by LENA DIAZ,
Madison clutched his hand, her face a mask of misery. “I’m so sorry. I know how much you cared about Amanda.”
He pulled his hand from hers, shaking his head. “Don’t say it in the past tense. She’s not . . . we’re going to find her in time.”
Madison didn’t answer.
Karen’s husband rounded the corner into the waiting room with a steaming cup of coffee in each hand. Madison jumped up and took the cups from him, setting them on one of the side tables.
Logan rose and shook Mike’s hand. “Is there anything I can do, someone I can call?”
Mike waved him back down and took the seat Madison had left open for him next to her. “There isn’t anyone to call, chief, but thank you just the same. I already told the other officers not to waste their time here with me either.” He patted Madison affectionately. “I’ve got this sweet girl if I need anything.”
Madison smiled through the tears trickling down her face.
“Chief,” Mike said. “I know you care about Karen and I appreciate the gesture, but you have a young lady of your own you should be searching for instead of sitting here with me.”
“A young lady of my own?”
Mike smiled, a gentle, sad smile. “Karen knew Amanda had feelings for you, and Karen was sure you felt the same.”
Logan drew a ragged breath and scrubbed his face with his hands. Feelings? What a pathetic word. What he felt for Amanda was so much more than just “feelings.” When he tried to picture a world where she didn’t exist, all he could see was a black void.
“You have responsibilities,” Mike continued. “I’m sure there are more important things you could be doing right now than trying to console an old man, like finding the man that hurt Karen, and making sure that whatever happens to her, it isn’t in vain. Karen cares about Amanda. She wouldn’t want you sitting here when you could be out there doing something to find that young lady.”
A feeling of relief shot through Logan because he wanted to go help look for Amanda so desperately. But it was quickly washed away by the guilt that followed close on its heels.
Mike gave him an understanding look and patted his shoulder. “You’re a good man. I don’t blame you for what happened. Karen is a cop. She knew the dangers. There’s only one thing I want from you right now and that’s a promise that you’ll catch the man who hurt her. Don’t let him do this to someone else. Go catch him.”
Logan was humbled by the sincerity in Mike’s eyes. He meant what he’d said. He didn’t want Logan to sit there with him. He wanted him to go after the man who’d hurt his wife. Swallowing against the lump in his throat, Logan stood and shook Mike’s hand. “I promise I’ll do everything I can. Madison, call me if either of you need anything, or when you hear word about Karen, okay?”
“Go. Do what you need to do.” She added an encouraging smile along with her words.
Logan nodded, turned on his heel, and rushed from the waiting room.
As soon as he cleared the doorway he broke into a run, ignoring the startled looks of the people he passed as he sprinted down the hallway and out the front doors of the hospital.
“He fits the profile perfectly. Absolutely perfectly.” Pierce folded his arms over his chest and leaned back in the conference room chair, watching Nelson update Bennett’s details on the white board.
Logan bleakly watched Nelson write, but he couldn’t focus on the words. All he could think about was Amanda. Where was she? Was she hurt? He clenched his hands into fists and tried to concentrate on the lists on the board. There had to be a pattern. There was always a pattern, something to tell him where Amanda had been taken. But damned if he could see it.
Detectives were clustered in small groups around the room, strategizing, planning new searches. A pair of them on the other side of the table leaned over a map of Walton County, writing the names of the men leading search parties in each area.
“His father drank and beat his wife,” Pierce continued. “That’s why she left him. There’s also evidence Tom and Riley’s father abused them, too, although charges were never filed. Tom was a social outcast at school. After Anna Northwood rejected him and cut his face, his father moved them to a small town in Alabama. Five years later the father disappeared. No trace of him was ever found. I’ll bet Bennett killed him.”
Logan critically eyed the board, reading what Nelson had written. “You’ve established Bennett in the same towns, at the same time five of the attacks occurred. What about the other four? Why are you being so stubborn about agreeing that Riley might be guilty?”
