A Hard Truth by C. R. Chandler

Author:C. R. Chandler [Chandler, C. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Back Door Publishing
Published: 2024-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

It was almost five in the afternoon when the exhausted group returned to the hotel. Tired, hungry, and discouraged, Gin sat silently in the front seat of Agent Byer’s car, grateful that the Miami agent didn’t feel the need for polite conversation.

The waters between the offshore island of Key Biscayne and the preserve were deep enough for most pleasure crafts to pass through freely, but not so deep that it had been hard to find Gerald

Mobley’s body. Rope had tightly bound both his feet to a fifty-pound ballast bag, which had most likely been stored on the yacht.

Convenient. Easy, she thought as she stared out the side window. Tie the body to something to make it stay down in the water and toss it overboard. Then inflate the raft and take Stampler to shore.

But it was the fact that Mobley’s hands were bound behind his back that haunted her. Maybe he’d been tied up before he was killed. Killed and then tossed into the ocean to float unseen beneath the boats passing by overhead.

But maybe not.

She closed her eyes as her face scrunched up at the thought. This killer was cold and calculating. Lying in wait for his victims. Sticking to a strict killing process along with how and where to dump the bodies. It was more than possible that he’d tied Mobley’s hands and feet, then simply shoved the bag overboard, pushing the crewman over with it while he was still alive.

The image wouldn’t leave her mind. A barely thirty-year-old Mobley, fighting to get free as he sank into the water, knowing he wasn’t going to win that fight. Those vivid images didn’t stop with the crewman either. She could feel Stampler’s fear at seeing Mobley die and knowing he’d be next. Even her closed cases still haunted her, and when this one was closed, it wouldn’t be any different

But it wasn’t the victims she’d stood over during her FBI career that had brought on the crippling migraines she’d suffered with for years. But the one living breathing thing that would not go away was her father. Everything always came back to him, and his helpless victims. And how long it had taken her to stop him.

It wasn’t until he’d been caught that law enforcement came out with how many possible and even unidentified victims were yet to be found. That was when the headaches had started. Not when she was actually living with a monster, but when she realized that if she had only moved sooner or faster, who knows how many lives would have been spared?

It haunted her to this day, but at least the headaches had become less frequent. The more killers she tracked down and stopped, the longer the periods between the migraine attacks. A penance rewarded, she thought sourly. Move sooner, move faster. Stop them. It had become her mantra. A barrier of words against her memories and her guilt at not saving more of them. Of not saving Kayla, her father’s last victim.

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