escaping Medford as she imagined her mother had all those years ago. Lara had left Medford lying on the basement floor after swinging the broadside of a shovel at the back of his skull. She’d hit him and run like hell. Upstairs, she had spotted his poor elderly mother passed out in her bed. When the police arrived, the eighty-year-old had sworn she had no idea where her son was or if he’d been holding anyone in the basement. Later, of course, her statement changed to her son would never do such a thing. She was always home. He couldn’t have done it without her knowing. Forensic evidence, however, betrayed her son’s activities. Considering the mother’s addiction to pain meds and her evident dementia, she might have been telling the truth to the best of her ability in both instances.

  A couple of smears of blood on the tile floor in the basement and the shovel Lara used had confirmed her escape story. But when Medford wasn’t found and never reappeared, a different focus landed on Lara.

  She became a suspect in his potential murder.

  Not a good feeling. Okay, it was possible she’d landed a fatal blow. After all, she’d been desperate. But where was all the blood if he’d bled out? Maybe there had been mostly internal bleeding. Still, where was the body?

  Mrs. Medford swore she’d been awake the whole evening and no one had come or gone from her home. She’d insisted the blood was from where her son cut his hand while working on one of his many taxidermy projects. The shovel was the one he used for burying his failed projects.

  Most of that story was a lie. Yes, Medford had numerous taxidermy projects. Primarily small animals he’d captured from around the neighborhood, squirrels, birds. But there had been no blood on the floor until after Lara hit him. And the mother had definitely been passed out when Lara raced through the house to get out the front door. That part of Lara’s story was, unfortunately, her word against the mother’s.

  When the body was never found the case went cold and Lara hadn’t been questioned again. The mother kept quiet. Never made a fuss. Either she was hiding where her son was or she was glad he was gone.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Nate said, his deep voice unusually low and soft. “No one believes you killed Medford.”

  She laughed. “Oh, I have followers ask me about it from time to time. I’m sure the police have all sorts of thoughts about my guilt in their cold case file.”

  “I’m leaning toward Wynwood,” Nate said. Lara met his gaze. “Maybe he’s the one who’s been keeping up with you all these years. Maybe he made Medford disappear.”

  A shiver rushed through her as she considered Nate’s theory. Wynwood was the type. She sensed a menace about him.

  “Hold on.” He checked his phone. A long text message filled the screen. He read for a bit, then said, “Prater found additional details about Wynwood’s military service.”

  Lara held her breath.

  “When he filed for his PI license a copy of his military record was pulled. He was Special Forces. He was a part of several operations and took out as many potential obstacles as possible to facilitate the mission.”

  Meaning he’d likely eliminated enemies—people—which confirmed killing wasn’t new to him. But it was one thing to be a soldier on an official mission and entirely another to be a cold-blooded killer. “What about Franklin’s records?”

  They had been waiting to hear what the FBI could find in military records and any other data bases. If they’d found Wynwood’s surely they’d found Franklin’s.

  “There was a fire in the storage facility about thirty years ago,” he explained as he closed the text message app. “All the records held there were lost. Franklin’s would have been there.”

  Lara’s hopes wilted. “But you said Wynwood’s were available when he applied for his PI license.”

  “About six months before the fire.”

  How convenient. “They found nothing at all on Franklin?”

  “Nothing so far but they’re still looking. Prater isn’t optimistic on that front.”

  “Thanks for the update.” She set her attention back on the screen of her laptop. She hadn’t really expected anything useful. Serial killers like the Butcher were very good at hiding.

  “Tell me about the followers you’ve narrowed down.”

  His gaze remained on Wynwood’s house as he spoke. This made her smile. Nate Decker was good. He wasn’t rusty at all. If anyone could help her, he could. She relaxed to the degree possible under the circumstances.

  “Lex Jones is forty,” she began. “His social media says he lives in New York. He’s a city engineer in Albany. Alec Berger lives in Paris. He often professes his adoration of me.” She laughed. “He’s invited me to visit on numerous occasions.”

  “Sounds suspicious,” Nate said, arrowing her a dubious look.

  “Assuming he actually lives in France,” she reasoned, “coming here would make for a long trip to meet someone.”

  “Not if he adores you enough.”

  Lara rolled her eyes and went on to number three. “Then we have Travis Hall who lives in Nashville. He’s practically my neighbor. A wannabe country music star who hangs out at all the right haunts hoping to be discovered.”

  “I thought there were four.”

  “I ruled out the fourth one since he’s wheelchair bound.”

  Nate nodded. “Okay. We’ll start with Hall. Send me the list and data you have, and I’ll forward it to Prater.”

  This was where they were going to have trouble. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”

  He cut his attention between her and the house. “What do you mean?”

