by Cynthia Eden
Since it was his office, the guy should have felt plenty comfortable heading inside, but judging by the look on his face, comfort was the last thing James felt. “The minute I saw Lily’s car, it reminded me of Maria, too. That’s why I had to call you.”
Maria. His sister’s name seemed to echo in his mind, but Kyle didn’t let his expression alter. “The setup is the same.” A car, abandoned in the dead of night on a long, lonely stretch of highway.
In the same damn town.
When he’d been out on that road, memories had burned through him. It had been all he could do to hold onto his control. Cadence never had a problem with control. He had to fight to keep his every minute.
Kyle cleared his throat and tried to stay cool. “The cases are sure similar, but my sister was eighteen when she vanished. Lily’s thirty-two.” It was a big age gap for a serial—not that anyone had ever tied his sister’s disappearance to a killer.
No one had ever found Maria McKenzie. She’d gone on a road trip, determined to exert her independence as she headed down to Florida for a summer vacation. Her friends had been waiting for her in Pensacola, right on the beach. White sand, blue waves. That was what Maria had told him. Pensacola Beach. She’d been so eager to start her journey.
But she’d never made it to those sandy shores.
Officer James Anniston had found her car. Traced her tags. Contacted Kyle.
Then my world fell apart.
Because he’d promised his parents he’d go on that trip with Maria. Sworn he wouldn’t leave her on her own.
He’d broken his promise.
“There were no signs of a struggle at Maria’s scene,” James said. “Just like with Lily.”
Only with Lily, they had a lead. They had a voice. They knew she’d been taken.
With Maria, even James hadn’t been convinced—not at first—that she’d been taken. They’d thought she hooked up with some man—that she went off to enjoy her summer.
And what? Just left her car behind on some Alabama road?
No. He’d never bought that story. When Maria hadn’t turned up in a few days, weeks, or months, his parents had started to understand.
Their daughter wasn’t coming home.
His mother had turned to the bottle. He’d always thought she drank herself to death. His father had thrown himself into his work. A heart attack had taken him away at just fifty-eight.
And as all of those long days rolled past, James had come to understand that Maria hadn’t disappeared with her boyfriend. Evil had come to that small Alabama town on that long-ago night, and that evil had taken Kyle’s sister.
Kyle had kept in touch with James over the years, calling just in case any new evidence had been found.
There had never been any news. Until now.
“Lily.” James’s voice was musing. “She kind of looked like Maria. That same long, blonde hair.”
Kyle had noticed the slight physical similarity right away. It was another reason he’d busted ass convincing Cadence they needed to get down to Alabama.
“You know we’re going to investigate every officer you have here.” Cadence had already started to run background checks on the men. They’d interview them next, to see if anyone slipped up in interrogation.
“It’s not one of my men.” James was adamant on that point. “Two of ’em—Hollings and Wentworth—were breaking up a fight at Phillip Long’s place. That dumb SOB is always hitting his wife.” He ran a hand over his face. “She just always runs right back to him.”
Because of Lily’s phone call to Curtis, they had an exact time for Lily’s abduction. An exact time meant it was easier to confirm alibis. Or break them.
“You’ve got other officers,” Kyle pointed out.
“We know Heather Crenshaw didn’t do it. She was with her partner, Jason Marsh, all night on patrols.”
There was only a small number of officers in the Paradox Police Department, and Kyle knew he and Cadence would work their way through all of the alibis.
The problem was the guy they were looking for might not be part of Anniston’s crew. He could work in another county. He could be a state trooper.
Or he could be some asshole who’d bought a plastic badge at a costume shop. It wouldn’t be the first time a perp had pretended to be a cop to get close to his prey. Awhile back, the same thing had happened in Mississippi. A guy pretending to be a state trooper had raped four women before he was finally stopped.
If you want to make a victim trust you, become someone they can count on. Someone they need.
“A woman alone like that, in the middle of the night,” Kyle sighed. “She would have been grateful to see a cop pull up and offer to help her.”
On the recording, Lily had sounded relieved. Officer. But the relief had turned to fear all too quickly.
“We’re the good guys,” James said with a sad shake of his head. “Or at least, we’re supposed to be.”
Cocking his head, Kyle studied the captain. James was still in good shape. The lines near his eyes were deeper than they’d been, and while they’d been talking, Kyle had noticed James’s hands shook.
“In all my years here in Paradox, there have been only two missing-persons cases.” James eased into the rickety chair behind his desk. “Your sister and Lily Adams.”
He’d have to tell Cadence his sister had disappeared in this town. No getting around it. He wanted to tell her when they were alone, not in front of a room full of avid cops.
His past was his own. Bloody, dark. Twisted.
“This is a quiet area,” James continued. “We have drunks like that jerk Phillip Long, but we don’t have crimes like this.”
Yes, you do.
“The last time I saw you,” James said, glancing up at him, “you were here asking me for help.”
Begging, more like. He’d been so desperate, so wild to find his sister or any clue that would tell him where she had gone.
At first, he’d wondered if his family would get a ransom call. They were wealthy, and they could pay anything a kidnapper wanted for Maria’s safe return.
