Audra left the candle shop and returned to the B&B with a heavy feeling. She thought about Gwyneth's description of the air. She tried to remember the air on the night of Kendra's attack; it had been cold and hard to breathe as well but she'd attributed that all of these years to the mixture of adrenaline and panic.
Ethan was in the shower when she returned. She sat on the bed and took several deep breaths.
"Hey."
She wasn't sure how long she had been lost in thought, or how long he stood in the doorway watching her. "Hi," she replied, looking up to see him still half-wet with a towel around his waist, reminding her of their first night together. They had gotten caught in a storm while chasing down a witness in upstate New York. It was supposed to be a quick turn around, but the rain had flooded the highway and they were forced to take a random exit and spend the night.
The motel they'd stopped at was less than ideal. Ethan stood in the rain for a full minute before the manager unlocked the door for him and he was soaking wet by the time they got inside. She could still see the beads of rain running over his torso as he'd pulled that wet shirt off in front of her. That was when they'd crossed the line.
"What did you find out?" he asked, nonchalant, stopping her reverie.
It surprised her that he was less than upset that she'd left him behind. When they had been partners he always insisted on being front and center of every situation.
"Gwyn is now a specter. She says that she's pretty sure it wasn't a specter that killed her."
Ethan raised his eyebrows but didn't seem too surprised by that. Audra reasoned that a new specter in a specter town was probably not that big a deal, but one that was the victim of a phantom serial killer wasn't just business as usual.
"Gwyn was adopted," Audra continued. "Her birth mother was murdered in the hospital just after Gwyn was born, strangled to death. Her name was Abigail Stevens." Audra recited the highlights of her encounter with specter Gwyn.
Ethan quickly put on his pants and shoes, pulling on his shirt before sitting next to Audra. She felt a secure hand rest on her back. As he rubbed her back in circular motions she allowed herself to feel the awful strangeness of the coincidence between her sister's attack and the murder of Abigail Stevens, as well as the fact that all of the victims looked like her sister. She was not sure if she was ready to go through the next door. As she sat on the bed Audra was certain that whatever she uncovered from that point forward would only lead to truths that might be too ugly to leave her unchanged.
"We should go back to the station and look up Abigail Stevens' case," Ethan said calmly.
Audra nodded but did not move.
"You don't have to do this, Rook," he said quietly.
"Yes, I think I do," she whispered and took a deep breath. "You can drive. I'll ride with you." She turned to look at Ethan and saw a mixture of understanding and sadness. He stood and reached for her hand. As she took it she wondered once again about the coincidence of his being there as she realized that the case hadn't brought her back to him; it had brought her back to Abigail. But why was he there?
They rode to the station in silence. For the first time she thought about how useful it might be to have a specter on her team. The places they could go, the things they could hear. When they arrived Audra walked into the building determined to be ready for whatever it was she was about the face.
Ethan walked to the ancient wall filing cabinet and unlocked the bottom drawer. His finger strolled along the alphabetical filing system.
"I don't think this town has seen more than twenty murders in the last one hundred years."
He came to Abigail's pitifully thin case file and pulled it out, opening it and quickly flipped through the three tarnished pages that it contained before handing it over to Audra.
She took the file and sat at the empty deputy's desk. The first thing to hit her was the image of Abigail on the medical examiner's slab. Her throat was marked by a nasty red gash that took Audra's breath away as well as bruising around her mouth and jaw, on her hands and arms, and around the wrists.
"She was restrained and gagged," Audra said out loud. "She must have made some kind of noise." She noted that by the label for the victim's occupation was the word prostitute.
Audra read through the nearly useless details of interviews with the victim's sister, Renee Stevens, and two associates, another prostitute named Candy Reign, and the hospital's night nurse, Lisa Carter.
Abigail had spent nearly fourteen hours in labor and was in the hospital overnight for observation after what was termed a "difficult delivery". Audra noted there were no specifics about what made the delivery difficult. The night nurse claimed that on her rounds at just past midnight Abigail was fine but the next hour she found Abigail turned on her side. When she went to take her vitals, Lisa Carter turned her over to find her dead.
