“Dante, that was a call about a body that could be Sydney Carriere. We should go check it out,” Milla said, coming over to him.
Although he had been expecting this call, he had not been expecting the strength of his reaction to it.
He felt like he had lost someone he knew. And not just knew but someone he cared about. Yet he had never even spoken a word to this woman. Just watched her through a window for less than a minute, and she had smiled at him. That was hardly reason to feel like a piece of himself had just died.
“Why don’t you go. I want to spend a bit more time here, try to get a read on this guy.” That and he needed a little time to collect himself and his thoughts and emotions before he was ready to face anyone.
He was grieving.
As ridiculous as it sounded, he was grieving this beautiful woman he had never even met.
“Okay, I’ll call you when I get there, let you know what I find.”
Once Milla left, he gave himself a moment to just feel what was flooding through his body. It had been so long since he had felt anything but anger that the strength of the emotions made him feel both dizzy and queasy.
In order to function each day, he had to take his grief and guilt over what had happened to his family and lock it away. It was so much easier to feel nothing than the crushing weight of loss.
The library was empty. It would remain closed for the rest of the day. Crime scene would be here soon, but right now, he appreciated that no one was here to witness his mini meltdown.
When he had drawn in several deep, cleansing breaths he felt his head begin to clear. He might not have been able to save Sydney, but he could make sure that the man who had killed her was caught and punished, that justice was served.
There were two glasses of champagne, and two chairs had been decorated with balloons. Was the killer recreating a date that had gone bad? If that was the case, how did it factor in with the libraries? Had the date been at a library? Had the woman he’d been on the date with been a librarian? Ed’s mother wasn’t a librarian, and his sister was deceased—perhaps an aunt, or niece, or some other relative had been one?
Unlike yesterday’s scene, there was no indication that Sydney had been attacked while she was here. There was no blood, just like at the first three scenes. Yesterday it had looked like the killer was devolving, but today he was back to a smooth and forensics free abduction. Was that because Sydney was the one he wanted all along?
Dante was so preoccupied he didn’t notice the man behind him until it was too late.
A brick connected with his skull and he dropped.
12:34 P.M.
* * *
My head is spinning.
That was Dante’s first thought.
His second was that he needed his gun.
Without moving, he did a mental assessment, checking to see if his weapon was still on him.
It wasn’t.
Whoever had knocked him out at the library had obviously taken his gun.
The logical conclusion was to assume that the person who’d attacked him was the very same killer he’d been hunting. The man who abducted librarians and ripped them to shreds. But he had learned a long time ago that the logical thing wasn’t always what happened, and that making assumptions often led to mistakes.
So instead of assuming he knew what was going on, he very carefully opened his eyes and surveyed his surroundings. He was in what appeared to be a cave. There were metal bars about five feet from where he lay, running from the ground to the cave’s ceiling.
He hadn’t just been knocked out; he’d been abducted.
The pain from being hit over the head already forgotten—he had long ago learned how to compartmentalize pain—he jumped to his feet. He turned around and was surprised when he heard a voice speak from the shadows.
“Oh, you’re hot. I mean, well, not hot hot. Well, no, you are very sexy … you must work out a lot. I mean, I’m sorry, this is not appropriate ‘we just met’ talk. I shouldn’t have said you were hot. Not because you aren’t, because, yeah, you are, but just … okay, Syd, stop talking now,” a voice babbled.
“Sydney Carriere?” he asked, confused, trying to get a better look at the woman who was still standing partially obscured behind a large rock.
“Yes. Have we met?”
She finally took a step toward him, and it was definitely Sydney. Up close, she was even prettier than he’d thought. Her eyes were a very bright blue, the same shade as the sky in the middle of summer. Her hair was a gorgeous golden blonde, that once again reminded him of the bright summer sun. She was short, not much over five feet, and while she seemed delicate, he had a feeling she was a lot tougher than she looked.
When he looked into her eyes, he knew why her smile had affected him to the point he could think of little else.
She knew.
She knew pain and grief and loss like he did.
She understood.
She got it.
It wasn’t something that he would have to explain to her. He wouldn’t have to try to justify why he hadn’t moved on with his life after six years; he wouldn’t have to try to describe the mix of emotions that messed with your head when someone you loved was snatched away from you.
She had lived it.
Whoever she had lost and however it had happened, the damage that it had done to her was etched into every inch of her face; it was written in her eyes, and it was tattooed onto her soul.
“I don’t think I know you,” she continued, carefully keeping her distance while she tried to figure out if he was here to hurt her or if he was just another victim. “Not that that means we haven’t met before. I don’t always have the best memory for faces. My mom says it’s because I spend too much time stuck in fantasyland, because I love books and I’m always reading them. She says if I just spent as much time in the real world as I do in book worlds, then … Oh, I’m rambling again. You don’t care that I love books, and you’ve probably already figured out I talk way too much. I’m always being told that I talk too much. In school, on all my report cards … Syd, he doesn’t care about your report cards.” She shook her head at herself as she took another tentative step closer. “I’m just going to keep talking until you stop me. And I have a bad habit of talking to myself out loud. I don’t really know why I do it, and sometimes it gets embarrassing, but I can’t seem to stop—”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” he asked with a bemused smile despite the dire situation they were in. “You’re not going to stop talking until I interrupt.”
“Sorry,” she said with a sheepish smile. “How did you know my name? Wait, I do know you. You were at the library the other day. I saw you talking with Carmen, Lex, and Roberta while I was tutoring Lillie, Rob, Jenna, and Liam—”
“My name is Dante Delamarre, I’m a cop,” he interrupted, assuming that, once again, she was going to continue talking until he stopped her. “The one who was working this case, looking for the man who brought us both here. I understand you know him, and that he’s obsessed with you. It’s Ed O’Rourk.”
Sydney shook her head, but before he could ask her why, a figure on the other side of the metal bars stepped forward.
“Actually, my name is James, and Syd and I go way back. She knows who I am, just like she knows that it’s her own fault she’s here.”