The Prey Read online

  “Okay,” she said, her voice small and shaking.

  Mama squeezed her hand. “Sometimes I say or do the wrong thing. Daddy gets upset. He works very, very hard, you know. Very hard. Six kids cost a lot of money, you know.” She was speaking fast.

  “Okay, Mama.”

  “But Daddy loves me. Very, very much. And I love him. And it isn’t all the time, just sometimes. Rarely.”

  Mama wasn’t making sense. Then she leaned over and kissed Lily on the head and the world got a little better.

  “Rowan?”

  John’s voice was soft but urgent.

  “Rowan, are you okay?”

  “Just thinking.” She took a deep breath. He knew everything already. Only one more secret to share. “My father abused my mother. Hit her. She always justified it. Said it was her fault. When I asked her about it once, she just said she did things wrong. Stood up for him.”

  Her knuckles were white from clenching her hands into fists. She consciously worked out the tension in her muscles.

  “I didn’t think killing her came out of nowhere,” John said. “You know, it’s a pattern. Abusive relationships often end in death.”

  “They’d been married nineteen years. Six kids. And—and she stayed with him the whole time, no matter what he did.” She remembered the flowers he always brought. The kisses he bestowed on her when he came in at night. “It was like Jekyll and Hyde. He hit her. They argued so much. But I couldn’t believe he killed her. Didn’t want to believe. He used to call her his queen.”

  She took a deep breath. She didn’t realize she’d been crying until John wiped the tears from her cheeks.

  “I loved my father and hated him. He could be so wonderful—playing games, taking us to the park, out for ice cream—but he hit my mother.” Her voice hitched. “I was so confused. Then seeing him so—so—so empty.” She took a deep breath. “That, I didn’t know how to accept. Not then.”

  “You were a child, Rowan. A child forced to grow up very fast.”

  “Bobby was different.”

  Rowan never forgot Bobby’s cruelty. The silent terror he’d inflicted on all of them. Even Mama.

  “Some people are just born evil,” John said.

  She didn’t disagree. “I think Bobby took the worst of Daddy and twisted it. I mean, he was the oldest. He knew what was going on. He used to push Mel and Rachel around just like Daddy did to Mama. He’d hit them.”

  “And no one did anything.” John’s voice was full of shock. Not a surprise. After all, he had had a perfect childhood.

  “Once Mel went to Daddy. Told him that Bobby had hit Rachel so hard she fell down the stairs. Daddy and Bobby had a huge fight in the garage. Bobby left for days. And I was glad. So glad.

  “But he came back.”

  With a vengeance, Rowan thought. That was a year before the murders. When he turned eighteen, she had hoped he’d move out for good. But he didn’t.

  “Bobby called my father weak and pussy-whipped. I didn’t know what that meant at the time. But he never challenged him to his face, except that one time. It was when Daddy wasn’t home that Bobby terrorized us. He broke Peter’s arm when he was a toddler. I saw him do it. But he told me if I told the truth, he would kill me. I believed him and told Mama it was an accident.”

  “No one would blame you, Rowan,” John said.

  “Would anything have been different if I’d told the truth then?” she continued, almost as if she hadn’t heard him. “Would Bobby have been sent away? Punished? Anything?”

  She shook her head and released a deep, weary sigh. “I’ll never know.” She laughed, but felt no humor. Only a deep, pervading emptiness. She wondered if she’d ever feel whole again.

  John squeezed her hand, held on with both of his. She felt cold to the touch. His throat was raw and scratchy. Tears of anger and rage threatened and he swallowed them down. No child should ever have to go through what Rowan did. The senselessness, the horror of everything she’d endured stabbed at his heart.

  But what really angered him was not simply young Bobby’s evil. It was her parents. What had they been doing living with an abusive son, a young man who tormented them and their other children? How could they do nothing? How could her mother sit in the house, let her children witness her abuse, and not get them out of there?