Audra shook her head at the obvious lack of interest that went into the death of this young lady. She let her finger stroll over the word prostitute and reasoned that was why. If she had been a teacher, librarian, or even a waitress, Audra was sure more effort would have been made to bring her killer to justice. There was no interview with the doctor or any obvious attempts to find who the baby's father was. She closed the file and looked at Ethan.
"I guess we should try to find her sister first and then these other two women."
"Audra, you can put this aside," Ethan reminded her.
"Everything since the day my sister was attacked has led up to this discovery," Audra said. "Except you being here."
"Does that bother you?" he asked.
"It does," she said, unable to hide her frustration and confusion. "How did you get here?"
Ethan took a seat at his desk.
"Well, when I came to the South, I lost interest in the job. It wasn't the same. Never mind the biggest case the southern office had was a ring of opiate dealers out of Mexico," he said as if the idea bored him.
"Getting drugs off of the streets, that's important," Audra said.
"If people want to get drunk or high that is their business," Ethan said dismissively. "Never mind the fact that it was a racquet. We could only get to the little guys, never the big fish, so I figured I needed to find a new career."
"Why here?"
"Actually, AD Cordero suggested it. I called him on occasion. When I told him I was ready to leave the FBI he said if he were thirty years younger and in love with a woman like you, he'd marry her and bring her to the small town of Specter, Georgia. Buy a house on the lake and live on love and trout 'til the day he died." Ethan took a deep breath. "I thought about calling you a few times."
"Why didn't you?" Audra asked.
"The way we left things. I thought I was making things easier by volunteering to go quietly but you seemed angry about it. When I tried to talk to you, you blew me off," he said. "I don't know why."
Audra sniffed and closed her eyes. "I had a miscarriage, Ethan."
Ethan's eyes widened in shock. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Well, you were leaving," she reminded him. "It didn't seem to bother you to be moving a thousand miles away."
"I told you, I didn't want your career to get shot up because of me," he said, still in disbelief.
Audra shrugged. "I figured maybe it was all for the best. A clean slate for both of us." As she looked at him she realized the only thing they had both accomplished by being nice about the situation was losing time together.
"Oh, Audra." Ethan stood and quickly pulled her into a tight embrace. "You should have told me. You should have yelled and screamed at me." He took a deep breath and let it out. "I should have known."
"How could you have known?" She hugged him back loving the feel of his strong, secure arms around her.
"I mean I should have known you better," he said. "Honestly Rook, losing you was the worst thing to ever happen to me. Every time I even thought about a way back to you, I just didn't think I could face you rejecting me."
Audra nodded, understanding. She had thought about calling time and again in those first months after he left, but his leaving had seemed so easy for him.
"I know what you mean," she admitted and took a step back. "Cordero is from here?"
"Yeah, didn't he tell you?" Ethan asked. "He was the sheriff's deputy in the early to mid eighties before joining the FBI."
"He didn't tell me," she said at length.
She opened the file again and looked at the signature on the witness statements.
"Jonathan Cordero, deputy sheriff," she said. "How did I miss that?"
"The gory picture on the front cover probably had your attention."
Audra began to feel herself relax a bit. "Okay, so, the killer brought me back to what I will presume is where it all began. Twenty-five years ago, AD Cordero was a deputy sheriff and worked the unsolved murder mystery of a small town prostitute with an illegitimate daughter who the sheriff later adopted. And twenty-five years later the daughter that survived is murdered in a string of seemingly unrelated serial murders."
Ethan took a breath. "Related," he said. "If Gwyneth was targeted because she was the daughter of a prostitute, maybe the other women were related to Gwyneth."
"We have DNA from all of them. I'll send Gwyn's back to New York and see if there's a match." She paused, breathing in and out. "I'll have a sample of my sister's sent as well."
"Good idea," Ethan said.
"I also need a team sent down here immediately. Can we use your station as a base of operations?"
"Of course." Ethan smiled. "In the mean time, would you like to have dinner with me?"
"It's been a long day, Ethan," Audra began, but before she could say any more a loud knock came on the door.
The visitor didn't bother to wait on an answer and a short, stout man with dark skin, thinning hair, and thick glasses waddled through the door.
"Cole!" he said shortly and then stopped as he saw Audra was there also. "Is this that FBI lady?"
