Chapter 33

Friday, March 19

2:00 p.m.

It'd take days for the FBI's computer crime squad to revive the laptops and phones buried under two feet of ice and frozen ground. But they finally had their connection.

Boucher had made too many mistakes. Inaccurately gauging the number of stab wounds inflicted on each victim, missing Michelle Cross's research in the attic space of the victim's home, killing Chris Ellingson out of revenge for abducting his son, then not destroying the very evidence that tied him to the murders.

Chandler Reed had received the duffle bag she'd pulled from Ellingson's garage. The blood crusted to the ripped tarp had, in fact, belonged to Michelle as she suspected. But the clothing… That'd been more complicated. Completely clean. Other than a single hair belonging to Ellingson. Boucher's plan to frame his abductor for these murders might've worked given enough time, but he'd gone up against an opponent far more experienced and volatile. One who would've done anything to keep his freedom.

Leigh pulled her rental in front of the converted barn house.

The home itself looked exactly as she'd left it, but so much had changed. Especially for the people inside. Two news vans had parked across the street. Both waiting for the perfect moment to strike, but a blue tide of Lebanon police officers had taken it upon themselves to stand guard.

She hauled herself out of the car one-handed and dragged the bouquet of flowers she'd bought from a grocery store on the way out from the back seat.

"There she is. Let's move." A journalist darted across the street toward the barricade, trying to squeeze between them. "Agent Brody, do you have any comment on Lieutenant Gabriel Boucher's involvement in the recent murders? You were on the case, were you not?" He was prevented from following her by the men and women holding their line. "Is that bullet wound in your shoulder from facing off with the lieutenant?"

"Director Livingstone will be answering any and all questions in a press conference set to take place this evening." She kept moving up the manmade path trampled through the grass. "You can ask her."

The officer on duty nodded as she went for the front door, and for the briefest moment, she tensed at the possibility of being turned away. Only there was no jurisdictional bullshit. No fight to prove she'd come to help. She was simply allowed to go inside.

Friends and family gathered in the living room off the front entry. Rows of casseroles and side salads took up space along a table that'd been set up to collect offerings at the door, and Leigh didn't know whether or not flowers counted. Boucher's ex-wife sat in the middle of a long sofa, a tissue to her nose, surrounded by loved ones.

Leigh had come to offer her condolences for a murderer.

But it was a quiet sniffle that directed her toward the stairs.

Carter Boucher—dressed in the most perfect little suit—wiped his nose with the cuff of his sleeve. From the look of it, he'd been at it for a while. Hugging the wall, he stared down at something in his hand. A police shield.

"Is it okay if I sit by you?" she asked over the banister.

The ten-year-old didn't look up to see who'd talked to him but nodded.

Leigh set the flowers on the front table and maneuvered down the stairs to take a seat on the same step. "Is that your dad's badge?"

"I'm not supposed to play with it," he said. "I just wanted something that was his."

"I think it's okay. I'm sure your dad would've wanted you to have it." Leigh kept herself from toying with the soldier still in her blazer pocket as she'd done so many times over the course of her life. It was habit, to try to be close to the ones we'd lost.

"Did you know him?" Carter asked.

"I did. We worked together." She'd leave out the part where they'd nearly died together.

"Are you mad at him, too?" He looked up at her with his father's eyes. "They're saying he hurt people. My mom doesn't want to tell me why, but she won't stop crying."

She didn't know how to answer that. Partly, yes. Boucher had brought her into this investigation by replicating the MO of the man who'd taken her brother from her. And she'd fallen for it, just as he'd planned. It hadn't been enough for him to kill Chris Ellingson outright. Boucher had wanted him to suffer in kind for what his abductor had done. Not just to him but this town. But the other part of her, the one that believed Chris Ellingson had gotten exactly what he deserved, that Boucher had done it out of a warped sense of protection and love, understood his motive. "Someday I'm sure your mom will tell you why she's crying, and it will be hard for a little while. You're going to miss your dad like crazy, and your mom will, too. But people are going to say terrible things about him, Carter. They're going to treat you differently, and you're not going to know why. No matter what happens, you should know your dad loved you so much that he was willing to give up his life so you would be safe. And that's what counts."

