The blood was on her fingers. The body was so close to her. She was trapped in the dark with the dead.
And blood was on her hand…
Chloe’s bloody fingers flew up and slammed into the stone slab. She had to get out. There had to be a way out. She kicked up at the stone. Twisted her body. Shoved harder.
The stone didn’t move.
Her heart pounded frantically in her chest.
And the scent of the blood seemed to deepen around her. A scream wanted to rise in her throat, and she choked it back. The stone would be too thick. No one would hear her screams. She’d just waste precious oxygen. Lose valuable energy. She had to think of another way. Had to try something else…
Joel had escaped. She would, too.
She would get back to him.
***
“I’m not going to a fucking hospital! I’m finding Chloe!” Joel jerked free of the EMTs who were trying to hold him back, and he leapt from the ambulance.
Cedric frowned at him. He’d been pacing outside of the ambulance while the EMTs poked at Joel. “How many times did I tell you to calm down?”
Screw being calm. “Chloe.”
“We are going to find her. Look, we aren’t sure that she has been taken. I mean, this is Chloe. For all we know, she went off hunting the killer.”
“She wouldn’t leave me.”
“No?” Cedric’s brows climbed. “I’m pretty sure she left your ass at the hospital and went off on her own—”
“We have a deal. She wouldn’t.”
Cedric glanced away. “I don’t like anything about this,” he muttered.
Neither did Joel. He sure didn’t—
A phone was buzzing. His phone was buzzing. He hadn’t even realized the damn thing was still in his pocket. Joel fished it out. The screen was smashed to hell and back but—
Chloe?
It was Chloe’s number texting him. His finger flew over that broken screen.
A video had been sent to him.
It was…
Chloe wasn’t moving. Her body was still. So still. Stone surrounded her. And…stone was pushed over her. Closing her up. Sealing her inside.
“That’s a fucking tomb,” Cedric said as he leaned in close.
It was a fucking tomb. It was a video of someone sealing Chloe inside a fucking tomb. One of those above-ground tombs that he’d seen in plenty of cemeteries. There were hundreds of those tombs in the city.
Thousands?
He played the video again. Ignored the way his heart froze at the sight of Chloe’s still body. The footage was careful. Close up on the one tomb. A white tomb. A fast shot. Then…nothing.
“Send it to me. Now. I’ll get the techs in the department to rip it apart. If it’s got metadata on there that we can use, we will find it. Locations are often embedded in photos and video files—”
Joel was already sending him the text.
Cedric turned away and went to work typing on his phone. Joel knew he was sending the text to his team.
Joel stared down at the video. The bastard who’d sent the pic had used Chloe’s phone. “Trace her phone,” he managed. He barely recognized the hollowness of his own voice.
“What do you think I am telling my people to do right now?” Cedric groused back. “Getting them to ping towers so we can find where the hell she is, but I also want them analyzing that video.”
In case the bastard who’d sent the video still had her phone close to him, Joel fired out a text of his own.
You’re dead.
He saw the little dots moving at the bottom of his phone. “The bastard is about to respond.”
Cedric whirled back to face him.
Joel’s phone buzzed. A text—
No, but Chloe is.
Chapter Eighteen
She pulled the ring off his finger. A man. She’d figured that out during her search. She’d had to touch him…because she needed a tool. She needed a way out. And he was it.
The bastard who’d put her in there expected her to freak out. Bloody—bloody bodies…they’d always made her uneasy. Because of her past. Because of the night she’d found her butchered parents and been forced to kill her real brother.
A few people close to her knew how blood got to Chloe. It was one of the reasons she liked to have a doctor for a partner on her cases. An MD could handle the bloody work. Literally.
Joel knew about her issue. Reese. Marie. Ruben. Cedric.
Her ex knew. Morgan Fletcher had been particularly intrigued by her response to blood. That had been one of the first major warning signs for her. The criminal defense attorney had seemed so perfect. He’d responded so well in every situation, but then the cracks had appeared in his polished veneer.
Six people. There could be others who knew.
Because, obviously, her attacker knew.
But he was a fool if he thought her weakness was going to stop her in any way. The slab above her was too heavy to lift. The longer she was trapped, the weaker she would become so the less likely she would be to maneuver the damn thing off her.
So if she couldn’t move it, she had to get someone else to do the job.
Her fingers clenched around the ring she’d taken from the victim’s finger. A big ring, heavy. It reminded her of the first case she’d worked with Joel. The victims in that case had all worn similar football championship rings. The rings were very sturdy, like this one. Maybe this ring would work well for what she had in mind.
What time was it? Chloe didn’t know how long she’d been out. If it was nighttime—and she was where she suspected she was, in one of the infamous cemeteries in New Orleans—then it was unlikely anyone but her attacker would be around. The cemeteries were closed down at night to stop vandals from getting inside. But…
There were still ways to slip into the cities of the dead. The voodoo group she’d watched had slipped in.
So maybe…maybe someone would be there.
She turned to the side, away from the body, and her fingers lifted the ring. She began to tap the ring against the stone. The clanging contact would make a sound that she hoped would carry.
Especially since she was sending an SOS…
***
“We have teams separating and searching as many cemeteries as they can,” Cedric said as he turned toward Joel. They’d left the bomb scene. Finally gotten Joel the hell away from the EMTs.
Joel hadn’t let them stitch up the cut above his eye. He’d demanded skin glue and called the job done because he damn well wasn’t going to waste more time.
I have to find Chloe.
When Cedric had left that scene, Joel had jumped into the car with the detective. He hadn’t even been sure where they were headed, Joel had just known he could not be cut out of the investigation. I’m coming, baby. I am coming.
“We couldn’t trace her phone, and so far, the techs are turning up jack with the video.” There was no disguising the frustration in Cedric’s voice. “Looks like our guy was smart. He stripped out the useful metadata before he sent the file to you.”
“Wonderful. Glad to know he’s fucking smart.” Joel’s voice sounded strange to his own ears. Rough. “Why are we starting at this one?” He jerked his hand toward the heavy stone walls that wrapped around the cemetery. This place had been Cedric’s destination.