Page 18 of Serial Love

He caught her giggle as she met a young man at the bottom of the steps and watched as they walked toward the dorm together. He palmed his crotch, but the urge was not there. He felt nothing. Turning, he climbed intohis little, nondescript sedan, smiling to himself.You’re safe tonight, little girl. I don’t need anyone now.

Two weeks passed while Jack and his Saints were busy with combing the campuses and digging for more information. Jack moved to his porch with his morning cup of coffee, having already run the perimeter and taken a shower. He had attempted to force his mind not to think of Bethany every time he ran by the area where he had first seen her.Or captured her, to be exact.But he was unsuccessful. He thought of her anyway. Every. Single. Time.

His attention was diverted when Chad’s SUV parked in the driveway, followed by Cam and Bart. Monty was still at the FBI headquarters, coordinating some shared information with them. Marc had pulled the all-nighter in the command center below and would soon be replaced by Blaise.

Giving head jerks in acknowledgment they met in the kitchen, all pouring coffee before moving downstairs. Assembled around the conference table, they once again shared information.

Cam spoke first. “Looked into a missing student from Washington College and talked to her roommate. The missing girl was Nola Talbot. From what I could find out, she was a really sweet girl but not the greatest student so when she just left school, everyone assumed she dropped out due to grades.”

“But didn’t she leave all her stuff behind?” Blaise asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“She had no family, so no parents to check with. The roommate did file a missing person’s report but never heard anything back. And when the semester ended, the college, per policy, threw out all her unclaimed possessions.”

“We’ve got nothing on this girl at all,” Jack growled.

“Well, she had been in the foster system in high school, so there are records if a body ever turns up.”

Jack turned his gaze to Chad. “What’ve you got?”

“I checked on Laura Polinis from Bluefield College and Lisa Mullins from Tech. Laura went missing one weekend after a church revival. Her friends had gone to a huge musical festival which, of course, was synonymous with drugs and alcohol. She really wanted to go with her friends but had promised to sing in a church revival first. She was going to meet her friends there later, but never made it to the festival, nor was heard from again. Her parents still hold out hope that she will surface. Lisa Mullins was quiet and very reserved. She came from a single parent home, who like the Polinis still hold out hope she’ll be found. She worked at a pizza place and never made it home one night.”

Each man studied the information on their laptops in frustration. “Except for a few descriptions, these girls, as a whole, have nothing in common,” Jack bit out once more.

Luke spoke up, “I’m adding all this new data into the system to see if we can get any feedback at all on what another commonality might be.”

“Meanwhile,” Bart added, running his hand through his shaggy blond hair, “This guy is probably already studying who his next victim is.”

“So far, the victims, including the missing girls, have been redheads, blondes, brunettes, green, blue, and brown eyes. They’ve been wealthy right down to the state paying tuition. Religious, not religious. Some worked, some played sports. Some lived in dorms and others in apartments,” Cam reiterated.

“Were they just in the wrong place at the wrong time?” Chad asked.

Blaise glanced over. “Some guy gets the urge to kill and stalks whoever looks easy?”

Chad shrugged. “Just throwing it out there.”

“So, what do we have?” Jack asked the group.

Luke glanced up and said, “All victims were female, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three. All were current college students here in Virginia. Monty’s profiler said the killer usually did not travel too far, but when we pinpoint the victims’ locations, we can see they are somewhat centrally located.”

The team focused their attention on the large screen, seeing a map of Virginia and the locations pinpointed in red. “I’ve numbered them in terms of the approximate time that the student was missing or murdered. You can see it’s as though a noose is getting tighter,” Luke commented.

They stared at the map of Virginia with all the colleges, universities, and community colleges marked. “The first missing girls were in schools that were about two hundred miles from the Capital. Then the firstbody that was found was about one hundred fifty miles away. The next missing girl was about one hundred miles away and our final two bodies were within one hundred miles of Richmond,” Blaise noted.

“Is this a specific pattern or is he purposefully moving closer to the Capital?” Cam wondered out loud.

“He’s getting more comfortable,” Jack stated firmly, causing the others to jerk their gazes from the map to their boss.

He continued, “He started farther away. That gives him time to make a get-away and if her body is found, he won’t be anywhere near the scene. Remember what the profiler said? It’s not that serial killers want to be found out but that they gain more confidence, so they take more risks.”

Mark interjected, “You think this guy was just getting warmed up with the first ones and he’s now more comfortable staying closer to home?”

Jack nodded. “I’ll bet my life this asshole lives in the Richmond area. Now, of course, that’s a big area, but it’s something to go on.”

“I’ll send this to Monty,” Luke said, “and let him get it to his FBI contacts.”

The room fell quiet for a moment, each man studying the reports.

“All the women were pretty,” Bart added. Seeing the looks of the others, he shook his head. “Just saying, guys. Look at the pictures…not a homely one up there.”

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