Taken

by Cynthia Eden

  She wanted to believe that. “I was actually a patient of Dr. Leigh’s even . . . before the abduction.” Most people thought that she’d started seeing him after, to deal with all the trauma, but . . . no. Before. “My parents died when I was eighteen, and I’d been a patient of his, on and off, since then.”

  “I’m sorry about your parents,” he told her softly. “I’m sorry, it’s—”

  “It was my fault.” Stark. Painful. So cutting.

  “What?”

  “My fault they died. The guilt . . .” She shook her head. “Oh, my God, but the guilt would not stop, no matter what I did. It ate at me.” Six months after her parents had died, she’d already lost thirty pounds. She’d been sick, heart and soul sick, and she’d let everything go.

  Nearly myself.

  “I was in the car when they had the accident. I was so stupid.” A careless kid. “I’d been drinking at a party. I shouldn’t have done it. I know I shouldn’t, but I’d just graduated and I wanted to celebrate. I’d never had alcohol before, and I drank too much. I got so sick . . .” Her eyes squeezed shut. “I called them to come and get me. They did. They always did things like that for me. My dad didn’t yell. My mom just told me to sit tight. And I sat out on that porch, vomit on my clothes, and I waited for them. They were coming to save me, again.”

  His fingers squeezed her shoulder.

  “They arrived within thirty minutes. I climbed into the backseat. It had started to rain.” The story was coming out, rapid-fire now. She’d never forget the patter of the rainfall and the slow slide of the windshield wipers. “We were almost home, going around one of those long, twisting curves, and my mom lost control.” A tear slid down her cheek. “She’d looked back at me. One minute, she was asking me if I was all right, and the next . . . she was screaming. I was screaming. The car flew off the road and slammed into a tree.”

  He pulled her into his arms. Held her tight. “That was an accident. Just a terrible—”

  “We were all still alive. At first.”

  “Bailey . . .”

  “My dad was pinned. My mom . . . part of the tree had gone through the windshield and into her chest. But she was alive. Talking. I wasn’t hurt at all.” Her laughter hurt her throat. Such bitter, tortured laughter. “I tried to get them out, but the metal was twisted and none of our phones worked. I told them I would walk to town and get help. That I would be back for them, I promised that I would be back for them.”

  He was silent.

  And she couldn’t stop the words, not anymore. “I’d walked for maybe ten minutes when I heard the explosion.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Sometimes, I can remember smelling the gas. At least . . . I think I can. I had to know gas was leaking, right? I mean . . . I must have known. I must have smelled it at the scene, but I left anyway.” That was one of the things that tormented her. “The car ignited. They burned to death, and when I got back, all I saw was the flames.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I left.” That was the simple fact. “I could have tried harder. I could have found a crowbar—we kept one in the trunk, I just . . . I forgot about it. I could have used it and I could have gotten my dad’s door open. I could have saved him. I could have saved them both.” Each word hurt her. “But I didn’t. I walked away. They died.”

  He pushed her back. She thought he was going to thrust her away but he tightly gripped her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “That’s it, isn’t it, Bailey? That’s why you couldn’t leave Carla. Why you still don’t blame her for anything that happened at that cabin.”

  “Asher—”

  “You literally couldn’t leave her, could you? You already carried a lifetime of guilt and it wouldn’t let you out of that cabin.”

  The door flew open behind him. “Asher!” Sarah’s voice was excited. “We have got to talk. You aren’t going to believe—” She broke off, apparently taking note of the scene before her. “Is everything okay in here?”

  No.

  To Sarah, it probably looked as if Asher were in the middle of shaking Bailey. His hands were wrapped tightly around her shoulders and Bailey felt the wetness of her tears on her cheeks. “It’s not what it looks like,” she managed to say.

  Asher’s right hand rose and he carefully wiped away her tears. “It wasn’t your fault.” His words were said clearly. Firmly. “Your parents died in an accident, and if you had stayed there instead of trying to get help, you could have died, too.”

