Chapter 26
The doorbell pealed.
Candace’s hard-won serenity vanished, and she rolled up from the yoga mat and turned down the recording of the soothing sounds of ocean waves surging onto a sandy beach. Tucking stray hairs into her long braid, she crossed to the window and slid the edge of the curtain aside.
The late afternoon sun shone across the shaggy front lawn. A vehicle was parked at the curb—a familiar black SUV.
Her heart raced, but not from fear, definitely not fear. She hurried to the front door and unlocked all the locks and opened the door wide. “Aiden.” She couldn’t stop the smile breaking out on her face.
Instead of the light, teasing grin she expected, his face remained stony, and shards of flint shone in his hazel eyes. “I need to talk to you.”
“Okay.” She stepped aside. “Come in.”
He brushed past her and waited in the foyer while she relocked the door and reset the alarm. Then he followed her down the short hall to the living room.
“Do you want something to drink? I can make coffee.”
He held his body tight, his muscles taut, his shoulders stiff. “Sit down, please. We need to talk.”
Okay, so this wasn’t a social call. Heart lodged in her throat, she perched on the couch.
He shrugged out of his suede jacket, laid it across the back of the couch, and sat on a chair facing her, staring at his hands.
The ensuing silence swelled and grew until she could hardly breathe. “Where’s your dog? It’s Sunday. I thought Tracker would be spending the day with you.”
“I’m working. Tracker’s stuck at home today.” He continued to stare at his hands as he clenched and unclenched them on his lap.
Her heart rate sped up. “Is there a new development?”
He met her gaze for the first time since he’d sat down.
That was worse than him avoiding her gaze. His eyes were dark and hard, his jaw rigid, his mouth a thin line. Anger, and something else, something she couldn’t put her finger on, radiated off him in almost-visible waves.
“What is it? What’s happened?” Her hands flew to her chest, and she pressed hard to slow her racing heart. “You identified the bones in the cave. Are they Amanda Jacobs’s remains?” The room swirled as her mind raced, fighting against the awful reality.
He shook his head. “They’re the remains of a fifteen-year-old girl from Bishop. She went missing nine months ago.”
“Bishop?” She blinked. “So, it’s not—” She swallowed as his words sank in. A wave of relief washed over her, immediately followed by guilt. Some poor girl was dead, and she was happy it wasn’t Amanda. “What happened to her? Bishop’s a long way from here. How did she end up in that cave in Creighton Springs Park?”
He shrugged. “We don’t know. Not yet.”
She digested his news. He’d promised he’d keep her informed, and he was a man of his word. “Thank you for telling me.”
A pulse in his jaw ticked. “There’s more.”
“Did you find Amanda Jacobs?” She swallowed. “Is she okay?” Even as the questions spilled out, the dismal truth was revealed in the stark lines of his face. Amanda was still missing.
“No. Nothing on her yet.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his tanned throat. “Remember I told you about the victim found in Lynn Canyon?”
She nodded.
He stood and reached in the back pocket of his faded jeans and pulled out a piece of paper, unfolded it, smoothed the creases and handed her the paper. “Tell me what you notice.”
Her hands shook so much, the faces on the paper blurred. She grabbed her glasses from the coffee table and slipped them on and lay the paper on her lap. Her breath caught in her throat as she studied one face after another. She looked at him. “Are these the girls who went missing?”
He nodded again.
She expelled her breath in a rush. The room spun, and she closed her eyes and clutched the cushions and held tight. When she opened her eyes, nothing had changed. The world was still insane. “I don’t understand. Why am I included in this array of pictures?”
The furious ticking in his jaw ramped up. “Look at the pictures again. Look at all the photos.”
She didn’t have to look. She knew what he was getting at. The second she’d seen the photo array the resemblance had struck her like a slap to the head. It was gut-wrenching to look at the youthful faces, filled with hopes and dreams for the future, knowing those dreams had been cut short.
“Candace?”
