Perry doubted anyone would question his being at the station at night. Hell, he’d been here around the clock more days and nights than he cared to think about. He mulled over a believable story in case questioned as he walked through the “pit” to his desk.
There wasn’t anyone in the “pit,” which was probably for the best, since his mood had gone from sour to downright pissy after he left Megan’s house earlier tonight. Kylie had hung out, spending most of her time with Dani, after he confronted her about their relationship. But she had slipped out after Megan got home, in the midst of the chaos that always followed when all the women in his family descended in one room after the end of their day. He’d driven by Kylie’s house twice, and she hadn’t been home, which damn near made him decide to stalk her until he found her, instead of coming here and doing what he had planned on doing after leaving his sister’s.
Rad’s office door was closed and no light streamed out from under it. Everyone had gone home. The evening shift were cruising their beats and would be in and out throughout the night, but mostly downstairs by the holding cells or in Booking. There wouldn’t be as many people here at their desks, although anyone who needed a computer or a space to do reports could always show up and take advantage of the space.
Or at least they could before Rad password-protected all the computers and enforced strict policy that everyone only use the computer at their own desk. Perry understood now why Rad had implemented these new precautions. The Chief was under pressure to prove none of his cops were Peter. Although it appeared from the ISPs they’d narrowed it down to that one of them was Peter. And whoever it was had used Perry’s computer to talk to those girls.
Motherfucker!
Everyone in the department who was innocent would abide by the new policy. Only Peter would go out of his way to not use his own computer when talking to the girls. When he struck again, Perry would be ready for him.
Sitting down at his desk, he glanced around the “pit” one more time, then stared at the doorway and the lit hallway beyond it. Voices echoed down the hall, probably from the stairwell. Someone was being brought in for booking. Perry doubted anyone would head up this way, but either way he needed to hurry. He didn’t feel like explaining why he was downloading a program onto his work computer.
Taking the CD he’d used to download the program he had bought online at his house, Perry slid it into the disk drive and waited for the box to pop up, introducing him to the ultimate computer protection.
Record every keystroke. Know what Web sites your loved ones go to. Read every chat conversation they have while online. The “Online Undercover Detective,” was designed to appease parents who felt a need to watch what their children were doing online and for spouses to catch each other cheating. He clicked on the button to download and then tapped the edge of his desk while the bar slowly slid across the screen, showing the extent it had downloaded so far.
Perry read each box as it popped up on the screen before clicking next. The software was undetectable once installed. No icons or programs would appear anywhere on the computer to clue anyone into the fact that it had been downloaded. The program would record every document opened, any file downloaded or uploaded even if it came from a CD put in the disk drive. It would take screen shots, and best yet, it would send all the information it logged to Perry’s computer at his home.
It would be interesting to find out if Pinky could detect the “Online Undercover Detective.” Hopefully Perry would bust Peter before Pinky proved the advertising for the program wrong, if it was wrong.
He quickly typed in the password he’d chosen, “Kylie,” and clicked “save.” One last box appeared, announcing he had successfully installed the software. It flashed an announcement telling him which keys to press down simultaneously to pull the program up and suggested Perry write down this information for future use, and then the box disappeared. He was done.
“Trap is set,” he murmured, standing and reaching for the disk drive on the tower to remove the CD.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs and Perry quickly slid the CD into its sleeve and then tucked it into his inside jacket pocket. He barely sat back down before Rad and the agent Perry had seen at the FBI field office entered the “pit.”
“What are you doing here, Flynn?” Rad demanded, narrowing his gaze on Perry and then shifting his attention to Perry’s screen. “You took a personal day today, didn’t you?”
“Yup. Hung out with my niece until my sister came home this evening.” Perry looked pointedly at the man standing silently next to Rad. He was tall, in a suit, and possibly somewhere in his fifties. There were silver streaks through his brown hair, and alert blue eyes studied Perry in return. “She was pretty shook up after last night. The whole family was,” he added, returning his attention to his Chief.
“Might be a good idea to bring her in for questioning. I’ll have Barker or Richey talk to her.”
“I’ve questioned her thoroughly and can type up the report for you tonight if you need it.”
“I’m not saying you haven’t,” Rad said, his expression serious and unreadable. “But it would be a good idea for her to be debriefed on the situation by someone who doesn’t know her. You don’t have a problem bringing her into the station, do you?”
“Nope.” Perry would even go as far to agree it was a good idea. Someone who wasn’t family might pick up things from Dani he might miss. He wouldn’t tell Rad that Kylie had already recorded the conversation she had with Dani earlier today at the house. “She even drew a picture of Peter.”
