either way, there aren’t enough cops to watch every girl in Dallas.”
“Maybe not, but it’s not going to help me sleep at night. You were right about the van, too. The seller remembered her as Sister Suzan. We didn’t get anything out of him because there just wasn’t anything to get. Straight cash transaction, sign the transfer, and she drives off. Alone. We recorded the entire interview. You’ll have a copy.”
“All right.” She saw Laurence sit down beside the weeping girl, hand her some tissues. And saw him put an arm around her when she turned her face into his chest to sob there.
“Laurence should take the friend,” Eve decided. “She’s already turning to him, so he’s got a jump there. Maybe you can use the federal badge, give security a push. I want to see everything from the last week. Detective Jones, I want the clerk first.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re going to get her back,” Nikos said. When her eyes met Eve’s again they were full of regret, knowledge, cold rage. “But not soon enough.”
“No.” No point in pretending otherwise, Eve decided. “No, it’s already too late. Now we concentrate on getting her back alive.”
At some point, despite the lights and the fears, Melinda slept. The sound of the locks shot her awake, hands balled into fists. Those hands went numb when Sarajo dragged the girl inside.
“No, no, no, no.”
Sarajo shoved the naked, trembling girl to the floor. “Shut the fuck up.” She backhanded Melinda, sent her sprawling, added a vicious kick when Melinda tried to get up.
“Stay down, facedown, or I’ll bloody her. That’s how it works with you, right?” Grimly, Sarajo shackled the limp girl, let her drop as Darlie’s head lolled. “Yeah, that’s how we get you to behave. You start something with me, bitch, she pays. Remember that.”
“Did you have a part in this? In what he did to her?”
“My part starts now.” Sarajo shook her hair back. “Her?” She gave a half-laugh, a shrug. “She was foreplay.”
“I’ll kill you if I get the chance.” Melinda spoke quietly, and from a place in her heart she’d never known existed. “You remember that. I’ll kill you for what you did to her. You’re worse than he is.”
“You don’t worry me. Why don’t you and the baby whore compare notes.”
She shut the door, locked it. As the lights went out, the girl moaned, cried for her mother. Melinda crawled over, did her best to comfort—soothing, singing, stroking.
She’d protect, somehow, she’d protect. Even though it was too late to shield.
Before the lights had gone to black, she’d seen the tattoo on the girl’s small breast. Number twenty-eight inside a perfect heart.
11
Laurence stepped into mall security, glanced at the multiple playbacks Eve watched.
“I let the kid go home. Simka Revin,” he added. “I showed her the pictures we have of the female UNSUB. She can’t be sure. Jones reports same with the vic’s parents, but two of the clerks on tonight recognized her. Said she’d come in a couple times a week over the last month or so.”
“Yeah, I’ve spotted her on here a few times—same look. Tells me she wanted mall employees to recognize her, think of her as a regular.”
“We got people showing the pictures, clearing employees and the shoppers who were here before the lockdown. Place was crowded, with plenty of kids Darlie’s age milling around. Public schools are closed tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I got that already.” She turned to him. “You can be sure he knew it when he picked his spot. There’ll be other spots, and she’ll have cased them just like this. He’s having a real good time, Laurence.”
He nodded, hands in his pockets, eyes on the security monitor. “I’ve been doing this awhile.”
“Yeah, I read your file.”
He smiled a little. “Ditto. The way I see it, if Darlie had gone in the dressing room, Simka wouldn’t be tucked into her own bed tonight.”
Eve gestured to the screens. “That shop, and a couple others, particularly draw his vic type. Sometimes they go in with an adult, but more often in little packs. That’s what he likes. Likes to separate one from the pack, like a lion with an antelope. Abduct in plain sight. It adds to the thrill, and makes him feel more important. A lot of girls went through that shop tonight, and she could’ve lured any one of them for him.”
“Bad luck for Darlie Morgansten.”
“Yeah. Bad luck.”
After two in the morning, with the initial search protocol complete, the alerts issued, the search active, Eve and Roarke returned to the hotel. The smudges of fatigue under her eyes blurred like bruising against her pallor. A sure sign, he knew, she’d passed the point of exhaustion.
She needed sleep but, as he expected, objected when he stopped the elevator on the bedroom level.
“I’m not done.”
“Oh, but you are.”
She stripped her jacket off, tossed it on a bench in the foyer. “Look, I need you to do something.”
“Fine. And I need you to do something. We’ll trade.”
She stood, weapon harness over shirtsleeves, her whiskey-colored eyes ripe with a combination of fury, sorrow, and stress he understood very well. He felt the same himself.
“Goddamn it, Roarke.”
“And that’s not the way to get something from me, particularly at half two in the morning. Tell me what you need, and I’ll try to get it for you.”
“The female, she cased that mall in her ‘I’m just a harmless woman’ gear. She even bought stuff for girls who fit the age spread, things the vic would go for. She knew the place, so I’m betting she used it for her own shopping.”
“Good bet.” He shrugged out of his own jacket, sat on the bench to pull off his shoes. If he’d be working a bit longer, he’d damn well work comfortably. “I see where you’re going.”
“She’d probably dress as who she is or who she wants to be for McQueen, wouldn’t she? Hitting shops that cater to adults, women’s stores, sexy gear stores. You want to bang, you buy the sexy underwear.”
He glanced up. She roamed the foyer, moving, moving, moving because she knew—as he did—once she stopped she’d go out.
“You don’t.”
“I don’t have to buy the sexy underwear when you buy enough for an entire gaggle of high-class LCs.”
“It’s a weakness. A gaggle is it? Darling Eve, you’re very tired.”
Frustration flickered over the tension in her face. “Look, if we can just set up and run a face-and-body- recognition program, something that will give us some probables, we—”
“No, you said you wanted me to do it, and I will.” He rose, barefoot now and in shirtsleeves as she was, and pulled a thin leather tie from his pocket. “In exchange you’ll go to bed, the bed neither one of us has so much as seen yet. That’s the master,” he added, gesturing.
“I want to get this started.”
“I’ll get it started, and we’ll both take a couple hours down while it runs. I’m pretty fucking fagged myself, but if you push it, I promise I’ll put you down.”
“You’re going to stand here and threaten me?”
“You know it’s not a threat.” In a smooth, unhurried move, he tied back his hair. “It’s a simple fact, and one I’m not going to waste time arguing over. Go lie down, now, or it’ll get ugly.”
He watched anger flood temporary color into her face, lifted his brows when her hand balled into a fist. She