No demand was ever made.
There was just…nothing.
“Now I’m the one who needs your help.” James’s voice roughened. “You hunt guys like this. I’ve followed stories about you, seen the headlines in the papers.”
He didn’t seek out those headlines. He just tried to help where he could.
“You got here so fast. Maybe we can find her alive. Whatever you need, whatever I can do, tell me.” The captain’s sigh was ragged. “And I’ll do it.”
A light knock sounded at the door.
Kyle glanced over and saw Cadence standing on the other side of the glass. She hesitated a moment after her knock, then swung open the door.
“Am I interrupting?” Cadence asked carefully.
Kyle shook his head. He’d have to tell her everything soon enough, but going through the hell of his past wasn’t his favorite activity.
“It’s time for the interviews, Kyle.” She gave a little inclination of her head toward the captain. “I’m going to need to interview you, too, Anniston.”
James flushed, but gave a grim nod. After what they’d heard on the machine, there would be no getting around the interviews.
Or accusations.
In small towns like this, it was easy for people to turn on each other. Kyle had sure seen it before. Fear was the worst kind of virus, ravaging everyone in its path.
“I’ll wait outside,” James said as he edged past Cadence. “Ma’am.”
She didn’t speak until the door closed behind the captain. Then she pushed back her shoulders and lifted one eyebrow as she faced Kyle. “We could have a really big problem in this town.”
Yes.
“The sooner we figure out who was on that road with Lily Adams, the better.”
Tell her.
“I called Dani at Quantico.” Danielle Burton was Cadence’s go-to girl when it came to information retrieva
l. “I asked her to pull all the missing-persons cases in the area for the last five years. This could be a one-shot crime, but just in case…”
Five years wasn’t gonna cut it. “She might want to go back further.”
Cadence frowned.
He headed toward her.
“Just how far?” Cadence asked as her head cocked so she could study him better. “Are we talking, say…fifteen years? That was when your sister vanished, right?”
Every muscle in his body seemed to clock down. It looked as if he was about to see just how far Cadence had dug into his life. Had she discovered his desperate searches, his—
“This isn’t your sister’s case.” Sympathy was there, shining in her eyes. “Is that the real reason you brought us here? Because it was another disappearance, in the same town—”
“In the same way. With a car, abandoned, and a girl gone in the dead of the night,” he growled as his hands fisted.
Get your control. Hold on to it.
Kyle’s head bowed as he sucked in a sharp breath.
Then he felt a touch on his arm, featherlight. The scent of flowers deepened around him.
“What are the odds of that?” he managed as his head lifted, and he found Cadence standing less than a foot away, still touching him. Staring up at him with worry on her delicate features. She was close enough for him to pull into his arms. How many times had he wanted to do that? Pull her against him and use pleasure to make them both forget the nightmares waiting out there for them.
Don’t do it. You can’t. He cleared his throat, kept his control. “Another disappearance. Same place, same way. It shouldn’t happen, Cadence. You know it shouldn’t.”
Her eyes searched his. “You think it’s the same perp? After all this time?”
He’d clenched his back teeth so hard they ached. “After the case in Louisiana, is it so hard for you to think it could happen?” Kyle gritted out the words. “Look at the Bayou Butcher, look at how long he’d been killing.” A fifteen-year span for the crimes wasn’t impossible. Not if the killer had been careful enough.
Smart enough.
“I wondered…when you insisted we come down here…just how closely this could be linked to your sister.”
Now he realized she’d come for him.
“I’m so sorry for what happened to her.” The emotion in her voice was real. “Please know that I am. Sorry for what happened to her and for what her disappearance did to you. But Kyle, this case is about Lily Adams. Her daughter is at home, crying for her mother. We have to focus on Lily right now.”
Not Maria.
“You’re the one always telling me to have hope,” she said. “We have hope in this case. We have a chance to find Lily.”
Not Maria.
Maria wasn’t ever going to be found. He’d tried to come to terms with that, over and over. “I know the job.” His own voice was hard, grating, when hers had been so soft. “And I’ll do it.” He pulled away from her and headed for the door.
“Kyle!”
He hesitated, his fingers wrapped around the doorknob.
“I am sorry about what happened to your sister.”
How far had she dug? Had she talked with the family he had left? His old friends? Had she learned how desperate he’d been back then as she discovered every secret he had? He didn’t know her secrets, and that didn’t seem fair.
I want them all. No, he wanted her, as exposed as he was.
“If I could help you find Maria, I would,” Cadence told him. “Maybe after Lily, if we find new evidence while we’re here—”
He yanked open the door. “They’re waiting on us.”
The cops. The perp.
All were waiting.
As for Maria…
He knew she’d stopped waiting to be rescued long ago.
“Officer Crenshaw, you knew Lily Adams, didn’t you?” Kyle asked as he leaned across the small table in the only conference room available at the Paradox station.
Cadence sat beside him, still too conscious of what had been said in the captain’s office.
He’s hoping to find his sister.
She’d known that, though, from the minute he came to her desk back at their main office, his eyes shining with barely contained emotion.
We have to go to Paradox. A woman’s missing.