“You don’t say?” the man in the suit said.
“Flynn, you remember John Athey.”
“Lieutenant,” Athey said, not smiling or changing his expression but nodding once.
“What are you two doing here?” Perry asked, returning his attention to Rad.
“We came down to go over the files on the Peter case, figured we would use my computer to see if we can find any more similarities we’ve overlooked.” Rad looked past Perry at his computer. “And what are you doing here?”
“Just logged in. Figured I’d take a look at what fun I missed out on today.”
“It was relatively quiet. Go ahead and type up that report on what happened the other night when your niece was almost abducted.” Rad started toward his office. “I also want a copy, or better yet the original, of that picture she drew of her abductor. And bring her down tomorrow after school or as soon as you can. We’ll have either lady talk to her. What was her name again?”
“Danielle. She goes by ‘Dani.’ ”
“Good. Dani. Bring her in tomorrow and get me that report.” Rad walked away from him without saying anything else.
John Athey gave Perry a final appraising look before following the Chief. “I’ve heard a few things about you,” Athey said gruffly, his comment sounding anything but complimentary.
He would learn now Perry wasn’t easily intimidated. “Can’t say I’ve heard a thing about you,” Perry told him.
“How good of a look did your niece get of this guy?”
“She ID’d him pretty well.” Perry leaned back, crossing his arms, and stared into John Athey’s face. Something dark passed over the man’s expression, a tightening of the lips, a narrowing of the eyes.
If the man hated Perry that much for seeing Kylie, he would get over it like everyone else. Athey wasn’t Kylie’s father. And even if he were, Kylie was a grown woman, free to make her own decisions, and Perry knew beyond any doubt she wanted him.
“You think you could ID him if you saw him?” John asked.
Rad turned, before reaching his office, and listened, shifting his attention from John to Perry and waiting for his answer. Perry wouldn’t let the FBI man make him look like an ass. Standing slowly, he sized the man up, noting he was a good inch or so shorter than Perry. John didn’t have Perry’s build, making him look a lot smaller than Perry, although in truth he wasn’t that much shorter.
Tugging on his T-shirt, Perry let his arms fall to his sides, relaxing his body but keeping a shrewd look in John’s direction. The man wasn’t easily intimidated, but Perry would have been surprised if Athey was, considering his position.
“Like with any victim who offers a description of a suspect, there are cracks that needed to be filled in,” Perry said slowly, not caring if his tone sounded a bit condescending. The motherfucker wasn’t his boss. “He never got out of his SUV, so when she tells me he is tall, I appreciate the fact that she never saw him standing. He wore a baseball cap, so when she tells me his hair is dark, I don’t know if he’s got a thick head of hair or is damn near bald. The only thing she was very adamant about is that he had blue eyes. Hell, for all I know Peter could be you,” Perry added, searching John’s face and noting the dark hair and blue eyes.
John’s expression twisted quickly as he puffed out his chest and growled, as if he would attack.
“Flynn, get that report typed up for me now,” Rad bellowed.
Perry squared off, ready for anything John might dish out at him. He didn’t take his gaze from the man when Rad approached, touching John’s arm and nodding toward his office.
“We’ve got things to discuss,” Rad growled, indicating John should come with him. Then giving Perry a look that would kill, he turned when the FBI man did and the two of them headed into Rad’s office, closing the door behind him.
“FBI motherfucker,” Perry grumbled, and slouched into his chair to fill out the report.
An hour later, well after Rad and John Athey had left without a word of good-bye, Perry saved the report and clicked to print it out. This was the worst part of his job, the computer work. He leaned back, stretching, and itched to get out of there. His trap was in place on his computer and when he got home, he could test it since everything he’d typed should have been sent to his home computer via e-mail.
The sky was a heavy black velvet blanket, stretching out beyond the businesses lining either side of the street. Perry bet it would be full of stars if he were home and not in the middle of town, with streetlights blinding his ability to truly appreciate the night. He headed over to his Jeep, feeling the cool night air on his face as he unlocked his car and slid in behind the steering wheel.
A quick drive by Kylie’s showed she was home this time and all lights in her house were off. At least she wasn’t out offering herself as bait to a madman. Picturing her cuddled under her blankets, sleeping soundly, made it damn hard to keep driving. There was one thing he wanted to do, though, and it would be best to do it alone. Driving past her house, he told himself he would go over there later. Like any FBI man or his Chief would keep him away from Kylie.
