Scream for Me (24 page)

“Drop it!” Cadence yelled.

He hesitated.

“Drop it or I shoot.”

“Ma’am?”

He dropped the weapon.

She advanced. Cleared the brush enough to realize…

This man wasn’t wearing hiking boots. He had on the regular black shoes of the deputies. The breath left her lungs in a hard rush.
Not him
. “Where’s the other deputy? The one who just came this way?”

“I didn’t see another deputy. This was my search zone.” His voice was shaking. His eyes wide and nervous.

Probably because her gun was aimed at his heart.

“
Cadence!
” Kyle rushed to her side. “What the hell is happening?” He already had his gun out, and aimed at the deputy whose whole body was now trembling.

“It’s not him,” she whispered. “There was another man, dressed as a deputy. He had on hiking boots.” Her gaze darted to Kyle as she lowered her weapon. “He was right here.”

A muscle jerked in Kyle’s clenched jaw.

She glanced away from him. Let her gaze sweep the line of trees stretching as far as she could see.

The killer was playing with them.

She was tired of his game.

CHAPTER TEN

The FBI unit director was pissed.

Special Agent Ben Griffin marched back and forth in Sheriff Coolidge’s small office. Since the man was still in the hospital—recovering, thankfully—they’d taken over his space while they were in Maverick.

“What the hell is happening here?” Ben demanded. “A witness is
dead
. On our watch. Do you know how this is gonna look to the press?
In
the press?”

Kyle didn’t really give a damn how it looked to them.

But the killer cares
. Kyle knew he did. The SOB had brought up the papers.
You want the attention, don’t you?
He’d hunted fifteen years in secrecy, but now he was trying to catch as much attention as he could. Shooting a sheriff. Dumping a body at the diner.
You want all eyes on you
.

And they were.

“This perp is jerking us around,” Ben snapped. “He’s slipping right through our fingers.”

He’d been in those woods. Killing close to Cadence.

Ben’s steely blue gaze pinned him. “You know you should be off the case.”

Kyle lurched to his feet. “The hell I should!”

Ben waved that away. “It’s too personal. The connection to your sister, the way this fellow is calling you. You can’t be objective.”

He wasn’t going to be shoved to the side on this one. “It’s
because
of my connection that you need me. He’s not going to contact any other agents. He won’t. He’s pulling me in because he likes screwing with me.”

“It’s a dangerous game,” Ben said. His stare focused on Cadence. She sat in the chair just a few feet away. “One that could wind up hurting someone.”

Ben had already been briefed on the phone calls. He knew everything the perp had said. Everything he’d threatened.

“I’m not afraid of him,” Cadence said, lifting her chin.

“I am,” Dani muttered from her position behind the desk. She was tapping frantically on her laptop.

Ben glowered at Cadence. The guy had trained her, even worked as her partner before his promotion. Sometimes when he looked at Cadence, there was an intimacy in his stare that put Kyle on edge.

Had they been lovers?

“You’re never afraid when you
should
be,” Ben muttered to Cadence. “That’s part of the problem. The guy said he was targeting
you
. He was going to take you out. If he’d been better with his gun, you wouldn’t even be here now.”

Ben’s attention turned back to Kyle. “Don’t you see the risk we’re running? You’re already emotionally involved. He’s using that. Getting you twisted up so you can’t effectively hunt him.”

“All he’s doing”—Kyle kept his voice flat, cold, because now wasn’t the time for emotions—“is making me more determined to stop him.” He gave a grim nod. “He’s slipping up.”

A furrow appeared between Ben’s dark brows.

“He’s too confident, cocky, when he talks to me. He said he knew we’d only found one body in the Paradox caverns.”

Ben’s gaze narrowed. “We didn’t release any information about the remains to the press.”

No, they hadn’t. Cadence had been very, very careful during the press conference.

But when they’d briefed their task force in Paradox, he and Cadence had told
them
.

“He’s involved in the investigation,” Ben said.

Yes. “You know it happens. Killers insinuate themselves in the investigation all the time,” Kyle said. The perps did it to keep tabs on the investigation—and because they liked the rush of thinking that they were outsmarting the authorities. This perp was all about competing with the authorities. The guy wanted to show them all just how strong he was.

“He was wearing a deputy’s uniform today,” Cadence said and she rolled her shoulders, as if pushing away a heavy burden. “He got everything right about the outfit, except for his shoes.”

The bastard had gone hunting for her, but when he’d approached her in those woods, he must have realized Cadence had already been alerted.

She’d been waiting with a gun.
So you had to back away, didn’t you?

“I checked all the deputies after I met up with Kyle. They were accounted for. This guy slipped into the perimeter, and I’m guessing he’s done it before.”

“He could have walked right into the Paradox station,” Kyle said. “Passed by the officers there just as easily as he did today.”

With a hat pulled low to hide his face. The right clothes, a badge. The badge would get you anyplace.

A lesson the killer had learned.

“The press is calling him the Night Hunter.” Ben barred his teeth in a grimace. “You know how I hate those fucking names. You give a serial a name, you give him power. Fame. They just kill all the more.”

Dani stopped talking and slanted a fast glance at Ben. “He killed two girls in the last twelve hours. I think we’re safely in the ‘kill all the more’ zone already.”

She went back to typing.

Ben went back to studying Kyle with that narrowed gaze. “You heard your sister’s voice again. In the second call.”

A slow nod.

“Is it a recording or the real deal?”

“There’s too much static, I can’t tell for certain.”

Ben wasn’t backing off. “You tell me the truth ’cause you know I’m damn good at catching a lie. Do you think your sister is still alive? Even after all this time?”

Kyle could feel the weight of Cadence’s stare on him. “I want to believe she’s alive.”

“That’s not an answer,” Ben snapped, sounding aggrieved. “Do better.”

“The killer wants me to think some of the girls are still alive. He all but said they were.”

“Killers lie,” Cadence stated as she pushed back her hair with a tired hand. “It’s what they do.”

When they weren’t killing.

“There could be other bodies in those caverns.” Cadence’s voice was cautious. He knew she didn’t want to tell him that his sister was dead.

Even though that was precisely what she thought.

“Or someplace else,” Ben added. “The guy’s hunting grounds sure stretch far enough.” Then Ben scrubbed a hand over his face.
“You know how I caught the FBI’s attention? Back when I was a cop, hitting the streets of Brooklyn?”

Kyle shook his head.

“I was running down a cold case. A little girl, five years old, who’d vanished from a shopping mall. Every year—every single year on July seventh, the parents came to the station, looking for their little girl. Hoping we had some news. Hoping we had something.” His gaze had turned to the past. “When the date started rolling around, the other cops would get nervous. They’d all but told those parents they weren’t ever getting the girl back. It had been seven years. Hell, you know what the odds are on a recovery like that.”

They all knew the grim stats.

“I got cold case duty, I read through the files, and I thought, ‘Hey, why not?’ Why not just go back and see if any witness remembers anything else? Why not try to give the parents something new this time?” He swallowed. For an instant, his gaze seemed haunted. “The girl was playing at a park when she vanished. I had a list of the parents who’d had their kids there that day. I started on the list. The first two didn’t remember jack. When I went to question them, their kids were running behind them, playing, and I could tell they just wanted me to get away from them.”

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.