Scream for Me (15 page)

“Maria—”

“If we get him, then we find out what happened to Maria.”

Kyle stared at her. No, glared. “I know her voice.”

She licked her lips, hurting for him.

“I never forgot her voice.” He glanced away, as if he couldn’t meet her stare any longer. “She was crying, then she was screaming.”

Cadence had to touch him. “Kyle.” Her fingers curled around his arm. It wasn’t enough.

“I should have been with her. If I’d gone on the trip like I was supposed to, she’d be with me now.”

“You can’t change the past.” Hadn’t she wished her own past would be different, again and again? “You didn’t hurt her.”

“I could have saved her. I didn’t.” He pulled away.

“We can’t save the world.” He should have known that truth by now.

But he kept walking, heading toward the excavation team.

“Sometimes,” Cadence whispered after him as she felt the ghosts from her own past slide around her, “we can’t even save ourselves.”

The agent had taken the bait.

You won’t find her
.

It must be absolute hell to spend so much time searching for what he’d never have again.

A life lived like that might just drive a man to the edge of sanity.

He would enjoy watching Kyle McKenzie fall into madness. The great agent. The hunter of killers.
You’re nothing compared to me
.

The bastard deserved to suffer.

And you will
.

He planned to make Kyle McKenzie suffer more than any other man had.

McKenzie had started them all down this path.

McKenzie’s name was the one that had ripped through too many nights. Maria’s big brother. The hero.

You think you’ve lost everything? Not even close. Not yet. But you will
.

It was time to prove that McKenzie wasn’t as damn smart as he thought he was. McKenzie didn’t deserve the fame and the attention in the papers.

McKenzie was nothing.
Not compared to me
.

When the FBI agent crumbled, he would be there to watch.

He’d be smiling the whole time.

“What are you doing?”

Cadence stiffened at the question. She’d shut the office door for a reason, but it looked like Detective Marsh had ignored the not-so-subtle cue for privacy.

She glanced over her shoulder and found him lounging in the doorway.

A few scrapes lined his cheek. A bruise skirted under his jaw. Otherwise, it looked as if he’d escaped the cave-in without any serious damage.

He stepped into the room. Left the door open behind him. “I was worried about you.” His voice had dropped. All warm, southern charm. His brown eyes glinted with his emotions. “I tried to crawl back to you.” He held up his hands, and she realized he did have more injuries. Cuts, lacerations, bandages. His hands had been ripped raw. “But I couldn’t get through. I ran out, got help, and we were going to dig our way to you. We weren’t going to stop, not until you were out.”

But they’d gotten out on their own. Brought Lily to safety.

“I didn’t leave you. Don’t think that.” His voice roughened.

Cadence shook her head. “I didn’t think you had. The stones fell so suddenly, Kyle and I were afraid you had been hurt. Killed.”

Jason shook his head. “It takes more than a bit of darkness to take me out.”

He was standing right in front of her. Staring at her with far too much intensity in his eyes.

“
Jason
.”

The cry was sharp, annoyed, and coming from the open doorway.

Cadence glanced over and saw Heather Crenshaw glaring at them.

“We’re needed back at the caverns,” Heather told him. “Captain said for us both to go.”

There was something in her voice, her gaze.

Heather’s stare cut to Cadence.

Jealousy
.

So Heather and Jason were more than just partners on the force.

“On my way,” Jason murmured. But his eyes drifted back to Cadence. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

“I wish the same could be said for all his victims,” she told him. Dani should be sending an updated missing-persons list to her at any time. Cadence needed to start matching victims to those tally marks. Because as soon as she understood the victims, then she could better understand the killer.

“If there are more bodies in that place,” Jason said, beside Heather now, “getting them out is gonna be hard. We can get to the one in the Statue of Liberty chamber, but any others…” He exhaled on a rough sigh. “You’re talking months of work. Maybe years, if it’s even possible.”

The cave-in had been so complete.

The killer had intended to cover his tracks. And he had.

“It’s a good thing I don’t give up easily,” Cadence said quietly.

He glanced back at her. “I don’t either.”

Then he and Heather were gone.

Cadence booted up her laptop. The Wi-Fi in the office was perfect. One good point for Paradox. She immediately opened her e-mail because Dani had told her that the files were incoming…

They were. As she scrolled through the information that Dani had sent to her, Cadence’s heartbeat felt too heavy in her chest.

Twelve names were listed, including Lily’s. Twelve women. Four states.

Alabama.

Georgia.

Twelve old missing cases.
But when you add Lily Adams to that list…

Thirteen. A perfect match to the tally marks that had been carved into the dirty cave wall.

“Did you get the intel from Dani?” Kyle asked as he came into the room.

Cadence didn’t look up at him. Right then, she couldn’t take her gaze off the screen. “Yes.”

Tennessee.

Mississippi.

The disappearances had been over such a vast amount of time. Across state lines.

The dots hadn’t been connected before. No one had put these women together.

She tapped on the keyboard. Her fingers were trembling.

Their cars had all been found, abandoned. These women had never been seen again.