Turning off her street, Perry focused on his headlights beaming on the road ahead of him as he headed across town toward Franco’s house. Then parking down the street, Perry cut the lights and motor and stepped out into the calm, cool night air. He breathed in the scent of freshly cut grass as he walked slowly down the quiet street. Very few houses had any lights on, and he guessed those that did left those interior lights on all night. It was almost midnight, and middle-class homes such as these were filled with people who would get up at the crack of dawn, dragging themselves out the door for another day at the job.
It was people like these, just like Megan and the girls, whom he’d vowed to protect with his life. For those reasons, and especially after the death of David, leaving his sister alone with four children to raise, Perry always believed he would never settle down with a woman. His job required taking risks, stepping into the line of fire and protecting citizens of his town so they could go about their lives without interruption.
So what changed? Perry neared Franco’s house, checking out the neat yard and the dark windows, then glanced up and down the street. Not so much as a dog announced Perry’s presence. It was almost too quiet. Which left his thoughts to torture him as he neared the garage.
What was it about Kylie that made him want to risk hurting another person? Let alone take the chance of getting hurt if he turned his heart over to her. In all his years, he’d managed to keep any relationship he’d entered into with a woman casual, consensual, good sex, and that was it.
The sex with Kylie definitely qualified as better than good. Hell, it was damn near the best sex he’d ever had in his life. Was that the reason he wanted to push their relationship to the next level?
Perry reached the side of the garage and stood there, leaning against cool brick, and didn’t move, letting the peaceful night sink into his pores and listening for any sound of intrusion. He didn’t hear anything other than crickets. Relaxing against the wall, he studied the side door to the garage that opened to a cobblestone path, which led around to the back of the garage and backyard.
Kylie was more than any other woman he’d met before. Maybe it was because her line of work was so similar to his. She would leave town once this case was solved. There wasn’t any changing that. He would never ask her to quit what she did for a living any more than he would tolerate being asked to give up being a cop. Kylie was gorgeous to a distraction, sexy as hell, but smart as a tack, too.
Even when he thought of how she challenged him, didn’t listen very well when he told her what to do, those traits in her didn’t turn him off. Perry shook his head, afraid he might be a goner where she was concerned, and stepped toward the side garage door. Franco would have an alarm system installed. He was a cop. It was in their nature to protect what was theirs. But as Perry studied the structure of the garage, let his gaze travel along the roof and guttering system, he didn’t see any sign of an alarm installed. Not that many alarm systems were visible from the outside. Few were as elaborate as what Kylie had installed at her house. Perry moved in front of the door, putting his hand on the doorknob, and stared into the glass pane, seeing his reflection stare back at him.
Something creaked around the back side of the garage and the crickets grew silent. Perry froze, knowing he was working off duty and getting caught in this compromising position would be his ass. Looking around quickly, he didn’t see as much as a bush or decent-sized tree to hide behind. He looked down the length of the cobblestone path, his eyes burning from not blinking as he fought to see better in the dark.
His heart pounded so damn loud he wasn’t sure he would hear another sound if there was one. Taking in a slow, silent breath, he willed his heart to quit thumping in his chest and cleared his mind, forcing thoughts of Kylie out of his head so he could cover his own ass. There wasn’t backup on this assignment.
When a cricket sounded, Perry damn near jumped out of his skin, and managed a smile as other crickets joined in and returned to their middle-of-the-night symphony. Whatever made the sound out back wasn’t a threat to them. But, Perry pointed out to himself, he stood here and that didn’t bother the bugs, either.
Perry didn’t doubt for a moment he could take Franco on if confronted. Granted the man could press charges since Perry was on his property, but if he used every ounce of his training, he wouldn’t be discovered. Nonetheless, it was best to check out his surroundings before returning to the task at hand. Testing the cobblestone path, he put one booted foot down on it and proceeded slowly, silently, pressing his palm against the cool, moist brick wall as he walked to the back of the garage. If there was someone there, the element of surprise would be in Perry’s favor. He’d never been one to run from a fight, but he knew he could outrun Franco.
Perry gripped the corner of the garage, wrapping his fingers around the rough edge, and took that final step. Bushes lined the back of the garage, neatly trimmed and creating a border between the cobblestone path and backyard.
Perry didn’t breathe. He didn’t move. Standing, listening to the crickets, he still swore he heard something else. Anyone wandering around in the yard after midnight wouldn’t be up to any good. Not that he was, either. But at least his cause was justified. He wanted sound confirmation the black Suburban in the garage was the same one he and Kylie had spotted every time Peter came around. Fake tags or not, if they matched the tags on file for Peter, then Franco was their man.
