Rule of Thirds (A Mirror Novel Book 1) Read online

  He saw Jacoby stare down at the scene and then grip the branch he leaned against tightly.

  He’d found something. Ward didn’t try to distract him, let him snap pictures, not wanting to disturb him too soon. But he was hoping to hear about a breakthrough.

  Finally, Jacoby scanned the crowd, settling his gaze on Ward—it always landed like a box of bricks, heavy as fuck and shocking to Ward’s system. He’d never get used to it…and that’s why he couldn’t get enough of it.

  He strode over to the tree and Jacoby shifted, motioning for Ward to climb up next to him.

  Ward joined him, stared down at the bodies and froze, much the way he’d seen Jacoby do. “Son of a—”

  “Yeah,” Jacoby broke in. “Guessing we don’t have any other aerial pics to compare this to.”

  “Definitely not.” Ward focused on the bodies again. From this angle, it was clear that they were positioned to form an almost perfect capital letter “J.”

  J for Jasper. J for Jessica. It mattered, and yet, it didn’t—because all roads led to the same end. “Let’s find Bren and we’ll know more.”

  Jacoby turned from the bodies. “Bren’s running from us. I’d bet anything that Jasper contacted him—that’s why he rented the cabin. I’m thinking a scenario where Jasper claims the FBI is lying to Bren and offers to prove it, in person.”

  “I don’t know whether to hope you’re right or not,” Ward admitted grimly.

  Jacoby stared back at the crime scene below them. “Me neither.”

  *

  On the ride over to Bren’s house, Jacoby sent the photos to Ward’s assistant—the guy was on 24/7, and within the hour he’d blow them up and send them to Ward’s massive bank of computers. He’d also bring over hard copies to Ward’s house himself.

  “You think the key to Bren’s disappearance is in that crime scene?” Ward asked.

  Jacoby nodded tightly. “I think it’s in Bren’s house.”

  *

  He and Ward snuck into the guarded house like burglars, through the neighbor’s yard and into an unprotected side window. They did so mainly because if Bren or Jasper—or Jessica—thought the place was compromised, they’d avoid it. Bren’s security team was disbanded at the request of the FBI, and for once Bren’s lawyer agreed. The man had sounded nervous as hell—he hadn’t admitted to the cabin, and he didn’t say anything about Bren being missing, but it was implied from his lack of argument.

  So at this point, there was only a black and white parked across the driveway to stop any curious press and pedestrians from walking up the driveway and ringing the doorbell.

  Ward had been calling Bren’s cell to no avail. Bren’s car had been gone since night before last—and captured by street cam turning onto the highway heading west, which was the direction of the cabin. And then…nothing.

  “Guy rarely leaves the house. The only reason he might was to meet with his editor or agent…or his informant. He’s supposed to let me know whenever he’s going to meet with his editor or his agent, since I figured he’d have a definite target on his back then. For the most part, he’d let me know. He forgot only once, but it was legit—he called me from the car, flustered and apologetic. Lawyer said the same thing. He was definitely at the cabin recently. I don’t think he’s been here for at least several days,” Ward assessed in order to focus them…and probably to stop Jacoby from rushing in and ripping the house apart.

  Which he definitely wanted to do, but since he was now officially part of the case, he had to play it as by the book as he could bring himself to. He scanned Bren’s office in the darkness—he and Ward both had on night vision goggles, a handy-as-hell tool. “You’ve got the black light?”

  Ward pulled it out and covered the room.

  Nothing. Guy hadn’t gotten so much as a paper cut in this room.

  They searched the whole house, with similar results. Finally, they went down to the unfinished basement.

  “Smells like water,” Ward commented almost immediately.

  Jacoby ran a hand over the cement and stone wall he was closest too—it was definitely damp. And then Ward shone the black light and the entire goddamned space lit up like Christmas.

  Jacoby muttered, “Motherfucker.”

  Ward agreed with that sentiment with a calm, “We’ve got a big problem here.”

