“Make it fifteen,” Simon replied. “I’ll do a walk around.”
When the foreman disappeared, Simon took another deep, slow breath. “Come on. Talk to me,” he whispered. “I’m almost out of time here. I’ll be surrounded by people, and then I can’t talk at all.”
Even as he said it, he winced, since it wasn’t like she had control of this time frame so he could work with it better. She had whatever moments of living she could actually survive. But he could do absolutely nothing to push that timetable. He took another deep breath and nudged her. “Come on. Talk to me.”
But, when she opened her mouth, it was a scream, a wrenching scream, and, through her eyes, he saw flashes of whatever reality was going on around her, as something snapped at her ankle. And then she blacked out.
He opened his eyes, then quickly sent Kate a message.
He is torturing her again. Her ankle was just broken for fun.
Chapter 10
Before they gotout to the parking lot, Kate’s phone beeped. She stared at Simon’s text and frowned, turning back around. “Damn it. The original crime scene will have to wait.” She called the woman back to postpone her visit and to make sure Kate was notified before any demolition began.
This latest vision of Simon’s was just a little too close to the case she was working on. Both victims—the death of Cherry and the kid’s sister from the old case—had their ankles broken, seemingly just for fun. What were the chances of a third victim, one that Simon had connected with? It was all too much coincidence for comfort, and it made her blood run cold.
How was she supposed to find the killer if he was already off torturing another poor woman? And what would happen if they managed to pick up the guy but couldn’t find her? She would die without care. She likely would die before they got to her anyway. Kate groaned out loud, reaching up to grab the hair at her temples and giving it a hard pull, yet already returning to her desk.
Rodney instinctively followed her. “Hey, hey, hey,” Rodney said. “What the hell is that for?”
She showed him the text on her phone, not slowing down her stride.
He stared at it, then looked at her. “Jesus. Is that Simon again?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“He’s connected with a victim?”
“I don’t fucking know,” she replied, raising both hands. They had reached the bullpen again. “That’s what it sounds like though, doesn’t it?”
He glanced back down at that text. “Oh my God.” Rodney rubbed at the back of his neck.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Now you’re getting the issue.”
“Do we have a third victim?”
“If we do, I don’t know about it,” she snapped. “What could possibly connect these two except our bloody suspect? The kid is now at home with his parents. And where the hell would they choose to pick up another victim—and why? Especially if Rick Lordwon’tbe a suspect?”
“But he will be,” Rodney noted. “And the killer is probably thinking that we’ll just run around like idiots, and he’ll get away with it again.”
“I don’t think he even cares anymore,” she stated, staring at Rodney, now seated at her desk again. “I think this is a good run, and he’s having way too much fun to stop. I don’t think he can stop now.”
“But we don’t have his victim.”
“Missing persons’ reports,” she said, galvanized into action. “What do we have for missing people from the last… what?” She thought about it and then suggested, “Four days?”
“Let’s go seven,” he said, pulling up stats on his monitor. “Just to make sure.”
“Narrow that down to females.” And, with that typed in, she rolled her chair closer to him to tell him, “And let’s choose an age range to narrow it down.”
He looked over at her, his eyebrows up. “The two women he had were both young and very beautiful.” He frowned. “What? Maybe fifteen to thirty-six?”
She nodded slowly. “Go as high as forty, just to be sure.”
He typed that in and said, “You know that we’re probably looking at fifteen to twenty-eight.”
“Yeah, but let’s take a look at who is missing.”