Strings of Fate (Mistresses of Fate) (30 page)

“Any sign of the van?” he asked the deputy who had arrived first at the location.

“No, sir. No van. All’s pretty quiet over here. We’ve checked the parking garage and surrounding streets.”

Ryan was pissed; he had this nagging feeling that he was missing something important. “I had an idea earlier that we should be checking the commercial spaces as well. This guy isn’t an unsub that blends in the way most do. He would stand out as strange in a public environment. Most likely he would avoid society if possible. We’re checking into possible connections, but I say we go ahead and take a look around the buildings in this circle and its surroundings.” He pointed at the deputies. “You two keep the reporters back in the circle. Agents, check the parking lots and garages for white vans and gold sedans.”

Ryan pulled up the details of Martha Cooper’s car. “I can send you the license plate number of the other vehicle we think he might be driving.”

“Sounds good,” Agent Bennett agreed, and rattled off her contact information.

They split up in separate directions, the deputies heading west toward Dog with Two Bones to hold the reporters,
while the two agents headed to the north part of the circle. Ryan retrieved his own flashlight and headed across the street toward the library on the east side. It was closed, but there was a car in the lot, a sedan. He checked the plate, but it didn’t match Martha Cooper’s. He did see something interesting, though: a pink backpack, with a yoga mat sticking out of the top.

He picked it up, a sick feeling in his stomach. A yoga mat likely meant one of Chris’s students. She was supposed to have had class yesterday until the dog incident had canceled it.

He glanced around, walking to the edge of the library parking lot, where a chain-link fence separated it from the railroad tracks. On the other side of the tracks, the bedraggled cemetery looked to Ryan like something out of a Tim Burton movie, complete with a huge oak tree in one corner.

Though he was certain his time would be better spent checking the various buildings in the circle, he decided to make sure there was no other evidence, so he crossed over the tracks and opened a rusty gate that wouldn’t keep a two-year-old out. Feeling vaguely ridiculous, like he was invading the privacy of the dead, he quickly flashed his light over the gravestones, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. When he glanced toward the big oak tree, though, he thought he saw someone move. Quickly he headed in that direction, his hand on his weapon, light scanning his surroundings.

After advancing about a hundred feet, he realized that what he’d seen must have just been a shadow from the tree in the tricky dawn light; he saw nothing out of the ordinary, just the gnarled oak and what looked like a tiny cross. He continued walking toward it, curiosity compelling him.

He bent down, and it took him a moment to make out the faded letters on the cross, which looked handmade by children, the letters slightly crooked.

“ ‘Summer Haven,’ ” he read out loud, and felt the hair on the back of his neck lift. “Chris.”

Dread washed over him. Irrational, completely unsubstantiated dread. He hesitated, uncertain why he felt so terrified. He didn’t trust the feeling.

Sweeping the area with his flashlight for threats, he left the cemetery abruptly, heading back to where he’d met the agents earlier. To his surprise, the woman, Bennett, was heading back in his direction, her phone held to her ear.

“Yes, sir,” she was saying. She glanced up. “He’s headed my way now, sir. I’ll tell him.”

She hung up. “Three teenage girls have gone missing from Fate.”

“I found—” Helmer began, but she held up a hand to cut him off.

“You should also know that one of the reporters told the deputy that Ms. Pascal drove off in her SUV shortly after you left. She’s been gone at least fifteen minutes. Midaugh is on his way here with the rest of the team.”

“Damn it.” Ryan was already dialing as he ran to his car.

When Midaugh answered, Ryan barked, “Which way did she head out of town?”

“She evaded the reporters by taking side streets and turning down a private drive. She was headed in the general direction of the mountain ridges to the northwest.”

Ryan thought of what she’d written the unsub, about the woods and where she’d once played with her friend Summer. “I think I can guess where she’s headed. Send me the address of Tavey Collins’s home. Also, I found a backpack in the library parking lot that looks like it belongs to a teenager. There were schoolbooks and a yoga mat. How long have those three girls been missing?”

“Since yesterday evening. They stay at the library after school until it’s time for their yoga class. I don’t suppose their yoga teacher could be someone other than Ms. Pascal?”

“I believe she’s the only one. Why weren’t they reported missing sooner?”

“Apparently their mother was told they could be found using a spell, but she called us this morning when the spell cast by someone named Circe didn’t work.” Midaugh’s opinion of this explanation was clear in his flat tone and crisp consonants. He didn’t come right out and say, “Goddamn idiot woman,” but Ryan got the gist.

“Just great. I know these girls—they’re not just teenagers; they’re identical teenagers. Their aunt believes she’s a witch.” Ryan ran a hand through his hair, deeply troubled by this revelation—he liked those girls.

“Is there any reason our unsub would have an interest in them?”

“They’re the ones who called us about the unsub’s connection to Christina. He could have searched their social media and found references to her or he may have seen them headed to class and taken the opportunity, but either way, if he’s the one that’s taken them, I believe he’s using them as a bargaining chip to get what he wants from Chris.”

“Which are some damn magic strings.”

“Yeah.”

“You think that’s why she took off? He told her he’d taken those girls?”

Ryan cursed silently. He knew her well enough now to realize that if the girls were in danger, and she knew about it, she would most certainly consider saving them worth endangering herself. “I think so. I’m going to call her. Give you a call back in a few minutes.” He hung up, tightening his fingers on the steering wheel, so furious and horrified that he couldn’t think beyond the next action, the next turn, the next stop, because when he did, images of the murder victims flashed through his mind, only they were Christina, her beautiful, stubborn face frozen in death, her body nothing but a shell that had once been someone so alive.

