The next few minutes were nothing more than flashes of red and black across my vision, and Dylan calling for Evan and Jasper to try and stop me from tearing the door off the fucking car.
“Beck!” Dylan shouted in my face. “You’re not helping Riley by losing it. We need to figure out who the fuck took her, and then we need to kill them. But we won’t do either of those things without a clear head.”
My fists clenched as my blood pumped through my body, everything burning. Dylan was right, though, I needed to get my shit together because my Butterfly needed me. “A car started up,” I managed to get out, “about half a mile that way.”
I pointed through the trees, already moving in that direction.
“It was a stock standard straight six-cylinder. A regular old piece of shit.”
There had been something familiar about its engine, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“I heard it too,” Dylan said. “Caught a glimpse of it down the road when we stopped, but I was too worried about Riley to pay it much attention.”
I locked my focus on him, even as we tore up the road to where the car had been. “What did you notice?” I bit out. “Surely your computer of a fucking brain remembers something.”
Dylan could catalog a scene and draw it play by play without any fucking effort. It was how his brain was wired.
He paused, giving himself a moment to think. “White sedan with blue markings on the side. Dark windows. No one in the driver or passenger seat. Straight six-cylinder.”
Another pause. “It almost sounded like a—”
“Cop car,” I said, cutting him off as the familiarity of that noise finally registered. The police in Jefferson all drove the same nondescript white sedan.
Dylan nodded. “But why the fuck would the police have taken her?”
A rumble rocked my chest as my teeth clenched. “Not the police, but someone close enough to lift one of their cars. Or … someone that works for them.”
The rose killer.
It made perfect sense. That’s how he remained out of jail—he worked for the police. Probably destroying evidence before it got close to incriminating him.
Dylan almost looked pale, despite his darker skin tone. “You think the serial killer has been that close all along. Like … at the police station while we were going in there with Riles?”
He’d reached the same conclusion as me.
I nodded. “Yeah, those bastards like to stay close. Keep an eye on things.”
We reached the spot, but the car was long gone. I saw the indent from the tires, and seeing they were the exact tread of the police vehicles, I figured that was the first place we needed to go.
“Tell Evan and Jasper to clean up the scene before the ambulance gets here and get whatever information they can out of that fucker before disposing of him,” I bit out. “I need to head to the police station.”
Before I left, I grabbed the Huntley folder and then called for one of our cars to come and pick us up. Dylan ended up joining me, while Evan and Jasper took our guest to one of the safehouses for some one-on-one time. They’d get whatever information out of him, and hopefully we would find Riley before it was too late.
20
Ascratching sound filtered into my head, disturbing the unconsciousness I was existing in. A groan escaped from me as I gently shook my head. Opening my eyes proved to be more difficult than it normally would be, my head aching like I had the worst hangover of my life. It also seemed very bright behind my eyelids, but not warm. I wasn’t in the sun…
Wiggling forward, I paused because I was propped upright, but my hands were tied behind my back.
What the fuck?
I managed to pry one eye open, wincing at the sudden shock of light. A beam was shining directly at me, and I couldn’t see anything except dancing dots in front of my vision. When my other eye finally opened, I forced myself to look around, even though my eyeballs were watering so badly I was basically crying.
Where the hell was I?I tried to remember what had happened, but everything in my memory was dark. Shaking my head again, I worked at the bindings on my hands, trying my best to loosen them enough to free my arms. My legs were bound, too, one to each leg of the chair I was on, but I’d worry about that once my hands were free.
Rope cut into my skin, but I didn’t let that stop me. My head continued to pound away while I tried desperately to find my last memories.
Eventually some of it came back … the hard drive, the video in my apartment … dinner atGraeme Huntley’s.
