Page 59 of Brutal Ice

She’s already gone.

Dark and so still.

She stood there a moment, with her hands at her sides. Her shoulders slumped. Violet had been her friend. For so long.

And what had she been?

I saw her that night. A horrible, terrible truth. I saw him take her, and I didn’t do anything.

Tears splashed down her cheeks.

The door creaked behind her. “Violet?” A gruff, male voice.

“She’s not—” Simone began. But she didn’t get to finish. She’d been about to say…She’s not here. Only she never got the chance to utter those words. Because someone grabbed her from behind. Someone big and powerful. One hand slapped over her mouth even as an arm locked around her midriff. She was yanked up against a strong body, and she thrashed and clawed, and terror blazed inside of her.

She felt the wig slide off her head. It slithered to the floor.

His grip slackened. His fingers fell away from her mouth.

Oh, God. He thinks I’m Violet. “Not…her!” Simone gasped out. She sprang to the left as she tried to flee.

His fingers curled around the back of her neck, and he just slammed her—and her head—into the nearest wall.

She crumpled.

Chapter Twelve

For some reason, she didn’t expect all the computers. Or rather, she didn’t expect quite so many of them. Five screens. Hard drive boxes blinked near them.

A massive, black desk waited in the middle of the room. There were maps on the left wall. One with a red circle in the middle, and when she leaned in closer to get a better look at that circle…

“The winery,” Royal told her. “After narrowing down locations, it seemed like a prime spot for the killer to use. Based on his other kills, I knew that he liked isolated spots. He preferred areas that weren’t currently inhabited. Not like he wanted his work interrupted.”

His work. She flinched.

“After Fiona Law’s body was discovered on the outskirts of Savannah, I knew he was hunting here. He’d been in Atlanta before that. I’ve linked two victims who were found there to him. Though, you already saw them, didn’t you? In the files at Punishment.”

She spun away from the map. Her gaze fell on the desk. Familiar files were perched on top of the gleaming, black surface.

The wine she’d gulped had her feeling a little dizzy. Or maybe that was just the memory of those bloody pictures. “How did you know…” Her voice was low, so she cleared her throat and tried again, “How did you know a serial killer was hunting?”

“At first, I didn’t. Just thought some sick bastard who got off on hurting women had left a body in an old botanical garden on the outskirts of Atlanta. The garden—hell, once upon a time, it was something to see. But the owner died, the place withered, and everyone seemed to forget about it.”

Everyone but the killer.

“An…acquaintance of mine knew the woman who was found there. Marcella White. He wasn’t exactly thrilled that she’d been tossed away like garbage. He thought Marcella deserved a hell of a lot better.”

Her gaze lifted to collide with his when she heard the rage in his voice.

“So he reached out to me. He didn’t have a lot of cash. He couldn’t hire a PI to help him, and the cops seemed to have hit a dead end on the investigation.”

“Did this friend know about your, ah, hobby?” And how in the world had Royal ever started this hobby? How—and when? How long had he been hunting the predators who hid in the night?

“No, he didn’t know about my hobby. He just knew that I was a dangerous sonofabitch who’d never liked it when someone hurt a lady.” His lips twisted. “Tyrone—Ty—and I knew each other from back in the day. Hadn’t seen him since we’d left New Orleans, so for him to reach out to me, I knew it was important to him.” He opened one of the files. Rifled through the photos. “He loved her, and it gutted him that some bastard took her away. Ty was always good to me, so I told him that I’d make sure the SOB got what he deserved.”

Punishment.

“Another woman from Atlanta turned up dead four months later. Like Marcella, she was living in Atlanta, but the authorities didn’t connect the cases right away because this victim…” He pulled out a photo. Turned it toward Violet. “Bailey Brown. She was found in an orchard about forty-five minutes from Atlanta.”

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