It was Ed O’Rourk.
Ed obviously caught sight of him and aimed right at him.
Dante darted back behind the van and the bullet hit the dirt just a couple of inches away. If he hadn’t moved in time, the bullet would likely have plowed right through his chest.
They both stayed low for a couple of minutes and the gunfire ceased.
With a glance at his partner, he nodded his head, and they both cautiously stood and made their way toward the house.
No more bullets were fired, and they climbed the steps to the front porch. When they didn’t hear anything inside, Dante kicked the door down and they entered the house.
They were halfway through clearing the downstairs when they heard the rev of a car engine.
By the time they got back to the front door, Ed was already driving off down the block, tires squealing as he went.
There was no way they could catch up to him.
“I’ll put out an APB,” Milla said.
Dante just nodded.
His gaze was locked firmly on the walls of the house, which were covered with thousands of hand drawn illustrations of beasts.
If he hadn’t been convinced before now that Ed O’Rourk was the serial killer they were hunting, he was now.
8:18 P.M.
Sydney hummed as she walked up the aisle.
This was her favorite time of day. She always hung around for a little while after the library closed, puttering around, tidying up a little, then she would walk up and down, choosing a couple of books to take home with her to read in bed and return in the morning. She could read at least one book an hour and usually went through two or three a day—every day. That made for a lot of books, so it was a good thing she worked in a library.
With a serial killer stalking librarians, staying back late on her own was risky, but she had set the security system after everyone else left, and the cops would be making regular drive-bys just to make sure everything was okay.
Besides, the cops thought that the killer was Ed O’Rourk, the creepy guy who had a crush on her, and after shooting at the cops this morning he had driven off, managing to get away. Surely, he had to know that if the cops were on to him then abducting and murdering was no longer an option. She felt confident he would lie low, try to avoid the cops, and fly under the radar.
Ed O’Rourk.
Even though she had always found him creepy, she still couldn’t believe that the man was a serial killer.
A serial killer.
She was in shock.
She had spoken to him just yesterday.
Not just spoken to him but turned him down when he asked her out, using her dead husband as her excuse.
What if she’d said yes?
Sydney shivered at the thought.
She knew exactly what would have happened if she’d said yes.
She would have been his next victim.
She shivered again.
All these months, Ed had been coming here—watching her, reading his comic books—trying to start conversations with her. And all that time he had been planning and executing these murders.
She had known that he gave her the creeps, and she had trusted her gut and stayed away from him as best as she could. But to know that he’d been here in this building—her happy place—was almost enough to have her quitting her job and never coming back.
So as much as she knew she probably should have left with everyone else, she just needed to be here tonight. She needed to convince herself that she was safe here, that the library hadn’t been ruined for her because of what Ed had done. He hadn’t contaminated this building; it was still the same place she was excited to come to every morning, and the place she was sad to leave each night.
This was her library, and she wasn’t letting Ed O’Rourk take that away from her.
“I won’t let you rob me of this place, Ed,” she said aloud, needing to break the silence. “It’s too special to me. It’s where I met Mitch; it’s where we had our first date; it’s where he proposed to me, and where we got married. There are too many special memories here and I won’t lose them, especially not to someone like you.”
Sydney reached the back corner of the library and paused, scrunching her brow in confusion.
“Is that cinnamon I smell? Why am I smelling cinnamon? Did Carmen leave a donut in the microwave again? And why are you talking to yourself?”
She rolled her eyes at herself—that really was a habit she had to break. She headed to the small kitchen where they had their breaks and stopped in her tracks when she opened the door. A plate of snickerdoodles sat on the table. There were two glasses of champagne, and helium-filled balloons had been tied to the backs of two of the chairs.
That someone had set that up was odd in and of itself, but for her, this scene meant something else.
She and Mitch had both been book geeks, book nerds, bookworms—whatever you wanted to call them. A date to them was usually carry-out dinner at home, then curling up in front of the fireplace, her feet in Mitch’s lap, as they both buried their noses in a book.
Books were their world, and that she could share her passion with the man she loved had only made her love both books and him more.
When Mitch asked her out, she hadn’t hesitated to say yes, and she hadn’t been surprised when he had snuck her in here late one night and surprised her with champagne and her favorite cookies. It had been so special, just the two of them in here, and they’d eaten the cookies and then gone hunting through the shelves, sharing their favorite books with one another.
Only she and Mitch had been there that night, and Mitch had been gone for five years now, so how had someone recreated that date here in the very same library?