She blinked and met his gaze. Her mouth was dry, swallowing almost impossible. “All these young women have the same color hair and eyes. You mentioned this similarity yesterday, but then you told me to forget that you said that. Are you telling me now that you believe these crimes are connected because of a physical similarity between the victims?”
She handed him the paper and wiped her damp palms on her leggings. She refused to accept the terrifying possibility he presented. To do otherwise would be to slip into a yawning chasm of despair. She forced a lightness to her voice. “Sure, there’s a resemblance, but it doesn’t mean anything. Lots of women have the same combination of hair and eye color. It’s not that unusual.”
He nodded. “You’re right. Lots of women have long dark hair. Not so many women with dark hair also have light-blue eyes. It’s a unique difference.”
“Those girls—” She pointed at the paper in his hand. “They’re younger than me. I’m almost twice their age.”
He folded the paper and stuffed it back in his pocket. “I think you might be in danger.”
Her breath blasted out in a noisy gust. “Wha-what?”
His brow furrowed as he paced across the small living room. “Think about this, Candace. You resemble those girls, and you were attacked the other night. If those frat boys hadn’t interfered, you'd have been abducted. Don’t you think there could be a connection?”
She swept a shaky hand across her forehead. “No. I don’t. The man who attacked me was a mugger. He wanted my purse, that’s all it was, a simple mugging.” Even to her own ears her protestations sounded unbelievable, but to accept what he was telling her, to face the horrible reality, was too much to bear.
He stopped pacing and faced her. “So then why did he leave your purse behind when he fled? Most purse snatchers don’t inject their targets with ketamine.”
And still she persisted, hoping she’d convince herself. “I don’t know. Maybe when those students called out, he was so desperate to get away, he forgot about my purse.”
“You said he knew your name. That alone means the attack wasn’t random.” He strode toward her and crouched at her feet and grasped her hands.
The instant jolt of awareness caught her off guard, and she inhaled a quick breath. Her first reaction was to snatch her hand free, but the warmth of his palm against hers, the rasp of his callused fingers, was comforting, and she was too weak-willed to do anything more than sit there staring into his earnest gaze.
“Look, Candace. I don’t want to frighten you, but the blood work from the victim in Lynn Canyon showed she had examine in her blood—the same chemical composition as the examine your attacker injected into you.”
She yanked her hands free and jolted to her feet. Lurching around him, her legs rubbery, she stumbled across the room. She had to move, had to escape the terrifying scenario he painted. “Are you saying you think the person who killed that poor girl, attacked me?”
He rose to his feet. “It’s a definite possibility.”
She clenched her hands into tight fists as the truth she’d been dodging these past days hit home like a bullet to the heart. “He was planning to kidnap me?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure, but like I said, it is a possibility. One we should consider.” He advanced and set his palms on her shoulders, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I’m not telling you this to frighten you. That’s the last thing I want to do, but we have to consider the evidence. You were attacked. The man who attacked you injected you with high-grade ketamine. The victim in Lynn Canyon was injected with the same ketamine. There’s a pattern there. We’d be fools not to see it.”
She blinked back tears. This couldn’t be happening. She’d suffered heart-wrenching tragedy in her life. One Cooper sister kidnapped was enough. What sort of just God would inflict this on her? Was it because she should have been the one taken so many years ago, and not Charlene? Because Charlene’s abduction was her fault?
Aiden’s deep voice broke through her shock. “The medical examiner checked the hair samples found on the skull in the cave. Apparently traces of examine can be found through chemical hair analysis. The drug is present for months postmortem.” He rubbed his chin, the rasp of whiskers loud in the small room. “The captain just told me the results.” He expelled a long breath. “We found traces of the same examine used on you.”
His pronouncement was like a bomb detonating in the room. She struggled to think through the maelstrom raging in her brain.
He studied her for several long seconds. “I believe we’re looking at a serial kidnapper, and I think, for whatever reason, you’ve been targeted.”