“What do you mean?”
“Stella. Won’t this all backlash onto her?”
Jay tilted his head to the side. “But he brought me here to fight it out, right? I mean, why leave me leads to follow if he doesn’t want to see me work?”
“I think you’re missing, or ignoring, key factors about this person’s personality.”
Jay raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Why don’t you fill me in then?”
“He needs to be the one in control. That is why the people we spoke to in Salisbury are now dead. That’s why they tried to kill Mr. Haraby.”
Jay frowned, as if in thought, even as white hot rage had begun seeping through his veins. This ploy with the media had always been the plan, but Jay knew so much more now.
He had checked everything Joe had given him against Hector’s finds. The results had been indisputable. The killing of blond, Caucasian women in their thirties had been going on for nearly two decades. Starting when Dave was only twelve. The ones in Seattle took ages to be discovered because the rate was slower and the kills were always of outsiders.
“You really think he’d kill her?”
Dave rolled his eyes. “Why do we have to keep going over this? This is a game, carefully planned. If you start breaking the rules, he will get angry. Yes, she will die but so will anyone else you’ve got ties to, like Ruby and even idiots like Gary.”
Jay caught the threat on Ruby’s life exactly as it had been intended and let out a billowing breath. “But if we don’t wrong foot him, how will we ever get a step ahead?”
“I know this is hard, but you’re letting emotion get the better of you. Turning this whole city into carrion for the news will not help anyone, including you and me.”
Jay slumped and sighed. “You’re right, you’re right. What about my finds then?”
Dave seemed obviously relieved, but his eyes tightened slightly as he turned back to the wall of Jay’s plans.
“It looks like you might have stumbled on something. The victims do start to resemble Stella more and more as we get closer to Miranda. But are you certain all these victims are linked?”
Jay smothered a flash of triumph. “That’s what these files are telling me.”
“You think a copycat then? I mean, from these reports,” Dave said gesturing at the newspaper articles, “the killers were all caught.”
Jay nodded. “Might be.”
“Might?”
Jay took a moment to savor the look of mild panic that had entered Dave’s eyes. It was the merest hint, barely able to mar the otherwise flawless look. Jay was no longer able to lie to himself and to ignore all the little things Dave let slip.
They both jumped when the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” muttered Dave even as Jay followed him.
Dave glanced back at him in question as he pulled open the door.
“Look out!” Jay yelled, reacting on instinct and yanking Dave back by his shirt collar.
Dave’s buttons ripped loose and went flying. The slash of the knife scratched barely to leave a thin trail of blood across Dave’s chest. Jay blocked the next attack with his right arm and knocked the attacker hard in the chest. The person grunted and fled.
Jay collapsed back against the side wall of the entry hall. Dave breathed out and began talking at top speed, smatterings of thanks, of how he should have expected an attack.
Jay ignored the drip of blood down his forearm. He would bet everything he had that that knife wielding person, dressed head-to-toe in black, was Dr. Amara Young. Since discovering her identity as bloodangel_53, so many other pieces had fallen into place. She was how the kidnapper could keep tabs on Jay in the prison. She passed out Stella’s letters, plans, and anything else so this man could formulate his plan. Stella had kept the whole business with Miranda fairly quiet before her disappearance, but her letters to Jay had been explicit.
Jay glanced at Dave, who was now fingering his wound, and felt sure of something else. The knife had never been meant to do more than it had managed. She wasn’t trying to hurt Dave or even himself. Instead, Dave was trying to test Jay. He had thought that if Jay suspected him, he wouldn’t risk himself to save him.
Looks like I’ve found one of your blind spots.
She had to have been the shooter at the Mr. Haraby estate too. The bullet that shattered the window had not gone wide because of Dave’s tackle, but because she hadn’t been aiming at them. It was meant to miss.
Jay felt his anger shift from impulsive rage to something far colder and so much more dangerous. Dave had been shot on purpose to be able to gain Jay’s trust through a supposed self-sacrifice. The doctor who had treated him had marveled at the fact that the bullet had hit nothing. Jay had wondered, even then, how someone who had accurately killed four guards had failed to kill Dave. Now he had his answer.
“Looks like they left you something. You going to open it?”
Jay ignored the fearful tone of voice, instead noting the look of expectancy in Dave’s eyes as he nudged a small wooden box. He felt his heart sink. He thought he’d gotten a step ahead, but whatever was in this box said otherwise.
Jay pushed off from the wall and picked up the little box carefully. Dave stood too and came to hover at his elbow as Jay lifted the lid.
Jay just managed not to throw the box away in horror. His stomach was heaving as he hastily threw it on the side table.
The severed finger seemed to have emblazoned itself on Jay’s eyelids. He rushed to the bathroom as his
