Sunday, 9:45 a.m.
Lexie couldn’t stop shaking. Her whole body was racked by tremors as she sat in the passenger’s seat, craning forward to peer out the windshield as if doing so would get her to the hospital that much sooner. Beside her, Aidan gripped the steering wheel in tight fists, his back ramrod straight, every muscle straining.
She knew he wanted to tell her everything would be all right.
They both knew that would be a lie.
Using Aidan’s phone, she’d tried calling Walter and had gotten no answer. Cursing the fact that she’d lost her own phone, wondering if he’d been trying to call her all night, she’d asked Aidan to take her to the hospital she herself had left less than twenty-four hours ago. The radio newscaster had reported that one of the girls had been taken there.
Of the other, there was absolutely no sign.
The few other reported details were sketchy. After they’d closed up for the night, movie theater employees had discovered a bloody teenage girl lying in the parking lot. They told police she’d left the building fifteen minutes earlier with another girl, who was nowhere to be seen.
Something deep inside her already knew, without a doubt, who the girls had been.
Identical twins
. How many sets of identical girls, teenagers, lived in Granville? She had spent a lot of time with the Kirby girls and their friends over the years and knew a lot of the families. Plus she’d been talking to teachers, students, and administrators from both local high schools in recent weeks. And she could not recall one other pair of identical girls of driving age.
Walter’s daughters
had
to have been the ones who were attacked. The question was, why?
So far she’d been able to think of only one possible answer.
“Do you think he stalked them because of my articles?” she whispered, voicing the awful theory that had gripped her almost immediately—that she could be at fault.
He didn’t try to calm her with some kind of assurances that she couldn’t know it was the Kirby twins. They were both well beyond that. Instead, Aidan said, “Lexie, I know you’re upset, and you have reason to be, but think about it. If this guy got angry about your articles and wanted to get back at you, and at Walter, the editor of the paper, wouldn’t he have done it a month ago when you first exposed him?”
She hesitated, thinking about it, then slowly nodded. “You’d think so. But maybe he heard I was digging into it again and wanted to scare us off.”
“By attacking the beautiful, vivacious twin daughters of a prominent, well-known, well-loved family? Not only will that
not
get the local press to back off, it’s going to bring the eyes of the national media onto this town,” he said, so reasonable and thoughtful.
Unable to prevent a note of bitterness, she replied, “They sure weren’t flying in here to cover the story when it was a bunch of missing girls from the wrong side of the tracks.”
“I know,” he replied, sounding as bothered by that as she was. “But to be fair, this is the first time there’s an actual victim to prove a crime occurred. Nobody can say the Kirby girls weren’t really attacked when one of them is lying in the hospital.”
“I suppose,” she admitted.
“The point is, this guy is not stupid. If he wanted to get you to back off, victims as high profile as the Kirby twins are the last ones he would target. Something else happened; something else drove him to do this.” He reached over and grabbed her hand, squeezing it. “This is not your fault.”
He made perfect sense, and logically, she knew he was right. But deep down that guilt still clawed at her. Even worse than the guilt, though, was her fear for the girls. Having met them as soon as she’d moved here, Lexie had watched them grow up from gawky tweens to the young women they were today. She had treated them like the kid sisters she’d never had. She had spent nights in their house, braiding their hair, playing board games. Walter’s family had become closer to her than the few remaining members of her real one.
As if that weren’t bad enough, her heart was also breaking for Walter and Ann- Marie, who’d already been through so much. They’d thought they had emerged from their long, dark tunnel, with only good days to look forward to. Now they’d been thrust into every parent’s worst nightmare.
One stabbed. One taken. Two lives at stake.
They had to do something, soon
.
“Aidan, is there anything you can . . .”
“I’m going over to the crime scene after I drop you off,” he told her, anticipating the request. His words low, he wouldn’t look over at her as he said, “I can’t imagine the locals have covered every single thing, so I’ll start there. If I don’t get anything, and if I can’t find something I can touch, you can get me into the Kirby house, all right?”