Perry would take Franco out, limb by limb, if the bastard was stalking Mission Hills, torturing, raping, and murdering teenage girls. His blood boiled just thinking about it.
Standing against the garage, Perry glanced behind him toward the street. It was so dark where he stood, he barely saw to the end of the driveway. Beyond that was a black abyss, quiet and serene. Too damn quiet. He focused on the bushes in front of him, which stood about as tall as he did. The branches moving would give him away. But Perry wouldn’t chance entering the garage and taking a picture of the license plate until he knew the area was secure.
The last thing he needed right now was to run into a cat burglar trying to break into one of these houses while Perry was snooping around, off the clock. He didn’t want to have to decide whether he would run a common crook down or let him be the ultimate distraction so Perry could fight for a higher cause. Stealing physical possessions didn’t rank as high of a crime in his book as taking lives, let alone young ones.
He heard something again. So did the crickets. Silence fell over the yard as if the black velvet blanket draping across the sky fell to the earth, enveloping all around it with an eerie quiet that sent chills rushing up his spine. Someone was in the yard. Perry was sure of it now.
The best thing to do at this point was become invisible. Mentally calculating the space between the tall bushes and the back of the garage, Perry pushed himself into the narrow space, enduring scratches on his arm and face while struggling not to move any more branches than necessary.
That’s when he saw her. At least he guessed it was a woman. A person had raised one of the upstairs windows in Franco’s house and was climbing out. The dang fool would break her fucking neck. And if she turned in Perry’s direction, she would spot him hiding behind the bushes from her elevated vantage point. Fortunately for both of them, she was intent on her mission and not paying attention to bushes or trees in the yard.
Perry watched, somewhat amazed, as the person shimmied down a drainpipe and jumped the last four or five feet to the ground. She rolled over the grass, then came to her hands and knees, frozen for a moment until the crickets started singing again. Then she sprinted to the edge of the yard and jumped the four-foot fence, disappearing in the yard behind Franco’s. In the next minute she was gone, leaving Perry and the crickets alone in the yard.
What the fuck had he just seen?
Perry stared at the spot where the girl had vanished, positive she was female now by how she ran and the shape of her body when she climbed the fence. Returning his attention to the window on the second floor, he stared at the open window, watching a curtain move in the breeze. Someone had just fled from the house. From what Perry knew, Franco wasn’t married and didn’t have any kids. Perry wouldn’t swear to it, but from what he could make out in the dark, and the shape and movements of the person who had just darted through the yard, he would guess she was young, possibly a teenager.
His blood pressure skyrocketed as his imagination fueled the images that popped into his head as to possible reasons why the girl would take off running. He returned his attention to the spot at the fence where she’d jumped free and disappeared. Should he go after her?
No one appeared to be following her. The way she boogied across the yard and over the fence, he doubted she was hurt, at least not seriously enough to slow her process. She disappeared quickly. Perry weighed his options and turned toward the side garage door. He would inspect the Suburban. If he found anything suspicious around it, he would seek out a warrant. Possibly inspecting the inside of Franco’s home was in order, too.
Once again Perry put his hand on the doorknob to the side door of the garage. He stared at his reflection in the clear, dark glass but didn’t focus on it for long. This time, pushing his face up to the glass, he shaded it with his hand and stared inside the garage.
There was no vehicle in the garage. It was empty.
Too much time had passed to chase down the girl. Nonetheless, Perry drove around the neighborhood after returning to his Jeep, searching yards and looking for any sign of anyone. There wasn’t as much as a single soul walking along the sidewalks.
The clock on his dash told him it was almost one o’clock in the morning. He turned at the next intersection, realizing he headed toward Kylie’s home instead of his own. His cell phone rang and he jumped, grateful it hadn’t rung while he’d been alongside the garage. He’d forgotten to put it on vibrate.
“This is Flynn,” he said, his voice sounding scratchy when he answered the call from Dispatch. He was off duty and it was the middle of the night; there couldn’t be anything good coming from this phone call.
“Flynn, Lieutenant Goddard asked me to call you.” Cliff Miller, the dispatcher, spoke quickly and sounded out of breath, which he often did when he was upset. The guy never moved out of his chair at the station, but when an urgent matter came through the man would sound as if he’d just run a mile. “They found another teenager over on Antioch, near the mall.”
“Fucking hell,” Perry growled, understanding now why the Suburban wasn’t in the garage. Peter had been busy. “What is the exact location?”