Confused, she spun in a circle, but she didn’t see anyone.
“What is going on? Hello?” she called out.
No one answered.
“This is too weird. And you are too weird, Syd, stop talking to yourself.”
“I think it’s adorable.”
She spun around again at the sound of the voice, then gasped when she saw who was standing behind her.
“No,” she whispered. “You can’t be here.”
“And yet, I am.”
Sydney didn’t hesitate. She didn’t think; she just acted. She screamed at the top of her lungs and turned and ran.
He was faster than her.
Bigger and stronger than her too.
He was on her in seconds. He grabbed her arm, yanked her up against his rock-hard body, then wrapped an arm around her neck and squeezed.
She clawed, she kicked, she struggled.
It didn’t do any good.
The world grayed, a sound like rushing waves at the beach echoed in her head. Her limbs began to tingle, and then she floated away.
5
April 19th
9:23 A.M.
“We got another one.”
“Yay, yay, yay,” Dante deadpanned. This was not how he wanted to start his day. He had thought they would have Ed O’Rourk in custody by now. Instead, the man was still on the run, and he had killed again.
This one hit him particularly hard.
Not just because this felt like he was partly to blame since things hadn’t gone to plan at Ed’s house yesterday, but also because of who this victim was.
“That makes five now,” his partner said.
“Is that why you’re here? To state the obvious?” he snapped. Why did Milla always have to be so cheerful? Why couldn’t she be like a normal cop and let the job break down her spirit piece by piece until it was only by sheer strength of will that you didn’t end up like one of the people they hunted daily.
“Nope, I’m here to help you,” Milla answered with a smile. “You’d miss me if I weren’t around.”
“As if,” he muttered under his breath as he stalked through the library to the kitchen.
This crime scene was just like the others.
Four women, all dead.
Maule
d by a man who thought he was a beast.
He wasn’t just on edge because he was angry and felt guilty. It was knowing that at any minute now he could expect to receive a phone call saying that Sydney Carriere’s body had been discovered.
Only Sydney wasn’t just a librarian who had fallen victim to this serial killer who appeared to be obsessed with her. She was also the woman who had smiled at him yesterday.
That was it.
Just a smile.
And yet, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“After the last two murders, we notified all libraries in the area and told them to tell their employees to make sure that no one was here alone in the evenings. Why do you think she was here by herself last night?” Milla asked.
“We’ll never know,” Dante said. He was under no illusion that anyone was ever going to see Sydney alive again. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. His inability to stop thinking about her was testament to how badly he wanted her to still be alive, and if there was a way to save her life, he would do it in a heartbeat. But he was resigned to the facts, and the facts in this case were the woman would soon be dead if she wasn’t already.
“Why do you think he does this?” Milla waved her hand at the party scene before them. “How do you think he does it? Don’t they see him? Or hear him? Do you think he breaks in after everyone else leaves, or was he in here at some point during the day and hid, waiting until everyone left before sneaking out and setting this up? I don’t get how the women don’t know he’s here until he’s ready for them,” Milla said.
These were all questions they had gone through already, and still, they didn’t have any answers.
Which drove him crazy.
And made him angry.
Angry at the killer for what he was doing. Angry at Sydney for being so irresponsible as to be alone in a library at night. Angry at himself that he hadn’t done more to stop this man.
Just plain angry.
He had been angry for the last six years, and Sydney had—for one second—taken that anger away.
And now it was back.
And she was gone.
He had become a cop because he wanted to save people. He had stayed a cop after losing his family because it was the only thing that kept him marginally sane. Every person he couldn’t save was like another weight added around his neck. Too many unsaved people over too many years left him with too much weight to carry around. His job was slowly but surely killing him, but he could never give it up. It was all he had in his life.
Milla’s phone buzzed, and she answered it while he did a slow walk around the kitchen that served as the break room for the library staff. A plate of cookies, two glasses of champagne, balloons. What was important enough about these items that he set this up at each of the crime scenes?
Serial killers were kind of his area of expertise. Usually, he could figure them out … what was their motivation … what had set them on this path … what was their endgame. When he got those answers, it led him to the man he was looking for.
But this time?
Nothing.
He couldn’t get a read on this guy, no matter how hard he tried, which meant that Ed could remain at large indefinitely because he didn’t know where he should be looking for the man. If Sydney was the intended endgame, then what would Ed do next? Where would he go? Would he disappear? Commit suicide? Go on a spree?
“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 fee
t, 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.”
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