Page 43 of Dolls & Daggers
But there’s nothing. The Doll is meticulous. The videos have been skewed in a way that would take a tech team weeks to unravel just to get some scope on her height.
Hunter calls back just as I’m rewatching the last video. “I had to come back for work. Mom and Dad say hi, by the way.”
“Uh-huh. Did you release your rabbit into the wild for her date?” I take a pull from my beer and sit back,turning down the volume on the TV, where I’ve cast the videos from my laptop.
“Fuck her date,” Hunter scoffs. “The dude was five-nine with a pedo-stache.”
“And you know thisbecause?” On the screen, the Doll saws through her victim’s privates. My balls ache just watching it.
“Because I walked her to the bar where they were meeting. She’s just trying to get back at me for kissing Dove.”
“Hmm. Maybe she and I should team up. Swap a little spit in front of you two and see how you like it,” I muse, getting up to grab a new bottle. The second the words leave my mouth, however, guilt punches me in the gut.
I’ve been ignoring Dove since I ran away like a coward the other night. She deserves better. She deserves more than a ring of bruises around her dainty neck and the pain I caused in her big blue eyes. No matter how panicked I was.
Even if she’s the Doll.Especiallyif she’s the Doll.
And fuck, if she is… was she right in front of me the whole time?
“Touch a hair on Bunny’s head, and I’ll charge you with sexual assault,” Hunter grumbles. I know he won’t.
“It’s cute you keep threatening that, yet you hadthe nerve to touch my…” My what? Dove isn’tmyanything. I ruined any chance of that.
Didn’t I?
“Oh? Is sheyoursnow?” Hunter sounds amused.
Movement on the screen pulls my attention back to the TV. The victim thrashes against his bindings, knocking the chair into the table holding the Doll’s instruments. She backhands him with the pommel of her dagger. Her head falls back, shoulders rising and falling as if sighing, before she methodically readjusts the table to its original position.
I blanch, nearly dropping my beer.
Rushing back to my laptop, I rewind thirty seconds and hit play, vaguely aware of Hunter rambling about how he teased Bunny’s date so bad the guy left before drinks were even ordered.
I watch closely as the scene replays, matching each second to how Dove reacted whenever I knocked something off-kilter in her office—how she’d pause before setting it back exactly as it was.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
“Hey, Hunt? You never find any fingerprints at the crime scenes, do you?” I think about the way the Doll’s fingers felt against my skin—smooth, with rough edges, like she’d taped something over the pads or coated them in glue.
“Nope.” He pops his p. “The scenes are always wiped clean.”
Sitting back, I drag a hand down my face, weighing whether to tell him. But at my core, I know he’d be obligated to investigate, and I can’t stomach the idea of Dove sitting behind bars.
The Doll doesn’t belong in prison. I don’t care if she murders men. The disgusting bastards deserve it.
And it doesn’t seem like Hunter is all that concerned with catching her.
“You guys don’t seem too worried about catching the Doll or the Siren,” I lead, hoping he bites.
He does. “This is off the record, obviously, Wren. But they kill the bad guys the world’s better off without. Some of us aren’t exactlyitchingto put them behind bars.”
Long after we’ve hung up, after I’ve matched nearly every coincidence, I’m convinced.
Dove Carroway is the Baby Doll Killer.
This could have beenan email or a phone call. Why does it have to be a home visit?
My inner voice sounds oddly like Bunny today.