According to the police reports, the women had gone missing at night, estimated at times between midnight and three a.m.

Her cheeks went cold as she read through the case files. The cars of the last two women taken—Laura Lassiter and Wendy Crighton—had been found on the side of the road, their gas tanks empty.

She’d been right when she thought the perp had done this before. Cadence just hadn’t realized how many times he’d committed the same attack.

She scanned the next victim file. Elizabeth Jennings. Elizabeth Jennings had disappeared after leaving her shift at St. Mary’s Hospital in Clydale, Georgia. Her car had been found, with a busted radiator, on the side of an old, two-lane highway.

Elizabeth had never been seen again after that.

Kyle came to stand behind her, reading over her shoulder. She tensed, hypersensitive to him, but she didn’t glance back. Right then, there was no way she could take her gaze from the laptop.

Another e-mail from Dani popped up on her screen. As she read it, her icy cheeks flushed.

I went back twenty years, just to be certain. Maria McKenzie was the earliest match I found
.

Finally, she had to glance up. Glance
back
at Kyle. His jaw was locked. His eyes glittered.

“She found them,” he said, but he didn’t sound like himself. She’d never heard such an empty, hollow tone from Kyle before. Kyle was passion and fire. This…this wasn’t him.

She stood and reached for his hand because she had to touch him right then. “It’s all preliminary, you know that. Right now, we’re just dealing with links, with cases that match up.” They’d have to dig deeper for more conclusive proof, but it was sure looking like a serial killer was at work.

A perpetrator who hunted women, who got them alone on dark, empty roads. He disabled their vehicles. He timed their abductions to fall in the dead of night, when no one would be around to offer help. He took those women. And no one ever saw them again.

Just. Like. Maria.

“The cases fit. The pattern is there.” In her behavioral sciences classes at Quantico, Cadence had always been told to look for the pattern.

She’d go back, study all of the victims, learn who they’d been, but first…
Kyle needs me
. After that call last night, a direct taunt from the killer aimed straight at Kyle, she had to make sure her partner was in control.

That he was safe.

Sane
. Because Cadence feared that the killer was trying to play a game with Kyle. A very deadly, twisted game.

She swallowed and told him what she’d learned from those files. “Three years after she vanished, another woman was taken.”

Three years.

Long enough for everyone to have forgotten Maria McKenzie. Everyone but her brother.

Her hand was still on Kyle’s. “After that, roughly a year later, another woman was taken. That’s the way it appears to have been since then, over and over, nearly a year passing in between disappearances.”

“
Why the hell didn’t someone know?
” He pulled away from her.

“He went across state lines. Four states.” She wanted to touch him again, but instead she balled her hands into fists. “Right now, right this
minute
…” He
knew
this. He knew the caseload authorities faced. “There are as many as one hundred thousand active
missing-persons cases being investigated.” So many cases and not enough investigators.

Details, patterns weren’t noticed. They slipped through the cracks.

“He took Maria.” Kyle gave a hard shake of his head. “He took her and the others.”

He
. The perp they hadn’t profiled. The serial killer they were just recognizing for exactly what he was.

“You said yourself,” she whispered. “Same city. Same abandoned vehicle.
Same date
.”

“He came back to where he started.” His voice was hollow, but his eyes burned with blue fire.

The killer had hunted again, in the place where the abductions had first begun.

“You’re sure she was the first?” he asked, his voice rasping.

Not 100 percent sure, but… “I can get Dani to keep looking, but she’s already gone back twenty years. Maria’s case was the first to match with the others.”

His hands had fisted. “The first is special.”

She could feel his pain. She
hated
it.

“That’s the spiel, isn’t it? With the first kill, something breaks in the serial—”

“Or is born.”

“He liked it.” That hollow voice hurt her. “He liked what he did to my sister, so he did it again and again, and no one stopped him. No one
cared
.”

She had to touch him. Cadence grabbed his shoulders, unable to hold back anymore. “You care. I care.” Her breath was coming too fast. Her heart racing too hard. “We’re here. We’re going to stop him.”

Did he even hear her? See her?

She shook him a little, tightening her hold on him. “He came back here for a reason. His first kill was here, for a reason.” He needed to think like an agent and think past the grief and rage. “Why, Kyle?
Why did he come here?
”

She needed him to say what she already knew.

His breath heaved out. “Paradox has meaning for him.”

The first kill was never random. Nothing about it was.

“That’s right,” she whispered. “It has meaning.” Then she whirled away from him and yanked down the map of the United States attached to the wall. She grabbed a pen, started circling cities. All of the cities in Dani’s files. The abduction sites.

Her palm was damp around the pen.

It slipped from her grip even as she put a star on Paradox. A star, because the city was nearly perfectly in the middle of the abduction sites on the map. “This could be his home base. He could still be here, Kyle.” The phone call that Kyle had received meant the perp had to be close enough to watch them.

“With Maria.” The words seemed torn from him.

She stilled.
Fifteen years
. “No.” Her voice was sad, soft. “He doesn’t still have Maria.”

Not after fifteen years.

Not after all of those other victims. In her experience, a killer only chose a new victim to take when—