“Because I’ve made a lot of things in my life,” Wells said. “I’ve created some damn good surgeons. Even a few decent coroners. I am the kind of teacher who truly transforms lives. I thought my crowning achievement was my protégé. But then . . .” His grin widened, terrifying, a shark in the water, smelling blood for the first time. “Then I created an FBI agent,” he said, a delighted chuckle wrapping around Abby like a snake. “And not just any FBI Agent. Special Supervisory Agent Paul Harrison.” He lowered his voice as he rattled Paul’s title off. “The agency’s golden boy. There’s talk that you’re on track for assistant director before you’re forty. There’s even rumblings of a congressional campaign, if you don’t set your sights on director. And the choices I made set you on that path. Isn’t life grand, sometimes?”
Abby wanted to reach forward and tear that pleased look on his face off. He had nothing to do with Paul’s successes. How dare he. Anger sparked, hot and low in her body, and she could feel it spreading to her cheeks.
But Paul’s face didn’t even ripple at Wells’s outrageous claims. “You had nothing to do with why I became an FBI agent,” he said.
“Don’t insult my intelligence, Paul,” Wells tutted. “You were headed for a baseball career before Cass’s murder. And then all of a sudden you were done with baseball and applying for colleges and aiming your sights on Quantico. I did that. I suppose my protégé did have a hand in it, since he did the actual killing. But you didn’t know that, did you? You thought it was me. I was the one you saw when you closed your eyes at night. When you were at Quantico, it was my face you imagined when you fired your gun at those paper targets. I formed you into the kind of man who could be a hero.”
“You don’t get to take credit for what I built from the ashes,” Paul said, the resolve in his face making her stomach twist. “You think that you and your boy, whoever the hell he is, are the most horrible thing that’s ever happened to me, Wells?” He let out a short bark of a laugh that hurt Abby to hear. “Sorry to disappoint, but you two barely make it to the top five. You want to talk about transforming life experiences? Let’s talk about the man who strapped enough C4 to me to blow me, himself, the little girl and the cabin we were in to kingdom come. Let’s talk about my father dying forty years too early because even though he got sober, it wasn’t soon enough and his liver failed. Let’s talk about what it’s like, to have a six-year-old girl die in your arms because her father shot her entire family and then himself. You want to talk horror with me, Wells? You want to talk evil? You’re a sick fuck deluded by his own phony murderous grandeur. You’re not even the most interesting serial killer I’ve come up against.”
Abby had never wanted to reach for him so much in her life. She knew she couldn’t, that Wells would just delight in this show of affection and worry, but it was hard to stop herself, when Paul was laying out his truths so fiercely, lobbing them like grenades at Wells to show he had no power over him.
“You wanna really see what kind of man I am?” Paul asked, rising to his feet. “Abby, you should leave.”
Abby’s eyes widened. What the hell was he going to do? “No way.”
“Fine.” Paul looked over at Stan. “Let him out,” he demanded.
Stan gaped at him. “What?” he sputtered.
“You heard me,” Paul said. “Open the Goddamn door.”
Stan backed away. “No,” he said.
“Paul—” Abby started to stay, but then faded off in shock as Paul strode over and without a hint of hesitation, snatched the keys off the chain on Stan’s belt.
“You can’t do that!” Stan shouted as Paul slotted the key into the lock. He hurried across the room, slamming down on the emergency button, and then ran out of the room, leaving the two of them alone.
“Paul,” Abby said again.
“Leave,” he said.
“I am not leaving you alone to kill him!” she snapped and Wells shrieked with laughter as Paul turned the key in the lock and jerked the door open.
Abby’s fingers curled into fists, her entire body screamed at her to run as Paul grabbed Wells by the neck and shoved him against the Plexiglas wall of his cell. But instead of beginning to pummel him, he grabbed a chunk of Wells’s hair and tore it out. Keeping one elbow on his neck and holding him pinned, he dug in his other pocket for a small plastic evidence bag, depositing the hair into it.
“This is what kind of man I am,” he hissed in Wells’s ear, shoving the bag in his face like a taunt. “The kind of man who trusts in science. In the law and justice. And in my people’s ability to outsmart you and your protégé. Just you wait, Wells. Your boy’s gonna be in the cell across from yours any day now.”
He jerked away from him, and the man panted against the glass, dazed and red-faced, as Paul stepped out of the cell and locked the door.
Abby stared at him, wide-eyed and breathless. “I thought you were going to kill him,” she said.
“He doesn’t have the guts!” Wells shouted.
Paul shot him a disgusted look. “You’re not worth the energy or the bullet.”
Without another word, he took Abby’s hand, and led her out of the room, where they were greeted by a crowd of guards, led by Stan, looking panicked and worried.
Paul tossed Stan his keys. “He’s all yours, boys.”
Chapter 29
When they got back to the farmhouse, Paul tossed the bag of Wells’s hair to Zooey.
“You make sure it was from the root?” she asked. “I need the root.”
“It’s from the root,” he said.
“Good.”
“Why are you testing his hair?” Abby asked. Her stomach leapt, horror filling her. “You didn’t . . . you didn’t dig Cass up, did you?”
“No,” Zooey assured her. “I have a theory. It’s kind of a wild theory, but after I talked it through with our profiler in DC, I figured it was worth a shot.”
“Zooey thinks that Wells and the unsub could be related,” Paul explained.
“What?” Shock coursed through Abby. “Seriously?”
“I kept asking myself, why is Wells protecting this guy? He’s too much of a control freak to trust all his secrets—his teachings—to someone who was on the other side of an anonymous screen. They may have communicated online, but they had to know each other in real life. So what kind of bond keeps Wells from giving him up, even after he framed him for murder?
“Wells’s first wife, Ruth, left him after only a year of marriage,” Zooey said. “She didn’t go directly back to her family, even though that was her original plan. She went to stay with an aunt. And six months later, she shows up at the hospital, pregnant. The thing is, she doesn’t leave with a baby.”
“She gave the baby up for adoption,” Abby said in realization. “Oh, that must have infuriated him. He’s obsessed with legacy.”
“What better way to insure your legacy than to track your son down and teach him your serial killer ways?” Zooey asked.
It was a chilling thought. Twisted. But it would make sense of the fact that Wells never exposed his protégé. It never sat right with Abby that he’d kept quiet about it, all these years.
“It might explain the animosity the unsub clearly feels against Wells,” Paul said. “He dedicated a lot to framing him. But I’m guessing that the high of that faded fast.”
“Which is why he was back to not just killing girls, but abducting them and keeping them captive in just twenty-four months,” Abby finished, feeling grim.
“Exactly,” Paul said.
“I’m gonna take this to the sheriff’s station,” Zooey said. “My equipment got delivered this morning. I should have the relevant DNA strands isolated and run through the database in a few hours. If our guy’s ever been arrested, we should get a hit.”
“And then we find Robin,” Paul said.
Abby reached out and squeezed his shoulder.
“I need to get back to my mom’s,” Paul said. “Georgia is . . . she’s not well. And Jason’s barely keeping it together.”
“Of course,” Abby said. “I’ll go with you—” she started to say, but there was a knock at her door.
“Abby?” called a voice. “I’ve got the monthly yield reports.”
That was Jonah, her orchard manager. “Go on,” she told Paul. “I’ve got to deal with orchard stuff. I’ll come over later and bring everyone food.”
He reached out, grabbing her hand and squeezing it briefly. “Thanks, Winny.”
She smiled at the nickname. “I want to do everything I can,” she said. “For all of you.”
“I know,” he said. “It just . . . it means a lot.”
“Hey, Abby!”