Jay was only allowed to rely on Dave himself.
“So what is your plan, then?” Dave asked, belatedly realizing that he had probably let the pause drag on too long.
“I have a plan. There is someone else who might be able to get me my answers.”
Dave raised his eyebrows. “Who?”
Jay pursed his lips in thought then rose abruptly. “I got some information on one of the techs the sheriff uses to hide the trail of bodies.”
Dave covered his reaction with difficulty. “Really? How?”
Jay gave him a tiny smile with only a hint of his usual arrogance in it. “I piggybacked in on one of the streams for those files that were dropped. Looks like our inside man who’s buying off Lloyd’s men is one of the sheriff’s. Or maybe the man himself.”
Dave worked to bury his building irritation and look hopeful and admiring instead. The last was easy enough. There was a reason Jayden Roe had become his obsession. It was this keen mind and on-the-fly work that had made him the only opponent worth fighting and the only master worth surpassing. “I’ll look into that if you like.”
“Sure. That’ll leave me free to plan my attack on this forensic tech.”
“Attack?”
“Of course. You don’t actually think they’d do this willingly, do you? They’re helping cover up a serial killer. But before I can use that, I need to gain enough personal information on them to ensure there are no errors and that the answers they give will be honest.”
Dave chuckled. “You truly are something else, Jay.”
It was not a problem for Jay to pull this forensic tech into service. He had enough eyes and ears in the police station to make sure that all Jay’s requests were monitored. He also needed Jay to learn the truth about the finger. He looked over Jay as the man stood. He hoped to be there for the moment that he realized it was Stella’s finger in the box. His smile broadened and left.
While Jay was obediently following the finger, he would be free. Jay was amazing, but Dave took a huge amount of pleasure in knowing that the man had just handed his hidden enemy the perfect cover to ensure that his network remained pure and that no more unplanned leads surfaced.
He wanted to break Jay into submission, not kill him. Yet he knew that if the man found out before the right time, he would have no choice but to choose the latter.
***
Jay leaned back from his desk and glanced at the clock. It was nearly three. He had skipped lunch to finish his preparations. Of course, he would never have gotten so far without Elliot, Hector, and Gary.
He smothered a laugh as he thought of Dave’s probable reaction to him being ready to confront the tech after less than a day. He had been watching the man’s reactions carefully as they had spoken this morning. His mirth faltered a little as he knew nothing he had caught had given him a solid motive yet. Though he had caught flashes of irritation and pleasure.
Jay fought down a shiver. He had dealt with many types from the world’s underbelly in his years working as a private investigator, but he had never dealt with a serial killer. Psychopaths didn’t usually enter into his sphere of work, either being careful enough to avoid detection entirely or careless enough to result in their easy capture by police. His clients had always been lone people who didn’t trust the local law force to get them what they wanted.
He drew a deep breath and looked at his partial victim wall, covering only some of the nearly one hundred victims that seemed to be Dave’s doing. The fingers of fear trailing his spine turned to grip his stomach, and he fought down a wave of disgusted nausea. Why had a man who killed blonds in their thirties taken exception to him? He glanced at his screen where he had just closed the RPG game. The man had promised to find that moment where their paths had crossed.
In the meantime, Jay would stick to this plan. He didn’t like risking lives by working with incomplete information, but he knew he couldn’t stand still. His outward behavior and habits could not change from what they had been before. He thought over Dave’s reactions again. He hadn’t only been monitoring them in the hopes of learning something about the man’s goals. He was certain that his current direction was not going to result in any more warnings like the death of Miranda and the unidentified finger sitting in the freezer downstairs.
Dave wanted him to find out about the finger. It was one of his intentional leads, just like the bracelet and the dying of Miranda’s hair.
He felt his trepidation grow slightly as he glanced at the door. He had wanted Dave to look into the sheriff. He wanted him to fall into the trap of finding the non-existent spies in the ranks. It was the first step in having him dismantle his own net. Yet he couldn’t stop his fear that Dave would not only see the ploy, but that his digging into Lloyd would inadvertently lead him to Gary Peters. He had already passed along a warning to Gary to be more careful than normal.
Jay knew that more people might still die at Dave’s hand before he was ready to take him down. There was nothing he could do about that. If he took him down now, not only would Stella starve to death wherever he was keeping her, but Dave himself would escape the law. So the man had
