by Katee Robert
Isaac’s cruiser was out front as she pulled up, and she battled the nearly overwhelming urge to sprint into the house and make sure Emma was okay. With a sheriff and an FBI agent keeping her company, Emma was as safe as a person could be. Lei was the one traipsing out into the woods where the killer had lurked.
And recently, too.
She’d had time to think about it while she was driving back. She’d taken that same route the day before yesterday, though she’d veered to the ten-mile loop instead of turning back at three. He could have been out there, watching her, waiting for the opportunity. She shivered despite herself and shut off the engine.
“Lei.”
She turned and found Dante’s fathomless dark eyes threatening to pull her under. She knew his type. He wanted to protect everyone from the darker threats in life. If she let him, she had no doubt he’d do whatever it took to keep her and Emma from harm, including taking over.
Which was the one thing she couldn’t let him do, no matter how tempting she found the idea.
She took a deep breath. “Yes?”
“We’ll find him.” He climbed off the ATV and offered her a hand.
For a second, she actually considered ignoring it just to prove a point, but Lei didn’t have the energy for pissing contests to prove what a badass she was. She’d made her point back there in the forest, and Dante seemed to have paid attention. Being petty now wouldn’t do anything but make her look like a dick and potentially damage their working relationship with the Feds.
Or that was what she told herself as she took his hand.
Her reasoning sure as hell had nothing to do with the insane desire to feel Dante’s skin against hers. He helped her down but didn’t immediately release her. His calluses were twin to hers—courtesy of weight lifting and too many hours with guns in their hands. He opened his mouth, and she just reacted, snatching her hand from his and taking two large steps back. “No.”
He raised dark eyebrows. “I didn’t say anything.”
“But you were about to.” The words sounded stupid when she said them aloud, but Lei didn’t have the capacity to put her anxiety into coherent sentences. The strange spark between her and Dante was trouble in the worst way. She didn’t think Britton would allow a sociopath onto his team, but Travis had fooled everyone around him until the very end.
You know damn well that Dante isn’t Travis. You’re using that as a shield to keep him at a distance.
Yeah, I am. So sue me.
Dante looked at her for a long moment, and she had the crazy suspicion that he could see down to the heart of her and know that the thought of letting someone new close to her—even a little—scared the shit out of her. Finally, he nodded. “Another time.” He headed for the house before she could ask what he meant by that.
It didn’t matter.
They’d get through the case, find the killer, and they’d both go back to the lives they were living before meeting each other. Simple. Lei turned and looked at the tree line, forcing herself to take a mental sidestep. She and Emma had worked too hard to survive to be brought down by some half-assed version of the original. Fanboy letters. Threats. All that relatively harmless bullshit, they could deal with. Someone actually going so far as to murder . . .
No, they would get through this.
She turned slowly, dragging her gaze over each individual tree, her fingers itching for the gun in her holster. No stranger jumped out to present a target, and she wasn’t paranoid enough to carry her gun around in her hand . . . yet.
The day’s still young. Anything could happen.
That’s what she was afraid of.
CHAPTER NINE
By the time Lei made it into the house, everyone had congregated in the kitchen. Someone—probably Emma—had cleared off the small kitchen table they rarely used for anything other than a place to pile junk mail en route to the trash can. Now, it held the purse they’d retrieved.
Clarke had her phone out and was clicking pictures as Dante removed each item from the purse and laid them in a neat little row on the shining wood of the table. Lei walked over to stand next to Emma, silently cataloging each thing he set down. Gum. Six different lip glosses. Three tampons. Birth control pills. A hairbrush. A half-empty bag of Rolo candies. An overfilled key chain with keys, knickknacks, pepper spray, and a fluffy pink feathered thing. And, finally, her wallet.
Dante flipped through it, his curse low enough that Lei was half sure she’d misheard him. “Luna Henderson.” He said her name like it was familiar to him, which didn’t make sense . . .
Lei crossed her arms over her chest. “Who is Luna Henderson?”
Clarke shook her head. “One of the missing sorority girls.”
The walls came crashing down around her. Lei blinked, half expecting to find the house a crumpled ruin. “That’s not how it works,” she whispered. There were no missing girls. They were all accounted for. That was part of the nightmare, the truth she had to live with. This killer was supposed to be a copycat, which meant the killing should have stopped the second he left that house. There was no room for missing in that scenario.
Isaac shifted closer to Emma and Lei, as if he could step between them and the truth she saw brimming in Dante’s dark eyes. Reality is never pretty. But just once, I’d like the silken lies instead of the barbed truth. Wanting the comforting lie just delayed the moment when she’d have to face reality. Lei pressed her lips together but finally made herself speak. “Please tell me what happened.” There. That sounded tight and professional and not at all like she was in danger of spinning out of control.
There were rules, rules she’d lived with since the night when everything changed. The night that had never really ended. Not for her, and not for Emma.
As if sensing her thoughts, Emma found her hand and clasped it tightly. Whatever it was, they would face it together, just like they always had.
