Page 21 of The Survivor
It took a second to realize that, for the first time, Elaine was talking about what had happened to her. That small detail made Sam forget all about her own pain, made her own tragedy take a back seat and reminded her why she was here.
“What else did he say?” she asked, trying not to push.
Elaine wiped the tears from her eyes. “He told me if I made a sound, he’d slit my throat. He had a knife, so I believed him.” She paused. “I was in the underground parking lot of my office, about to go on my lunch break. A coworker had wanted to walkdown with me, but I laughed and said Bob the security guard would kick anyone’s butt if they tried to mess with me. Bob sits in the lot all day, making sure everything’s okay.” She shook her head, looking betrayed. “He wasn’t there that day.”
From the bare details Blake and Rick had provided, Sam knew that the security guard had been knocked unconscious and was out cold in his booth when Elaine had been taken.
“He came up behind me and told me to be a good girl, and then there was something over my mouth. A rag, and it smelled sweet.” Elaine took a long breath. “That’s all I remember in the garage. When I came to, I was blindfolded and gagged and my hands and feet were bound. I think he put me in the back of a van, but I don’t remember seeing one in the parking garage.”
“Did he talk to you at all?”
Elaine shook her head. “I heard the radio playing, but it was kind of muffled, like there was a partition or something. And I kept smelling…” She drifted off.
“What did you smell?”
“I’m not sure.” Elaine bit her lower lip, confusion marring her face. “Something fruity and flowery. I couldn’t place it. I still can’t. But sometimes when I wake up I think I smell it. It makes me sick.” Her blue eyes flashed. “Hemakes me sick.”
Without a word, Sam drew her into her arms, touching her soft brown hair and fighting back tears of her own. It broke her heart hearing the girl’s anguished sobs, and when Elaine finally pulled back and rubbed her puffy red eyes, Sam knew it was time to go.
She couldn’t ask Elaine to put herself through any more pain. There would be time to hear the rest of her story. She’d make time. Right now, she simply couldn’t let another sliver of horror reach the surface. Not just for Elaine’s sake. But for her own.
* * *
“Let’s go,” Blake said roughly when she stepped out of Elaine’s room.
He took hold of her arm, and Sam allowed him to drag her away. No point resisting, not when he still looked displeased by her insistence on coming here this morning. He’d thank her later, though. The sparse details she’d gotten from Elaine in less than an hour were more than Blake, the FBI and the Chicago PD had managed to obtain in weeks.
“Would you ease up?” she muttered, staring at the white knuckles gripping her arm.
He slowly loosened his grasp but didn’t slow down. She matched his strides, following him down the brightly lit corridor toward the stairwell. When she’d come here with Rick, they’d taken the service elevator but apparently Blake wasn’t taking any chances. His route required them to walk down to the basement, which housed none other than the morgue.
God, she didn’t look forward to going down there again like she did the previous night, walking the creepy morgue hallways and listening to the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.
It scared her to realize that six months ago she’d come pretty close to being another one of those bodies in the morgue.
Blake didn’t say a word as he held open the door for her, but she didn’t need to be a mind reader to know that he was angry. She wondered if he realized how sexy he looked when his eyes flashed like that, when his strong jaw jutted out impatiently. Not that she would ever let him know. If there was one thing she’d learned about men in her twenty-six years, it was that unnecessary strokes to their ego only inflated it.
He descended the steps so quickly she nearly stumbled forward trying to keep up with him. He quickly caught her arm to steady her, and heat sizzled right through the sleeve of her sweater where he’d touched her. She had to pause on the landingto catch her breath—Blake’s spicy aftershave and intoxicating nearness were too much to handle.
She suddenly thought of Elaine’s despair over her boyfriend’s engagement, the look in her eyes when she’d wondered if anyone would fall in love with her again, and Sam couldn’t help wondering if the same thing applied to her. Could someone fall in love withher?Could Blake?
He’d admitted to being attracted to her, but attraction was a far cry from love. Men knew how to separate the two, and none of the relationships she’d had in the past had ever transitioned from sex to love. The men she’d dated hadn’t loved her. They’d loved theideaof her, the model who wore little bikinis and posed on some of the world’s most beautiful beaches. They liked the glitz of her life, the glamour, and yes, the sex.
She couldn’t remember the last time a man had shown interest in getting to knowherand not the model.
“You okay?” Blake asked gruffly, jerking her from her unsettling thoughts.
She slowly nodded. “Yeah. I’m fine. Let’s get out of here.”
She took a step forward just as the door to the landing swung open and nearly knocked her over. Startled, she promptly dropped the purse that had been dangling loosely from her fingers. The contents spilled out onto the floor and both she and Blake dropped to their knees to collect the fallen items.
“Shoot, I’m sorry about that,” came a male voice, and a moment later a third person was on his knees, a third set of hands grabbing at a tube of lipstick that was perilously close to rolling down the steps.
Sam glanced up to look at the man who’d startled her.
A nanosecond later she forced her head back down.
Beside her, Blake shifted over and leaned forward, trying to shield her from the reporter who was currently sharing the small space with them.