  Or I could have saved them.

  “You think I haven’t second-guessed myself? You think the guilt doesn’t nearly choke me some days?” He never looked away from her as he spoke. “Why didn’t I break loose from my ropes sooner? Why didn’t I save Ana sooner? Why didn’t I manage to convince those twisted bastards to hurt me, and not her?”

  She could hear the ticking of the clock on Wyatt’s desk.

  “You can’t change the past, and if you use it to beat yourself up again and again”—his fingers tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear—“then, baby, all you get are new scars. New pain. And, eventually, you have to let that pain go or it destroys you.”

  “Have you let the pain go?” Bailey asked him.

  “There’s something else I’m holding tight to right now instead,” Asher told her.

  Me. He’s holding on to me. Her lips trembled as she stared up at him.

  “Um . . . okay . . .” Sarah cleared her throat. “Obviously, you two are working through some . . . big . . . issues right now. And normally, I’d leave you to that.”

  Bailey and Asher both turned toward Sarah.

  “But you need to know about that woman in there.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Carla Drake is not who you think she is.”

  “She was the other victim,” Bailey said, shaking her head. “I thought you knew—”

  “I’d stake my professional reputation on the notion that Carla Drake was a participant in the Death Angel’s crimes.”

  Bailey’s jaw dropped. But Asher didn’t even jerk in surprise.

  “The tattoos,” Asher said.

  Sarah nodded. “I’d say they were her work. That would be why the authorities could never track down the tats—she wasn’t working in the business any longer, but she still had her machines. She did the work. They were looking for a male tattoo artist, so she slipped right by their radar.”

  “She was screaming,” Bailey said. “She killed him. She—”

  “Her questions were wrong.” Sarah said this with a sad smile. “I’m sorry to tell you, Bailey, I know you thought she was . . . like you. But she isn’t.”

  “‘Her questions were wrong’?” Bailey repeated. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “She’s fascinated by my father. Not repelled. Not just curious. She knows all about him.”

  “Most people know about Murphy,” Asher said.

  “This is different. She’s different. I believe she was involved with the Death Angel, intimately. I think he was the controlling force in their relationship. He manipulated her. Used her. She saw what was happening. She saw him kill—”

  “How can you know that?” Bailey asked, her heart squeezing in her chest “You can’t just talk to someone and know—”

  “She wanted to know what it was like the first time I saw my father kill.”

  Bailey blinked. Okay, that was morbid, but . . .

  “Not the typical question I get asked, especially by a crime victim. But Carla had a few other questions. She wanted to know if I killed my father. If that stopped the guilt for me . . .”

  Bailey glanced back at Asher. “Carla has already confessed to killing the Death Angel.”

  “Confessed, yes, Asher told me that.” Sarah tapped her foot on the floor. “But why hasn’t she said more about him? What he looked like? I mean . . . you may not remember because he was choking you into unconsciousness the only time you saw his face.”

  Bailey flinched.

  “S
orry,” Sarah muttered. “I get . . . I’m better with killers. I say the wrong things with victims.” She cleared her throat and Bailey’s gaze slid back to her. “You don’t remember, but I think she does. And she’s deliberately withheld that information. Why? To protect him somehow?”

  “There’s no reason to protect a dead man,” Bailey said.

  “Exactly.” Sarah’s eyes gleamed. “You only protect the living. You protect the living . . . and human nature is always to protect yourself.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  They didn’t beat the news crews to the little motel. Wyatt swore when he saw the flock of TV vans—and he knew they’d probably already snapped plenty of footage. Shots of the dead man. To blast all over TV.

  “They have no conscience,” he muttered. “None at all.”

  Beside him, Victoria Palmer shifted a bit in her seat. “They think they’re doing their jobs.”

  He turned off the ignition. “Bullshit. They think they’re getting a scoop. If it bleeds for them, it leads.” He knew the old press motto.

  He jumped out of the car. He’d already called the ME, and the black van pulled up right behind him. Two other deputies were there, too, and with a curt gesture from Wyatt, they ran to push the reporters back.