  There were two older girls. Couldn’t one of them have gone to the authorities? Surely they witnessed Bobby’s anger; they’d obviously been subject to it themselves. Yet Rowan placed everything on her own shoulders, as if she were the only one who could have done something yet had failed to act.

  If only he could explain to her, reassure her, that her actions and inactions had nothing to do with what happened.

  “Rowan, none of it was your fault,” John said quietly.

  She shrugged. Had she even registered what he’d said? “I guess what I’m saying is that I expected Bobby to do something bad. Real bad.”

  “Why do you think your father broke?”

  “I just don’t know. It’s why I studied criminal psychology in college. It’s why I joined the FBI. For answers. And I found answers. But not about my daddy. Just the standard: Abusive spouses often kill or are killed.”

  John pulled her to him. He couldn’t stand to hear the self-torture in her voice. Evil knew no bounds. Rich or poor, male or female, old or young. He didn’t know what made Robert MacIntosh kill his wife, but it had broken him forever. Twenty-three years without speaking, without even acknowledging the presence of another human being.

  But Bobby MacIntosh was another story. If he was right and Rowan’s brother was the cause of the three-week, premeditated, expertly plotted killing spree, then his evil heart was more twisted, and far saner, than his father’s.

  Roger Collins paced the waiting room of Beaumont, the maximum-security prison where Bobby MacIntosh had been incarcerated for the past year. The warden was transferring him into a private conference room, but Roger waited for Rowan.

  He wanted to strangle John Flynn, but at the same time feared his theory was right. That Bobby MacIntosh was not in Beaumont, but instead was free and terrorizing Rowan.

  Good intentions aside, he’d made a big mistake. A mistake that cost seven people their lives. And maybe more.

  Bobby MacIntosh at eighteen—hardly a man—was more dangerous than most hardened criminals with decades of assaults under their belts. No remorse, and he certainly took a special glee in his killing night.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Special Agent Roger Collins,” Bobby MacIntosh had said twenty-three years ago when Roger interviewed him in a Boston jail cell.

  Roger stood outside the cell and stared at the kid who’d killed three of his sisters.

  “Lily is going to testify against you,” he’d told Bobby, wanting to see him squirm. “She’s alive and well and wants to send you to the electric chair.”

  Bobby’s eyes narrowed as he glared at Roger.

  “Massachusetts doesn’t have a death penalty. It’s unconstitutional,” he mocked.

  “Too bad. I would have happily flipped the switch. Lily would have, too. You tried to break her, but she’s strong. Stronger than you think. Stronger than you’ve ever given her credit for. When she gets on the stand, not one juror is going to vote to acquit. You are going to spend the rest of your life in prison.”

  He’d approached the bars, stood inches from them. He’d never felt such loathing toward a suspect in his life. After listening to Lily’s story, Roger hated this kid.

  “And if you think you’ll be living for long behind bars,” he said, his voice low and even, “think again.”

  Bobby just stared at him, his eyes mocking, casually reclining on the cot. “You don’t know me,” Bobby said, shaking his head. “I’m a survivor. And if you think I’m spending the rest of my life behind bars, you’re the one who’s deranged.”

  Bobby sat up, put his hands on his knees, and narrowed his eyes. The hard anger in his face made Roger involuntarily swallo
w. This was the man Lily feared, the brother she had lived with for ten years, who killed without remorse. He did it for sheer pleasure.

  “I will kill Lily. Not now, not tomorrow. Someday. I’ll take her scrawny neck and break it in two.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Roger had said through clenched teeth. He turned and stormed out of the jail. But he heard Bobby MacIntosh’s final words.

  “Don’t underestimate me, asshole.”

  The next day he took Lily to see her father. And the strong little girl completely fell apart and needed to be sedated. It was only then that he feared she wouldn’t be able to take the stand, that testifying might permanently harm her. And after everything she’d gone through, he didn’t want her to face even more.

  Bobby attempted to escape on the way to a preliminary hearing. He’d shot and killed two guards and had been gunned down. While he was in surgery, Roger prayed to a God he barely believed in that He would send Bobby to hell, where he belonged.