Dante set down the wallet. “On our way back to Washington, we got word that there were two missing girls from the Omega Delta Lambda apartment. The PD didn’t realize they were gone because half the campus goes home or travels for spring break. Luna Henderson is one of those girls.”
There was more. She could see it. “And what else?”
“Berkley left us a little bread-crumb trail to follow, and we think it’s connected to the missing girls.” Clarke held up a photograph. It could have been any clearing in any forest in ten different states. Lei leaned forward, automatically categorizing the trees, looking for turned earth or any other indication of a recently dug grave. There was none . . . but then, there wouldn’t be.
“We have no proof other than the photo and coordinates, but there’s no denying Berkley is involved. Whether the copycat sent him the photo on his own or Berkley orchestrated the whole thing is up for debate. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter right now. What matters is finding those girls.”
They had to have been in contact before the most recent murders. It was the only thing that made sense. Which made it that much more plausible that they were partners, rather than the killer acting as a devoted fan.
Clarke flipped the photo, revealing two numbers scribbled in black ballpoint pen. “The coordinates are for an access road in Mount Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest. It’s about—”
“An hour and a half from here.” The pieces clicked into place, faster and faster. Lei suspected she wouldn’t be allowed to sit this one out, even if she were so inclined, but now Travis and his pet had made sure of it. If those coordinates led to an access road close enough to drive to, it couldn’t have been a clearer invitation if he’d . . . She stopped. “Let me see the card.”
Dante hesitated, but something on her face must have convinced him, because he passed over a pair of gloves and the card, still in its bag. Lei pulled on the gloves, her mind going perfectly blank, as if she’d shut off the last light and stood alone in soul-sucking darkness.
Open it.
It looked like any card envelope found in grocery st
ores across the country. A tasteful blue of thick paper. The letters of her name looked similar to the block lettering on the picture—and on the postcard that arrived with the hair—but Lei was no handwriting expert. She opened it carefully, but the flap had been tucked down rather than licked. No DNA samples there. Inside, there was a card with a picture of two puppies sprawled in the middle of a pristine green lawn. The text read MISSING YOU.
Her stomach lurched, and she had to stop and take several careful breaths to fight down the nausea. It was just a card. It wasn’t going to release a cloud of anthrax and kill her. That wasn’t Travis’s style. No, this was pure psychological warfare, and she was better than this, damn it. She gritted her teeth and flipped the card open. Come play with me. Followed by the same coordinates written on the picture.
It took her two tries to speak past her dry throat. “Someone wants to be sure I’m part of this.”
“Don’t go.” Emma spoke so softly it was almost a whisper. “He already did so much damage. Let the cops handle it. It’s their job.”
She looked at her friend and saw the same trapped-animal feeling reflected back from those blue eyes. Emma had to know that trying to stay out of this—to stay safe—was futile. They would be drawn in one way or another. Better to start now, on her own terms, than have the bastard force her hand later on. At least if they moved quickly, she had a chance to save those girls.
Even if, in her heart of hearts, Lei knew they were both already dead.
She checked her watch. “Are the local police going to organize a search? We need to start moving now.” It hadn’t rained in the last week, so that was at least something they had going for them. Saul could scent through pretty serious weather conditions, but it was distracting for both him and her.
“They’re already on their way. We were coming here to get you.”
Before they were distracted by the purse. She nodded. “Give me a few minutes to change and get my things together and I’ll be ready. Emma?”
“Coming.”
They strode upstairs and into Lei’s room without a word. The dogs were nowhere to be found, so Emma must have put them in the kennel on the back porch when Isaac arrived. “Give me two.” She went into her bathroom, stripped out of her sweaty running clothes, and took a fast shower. There was no point in drying her hair, so she threw it up into a ponytail that would keep it out of her face while they searched. Next, she dressed in a pair of jeans and a tank top. Shorts would be better, but there were blackberry bushes and brambles littered all over these mountains, and she liked her skin right where it was. Next came thick socks and her hiking boots.
Common knowledge said that most killers wouldn’t haul a body more than one hundred yards from any given access point, but this guy wasn’t most killers. He’d issued a challenge directly to her, which meant he knew he’d be tracked by Saul and had planned on it.
She stopped in the middle of lacing up her boots. It could be a trap. It probably was a trap.
It didn’t matter. She had to go.
Lei found Emma perched on the edge of her bed. Her friend burst to her feet the second she opened the door. “You can’t go.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“That’s bullshit. There’s always a choice.” She clenched her hand so tightly that Lei had no doubt there would be half-moon imprints from her fingernails. Emma lifted her chin. “He’s going to try to kill you.”
“He’s going to try to kill both of us.” She said it gently, but now wasn’t the time for pretty lies. The thought of losing Emma, of her delicate life force being snuffed out . . . It stole Lei’s breath. She pressed her lips together in an effort to get control. Focus on the facts. No matter how this plays out, you were always prepared for Travis to come for you someday.
Yeah, but it was supposed to be theoretical.
She swallowed hard. “You’ll be safe here. You have Prince, and you have the security and the safe room. He can’t get you.”
