Dangerous To Love

by Toni Anderson, Barbara Freethy, Dee Davis, Leslie A. Kelly, Cynthia Eden, J. Kenner, Meli Raine, Gwen Hernandez, Pamela Clare, Rachel Grant

  “Oh, no,” Lexie whispered.

  “We can’t be sure it’s related to the other kidnappings. It has similarities, but doesn’t sound like this guy’s MO.”

  “How so?” Aidan asked.

  “Well, he stalked two girls together, stabbing one, taking the other. And it wasn’t down in the bad area where you were attacked, Lexie, but at a movie theater in North Granville.”

  “Oh my God,” Lexie whispered. “Who? Who are the girls?”

  “They aren’t releasing the identities of the victims,” Julia said. She appeared sympathetic, as if knowing Lexie was already running down the names of every teenager she knew in town. Considering he’d seen a number of them Friday night, himself, he completely empathized.

  “Apparently they can’t make a positive ID yet. The news is saying there’s a complication identifying which girl was taken and which one was left bleeding on the ground outside the theater,” Mick explained.

  Aidan didn’t follow. “Why? What kind of complication?”

  The other man shook his head in sadness and disgust. “I guess they were sisters.”

  Behind him, Lexie stiffened, and he knew her mind had immediately gone to the worst possible scenario. Aidan said, “There are a lot of families in this town, Lex. I’m sure it’s not Walter’s.”

  “Tell me everything,” she told Mick. “What other details have they released?”

  “That’s . . . that’s all, I think,” he explained. “I’m sorry.”

  Lexie still wasn’t satisfied. Her jaw shaking, her eyes enormous, she grabbed two fistfuls of Mick’s shirt and physically shook him. “What else?”

  Julia put a hand out, covering one of Lexie’s. “Wait, I do know a little more.”

  Spinning around to look at the other woman, Lexie snapped, “Your ghost?”

  Julia nodded, not taking offense at Lexie’s tone, obviously knowing she was distraught. Not sure whether she was about to deliver good news, or bad, she hesitated.

  “Well?” Lexie demanded.

  Julia cleared her throat. “The problem isn’t just that they’re sisters. They actually can’t tell for sure which one was taken and which was left because they are identical twins.”

  “Oh God,” Lexie moaned. Aidan reached out to steady her, but Lexie, exhibiting the strength he already so admired, instead stiffened in resolve and simply said two words.

  “Let’s go.”

  Sunday, 9:35 a.m.

  Last night, when he’d dragged a limp, lifeless form into her cell, Vonnie had begged her captor to unchain her. The girl, whom she’d immediately recognized from school as one of the Kirby twins, looked half-dead. She crumpled to a heap on her stomach, her face turned toward Vonnie, her dark hair made darker with blood, her clothes drenched in it.

  Worst, she was utterly quiet. Deathly still.

  Refusing to let Vonnie help her, the monster hadn’t spared a glance for his other victim on the hard floor before departing, saying he’d see them both—or maybe just one of them—in the morning. He’d slammed the metal door closed with a clang, cutting off their only source of light. She was left to lie here all through the dark night, not knowing if the person lying a few feet away from her was dying. Or already dead.

  Vonnie had tried begging the girl to wake up—so she could unchain Vonnie, who could then save them both. She’d also, at times, held her breath in an effort to hear if Taylor or Jenny was taking any breaths of her own. She heard the creaking of the building and the groaning of old pipes and the scurry of creatures in the walls and her own heart beating. But from the unconscious girl, absolutely nothing.

  Hour after hour, she peered into the darkness, straining her eyes, needing to know if she was talking to an injured friend, or a corpse.

  At dawn, when sunshine had begun to slant in through the tiny barred window in the cell, she’d turned her head and watched. It had taken a long time, until that rectangle of light had created a solid shape on the cement, before she’d finally seen something.

  A pale hand, moving ever so slightly against the filthy, blood-stained floor.

  Thank you, Jesus.

  Once she’d known the other teen was alive, Vonnie had begun talking to her in earnest, whispering reassurances that they were going to survive, that they had each other. She got no response, yet she still whispered, talking about how she’d ended up here, the things he’d done to her, the way she’d been feeling stronger hour by hour. She vowed retribution and she swore out a need for blood and released some of the rage she’d been hearing only in her head for days.