He would find her before the unsub did. He had to. The alternative was unacceptable.

36

CHRIS SLAMMED ON
the brakes and pulled a U-turn. She’d only driven five miles out of town, but even that short distance gave her the clarity she needed to realize that she just couldn’t do it; she couldn’t betray Ryan’s trust and get herself killed in the process. Her plan had sounded easy enough when she’d been plotting it out in her mind: Instead of going straight to the coordinates he’d sent, which she’d located on Google Earth, she’d uncovered the cameras on her monitors and held up a piece of paper with the coordinates of an old hunting cabin on Tavey’s property. She would drop off a disposable phone in the cabin and call the unsub from a safe location nearby. She intended to send him to one coordinate after another in exchange for information about the location of the girls Hays had taken, while all the while the FBI would be on his tail—she’d left the location of Tavey’s cabin back in her apartment for the agents to find. But the closer she got to actually putting her plan in motion, the more insane it sounded. Ryan was an FBI agent. He had the resources and training to handle this. She was likely just going to get herself killed.

When her phone rang, she knew it was Ryan without having to look.

“Ryan, I’m sorry.”

“I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

“I know, I shouldn’t have.”

“This is beyond stupid. We have better resources for finding those girls. Do you think I need you missing as well? What are you doing?”

“I was going to meet him. I know we have the location of one body, but I thought if there’s even a chance that I could get more information about Hays, about the other girls he took . . .”

“Hays?” He sounded confused.

“Martin Hays.”

He was silent just long enough that Chris checked her phone to see if she still had bars. When he finally answered, his voice was cold. “You want to find them? Get your ass back here so I can concentrate on the case.”

Chris bit her lip; he was acting like a total dick. She understood that she’d freaked him out, but she didn’t like being told she was an idiot, even if she was acting like one. She had been successful in helping uncover vital information with a lot of cases, especially this one. At least she did something to help people, even if her methods were unconventional.

She considered telling him that she was on her way back to Fate at this very moment, but instead she hung up on him. He could call her back when he calmed down and stopped being an ass.

Her phone rang again. She picked it up without glancing at the number on the screen.

“Ryan, I’m not talking to you if you’re going to be a dick.”

“This isn’t Ryan,” a man’s voice replied; it was high and somewhat childlike.

Chris’s heartbeat immediately sped up, and she quickly pulled over into the parking lot of the Baptist church, which was empty on a Friday morning; her hands were shaking too much for her to continue driving.

Not bothering to ask how he’d gotten her number, Chris jumped straight to the million-dollar question. “What do you want?”

“You were supposed to meet me. Why did you stop?”

“I changed my mind. We’ll use the evidence we find to catch Martin Hays ourselves.”

“Martin Hays has gone missing. Didn’t your boyfriend tell you?”

No, he’d forgotten to mention that little tidbit.

“Doesn’t matter,” Chris argued. “We’ll catch him anyway.”

“Maybe.” The guy sounded supremely disinterested. “But he really doesn’t matter.”

“What does matter?” she asked, though she knew it was a mistake before the words were even out of her mouth. He sounded like he was gloating, so whatever he wanted to tell her was going to be unpleasant at the very least.

“No one, really. Just their strings matter. I found some interesting girls who have no strings. They’re hard to see.”

“Interesting girls?” Chris’s mouth felt like she’d licked her own UGG boots:
More victims already?

“They’re the same, all three of them,” he informed her, sounding as if he were looking at them as he would specimens in a jar. Chris felt the world start spinning around her—suddenly she knew exactly which girls he was talking about.

“Let me talk to one of them.”

“Oh, they’re not here with me. Not right now, but if you check, you’ll find that an Amber Alert has gone out for these sisters that you know very well, and if you want them to live, you will meet me. I like the cabin you chose. It’s very nice.”

“And then what? You’ll kill them anyway.”

“Why would I kill them?” He sounded genuinely puzzled. “I can’t see their strings.” He hung up.

The phone rang again; this time it was Ryan.

Chris hesitated, but the girls were more important than her hurt feelings.

“What?” she snapped at him.

“Where are you?” He sounded calmer, at least.

“I was on my way back into town, but the fucking creep called me.”

“He has your number?”

“Wouldn’t be that hard to get. It’s listed because I’m on the board of directors for Once Was Lost, plus it’s listed on my yoga studio site.”

“Great.”

“You know that he’s taken Tira, Sandra, and Ro?”

There was a brief pause and then he said, very carefully, “Yes, I just found out a little while ago. It looks like he took them yesterday afternoon, right around when you found the dog.”

“He still wants me to meet him at the location I sent him. Your agents probably already found it; I left the coordinates on my desk.”

“They just texted it to me.”

“Okay, good. I’m headed there.”

“No, I don’t want you anywhere near this.”

Chris shook her head, frustrated that he didn’t understand or just refused to. “Ryan, I might be a woman, and a regular person, but I’m the only one this guy wants—that makes me valuable, does it not? It gives you leverage. I’ll be damned if I sit by when I can help three girls I care a great deal about.”

“We’re meeting you there.”

“I hope fucking so,” Chris muttered, and hung up again.