LITMIR.BIZ

      Two

      Washington, D.C.

      Jo Luckett was at her desk, tying up the loose ends of her last case when her phone rang. She answered absently, still locked into what she was doing.

      “This is Jo Luckett.”

      “Agent Luckett, this is Julie. Hold for Director Thomas.”

      Jo’s focus immediately shifted as her boss came on line.

      “Good afternoon, Agent Luckett. Good job on closing that case.”

      “Thank you, sir. Good teamwork, as usual.”

      “Speaking of teamwork, what do you know about the Stormchaser murders?”

      She tensed. Her ex-husband was on the team, but she was certain that wasn’t what he meant.

      “Probably not much more than what anyone would hear on the news, why?”

      “He’s killing again. We’ve activated the original team, but I’m adding you to it. Julie emailed you the file. Familiarize yourself with all the details and await further orders. At the moment the team is on the move. Once they get settled, I want you to join them.”

      Even though her stomach was in knots, she answered firmly. “Yes, sir.”

      There was a pause, and she thought he would hang up, but he didn’t.

      “Will you have a problem working with your ex-husband on this?”

      “No, sir, of course not,” she said shortly.

      “Good. Agent Benton is lead investigator. You will take your orders from him.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “I want this man stopped. Find his money trail. Find the aliases he’s been using. Do what you do best and make that happen, understand?”

      She got the message. Her skill at tracking perps via the latest technology was needed once again.

      “Yes, sir, of course, sir.”

      She hung up and immediately checked her computer, found the new message from his office and pulled up the attachment. The file was massive, far more than she had time to go through at her desk. She forwarded it to her laptop at home, then finished the report she’d been working on and filed it.

      She wouldn’t let herself think of what the days to come would be like. She hadn’t had more than a half-dozen brief encounters with Wade in the past three years, and the thought of working with him made her sick to her stomach. She’d loved him so deeply—then, in one reckless afternoon, destroyed their world and their unborn child. She couldn’t imagine how this was going to turn out, but all she had left was her job, and she wasn’t going to fuck that up, too.

      Tulsa, Oklahoma

      On day three, Hershel pulled a hit-and-run during the storms that hit Tulsa, taking out three more people who had initially survived. He was back at the campgrounds at Keystone Lake long before daylight, sleeping peacefully while the city waited for sunrise, fearing the scope of the disaster.

      The air at the scene of the debris field left from the tornado was hot and heavy, mingling with the scents of decaying food and diesel from the big machines the cleanup crews were using farther down the next block.

      The yellow crime scene tape around the area where the two agents were walking marked the spot where the first body had been found. As soon as the body was identified as a murder victim, cleanup efforts in the immediate vicinity had been shut down, although the site had been so badly compromised, there was no way to tell what was storm-related and what might have been left by the killer.

      Over the next sixteen hours the medical examiner had found two more murder victims among the bodies that had been recovered, and all three shared the same cause of death. They’d been rendered helpless with a Taser, and then they’d been strangled.

      Once the media caught wind of the news, they quickly linked these victims to the earlier killings in Wichita Falls, Texas, and that was when the FBI had shown up, still following in the Stormchaser’s path of destruction.

      * * *

      Two hours later police cruisers from the Tulsa Police Department blocked off access to both ends of the street as the FBI agents moved through the third crime scene. A couple of news crews had stationed themselves at the far end of the next block with their cameras trained in the agents’ direction. They weren’t interfering with the investigation, but the long-range lenses could make it appear as if they were filming on-site.

      Wade Luckett was standing less than a yard away from the bathtub where the third body had been found. He checked the picture on his iPad against the scene before him, then turned to look for Tate, who was standing a few yards away. “Hey, Tate, here it is,” he said.

      Tate moved across the debris field for a closer look. “You’re right. And check that out. There’s a wall between that tub and the street, another impromptu barrier between the body and immediate discovery.”

      “Just like in Wichita Falls,” Wade said, and then added, “Have you heard from Cameron today?”

      “Yes,” Tate said. “They located the guy who thought he witnessed the killer leaving the James Atwood crime scene. He’s interviewing him sometime today. He also said that Laura Doyle showed up yesterday with the Red Cross.”

      “He’s still sweet on her,” Wade said.

      Tate grinned. “Sure looks like it. They stayed in touch after we came back from Louisiana last year. I know this because my lovely wife keeps me apprised of the important things in life.”

      Wade heard the pride in Tate’s voice and remembered how close they’d come to losing Nola Landry to the Stormchaser last year.

      “Okay,

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