How to Save A Life

Chapter 21

Seven months earlier

San Diego, California

"Hey, guess what?"

Trey's partner, Bill, looked up. "What?" he asked, a donut halfway to his mouth.

Trey grinned. "Lisa's pregnant. We're gonna have a baby."

Bill's mouth dropped open, then his face split into a huge grin. He dropped the donut, jumped out of his chair and went over to slap Trey on the back.

"That's fantastic!" he said. "Congratulations!" Happily married, with two children, Bill was the kind of guy who thought everyone should be married with children. "When is she due?"

"August," Trey said. He rubbed his face, but smiled. "It was a bit of a surprise, but what the hell." Little by little, he was getting used to the idea of being a father. He pictured himself with a son, playing baseball, taking him to Padres games. Or maybe a little girl. He wasn't sure what he'd do with a girl, but, hey, maybe she'd play baseball, too. He grinned.

"I never thought I'd see the day," Bill said. "Wasn't sure you had it in you."

"Screw off." Trey grinned. "Come on, we've got work to do. I'm off to Brawley today."

They'd been immersed in the Sheldon Barnes case for weeks, desperate to find this guy before he killed again. Trey had gathered so much information on Barnes he felt as if he knew him better than he knew his own brother. They didn't technically call it profiling since they were field agents, not profilers, but that's what he was doing. He wanted to know what made this guy tick, what gave him an adrenaline rush, because Trey sure got a rush from figuring out what went on in a psychopathic, narcissistic murderer's mind.

In Brawley, he met Sheldon's mother, Wanda Barnes, a thin, tired-looking woman. Her hair was faded, but he could tell it had once been a pale gold blonde, just like the three women victims.

"He called me the other day," she told Trey nervously. "For some reason he wanted to know if I knew where his ex-wife is."

"Sheldon was married?"

Wanda nodded. "Her name is Teresa. Teresa White. They got married when they were only seventeen. She was a mousy little thing--her father had just died and her mother was falling apart. I think she thought Sheldon would look after her." She gave a sharp, mirthless laugh. "Guess she found out pretty quick that wasn't gonna happen, because she just up and disappeared one day."

"Where'd she go?"

Wanda shrugged. "I never knew. Never cared. But after Sheldon called, I went and paid a visit to her ma." She scowled. "That woman's a mess. Hammered all the time. But she says Teresa's living in El Paso. And..." She hesitated.

"What?" Trey probed gently. He met Wanda's eyes with reassurance.

"Debbie White says Teresa has two kids. Eleven-year-old twins." She frowned. "Teresa's married to someone else, but it was eleven years ago she was married to Sheldon."

"You think the kids are his?"

Wanda shrugged, still frowning. "Jesus, I don't know. But if they are, Sheldon deserves to know about it."

"Did you tell him?"

Wanda shook her head. "I don't know how to get hold of him."

"Are you going to tell him? If he calls?"

Wanda's mouth twisted. "You're just full of questions, aren't you? Hell, I don't know if I'll ever hear from him again."

"You will," Trey said confidently. "You will."

Trey went next to visit Sheldon's older brother Peter in the nearby state penitentiary, then talked to cousins and other relatives in the Imperial Valley area and found out Sheldon had occasionally shown up looking for money or a place to stay. He traveled to El Paso to talk to Sheldon's ex-wife as well. The two boys had never met their father, their mother having fled her relationship with Sheldon when she was pregnant. She'd never known if Sheldon knew about the boys, but figured he didn't, since he'd never showed up looking for them. She, too, hadn't seen him since then, and had been horrified about the news stories she'd been seeing on television. Horrified and frightened.

"You need to know his mother will probably tell him about his sons," he cautioned her. "There's no reason to think he'd come here, or that he'd have any intention of harming you. But..." He couldn't help but eye her flaxen hair.

Trey had decided to drive all the way back to San Diego that night, rather than stay over in a hotel, and arrived home after midnight to an empty house. Where the hell was Lisa? A four months pregnant woman out partying? Weird.

He grabbed a beer and wandered into the bedroom. The computer monitor was still on, so Lisa must have been doing something on it earlier. He touched the keyboard, the screensaver disappeared and her e-mail program appeared. He reached for the mouse, intending to close it and shut down the computer, but his eyes were drawn to rows of e-mails from the same sender...

Travis. Why was his brother Travis e-mailing Lisa so much? His eyes scanned the list. There were five e-mails today alone, several from yesterday, three days ago and more.

Trey gnawed on his bottom lip, then tipped the beer to his mouth. He should close the program. That was Lisa's personal e-mail. But as he lowered the beer with his left hand, his right hand slowly moved the cursor up to the top e-mail and clicked. The message opened.

If you're sure Trey won't be home tonight, you can spend the night with me, he read. It would be so awesome to sleep with you all night.

Trey swallowed hard with disbelief, his heart squeezing painfully in his chest. The room went out of focus and the beer dropped from his fingers to the floor, foaming all over the pale grey wall-to-wall carpet.

When Lisa walked in the next morning, her mouth dropped open in shock to see him there.

"How long has this been going on?" he demanded.

He hadn't slept all night. He'd tortured himself by reading e-mail after e-mail, including the ones she'd saved. He already knew the answer to his question. Their affair had been going on for nearly three months.

"How could you do this? And with my own brother! Jesus!"

