Page 77 of Threat of Danger
“How do you know all this?”
“Went down to the gas station after dinner. Needed antifreeze for the truck. Ran into the sheriff. We talked for a couple of minutes. I was going to tell you in the morning.”
The thought of the poor runaway girl being swallowed up by the river sent a cold shiver down Jess’s spine.
Derek still held her hand. “What is it?”
“I almost drowned once on a shoot. It’s not a good way to die. Hate water stunts.”
His expression instantly flashed with anger. “Where the hell was Eliot?”
“It happened before Eliot. Wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The director changed the shoot at the last second. No time to prepare.” She shrugged. “They do that.”
“Can’t you protest?”
“Sure. I just won’t be called for the next job.”
Hollywood seemed a million miles away. Jess couldn’t take her eyes off the girls. Her heart bled. “What do they have in common?”
“Ages between sixteen and nineteen. Female. I can’t find anything else.”
“All from around Taylorville?”
He shook his head. “But within easy driving distance. Since Taylorville is at the meeting point of three counties, the cases fall under different police jurisdictions. That’s one of the reasons the police hadn’t made the connection.”
Jess rubbed the back of her neck with her free hand as she took in the newspaper cutouts and the jumble of Derek’s handwritten notes attached to them. He’d given this a lot of thought. He’d been investigating. He’d written a book to draw out the masked man.
The headache was barely there one second, then pounding hard at the base of her skull the next.
“I need to go home.” She pulled away from Derek and turned out of the room, yet the images remained seared on her brain: her own photo, and the faces of the dead girls.
Derek followed her down the stairs. “Why don’t you stay?”
She stilled and looked at him, trying to figure out exactly what he meant by that, trying to figure out how she felt if he meant more than a friendly offer. Because ... they’d kissed. And he was looking at her as if he wanted to draw her into his arms and kiss her again, right now. She, however, was definitely not in the right frame of mind for—
“Sleep in the guest bedroom,” he said.
OK, not more than a friendly offer, then. But she still couldn’t stay. Jess headed for the front door, but stopped with her hand on the doorknob. “Zelda would worry if she couldn’t find me when she woke up.”
“Then text me when you get in.”
She nodded. “Do you think he’s hunting?”
She didn’t have to tell Derek who she meant.
“Probably not. He’s just taken Hannah. He’s never taken girls back-to-back.”
“But you provoked him.”
“That should make him lash out atme.”
Jess hated that idea with a passion. “Now that the police have some of Hannah’s bones, they’ll be looking for her killer. Maybe they’ll find him.”
“Maybe. The cops were all over the woods when I went for my walk this morning.”
“And?”
“The cadaver dogs found a few more bone fragments, all spread out. Hell, any remains might be spread out over a thousand acres. What evidence they have will be sent off for further analysis, but the results will take a couple of days.”