  The dead guy hadn’t even been covered up. Yeah, okay, maybe someone had been trying to preserve evidence or—

  Or maybe it just made for better news to show the guy all bloody.

  “So glad you’re here,” Royce Donnelley announced dramatically. A blonde woman in a rumpled cocktail dress stood behind him. “This poor man needs justice!”

  Wyatt rolled his eyes. Royce was such an asshole. Why Bailey had ever dated the man, he had no clue. But Royce had sure left her fast enough when she needed him the most.

  Ran right out, didn’t you?

  What a stellar guy.

  Wyatt knelt near the body, aware of Victoria close behind him. A wave of surprise had him glancing back at her. “I know this man. He’s a reporter. Dave Barren.” Wyatt had talked to the guy just yesterday, giving him a brief sound bite for his six o’clock report.

  Maybe someone didn’t like your story, Dave.

  “The Death Angel is killing again,” Royce said, voice deep and carrying easily to the reporters. “Don’t you see the tattoo on him?”

  A tattoo that was already smudged. A tattoo that was also a real shitty job, much like the one that had been on Hannah Finch.

  He rose, peering around the lot. Where the hell was the desk clerk? If there was a dead guy in the parking lot, the freaking desk clerk should have been out there.

  I want to find Dave’s car. But right then, the vehicle catching his attention most . . . “That your BMW, Royce?” Wyatt asked him.

  “Well, yeah, but . . .”

  “Want to tell me where you were last night?”

  Royce backed up a step. The blonde woman put a protective—and possessive—hand around him. “He was with me,” she said, her voice nasal. “We hooked up at Ballers around six, and then we came here.” Her smile stretched. “All night.”

  Jesus save me. “Someone tried to run Bailey Jones off the road last night.” He tapped his thigh. “The driver was in a vehicle very similar to that one.”

  Both Royce and Leigh drove BMW SUVs. He already had an APB out for Leigh’s vehicle. He figured it had to turn up, sooner or later.

  Hopefully, sooner. Before someone else gets hurt.

  But the fact that Royce drove the same make and model car—only his was a dark blue and Leigh’s had been black—that made him wonder . . .

  Had Bailey’s ex-lover gotten pissed enough to come at her last night? And he was just using the woman in the sagging dress as an alibi? It would have been easy enough to slip away from a sleeping partner and then come back to the motel. “You sure he was here with you all night?” Wyatt asked the woman.

  She blinked and the scent of booze drifted to him as she staggered a little closer. “I . . . think so.”

  Bullshit. He was betting she remembered very little from the night before.

  Before Wyatt could push her harder, Royce surged toward him. “Is Bailey okay?” Royce asked, his eyes widening with worry. “Can I see her? Does she need me?”

  Idiot. Bailey hardly needed the guy who’d been screwing the flavor of the night. He turned away—and saw Ana Young standing in back of the crowd.

  Ana Young was a woman you didn’t miss easily. Actually, he thought she was pretty fucking unforgettable.

  The ME had brought his bag forward and was bending to examine the body. Victoria watched him for a moment, then sidled closer to Wyatt. “Want me to tell you what I know?”

  Uh, hell, yes. He nodded, but directed her back toward his car and away from some of those eavesdropping reporters. He noticed that Ana started making her way toward them.

  “I know your killer is a male, probably around five foot nine, maybe five foot ten, and he’s left-handed.”

  Wait, what? She knew that already?

  “It’s based on the victim’s wounds,” she said, shrugging. “A right-handed killer would have slashed the vic’s throat from the left to the right. That’s the normal angle of attack for a righty.”

  He glanced back at the body.

  “But you can see . . . the depth of the wound is deepest on the right side, then it slashes back and is most shallow on the left side, indicating that we are after a left-handed killer.”

