‘Oh no.’ He shook his head. ‘She’s not my type at all.’
She arched a brow, only half-teasing. ‘She’s a redheaded, gun-carrying, opinionated child psychologist.’
He tilted her chin so that his gaze locked with hers. ‘But she isn’t you.’
Meredith’s lips curved. ‘That was another really good thing to say.’ She snuggled against his shoulder. ‘So what happened the night you came to me? The first time?’
‘Deacon thought I’d put Faith in danger. She was safe, surrounded by cops – including me, but Deacon was livid. He’d just come from a gruesome crime scene and he was so upset. But he was moving on the case too slowly, at least in my mind. At the time I thought that he was so worried about keeping Faith safe that he didn’t care that the killer was holding an eleven-year-old girl hostage.’
‘Roza,’ Meredith murmured. She knew the girl well, had treated her after her rescue. And then she gasped softly. ‘Oh. Oh, Adam. Roza was eleven last year when all that happened to her. Just like Paula.’
‘Yeah,’ he said gruffly. ‘Nobody else made that connection.’
She pressed a kiss over his stuttering heart, her lips warm against his skin. ‘To be fair, I don’t think you’d told anyone about Paula, except maybe your boss at the time.’
‘No, I hadn’t. I couldn’t. Hanson knew, and Nash Currie knew, but only because they was standing next to me when it happened.’
‘Who is Nash Currie?’
‘One of Personal Crimes’ IT guys. He was trying to track her computer’s IP signal. But I couldn’t tell anyone else about it. I tried, but it was like there was this disconnect in my mind. I’d think of her and my words would . . . I don’t know. They’d just disappear.’
PTSD, she thought sadly. He’d suffered all alone. ‘But you can talk about her now?’
‘A little. My shrink has helped. I still . . . react when I think about her, but it’s not that raw, debilitating panic anymore. It’s just garden-variety panic.’
‘I get that too. Everyone has their public face. Most people never look past mine. Even my friends.’
‘Because you wear it so well. I didn’t. I was a pathetic mess. I accused Deacon of ignoring what was happening to Roza, that she’d die because he was moving too slowly. He said he knew what was happening to her. He’d been to the morgue, seen the victims.’
‘But you saw Paula actually die and that’s different than attending to the aftermath.’
He frowned. ‘I told you that too?’
‘Yes. You were sketchy on the details. You kept saying, “So much blood.”’
‘Yeah,’ he grunted. ‘There was that.’
‘Who was Paula? I mean, who was she to you?’
He swallowed hard. ‘A little girl who asked me for help. But I couldn’t save her.’
She brought his hand to her lips. ‘You don’t have to tell me any more.’
‘I do. Because even though I started drinking when I was a kid, I could always stop. After Paula, I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to. I was awful to my family and my friends. I pushed Hanson away. His dad too, even though he’d always been there for me. Always the good dad that mine never was.’
She felt a sliver of relief. ‘I’m glad you had someone who was good to you.’
‘Dale Hanson, Wyatt’s dad, was that guy. Coached me in Little League, was always encouraging me. Went to father-son events with me when my own dad was too busy or too drunk. Dale kept trying, even after I pushed him away. But I pushed everyone away – Isenberg, Deacon, and Dani . . . I even pushed my mother away because she wouldn’t see me without bringing my father and he kept calling me a sniveling coward.’ She stiffened in his arms, so he tipped her chin up and kissed her mouth softly. ‘And I shouldn’t have even brought him up because he’s nowhere close to the most important person I pushed away.’
‘I want to kick his ass,’ she whispered fiercely, hating Jim Kimble.
‘That actually helps. The most important person was you, by the way.’
She smiled at him. ‘I was hoping so.’
‘But back to my point. I was an asshole. It’s a wonder anyone still talks to me.’
‘Detective Hanson said I should make sure you knew that you had people who cared about you, even if you didn’t want to accept it.’
‘I do now. But it’s hard to see the support around you when you’re mired in shit.’
‘I know,’ she soothed. She laid her head on his shoulder, her fingertips softly petting the hair on his chest. ‘How did Paula die, Adam?’
She felt his body bracing itself. ‘Her throat was slit. On Skype.’
Inhaling sharply, she held the breath for a long, long moment. ‘Oh,’ she finally breathed mournfully. ‘And you saw that?’
‘Yeah. She’d been kept in a cage. Not a small one. More a cell.’
‘By whom?’
‘She didn’t know his name. He only locked her up at night. Or when she was “bad.” Her word. Other times she was left to roam the house freely, but the doors were locked and the windows made of hurricane glass. She’d tried to break out, but was never able to. One day, she emailed me, out of the blue. She’d seen a news report on TV about the youth baseball team I was coaching. There were deaf kids and hearing kids on the team. The report showed me signing to them. Gave my email at the bottom of the screen in case other deaf kids wanted to join. She saw me signing and knew I’d understand her.’
‘Oh.’ Comprehension filled the single syllable. ‘She was deaf?’
‘Yes. She’d watched her captor send emails, but when she’d tried in the past, the computer was always locked. One day it was left unlocked and she contacted me.’
‘From whose account?’
‘Her captor’s. We checked it out thoroughly, but we never turned up an owner.’
‘What did she say in the email?’
‘That she was scared, begged me to help. But she didn’t know where she was, just that she was out in the country. That when she looked out the window, she didn’t see anyone or anything.’
‘You couldn’t track the email to an IP address?’
‘No, and we tried. So hard. It had been bounced off of so many proxies by the time it got to us that Nash couldn’t track it.’
‘What was Paula’s situation?’
‘Kept locked away. Isolated from the world, she had access to a TV and a computer. Of course it was being monitored. We knew that. That the computer was left unlocked right after she saw me on the TV news was too coincidental.’
‘Of course.’ She sighed. ‘So Paula signed?’
‘Enough that I could get the general gist. She remembered having a family once. A nice one, she said. But I never knew if that was her imagination or those memories were real. Anyway, I told her how to use Skype because her signing was better than her typing and because I was afraid her email was being monitored. That made everything more urgent, like we had to find her before he came back and punished her for reaching out.’
‘Even though he might have set her up to be caught.’
‘Exactly. She talked to us three times over Skype, for just a little while each time. Nash Currie tried to trace the signal, but he couldn’t. I kept looking for clues as to where she was. I had ICAC examine the recordings I made of each call. They had all the experience on what to look for, but they were at a loss too. There was nothing to give us her location.’
Meredith kissed his jaw. ‘And the fourth call?’
‘It started out like the others. Then I heard a door slam on her end. She didn’t hear it and I told her to hide, to disconnect, but it was too late.’ He buried his face in her hair. ‘He wore a mask. Only showed his eyes and his mouth. He was big. And she was small. Frail. Poor nutrition. She didn’t have a chance.’
‘She was just a little girl,’ she murmured.
He swallowed audibly. ‘I wanted to help her. So much. She was so alone. And then . . .’ His voice broke. ‘He started slicing at her skin and she was screaming, but it was . . . rusty screams, because she didn’t use her voice.’ His breathing became shallow and rapid. ‘He kept smiling at the screen. Like he knew I was there. Then he’d cut her again.’