  But the young killer lived.

  Fortunately, the circumstances were different this time. Bobby had killed two cops. Roger convinced the D.A. that Lily wasn’t strong enough to withstand a trial. They tried MacIntosh for the murders of the cops instead of the murders of his family. Life in prison, no possibility of parole.

  Damn Massachusetts; he should have gotten the death penalty.

  Roger went to Lily and told her Bobby had been killed trying to escape.

  Thinking back, it had been a good plan. MacIntosh was in prison, Lily spared the agony of the trial and the fear that her brother was alive and would hurt her. She grew up believing he was dead and couldn’t harm her. And she’d grown up lovely. Beautiful, smart, devoted. He’d pushed her into the FBI because she had the empathy and brains to make an outstanding agent.

  It was only when she resigned after the Franklin homicides that Roger wondered if he hadn’t made mistakes with Rowan. Like bringing her into protective custody without telling her, under the guise of guardianship. Encouraging her to limit contact with Peter. Convincing her to change her name.

  Everything he’d done, Roger had done because he loved her. Rowan was the child, the daughter, he and Gracie could never have. When her grandparents called him and said they didn’t know how to handle her and Peter, that the children had night terrors and the psychiatrist wanted to try drug therapy, Roger made a decision. He contacted a cop who’d told him he and his wife would adopt both Lily and Peter.

  But after a trial period, they wanted only Peter.

  Rowan didn’t make it easy on anyone back then. Who could blame her? She was torturing herself that Dani had died. That she couldn’t save her family.

  So Roger took Rowan in. And had lied to her ever since.

  A guard opened the door of the waiting room and escorted Rowan, Quinn Peterson, and a dark-haired man he presumed was John Flynn into the room.

  One look at Rowan and Roger no longer wondered if he’d made a mistake. He knew it.

  Still embarrassed about her emotional breakdown on the plane, Rowan vowed to keep herself under control. John had been surprisingly understanding, considering that her brother might have killed his brother. John listened, asked simple questions, and didn’t tell her everything was going to be okay.

  Nothing was ever going to be “okay.”

  She stared at Roger and frowned. “You lied to me.”

  Roger nodded. “I thought it was for the best. I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

  What an understatement! She shook her head, unable to trust herself to speak. If she said anything to Roger, it would be replete with cursing and venom. He’d lied to her forever, didn’t trust her with the truth. Probably thought she’d end up in a loony bin like her father. Maybe she would have. Maybe she still would.

  But his betrayal would stay with her until she died. She didn’t know if she’d ever be able to forgive him.

  She turned from Roger and ended up staring into John’s deep green eyes. He squeezed her arm and she leaned into him just enough to show him she appreciated his support. For the first time in this long, long day, Rowan felt she might survive.

  The warden came into the room, a surprisingly small, balding man who walked tall and wore a nervous smile. “Assistant Director Collins, I’m Warden James Cullen. The prisoner is ready for your visit.”

  He glanced at Rowan and John. “Ms. Smith, correct?”

  She nodded. “This is my partner, John Flynn.” Partner? It just slipped out. She’d meant to say bodyguard. She wasn’t even a damned agent anymore. She didn’t have a partner.

  No one said anything, but she felt a subtle shift in John’s stance. She didn’t look at him, but wondered what he was thinking.

  Rowan followed the warden out, John right behind her in his subtle protective mode. Roger and Quinn trailed them. They traveled down a long, wide corridor, making several turns, and the warden typed security commands at three separate gates. They were accompanied by two armed guards.

  The clear window looking into the brightly lit interrogation room showed a forty-something man shackled at his wrists and ankles. He had short-cropped sandy blond hair, a pointed chin, and blue eyes. He was average height and build, with the sunken look of defeat seen in many lifers.

  He looked like Bobby MacIntosh. At first glance, Rowan was certain it was her brother in chains behind the table.

  But it wasn’t.

  Roger spoke, his trembling voice deep and filled with anger. And fear.