Something to touch. A hair clip, a key, a torn scrap of clothing.
A drop of blood
.
Anything to connect him with the girls.
“My God,” she muttered, “I still can’t wrap my mind around it.”
“Everyone’s going to be working on this, Lex,” he told her as they drew within a few blocks of the hospital. “I guarantee you, Dunston won’t be able to impede this investigation. State and probably even federal officials are going to get involved, since this is a forcible kidnapping.”
“Yes, but will they do it in time to save her?” Thinking of Vonnie, she clarified. “To save them?”
“I don’t know.”
Glancing over at him, seeing the stubborn set of his jaw, the fierce look of determination in his eyes, she felt sure of one thing. Whether anybody else got involved in time to help those girls, Aidan wasn’t going to give up.
He was in this now, part of this. Even if they hadn’t spent this morning making amazing love, he would still be here, committed and by her side until the very end. Whatever demons had kept him from doing what he was born to do had either been exorcised or at least shoved away while he focused on this case, these missing teenagers.
“My whole team will focus on nothing else, twenty-four /seven, until it’s done,” he promised her. “Julia and Mick are already heading out to that old plantation house and Olivia and Derek are meeting them on site. They should know within a couple of hours if Jessie Leonard really died there, and how she died.”
She wanted to know that, wanted the girl’s mother to know the truth. But right now, that wasn’t as important as helping the girls who were still—please God—alive.
“Plus, Julia told me she intended to go look into county property records and see who owns that place. I can’t see a bunch of men using it month after month without knowing the rightful owner isn’t going to stumble out there and catch them at their dirty games.”
“I’d actually thought of that last night right before I fell asleep on the couch,” Lexie admitted, just now remembering. “I’m good at doing grunt research. I had intended to offer to do it today, while you all did your thing.” She didn’t add that she’d wanted to do it specifically because she did not want to go into that evil old house. “I, uh, might still be able to. I honestly don’t know what I’ll be doing all day.”
What if Walter and Ann- Marie didn’t want her there, keeping vigil with them for their daughters? For all that Aidan could logically say it wasn’t her fault, would the grieving parents see it the same way?
As they pulled into the hospital entrance, she could only hope they would know she would never have intentionally done anything to put their children in danger. She would give anything to be able to go back and change it if it would prevent this from ever happening.
And if she ever discovered she had somehow triggered that monster into targeting Walter’s daughters, Lexie would never forgive herself, not for all the days of her life.
“I’ll park and come in with you for a minute before going over to the crime scene,” he said, obviously not wanting to drop her off at the hospital entrance.
Suddenly thinking of something, she realized there was a better way for Aidan to build a connection between himself and the Kirby twins. “I have to ask—isn’t a real, physical touch between you and another person better than touching an object?”
He nodded.
“So instead of going over to the scene, why don’t you stay here and get the touch you really need? It’s better than trying to find some random drop of blood on the ground.”
“It would be, but how would the parents feel about that?”
“Walter knows who you are and what you can do. I’m sure he can get you in to see her.”
She swallowed, thinking about her own words.
Her
.
Jenny or Taylor? The sweet academic or the fiery bad girl?
Which twin was fighting for her life in the hospital? Which was in the clutches of a brutal psychopath?
And which was worse?
Sunday, 10:00 a.m.
Jack Dunston had spent a lot of years being a yes- man, and he knew it. It hadn’t really seemed to matter. In a town like this, was turning a blind eye to the occasional parking ticket or speeding charge leveled against one of the more important residents really so bad? Had anybody ever been hurt because he sometimes leaned on kids for riding skateboards too close to the bank, or because he arranged for a tow-away of a car parked once too often in front of the mayor’s trash cans? Did anybody really care?
Probably not.
