Page 23 of Mine to Protect

“Find anything interesting?” Chandler asked, turning to face Cas.

“Tons,” Cas responded, but kept his dark eyes on me instead of turning to his friend.

Awkward seconds ticked by in silence. To avoid the building unease, I focused on studying the file in my hand.

“He has to have resources,” I mused as I scanned the words I’d already read twice. “As in a truck or van to get these women out of the park. And….” I turned to stare into the fire. “The women have to be drugged or knocked unconscious somehow, right? The one thing that has stood out is they were all capable of fighting off an attack. But what if they couldn’t?” Memories and details of the cases muddled together until they seemed to be one and the same. “It doesn’t explain how he got them alone, but it could explain how he got them out of the park, unless he was staying in the park already.”

I glanced to Chandler, searching for confirmation. “Have you guys run who stayed in the park then and who’s staying here now? Maybe even surrounding cities? Estes Park isn’t that big, and several remote areas would be ideal for this guy.”

“We did for the Smokies, but not here. Great idea, Birdie.”

“Birdie?” Cas questioned.

My eyes shifted from Chandler to Cas, who hadn’t dropped his attention from me since he walked out of his room.

“It’s what her friends call her,” Chandler said, humor lacing his light tone. “Isn’t that right, Birdie?”

I nodded and swallowed against a dry throat. Why did he keep staring?

“What else?” Chandler asked me directly.

“Sucks that we don’t have the bodies. Then we could determine if he’s controlled them with drugs, or maybe a stun gun.” I grimaced when my worrying nail snagged on a loose cuticle, ripping it lengthwise along my thumbnail. “But how does he get them to walk into the woods alone?”

“Maybe someone they trusted?” Chandler suggested.

“But that would be a consistency we’d see if it were one person. I mean, all those women having one person in common?”

“What if it's not a certain person but someone in uniform?” Cas offered. His assessing eyes flicked down my chest, over my hips, and along my legs.

An intense heat bloomed between my thighs. Clenching them together to help ease the increasing throb, I watched, mesmerized, as the tip of his tongue darted out, wetting his lower lip.

Wow, it looked like he wanted to eat me.

Oh, how I wish he would.

Where didthatcome from?

“You mean like a ranger.” My heart pounded against my chest, both from him and his subtle accusation.

“Or someone else wearing a uniform: maintenance, park employee, and yeah, a ranger.”

“Can you track the online purchases of that kind of stuff?” I asked Chandler.

One hip pressed against the couch, glancing between me and Cas, Chandler rubbed his chin as he considered the new theory.

“You’re one smart Birdie.” With that as a parting remark, he stalked to his room, phone already pressed to his ear, and closed the door behind him.

8

Cas

Unable to resist,I continued to study her as she attempted to distract herself with the file in front of her.

Yesterday after we dropped Alta off, I requested the entire team's files under the ruse of wanting to verify everyone. Of course, Peters saw straight through it, knowing I wanted one report in particular, and why. A part of me wished I’d never asked for it; then I wouldn’t be sitting here so fucking pissed off I couldn’t see straight. The report gave the basics of what happened to her ten years ago, but no details. Which was both a good and bad thing, considering that, with only knowing the basics I already wanted to dig up the fucker and pound his bones into dust for what he did. There was no telling what I would do if she ever told me the full story.

Same as when I first read the words, my blood boiled beneath my skin, readying to kill. She was innocent, a perfectly happy girl until it was ripped from her unexpectedly. Before the abduction, she was a perfect student, a part of every association on the damn campus, but after, nothing. Alta finished her senior year online instead of returning to college. Then one day a year or so later, she up and left for Tennessee, leaving her family behind in west Texas.

Like a siren’s call, her deeply buried darkness sang to my own. But was it a call to protect her from experiencing pain and fear again, or a luring of her dark passion that’s been waiting for the right spark to ignite the building want inside?

---