She drove her hand into her pocket and pulled the black Lego figure from inside. She might never have these quiet moments with her own child, but that didn't mean she couldn't be there for someone else's. Handing it off, she watched as Carter ran his thumb over the etching over the figure's heart.

"It has a badge," he said. "Like my dad."

"Exactly like your dad." It wasn't much of an offering, but it was all she had. She left him there on the stairs and headed for the front door. She couldn't protect that ten-year-old boy the way Boucher had wanted, but Carter would be okay. He was strong. Just like his dad.

Leigh collapsed behind the wheel of her rental and started the car. Her own words to Carter echoed on a loop as she pulled onto the road.

The bodies of Boucher's victims had been released to their families. The exhumation order for Derek Garrison's remains hadn't been necessary. His baby teeth were returned to Katherine Garrison, recovered from the hole she'd dug in the woods along with the small tin her own mother had kept Leigh's and Troy's baby teeth in, three sets of laptops and phones, a mountain of surveillance on each target, and the missing evidence from the station. Michelle Cross hadn't gotten the chance to compare the DNA she'd collected to the bodies of two boys in Lebanon's city cemetery, but that was probably for the best. The dead deserved their peace. She and Gresham Schmidt—they'd been on a path to the truth. One of Chris Ellingson's victims had survived. And it'd gotten them killed.

Leigh pulled up in front of the lot where her childhood home had once stood. The remains were no longer smoking, but a charred scent still lodged at the back of her throat as she got out. Just one more reason for the neighbors to hate her.

That life she'd planned out for herself—the one filled with little feet running back and forth and excited screams on Christmas mornings—had burned down right along with her home, but she still had the memories. And she had the chance to make sure kids like Carter Boucher got to live their lives and create memories of their own.

She pulled her phone from her pocket and called Elyse. The line connected almost instantly, and it was in little moments like that, she believed Elyse meant what she'd said. That she wanted to be there for her, to share this burden with her. Like a friend would.

"Hey, I was just watching the news about that case in Lebanon. Looks like you've been busy," Elyse said. "You okay?"

"I'm a little banged up, but otherwise I'm… good, actually." It was the first time she could think of she hadn't lied when she'd said that, and an easiness Leigh hadn't felt with another person took shape. She leaned up against the side of her car.

"I thought about what you said. About the surgery." Tension solidified in her gut. She'd already made up her mind, but letting go of how she thought her life would play out scared the shit out of her. "Could you be there when I come out of the anesthesia? You know, to get all my crazy ramblings from the drugs on video?"

"Are you asking because you need someone to drive you home afterward?" Leigh could practically hear the woman's smile through the line. "I'm technically not your physician, so yeah. I think I can do that. That's what friends are for."

Friends. Haley Pierce had been her friend once, but this felt different. It felt real. Not based on high-school politics or the past. But the here and now. Who she was now. "Thanks. I'll message you the time and date of the surgery as soon as I have it."

"Don't chicken out. I'll hunt you down." Elyse ended the call, and Leigh found herself smiling as she hit the off button on the side of her phone.

Another vehicle pulled up behind hers, and the engine cut off. Chandler Reed shouldered onto the pavement, a grocery bag in hand. He tossed it at her as he limped around the hood. His wounds had been stitched and bandaged. A few pints of blood replaced. A sling supported the arm Boucher's bullet had gone through. Just like hers. Neither of them had been willing to sit around in a hospital for another few days. They had work to do. "Got you something."

She caught it with her free hand. "Don't you know you shouldn't throw things at people in slings?" Leigh slipped the plastic bag free and laughed. "A Xena action figure?"

