Page 60 of Unholy Bonds

“You know I’m looking.” I felt useless.

“You found the ones the detectives couldn’t.” Her voice was slightly accusatory. I knew she didn’t mean it. She only wanted him gone as much as I did. I didn’t blame her for that. She was right. I wanted The Strangler. I wanted his blood, but he was a phantom. Even though his first few kills were in Detroit, his recent kills were all over the place.

From Ann Arbor to Toledo to Cleveland to Baltimore. It was like he was purposefully throwing the scent off of him.

“Yes, I did, and I’ll find him. It’s taking me a bit longer than I thought, but I will find him.”

“It has been four years, Yara. Four years since Katelyn died. Four years since… you started the hunt.” She let out a long sigh.

My heart stuttered at the thought of Katelyn, how pale she looked when they found her, how peaceful, too, like she was floating in a realm between reality and lies, fighting to find a way back in.

Katelyn’s death was different from the others. Not only was she the only one with a sister, but there were also subtle marks of violence on her body. The cops concluded that the bruises on her arms, forehead, and the scar on her shoulder were by accident, but my gut told me otherwise. It felt a bit more personal.

The other women didn’t have bruises or any hint of wounds except the long line on their necks from the garrote, and they were all orphans. Except Katelyn.

“I’m sorry.”

“Did you talk about him with Sinclair after that night?”

“I think I might have scared Ryden Sinclair off.” I half lied. I didn’t want to tell her that he was the one who was now stalking me.

She rolled her eyes. “He didn’t strike me as someone who’d be so easily spooked. For God’s sake, he’s a fucking serial killer.”

“Well, even killers feel panic when they feel trapped,” I said, scanning the newspaper.

“You don’t feel panic,” she said, her nose upturned. “I wish you would, but you don’t, and you just barge into… things that put you in dangerous situations.”

“Don’t start now, Irene.”

The article about The Strangler only talked about the identity of the girl and the discovery of her body at a bus stop. They hadn’t released the contents of the love letter yet, but it’d probably come in the next morning’s edition or the one following that.

If the media were to stop publishing his letters, he might have stopped killing, too. I was sure of that.

The gesture, the display, was intended only for her. His victims were all around twenty-five to thirty. So, his woman, the one he was crafting these love letters for, must be around that age, and in the twisted part of his brain, he was showing off his love for her.

Of course, I understood the part that made him feel that he needed to kill all these women to send love letters to the one he would love to kill but couldn’t, because he loved her. Love and obsession, tangled with need.

Irene sighed and stood up, a frown pulling her lips down. “Talk with Sinclair, please. Maybe he knows more.”

“I’ll try, Irene, but he did send me all his notes. He had nothing new. His profiling was… nearly identical to mine,” I said as I stood up from the table. “I’m leaving for work. Maybe Detective Rosario knows more. I’ll try to weasel some information out of him. Stay here for today and leave tomorrow. You have to concentrate on your life, Irene. College is important.”

“I don’t care about it.”

“You have to,” I said as I poured a cup of coffee and made eggs for her. “Eat and sleep.”

“I want to come with you. Take me with you.” She was closer to twenty-one now, but she almost sounded like the teenager I once knew when Kat was alive.

“No, Irene. Please.”

“I’m not a baby. I’m going to be twenty-one in five months, and you’re only twenty-seven, not two hundred and seventy,” she said, looking morose.

“And yet here you are, Re-Re, whining like a baby,” I said, grabbing my bag from the table.

“Wait, Yara… I have an idea.”

“What now?”

“You should pair up with Ryden. You might catch The Strangler quicker if you work together. You don’t have to do all the work alone.” She looked nonchalant as if she was talking about teaming up with him for a game of tennis.

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