  *

  The same ME from the crime scene came to Bren’s. Leo was a machine and the rumors about him were legendary, and Jacoby figured the guy had to have a past. Mainly because the same type of rumors swirled around Jacoby if he stayed in any one place or job for too long.

  Ward greeted him with, “Sorry to pull you off your autopsy.”

  “I can just keep going right here,” Leo said, as he used the black light and began to take samples from the stone. “I think you found the blood I was missing.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The blood type didn’t match Bren’s—at least not the samples Leo took. It was impossible to test every inch that was blood-spattered, but there were definitely matches for the most recent of the two victims’ blood types. It would take several hours for the DNA tests to come back., but the couple had been easily identified by their wallets and their IDs, found several miles from the scene.

  Ward sent Jude back to Bren’s cabin to black light…and to wait, along with backup. He and Jacoby went back to Ward’s house to try to figure out their next move.

  “So how does Jasper connect?” Jacoby asked, his voice hoarse from lack of sleep. The sun would come up in a couple of hours. For now, the men drank strong coffee and ate breakfast and pretended they didn’t need sleep. And they didn’t—not until they found Bren.

  They had a limited window of time. If they were talking about Jessica, the most she’d hold him for was four days—and she’d been known to hold men for as few as twenty-four hours. The Couples Killer—aka Jasper—had a different timeframe: he killed almost immediately.

  “But Bren has something they both want,” Jacoby pointed out.

  “What—fame?”

  “More than they have,” Jacoby said. “A wider audience. Movies.”

  Ward conceded that. “So how does Jasper connect? And does he? What if he’s just a distraction?” That last part was a definite possibility. Even if he did connect, it was a most likely scenario that Jasper had agreed to provide the distraction necessary for Jessica to get to Bren. “Want to look over his files again?”

  “For the hundredth time,” Jacoby murmured, but he never hesitated to retread a road while looking for a lead. This time was no different. That was one thing about Jacoby—he never went for only the easy way. He’d comb a case over and over again, attempting to squeeze blood from a stone, as it were, in order to get to solving the case. There was always something missed when it was unsolved, always a stone to overturn, always a different way to look at something.

  In this case, two heads were better than one. They batted material back and forth, Ward from memory and Jacoby with the paperwork, because they often caught discrepancies in that manner. Just because they remembered events a certain way didn’t mean it truly happened that way. Memory was a funny thing, often twisted to meet or satisfy the needs of the person who was remembering.

  “Bren’s thirty-one. Started writing about serials when he was twenty-one. An overnight success, they called him. He won a hell of a lot of awards for his first book,” Jacoby said now.

  “Do you think he’s gotten paranoid over the years?”

  “If he had a brain, he would’ve been from the first,” Jacoby said. “There’re enough movies out there showing authors being stalked by their subjects. Maybe that’s why he stuck with fictional killers—safer.”

  Ward agreed. “Still, Bren was contacted because of what he wrote.”

  Jacoby blew out a breath. “For sure? We don’t know that for sure.”

  Ward ran his fingers over the smooth wood table. “So is that the missing link? What if Bren was targeted? Do you really think Jasper o
r Jessica—or both—would’ve picked him if he wasn’t an author of fictional crime?”

  Jacoby sighed, rubbed his hands over his eyes as he tipped his chair back and balanced on two legs. Suspended in air, he let his mind wander but didn’t get any further along on his theory. He brought the chair back onto four legs with a loud bang. “I don’t know—fuck. But that’s the only assumption I keep coming back to in order to challenge. What good would Bren be to a serial if he couldn’t write the story? If Bren means something, they could’ve found another way in.”

  “Maybe,” Ward conceded, because Jacoby’s instincts were rarely wrong, and even if on the surface they were, something always broke through to prove Jacoby right. “So follow the thread—were they using him to get to him? To lure him?”

  Jacoby considered that. “They got our attention—they picked someone close to you.”

  “Is that coincidence?” Ward mused.

  “Bren moved here six months ago. He lied about when he was contacted and he was actually led to that house, and to you. It’s like they’re tightening the noose…around all of us.”

