Chase was going to be okay. Livy repeated that to herself as she hesitated outside the room the hospital director had arranged for them to meet in. She didn’t care how many times she repeated those words, it didn’t take away from the fact that if she had stayed until Robyn’s shift ended and brought her home, it wouldn’t have happened. Alex and Ben rounded the corner and walked toward her.
Alex touched her arm. “You okay?”
She gave him a shrug and didn’t answer. She’d teared up a time or two in the last two hours and didn’t trust herself to talk.
Ben eyed her, his eyebrows raised, then he addressed Alex. “Are you still flying to Nashville in the morning?”
“I thought I would. Are you still going with me?”
“No, not after this. Y’all go on in the room; I’ll join everyone in a minute. I asked Taylor to wait for me down the hall in a consultation room. I want to let her in on Robyn’s identity before we meet. Might save us a little time.”
That made sense. Alex opened the door, and they entered the room. It looked like some sort of boardroom with a long conference table and chairs. A whiteboard occupied one end of the room. Livy took a seat, and Alex sat across from her. She hated waiting and checked her email on her phone.
“You never answered me,” he said.
She looked up. He’d asked if she was okay. At the moment, the tears seemed in check. “Of course I am. I didn’t do my job and Chase gets shot. What’s not to be okay about?” She clamped her mouth shut to stop her lip from quivering.
“Being sarcastic won’t help, and neither will feeling sorry for yourself. I do know how you feel—I feel as though I let her and Chase down too, but we couldn’t have stopped it.”
“I don’t think it would’ve happened if it’d been me taking her home instead of Chase.”
“You don’t have a crystal ball to look into and see what this guy is going to do. At least no one died. And maybe it flushed our kidnapper out into the open.”
“But we don’t even know if it was him.”
“It was him, all right. And he’s already fixated on—”
The door opened, and Robyn stuck her head inside. “Oh, good. I wasn’t sure if this was the place.”
“It is. Come on in. Ben and Taylor will be here as soon as they talk.” Livy was glad for the interruption. Alex did not know how she felt. He’d only known Chase a couple of days. She’d known him all her life.
“He said he was going to tell her who I am. I wish we were telling everyone. Has anyone called Abby and let her know how her daddy is?”
“Allison called Kate,” Livy said.
The door opened again, and Ben and Taylor entered. Livy’s breath caught as a wide smile spread across Taylor’s face. She knew exactly how Taylor felt as she wrapped her arms around Robyn.
“Girl, you should have let us know! Maybe we could have helped.” Then Taylor held her at arm’s length. “I can’t believe how different you look. Who would’ve thought losing weight and having a smaller nose would make such a change.” She touched Robyn’s hair. “All that red and those beautiful curls. Gone. No wonder no one has recognized you.”
Livy totally agreed with Taylor and said, “Don’t worry, the curls are still there. I saw her straightening them this morning.”
Robyn twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “I might keep the blonde coloring. I kind of like it.”
“You don’t even sound like yourself.” Taylor stared at her. “And you had such blue—” Her mouth dropped open. “Contacts?”
“Yep.” Robyn grinned, obviously pleased with herself. She turned to Livy. “Do you know how good it feels to get this out into the open? I can’t wait for everyone to know.”
Livy couldn’t imagine how her cousin felt. “Did you notice how marriage agrees with Taylor?”
Taylor blushed. “I can’t wait for Robyn to meet Nick.”
“This is what I’d hoped to avoid,” Ben said with a chuckle. “Let’s get caught up later. We have a criminal to catch.”
