“Evans considered them to be very high value targets. Allegedly, he was the money behind fifteen clinic bombings across the US,” Alex murmured. Evans had managed to kill doctors, nurses, and patients, most of whom had only walked into the clinic for routine exams, but they made Evans’s hit list because the clinics were government funded and offered family planning. “He also targeted domestic abuse shelters. He liked to set those on fire. Evans isn’t really big on women’s rights.”
“He specifically targeted clinics where women got routine care and could procure birth control. In twelve of the clinics he targeted, no abortion services were provided,” Ian continued. Ian knew the file as well as Alex. It was this very case that had brought Alex to Dallas to found the company with his best friend. Ian was a head case half the time, but Alex owed him everything, and that was his only reason for having this briefing. If it weren’t for Ian, he would be on his way to the meet site right now.
“What’s his motivation?” Jake asked. “I know the case files, but I never really understood what he wanted. Obviously he’s a misogynist pig, but terrorists usually have a point they’re trying to get across.”
“Evans is a deep believer that modern America has stripped men of all their god-given rights. He wants to go back to the times when a man owned everything. When a man had full rights to his property and could enforce his own laws on that property, and part of the property included a man’s wives. Yes, I said wives,” Alex explained. “He had several wives across the country. He killed one when she turned state’s witness against him. He left behind the corpse of another woman when he fled his Idaho compound. Wherever he is now, we should be prepared that he likely has a wife or two and he won’t hesitate to throw them in the line of fire.”
“Charming,” Adam muttered.
“Yeah, well, he’s no prince.” Alex clicked through to the next slide. It was the one of Evans being hauled in. Evans was smiling at the camera, his handsome face looking more like a movie matinee idol than a mass killer. Those good looks had brought him hoards of women who wrote to him in prison or did an enormous amount of his dirty work.
Evans is a charismatic killer, Eve had written. He uses charm to draw his victims in, but in the end, he can’t consider himself a winner unless he beats a male he considers of equal worth.
God, if he’d just listened to Eve. “Evans was placed in prison awaiting trial. He had excellent lawyers, naturally. They managed to push the trial out almost two years and to have Evans held at a medium security prison to await trial.”
“He escaped in a mattress, right?” Simon finally moved in, sitting down and starting to glance through the material in front of him.
“Yes, right before the state was set to present opening arguments. He had a long-term issue with his lungs. They were damaged from a fire in his childhood, and he was on oxygen therapy from time to time. He had a breathing episode, very likely faked or purposefully brought on, and, not only did the prison doctor give him a small oxygen tank, he prescribed new, allergen-free bedding. Almost two years to the day that he was arrested, Evans was smuggled out in the bedding. It had been hollowed out. One of his most loyal followers took his place in jail with a duplicated oxygen tank. Because of the mask over his face, no one noticed until almost twenty-four hours later, not even his cellmate. They took him in for questioning, but he wouldn’t say a thing. He’d been taken out of the cell at the time, so the authorities couldn’t link him to the escape. As far as we know, Evans joined his jihadist friends in Central America shortly thereafter.”
“You said the FBI arrested him? Don’t you mean you arrested him?” Simon asked, his icy blue eyes coming up from the file folder.
“Yes, I was the arresting agent.” He said the words through clenched teeth.
“You were the Special Agent in Charge? I believe that’s the local lingo,” Simon said. “How long after this case was it before you quit?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ian pronounced.
But Simon had a right to know. “I quit two months after Evans was arrested. That was five years ago. I packed up my life and I moved here. Ian and I started this company. Make no mistake. This is personal for me. This isn’t a payday, and anyone who doesn’t want to volunteer time should feel free to walk away. I’m not going to ask for much beyond some behind-the-scenes support, and even that will be in an informational fashion. I don’t need muscle on this one.”
He usually was the muscle.
Simon frowned, obviously unwilling to give up. “Why isn’t O’Donnell around? I can’t imagine he would willingly miss this meeting. Is he already working on the case? And where is our lovely shrink? I suspect she would be helpful in this case. She used to be in a behavioral analysis unit, correct? Did she work on the Evans case with you? Could we see her files on him?”
A tense silence filled the room. They were all perfectly valid questions, and Alex resented the shit out of them.
“Yes, Eve used to work with the BAU. She was a profiler, but she doesn’t need to be involved in this case.” None of them really needed to be involved. Just him and Evans and whoever the hell this mystery contact was. He glanced at the clock. Four and a half hours. Just four and a half hours before he could meet his contact and start up the nasty game he and Evans hadn’t quite finished.
“What do I not know?” Simon asked. He looked around the table, studying every man there. “I obviously am the only one not in on the joke.”
“It wasn’t a joke, asshole,” Adam said. “And Eve should be here. She has a right to know if the man who raped and brutalized her is back in the States.”
“Eve isn’t coming anywhere close to this case,” Alex stated flatly. “And if I get even a hint that Evans is close to us, she’ll be on her way to a safe house and under twenty-four seven cover.”
“Ah, no, not a joke at all.” Simon closed the folder. “I assume this is of absolutely no use. It’s going to be sanitized. I’ll research it myself. I’m rather surprised they allowed you to stay in charge.”
Simon was right about the file. He’d sanitized the thing because he couldn’t stand the thought of anyone knowing what had happened. The Bureau had kept things very quiet and the press had only gotten the merest hints of what his wife had to go through. They had enough other evidence on Evans to burn the fucker five times over.