  Ward held in a shudder. Jacoby couldn’t. They had blood. Two victims had no connection to Bren that they could see so far. “Childhood friends?” Jacoby suggested.

  Ward shook his head. “Bren didn’t grow up around here. No school records show any of them together. And it’s not like I can show Bren’s picture to the vics’ families without setting off an uproar or misunderstanding. But there were no pictures of Bren in either vic’s apartment. And vice versa. And none of Bren’s books showed up in their respective apartments either. Or on their e-book devices or apps. And this could be a lot easier if Bren were here, dammit.”

  “It’s fucking impossible.”

  “There’s been no activity on the line Jasper used to call in. He also used burner phones. But I’ve had it routed to my cell,” Ward continued. “All bases covered.”

  Jacoby would expect nothing less. It was their only measure of control and comfort, even though they were both fully aware there were no such things. “What do you have on Jasper from the old crime scenes and reports?”

  “Now we have a name,” Ward said dryly. “He may or may not know Jessica.”

  Jacoby let the sarcasm fly right over his head, no doubt purposely. “And we can bet that the ‘J’ design of the bodies isn’t new, based on the old crime scene photos. Seems to be his MO.”

  “Which means it’s about Jessica or about you,” Ward reasoned. “She doesn’t know your new name.”

  “Not that we know of. But is Jasper enamored of her…trying to get her attention…or killing her off symbolically with every kill?”

  “Based on the set-up, I’d go with getting her attention and not on good terms.”

  “Not now,” Jacoby broke in. “But if it ends up that what he told Bren was true, then either they were close once, or else maybe Jasper and I knew each other.” That fact was like a cold hand wrapped around his heart. He didn’t realize he’d shuddered visibly.

  Ward might attract lost and broken souls, but Jacoby seemed to attract psychopathic killers.

  “Hey.” Ward moved next to him. “Even if you met him—”

  “Or slept with him,” Jacoby muttered.

  “Even so, you never gave away your life story.”

  That was the truth, and the only relief in all of this. “Fuck. I just hate someone like that knowing my business.”

  Ward didn’t try to comfort him with words. Instead, he began to massage Jacoby’s shoulder, the one that always bothered him the most when it rained or snowed, thanks to his shoulder dislocation on an old job. And yeah, it was definitely getting ready to storm.

  *

  An hour later, Ward was taking calls from the office. Jacoby glanced at his vibrating phone and saw Abby’s name pop up. After a moment of hesitation, he picked up. Usually, when he left a case behind, he left it behind for good…but with Abby, there was too much of a connection.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Funny, I was going to ask you the same question,” Abby said. “I’ve been a little MIA.”

  “Is Ethan home?”

  “How’d you guess?” Her laugh bubbled up warmly. “And yes, he’s the one who told me to check in on you, but I would’ve anyway.”

  Jacoby knew that was the truth on both accounts—Abby didn’t need to consult with her psychic boyfriend to know that Jacoby was in a fucked up situation. “Things are…fucked.”

  “Can I help?”

  She probably couldn’t, but it wouldn’t hurt to give her a heads-up. As a US Marshal, she wasn’t on the front lines of crime scenes or profiling—for personal reasons—but she could be. So he told her about Jasper and Bren and the book.

  “And Bren’s missing?” she asked briskly, attempting to keep it businesslike for Jacoby’s sake.

  “Not sure if it’s willingly or not.”

  There was a long pause. “You’re connected to him.”

  He resisted the urge to say, “Through this case,” because he knew that was Ethan telling her. And the guy was pretty much on target. “It’d be nice if he had a location for me.”

  She sighed. “If it worked like that, I’m betting he’d lose his mind. I’m assuming you’ve considered the fact that he’s with Jasper, in some kind of intense interview session with no idea that Jasper killed anyone?”

  “You think he’d have killed in Bren’s basement without Bren knowing? Fuck, none of it makes sense.”

  “But it will,” she told him soothingly. “Take an hour away. Watch a movie. Let your mind wander.”

