Page 57 of Riding Danger

“What happened?”

“I was seventeen when I auditioned and got the spot in The Poets. She was forcing me to go to so many auditions, I threatened to quit.” I looked away, not able to face her. “She said if I wasn’t going to use my voice to earn my keep, she would use my, and I quote, ‘All American good looks’.”

“She did what?” Shiloh sat up, her breasts nearly level with my eyes. “Did she make you?—?”

“No. I got the spot in The Poets before that could happen.”

Her body eased back down as she nodded. “Ry, do you still have contact with her?”

“I was thinking while I was on stage, I am going to let my lawyer deal with her in the future.”

“Good.” She twisted into me, rubbing herself up against my erection. “I can rally, if you want.”

I suppressed a chuckle. Yeah, that would not work for me. “Sleep, babe. We have our whole lives to fuck each other’s brains out.”

She nuzzled into my chest, her hair somehow making its way into my mouth. I was content. I had my career. With plans for the next phase in it. My child was asleep in the next room, the results of the DNA test were in my suitcase. The woman I loved was in my arms. And naked. Life was good. I had everything I wanted, and no one could take that away from me.

26

SHILOH

Ilooked over at Lilly as we both poured over the files. Once we established what all the victims had in common, it was easy to see the patterns.

“Ok, so the unsub considers these men to be deadbeat dads.” As much as I hated the word, which was short for unknown subject, she’d insisted I used it. “I still think the markings on the back are significant.”

Lilly nodded. “You could be right but that second last body didn’t have them.”

Agent Newton sat back with his feet on the expensive table. “Maybe she ran out of time.”

My head whipped in his direction. “She?”

“Think about it.” Lilly raised a brow and watched as the puzzle pieces started to fit.

And boy were they fitting. “Drugged and bound. She needed to subdue her victims.” We had all the pieces. “That last victim. She didn’t have time to freeze him properly, but she made the markings on his back.”

Agent Newton lifted the photo and tilted his head. “The markings are deeper. Almost like they’re more deliberate.”

“Because she knew there was no record anywhere of those markings. She wanted to make sure we knew it was an important part of her ritual.” It all made sense. “Which means it is significant.”

All while I poured over the reports, I studied the photograph of the last victim with a semi-circular scar along the base of his neck. It wasn’t until I moved onto the next victim and had read the reports of the additional witnesses that something clicked. The victim's next-door neighbor had consecutive numbers, not alternative numbers. That only happened when… I pulled the Maps app on my phone. Yes. “Bingo.”

“What?”

“What?”

“The markings on their backs are maps.” They both looked at me skeptically and I continued. “The markings on the fourth victim's back, is a street map of where the fifth victim lived.”

Once we had that clue, all we could do was see the pattern. The problem was that the maps on the victim’s backs were so rudimentary there was no way to have predicted the next victim.

Of course, the process made it clearer that the extra body found was not one of our unsub’s kills.

The map on the last body had, as expected, as little detail as all the rest. It had what looked like one long street and a huge building with something behind it. Best guess was a big house with a pool. Problem was that it could be anywhere. All we knew was that it would be in a small town surrounding San Diego. The victim would be a father, who had abandoned his child or children.

Lilly pulled me from my thoughts as Agent Newton waved goodbye.

“It’s Christmas Eve, don’t you have dinner to get to.”

That was something else that had been on my mind

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