"I felt bad about breaking yours all those years ago." He folded one arm across his chest, exaggerating lean muscle. Nothing like the string-bean kid she'd pulled out of Chris Ellingson's garage that night. "Especially after you saved my life. But to be fair I know you meant to cut me with that pumpkin carver that Halloween."

"I love it. Thanks." She smiled, closing one eye against the sun. She supposed he'd held on to a few features she recognized, but it'd been important for Troy Brody to disappear entirely the night she'd found him. In his place, Chandler Reed was born. At just twelve years old, he'd known he wouldn't have been able to come home, that he'd always be the one who got away, always be in Chris Ellingson's sights.

And so she'd hidden him away. In the same abandoned mill Boucher had murdered his victims. Protected. Untouchable. Her parents couldn't know. The grief had to be real, and it'd hurt. More than she'd ever imagined. Looking back, she'd been too young to make the decision. But with the possibility the police would continue to ignore evidence, that Ellingson would get out on parole or with good behavior even if arrested, or—what scared her the most—Ellingson had been working with a partner, it'd been the only solution to keep Troy safe.

She'd started watching Ellingson then. More than she had before. Surveilling him during school and in the hours after, waiting for him to make his next mistake. The police had moved on, but she couldn't. Though Ellingson must've realized one of his trophies was missing from the garage. He knew Troy had escaped, lived in fear of the truth coming out, but he was careful. Never once letting himself slip.

For months, she'd collected lists of routines, patient names, visitors, changes in behavior. Evidence the police couldn't ignore this time. She'd been balancing on a double-edged sword. Determined to prove Ellingson had killed Derek Garrison and intended to do the same to her brother. Desperate to make sure that he never touched Troy again. And maybe that, in and of itself, made her a little bit like Boucher as he'd claimed.

But Troy couldn't live in an abandoned mill for the rest of his life. Alone, isolated. He'd started getting sick. The mold and the cold kept his wounds from healing as they should, and no amount of blankets had fought back the fevers. She hadn't pulled him out of that garage to watch him die. He deserved to live.

So they'd left Lebanon the day she graduated high school. They moved to Concord so she could go to college and attend the police academy while working two jobs to support them while he put himself through homeschool. Within a few years, he'd earned his diploma, but news of their mother's suicide doused any happily ever after they'd imagined together.

That was when they'd come up with the plan.

She'd learn everything she could about serial offenders like Ellingson by consulting for law enforcement and aim for CJIS to keep up to date on any similar cases. He'd study forensics and work to become one of the top federal investigators in the country. Together, they'd make perfect candidates for recruitment by whatever agency reopened Troy's case. And they would reopen it.

All it took was sending a copy of the investigation file to Gresham Schmidt.

Leigh knocked her uninjured shoulder into his. While the plan had been solid, there were certain things they hadn't expected. Boucher, for one. All of the people he'd hurt. The fact he'd been another victim of the same evil as Troy. She hadn't planned for any of that, but in the end, she'd gotten what she'd wanted. Her brother home, safe. And a continuing position with the BAU. The scars beneath his tattoos would always remain, but he was still the pain in the ass she'd give up her future to save. Just as Boucher gave up his for Carter.

"I have something for you, too." Leigh pinched the action figure under her sling and pulled the toy soldier from her blazer. "I thought you could do the honors."

Chandler stared down at the green plastic, running his thumb over the end he'd clipped for analysis. In his next breath, he threw it as far as it would go into the remains of their old house.

The back door of Chandler's vehicle popped open, and her father stepped free of the car. "You two knuckleheads finally managed to burn down the house."

"It's not that bad. We might be able to save… that shutter." Chandler's laugh filled her soul and chased back the tightness in her chest. "Come on. We've still got work to do. The little boy you found under our house all those years ago is waiting to be identified."

Leigh rounded the hood of her rental, glancing back at the place where their home had once stood, and took a deep breath in preparation for what was coming. "I'm ready."

*