"Agent Wheeler," Audra supplied, extending her hand.
"Mayor Broner," he huffed, ignoring her hand and focusing his scowl on her.
"Am I to understand that you'll be taking care of this mess with the Miller girl?" Mayor Broner barked.
"I am investigating her cause of death," Audra corrected.
"It's them specters, ain't it? I won't have this in my town!" he yelled, not pausing for an answer. "Cole, you were elected as sheriff to pick up where Miller left off, and now his own daughter is victim to them!"
"We really don't know that, sir," Ethan said calmly to the angry mayor.
"Yeah, calm down, Jimmy," a new voice said from the door.
The sheriff's station became incredibly crowded as another man, tall and good looking with dark bedroom eyes and salt and pepper hair added a fourth body to the small room.
"Specters have been nothing but kind and generous to our town for the last ten years and you know it, Mr. Mayor," the handsome intruder said with a brilliant smile.
"Humph. Shelley." The Mayor turned back to address Ethan. "I'm calling a special town hall meeting this Thursday to address the town concerns. I expect you and your lady friend here to have this mess straightened out by then."
The Mayor pushed past the handsome man and waddled out of the station.
"Brendon Shelley," the handsome man introduced himself to Audra, extending his hand. "It's great to meet you Agent Wheeler. I stopped by the library this morning and Charles Stuart said you're just about as sharp as a tack."
Audra noted the charm in his smile and behind those bedroom eyes with amusement before extending her hand as well.
"Nice to meet you, Mr. Shelley," she said.
"Councilman," he corrected. "I sit on the town council with our delightful mayor."
"I see," she smiled and relaxed.
"Don't mind him, he's just old school. My family and I are more than pleased by the coexistence of humans and specters in town. This ugly business is merely an isolated incident, right?"
Councilman Shelley's eyes roamed to the case file in Audra's hand and she watched as he became tense and straightened up.
"We shall see," Audra answered him as she placed the file out of sight.
"Right." Councilman Shelley cleared his throat. "It's about closing time, I ought to head back to town hall."
"Of course," Audra said with a nod.
Councilman Shelley left the trailer sheriff's station and Audra took note of the air clearing out.
"Okay," Ethan said, exhaling. "So, before we were interrupted, I was asking you to come to my place for dinner."
"Ethan really, I –"
"Don't say no," Ethan stopped her. "I'll take you back to the B&B and drop you off. I usually eat around nine; I'm a really good cook."
"Good to know," Audra said as she stood, taking Abigail Stevens' file with her, and walked out of the station.
Ethan did take her back to the B&B and, once she was in the room alone, Audra placed Abigail's file on the table and stripped her clothes off. Leaving the specter shield turned on, she placed it on the bedside table before sliding herself between the sheets. She let her head rest on the pillow that Ethan had taken a nap on earlier and a faint hint of his cologne lingered as she closed her eyes, inhaling deeply. She turned on the television to fight off the boredom of the screaming quiet. By the time nine o'clock rolled around, she was in bed staring at the ceiling. The phone rang.
"Hello?" she answered.
"How many ceiling tiles are there?" Ethan asked.
"It's stucco," she answered with a smile. "Sorry, I couldn't make it over there."
"No problem," he said. "It's an open invitation, whenever you want to come over."
"Thank you," Audra said.
"Are you okay?" Ethan's concern touched her.
"I'm okay, Ethan," she assured him. "But there is something Councilman Shelley said that I can't get out of my mind. Him and his family, who are they?"
"Oh, yeah," Ethan said, "the Shelleys are the richest family in town."
"Rich is a relative term, Ethan. It's a pretty small town."
"Yes, but they managed to fund the new hospital about five years ago," Ethan remarked.
"New?" Audra wondered about the old hospital, where Abigail had died. "What happened to the old hospital?" she asked.
"I believe the old hospital is where they built the new park."
"Is it crazy to hope that they kept their old records?"
"Maybe. You saw the condition of the old case files, right? I'm honestly impressed that Abigail's file was still there."
"Me too," Audra admitted as she thought about Cordero's signature on the case file. "Good night, Ethan."
"Good night, Audra."