Now, he didn’t want to go back.
He wanted to keep going forward until he got to where he wanted to be.
Leaping forward, he slammed his fist into the back of the woman’s head and watched with satisfaction as she dropped.
He was breathing hard as he stood above her.
He should wait.
He shouldn’t do this here.
For all he knew, someone would be coming back.
But he couldn’t resist.
Wrapping his claws around her arm he lifted it and sank his teeth into her flesh, and like the addict he was becoming, endorphins flooded his body at the taste of blood.
He wasn’t just becoming a beast; he already was one.
10:29 P.M.
* * *
Dante hoped that their warnings had been heeded.
They didn’t have the manpower to stake out every library in the city, nor did the killer seem to have a pattern in how he was choosing which libraries to hit. He wasn’t predictable in what days he was committing his abductions and murders, so there wasn’t a lot they could do to keep people safe. They had to settle for putting out a warning to all the libraries, making sure that their staffs knew not to remain alone in the buildings at the end of the day.
Was it enough?
Somehow, he doubted it.
By design, most people lived with an air of immortality. Although death was all around them and they all knew that one day it would grab them, it didn’t seem to matter. People lived like they would live forever, and it wasn’t until they had an up close and personal experience with death that it finally began to change.
He had been guilty of that disposition.
It wasn’t until his life was ripped apart that he learned just how close to death they lived each day.
He’d just turned thirty-four last month, and that same day marked the anniversary of the loss of his family.
Not just one person he loved.
Not even two or three.
But every single member of his family.
Gone.
In one horrific night.
It was his birthday and he was supposed to be at home celebrating with his family, but a victim in a case he was working was found wandering along the side of a highway. Of course, he had rushed off to interview her and find out if she knew who had snatched her from her bed in the middle of the night and tortured her for over a month.
She knew nothing more than that the man was a monster.
He was about to learn that as well.
That the girl had gotten free was no accident; it was a diversion. While he was occupied with the case, the serial killer broke into his house and proceeded to kill his family one by one. Slowly and painfully. His parents, his three younger sisters, and his fiancée. They all died horrific deaths that night.
Dante knew that because the killer had filmed everything and live streamed it to his phone.
It went without saying that the night had virtually destroyed him.
How could it not?
Watching the fear on his loved ones’ faces was surpassed only by the resignation as they realized they were never walking out of the house alive.
When he was done slaughtering his family, the killer had brazenly walked out of the house and been shot by the dozen or so cops surrounding it and planning how they would swarm inside and take the man out before he killed anyone else.
By then, it was too late.
They were all dead.
As was the killer.
He had lost everything that night six years ago. He had been left behind to live out the rest of his life alone and stuck in a circle of grieving that had no end.
So, this was his life now.
Work.
It was a simple life, but at least, it gave him something to hold on to, something to keep him going, something to focus on so he could keep the depression that threatened to crush him at bay.
Every second that he wasn’t sleeping or performing some necessary chore like eating, showering, sleeping, or working out, he was working on at least one of his open cases.
Which was exactly what he was doing tonight.
It was quiet at the station this late. There were detectives on duty but most of them were out in the field. He liked being here alone—with no one to bother him. He found he was much more productive.
Milla thought he had gone home when she left for the day, but there was nothing for him at home. This was where he wanted to be; this was where he could still do something good in the world.
Tonight the case he was working on was the library killer case.
He was positive that he already possessed the key to finding who this man was. He just didn’t know that that piece of information was important.
Yet.
But he would find it. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do with his time.
Pausing the TV, he stood and walked from the table over to the screen to get a better look.
Right there.
He tapped his finger just above the screen.
That man.
Dante was sure he’d seen him on one of the other videos he’d watched earlier tonight. He had collected all the security footage from the libraries and had been going through it, hoping that he might see someone pop up at all the locations.
Not that that necessarily meant anything. It was perfectly reasonable that someone would visit more than one library, but if he could find someone who had been at all of the buildings where someone had been abducted and murdered, then he might get a suspect.
The man he was looking at looked just like a man he remembered seeing at the library where Teresa Mateo worked and at the library where Kelly Mac worked. On the screen, there he was sitting at a table, a comic book in his hands, at the library where Kim Johnson worked.
Three for three.
That was good enough for him. He would send this footage to the tech guys and see if they could get a good enough shot to run it through the database using facial recognition software to get a match.
Tomorrow he and Milla would go to the libraries with a screenshot of this man and see if anyone was able to identify him from the picture. If he was lucky, someone would not only recognize him but would also know his name.
Tonight, he was going to start watching footage from other libraries. If he could spot the guy somewhere else then he might actually be able to get one step ahead of the killer.
4
April 18th
* * *
9:50 A.M.
* * *
Dante paced impatiently outside the library.
He’d waited all night to get here and start interviewing staff and patrons and now that he was here, he just wanted to get inside and find out if anyone knew the man in the security footage.
“We still have ten minutes until they open,” Milla reminded him, standing patiently beside the door.
“I can tell time,” he snapped.
“Of course you can. How could you have become a cop if you couldn’t,” she said with a cheerful smile.
It didn’t matter how often he tried to push her buttons and ruffle her feathers, because she didn’t have buttons or feathers when it came to getting annoyed. Milla was the most even-tempered person he’d ever seen. Which was probably why she was the only cop in the department who was happy to work with him.
Losing his family in one night had changed him. He had never been a particularly outgoing or extroverted person, and he’d always preferred to work hard and focus on his job and his family, but once he lost them, he became angry and bitter. He knew it was a natural reaction to grief, and he didn’t deliberately act cold and harsh. Pushing people away wasn’t a conscious decision. He would just prefer to stay alone and not get close to anyone else.