“I knew her.” Heather Crenshaw, a slim redhead with a steady, green gaze, gave a slow nod. “Lily was a few years ahead of me in school.”
Cadence glanced at Heather’s partner. “What about you?”
Jason Marsh. Tall. Dark. Handsome. He spoke with a faint southern drawl. A thin scar snaked out from the corner of his left eye, disappearing into his hairline.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jason said with a nod as his eyes stayed on her. “I’d seen her at Striker’s plenty of times. In a town this size, folks pretty much know everyone else.”
True enough. But Lily hadn’t recognized the officer with her. Because it wasn’t a cop at this station. Her gut had told her it wasn’t, but the interviews still had to be conducted.
“Where were you patrolling last night?” Kyle asked. His voice was smooth, low, emotionless.
She’d seen the emotions blazing in his eyes moments before. The past was haunting Kyle, tearing him apart on the inside.
“We were near the town’s main street,” Jason said easily. “Some kids spray painted the side of the school gym a few nights back, and we were making sure they didn’t come back for another run at the place.”
Kids and graffiti. Paradox wasn’t exactly the crime capital of the world.
I’m wasting time with the cops. They weren’t going to give her any information she could use. Sitting with them wasn’t where she needed to be. She and Kyle both needed to be out there, joining the teams already searching for Lily. She’d immediately ordered for the searches to start, pulling in local and state help in the woods, even as she set up the interrogations.
It was the locals who would be of the most help. And since she had locals in front of her, she needed to ask different questions. More useful ones. “If you were going to dump a body in this area, where would you go?”
Silence.
Kyle turned his head slowly. Stared at her.
Her gaze cut back to the two cops. “Someplace secluded,” she added. Hell, the whole town was secluded. Surrounded by miles and miles of forestland. Mountains, lakes, thick woods. But maybe the locals knew one spot that would work best for making a body vanish. “There’s got to be a place around here folks don’t visit. Some spot a hunter wouldn’t stumble on when he was chasing game.”
“Cadence.” Kyle’s voice held a warning edge.
He’d realized she was looking for a body, not a live victim. Lily could still be alive; I’m not saying she isn’t.
She was also covering as much ground as she could. “I need you both to think of areas like that. Get trackers out there. Get the county’s canine unit, and give them some of Lily’s clothes.” They needed to start tracking right away. Cadence pushed from the table and rose to her feet. “Let’s not waste any more time.”
“Does that mean we’re clear, ma’am?” Jason wanted to know. He’d risen too, cautiously unfurling from his seat.
“It means I’m not spending any more time in here. We all need to be searching the town, the woods, to see if we can find Lily.” Cadence knew exactly where she’d start her hunt.
The last spot Lily had been seen alive.
She opened the door, marched outside. “I want everyone’s attention!”
She already had it. All eyes had sprung to her the moment the door flew open.
“Canine units.” She snapped out the words and gestured over her shoulder to Jason. “Officer Marsh is calling them in. We want them searching the woods for Lily. Start at the spot where her car was abandoned and work out from there. Check any”—damn, she hated to say it, but—“potential body dump sites you can think of. You know this area. Search it.”
Kyle had com
e to her side. “We need a guard to stay with Lily’s family, and we want a trace put on their phone lines.” He knew the drill perfectly. After a year working with her, he should.
“Why?” This came from Officer Randall Hollings. They’d talked to the slightly paunchy, balding officer earlier. “Do you think whoever took Lily might call for some kind of ransom?” He shook his head. “Lily didn’t have any money. Why else do you think she was working a double shift at Striker’s?”
“It’s not always about money,” Cadence replied. If only it were. Greed was easy to understand. The sadistic motives of the killers she had faced over the years? Not so easy. “It’s possible our perp might want to taunt the family, or…” Hate saying this, hate saying it… “If he has already killed Lily, then guilt might grow in him. He may feel the urge to reach out to the family. Even to confess his crimes.” She’d seen that happen, too.
Randall gave a low whistle. “That’s messed up.”
Killers often were. That was why they were killers.
“We’ll all need to stay in close contact,” Kyle said, his voice strong and hard. “If you discover anything, everyone needs to know. Lily Adams is out there, and we are going to locate her.”
It wasn’t a promise Cadence was ready to make. It was a vow Kyle shouldn’t have made.
Cadence had checked the weather report earlier that day. A major storm system was coming their way. They needed to hunt, before that storm hit. Because once it did, the storm would wash away any trace that Lily’s abductor might have left behind.
Mother Nature was going to work against them. That meant they had to work even faster, even harder, if they were going to beat her.
Then the doors to the station opened. A woman with graying hair and worried eyes stepped inside. A little girl, blonde, shaking, was at her side. Cadence recognized the girl from pictures she’d seen just a little while before.
Lily’s daughter. Carrie.
“Please,” the woman said, as she glanced around the station. “Please, tell me where my daughter is!”
Tears slid down the little girl’s cheeks.
Deep inside of Cadence, something seemed to break.
“What happened back there?” Kyle asked as the car they’d taken from the station slid to a stop. It was a patrol car, so it wasn’t like they were keeping a low profile as they headed toward Striker’s.
