I poured Jade a cup of the coffee that I’d brewed and set it in front of her. She leaned over and breathed in the rich fumes, waking up a bit more, before grabbing the cup and taking a sip of the hot, dark liquid.
She gagged, almost spitting it right back out again. “What—what is this? Because it is most certainly not coffee.”
“Sure it is. Chicory coffee. I had a bag of it stashed in the emergency supplies in my trunk. You were out of your regular brew, so I had to use it instead.”
She frowned. “You keep coffee in your car?”
“Sure. Coffee, granola bars, bottled water, knives, healing ointment. The usual.”
“But why coffee?” she asked. “What kind of assassin emergency requires chicory coffee?”
“Finnegan Lane.”
Jade gave me a puzzled look.
“You do not want to talk to Finn in the morning before he’s had his coffee. It’s like trying to communicate with a bear that’s just woken up from hibernating. Glares, grumbling, and gnashing teeth. It’s not pretty, not pretty at all.”
I sat down with my own plate and nudged hers a little closer to her elbow. “Now, eat up.”
Jade stared at the food. After a moment, she shook her head. “Sorry, but I just don’t feel like eating. Not when I know that Elissa is out there somewhere, that she probably hasn’t had a meal in hours . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she blinked back the tears in her eyes. “So what’s our next move?”
“Our next move?”
“Our next move,” she repeated. “I’m with you on this, Gin. Every single step of the way.”
I shoveled some food into my mouth, giving myself time to think. Despite the few ingredients that I’d had to work with, the scrambled eggs were light and fluffy, with a sharp, gooey tang from the cheese, while the potatoes had the perfect amount of spices and crispy brown edges. Normally, I would have thoroughly enjoyed the food, but thinking about Elissa and what she might be going through made everything taste like burned toast—dry, brittle, and utterly unappealing. Still, I forced myself to take bite after bite. No doubt today would be another long day, and I would need all the energy I could get to keep going.
Jade stared at me, wanting an answer, so I sighed and put down my fork.
“I know you want to be there for Elissa. I know you want to find her more than anything else. I know that you would give anything for that to happen.”
“But?”
I let out a breath and made my voice as gentle as I could. “But we might not find Elissa. We might not find her alive. We might not find her at all—ever.”
Jade flinched, as though I’d slapped her. She dropped her head, leaned back in her seat, and crossed her arms over her chest, as if she were trying to shield herself from the ugly truth of my words. After several long, tense seconds, she raised her head and looked at me again, tears shimmering in her eyes.
“I know that.” Her voice was as soft and serious as mine had been. “I don’t like it, but I know it. I know that she could already be . . . dead.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and she had to clear her throat before she could continue. “But she’s my sister, and if I don’t do everything that I can to find her, then I will never be able to live with myself. Surely you can understand that, Gin.”
“I do understand that.” I gave her a hard, serious look. “But if you want to be involved, then you have to play by my rules, and you have to do what I say, when I say it. I might have to do some nasty things to find Elissa. Things that would turn anyone’s stomach. If you don’t want to be involved in those things, I understand.”
Jade’s mouth tightened, and her chin lifted. “I don’t care who you have to hurt or what you have to do to them. I’ll stand right by your side and hand you the damn knives myself if it means getting my sister back.”
Determination flashed in her eyes, and I knew that she meant every single word. Jade would do whatever it took to find Elissa. Still, she would be emotional and vulnerable, no matter how much she tried to keep her worry and fear in check. But I could be cold, hard, and strong enough for both of us. And Jade was right. I couldn’t shut her out. I wouldn’t have been able to stand aside if Bria was missing.
“All right, then,” I said, picking up my fork again. “Gin’s first rule. Eat your breakfast.”
Jade opened her mouth like she was going to protest that she couldn’t possibly eat a single bite, but I stabbed my fork at her.
“Gin’s second rule. Do not argue with assassins carrying multiple knives. Ever.”