“Because witnesses identified the security badge picture of Bennett as the man who attacked Karen and abducted Amanda. They didn’t finger Riley. Bennett had access to police cars and could have pretended to be a cop to abduct his victims. Everyone who knew Tom Bennett said the same thing. He was “off,” antisocial, talked to himself half the time. He was a brilliant mechanic, which is the only reason they didn’t fire him, but everyone who worked with him said he was nuts.”
“Which means he probably couldn’t focus enough to plan the murders and leave the scenes so clean we didn’t find any forensic evidence. Even if he was involved, someone else had to have helped him,” Logan said.
Pierce shook his head. “All right, all right. Go ahead, Nelson. Put up what we’ve found about Riley.”
Nelson added five more bullets to the board.
* Victim #3—Riley on vacation; Credit card records show him in same town as victim
* Victim #6—Riley on vacation; Hotel records show him in same town as victim
* Victim #8—Riley on vacation; no receipts yet, but was out of town, had opportunity
* Frank Branson—Unable to establish Riley’s whereabouts at the time of Branson’s abduction and later murder
* Born David Riley Bennett, legally changed his name to David Riley at age eighteen
* Dysfunctional family (evidence of abuse, abandoned by his mother), intelligent, organized
“It looks damning, Logan, but even if you think Bennett and Riley are some kind of serial-killer tag team, which is extremely rare, Riley doesn’t fit the profile. He’s a police officer, no reprimands on his record, no trouble with authority.”
“Profiles can be wrong.” Logan held up his hand to stop Pierce’s response. “He’s not answering his phone and he disappeared after hearing that we suspected Bennett. He knew Bennett would lead us to him. That’s the only reason he would have run off.”
“Or maybe Riley realized his brother might be the murderer and he went off to find him on his own, to stop him. There’s no reason to think Bennett didn’t commit all of the murders. We just haven’t proved it yet,” Pierce insisted.
“And Riley just happened to be on vacation and in the same towns when three of the killings occurred. And he had time to drive back and forth between some of the other victims’ locations and Shadow Falls and still make it in time for work each day.” Logan grabbed his jacket off the back of a chair and shrugged into it. “If Bennett killed Branson, how do you think he found my house? He wouldn’t have been in the station when my sister came looking for me. He wouldn’t have known to follow her. Either Riley told him where I was, or Riley was the shooter. Like it or not, Riley’s in this up to his neck.” He headed toward the door.
“Bennett could have just as easily put a GPS locator on your car while you were at work. He could have followed you, figuring you’d eventually lead him to Amanda,” Pierce called out. “Will you stop for a minute? Where are you going?”
“I can’t sit around here doing nothing while Amanda’s out there enduring God only knows what kind of torture.” His voice broke and he cleared his throat. “I have to find her.”
“Use your brain, Logan. Not your emotions. We’ll find her more quickly if we work together, evaluate the facts, figure out where she’s being held. Our men have been searching for hours and haven’t had any luck. What makes you think you’ll do any better out there?”
Logan igno
red him and strode through the outer office, which was filled with detectives on phones, shuffling papers, typing on their computers. He tried to ignore the sympathetic looks everyone gave him, as if it was a foregone conclusion that Amanda was already dead.
He refused to believe that. He’d failed her once all those years ago by letting Northwood’s killer go free. He couldn’t fail her again.
Once inside the elevator, he pulled Amanda’s list of suspects out of his jacket pocket. He’d found it earlier today when he went home to get the Northwood file, hoping to find some clue that would tell him where Bennett, or Riley, would have taken Amanda.
She’d drawn circles around the words “cop,” “mechanic,” and “Riley,” with question marks beside each one. Each conclusion was explained with meticulous notes referring back to the exact report or interview in each file that made her reach that conclusion. In a matter of hours she’d done a better job of analyzing the data than any of the detectives on his team—including him—had done in weeks.
