Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
An insistent ringing woke her.
Lily cracked open one eye, glaring at the bedside clock, but when she saw those glowing digits—What? She sat upright fast.
The ringing came again. Not a ringtone she recognized—because it’s a new phone.
That’s your new phone ringing on the nightstand.
Her hand flew out to grab the phone. She swiped her finger over the screen and put the phone to her ear.
“Hello?” She’d only called one person with that phone.
So only one person should be calling her on it since no one else—other than Atlas—would have the number.
Atlas.
She automatically looked over her shoulder. He sat on the edge of the bed, his broad back to her.
“Lily!” Sloane’s frantic voice in her ear.
But Lily frowned at Atlas. He was…reading something? Her head craned. What was he reading?
“Lily, it’s on the news! I’m stuck in the New Orleans airport, and it’s on the news!”
Lily rose from the bed. She pulled a sheet with her, wrapping it around her body, and she crept around the edge of the bed to get a better view of Atlas.
He was wearing jeans. When had he gone to put on jeans? And…
That was her diary in his hands. Her open diary.
The diary she’d hid beneath the mattress of the bed. “Atlas?”
His head lifted. Turned toward her. He shut the diary. “I found it on the floor.”
“I—”
“She’s dead!” Sloane cried.
Lily blinked.
“Did you hear me? Because I don’t think you did,” Sloane huffed.
“I am sitting in an airport in New Orleans, watching the news, and the story airing is about Tonya Johnson. The name ringing a bell? Because it did for me. A super loud one. She was murdered outside of the bar where she works in Shreveport.”
Lily shook her head.
“Stabbed to death. At least according to the blonde reporter who is talking. This happened sometime yesterday or last night—or, I don’t know. The blonde isn’t really clear on the when part, but I have to tell you, this is making every internal alarm I have scream in warning.”
Lily’s mind was screaming.
“You’re taken,” Sloane said. “You escape. Your house is broken into. Someone steals your files, and then one of the names on our list—Tonya Johnson—happens to be murdered right after that? Tell me you see the waving red flags in this.”
“I see them.”
Atlas rose. He left the diary on the bed.
Her throat wanted to close on her. Had he been reading the diary, while she slept?
Atlas shook his head. “No.”
“It can’t be a coincidence,” Sloane said at the same time, her faint southern accent coming through with her stress. “Because if it is, then that’s the worst coincidence in the entire world.”
“I wasn’t reading it.” Atlas stepped toward Lily. “I found it on the floor. I went to my room to get some jeans, and when I came back, I accidentally kicked it. It was on the floor. I picked it up.”
Sloane hummed. “Is she—was Tonya—the closest subject to you? No, no, of course not. Atlas Bennett is the one physically the closest.”
Atlas was right in front of her, close enough to touch.
“But of the others, she is—or, dammit, was—the closest physically to Dallas, Texas, wasn’t she? Dallas and Shreveport are like what—three hours away? Two and a half if you drive fast and there is no traffic? I don’t like this.” Her voice notched up as Sloane repeated, “I don’t like it.”
Tonya Johnson. The daughter of Meredith and Lyle Johnson.
Tonya’s father had picked up over a dozen hitchhikers when he’d been working as a big rig hauler across the US.
He’d picked them up, and they’d never been seen again.
At least, not seen alive. The bodies had all eventually been found…
by a group of Boy Scouts out on a hike. Lyle had liked to keep his kills in one central location.
Meredith and his baby girl Tonya had not known of Lyle’s crimes. The perfect father had been the devil. And Meredith had spiraled into drugs and booze after his conviction. As for Tonya…
Convictions for petty theft. A brush with prostitution. But Tonya had never physically hurt anyone. She’d gotten out of rehab about six months ago, trying to kick her own drug habit, and she’d seemed to be doing well.
“Who is the next closest one?” Sloane wanted to know. “If this prick got your list, if he’s offing the subjects one by one—”
“We don’t know that,” Lily cut in to say even as her stomach twisted. “We can’t jump to that conclusion.”
“Yes, well, how about we follow the whole ‘better safe than sorry’ rule on this one?”
“That’s not a rule.” Her hair tumbled forward, and she shoved it back with one hand.
“Who is the next closest subject?” Sloane demanded.
“They are not subjects. They are people.” When had she stopped thinking of them as subjects? When?