For a second, a ghost of a smile pulled up her lips. “Yes, ma’am.”
I nodded. “Now, that’s more like it.”
• • •
I forced myself to finish the rest of my food. Jade merely picked at hers, but at least she ate a few bites and grudgingly sipped the chicory coffee. Better than nothing.
After breakfast, we both got to work. Jade called her employees, telling them that she had a personal matter and they should all take the day off. I made a call of my own, then went outside, grabbed a fresh set of clothes out of the supplies in the trunk of my car, and took a shower.
At nine o’clock sharp, a polite knock sounded at the front door. Jade and I were back in the kitchen, and she almost jumped up out of her chair at the sudden noise.
“Who could that be?” Jade asked.
“Reinforcements.”
We went into the office in the front of the house. The knock came again, a little louder and more insistent than before. I rolled my eyes at his impatience, but I still double-checked to make sure that it was him before I unlocked and opened the door.
Silvio was waiting outside, his phone in one hand and his tablet case resting in the crook of his other elbow. “Finally. I was wondering if you were going to make me stand outside all morning.”
“The thought never crossed my mind,” I quipped.
“Uh-huh.” He arched his eyebrows and stepped inside the house. “Jade.”
“Silvio.” She nodded at him.
My assistant looked around, his gray eyes brightening with appreciation as he took in all the desks, computers, and other equipment. “Finally. A real office. This will do quite nicely.”
He went over to the closest desk and put down his phone and tablet case. Then he headed back outside, returning a minute later with a large cardboard box. Back and forth Silvio went, until a dozen cardboard boxes were stacked in the corner.
“What’s all this?” Jade asked in a puzzled voice.
Silvio set down the last box. “Everything that the Ashland Police Department has on the Dollmaker.”
Jade stared at all the boxes, her face creasing into a frown. “All those boxes, all those files inside. It would take an army to go through all of that information.”
He flashed her a smile. “Don’t worry. Help is on the way.”
Sure enough, less than five minutes later, another knock sounded at the front door. Jade opened it to find Finn, Bria, and Owen standing outside. They all trooped into the house and murmured their hellos to us.
The fourth and final person at the back of the pack surprised me: Dr. Ryan Colson. He’d changed out of his blue scrubs and was now wearing black boots, black corduroy pants, and a dark blue sweater under a black leather jacket. Despite the fact that he’d probably been up all night, performing an autopsy on the Dollmaker’s latest victim, he looked as calm and steady as always. Then again, I supposed that he was used to working hard, long, and odd hours, given his job.
“I’m sorry to just barge in like this, but Bria told me what you were doing.” He looked over at Jade, who was staring at the boxes of information again. Sympathy and understanding filled his face. “I’d like to help, if you’ll let me.”
“Of course, Ryan. Come on in.”
He stepped inside, took off his jacket, and hung it up on a rack i
n the corner.
“Any news on the dead woman?” I asked.
“We got an ID on her—Lacey Lawrence,” he said. “Missing since last week. Vanished after working her shift at a clothing store in Northtown. Xavier’s tracking down her family so they can be notified.”
“What about your autopsy? Any new clues there?”
He shook his head. “Nothing that I haven’t seen before with the other victims. She had been dead at least twenty-four hours before you found her, just like I thought. I also sent off a sample of the lipstick to a lab guy who owes me a favor. I’m hoping that he gets back to me today with the color and brand. Maybe I’ll know more then.”
“Thanks, Ryan.”
He nodded at me and looked at Jade again. He hesitated, then went over and said something to her that I couldn’t hear. She nodded back at him before her gaze locked onto the boxes again.
“Now that we’re all here,” Silvio said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, “let’s get cracking.”
There were few things that my assistant loved more than organizing, whether it was people, information, or both, as in this case. Silvio made us each take a separate desk, and he assigned each of us a single box to start with. We all settled down and got to work, cracking open our boxes, digging into the files inside, and reading through the information, trying to find some clue that would lead us to the Dollmaker and where he might be holding Elissa.