He drew a ragged breath and crumpled the paper into a ball, shoving it back into his pocket. Twice she’d asked him to look at it yesterday, but he hadn’t. If only he’d listened to her, given her five minutes, she’d still be safe. It was entirely his fault that Karen had been hurt, that Amanda had been abducted again. And worse than that, the man who had her was the same man he’d let go. Amanda would never have been hurt if it weren’t for his incompetence. She’d still have her dreams, still be able to have a family.
The elevator doors opened and he shoved his way past the people in the lobby, racing through the building to his car. He was backing out of the parking space when someone tapped on his passenger side window. Pierce leaned down and motioned for Logan to unlock the door. When he did, Pierce got in and slammed the door shut.
Logan raised a questioning brow.
“I think you’re a damned fool, Logan. You’re too emotionally involved in this case to be part of the search. I also know I can’t stop you, so I’ll settle for trying to keep you from getting your head blown off if you do happen upon Bennett somewhere.”
“Or Riley,” Logan added, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “Whoever has Amanda, once I find him, he’s the one who’ll have his fucking brains blown out, not me.”
Pierce swore and dramatically covered his ears. “I didn’t hear that.”
Logan punched the gas and raced out of the parking lot.
Chapter Twenty
Amanda sucked in a sharp breath and eased the handcuffs off the raw, stinging cuts on her wrists. Not that it mattered. As soon as she let the cuffs go, they’d scrape across her cuts again. She’d tried to tear a strip out of her t-shirt to use as a cushion, but without scissors or a knife it was hopeless.
A bead of sweat trickled down between her breasts. She rubbed her shirt and glared at the window on the far wall of the cabin. Inside the air was hot and sticky. Outside the blue sky beckoned through a pane of glass only ten feet away.
It might as well have been a hundred.
Both the window and the door next to it were beyond the reach of the six foot chain that connected Amanda’s handcuffs to the metal loop bolted to the floor.
Just like four years ago.
And just like four years ago, her friend had paid a terrible price for being with her. Was Karen still alive? An image of Karen, bloody, beaten, tossed out of the car as if she were garbage, flashed through Amanda’s mind. Please, God, let her be alive.
A prickling of unease skittered up her spine and she glanced toward the window again. How much longer did she have before he returned? If she was still chained to the floor when he got back, she didn’t have a chance. She fisted her hands around the chain, hissing at the sting of metal on her open cuts. Her palms were a mess, slippery with blood from trying to yank the chain free. So far, no amount of tugging had budged that stubborn loop of metal. All she’d managed to do was stir up dust when the chain rapped against the floor. But she couldn’t give up. If she did, Logan would blame himself for her death.
She couldn’t imagine the anguish he must be suffering right now. For ten years he’d worried that the killer he’d accidentally let go might have hurt someone else. Now he knew the answer was yes, and that she was one of the ones hurt.
If she didn’t survive, he would always blame himself. She couldn’t give up. She had to make it, for Logan.
She lowered herself to the floor, wrapped the chain around her hands and braced her sneakers against the wall.
One.
Two.
Three. She pushed and strained, gritting her teeth against the sharp, fiery burn in her hands. Her legs quivered and her thighs began to cramp, but she fought through the pain, arching her back, panting with exertion. The wood floor creaked. Did the metal hook move, just a tiny bit? A spark of hope had her pulling harder, but the muscles in her arms gave out. She lost her grip on the chain and pitched backward, crying out when her head smacked the hard floor.
“Damn it.” She pounded a fist against the floor and rubbed the back of her head. Unshed tears burned her eyes and clogged her throat. It would be so easy to give in, to lie on the floor and wait for the inevitable. Before she’d met Logan, that’s what she would have done. She would have felt she deserved her fate because she owed it to Dana.
