“Hold on, Kyle.” Dani shook her head. He noticed she didn’t look directly at the victim. Danielle never did. The victims always made her too nervous. She wasn’t usually in the field. She stayed safely shut in her office. Behind all those locked doors at the bureau. “We need more evidence before we start saying this girl is his.”
Kyle’s phone vibrated. He yanked it from his pocket. Glanced down.
Blocked caller.
The breath in his lungs became icy. “Cadence.” He snapped out her name right before he took the call.
She glanced at him, her left eyebrow rising.
“Who the hell is this?” Kyle demanded.
Cadence’s eyes widened.
Laughter rasped across the line. “You know.” A dark, rasping voice.
His voice.
“We need a trace on that call,” Cadence said to Dani. “We need it now.”
“Do you feel hunted?” Kyle asked him. He knew he had to keep the guy on the line as long as possible. Dani was already working frantically, typing on her tablet and talking to her crew at Quantico. They’d need to ping cell towers and trace the signal. He had to buy as much time as he could. “We’re closing in on you. I saw you today.”
“I let you. Just like I let you find that poor girl behind the diner. The woman you’re standing over right now.”
Fuck. He can see me. He mouthed the words to Cadence. She eased back. Went to talk with the cops in the area. Then he saw them all spread out.
They’d start searching.
“I don’t buy that she’s yours,” he said, but he did. “This isn’t the way you kill.”
“You think you know me.” The words were mocking. “But Agent McKenzie, you don’t know anything.”
“You take your victims, you keep them. You didn’t keep her.”
“She wasn’t good enough.”
Sick prick.
“My girls have to be just right.” His voice never rose over a low rasp. “I thought the little blonde might work, but she wasn’t like the original.”
Maria.
“I know you, Agent. The man who takes down the killers…you like to see your name in the papers, don’t you?”
He didn’t give a shit about the press. “I’m going to take you down.”
“Maria’s hero,” that rasping voice mused. “How quickly you forgot her.”
“I never forgot!” The rage surged within him.
“Now no one will forget.” Satisfaction was there, thickening the words. “They will all know what’s been done. All know that no one can stop me.”
Bullshit. Kyle would stop him.
“You haven’t asked to talk with her.” The words faded into a whisper. “Don’t you want to hear from Maria again?”
What he wanted was to kill that SOB. “It’s hard to talk with a ghost.”
More laughter. “Why do you think I killed them all? You only found one body in those caverns.”
Kyle’s shoulders tensed. How the f**k did he know that?
Cadence had disappeared into the trees. Dani was still close. “Not yet,” she mouthed to him.
They didn’t need the cell tower pings. The SOB was right there. Kyle’s gaze swept the line of trees. The rolling hills. So many places to hide.
“If they die too quickly, then what’s the point?”
“You killed this one fast enough,” Kyle pointed out. The scent of death was heavy in the air.
“That bitch wouldn’t stop screaming, so I stopped her! You don’t follow the rules, and you get punished.”
“Bullshit,” Kyle called. “You get off on killing, so you do it. That’s why you shot Christa.”
“Christa wasn’t the first one I aimed for.”
“The sheriff’s gonna make it.” He’d better. “Your aim was shit.”
“Yes.” A surprising admission. “I wasn’t trying to hit the sheriff, either.”
He tried to remember who’d been close to the sheriff.
“You took my girl away,” the voice told him, rasping now. “So I’m going to take yours.”
Cadence had been the only other person close to the sheriff. His blood had splattered on her.
His heart slammed into his ribs. I can’t see Cadence. She’d vanished into those woods.
The killer waited in those woods.
“No, no, you’re f**king not!” Kyle snarled into the phone.
Dani’s head jerked up.
“Let me go.”
That voice. Maria’s voice.
“I want to go home. Kyle, I want to go home!”
Tears choked her.
Then all he heard was silence.
“Kyle?” Dani touched his arm. “Kyle, the call is coming from somewhere in a five-mile radius. We couldn’t pinpoint it any better than that.”
The phone’s screen cracked. He tried to ease the pressure of his hand, but couldn’t. “Cadence.” It was all he could manage right then.
“She’s searching for him now.”
“He wants Cadence.”
Dani stumbled back.
Kyle’s fingers slid over the broken phone’s screen. With one touch, he was calling her, even as he raced for the woods. For the last spot he’d seen her.
Cadence’s gun had been out when she went into the woods. She was a federal agent. Trained. She could handle herself.
Answer the phone. Answer…
Cadence advanced slowly. She kept her gun up as she swept the area. From what she’d heard, it had sure sounded like the perp was watching Kyle at the diner.
Even with binoculars, he’d have to be close.
Where are you?
The land slanted upward. Four deputies had branched out, searching with her. She kept trying to find the telltale glint of metal in the brush. The flash of a lens on the binoculars, but she didn’t see anything.
Insects buzzed around her. The heat of the Tennessee summer had her T-shirt sticking to her skin.
Her phone vibrated, shaking in her pocket. She fished it out with her left hand. “Hollow.”
“He’s after you.” Kyle’s voice. Shaken. Furious. Harder than she’d ever heard before. “The sonofabitch told me that he wants you.”
She retreated a few steps, putting her back against the broad base of a tree. Her eyes kept scanning the area. “I haven’t caught sight of him.”
“Come back down here. Fuck, come on now, Cadence.”
“This is what I’m trained for. I have my vest on and I’ve got my gun.” She wouldn’t give in to fear. “He can see me regardless, and if I start rushing out of here now, then I might just make myself more of a target.” It would be better for her to lie low and search for the perp. You’re hunting me? We’ll see who gets caught first.