“Where did you get those?” she whispered.
He tapped the tablet and the screens went dark. “I still have a few contacts in law enforcement.”
She crossed her arms over her middle. “Well, they shouldn’t have shared my hospital photos with you. They’re—”
“Too personal? None of my business?”
She flinched and dropped her gaze.
He rolled back from the table. “Come on. It’s okay. Forget all this. You’re not ready.”
“Wait. Just...give me a minute to catch my breath, okay? I can handle it. Really.”
“Teagan. There’s no reason for you to have to catch your breath, to handle it. You lived through the abduction, the torture, once already. You shouldn’t have to do that again, reopen old wounds. Leave the investigation to me. Maybe because I admire your spunk, or maybe just because I’m ready to jump back in the game and didn’t realize it until now. Regardless of the reason, I want to do this. But the only way I can is by going through every piece of data surrounding your abduction, everything that happened to you.Everything. It’s the only way to make sure nothing was missed, that every possible clue has been considered. Meanwhile, you can go back to Florida, get on with your life. When I have something to report, I’ll contact you.” He wheeled to the door and held it open for her. “Come on. We’re done here.”
Chapter Eight
When Teagan crossed her arms and gave him a mutinous stare, Bryson sighed and let the office door close. She’d made no move toward the doorway. She wasn’t backing down without a fight. But neither was he. “Teagan, we should—”
“You caught me off guard. That’s all. I didn’t expect to see...those pictures, okay? You should have warned me.”
“If I’d warned you, I might not have received an honest reaction. You would have covered up your true emotions, or at least tried, with false bravado. Now I know the truth. This is all still too raw for you to be involved in the investigation. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Victims don’t typically work on their own cases, for good reason.”
“I’m not a victim,” she snapped. “I’m a survivor.”
“Fair enough. That doesn’t change anything that I said.”
She waved toward the stacks of boxes. “Why can’t we start with these? I already know the man who attacked me is the real Kentucky Ripper, not Leviathan Finney, the guy in prison. There’s no reason to review every nitty-gritty detail about what happened to me. We’re past that. We know who did it, that first guy you profiled back in Kentucky, the one the police let get away, Avarice Lowe.”
“Did you tell the detectives on your case that you believed Lowe was the one who’d abducted you?”
“Yes. I did.”
“And? Let me guess. They did a cursory look at him and either couldn’t locate him at all or said he had an alibi. And they went no further than that.”
“They couldn’t find him. But they didn’t try very hard.”
“Why do you suppose that is?”
She threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know. Probably because they’re lazy and wanted to work on easier cases.”
He wheeled over in front of her. “Can you think of another reason? Come on. Set aside emotion and use that valedictorian mind of yours.”
She gave him another mutinous look. “They don’t believe Lowe is the Ripper and had no evidence to tie him to my case. But that’s because they refused to listen.”
“Detectives, good ones at least, follow the evidence. The only reason you feel that the Ripper is the one who abducted you is because the man who hurt you carved that X on your abdomen. Everything else about your case is different, including the fact that you survived.”
“Then let’s go through your case files and find more similarities. That’s why you brought them here.”
He shook his head. “I brought them here to reviewafterI review your case, and then, only if we decide the two cases are connected, or highly likely connected. What happens if we do it your way, spend all our time on the Ripper case, and discover that you’re wrong? We’ve wasted weeks, or longer by that time going through all of the Ripper’s cases. We’d be starting over at ground zero without having made any progress figuring out who attacked you. If you truly want my help in finding out who hurt you, I’m all in. But I have to do it my way. I follow the evidence. And that means, starting at the beginning, with what happened to you.”
She stared at the stacks of boxes for a long moment. When she finally met his gaze, naked pain radiated back at him. “I spentover a year and a half on this to find the man who hurt me. I don’t want to start over. I can’t.”
Disappointment shot through him, but he forced a smile. “Then don’t. Keep doing what you’re doing. Follow the leads where you believe they’ll take you.”
“Without you.”
He nodded. “Without me.”
