Chapter 15 #2
“I didn’t know—I wasn’t searching specifically for this, I—” Her head turned.
She stared up at him with fear. “I thought I was taken just because I was at your house. Because I tried to stop him. I didn’t have my ID on me when I tried to stop him.
How did he know who I was? How did he know my initials?
” Then she shook her head and her voice lowered as she seemed to say, more to herself than him, “He must have gone back and searched my vehicle after I was knocked out. That’s how he found my ID.
It was in my purse. Has to be it. That’s how he knew my initials.
” Her shoulders relaxed. “Calm down, Sloane,” she mumbled to herself.
“No.”
She blinked. “What do you mean, no?”
“I mean he didn’t search your vehicle. He picked you up and he put you in the back of the van. He never touched your car.”
“How do you know that? How can you be certain?”
“Because I reviewed the video footage this morning, right after you were uh…driven away in the patrol car.”
“What footage?”
Thunder boomed. Not just drops of rain now. Actual rainfall. “Time to go.”
“What footage?” She did not go. If anything, she seemed to root to the spot.
“The security footage from my house. I wanted to see what was on it.”
She grabbed his upper arms. “You have security footage and I’m just hearing about it now? Now?”
Uh, yep. “There is nothing to see on it.” Unfortunately. Nothing that would help with the investigation. “He knew where the cameras were positioned.” Another problem. “He’s very careful. He keeps his mask on the entire time.”
“How do you know that he realized cameras were there? I didn’t see them.”
“Because, at one point, he turns and flips off the closest camera to him.”
Her mouth opened. Closed.
The rain spattered over the top of his head.
“We need to go, now.” He began tugging her back to the car.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Noble following them.
His bodyguard had been quietly keeping pace with all of their movements and probably wondering when in the hell Preston was going to get them all out of the rain.
Preston and Sloane returned to the yellow police tape. Several tarps had been placed over the dirt.
“This is not a secure scene,” Sloane stopped to declare.
“The FBI will be pissed.” She hurriedly rattled off the details about the initials in the maple tree, giving a quick but thorough description of where to find the tree and telling the deputies that it needed to be roped off for evidence collection, too.
Then she lasered in on Eugene. “Did you recover my bracelet?”
He frowned at her. “Ma’am?”
“A gold bracelet. It fell off my wrist when I was getting out of the grave. Is it at the station? Collected as evidence?”
His frown deepened. “I don’t remember seeing a bracelet.”
Then Preston figured it was still in the dirt. Wasn’t it? Had to be. The crime scene techs just hadn’t been given a chance to sift through the soil to find it yet.
“I’ll check again,” Eugene promised her as the rain hit his hat.
“Please do.”
The rain hit harder. Pelting them now. And Sloane finally hurried the hell up. They made it back into the waiting Range Rover just as more thunder boomed.
Sloane shook her head, sending water droplets flying.
Frankie was already in the front seat. He started the vehicle but didn’t leave. “Where to, boss?”
Debra was out searching for Bridget Russell. The Feds were heading to town. But the whole Fed team just would not get there soon enough.
How much time did Bridget have? Was she already in the ground? Because Preston feared that she was. He feared that she’d woken up, trapped, and found darkness all around her. Had she screamed for help? Begged? His left hand fisted on his thigh.
“I want to see the footage.” Sloane swiped away rain drops from her cheeks. “I want to see the security videos.”
“I sent the files to Debra.” Preston had, after he’d viewed them.
“Yeah, but you have copies at home. Show them to me.”
Fine. He’d show them to her. She wasn’t going to find anything useful on them.
And Bridget will stay in the ground. Fucking hell.
He leaned forward to tell his driver, “Take us home, Frankie.” What else could they do?
He wanted to rip the woods apart. Wanted to search every inch of town, but he didn’t know where to go.
Didn’t know where to start. Rage twisted inside of him.
A woman was going to die, and there was nothing he could do.
“Home, check. You got it.” Frankie began to reverse the vehicle. Noble would be getting into his own ride to tail them back to the house.
Preston eased back against his seat. Sloane didn’t relax. She remained stiff. Far too tense. Her stare was directed out of the window as the trees passed them in a blur.
“Sloane?”
She didn’t look at him. “She doesn’t have a lot of time. Not if…if he’s put her in the ground.”
