Page 21 of Blood and Sand

A crazed killer had gotten too close to her. It pissed me off and scared me shitless, all at the same time. Even if I had to throw her over my fucking shoulder like a damn caveman or cuff her ass, she was coming home with me. I let her pull this bullshit about staying in this damn hotel when I knew she should have been in our home, safe, with me.

But what happens when she’s not with you? He’s coming for her, and she can’t be with you twenty-four seven.

My thoughts taunted me. I couldn’t be with her twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, but damn it, I’d try. Her stayinghere wasn’t an option. There was no security, no one to protect her if this maniac came back. I raked my hand through my hair and paced the floor, rage building inside me. I was pissed at myself. Pissed I hadn’t made the connection sooner. How could I have put her in danger? I’d done exactly what he wanted and brought her back to Louisiana. I’d been the one to put her in danger.

“I knew there was something familiar about these women. I just couldn’t put my damn finger on it. I’ve done exactly what that motherfucker wants.”

“Rey, stop.” Dana placed her palms on my chest to stop me from pacing. “Calm down. What are you talking about?”

I sat on the end of the bed with my face in my hands. “At your grandparents’, when you went to bed after we discussed the case, I got that feeling when I looked at the photos of all those women. At their graduation pictures, family photos, and autopsy photos. It’s the first time I’ve gotten it.”

Her eyes shot up in surprise. “Yourfeeling?”

I nodded. She knew exactly what I was talking about. When we were together, I had discussed with her the feeling I got whenever something bad was coming, and it hadn’t ever failed me. Ever. Whenever it occurred, something bad always happened.

I got the same feeling when we were in North Carolina. My grandmother had always claimed I wasblessed. It was something I never believed in, but I did have a gut instinct that told me when shit was about to go down.

“A sense of familiarity hit me, but I thought it was my imagination. I thought maybe I was overacting, so like a fucking idiot, I shrugged the feeling off. I shouldn’t have shrugged it off.”

“Wait. What are you trying to say, Rey?”

I reached over and picked one of the photos. “Victim number nine. Daniella Strong, age twenty-nine. I remember so much about these women’s lives, DeeDee, that it’s become second nature recalling their last days.”

“I’m so sorry, Rey.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. It comes with the job.” I shook the picture. “This picture was one of the last photos ever taken of Daniella before she went missing the following day. She never made it to work Monday morning after having brunch with her parents on Sunday. According to her friends, Daniella was the life of the party, and her parents said she was the rock of their family. She’d been missing more than a week before her body turned up in Laurels Bayou attached to victim number ten, twenty-eight-year-old Dawn Ellis.” I took in a deep breath and released it. “I will never forget their mothers’ wails when Amir and I made the death notification.”

I gazed at it for a few more minutes before I handed it to her.

“Look at her, DeeDee. I mean, really look at her. All of them.” I motioned to the pictures of all the victims splayed across the bed. “Who do they look like to you? Tell me I’m going fucking crazy.”

Her eyes widened when she looked at the picture I handed her. I stalked to the bathroom, grabbed her toiletries, and tossed them in the suitcase. She swallowed hard and crossed her arms over her chest, trying to find an answer to my question that went against the obvious. She knew. No matter how much she denied the truth to herself, I was right, and she knew it.

These dead women were a pawn in a serial killer’s game. She was his real target, and I’d led her straight to him like a fucking lamb to the slaughter.

“How could I be so fucking stupid?” I gripped my hair and tugged on it before I dropped my hands, thinking about all the things I needed to do to get ahead of this bastard.

“You can’t be serious, Rey.”

She held the picture of Daniella out toward me. I took it and looked at it one more time before tossing it on top of the others on the bed.

“You think these women look like me?”

The tremble in her voice tore at my heart, but she needed to look at the situation from a logical standpoint, not an emotional one. She was the best at what she did, so now was the time for her to do that crazy shit she did so well and not be caught up in her emotions.

The bastard had been sending signs…signs I’d fucking missed, but now I understood what he was doing. He'd used me to get her back to Louisiana, from dumping women who looked like her into Laurels Bayou to getting rid of them in my parish. Shit, even all their names started with the same damn letter. It had been about her this entire time, and I had fallen right into his trap.

“They resemble you, DeeDee. Open your eyes.” I zipped up her suitcase, grabbed all the files on the case, including the picture of Daniella, and packed them in her briefcase. “Everything this fucker is doing comes back to you. The way these women look, their accomplishments in their professions, even fucking Laurels Bayou. Me, my parish. Their fucking first names all begin with the same letter as yours!”

How could I have been so fucking stupid, bringing her back here?

“What about the Kinbaku then?” She glared at me with her hands on her hips. “I’m not into that, and I don’t frequent those types of online sites either.”

“I hadn’t figured that shit out yet, but I’m sure it’s got something to do with you. Maybe the work you did during grad school?” I tossed my hands in the air. “Shit, Dee, I don’t fucking know. What I do know is we’re going to figure this shit out, atourhome. Not here. So, let’s go.”

For a moment, she stood still. Dana was the strongest woman I knew, but the news that all this had something to do with her had shaken her to her core. Like most law enforcement officers, we received death threats weekly. It came along with the job. Dana was a high-profile criminal profiler for the FBI. She was constantly on television during high-profile cases or speaking at law enforcement conferences, so I was sure she’d received her share of threats from nut jobs, not to mention the shit she went through in college with that psycho. But this killer’s obsession went beyond the normal stuff we received from crazies. She was the target of an intelligent killer who’d evaded capture for at least eight months, with at least twelve women’s deaths attributed to him. All because he wanted her attention.

Over my dead body, would she stay here.

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