They hadn’t wanted to head back into the nightmare. He’d seen that behavior time and time again. The only way to cope? Pretend it hadn’t happened.
“The third guy I visited wouldn’t open his door more than a few inches for me.”
Kyle tensed.
“According to the notes in the file, he’d been plenty cooperative during the initial investigation. He’d even been the one to identify the suspect, a male in his late forties, wearing a red pullover.” Ben’s lips tightened. “We never found the suspect. But when I was at that guy’s house, standing on the porch trying to get in, you know what I saw?”
No, he didn’t.
“I saw a girl’s bike propped against the side of his house. Now, see, the man didn’t have a little girl. He had a boy, one who’d been Sara’s age, but no girl. Sure, the bike could’ve just belonged to the kid’s friend, but the place felt off to me.”
Even Dani was watching him now. Her fingers had frozen over her keyboard.
“No matter what I said, I couldn’t get the guy to let me in his place, so I finally left. I left, but I came back and started watching the house. That night, he hurried from the house, with two kids with him. A blond boy and a blonde girl, a girl who would have been Sara’s age.”
Ben rubbed at the faint scar under his chin. Kyle had always wondered about that scar.
“I called out to him because I wanted a better look at the girl, and that was when he pulled the knife. He put it to her throat, and he told me that no one was taking his family away from him.”
Silence.
Dani shook her head. “What did you do?”
His fingers fell away from the scar. “I took his fucking family away. He sliced me, but I took him down. Got those kids back to the police station. The girl—”
“She was your missing Sara,” Cadence said.
He nodded. “Gone seven years, presumed dead. But very much alive.”
Kyle was getting the message. But seven years and fifteen—
“And the blond boy?” Ben continued as his eyes stayed locked on Kyle. “Turned out that guy wasn’t his father. The boy had been taken twelve years before. Stolen right out of a hospital in D.C.” He exhaled slowly and never looked away from Kyle. “Now, I’m going to ask you again, McKenzie, and I want a real answer. Do you think that was your sister on the phone?”
His hands had fisted. “It was her voice.”
“Is she alive? Or is he screwing with you? What does your gut say?”
Hope wouldn’t die. Not until he saw his sister’s body. “Yes, I believe Maria is alive.” He looked at Cadence. “I won’t ever believe otherwise, not until I see her body.” The brutal truth. He wouldn’t give up, he’d do anything necessary, until his sister was found.
Found either alive…or dead.
“That’s what I needed to hear.”
“Why the hell did you need to know that?”
Cadence watched him with worried eyes.
“Because,” Ben said, shrugging, “if you thought he’d killed your sister, then I’d have to worry you were just hunting him with the sole purpose of killing him. I needed to know you’d try to bring him in alive.” A pause. “We need him alive. I’ve got at least ten missing women and their family members are just like you. They won’t stop searching, not until they know…one way or the other.”
Then his gaze went to Cadence. “Are we all clear on this? A kill shot is our last resort with this guy. We want a live capture. We need it.”
“I’m clear,” Cadence said, her voice soft. “Don’t worry.”
“I do because if the perp does come for you—and it sure looks like he might—you take him down.”
“Take him down,” she repeated with a faint nod, “but just keep him alive.”
“That’s the plan.”
Dani whistled. “Guys, I’ve got something.”
Their attention immediately shifted to her.
“We’ve got a hit,” Danielle said, her voice cracking with excitement. “I found an owner of a Dodge Charger, a guy who lives about twenty miles from Christa Donaldson’s place. The search was easy, because the car links to Jake Landers.”
“Shirley Wayne’s jailbird ex,” Cadence clarified to Ben’s questioning look.
When Dani looked up from the screen, her smile was cold. “Jake Landers is ex-military, aged thirty-seven, and he has plenty of arrests on file. The first came over fifteen years ago, when the guy got drunk and put his girlfriend in the hospital for two weeks.”
Talk about fitting the profile to a T.
“Seems he didn’t like the fact she wanted to breakup with him,” Dani continued. “Our guy has a real problem letting women go.”
So did their perp.
“At least three women filed restraining orders against him over the years. The man sure has a problem with the concept of rejection.”
Or giving up what he wanted.
“What’s the address?” Kyle asked as he checked his weapon.
“Forty-five Old Mills Road.”
Hell, yes.
He headed for the door. Cadence was right by his side.
Ben hurried behind them. “Remember,” the boss directed, “alive.”
That was the goal.
But one way or another, the guy would be stopped.
The cabin sat in the middle of the woods, its small roof sloping, the porch sagging, and wood near the door rotting.
“This is it,” Kyle said as the glanced at Cadence. They were lead on the approach, heading in first with local backup right behind them. Backup that had been screened, cleared. No one was slipping by in a deputy’s uniform this time.
Cadence nodded, but her gaze, when it found his, was hooded. “Kyle, if this is his place, there could be trophies inside.”
Serial killers often kept mementos close to them.
