No release. No pleasure.
At least the screams had stopped.
He knew they’d searched the cabin. Found Judith. Judith had been good. She’d learned quickly. Been so eager to please.
Until the end.
She’d broken then. Kept crying for her family. Kept begging for death.
So he’d given it to her.
The cops had also found Landers. The ass**le. He’d never understood how women should be treated.
He knew all about Landers. The guy had been sent to the pen, and he shouldn’t have been released so soon. But there’d been a slipup. Landers had gone free, and the guy had stumbled right into his cabin and found Judith.
He liked to keep his girls separated. He focused on them, one at a time, so he needed that second location. The cabin had seemed perfect for him.
Until Landers appeared.
When he’d shot the bastard, just as the guy’s hands had gone for the ropes binding Judith, the man’s blood had splattered all over her.
But Judith hadn’t screamed.
Good, even then.
He didn’t think Cadence would scream, either. She’d said she stayed quiet before, when she’d been under the bed.
Listening to her mother die.
She’d stayed quiet.
He liked the quiet.
Needed it.
Craved it.
He just had to find the perfect way to get to Cadence. He’d need to separate her from the others. Separation. Isolation. That was how he worked.
He’d been close to her in the woods.
But she’d been on guard. Too ready to attack.
That wasn’t the way he liked his prey.
His prey should be weak. He was the strong one. The one meant to always survive.
He would have to wait for the right moment. There would be no more desperate hunts, he’d learned from his mistake. He could be careful. He could be cautious.
He could wait for her.
She would come to him.
“He’s not going to walk right up to you,” Dani said as she bent over Cadence’s wrist and adjusted her new watch. “You know that, right? He’s not going to offer you a ride in his car. Not going to sweep you away on a dark road.”
“I know,” she said, sighing. Like Kyle, Dani was definitely not on board with the plan. “I’ve got a pretty good idea of how this will work.”
Dani paused, then she glanced up at Cadence. The watch around Cadence’s wrist was a GPS tracker. It would send her location back to Dani every five seconds. Dani always kept her tech toys close, so Cadence hadn’t been surprised when Dani had brought out the equipment.
Having it so close saved them time.
“You think so, huh?” Anger pulsed beneath Dani’s words. “What happens if this grand plan of yours goes wrong?”
Cadence lifted a hand and stroked the earring on her right ear. Another tracking device. Hidden so easily in plain view. “I’ve got you keeping tabs on me, what could go wrong?”
“Plenty,” Dani snapped. “Maybe he takes you to a place where I can’t get your signal. If he goes underground again, if there are caverns or caves near here that he uses…” She shook her head. “I’m not sure the signals will transmit back to me. I could lose you.”
Cadence wasn’t going to let fear hold her back. Judith was alive a week ago. She had to offer herself. Had to be bait for the killer. “If the transmission stops, then you follow the last signal. Every five seconds, remember? You follow it and you’ll get close enough to find me.”
“Why?” Dani demanded, voice low. “Why are you doing this? For him, obviously, I get it. I see the way you keep staring at Kyle.”
I see the way you keep staring. She’d have to watch that. “The women could be alive. I’m doing this for them.”
“Not just for them,” Dani argued immediately. “Tell that to someone who doesn’t know you that well.”
Fine, she was doing it for Kyle, too. “If it were your sister, would you want her left with him? Left for all of those years while he tortured her, again and again?”
She wasn’t even sure how Kyle was keeping it together. After he’d found out about Judith, she’d expected more of a reaction. Alive. For four long years.
They hadn’t told Judith’s family the news yet. Cadence knew it would devastate them.
“You have your gun?” Dani asked her, not answering Cadence’s question.
She lifted her arm, revealing the holster.
Dani’s breath huffed out. “And a backup? You have your backup, right?”
“Strapped to my ankle.” Her right ankle had a gun strapped to it. Her left, a knife.
“Two transmitters are in place on you now.” Danielle’s breath exhaled slowly. “A third is on the way. It’s shipping from Quantico and should be here in a few hours.” Her right eyelid twitched. “This had better work, or I’m gonna kick your ass when I see you again.”
Cadence nodded. “Fair enough.”
Dani backed away from her. “You know I can take you out. I did it plenty of times in training.”
When she wanted, Dani could be vicious.
She moved to stand near the small window, one that looked over the line of trees in the distance. “So,” Dani’s musing voice began. “When did you start sleeping with him?”
Yes, she’d figured her friend would pick up on that.
Dani glanced over her shoulder. “The guy’s looked at you like he wanted to eat you for months. He still looks that way, but something’s different.”
It was. “In Paradox.”
“You know you won’t be able to keep working with him. Not when Ben finds out.”
She thought the guy already knew. “Why not? You and Ben seem to get along just fine.”
Silence. Dani’s lips were parted, her stare startled.
Cadence almost smiled. “Did you think I didn’t know about you two?” Her friend wasn’t that good at keeping secrets.
“We don’t usually work in the field,” Dani said, but her words were halting. “You and Kyle, with this case—”
“I don’t know what’s happening with us. I don’t know if there’s a future or if there’s only now.” She couldn’t think past the moment. “We’ll figure it out after we stop this ass**le.”
“The Night Hunter.”
So the media kept calling him. Since he only hunted at night, the news folks thought they were being clever.
The moniker would just feed the killer’s ego. Make him think he was larger than life.