My box was about Sandra Reeves, the killer’s very first victim, two years ago. At least, she was the first victim Ryan knew of so far. Twenty-three, blond, pretty. Sandra had worked as a waitress at the Cake Walk, another downtown Ashland restaurant, before she’d disappeared one night after her shift. Her body had been found two weeks later dumped in a park that fronted the Aneirin River, not too far away from Lorelei Parker’s shipping yard. Beaten and strangled, with traces of makeup and blood-red lipstick all over her bruised, battered face.
And that was it. That was all the pertinent information in the file. The police had interviewed Sandra’s friends and family and had taken a long, hard look at her boyfriend, but none of them seemed likely to have killed her, and the cops didn’t have any other leads. No one with a grudge against Sandra, no one she owed money to, no one with any reason to hurt her.
I flipped back to the beginning of the file and read through all the info again, but nothing changed, and I didn’t get any brilliant new insights.
I examined a photo of Sandra’s swollen face that was included in the file. Young, blond, pretty. At least before the Dollmaker had gotten his hands on her. I knew rage when I saw it, and this bastard was chock-full of it. Once he’d started beating Sandra, he hadn’t stopped until she was dead, and he hadn’t been too particular about where or how hard he hit her. He’d broken her nose, her ribs, and both of her collarbones.
But there was no real clue in anything that the killer had done to Sandra. In fact, the only real, tangible clue we had was the spider runes that had been drawn on the palms of Lacey Lawrence, the latest victim.
Silvio had given me photos of the marks, and I picked them up and studied them. But in each one, I saw the exact same thing as before: a circle with eight thin rays radiating out of it, all done in blood-red lipstick.
Disgusted, I threw down the photos, and they both glided to a stop right next to that photo of Sandra Reeves’s beaten face. I glared at all three pictures, but then I noticed the one, single, striking difference between them.
How battered and broken the girl was compared with how very neat and precise the spider runes were.
At some point during his sadistic ritual, the Dollmaker had flown into a deadly rage and killed the poor girl he’d abducted. Girl after girl beaten and strangled, with no change in the pattern at all.
But the spider runes were different. These marks had been drawn with a cold, steady, dispassionate hand. No smudges, no hesitation lines, no places where he’d stopped and started or traced over the runes. It was almost as if . . . maybe . . . possibly . . . the symbols had been drawn by someone other than the Dollmaker.
I frowned and rocked back in my chair, mulling over that disturbing new possibility. But how could that have even happened? The Dollmaker had dumped Lacey Lawrence at Northern Aggression and had kidnapped Elissa to take her place. So if a second person was involved, he would have had to come across Lacey’s body at Northern Aggression sometime after the killer had left it there, pulled out a tube of lipstick, and drawn the marks on her palms. What kind of person would do that? And who went around carrying blood-red lipstick in their pocket?
But if there was a second person involved and he knew who the Dollmaker was and had maybe even followed the killer to Northern Aggression, then why didn’t he call in an anonymous tip to the police? Why not try to save Elissa himself? Why draw my runes on the dead girl instead?
My head pounded with all the questions, speculations, and what-ifs. I felt like I was snared in someone else’s spiderweb, and everything I did only made the sticky threads twist and tangle tighter and tighter around me. Nothing about this made any sense, and Elissa was running out of time for me to figure it out.
“Does anyone have anything useful?” Finn growled, throwing down a stack of papers on top of his desk. “Because I have fuck-all nothing. No fingerprints, no DNA, nothing that could lead us back to the killer. This guy is a ghost. He’s a sick fucking ghost, and I have no idea how we’re going to find him.”
Owen shook his head. “I don’t have anything either. Nothing that would tell us who or where this guy is.”
Silvio shook his head too. “Nor do I.”
Ryan sighed. “Nothing here that I haven’t seen a dozen times before.”