  “That’s not MacIntosh.”

  CHAPTER

  18

  “Uh, sir, we double-checked his records and it is him,” Warden Cullen said with a stiff nod, running his hand over his smooth skull. “He’s been here for fourteen months. Our new security protocols have us take a DNA sample on arrival. When you called three weeks ago, we took another DNA sample. It’s definitely Robert MacIntosh.”

  “He must have made the switch during transport,” Roger said, almost to himself.

  “Excuse me?” John said.

  Warden Cullen explained. “Security is very tight. For the past two years, new prisoners must provide their DNA for the file. In addition to a recent photograph and fingerprints, of course. In the past, fingerprints and identifying marks were the main distinguishing characteristics.

  “Everything is in the computer,” he continued, confidence growing. “So when we received Robert MacIntosh into the facility fourteen months ago, we compared his photograph, distinguishing marks, and fingerprints with the computer records. Perfect match.”

  “What about his DNA?” Roger asked.

  The warden frowned. “We took his DNA sample upon admittance.”

  “So you had nothing to compare it with.”

  “DNA sampling is expensive, Director Collins. New prisoners are done routinely. MacIntosh has been in the system for over twenty years. Existing prisoners are added as funds become available.

  “MacIntosh had been in Louisiana since his conviction until fourteen months ago, when he was transported here. They didn’t have a DNA sample on record,” the warden explained.

  “I didn’t know he’d been transferred until three weeks ago,” Roger said, not looking Rowan in the eye. He stared instead at the imposter.

  “Transferred,” John repeated, failing to contain his frustration.

  Roger nodded, looked sheepish. “I had a copy of the file sent to me. He’d been beaten by a prison gang, and it wasn’t the first time. Louisiana has been having some problems, and MacIntosh’s attorney petitioned for a transfer. It was granted. I was supposed to be notified, but I wasn’t.”

  “There was no reason to believe he’s anyone other than Robert MacIntosh, Junior,” the warden said, his voice tight with indignation. “All the files matched.”

  “Computer records,” John mumbled, running a hand through his short hair. “They could have been switched.”

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Flynn,” the warden said, “but computer security is tight. This is a federal penitentiary
. We protect ourselves against hackers.”

  “No system is secure,” John said, jaw clenched.

  Rowan nodded to the man on the other side of the window. The man posing as her brother. “He knows the answer.”

  Two minutes later, Rowan sat across from the man who’d passed as Bobby for fourteen months. John stood against the wall next to one of the two guards, Roger sat to Rowan’s right, and Warden Cullen stood nervously at her left.

  “Who are you?” Rowan asked.

  “Bobby MacIntosh, but ya know that,” the imposter said, staring at her and trying to look fearsome, but failing.

  Rowan shook her head. “No, you’re not Bobby. Bobby is my brother. I know him. You are not Bobby.”

  “Hey, babe, I’ve changed.”

  “Tell me how you made the switch,” Roger said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” He shuffled his feet, the chains clinking together, echoing in the silence of the sparsely furnished room.

  Rowan glared at him. This man had helped her brother commit murder. “Did you plan it with him? Accomplice to murder. Hmmm. Texas has the death penalty, doesn’t it, Warden?”

  “Well, uh, yes we do.”

  “I don’t suppose an accomplice is eligible,” Rowan said, her voice flat and hard.

  “Well, there are extenuating circumstances where an accomplice may be eligible,” the warden said.

  Rowan controlled her reaction. It was bullshit, but the imposter wouldn’t know that. Play up whatever angle they had. Besides, everyone knew Texas had one of the strongest death penalty laws in the country.

  The imposter fidgeted, crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

  “Well, let me spell it out. We have your DNA. My DNA is on file with the FBI. Assistant Director Collins,” she motioned toward Roger, “already called for my profile to be faxed here. If you really are my brother, the DNA profiles will prove that.” She glanced at Warden Cullen, who quickly picked up the thread.

  “Guard, please call up to my office and see if the fax has arrived from Washington.”