  For some reason, no matter which twin was actually here, the girl next to her had become Jenny, because Jenny was the one she knew best. Jenny had been one of her first new friends at school. Jenny had been the one who’d walked her out Monday night and offered her a ride.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, starting to cry softly, then harder, wishing, for both their sakes, she’d taken that ride.

  Vonnie tried to suck it up, tried to force herself to stop since she had no way to wipe away the tears or the snot. She hadn’t really lost herself to weeping since she’d been brought in here—other than tears she’d shed when asking the monster not to kidnap somebody else. But the long, desperate hours of waiting for any kind of sign, and the continuing silence after that one small hand movement, appeared to have finally cracked her spirit.

  “It’s my fault,” she said, her voice shaking with emotion and fatigue. “My fault he took you and I’m so sorry.”

  She didn’t know if Jenny heard or was just coming out of whatever their attacker had done to her, but at last the girl let out a low groan. It was the first sound she’d made in hours.

  “Jenny?” She bent her head as much as she could, peering down over the cot. “Oh God, please wake up. Come on. It’s daytime; we haven’t got much time.”

  Another groan.

  “Oh, please, girl, please,” she hissed. “He could come back at any time. You’re not tied up; you can move if you only wake up. You need to snap out of it, come over here, and help unchain me so we can both get the hell out of here.”

  She knew even as she said the words that it was wishful thinking. Jenny wasn’t even conscious, so the idea that she might be able to aid in their escape was crazy.

  Still, the girl tried. As Vonnie watched, one of Jenny’s bloody arms began to slide upward, the fingers inching on the rough cement. Making no sound, still flat on the cold floor, she kept trying, extending her arm outward, like she was trying to grab something. Her eyes remained closed, her bruised face expressionless. No other part of her moved except that arm, that hand, which she pushed and pushed.

  “Come on, girl,” Vonnie whispered. “You’re okay; wake up, now.”

  Jenny’s arm made a faint scratching sound as she strove on, until her fingertips emerged into the bright rectangle of sunshine on the floor. Vonnie wanted to cheer for her, watching as her hand pressed on, an inch at a time, into the light. It broke her heart to see how her friend was trying, how she reached for her, though she obviously had no strength to do more.

  Finally, when the arm was fully extended, that pale, scratched hand slowly lifted a few inches off the floor, the fingers flexing, reaching . . . reaching. The tip of her index finger quivered with the effort to stay straight as the others curled down toward her palm.

  Vonnie had taken an art history class, and she was instantly reminded of the ceiling on the Sistine Chapel. That extended arm, the fingertip touching God, all hope and prayer and faith expressed in the slightest of touches. It made her gasp, stopped her heart.

  Then the hand crumpled to the floor. All movement ceased. And Vonnie’s cellmate succumbed again to whatever blackness had kept her still throughout the long night hours.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, not sure she’d ever seen anything so heartbreaking as that poor, pathetic girl reaching to her from the shadows. “Thank you for trying.”

  Full of rage now, Vonnie strained against the chains, arching he
r back, tugging until her shoulders ached. She wished that bastard would come in here now; she felt fully capable of murdering him with her bare hands. She only needed one free and she’d kill the motherfucker for everything he’d done—most recently for causing the sad desperation of the girl lying on the floor.

  “Gonna get you,” she muttered. “You’re gonna pay for this.” She worked on her hands, flexing and exercising them as she had since they’d fallen asleep yesterday, wanting to keep them limber. She pulled her hands apart, working that drying, tired tape, stretching it just a little farther.

  She’d have a chance, she had to believe that, simply had to, and she wanted to be ready when it came. Because she was going to survive this.

  “And you’re going to survive it, too,” she told her friend. “I’m going to get us out of here. I swear to you, I’ll get us out.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Sunday, 9:45 a.m.

  Lexie couldn’t stop shaking. Her whole body was racked by tremors as she sat in the passenger 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.

  How many sets of identical twin girls, teenagers, lived in Granville? She had spent a lot of time with the Kirby kids 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 must 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.

  He didn’t try to calm her with some kind of assurances that she couldn’t know it was the Kirby twins. Instead, Aidan said, “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 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 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 been through so much. They 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.

  “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 can’t impede this investigation. State and probably even federal officials are going to get involved, since this is a forcible kidnapping.”

  “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. 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.

  “The EA team will be on it until it’s over,” 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? Aidan might 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 happ
ening.

  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.”

  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 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? Did anybody really care?

  Probably not.

  But now everything had changed.

  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 confirmed later in the night, when he’d received the call about the 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.