A gift for the bride.
Chapter Nine
Blake’s team and West’s deputies filled the small sitting room at the hotel. The contents of the mysterious envelope were spread throughout the room, some on the small table, others pinned to a corkboard borrowed from the sheriff’s department. The rest moved hand to hand through the room for inspection.
Together the stack of glossy surveillance photos was a quarter-inch thick, and Marissa was centered in each frame.
West sat on the edge of the sleeper sofa, elbows pressed against his knees. “He left them on your windshield?”
“Yep.” Blake paced the patterned commercial carpeting, struggling for focus, the dangerous heat of vengeance roiling in his gut. “Set off my truck’s alarm to make sure I knew he was there.”
Marissa sat with West on the sofa, feet tucked beneath her. “They’re just like the photo that someone took of Kara.”
Blake ground his teeth. “Not someone. Nash.” He swore before turning back to his brother. “He’s practically following me around and I can’t find him.”
West kneaded his hands where they hung between his knees. “At least tell me there were surveillance cameras where you parked.”
Blake stopped to glare. The fire in his belly was nearly painful. “He looked right into the camera while he made the delivery.”
“So it’s on tape,” West said. “That’s good.”
Blake leaned against the wall and tipped forward at the waist. He’d spent years thinking he was after an unhinged psychopath, but that wasn’t who Nash was. The dresses. The underwater chapel. Months of dedicated stalking. Blake had him all wrong. Nash was a sociopath. Cold and calculating. Biding his time. Planning his kills. Probably enjoying the hunt as much as the attack.
“I found something else after you left the station,” West said. “I pulled the missing person report on the woman abducted earlier this month. It struck me as inconsistent that he’d taken months between the other kills, then after five years off, he made two back-to-back attacks.” He danced his thumbs over the screen of his phone.
Blake’s cell phone buzzed on the table. He flipped it around to face him and typed in the access code.
It was a photo of the last woman to be pulled from the lake. She looked like Marissa. Marissa had said so herself.
Marissa peered at West’s phone and made a strange gurgling sound. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
In the photo, the woman was wearing the same fitted running gear Marissa had worn the morning of her attack.
Blake swallowed a mouthful of bile. Nash had mistaken her for Marissa. “He’d been expecting Marissa on that towpath.”
West nodded. “I think so. The fitness app on Marissa’s phone showed a pattern of morning trips to that park. Typically, Tuesday mornings, the same day of the week that this woman went missing.”
Marissa’s face paled impossibly further. “Sometimes, I skip my morning jog to meet Kara for breakfast. It’s kind of our thing. Very impromptu. I’m always busy, and she slows me down with an unexpected invitation. I never say no.” Until today. A tear rolled onto her cheek and she quickly swiped it away. “That woman is dead because of me?”
“No.” Blake and West growled the answer.
Marissa scoffed. “He came for me. I wasn’t there, and this poor woman has my taste in clothes.” A painful wedge formed in her throat. “She was just living her life.”
West angled on the couch to face her. “So were you. You didn’t know you were being watched. How could you? No one knew.”
The truth was another hot poker to Blake’s gut. He should’ve known. He’d become lax this year. Assuming Nash was either dead or out of the country after such a long hiatus. He’d slowly stopped wasting federal time and money chasing vapor.
Maybe that was why Nash got back into the game.
Could he have known that Blake had moved on? Would Nash start killing again to regain Blake’s attention?
Had he been watching Blake all this time?
* * *
MARISSA LEANED ON her forearms, trying to remain calm. Her heart sprinted and her chest heaved, desperate for more air than her lungs could find. She concentrated on breathing. Slow and steady. This is what Nash wants, she chided internally. He wants you in an emotional frenzy. Hadn’t West said as much at the station? Psychological warfare.
Well, it was working.
The jogger had been murdered because of her. Her sister had possibly been abducted because of her.
It had to stop. “Use me as bait.”
The men fell silent. She hadn’t kept up with their conversation, but their voices were suddenly still.
She released an uneasy breath and levered herself upright. “Nash wants me, so let him have me.”
Blake’s eyes bulged briefly before narrowing into slits. “Absolutely not.”
West leaned slightly forward, catching her eye. “It’s a noble thought, but we aren’t in the business of putting people in danger.”
“Or giving animals like Nash Barclay exactly what they want,” Blake barked.
Marissa pushed onto shaky legs and moved toward him. “So, don’t give him what he wants.” She turned to West. “Protect me.” That covered both their arguments. “Use me to save my sister.”
West groaned. “We don’t know if he—”
She waved her hand to stop him. “Then use me to save the next lady.” She turned back to Blake’s glaring eyes. “There will always be a next victim unless you stop him.”
“No.”
“Blake.”
“I said no.” His words sliced through her.
She wouldn’t win this battle. “Then there must be another way,” she pleaded. “So, what is it? Because it’s certainly not to sit in this room and wait for his next move. His next move could be murder.” She folded her arms, hoping to look resolute and hating the hint of whine in her voice.
Blake looked past her to his brother. “What do you make of the photos? What’s the point? Why deliver them now?”
Marissa