A beat of silence. “Then we need to find our next person. Shit. Forget it, I’m pulling it up on my laptop because no one stole mine—oh, God, that was a bitch statement.
I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. It’s not your fault anything got stolen.
It’s that prick’s fault. The one who took it.
I didn’t mean to be a bitch, you know I didn’t.
I’m just stressed, and I’m scared, and I am so worried about you.
” Her words were rapid-fire, as they often were when Sloane was stressed. “I don’t want him coming after you.”
“I’m safe.”
A faint line had appeared between Atlas’s eyes. “Put it on speaker,” he ordered.
She did, swiping her finger over the screen in time for him to hear Sloane say—
“—if this perp killed Tonya Johnson, if he is eliminating the people on our list, then the next person, just in terms of being physically close to you and your location in Dallas, that would be Hatch Davis, in Oklahoma City. That’s about three hours away.”
Hatch Davis didn’t know that his biological father had been the Spring Break Strangler.
Another ridiculous moniker because the press liked to sensationalize everything.
But, during one long, hot spring twenty years ago, Hatch’s father Jeffrey had spent his time along the Florida and Alabama coast. He’d strangled five different women and tossed their bodies into the water.
When the first body washed up, with a shark bite on the woman’s side, the local authorities hadn’t thought of foul play.
But the ME in the area had been damn good at his job, and he’d been very, very thorough.
She was dead before she hit the water.
Then another body had washed up…this one with distinct bruising around her throat.
And another…
And another…
For victim number five, Jeffrey had been caught in the act of dumping the body.
He’d been locked away. Given a lethal injection in a Florida prison five years ago.
He’d died, and Hatch had never known that when his mother went down to the Gulf Coast for spring break with her sorority sisters so long ago, she fucked a killer.
One who let her walk away even though she looked exactly like all of his other victims.
When Sherry Lee had come back home, she’d immediately married her high school sweetheart.
Greg Davis might even believe that Hatch was his son.
And Hatch…he’d been the high school valedictorian.
He’d gotten a full ride to college. He volunteered with special needs kids.
He cooked at a soup kitchen on Saturdays.
He’d never even gotten a traffic ticket.
Lily’s breath left her in a hard rush. “Hatch isn’t guilty of anything. If this is the perp who took me and Atlas—he wouldn’t go after Hatch. Hatch isn’t guilty,” she repeated.
Atlas’s jaw hardened even more. He’d missed the first part of the conversation, and she’d have to fill him in, ASAP.
But for now… “And why would the killer come back here, to Dallas?” Lily asked.
“If he wants someone close to Shreveport…” She closed her eyes and envisioned the map she’d made long ago.
A map that had been on her laptop. “New Orleans. It’s five hours from Shreveport, and Westin Blanchard is down there.
He got out of prison for armed robbery three months ago.
” Westin was well aware that his father was a convicted serial killer.
After all, they’d been in Angola together during Westin’s recent stay.
Father and son had always enjoyed a very close relationship. In and out of prison.
“Two choices.” Sloane hummed. She hummed when she was in deep-thought mode.
Sometimes, she would literally hum a whole song and not realize she was doing it.
“Okay, okay, if this is a punishment-focused killer, then he has to go after Westin. Westin’s last victim needed facial reconstruction because of what he did to her in that robbery.
Hatch has never hurt anyone a day in his life.
So, we need to send the Feds to him. We need to give them a warning, and—dammit.
They are calling my flight! Look, I will be there as soon as I can, okay?
Call your ex. I know you don’t want to do it, but you have to let Gage know what’s happening.
He’ll take credit, like he always does when you solve cases and he gets promotions because he’s an asshole like that, but stopping a killer is more important than his bullshit, am I right? ”
“Yes,” Atlas answered flatly. “You are right. Stopping a killer is more important than bullshit.”
Silence. Then. “When you answered the phone, you used your sleepy voice, Lily. Were you in bed with Atlas Bennett? Because that is him, speaking, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Atlas said.
Just that.
Ahem. Yes, to both of Sloane’s questions. “Get on your flight. Stay safe. I’ll brief Gage.”
“You stay safe,” Sloane huffed back. “I’m not the one having sex with a potential serial killer and getting engaged to him.”
“Sloane.”
“Sorry! Sorry! That slipped out! I swear it did. I’m worried, and I’m running through the airport, and everyone is looking at me like I am crazy. Just please, please stay safe.”
“I have her,” Atlas said.