Lisa started to cry. He watched her, afraid he was going to cry himself, feeling hollow and frozen inside. Not only was his marriage done, but his own brother had done this to him. Never mind Lisa, how could Travis have done this to him? Hot knives of pain and betrayal sliced through him.

"I'm sorry." She sobbed, dropping onto the bed and covering her face. "I'm sorry, Trey."

He just stood there, feeling like the biggest sap in the world. What a fucking idiot. Why hadn't he seen this? He shook his head.

"We're having a baby," he whispered painfully. "How could you do this to our child? How could you, Lisa?"

She only sobbed louder.

"Lisa?"

Her muffled sniffs and choking gasps were her only response. Cold terror gripped him. "Lisa, tell me I'm the father."

She moaned. Trey's gut roiled and he thought he might actually vomit. The world stopped for a long, painful moment.

"Jesus Christ, Lisa. For the love of God, please, tell me you're not pregnant with Travis's baby."

She raised her face to look at him. She was a pretty woman, but right now her face was blotchy pink and puffy and she looked more miserable and distraught than he'd ever seen her.

"Are you really four months pregnant?"

She shook her head.

Fuck. No wonder she still wasn't showing.

"No," he choked out. "No." He turned around sharply, unable to look at her, afraid he actually might physically harm her, his rage was so great. He clenched his hands, eyes squeezed shut while his heart pounded painfully in his chest. "Son of a bitch!" He drove his fist into the wall, shattering the drywall and leaving him with bleeding, throbbing knuckles.

Lisa gave a startled whimper behind him. He flattened his hands on the wall and lowered his head, sucking in air.

He'd already packed his things. He had nothing left to say.

He worked incessantly. There was nothing else left in his life. His wife and unborn child--ha! What a joke. His wife, his unborn nephew, his brother were all dead to him. He couldn't face his sister or his parents and their own feelings of betrayal and pity for him. Just could not face it.

He moved into a furnished studio apartment not far from the bureau and buried himself in the Sheldon Barnes case. He studied and restudied every detail until his head swam. Still, people were reporting sightings of Barnes, although he seemed to be lying low. Which was unusual for him. It did seem to indicate he was still in the area, though.

Cops had staked out Sheldon's family home in Brawley, thinking he might return there, but he hadn't. At least, not yet.

When Trey wasn't working, he was drinking. Too much, he knew, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He made strict rules about not drinking on the job, only permitting himself to drink himself into oblivion after he'd left work.

One night he stopped at a bar instead of going home, unable to face one more lonely night in that cold, bare apartment. He needed some noise, some people around him, even though he had no desire whatsoever to talk to anyone.

He sat at the bar at the Pinto Club, chugging back beer after beer. Happy couples twirled on the dance floor, laughing, and he watched them with detached interest. A burst of laughter from a nearby group drew his eyes for a moment. A group of women at a table were laughing about something apparently hilarious and having a great time.

Trey ordered another beer and sighed. The empties lined up in front of him told him it was time to go home. Only problem was, which he hadn't thought of earlier, he was probably too drunk to drive. Not that he felt drunk. He felt stone-cold sober. Nah, that wasn't true either. The room had taken on a bit of a fuzzy glow.

He could easily walk the few blocks to his apartment. With that thought, he tossed back the remainder of the beer and lifted a hand to signal the bartender for another. What the hell. If he had to walk home, might as well have a really good reason. And the alcohol was finally starting to make him feel pleasantly numbed to the pain that was constantly with him.

The laughing group of women caught his eye again. One of them was getting up to dance. A man led her onto the dance floor, a good-looking guy with shaggy blond hair. The woman, too, was blonde, a long sheet of platinum hanging down her back. They danced well together, a snappy two-step, and when the song ended, they returned smiling and breathless to the table. The man pulled out a wallet and tossed bills onto the table, then wrapped his arm around the woman.

Apparently, they were leaving, waving goodbye to her friends, weaving their way across the bar to the exit. As they passed by Trey, he got a look at the man's face.

Trey's reflexes were slow due to his excessive alcohol consumption and it took a minute before he realized Sheldon Barnes had just walked past him. Escorting a woman out of the bar.

Trey jumped unsteadily to his feet. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. He started after them, knocking a chair over in his inebriated haste. People were looking at him, but he didn't care. Adrenaline kicked in. He stumbled out of the bar into the dark parking lot and saw a brown Ford leaving.

"Shit!" he yelled, and ran for his own vehicle.

His heart was going to explode out of his chest. He grabbed the cell phone clipped to his belt and made the urgent call for back-up. Even as he stabbed the key into the ignition, he knew this wasn't a good idea, but desperation and determination to stop that psycho killer, to save that woman from God knew what, overrode his common sense.

He squealed out of the parking lot, trying to keep the Ford in sight. They turned left at the first lights and he followed, narrowly missing an oncoming vehicle that blared its horn at him as it swerved. Fuck. He pressed on the gas pedal, trying to catch up to them, trying to talk on the cell phone, trying to focus on the road ahead of him.

"I'm on Market Street," he yelled. "Coming up to Park Boulevard. He's about two blocks ahead of me."

There was too much traffic. He blinked, trying to clear his vision, and pulled out to pass the vehicle in front of him that was impeding him. He pulled into the oncoming lane just as a Jeep Liberty turned from a side street right in front of him. The lights blinded him and with wrenching metal, exploding air bags and squealing tires, the collision was head-on.