“Sorry.” Red colored Taylor’s face again. “Okay. Let me tell you what I think, and then we’ll talk about what happened tonight and how it fits in.” She moved to the front of the room by the whiteboard. “I’ve gone over the information Ben emailed me, and some of it I’m sure you’ve already figured out. This guy has a fixation on waitresses. I figure he was betrayed or perceived himself to be betrayed by someone close to him who was a waitress. Could’ve been a girlfriend or even his mother. He’s a white male between the ages of thirty and fifty. He mingles well with people, and he’s probably OCD. In a restaurant setting, that means he’ll probably order the same thing every meal. Breakfast will be the same thing every morning, probably something like bacon and eggs. Lunch, probably a sandwich, dinner will be meat and potatoes.”
“Unfortunately, that sounds like every truck driver that comes into Johnny B’s,” Robyn said.
Taylor laughed. “I was afraid we might have that problem.” She picked up a folder and turned to the whiteboard. When she finished there were ten names on it.
“The first victim was Georgia Simmons. She lived in the Mobile, Alabama, area and was taken two years before Robyn on January 31; the second—Debbie Porter—a year later, also on January 31.” She used a pointer to go down the list. “Then, seventeen months later, he takes Robyn on August 31, followed by seven more if we count the Jane Doe.”
Taylor paused. “I hate to call her Jane Doe, but we don’t have confirmation that she’s the waitress who was last seen getting into a semi on December 29 after a fight with her husband. But to get back to the timeline, there’s Tammy Morton, taken five months after Robyn and again on another January 31; four months later Carrie Thomas on May 31; three months later Linda Rogers on August 31; two months later Cora Jones, October 31; one month later Jamie Williams on November 30. And, Jane Doe, which brings us to February 1 of this year when Samantha Jo is kidnapped.”
She put the pointer down. “Okay, tell me what you see here.”
Livy leaned forward. “He seems fixated with the thirty-first.”
Taylor beamed. “Absolutely. And three of the women were kidnapped on January 31.” She pointed to Samantha Jo’s name. “I believe it would have been four if she had not gone to the movies with Jason. There is something significant about January 31.”
“The timeline escalated,” Alex said.
“Yes. Unless there are victims we don’t know about.”
“Wade is combing the different databases,” Ben said.
Livy stared at the board. “Are there any similarities in his victims?”
Ben pulled a stack of paper from his notes and passed them out. “Here’s what we have so far on the victims. All but Samantha Jo are overweight. If the Jane Doe is his, she fits the profile as well.”
Livy stopped taking notes and leaned forward. “If she’s one of his victims why did he kill her? Why didn’t he let her go like he did the others? And why keep Samantha Jo?”
“Good question,” Taylor said. “One that I don’t have the answer to. According to the notes he leaves, he’s driven by a desire that mothers stay home with their children, which leads me to believe he was abandoned as a child by a waitress mother.
“He also has control and anger issues, but on the other hand, his mode of operating also suggests he is patient and extremely smart. Look at the way he stalks the women and waits to catch them alone.”
“I can tell you, he definitely has anger issues,” Robyn muttered.
Taylor nodded. “He depends on the drugs to keep the victim under control. When that didn’t work with you, he became frustrated. And he can’t handle that, so he lashed out. I believe the Jane Doe is his and something similar probably happened with her. And by the way, I’m pretty certain he’s a resident of Logan Point. Wade indicated in the report that she was found in the channel of the river—the deepest part of the lake. Only someone who knew the area would know where that was.”
Alex tapped his
pencil on the table. “Why did he shoot Chase?”
Taylor turned and wrote Sharon on the board. “I believe Robyn, as Sharon, is his next victim, and I think he was jealous.” She turned to Robyn. “You really need to be careful.”
“I will. Becoming his victim again is the last thing I want.”
Taylor nodded. “You’ve had a little time to think. Take us through everything you can remember about being at Johnny B’s before you got off—what you did, who was there.”
“I’m having trouble remembering anything,” Robyn said.
“Okay. Let’s try something. Close your eyes and try to relax.”
She closed her eyes, and Livy breathed with her as she took a deep breath, then another one.
“Okay, take a minute to picture the restaurant. Then, tell me what you see.”
