“Fucking have hope, Cadence!” He was the one to grab her, to hold on tight now. “I need it. Let me have it.”
It seemed the noise outside of the office had quieted. Had the cops heard his cry?
His breath rasped out.
He wasn’t hurting her, had never hurt her, but he wasn’t letting her go, either. “This is the first break I’ve had on Maria’s case. The first one.” His forehead dropped, pressed to hers.
She needed to call their boss. She could catch Ben en route to Paradox. Cadence had to brief Ben on the developments. When he found out the intimate link Kyle shared in this case, Cadence knew the director would order him off the case.
I can’t do that to him. She knew Kyle needed this.
“We’re following the leads we get,” she said carefully. “We’ll work up a profile. I won’t give up.” Not on Maria. Not on you.
After a moment, his head lifted. The blaze had died down in his eyes. More control had come back. Good. But she still had to warn him. “You have to be careful, Kyle. Don’t let your emotions take over. The killer is focusing on you. He wants you in his game.” That would be dangerous, for them both.
As they searched for the other victims, as they learned more about the perp, the case would become even harder for Kyle.
His control would fray.
Fray and fray until—it broke?
“We work together. We’re a team,” she reminded him.
His hands fell away from her. “I’ll remember that.”
Those weren’t the words she needed to hear. She needed more of a promise, but he had turned away. Moved to study the information on her computer.
Cadence glanced away, still trying to calm her racing heart. She looked to the left. The blinds were open. She’d forgotten about them.
Jason Marsh was watching her. Staring straight at her.
He’d seen the intimate interaction between her and Kyle. Had he heard them, too?
Marsh gave her a small nod, and then he turned away.
Cadence straightened her shoulders. She had a job to do. She would do it—the way she always did.
Start with the victims.
They were what mattered. In a case like this, victims held meaning to the killer. She would learn about the perp through them. Learn all of his secrets.
Every. Last. One.
Cadence stared at the victim board she’d painstakingly created. She’d put up pictures of the twelve still-missing women—the women they believed had all been abducted by the same perp. Twelve missing. One recovered—Lily.
So many faces. Smiling images. Happy.
They’d had normal lives once. Hopes. Dreams.
Then they’d vanished.
Time to become them, for a few precious moments.
She’d already spent much of the morning poring over their files.
Emma Black. Twenty-two. A girl with dreams of becoming a singer in Nashville. She’d graduated from Ole Miss, then followed her dreams to the country music capital. Only she’d never arrived in Nashville.
Her car had been found, abandoned, on a Mississippi highway.
According to the report, her convertible had run out of gasoline.
Did you get out of your car and start walking? Did he come to you, drive out of the darkness, and offer to help?
She could see the image in her mind, so clearly. Emma with her dark-red hair, blue eyes, afraid.
Shelly Summers had been twenty-five when she vanished. She’d broken up with her boyfriend, said she was going back to Florida to be with her parents.
Shelly’s car had been found over the Georgia border.
The cave, the darkness, the gag…he’d done that to Shelly, too.
Held his victims prisoner in the darkness. Taken them in the darkness.
Always in the dead of night.
So they couldn’t see him?
Why didn’t he want his victims to see his face? What was he hiding?
And was it about hiding…or did he just like the dark? Did the night hold special meaning for him?
The women were all attractive. Different hair, different eyes, but all physically fit. Ages had varied, from Maria’s eighteen to another victim’s thirty-three.
“None of you had records,” Cadence said to the women who stared back at her. “Not so much as speeding tickets.” No trouble with the law. No trouble at work. All the women had been described as good, dependable.
Until they’d vanished.
They were good.
They were all women who’d never caused trouble. Women who were likely to go along with whatever a police officer said if he pulled them over on a long stretch of road.
Her heart started to pound faster. It wasn’t the physical traits linking the victims. They were too different. If it wasn’t physical traits, that meant—
Behavior?
“Cadence.”
She glanced back. This time, Kyle filled the doorway.
“I just got the call. Lily’s awake.”
“I don’t remember.” Lily Adams had bruises on her jaw, bandages around her wrists, and lips that wouldn’t stop quivering.
Her mother sat beside her, carefully stroking her hand. “It’s okay, baby,” Martha Lansing whispered.
Lily shook her head. Her gaze drifted from Cadence to Kyle. “My mom said you two saved me. Thank you.”
The woman was breaking her heart.
Cadence eased into the empty chair closest to Lily. “Can you recall any details of your abduction?”
Lily swallowed. The soft click was almost painful to hear. “I was working at Striker’s waiting tables.”
“What happened after Striker’s?” Kyle asked her, keeping his own voice low and calm. Since Cadence could practically feel the tension rolling off him, she was impressed he held himself in check that much.
After the phone call he’d gotten, the guy’s control had to be razor thin.
The perp wants him that way.
The killer was taunting Kyle, bringing him into a battle that wouldn’t—couldn’t—end well.
She had to stop the killer. She wasn’t about to risk Kyle.
“I don’t know.” Lily’s voice was raspy. So weak. Her gaze drifted to her bandaged wrists. “I don’t remember what happened to my hands or my hip.” Her lashes lifted. “My left hip is fractured.”
“You banged it into the side of the bed, again and again.”
Cadence stiffened at Kyle’s words. They weren’t supposed to tell the victim specific details yet. It would just compromise her ability to recall on her own. “Kyle…”
“You saved yourself, Ms. Adams,” Kyle continued, not backing down at the warning he had to hear in her voice. “We were leaving the caverns, almost out, but you kept banging, swinging out with your hip to catch our attention. You brought us to you.”