“You think I’m worried about me?” Emma looked like she wanted to shake her. “I’m not the one traipsing out into the woods the second he called. Even with the cops and Feds, he knows you’re coming, and he’s prepared. All it would take is you getting separated from the rest of them, and he could take you—”
“He won’t take me,” she cut in. Lei crossed to her friend and gripped her shoulders. “We survived the worst he could offer, Em. We lived. He didn’t win then, and he won’t win now.”
Emma’s lower lip quivered, but she made a visible effort to hold herself together. “I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t. If he comes for me . . . I will kill him.” Truth. Cold, hard truth. It should have made her feel better, but she couldn’t shake the feeling it wouldn’t be as simple as pointing a gun and pulling the trigger.
Emma covered her hands with her own. “Promise me. Promise me if you see that son of a bitch, you won’t hesitate. No jury in the country would convict you, Lei. You know that. I couldn’t stand it if you died. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
Dante spent most of the ride on the phone with Detective Smith. Smith was just about as thrilled as one might expect about the idea of a search and potential rescue. It was outside his jurisdiction, but if they found bodies, they would be sent to Seattle rather than the little local hospital. He sent two men to assist, but that was all he claimed he could spare.
It irritated the fuck out of Dante.
Jurisdiction mattered—it had to—but there were two girls missing, and with each minute that passed, it became less and less likely that they’d find them in time.
“Calm, Dante.” Clarke spoke from the driver’s seat.
He realized he was holding his phone in a white-knuckled grip and forced himself to set it down. “That’s rich coming from you.”
“Yeah, well, only one of us can be the emotional one, and I called dibs.”
To distract himself, he twisted around to look at Lei. She sat behind the driver’s seat, her dog curled near her feet. The massive beast took up most of the space and appeared to be asleep. Lei, on the other hand, looked just as tense as he felt. Tension lines bracketed her mouth, and she held perfectly still, as if any movement might start a domino effect of fidgeting and worry.
“We’ll find them,” Dante said. He didn’t know what it was about this woman that made him want to step between her and the rest of the world, but it went beyond white-knight complexes. His early dating history was full of damsels in distress—soft women who needed him, who wanted nothing more than to rearrange their lives around his. It never worked out, and usually ended badly in the process.
After a while he’d stopped trying.
Lei was as different from his exes as a Pit Bull from a show Poodle. So damn strong, but brittle around the edges. Scarred beyond the extensive list of physical damage Berkley had dealt. Those scars hadn’t stopped her any more than her fear had—from what he could tell, it hadn’t slowed her down in the least. If anything, it seemed to fuel her forward, a warrior goddess who wasn’t quite at home in her own skin.
She glanced at him, and her lips twitched in what was probably supposed to be a reassuring smile. “Yes, we will find them. Whether we find them dead or alive is something else altogether.”
“Does it make a difference for the search?” It was something he should have asked before now, but she’d been so confident her dog could do the work, he hadn’t questioned it. It wasn’t false confidence—she had the track record to support it—but her track record featured heavily in the dead rather than the living.
She reached down and petted her dog’s head. When she looked at the beast, her features softened, and he got a glimpse of the woman she might have become if life had put her on a different path. “It makes a difference. Saul is better with the dead, but if I have something from one of the girls, he can track it.” She met his gaze, once again the woman who’d been to hell and back and lived to tell the tale. “The dirty clothes you requested should
work fine.”
He’d anticipated that request, so the detectives from Seattle were bringing something from both girls. “Good.”
Clarke took a turn, following the sheriff’s car in front of them. He led them off the main highway and onto a pitted asphalt road on a sharp incline. Dante leaned forward to look out the windshield. Trees converged on the road, creating the feeling of driving through a tunnel of reaching arms that only waited for the moment they stopped to snatch them up and drag them into the greenery. His skin prickled at the thought.
One would never know they were only an hour from Everett, and slightly more from Seattle. It looked like a different world out here.
Sheriff Bamford pulled onto a shallow shoulder, and Clarke guided their car in behind him. She glanced at her phone. “This is it.”
Dante climbed out and walked around to open Lei’s door. She gave him a look but didn’t say anything as she exited the car, quickly followed by Saul. Clarke walked over to talk to Sheriff Bamford, which left them the illusion of privacy. “How does this work?”
Lei pulled her bag out of the car and went through it, checking it with the methodical movements he’d seen in soldiers about to leave on a mission. “If this isn’t all a red herring, then the target parked his car here and either walked or carried the girls into the trees. Even if he carried them, Saul should be able to catch the scent. Most bodies are left or buried within a hundred yards of the access point, but we can’t assume that’s the case since the whole point of this is to make me jump through hoops like a dancing monkey.” She set the backpack on the ground next to her and turned a slow circle. “There are a couple of potential access points. There, there, and there.” She pointed to each of them in turn.
They didn’t look like much to Dante. One was definitely a hiking trail leading north from the shoulder. The other two could have been animal trails or just some flattened-down brush, but this was Lei’s expertise—not his. He nodded. “What do you need from us?”
