“You must learn self-control. A person should never allow themselves to be ruled by their stomach, so for your own good, your punishment will be smaller portions for the next two days until you learn how to put mind over matter.”
Bethany’s stomach clenched down hard. “That’s stupid. How can I learn any lessons if I’m starving to death? My teacher said we don’t learn well if we don’t eat enough.”
His soft laugh made Bethany bunch her fists in her shirt. “You’re in no danger of starving to death, and I’m afraid your teacher is wrong. Sometimes, we only learn the lesson when we’re forced to sit with our discomfort.”
“I don’t want to do whatever that is. I’m hungry!” Furious now, Bethany lashed out, shoving her palms against his chest before twisting her body to the side. She ducked free of his hands, long enough to leap to the floor and lunge for the cookies beneath the counter.
He grabbed her by the shirt and yanked her backward before her fingers could grab the bag. With rough hands, he whipped her around to face him. Bethany pulled back her leg to kick him in the shin when light creeping in from the gaps in the boarded-up windows struck silver.
Bethany’s mouth went dry, and she forgot all about fighting.
Knife.
The man shook the weapon a few inches from her nose before tapping the blade against her cheek. Bethany shivered from both the icy metal and fear. She squeezed her legs together to stop her knees from shaking, and she didn’t cry or yell, even though it was hard.
Never let them know you’re scared. Unless acting scared gives you an advantage, in which case, use it.
Another of her mama’s tips. Bethany got the feeling that the bad man wanted her to be afraid, though, so she swallowed hard and stuck out her chin. “You keep showing me your stupid knife, but I know you’re not gonna kill me. You want to catch my mama and lock her up too, and you’re using me to trap her.”
This time, the man’s soft laugh sent shivers down Bethany’s arms. “Aren’t you a clever girl? But who’s to say I can’t carve you up a little while we wait to snare your dear mama in our trap?”
Oh. She hadn’t thought of that.
Bethany’s lower lip trembled as the knifed dipped lower, down to her neck. The man pushed the flat side of the metal into Bethany’s throat and used it to lift her chin.
He pressed harder, and the sharp edge bit into her skin. Just a teensy bit, but enough that Bethany was scared to breathe.
He laughed, and the sound was scarier than if he’d yelled. “Besides, I only need Katarina to think you’re alive.”
This time, Bethany couldn’t stop her knees from trembling.
2
Click, click, click, click.
Charleston Detective Ellie Kline hit the backspace key until the freshly typed words vanished off the page. After hunching over the report all morning, she’d hoped to have more to show for her efforts, but so far, every attempt to complete the write-up on Valerie Price resulted in the same pattern. Type, erase. Type, erase.
She blew a loose red curl out of her face and reached for the breakfast burrito by her mouse, grimacing at the shiny grease congealed on the yellow paper wrapper. She shoved the barely touched takeout to the far side of her desk without taking another bite, the sight turning her stomach.
Wrong. The breakfast burrito was wrong, her report was wrong, everything was wrong.
A snippet from the page caught Ellie’s eye and punched her in the gut, stealing the air from her lungs.
Valerie Price: deceased
Valerie was gone, and Ellie wasn’t sure anything would ever feel right again.
The cursor blinked at Ellie from the white screen, as if taunting her to finish. But how? How could she be expected to condense Valerie’s life down to a couple of pages? Especially when Val should still be alive right now?
Grief crashed over Ellie, ripping away the fragile veneer of control that Ellie clung to as easily as a schoolboy ripped the wings from a fly.
Val had been a survivor. A fighter. Careful, smart, and capable, she’d escaped a murderer’s clutches once and deserved to live out the rest of her days safe from the human predators that prowled the earth. She was the one who’d got away. The woman who’d lived through the worst yet somehow persevered. After her traumatic experiences, she was supposed to go on to lead a long, happy life.
Except she couldn’t now. Because, now, she was dead.
Fate was so cruel sometimes.
A bark of male laughter across the bullpen wrenched Ellie from the image reel flickering through her head. Two of the other on-duty detectives were shooting the shit in the corner, joking around like today was any other day.
Meanwhile, the cursor blinked at Ellie, reminding her that, sooner or later, the job required her to fill the blank page with facts leading up to Valerie’s death a week ago.
With a soft snarl, Ellie shoved away from the desk and stormed out of the bullpen that housed the Violent Crimes Unit.
She paced the hallway a few times before flinging open the door and stomping down the stairs, the bang of her footsteps against concrete oddly satisfying. With her hands in her pockets and her chin tucked to avoid eye contact with curious coworkers, Ellie wandered the first floor.
This is a waste of time. You have a stack of cold cases to solve.
She wasn’t sure why she bothered with the mental reprimand. None of them had helped so far.
She’d recently tracked down one of her cold cases, a man named Luke Harrison. Luke had been snatched over a decade ago as part of an illegal child adoption and trafficking ring run in part by the now jailed Neil Burton, an attorney who had probably been stripped of his license to practice law