Logan had made her whole again. He’d made her realize she had worth, that Dana’s death wasn’t her fault. She deserved another chance at life, another chance at happiness. The only one responsible for Dana’s death was the man who’d killed her. Logan had done that for Amanda, he’d given her back her life. Now she had to return the favor. She had to make it out of here and teach Logan the same lesson he’d taught her. He had to learn to forgive himself. He deserved to be happy again, too.
She took a deep breath, coughing when the humid air hit her tortured lungs. Bracing her feet against the wall again, she gritted her teeth against the sharp stab of pain in her palms and took up the slack in the chain.
One.
Two.
Three.
Pull.
The sun was sinking, along with Logan’s hopes of finding Amanda alive. He and Pierce had driven to the park where Carolyn O’Donnell was killed, but the park was flooded with volunteers who were already searching every inch.
They drove to Amanda’s house but saw no signs of anyone having been there since the police finished their last investigation only a few days ago.
They’d driven down I–10 to the condo that was supposed to be a safe house. Even though the fire department had used their hoses to clean the blood from the parking lot, a dark stain still remained. Logan steeled himself against the pain that shot through him, and he steered his Mustang to the edge of the woods that bordered the condominium complex.
He and Pierce searched the woods but didn’t find any fresh tracks to indicate the killer had waited there for Amanda, or that he’d taken her back into the woods after abducting her.
FBI agents had searched both Bennett’s apartment in town and Riley’s home outside of town, but found no signs of Amanda. Riley was still missing. Logan had issued a statewide BOLO alert, telling everyone in law enforcement to be on the lookout for Riley as well as Tom Bennett.
If Riley was innocent, as Pierce still believed, he’d better come back with a damn good excuse for not answering his phone. If he had a good lead on Amanda’s location, he should have phoned it in, called for backup. Riley was young, inexperienced. If he tried to be a hero, Amanda might be the one who paid the price.
In desperation, Logan drove back to his house and retraced the route Karen had taken to the safe house, looking for tire tracks along the side of the road, hoping he could spot where the killer might have pulled out behind her. If he could do that, he could backtrack and see where the car came from. Of course that theory only worked if the car had driven through grass or dirt to get to the paved road, definitely a long shot.
Any reasonable man would have given up hours ago.
P
ierce had stopped making suggestions and quietly sat in the passenger seat watching the scenery roll by, as if he’d given up hope and was waiting for Logan to come to the same conclusion.
“She’s still alive,” Logan said, for perhaps the dozenth time in the past half hour, as if by saying it he could somehow make it true.
Pierce looked over at him but didn’t say anything. He turned back toward the window.
A few miles down the road from Logan’s house, he passed Mill Cove Road, the same road the killer had driven with Amanda four years ago when he took her to the cabin at Black Lake.
“Pierce, they’ve already searched Mill Cove Road right?”
“I’m sure they have. It was at the top of the list when we organized the search parties. Give me a sec. I’ll make sure.” Pierce pulled out his cell phone and pushed the speed dial. “Nelson, it’s Pierce. No, we haven’t found anything. Look, Logan wanted to make sure you’d already checked Black Lake.” A minute later his eyes widened. “Why the hell not?”
Logan cursed viciously and braked hard, wheeling the Mustang around in the middle of the road. He gunned the engine and headed back toward Mill Cove Road.
“Hold out your hands so I can take off the chain. Hurry. We have to go.” The man who’d hurt Karen and tasered Amanda glanced behind him at the cabin door. He’d told Amanda his name was Tom, that he’d chained her up to keep her safe. He was trying to help her. Having seen how he’d “helped” Karen, she knew better.
Amanda backed against the wall, holding the chain by her side, ready to wrap it around his neck if she got the chance. Her hands stung from the sweat running into her cuts and her heart felt like it was going to jump out of her chest, but she had to make a stand. The chain was her only weapon. She wasn’t giving it up. “If you want to help me, toss me the key and leave. I won’t tell anyone about you.”
He clutched the handcuff key in his hand, cocking his head to the side. “You’re trying to trick me.”