  It was advice he’d given to her a while back—advice he often doled out but was too stubborn to take. This time, he would.

  Except… “You forgot we can’t ever get through an entire movie,” Ward murmured.

  “Worse things in life.”

  “Definitely.” Ward pulled Jacoby on top of him. “God, I need you, J.”

  “Yeah?” That always surprised him, no matter how many times Ward told him. Mainly because he never thought someone could need him as much as he needed them. It was what scared the fuck out of him about Ward. In the past, it was what’d made him pull away every time, that intense need to keep Ward out of harm’s way.

  Which had been proven to be ineffective as fuck, so he’d figured he should grab these moments when they came.

  *

  An hour later, Ward’s assistant was at the door. Several minutes later, Ward was coming to him with an envelope, and a serious look. “What? A lead on Bren?” he asked, knowing full well it wouldn’t be.

  Ward shook his head. “A bartender saw a man with the couple—she sat with the bureau’s sketch artist.” Ward paused for too long, forcing Jacoby to insist, “Let me see it.”

  Ward reluctantly handed him the envelope. “It’s the only copy.”

  Jacoby slid the picture out of the manila envelope, not really focusing on it until it was fully out in front of him. Then he squinted, but it was more about trying to tell himself he didn’t know the guy than admitting he remembered him. Intimately.

  He sat, his legs unsteady. “It was one night. Nothing heavy. I’d come back from a month away and settled into the hotel where my mother talked herself into the penthouse. I didn’t stay there though. And he was at the hotel bar, and he mentioned that he met my mom. That’s why I can remember him, because I told him that was the worst pick-up line ever.” He shook his head hard to shake the memories off as fast as they came, not wanting them to stick. “What the fuck, Ward?”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  Jacoby pinched the bridge of his nose. “Bill? Billy? Christ, I can’t be sure, and that might not even be his real first name.”

  “Did he want more than a one-night stand?”

  Jacoby closed his eyes for a brief moment. “Christ, I don’t think so. We fucked in my room. He didn’t spend the night. It wasn’t a transaction either.”

  The fact that he’d sold his body on
a regular basis had always bothered Jacoby. It wasn’t about the sex—he’d had as much tail on the side for free, if not more. It was the times he’d done it at his mother’s request, no matter the reason. He didn’t like remembering that he’d once been part of her sick little team.

  “I need…” He stood, unable to continue articulating the thought. Instead, he stumbled forward a little, then caught himself and headed for the nearest bathroom. He stripped one-handed as he turned the water on and stepped in and stood under the spray as it went from cold to hot. A symbolic move, one he did purposely whenever the past was too much with him…to wash away the fucked up memories, separate himself from the case, and Christ, he’d have to stay in here for hours to accomplish that now.

  But then Ward joined him, barely taking time to strip before he had his arms around Jacoby, kissing him, touching him, putting all the pieces back together until Jacoby felt whole. And when Jacoby relaxed, that’s when Ward soaped him up, washed his hair, then kissed him again and again and again, until Jacoby said, “I can sleep now. I need to sleep.”

  He let Ward dry him, lead him into bed, and he fell asleep in Ward’s arms, content with the kissing and the holding and the purifying.

  *

  Bren drove his car over the small bridge toward the township Jasper had given him directions to. This trip was partially against his better judgment, but taking on this book had already been taking a chance. He couldn’t stop now.

  Jasper was giving him an opportunity to meet, in person. There would be no pictures of Jasper, but Bren couldn’t give up the invitation for a face-to-face meeting with the man who was responsible for his biggest book, probably of his entire career.

  Ward and Jacoby would probably put out an APB on him, or try to, but nothing in his house was out of place and he was allowed to leave his house. He’d asked his agent and editor to cover for him, but he had a feeling they were no match for the FBI agents who insisted on making him their own personal project.

  “I’m probably as nervous as you are,” Jasper had admitted to him the last time they’d talked. “I feel like, if we talk face-to-face, it’ll help you understand more about me, why I’m doing this. It’ll legitimize this for you.”