He just shook his head. “Look, I’ve got an alibi, okay? I was at Striker’s. I hooked up with Susannah, and I was with her until I got the call to join the search.”
Cadence didn’t let her expression alter.
“You were with Susannah Jane?” Kyle asked carefully.
Jason jerked his head in agreement. “Yeah, go talk to her, and we can clear things up real damn fast.”
Kyle glanced toward Cadence. “That’s interesting, because according to Aaron Peters, he was with Susannah last night.”
Jason straightened in his chair. “No f**king way.”
“Looks like one of you is lying,” Kyle murmured.
Jason’s fisted hands slammed into the table. “Not me! Dammit, do you think I would have done that to you? I mean, hell, that’s not me! I would never have hurt you!”
“You were the one who first took us down into the caverns,” Cadence said, not answering his question. It was getting harder and harder to keep her voice calm. Was he the man who’d taunted her last night? The one who’d ordered Fiona to kill her?
“I checked with dispatch,” Cadence told him. She had, right before starting the interviews. “They tried to contact you twice last night. You didn’t respond.”
“I wasn’t on duty! I didn’t know.”
“Then you called back thirty minutes later, asking where the search team was headed.” She stared at him. He was the right size. His background fit. He was the only one of the three suspects who had actually faced blindness. Temporary, according to his records, a result of the accident that killed his sister. “If you hadn’t talked to dispatch by that point, how did you even know a search team had formed?”
“Heather,” he bit out. “She called. Left a message on my voice mail. I got her calls before I heard from dispatch.”
Ah, yes, Heather. “You and Heather have been involved—”
“The same way you and McKenzie are.” His lips twisted. “Sometimes, partners get close.” Anger hummed in his voice.
Cadence didn’t look at Kyle. Her focus stayed on Jason. “You and Heather are involved, but you were still close with Susannah last night?”
“Heather and I aren’t serious. Susannah Jane was just there to pass the time.”
The man’s opinion of women sure seemed low enough to fit with their killer’s.
“Was Lily a girl to help pass the time, too?” Cadence asked, pushing in the dark, but wondering. Jason was a good-looking guy. The town was small.
His eyes widened, just a bit. “Lily and I were over a long time ago.”
Her breath eased out slowly as another suspicion was confirmed. Linked to the victims. Linked with the caves. Linked with a past that perfectly matched their profile. The guy might as well have a bow tied around him. The blood seemed to pump faster and harder in her veins.
“You have a nice southern accent,” Cadence noted, and she let her own drawl slide through. “The more you’re in the South, the easier it is to pick up.”
Kyle glanced toward her, a furrow between his brows.
“Once you leave…” She let the faint drawl vanish. “You can lose that drawl easy enough.”
“Didn’t know you were a southern girl.” Jason studied her with a hard gaze.
“Until I was ten.” Cadence nodded. “Then I moved up north to live with my aunt. That was when I realized I could make the accent come and go anytime I wanted.” Her head cocked as she studied him. “You grew up in Chicago until you were fifteen. That accent of yours—I’m betting you use it when you want and drop it when it suits you.”
No expression was on his face now.
“Maybe Lily didn’t recognize your voice at first because the accent was gone,” Kyle threw at the guy. “Once she saw your face, she knew, didn’t she?”
Jason shook his head. “You got this all wrong!”
“You moved to Paradox right around the time Maria McKenzie vanished,” Cadence said. “Just a few months before.”
Jason licked his lips and slanted a fast glance toward Kyle. “I didn’t know her.”
The glance at Kyle had been far too nervous. Cadence’s instincts went into overdrive. “You shouldn’t have known her since she was just driving through town. A pretty girl, in a fancy car. I bet it would have been hard for a girl like that to pass a teen boy, unnoticed.”
His shoulders had tensed. “Go talk to Susannah. She’ll back me up. Aaron is the lying ass**le, not me. He’s the one you need to be questioning. He’s got family up here, too, in case you didn’t know. He’s been spending his summers in Paradox most of his life.”
“Don’t worry,” Kyle told him. “We’re questioning him, too.”
Jason’s breath heaved out as he glanced at Kyle. “Look, man, I’m sorry for what happened to your sister. To all of ’em, but I didn’t do it. I’ve been trying to help them, not hurt them.”
Trying to help them…
The words seemed hollow.
Goose bumps had risen on Cadence’s arms.
A knock sounded on the door behind them.
Cadence backed away from the table. She opened the door. Ben was there, face tense. “I need to talk with you and Kyle.”
She motioned to Kyle.
“Find Susannah!” Jason called after them. “She can clear all of this crap up!”
The door shut.
Ben’s jaw had locked. “Two suspects…both telling us that the same woman can back up their alibis.”
“So one’s lying,” Cadence said. “Obviously, but—”
“That woman is missing.”
“What?”
“I got an APB out for her right now, but she’s not at home, not at Striker’s, and none of her friends have any clue where she could be.” He yanked a hand through his hair. “Her car is still at the bar. No one knows where the hell she is.”
“Are there any signs of foul play at the bar?” Cadence asked but there hadn’t been, not with the other abductions. Only with me.
“I know we’ve been over this, but”—Ben’s breath hissed out slowly as his brows lowered over his eyes—“could we be looking at another team of killers? I know you worked the case with them before.”
Cadence shook her head. Ben was talking about the alpha team she and Kyle had helped take down in Louisiana. “The perp used Fiona to help him last night. He wanted to show his total power over her, to prove he could get her to do anything he wanted. If our guy has help, it would be—”