“Can you handle that?” she asked him, worry threading through her voice.
“I can handle anything.” He wondered if that was the truth. When he’d thought the killer was targeting Cadence, hadn’t he been so desperate to save her that he’d run blindly into those woods? Not stopping when Dani shouted for him. Not stopping for anything, until he could see her.
They had men spreading out in the woods around the cabin. Securing the perimeter. The only road in was already blocked.
It was time to see what waited in that cabin.
He ran forward. They’d gotten a warrant easily enough. In a case like this one, the small-town judge sure hadn’t been about to say no to the FBI. When he reached the door, Kyle shouted, “FBI!”
There was no sound from inside.
He didn’t want to give the guy any chance to hide or destroy evidence, so he kicked in the door and rushed in, staying low, while Cadence covered him with her gun.
The smell hit him almost instantly. The stench of decay. Rot.
Flesh.
She was waiting for them. Tied to a chair, her head sagging forward. Her red hair trailed over her, concealing her face.
Not bones. Flesh.
“Fuck,” he bit off.
The bastard had kept a trophy right in front of him.
Cadence approached the body cautiously.
“How long?” Kyle demanded.
Cadence’s breath came heavily. “We need the ME to be sure.”
Bullshit. Cadence knew bodies. She’d even spent time at a body farm last summer, a place that should have sent her spiraling into nightmares but hadn’t.
“A week,” she whispered as she bent over the woman. “I think she’s been dead for about a week.”
That would explain why their guy had gone out collecting again. He’d lost—killed—his girl.
He had to find another.
Kyle backed up, his gaze taking in the area. The small kitchen. The closet-sized bathroom to the right side. This section of the cabin was clear. To the left, a small, snaking hallway led to darkness.
The floor creaked beneath his feet as he advanced down the h
allway.
He could hear the soft rustle of Cadence’s steps behind him.
His fingers curled around the doorknob. It looked like this place only had one bedroom.
He turned the knob. The door swung open easily, but there was no light inside the room.
Was the killer waiting in there?
He crouched low as he entered, not wanting to present a target. His flashlight swept the room.
An old bed. A small desk. A wooden chair.
Nothing else.
No one else.
His hand flew out, searching along the wall near the door. Then his fingers were flipping the light switch.
The bulb flickered, then pulsed with light.
No, the guy wasn’t there. Just the body he’d left behind.
Kyle turned toward the desk again, then realized there was something on it.
Cadence had already seen it. She was staring down at the desk’s surface, the gun gripped tightly in her hand. “It’s him,” she whispered.
Yeah, the body in the other room had pretty much confirmed that.
He crossed to her side, and realized she was looking at sketches. Nearly a dozen of them. Painstakingly detailed, charcoal sketches.
Of the missing women. He recognized their faces.
His gloved hand pushed aside some of the sketches.
Maria. His sister’s image stared up at him. Not a smiling, happy Maria. Not the vision of her that he struggled so hard to keep in his mind.
This Maria was afraid. Her lips were pressed tightly together. Her eyes wide.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Kyle!” Cadence grabbed him and pulled him back. “Focus on me, Kyle, got it?”
He blinked and realized that a haze of red—fury—had covered his vision.
Cadence tapped the small transmitter on her ear. The transmitter linked her to everyone in the search group. “He’s not in the cabin, but we have an affirmative. This is our perp. Keep searching the woods and get the dogs out here.”
Kyle’s heartbeat thundered in his ears. His gaze slid back to that picture. Maria. His Maria.
She wasn’t a trophy for that bastard. She was my sister.
“There will be something here with his scent on it,” Cadence told him. “We’ll check the whole place.”
He knew they would. They’d search every crevice for clues. They’d run down the paper used in those sketches. Figure out where the guy had gotten his charcoal. They’d tear his life apart and take him down.
Kyle’s gaze held Cadence’s. He choked back the rage and gritted out, “If he’s running, if he’s hiding out there, we will find him.”
The dogs raced through the woods, searching even as the sun began to set. Kyle ran right after them, not about to be left behind, because they had a scent.
The dogs were barking, so excited they were nearly dragging their handlers, and they’d found their prey.
You won’t get away.
They’d found clothing in the cabin. A man’s shirt, size large. Some hiking boots, size twelve. The dogs had the scent, and now they had him.
They crested a small rise, then dove into a thick patch of pines. Their handlers were fighting to keep the dogs in check. They had him.
The dogs stopped. They were pawing at the ground.
At the loose dirt.
The handlers pulled them back. Two deputies started to carefully brush away some of the dirt.
“Stop!” Kyle’s voice snapped out. He could see the remains already.
The flash of white bone. The piece of cloth that one of the dogs’ paws had caught.
“Another victim?” a female deputy asked.
He wasn’t sure. The scent the dogs followed should have belonged to Jake Landers.
But if Jake Landers was in the ground…
Then who has been killing?
Cadence stretched, her spine aching as she finally stepped away from the exam table. She’d been working with the county coroner for most of the night.
