‘They caught him,’ Edie murmured. ‘She got away. Only three women did. Most of his victims weren’t so lucky.’
His heart was racing, his hands shaking as he read the article. The man had truly been a serial killer, just like in the movies he’d seen as a teen. Horrified, he read about the man’s victims, their names accompanied by a brief description of who they’d been, along with photos of each woman and the souvenir the killer had kept of her.
So many women. So much death.
But no mention of his Mercy. He got to the bottom of the screen and turned to Edie, who was watching him with pity. ‘How do I read more?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘Just scroll down,’ she said, showing him how.
‘Thank you.’ He kept reading, reaching for the mouse when he reached the bottom of the screen once again. He scrolled down and gasped.
Because there she was. In the middle of the page. Mercy. It’s her. She’s not dead.
Older, of course, but still recognizable as his Mercy. She was so thin, her beautiful green eyes dull and flat.
His vision blurring, Amos touched the screen, tracing the lines of her face.
‘Who is she to you?’ Edie asked, so softly he almost couldn’t hear the question over the pounding of his heart.
‘My daughter,’ he whispered, hearing her gasp. He turned to her, wiping at his eyes with his sleeve. ‘She was taken from me. When she was almost thirteen. They told me she was dead.’
‘Oh, Amos.’ Edie’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He gave Abigail another quick look. She was engrossed in her book. Thank the good Lord for that. He wasn’t sure he could answer any questions she asked right now.
‘But she got away from the serial killer,’ he said quietly. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. She wasn’t interviewed for the program, but the woman who was on the show talked about how Mercy was rescued by her brother.’
Her brother? Amos had to grip the side of the table for support. ‘Brother?’ he managed to ask.
Edie was watching him warily. ‘Yes.’ Turning the screen so that she could see it, she typed Mercy Callahan brother into another screen. Browser. Whatever.
When the picture came up, Amos covered his mouth with his hand to keep the sob in. Gideon. ‘Oh,’ he breathed. ‘My son, my boy. Gideon.’
‘They told you he was dead, too?’
He looked at Edie and nodded. ‘They showed us a body. They said it was him. But look – he’s alive.’
‘And an FBI agent,’ Edie added. ‘With a girlfriend, according to this article. Just one in a gossip blog, but here’s a photo.’ She clicked again and a photo popped up, in full color.
It was him. Gideon. With a small blond woman who smiled up at him like he’d hung the moon.
‘Daisy Dawson,’ he murmured, reading the caption below the photo. Then he frowned. ‘Her name was in the other article. From the program. Is that gone? Can I see that again?’
‘Not gone. Nothing’s ever really gone on the Internet, or so my grandchildren tell me.’ Edie did something on the screen and the first article returned. ‘You’re right. The woman with Gideon was one of the three who escaped. She lives in Sacramento.’
But Amos was now leaning closer to the screen, squinting at the grainy photo above Daisy Dawson’s.
‘Let me zoom in,’ Edie said, and a second later, the photo was enlarged.
It was very grainy, but it still made Amos’s racing heart stumble and stutter. ‘Miriam,’ he whispered.
‘You know her, too?’ Edie sounded like she didn’t believe him, but Amos didn’t care.
The name next to her photo said ‘Eileen’, but the woman was Miriam. Miriam Comstock. ‘We buried her, too. I . . . helped her escape. They said she died.’
‘She did,’ Edie said gently. ‘She was murdered by the serial killer.’
Amos shook his head. ‘No, they said she was caught outside the community’s walls. That she’d died. We buried her,’ he repeated.
‘O . . . kay,’ Edie said with a note of trepidation.
And next to her photo was the souvenir her killer had taken. Her locket. On the front was the extremely familiar symbol of Eden – two children kneeling in prayer beneath an olive tree, all under the wings of an archangel wielding a sword. A second photo showed the back of the locket. Miriam.
‘Excuse me. Can I have the mouse?’ She gave it to him and he scrolled back up through the article, looking for any mention of Eden, but there was none.
‘What are you looking for?’ Edie asked.
‘A mention of our town,’ he said. ‘I thought maybe . . .’ He let the thought trail off. They’d escaped, Mercy and Gideon. They’d started new lives. ‘I need to find them. Either or both.’
‘Hold on.’ She’d somehow gotten them back to the first screen – the one that listed the other articles. ‘Mercy comes up in other articles. More recent ones. Most of them are from Saturday.’ She clicked one and blew out a breath. ‘She’s had a rough time, Amos.’
Amos found his mouth hanging open for the second time in as many minutes. Ephraim. You sonofabitch.
The curse, only loosed in his mind, still startled him, but he couldn’t be sorry. There on the screen was a photo of Brother Ephraim, his hand on Mercy’s arm, escorting her. Grimly Amos read the accompanying text. It had been an abduction attempt. Foiled, thank God. Mercy had been hurt, though. A small wound. She’d been rescued by an off-duty Sacramento detective by the name of Raphael Sokolov.
Raphael. He’d been Mercy’s guardian angel. Protecting her. Because Ephraim had hurt her. Again. Rage bubbled up through Amos’s veins.
Beside him, Edie cleared her throat. ‘You might want to take it down a notch. People are looking at you. You look like you want to do some major violence.’
Amos blinked hard, then realized his fists were clenched and he was panting like a bull ready to charge. Purposefully, he flattened his hands on the table. ‘My apologies.’
‘It’s all right,’ Edie said. ‘If someone tried to take my daughter, I’d feel the same way.’
‘How can I find her? I need to find her.’
Because Ephraim had tried to kidnap her from a crowded airport and, according to the phone call that Amos had overheard in Eden, DJ would be looking for her, too.
Panic rose to close off his throat. ‘I need to find her,’ he repeated. I need to warn her.