“I don’t know,” Aidan muttered, staring across the hall. “He’s smart. He doesn’t do anything unless he planned for it. That includes his escape.” Aidan looked back at Monroe. “I have a feeling he was glad we found him out.”
Monroe narrowed her eyes. “You’re saying he wanted us to catch him?”
“He didn’t want us to catch him, really,” Aidan told her. “I think he wanted to up his game. Push himself close to the edge and see how far we’d go.” Clearing his throat, Aidan added, “To see how far I would go. When he left that album, he had to know we’d find out his first victim was his sister.”
“Agent O’Reilly?”
They looked at the doctor stepping out of the swinging operating room doors.
Pushing himself off the wall, he asked, “How is she?”
“She’ll be fine. We’re going to take her to recovery, then move her to a room where she’ll stay for about a week or so for observation. But there shouldn’t be long-lasting damage. Just a lot of physical therapy. She has a long road ahead of her.”
“Thank you,” Aidan breathed. He tapped his head against the wall, then looked back at the doctor. “Can I go see her?”
The doctor nodded and took him into the recovery room. Cheyenne was medicated but seemed to be sleeping peacefully. They’d stitched the cut on her neck, as well as some of the deeper cuts on her skin. His heart broke as he scanned her bruised body.
He put his hand in hers and leaned close to her ear to tell her she was safe now and he loved her.
After minutes passed, one of the orderlies arrived and Aidan was told she needed to be moved. He kissed Cheyenne’s forehead and left the room.
Monroe still stood in the hallway, glancing at her cell phone. Zane must have left.
“Aidan!” Laura came rushing toward him, eyes clouded with hysterics.
He wrapped her in a tight hug and whispered that Cheyenne was out of surgery and would be fine.
“What happened?” she said through her tears.
Monroe motioned that she’d touch base with him later and he took Laura’s hand and led her to a nearby bench. He told her most of what he was allowed to say to the family of victims, which was that Cheyenne had been kidnapped, but she survived.
Laura’s eyes filled with tears.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Everything happened so fast. I didn’t want to worry you,” he replied. “And I was too focused on finding her. But Cheyenne’s fine. She’s strong.”
“Did you catch him?”
Aidan swallowed, knowing the question was coming but wishing he could avoid it.
“Not yet.” Wrapping his arm around Laura’s shoulder, he kissed the top of her head. “But we will. We know who we’re looking for now. It’s only a matter of time.”
80
IT HAD BEEN a week since they've discovered who The Carnations Killer was. They still hadn’t found him, despite stationing a good number of law enforcement on every possible exit route including all airports in the state of Georgia.
Monroe made arrangements to place Kent's wife and daughter in protective custody and stationed men outside his house in case he returned.
There were speculations that Kent had managed to escape before they'd issued the blockades, but Aidan still believed he was somewhere in the state.
Possibly still in this very city.
Kent liked to lay low, so Aidan figured he’d find a place to do just that if he hadn’t already planned one in advance.
The question was where.
Cheyenne was still in the hospital recovering from the injuries she had sustained. Laura and Aidan fussed over her to be sure she didn’t need anything, and although she told them they didn’t need to, Aidan was pretty sure she enjoyed the attention.
He was torn between the need to stay with Cheyenne as she healed or joining the manhunt. In the end, it was Shaun who insisted Aidan deal with family first and let him handle the serial offender.
It didn’t keep Aidan from digging deeper into Grant Rivers' past, however. Because his records were sealed, Aidan had to cut through a lot of red tape at the hospital Grant was admitted to in order to learn that he spent months in shock therapy. His parents had hoped to “shock” him into getting rid of the desires to inflict pain on others.
Aidan also learned that when Kent was a child, he’d suffered sexual abuse by his sister, which he imagined had helped elicit the desire to hurt women who resembled her. It was undetermined whether his adopted parents knew it and looked the other way or were blind to what their older daughter was doing.
His biological parents were drug users and the court had taken him away from them, so he spent two and a half years in foster care. Very often, foster situations weren’t the best for a child, which was in the case for Grant.
Except for one.
According to the families of Grant’s foster parents, they adored the four-year-old. It was said that Grant was a bright child, and fun-loving. The couple who took him in had been murdered, along with the three other kids who lived with them.
The first responders to the murder found Grant hiding inside a wooden chest. The young boy didn’t say much of anything about the incident. Inside the chest was a bouquet of carnations.
Because Grant’s foster mother was found a few feet away, it was assumed she’d attempted to hide Grant. It was unclear whether the killer knew Grant was inside the chest or not.
After the murders, Grant was moved to two more foster homes until he was adopted by the Rivers.
Aidan wanted to feel sorry for him.
He really did.
But
