Page 59 of Colton's Second Chance
Eli pivoted his chair to study his cousin as his gut churned. Kansas nodded slowly, her attention still locked on the wall map, her complexion gone pale. She raised a shaking finger. “And Two Bears River and the lot behind the cannery.”
Like a gong sounding, the message his brain had been whispering now shouted to him. He bit out a curse and plowed both hands through his hair.
“What?” Asher asked, then, his face blanching, he muttered the same curse word.
Kansas slumped against the wall, looking like she might collapse any second. She sent her troubled blue gaze from Eli to Asher and back again. “Please tell me this is just a very freaky and disturbing coincidence.”
Noelle sat heavily in the nearest chair. “What is it you just said, Eli? There are no coincidences?”
“Yeah. That,” Eli said hoarsely and lifted a troubled look to Noelle. “Remember the other day when I explained that a law enforcement investigator’s job wasn’t to build a case but to gather information and follow where the evidence leads?”
She nodded, her expression glum.
“I broke that rule, despite my best intentions. I got sidetracked, blinded by thinking this was about me. But…” Eli shifted his gaze to his cousin “…it looks likeyou’rethe link, Kansas. He’s copying your aunt’s murder and leaving the victims, all women who match your general description, at places you’ve been on rescues in recent months.”
“But…why?” Kansas asked, her voice cracking. “Wh-why me?”
No one said anything for a moment, but finally Noelle answered quietly, “You said yourself he’s flirted with you, and you’ve rebuffed his advances. Maybe his interest in you grew into an obsession. If he was already unstable and had within himthe ability to murder without compunction, maybe he thought killing the women would snag your attention.”
Kansas gaped at Noelle, then Asher…then clapped her hand to her mouth and raced from the conference room.
Asher started to rise, but Noelle lifted a hand. “Let me.”
Once Noelle left the room, seeking Kansas, Eli pinned a hard glare on Asher. “If we’re right about this, if Montgomery is doing this because of an obsession with Kansas, he could come after her next.”
Asher’s jaw clenched, and his eyes darkened with fury. “Over my dead body.”
“And mine.” Eli took a calming breath. He needed to weed out his own turbulent emotions and think clearly. “He could be hoping this latest kidnapping will trigger a search and rescue that will lead Kansas to him. Hell, now that he knows we’re onto him, he could have been planning to snatch Kansas tonight. Thank God she’s been with our family all day prepping for my mother’s party.”
“So we’re agreed she needs twenty-four-hour protection until Montgomery is brought in?” Asher said, his jaw rigid.
Eli exhaled. “Good luck convincing her of that. She might be freaked out over this turn of events, but she’s strong-willed and independent.”
Asher only grunted.
Eli cast a glance to the map again. “Okay, so we have a better idea of Montgomery’s motive and possible future target, but we still have to find the woman he took tonight—before it’s too late.”
Chapter 20
Knowing Kansas was likely the driving obsession behind Montgomery’s heinous crimes, Eli attacked the investigation with renewed vigor. The perspective that the women’s bodies had been left at sites where Kansas had participated in rescues gave them more geographic focus.
With Kansas’s help, they began reconstructing a map of all her rescue work over the past three years. The possibilities were mind-boggling. Kansas went on dozens of rescues every year, both close to Shelby and far out into the hinterlands of the Alaskan wilderness.
“How on earth do we pin down where he’s going?” Noelle moaned, the frustration in her tone matching the tension and urgency pulsing through Eli.
He stroked a hand over his mouth as he studied the well-marked map. “Will you enter all these sites and run cross-references and the like with your analytics software?”
“I will, but it’s going to take some time to get it all entered, and my laptop is still at your place,” she said.
From the corner of his eye, he caught the curious look Noelle’s last comment roused from Asher. He didn’t have time to address his partner’s speculations about his relationship with Noelle.
“I can’t help but wonder, though…” Noelle said. She paused, biting her fingernail while her brow dipped in thought.
“Go on,” Eli said. “All brainstorms are valid.”
“Now that he knows we’re onto him, he might have guessed we put together the reason behind the previous crime scenes, thelink to Kansas’s search sites. And if he doesn’t want to be caught, then wouldn’t he break that pattern? Are we wasting time with the SAR locations?”
“You may be right on that point. If so, that would bring the possible locations Montgomery could have gone back to…anywhere in the world,” Asher said, waving his arm at the map, his tone dark with frustration.