But everything had changed. His days of not caring, of being the yes-man, had come to an end. Some would say not a moment too soon.
It had started last evening, when he’d gotten in his truck and followed that van on a long, fruitless drive all over the county. It had been completely confirmed later in the night, when he’d received the call about the bloody attack against two good kids whose father was one of the few people in this town Jack would actually like to have for a friend. For all that the newsman had given him shit over the years, and seen him for exactly what he was, Jack had always respected Walter Kirby. It pained him now to see the grieving father about as close to breaking as any human being he had ever known.
Having just finished interviewing both the girls’ parents, he intended to head back over to the crime scene, to make sure it was being processed correctly. His technicians were young and pretty inexperienced, certainly not used to dealing with the kind of violence that had taken place outside that theater last night.
This wasn’t a drug deal or a simple burglary. There was innocent blood on the streets of Granville. He’d never have believed it possible and had to wonder if he’d been wrong about everything. Certainly he’d been stupid. He’d been lazy and a little too quick to listen to folks who didn’t believe the crazy, wild theories that turned up in the newspaper.
Only now they didn’t seem so crazy and wild.
What if there really was a serial killer lurking in Granville? What if he really had been picking off its residents one by one for the past three years while Jack Dunston kept opening up his fridge and pulling out beers and twenties?
If that was true, he’d honestly deserve whatever scorn and hatred got heaped on his head by all those angry families.
Well, that was over now. There could be no more sitting on the sidelines, letting things play out. He was in this. No more laid-back, good old boy, he was the chief of police. From here on out, he would do everything he could to find out what in the hell was going on here, and bring those responsible for it to justice.
“Can you even imagine such a thing?” a voice said, surprising Jack as he stood in a private alcove just inside the hospital entrance, finishing up his notes from the interview before heading out to his squad car.
“I just heard the news,” added Mayor Cunningham,
tsk
ing a little as he joined him. Though the man was, as always, well dressed and groomed, he didn’t look his normal, happy self. Dark circles under his heavy-lidded eyes said he hadn’t slept well last night and his jaw twitched, as if he were gritting his teeth.
Nerves working on him
. The easygoing mayor was worried about something.
“Dark day for this town,” Jack replied.
“How’s Kirby holdin’ up?”
“About like you’d expect.”
“Bet it was some tramp passin’ through,” the mayor said, the weakness of his tone saying even he didn’t believe the bullshit excuse. “Nobody from ’round here would evah do such a thing.”
A few days ago, Jack would probably have agreed with him. Not anymore. The blinders were completely off.
Pasting on that fake-caring expression that had put him into office election after election, for the past twenty years, the mayor patted Jack’s shoulder. “Well, now, you be sure to let me know if there’s anything I can do to . . .”
“There is.”
“Excuse me?”
“We need to talk.”
Cunningham’s smile faded. “ ’Bout what?”
Staring directly into the man’s slightly bloodshot eyes, Jack replied, “About where you and all your friends were heading last night.”
Cunningham’s normally pink-cheeked face went a bit pale and his deep-set, beady eyes darted back and forth. Used to having his posse around him most times—Lawton, Underwood, and the others—he looked a little like a cornered rat. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. We had a financial plannin’ meeting, just like every month.” He let out one of his hearty laughs, only it came out weak and phony. “Stock market isn’t bein’ too kind, lately.”
“I saw you,” Jack replied flatly. “Saw you get in that white van. I followed you all the way down Old Terrytown Road.”
Pale? No. Now the mayor’s face looked about the color of wet flour. He opened his mouth, snapped it closed, looking around more frantically this time. The man didn’t know what to say if his words hadn’t been put in his mouth by someone a whole lot smarter or written by a speech writer.
“Why’d you just drive around and come back to town?” Jack asked. “You slowed down once, like you were gonna turn, then sped up like y’all were being chased by demons. And I somehow doubt it was because you suddenly spotted me a quarter-mile behind you.”