Bria also tossed her papers down, as disgusted and frustrated as everyone else. “How do you think Ryan, Xavier, and I feel? We’ve been looking into this guy for months now, and he’s killed several more women in that time span. Soon he’ll have another murder on his résumé, and we’ll be getting a call about Elissa’s body being found somewhere.”
A tense, heavy silence dropped over the office. Bria winced, knowing that she’d said the wrong thing. Jade slowly pushed back from her desk and got to her feet, a sick, stricken look on her face. Bria opened her mouth to apologize, but Jade held out her hand and shook her head. She left the office and went into the back of the house. A second later, a door banged shut, making all of us flinch.
“Dammit,” Bria snarled, massaging her temples. “I wasn’t thinking.”
To my surprise, Ryan got to his feet. “It’s okay. Jade knows that. We all know that. I’ll go talk to her.” A grim smile twisted his lips. “I’m good at dealing with grieving folks.”
He too disappeared into the back of the house. A soft knock sounded, and a few seconds later, a door creaked open. A short, muffled conversation took place, and the door shut much more quietly than it had before.
That left Bria, Finn, Owen, Silvio, and me in the office. That tense, heavy silence fell over us for a second time, but Bria sighed and picked up her files again. So did Finn, Owen, and Silvio, and we all went back to work.
Since I hadn’t found anything in the first box of information, I grabbed a second one from the stacks in the corner, took it over to my desk, and cracked it open. The very first thing that caught my eye was the victim’s name: Joanna Mosley.
Mosley? As in Stuart Mosley, the president of First Trust bank? The man who’d hired Elissa to be his date the night she disappeared? No, no way. It couldn’t be.
But it was.
Sure enough, Stuart Mosley was listed as Joanna’s great-grandfather, and he’d leaned on the police hard, demanding that they find out who’d murdered her, according to the detectives’ notes. But those detectives hadn’t had any more luck than Bria and Xavier, and the case had gone unsolved, much to Mosley’s frustration and disappointment.
Even though I knew exactly
what I would find, I still flipped through the file until I came to some photos of Joanna, both before and after her murder. Young, blond, pretty—at least until she’d been beaten and strangled. No wonder Mosley had told Elissa that she reminded him of his granddaughter. Joanna could have been Elissa’s sister, along with the rest of the Dollmaker’s victims.
“Finn,” I said. “Come take a look at this.”
He and the others gathered around my desk, and I showed them the file.
Owen let out a low whistle. “It really is a small world, isn’t it?”
“When it comes to crime in Ashland?” Silvio sighed. “Unfortunately so.”
Finn picked up a headshot of Joanna that showed her before she’d been murdered. “I remember when Mosley’s granddaughter died, since he took a leave of absence, but he kept it quiet, and I never heard exactly what happened to her. His wife passed away just a few months later, and he took another leave of absence then.”
“You don’t really think that Mosley knows anything about Elissa, do you?” Bria asked. “Xavier and I have looked into him and all the other victims’ families. We didn’t find anything suspicious.”
“No. He’s not the killer. His alibi checks out, and he was nowhere near Northern Aggression when Elissa was taken.” I looked at Finn. “But I still want to talk to him.”
“What do you think Mosley will tell you that this file doesn’t?” Finn asked.
“I don’t know. Mosley probably doesn’t know any more than any of the other victims’ families do, but it’s worth a shot,” I said. “It’s not even a real lead—it’s a coincidence, perhaps—but it’s all we have right now. And like Bria said, Elissa is running out of time.”
For the third time, that somber silence swept over us.
Finn nodded. “I’ll make the call.”
16
Finn called Mosley and asked if we could come over. Mosley agreed, even though Finn didn’t tell him exactly what we wanted. Bria got a text from Xavier, saying that he’d found Lacey Lawrence’s parents and asking her to come help him do the death notification and follow-up interviews. So we all decided to take a break for a couple of hours, attend to our business, and come back and look at the files with fresh eyes.