Miller gave him the address. “Flynn, there is a situation, which is why Goddard wanted me to contact you personally.”
“What’s that?”
“He asked you to get there ASAP. He said it’s personal.”
Perry didn’t have a hard time finding the crime scene. After he turned onto Antioch, flashing lights from several police cars and an ambulance grabbed his attention. He pulled up and parked not too far from the crime scene tape and hopped out of his car. No one said anything when he climbed over the tape and walked over to Pete Goddard.
“What do we have here?” he asked Goddard, a decent cop who’d been on the force about as long as Perry had been.
Pete Goddard was fair complected, with strawberry blonde hair that was closely shaved to his head. He was tall and lanky and his uniform always looked as though it was half a size too big.
“It’s pretty ugly.” Goddard shifted his attention to a body, which lay crumpled up against the side of the building. “She had ID on her.”
“Oh, yeah?” Perry walked up to the girl, who didn’t look a day older than Dani, and stared at her half-nude and bloody body. “Who reported her?”
“Anonymous nine-one-one call.” Goddard moved in next to Perry, holding a clipboard and staring grimly at the dead girl. “We’ve cataloged all the personals found on her, which were basically a purse, a wallet with seventeen dollars on her, and makeup, along with a cell phone.”
“She wasn’t robbed.” Perry followed Goddard over to the back of Goddard’s squad car where Baggies were spread out in an open briefcase, already tagged and numbered and ready to be taken to the station. “What was her name?”
“Elaine Swanson.” Goddard sifted through the evidence Baggies and picked one of them out, then held it at eye level. “This letter indicates she went by ‘Lanie.’ ”
Perry glanced past the hood at the crumpled body, another teenager robbed of life before given the opportunity to really start living.
“And look at this-grades.” Goddard sounded disgusted, but it wasn’t from the report card he held up in another bag. Elaine, or Lanie, made all A’s and B’s. “She was a sophomore. My son is a junior, still a virgin, hasn’t been out on a real date yet. That girl was a child. To kill someone like her.”
His tone registered the anger radiating from him. Perry looked at Goddard, whose reddened complexion made his strawberry blonde crew cut stand out and look more white than light red. His light green eyes darkened as he met Perry’s gaze.
“This whole thing turns my stomach.”
“It’s fucking sick as hell,” Perry agreed.
After glancing at the case filled with evidence bags, Perry walked around the patrol car, leaving Goddard to talk to his partner. Perry noted Goddard didn’t have blue eyes, not that he would have guessed the cop was Peter. Goddard was a churchgoing man, with a good-sized family and a sweet little wife who adored him. Criminals came in all shapes and sizes, though. Perry knew from many years on the force that attending church every Sunday didn’t mean a man wasn’t capable of murder.
“You got an extra pair of gloves?” Perry asked the officer squatting next to the body.
She glanced at Perry and then straightened, interest or at the least acknowledgment that she liked what she saw registering on her pretty face. “Sure. I know you, don’t I?” she asked, standing and making a show of smoothing her uniform before walking over to the forensics kit sitting on the asphalt not too far away.
Perry noticed how she bent over, took her time pulling out a spare pair of latex gloves, and how she straightened. She had a nice ass, narrow waist, and mousy brown hair cut short in a pageboy. Although she wasn’t his type with her tomboy figure, small breasts, and petite frame, another time Perry would take time to talk to her. He wasn’t sure he’d seen her before, but she wasn’t ugly and Perry never discriminated against a lady just because she didn’t meet his definition of a perfect 10.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” he said, accepting the gloves and donning them, then turning back to the body.
“Gracie Pierre,” she offered, making a show of offering her hand to shake but then laughing and pulling back her gloved hand, which was soiled with blood.
Something about the fact that she could make jokes and be so carefree and flirtatious while the two of them squatted over a mutilated, murdered teenage girl’s body didn’t sit right with him.
“Nice to meet you, Gracie,” he said, but then turned his attention to the body. “Any speculation on the cause of death?”
“Oh,” she said, squatting next to him, her leg brushing against his as she leaned forward and lifted the girl’s arm, which had been over her face. “I just gather any evidence off the body. I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on TV.” Again laughing easily, obviously finding herself very amusing.
“Regardless of your role in this crime scene, you’ll learn what evidence to gather if you focus on the whole picture,” he snapped, wondering how long she’d been on the force. “The evidence you seek out would be different if someone was attacked by a dog than if they were brutalized and murdered.”