Robyn sat still. “I see Chase. He’s sitting right in front of me. Behind him is Jason Fremont. He ordered his usual. To their right is Timothy Nolan, and just on the other side of him is Bobby Cook. A couple of over-the-road truck drivers are behind them.” She caught her breath. “And Johnny B is talking to one of the drivers.”
Livy dismissed the two over-the-road drivers. They’d have to be checked out, of course, but she doubted they would be familiar with the lake. She tried to picture Johnny B on the lake. Not impossible, and the other three? She’d known them for years and hated to think it was any of them. She pulled her attention back to her cousin as she asked another question.
“What did Chase say to you?”
Robyn smiled. “He asked me if I wanted to go with him to get something to eat. And it embarrassed him when he realized what he’d said.”
“Did any of the other customers hear him?”
“Probably all of them. They were all sitting close together.”
“Were they all there when you left?”
Robyn opened her eyes. “I’m not sure.”
Ben shifted in his chair. “You’ve said you thought someone was watching you. Have any of those men seemed overly protective or interested in you?”
She twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “You know how it is at a restaurant. The men think I’m single, and they come on to me.”
Livy reached across the table and squeezed her cousin’s hand. “You’re handling this well.”
“Not much else I can do until we catch this guy.” She glanced around the room. “I think it’s time to up the stakes—come clean with who I am.”
“No!” Livy leaned forward. “If he’s fixated on you thinking you’re Sharon, he’ll go ballistic if he knows you’re Robyn.”
“I don’t see what difference it’ll make now. He’s already gone ballistic.”
Ben shook his head. “But he wasn’t shooting at you. If he had been, he would’ve been on the other side of the road. You can’t tell anyone who you are unless you want to go into protective custody and disappear until we find him.”
“Not doing that.” Robyn folded her arms over her chest. “I thought the whole purpose of me coming back was to get him to come after me. If I disappear, he’ll just go underground.”
A crazy idea popped into Livy’s head. One that just might work.
“What if . . .” She stopped until she had everyone’s attention. “What if I pose as Robyn?”
19
What?” Alex stared at Livy. She couldn’t possibly mean what he thought she did.
“Explain,” Ben said.
“So far no one has recognized Robyn as Sharon, because she doesn’t look the way she’s supposed to. A lot of the features people expect have changed—hair, eyes, nose, weight, and she’s not wearing glasses. We’re cousins and there’s some resemblance even though I don’t have the old Robyn’s Roman nose. But you’ll have to agree my nose is bigger than hers is now. Put a curly red wig and a pair of glasses on me, and I can pass for a slimmed-down Robyn.”
“No!” Alex and Ben and Robyn all spoke at the same time.
She glanced toward Taylor.
Taylor held up her hands. “Don’t look at me.”
“Have you even worked as a waitress?” Alex said.
“All through my senior year in high school, then four years of college is all.”
The room fell silent, and Alex shifted his gaze from Livy to Robyn. He hadn’t seen a photo of Robyn before her appearance had changed, but Livy might be right about one thing. “Do any of you have a photo of Robyn from two and a half years ago?”
“I might. Why?” Livy asked as she took out her phone.
As bad as he wanted to catch this guy, he wasn’t sure if this was the right way to go. “If we bought into your idea, there might be a problem. Our kidnapper might not buy that you’re Robyn—”
“The way she’s changed,” Taylor said, “I’m not even sure he’d buy that Robyn is Robyn.”
“Here.” Livy handed Alex her phone.
The photo of Robyn and Abby was too small, so he used his fingers to make it larger. He studied it, focusing in on her face. Wow. Robyn had totally changed. Photos tended to make people heavier than they were, but the woman in the photo weighed at least fifty pounds more than the Robyn he knew. And the difference in the two noses . . . amazing. He looked from the photo to Robyn, then to Livy. Both were about the same height, and Livy bore a faint resemblance to the Robyn in the photo. More even than the real one. He looked at Ben. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but with the right wig and glasses, it might work.”