No, she didn’t. “Maybe she’s not in the ground.” Bullshit. Preston knew the woman was buried. But he hated the desolate tone of Sloane’s voice. “Maybe we’re wrong about him having her.”
Now she did glance at him. “I want to be wrong.” A tear slid down her cheek. “But I’m afraid she’s in the dark.”
So was he. I will kill this bastard. I will find him. I will make him pay.
“She could have disappeared right after her shift ended this morning,” Sloane added. “That’s been so many hours. That was the last time anyone saw her.”
Too many hours. Because even without the thick clouds that were above them now, the sky would have been darkening. It was nearing normal sunset.
“So, I, um, when I first started researching you and the Last Breath Killer—I was curious about what made you different.” She eased a bit closer to him.
“I’m not different.”
“Yes, you are. Different doesn’t have to be bad.”
I am bad.
Her hands twisted in her lap. “I tried to figure out how long your oxygen would have lasted. If you hadn’t gotten out, that is.
I talked to different experts, and I learned that the amount of air really depends on the size of the coffin.
Let’s say you were in an average-size coffin.
You have to look at the internal volume of the coffin and the volume of a human being. ”
She’d lost him. Her words were coming fast. Tumbling together.
“Looking at the volume helps you figure out how much air is inside.”
“Air is important,” he gritted. Life changing. Life ending, too.
“If you’re trapped, and you’re burning through around half a liter of oxygen every single minute, then you could potentially have five hours of breathable air in the right scenario.”
The woman was calculating oxygen amounts? “Nothing about the scenario is right, angel.”
“That timeline is based on an estimate. The coffin size could be wrong. And you could be breathing faster because you’re terrified or because you’re screaming or—” Sloane broke off. “She’s going to be terrified. Bridget would be screaming.” A shudder worked over her body.
Yes.
“She could have five hours.” Another shudder.
“She could have less. A lot less. She’s alone in the dark, and she’s trying to get out.
” A long pause. “It’s already been more than five hours.
If he took her right after her shift ended this morning, if he buried her right away, it’s… it’s still long past five hours.”
Preston hated to feel helpless. Fury burned in his blood. “I don’t know how to find her,” he bit out. “I want to find her. I want to help her, but we don’t have a way to track her. Not like you were tracked. We got lucky, Sloane.”
It’s not like Bridget would have also been wearing a bracelet that took them right to her. Debra had found Bridget’s phone, tossed near the Accord in the parking lot. No phone, no tech to trace her.
“My bracelet wasn’t in evidence.” Soft. “You heard the deputy. He didn’t remember it.”
“That was Eugene. Eugene Calvin. He’s a green-behind-the-ears kid. He can’t be sure what is and what’s not in evidence.”
She scooted even closer to him. Put her hand on his leg.
His stare locked on her hand. The impact of her touch snaked through his entire body. When she touched him, every cell reacted. Seemed to tune to her.
“What if it’s not in evidence, though?”
He heard the swish-swish-swish of the wipers against the front windshield. “Then it’s still in the dirt.”
“Let’s find out.”
Find out? “Why are you so worried about the bracelet?” He’d buy her another one. He’d buy her anything she wanted in this world.
“Because…because we got out. Because killers like trophies.” Again, her words came fast, tumbling out.
“Because he fired gunshots at the station in order to get our attention and he left us a shovel in the back of her car because he wanted us to know what he’d done.
I think…I think he even wants us to find her.
He wants us to see what he did.” Her hand pressed harder against him.
“I need to borrow your phone. I bet the tracker in the bracelet is still working. If it’s working, I can find it. ”
He reached into the front pocket of his pants and hauled out his phone. Finding the bracelet wasn’t going to do anything. It was probably sitting in an evidence bag at the station, but if she wanted to track it, then she could damn well track it. He unlocked his phone and handed her the device.
Her fingers slid over his as she took the phone from him.
“You calling Atlas?” he asked. Atlas and Lily had tracked her bracelet before.
“No. I don’t want them involved. The last thing Lily needs to be doing is helping us hunt a killer.” She tapped on the screen, dialing quickly.
“Put it on speaker,” he urged. He didn’t want to miss a thing. When it came to Sloane, I need to know everything from here on out.
The phone rang. Once. Twice. Three times. He thought the call was going to voicemail.
“Who the hell is this?” A disgruntled, female voice. “And how did you get this number?”
“It’s me, Josie. It’s Sloane.”