He didn’t bother checking out her reaction to his biting her head off. But the silence that grew between them told him she probably thought him a little less attractive than she had a few minutes before.
“I might just be a rookie,” she finally said, sounding more hurt than mad. “But I looked at the big picture well enough to suggest to Goddard he contact you after tagging the picture that was rolled up in her hand.”
Perry did look at Gracie then. She frowned at the dead teenager, her lips pressed into a thin line. He would guess Gracie was in her early twenties, younger than Kylie, and not as well built. It wasn’t just that her breasts were smaller; everything about her was smaller. Possibly that made her look younger. If anything, he thought, returning his glance to Lanie Swanson and reaching with his gloved hand and attempting to cover her exposed breasts with her torn and dirty shirt, Gracie didn’t look much older than their victim.
“What was rolled up in her hand?” Perry asked. “And which hand?”
“Why does it matter which hand?”
He didn’t take the question as sarcastic, even if that was how she meant it. “I don’t know if it matters or not. Was her other hand always here?” he asked, sticking his index finger into her curled fingers resting at her side.
“Yes, and her right hand was above her head, her forearm resting over her face. I’m sure it was just the position she was in when she finally gave up on life.”
“Or how she stopped moving after being tossed out of a car.”
“Tossed out of a car?” Gracie asked, standing when the medics walked over to them with a gurney.
“Why would she die up alongside a building like this?” Perry stood as well, facing Gracie and watching her chew her lower lip and study his face. It was as if he could see her brain churning, struggling to come up with a believable answer that might impress him.
“Well, maybe she couldn’t walk very well from her injuries and started walking alongside the building, using it to hold her up.”
“Good.” Perry nodded. Maybe Gracie wasn’t as self-centered and cold to the line of work she was in as she first appeared. “If your theory is right, though, with the amount of blood covering her body, if she walked along the building there would be blood on the bricks. Have you checked?”
“No. Do you think I should?”
“Yup. If your theory is right, it would tell us which direction she came from. If there aren’t any blood trails on the wall, then my theory might be right.” He decided Gracie had a pretty smile, although he missed the glow that Kylie would get in her eyes when challenged.
“I’ll check,” Gracie said, as if she’d just decided she would do so. “If I’m right, though, you have to take me out for a drink,” she added, winking at him. She didn’t take his comments as instruction but almost as a game.
“We’ll see,” he said, watching when she again walked to her case and pulled out what she needed to search for blood samples on the brick wall. “What was this picture you mentioned?”
Gracie stood over Lanie’s body, facing the wall. She looked over her shoulder, grinning at him, her gaze traveling down his body shamelessly, and the sparkle he had missed in her eyes when he challenged her was there now as blatant interest brought out color in her cheeks.
She licked her lips and arched her back slightly, reminding him of a hungry feline, or possibly a feline in heat. “I’ve already tagged it as evidence,” she said, and turned from the wall and walked up until she stood close enough that she needed to tilt her head to look at his face. “It was a picture of another girl. It looked like it was taken with a camera phone possibly and blown up and printed. But I think I’ve seen the girl in the picture before down at the station. You might know her.”
Taking his arm, Gracie wrapped hers around his and escorted him to Goddard’s patrol car. Perry freed himself, frustrated with her unprofessional behavior, and the curious look Goddard gave him when he and Gracie rounded the car to the trunk.
“Where is that picture?” Gracie asked Goddard. “The one the girl had in her hand?”
“You didn’t see it already?” Goddard frowned at Perry but then sifted through the evidence bags and pulled out a piece of typing paper in a bag with a picture printed on it. Then grabbing his flashlight, he turned on the beam and handed the picture to Perry.
If the thing were alive it would have bitten off his hand. Perry gawked at the picture, his stomach churning so furiously while bile moved to his throat. He stared, his hand shaking, at the picture of Dani, taken in the dark, with her staring slightly above the camera, as if possibly she didn’t know the shot had been taken. Over the picture, written in block letters with a red marker, it said: Guess who is next?
“Fucking son of a bitch,” Perry roared, needing to hit something worse than he’d ever needed to before.
“What’s wrong?” Gracie asked, once again touching his arm.
He didn’t try to prevent her from touching him this time. If she wanted to mess with his boiling outrage, that was her own stupidity at work.
“It’s a goddamn picture of my niece,” he roared, turning from both of them and staring at the dark parking lot. It took him a minute to register what he saw, but he did a double take on the car turning in the parking lot and heading toward the exit.
It was Kylie’s hybrid.