“Yes!” Livy said. “I can pick up a wig in Memphis tomorrow.”
Ben held up his hand. “Wait, I didn’t say I would go along with this crazy idea.”
“It might be the bait we need to catch this guy,” Taylor said.
“How would we handle the family?” Robyn asked.
Alex chewed the inside of his mouth. He hadn’t considered what to tell them.
“If we go through with this, and I’m just saying if,” Ben said, “we only tell them Livy’s part. We need to wait until he’s in custody to reveal the whole truth.”
“Come on, Ben,” Robyn said.
“I’m sorry, Robyn, but it’s too easy for mistakes to be made. You want to trust your mom and dad to keep it quiet? And Abby—it’d be asking a lot of her not to tell her best friends.”
Her shoulders drooped. “Yeah. I see what you mean.”
Alex smiled. “If this goes like we plan, it shouldn’t be long before you can tell everyone.”
“Do I still go in to work tomorrow afternoon?” Robyn asked.
“No. You need to quit so Johnny B will hire me,” Livy said. “But before you do that, I want you to go shopping with me to pick out an outfit you would have worn two and a half years ago.”
“I can’t believe you backed me up tonight.”
Alex and Livy were alone in the kitchen, making a cup of hot cocoa at the stove, and her eyes glittered with excitement. The desire to take her in his arms and kiss her came out of nowhere, and he tamped it down. That would probably shake her up. “Well, I did say I’d be your partner, but you surprised me by suggesting it.”
She frowned at him.
“It’s a little out of the box.” He stirred the chocolate milk to keep the milk from scorching.
“And you don’t believe I can think outside the box?”
He raised his hand. He seemed to keep sticking his foot in his mouth. “Didn’t say that. Can we start over?”
“Too late.”
He loved the way her blue eyes snapped when he flustered her. “I know why you’re doing it. And for the record, can I just say there’s nothing wrong with going with the tried and true. It’s your personality.”
She tilted her head. “You are digging your hole deeper. Why do you think I want to pose as Robyn?”
“You feel guilty. In Bristol you didn’t want Robyn to come back—you thought it was too risky, but you went along with us. Now you think you should have stood your ground, especially since Chase was shot. And you don’t want Robyn to do it.”
“What did your grandfather want when he called this morning? You never told me.” She smiled sweetly at him.
He dropped marshmallows into two mugs, then poured the hot cocoa and handed her one. Had it just been this morning that he’d talked to his grandfather? That conversation seemed at least two days ago. “I don’t know. He hung up on me,” he said as he sat down. She joined him, sitting next to him at the end of the table.
“What did you say?”
Alex took a sip and looked at her over the cup. “Why do you assume I was to blame?”
“You weren’t?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “Just joking.”
Although he knew she was kidding, her words stung. In school, if something went wrong, it was Alex’s fault. For a time, he’d even gone out of his way to get into trouble, reasoning that if he was going to be blamed anyway, he might at least get some fun out of it. “He called to see how the case was coming along, and to remind me that I only have three weeks to find Samantha Jo.”
Livy touched his arm, sending a shock wave to his elbow. “I’m so sorry.”
“I accused him of hoping I didn’t find her.”
She sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Not good.”
“I could have used a better choice of words. When the body was found in the lake today, I was sure it was her body. When I saw that poor woman’s swollen face, I felt so bad about being relieved. She belonged to someone. A daughter, maybe sister, and according to his track record, definitely a mother. I worry that Samantha Jo is going to end up the same way.”
Livy stirred the marshmallows. “Why do you think he’s changed from releasing the women to keeping them?”
“I think he’s delusional, and he’s getting worse. Or maybe he wants a wife, and thinks this is the only way to get one.”
“If Taylor is right, he probably wants a substitute for his mother.”
“Then why is he keeping Samantha Jo? She’s much too young.”
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