So it was easy to cut through the streets and find her way back to that terrible spot.
“Right here.” She paused across from the Square, her gaze on the abandoned building. Historic, beautiful, but now seemingly forsaken. The windows were covered with boards, and the ornate railing on the front of the building was coated with peeling paint. “They were right here. I saw the man. I saw his knife.” She whirled toward Bennett. “He stabbed her. I yelled for him to stop. I yelled for help, but no one heard me.”
His gaze held hers.
“He had on a mask,” Ivy continued quickly. “Like mine, but white.” And she could not remember which Mardi Gras society was wearing the white masks this year—but she would be finding out. She wasn’t walking away from this situation, no way. I’m a PI. I can handle this. So she wasn’t a cop with a badge. That didn’t mean she couldn’t help people. She’d spent the last few years of her life taking cases so that she could help.
And atone for the sins of the past.
“His mask covered his full face.” It hadn’t just been a partial mask like the one she wore. “I didn’t imagine what happened. This was real!”
He brushed past her and pulled out his phone. A quick tap on the screen, and a bright light illuminated the scene. Flashlight app. “There’s no blood,” he said.
The cop—Officer Chambliss—had told her the same thing after his big two-second search of the scene.
Bennett kept shining the light. “If someone was stabbed, there’d be—”
He broke off, and his light hit the faint spots on the ground. Spots that had been hit by dozens of shoes as the crowd left the parade. Spots that could be—
“Blood,” Ivy whispered.
Bennett glanced at the building. “You say the guy and the victim vanished?”
She nodded.
“If he was dragging an injured woman—or a dead body—he couldn’t move very fast. Or very far.”
Her gaze cut to the building. “The front door is locked.” There was a giant chain and a padlock in front of the main doors and all of the windows on that side were boarded up.
“Then he didn’t go in that way.” Bennett hurried around to the rear of the building. He slid into the narrow alley way and stopped near a dark door. Bennett reached for the knob, but a quick twist showed that the door was locked.
Dammit. She’d hoped—
“Stand back,” Bennett directed.
He lifted his foot and kicked that door open.
Her jaw dropped when the wood splintered. “Wait! Aren’t you supposed to have a warrant or—”
He was already rushing inside, his light sweeping the floor. So…No warrant. She hurried after him, her steps slower because that darkness inside was so heavy and thick. The place smelled musty and old and when Ivy felt something—not a rat, not a rat!—race across her shoe, she screamed.
Bennett grabbed her and yanked her against his chest.
Get your control. You’re a PI for goodness sake. Act like it.
“Ivy?”
She sucked in a deep breath. “Sorry.” She’d panicked. That happened in the dark when things were coming at her.
He let her go. His light swept the area once more, flying across the dirty, dusty floor. Yellow eyes gleamed back at them as a rat scurried for cover.
That rat ran right across a pale, slender hand.
Ivy’s heart stopped. “Bennett?”
He’d seen the hand, too, and he was already kneeling beside the woman. A woman in a glittering, golden gown. A woman with long, dark hair.
A woman who lay in a pool of blood.
His fingers pressed to the woman’s throat, but Ivy already knew they were staring at a dead woman. I could have saved her! I had the chance…
Bennett slid away from the body. “Don’t touch anything,” he ordered, voice curt. ‘I’ll call this in and get a crime scene team down here.”
She wasn’t touching anything. She was barely breathing, much less moving. When Bennett’s light had fallen on the victim, she’d seen that the woman appeared to be in her mid-twenties. Her face had been chalk-white, her hair thick and dark as it spilled onto the dirty floor.
“All dressed up,” Ivy whispered. And nowhere to go…
***
They’d found the body. Too fast.
His eyes narrowed as he slid back into the shadows. He’d just left his sweet victim there for a little while. The crowd had thinned, and he’d come back, ready to move his precious prey.
But she wasn’t alone.
And all of his plans were about to get screwed.
He hunched his shoulders and turned, hurrying down the street. The night hadn’t gone at all like he’d planned.
Not at all…
His mask was in his pocket. His fingers slid inside and touched it. He felt so strong when he wore his mask. And his victims knew—he was invincible.
The cops won’t stop me. No one will.
Maybe he would show his new prey the mask. She could get up-close to it and then…then she’ll see all of me.