  “My followers trust me to protect their identities. I can’t turn their names and personal information over to the FBI. It wouldn’t be ethical.”

  Nate visibly took a breath. Probably tempering his frustration. “I understand.” He glanced at her. “But you need to understand how crucial this information might be to protecting you and finding the Butcher.”

  Ah, the guilt. “Yes, I do. That’s the reason you and I are going to look into these three people personally.”

  He didn’t speak for a time but the thin line his interestingly full lips made told her he wasn’t happy about her idea.

  “I have a friend I can call to see if your Parisian follower actually lives in Paris and has entered this country,” he finally said. “If he hasn’t, we’ll set his name aside for the time being.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The guy in Albany will be easy enough. I’m acquainted with an agent assigned in the area who can check him out—off the record.”

  She could live with that. Working in Public Affairs, Nate likely had friends—fellow agents—all over the country.

  “When we’re done here, we’ll visit the guy in Nashville.”

  Lara was immensely grateful for his cooperation. Protecting the privacy of her followers was extremely important. When this was over, hopefully she would still have a career. “Thank you.”

  He looked directly at her then. “Don’t thank me yet, Lara. If we can’t confirm the alibis of these three, I’ll have no choice but to turn over the names. Ruling out their involvement is essential. Understood?”

  She opted not to argue. “Understood.”

  If she were lucky, it wouldn’t come to that.

  The trouble was, luck had abandoned her two years ago when she ended up in the basement of a very disturbed man.

  Chapter Ten

  Nate glanced at his passenger. Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she responded to comment after comment on today’s explosive blog.

  Worry fisted in his gut at the idea that the world now knew she was genetically connected to the Butcher. At the very least, to the person they believed to be the Butcher. There was a chance, incredibly remote, that the evidence found at those two Butcher crime scenes could belong to someone else who was there for some other reason besides murder.

  But Nate knew better than to kid himself.

  He wished they had something—a used water bottle, anything—for DNA on Wynwood. Nate wasn’t ready to dismiss him as nothing more than an old friend of Patrick Franklin. He was far too cocky. Too self-assured. He either knew far more than he had shared, or he was far more deeply involved than he wanted them to know.

  Lara wouldn’t be happy if she discovered that Nate was holding out on her. Unfortunately, the step he’d taken was necessary. He’d asked a fellow agent and old friend for help. Nate and Special Agent Louis Keaton had attended the academy together. They’d stayed in touch over the years. Keaton wasn’t involved with the Butcher case, but he was aware of the details and he was assigned to the Nashville office. He’d agreed to conduct some extra research—off the record—for Nate.

  If Nate could get his hands on the necessary piece of evidence, Keaton would see that the analysis was handled. Nate hadn’t asked any questions. He didn’t care how the man got the job done, he just wanted it done. If there was any chance that Wynwood might actually be the Butcher, Nate needed to know as soon as possible.

  He recognized that he could very well be grasping at straws. The truth was, he didn’t want Lara’s father to be the Butcher.

  His cell phone vibrated on the dash. He picked it up and checked the screen. There was an update on the case. The text messages sent to Lara’s cell were from a burner phone. The name associated with the number was a dead end—literally. The name belonged to a resident of a Nashville cemetery. Even the address provided was the location of said cemetery. But the burner was a local purchase, meaning the user was here, in Nashville.

  Nate’s instinct said it was the man inside the house they were watching.

  “We should pay Mr. Wynwood a home visit.” Nate felt antsy. He wanted another opportunity to get something that belonged to the man. Something with usable genetic material on it.

  Lara looked up from her laptop, blinked. “What?”

  “Let’s knock on his door.”

  She stared at the house. “Okay.” She shifted her gaze back to Nate. “Why? I thought we were watching him with the idea of following him around. You know, the element of surprise and all?”

  “I have a hunch I need to follow up on.” It was the best excuse he could summon on short order that would hopefully discourage further questions.

  Lara closed her laptop and tucked it into the back seat once more. “Okay. Getting out of the car for a while would be good.” She straightened her crossed legs and grimaced.

  Nate started the car and drove the short distance to the house they’d been surveilling. When he had parked, they both emerged from the rental. No need to discuss strategy. Nate intended to wing it.

  He walked around the rear of the car to the passenger side where Lara waited. A quick scan of the exterior of the house and he spotted the first camera beneath the eave, right side. Not an older version, but something new. His cell vibrated and he checked it as they climbed the four steps and crossed the porch. The house wasn’t very large. One story, modest, judging by the style probably from the late fifties or early sixties. Since there was no doorbell, he knocked, then tapped the screen of his phone to quickly review the info he’d received.