  Had Hannah’s wound done the same thing? He couldn’t remember, but he would make damn sure Victoria had access to that body ASAP. Yes, she’d told me about five sentences and I’m impressed by her. Maybe he was easy to impress or maybe she was just a hell of a lot more on her game than Dr. Moore.

  “And the way the wound is located there . . .” Victoria added with a nod toward the body. “It’s not angling up, or down, but is rather straight on . . . telling me there wasn’t a large difference in height between the killer and the victim.”

  She was good.

  “The blood-spray pattern indicates that a vehicle must have been here.” She pointed toward the empty parking space. “See the spatter? It’s missing a huge chunk. So I’d say there was a car here, and the killer just hopped in it and drove away. Based on the appearance of the body and the lividity that I see, that was several hours ago. Definitely would have still been dark then, so no one else would have even noticed the blood stains on the car.” She tapped her chin. “But in the bright light of day . . . unless the killer has cleaned the car off . . . folks will sure start noticing now.”

  Carla Drake focused on keeping her breathing nice and easy. She’d known that she’d be locked up. Going to Bailey Jones, giving her the photos—she’d had to do it.

  There was nowhere else for me to run.

  With Bailey Jones . . . she’d had two options.

  Option one . . . Kill her. Bailey’s death would have permanently gotten her out of Carla’s life. Only . . . when she’d gone after Bailey, when she’d taken that SUV and slammed into the back of Asher Young’s motorcycle . . . she’d felt no pleasure.

  The guilt was just worse. So much worse.

  She eased out a slow breath.

  But it wasn’t worse when I killed him. No, when she’d gone after the manipulative bastard who’d ruined her life, she’d felt good. Strong. Vindicated. Her eyes squeezed shut.

  Two options. Kill Bailey Jones . . . or help her.

  So she’d tried to help. She’d given her the camera, even though it meant giving up her freedom. But being in that cage . . . being trapped . . .

  This is what they all went through. I let it happen.

  She opened her eyes. Stared at her hands. She could almost see the blood there. Did others see it, too? Carla thought that, maybe, Sarah had.

  Smart Sarah Jacobs.

  She knows what it’s like. She knows what I’m like.

  Talking with Sarah Jacobs had been a huge mistake.

  But the worst mistake I ever made? It was stepping fo
ot inside the office of Dr. Paul Leigh. And I made that mistake five years ago. Five long years.

  He’d been in her head since then. The great doctor. The one who wanted to help victims.

  Such a load of shit.

  She heard the shuffle of footsteps coming toward her. Carla lay on the cot, pretending to be asleep. If that was Sarah again, she’d just go right on pretending.

  “Are you okay, ma’am?” It was Ben’s voice. Gentle. Careful. Always so careful.

  She curled in a little tighter.

  “Ma’am?” And then she heard the jingle of his keys. He was putting them into the lock. The metal groaned when the door opened.

  She still didn’t move.

  Where can I go? I’d always be hunted. There’s no point . . . Will this guilt ever end? How do I escape?

  Ben put his hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am . . . what can I do to help you?”

  She sucked in a deep breath and did the only thing she could. Carla rolled over toward him, knowing that tears were in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  He frowned at her.

  And she saw that he was still wearing his gun. That it was low on his hips. Right there for her . . . so very close . . .

  Her hand flew out toward it. She grabbed the handle—

  His fingers closed around hers. Their eyes locked.

  She knew she wouldn’t get out of there. Not alive. And, maybe, maybe that was the way things were supposed to be.

  Maybe that was the way the guilt would finally end.

  The blast seemed to thunder through the whole police station. Asher immediately ran for Wyatt’s door, yanking it open and rushing toward the holding area.

  He knew the gun blast had come from back there. Knew that—

  Gunfire blasted again—the fast retort of a bullet—and a woman’s pain-filled scream.

  Sarah and Bailey were right behind him when he ran down the narrow corridor. Another deputy from the station was in front of him—just steps in front of him—and Asher heard the guy swear when he caught sight of the figures in the small cell.

  Carla and Deputy Ben. They were both on the floor. Both bloody.

  Both shot?