First on the redhead they’d found tied in the cabin.
Then on the second set of remains brought in by the deputies.
She studied the files that she’d prepared one more time. There was no denying the evidence on the female victim.
“Why did he just leave her in that house?”
She glanced over at the coroner’s voice. Kathy Warren had been incredibly thorough during the exams. All business. Now, Cadence saw the faint moisture at the corner of her eye as Kathy glanced at the remains.
“I don’t know,” Cadence said.
Kathy swallowed. “I used to work in Nashville. Started in the ER. I saw plenty of murder cases come across my table up there.” Her breath blew out as she pulled off her gloves and tossed them in the disposal. “It was the kids who were the hardest. Seeing what people can do to them.”
That was the hardest for Cadence, too.
“Why’d he leave her there? Why’d he just let her rot?”
Sometimes, people shouldn’t ask questions, not when they really didn’t want to hear the answers. Cadence pressed her lips together, but Kathy just waited. The faint ticking of the clock on the left wall sounded incredibly loud. Cadence finally said, “Maybe he didn’t want to let her go.”
Kathy flinched.
Cadence tossed away her own gloves. The team would be waiting for her upstairs. She strode from the room before Kathy could ask any more questions the woman would be better off not getting answered.
The morgue doors swung shut behind her. She climbed the stairs slowly. The morgue was located in the basement of the sheriff’s office, so it only took her a few moments to make her way to the FBI’s temporary home.
They’d made copies of the sketches. Pinned them to the walls. The originals would be checked very thoroughly to see if any prints had been left behind. To see if the paper itself could be traced, the type of charcoal used tracked down.
The FBI labs would go over every inch of those sketches. If there was a clue to be found there, they’d discover it.
“Agent Hollow!” She paused and glanced over her shoulder. The coroner was breathing quickly, and she had a file in her hands. “Just got the dental report back on the male.”
Cadence took the file. “Thank you.” The twist in her gut told her this wasn’t going to be the news the task force wanted to hear.
She opened the door and headed inside. Dani looked up from her computer. Ben frowned at Cadence. Kyle didn’t look her way. He was still staring at the sketch of his sister.
She cleared her throat. After a moment, Kyle glanced up and then over at her, blinking, as if he’d just stepped out of a daze.
“We have an ID on the remains that were dug up.” Her breath eased slowly from her lungs, feeling cold. She rolled her shoulders. They were tight with tension that wasn’t going away. She opened the file. The tension got worse as she read the results. Her stomach knotted. Before she could speak, Kyle said—
“Landers?”
That was what she’d feared—and it was what the report showed. Cadence nodded. “Yes, Landers has been identified from his dental work.” Her gaze scanned the file. His ID had been confirmed from two sources. Dental records and from an old knee surgery he’d had years before. The bones—the only things remaining—were definitely Jake’s.
“How long has he been dead?” The question was Ben’s. He was tapping his fingers on the table, a gesture that from anyone else would have indicated nervousness. With Ben, it meant he was trying to connect the puzzle pieces.
“Quite some time,” she murmured. And this was where things were going to get even worse for their investigation. She’d determined this part herself during the exam. “At least four years.”
Kyle swore.
Cadence wet her lips, which felt far too dry. “I’m waiting for more testing, but I believe his body was moved recently, that it was put out there in those woods. The clothes we found in the cabin were put there for us. I think the scene was staged.” A trail for
them to follow. “The killer wanted us to know Jake Landers wasn’t the perp.” She closed the folder.
Ben’s hands flattened on the table. “He wanted to make sure he got the credit. He wanted us to know he’d taken all those girls.”
Time to tell them all the rest. A last minute report wasn’t needed on this one. She knew all the details. “Dental records also helped us to ID our female vic,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck. The muscles there had clamped down, squeezing too tightly. “She’s Judith Lynn, originally from Tampa, Florida. She was headed up to Chicago.”
“Four years ago,” Kyle said.
Right. Judith was one of the victims Dani had pulled for them. Back in Paradox, her driver’s license photo was on their victim board.
And in Maverick, her sketch was just to the left of Kyle. His gaze cut to the sketch, then back to Cadence.
She’s not missing any longer. Four years. Cadence suspected that Jake Landers had been killed right before Judith’s abduction. He’d been killed and his cabin and land had been used by the man who would later dump Jake’s body in the woods.
Cadence pushed a copy of her report—and the coroner’s file on Landers—toward Ben. “She never made it to her aunt’s place, and she’s been listed as missing since then.”
Kyle squared his shoulders. “You’ve finished examining her body.”
Not really a question, but she still softly said, “Yes.”
“She disappeared four years ago,” Kyle repeated. “So how long has she been dead?”
This was the most painful part. “Based on the decomposition and the presence of insects…” It was the insects that could tell them so much about the time of death.
She saw Dani shudder.
Cadence cleared her throat and said, “The ME and I both agreed Judith Lynn was killed approximately six days ago.”