Joanna joined them.
“Your partner is dead,” Tony warned. “I’m sure you’ve heard the details of how he died. The knife nicked a lung first. While he gasped for air, the second stab of the blade clipped the aorta. He probably lived two or three minutes. Long enough to feel the pain and watch the blood spurt out of his body...and to think about what he’d done to deserve being murdered.”
“Stay the fuck away from me!” Martin backed a few more feet away, her backside bumping against her Jag.
Joanna moved in on her, pressing her body against the other woman’s. Tony resisted the natural urge to pull her away.
“Do you know what your friend did to me?”
The words were filled with hatred.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Martin argued. She pushed at Joanna. “Back off!”
“You’re running out of time, bitch,” Joanna warned. “Watch your back or you’ll end up like your friend.”
A cruiser rolled into the parking lot. The driver’s side window came down. “Do we have a problem here?”
Tony grabbed Joanna by the shoulders and pulled her away from the other woman. “We’re fine, Officer. Just a little misunderstanding.”
The cop’s flashlight flicked from Tony’s face to Joanna’s and then to Martin’s. “You okay, ma’am?”
Tony wanted to kick something. Of course he thought Martin was the victim.
“I just want to go home,” she said, her voice wobbling and her eyes shining with tears.
“Go on, ma’am. I’ll just stay put until you’re on your way.”
“Thank you, Officer.” Martin shot Tony a knowing look and rounded the hood of her Jag.
True to his word, the officer didn’t leave until Martin’s taillights were out of sight.
Though Tony knew it would be pointless, they hit all the spots Martin frequented once more, and then drove back to her house.
They weren’t going to find her again tonight.
Rather than drive away immediately, Tony parked and turned off the engine. “We can wait for a while. See if she shows up.”
“Probably a waste of time.”
The silence went on for a couple of minutes. She checked her phone. He checked his even though he knew for once he hadn’t received a call or a text.
“What did Conway do to you?” Maybe he was an asshole for asking. She hadn’t mentioned anything before except that Conway was the person who lured her into a trap. Apparently there was more...a lot more.
“He raped us, Ellen and me, while we were unconscious...before he handed us over or whatever. I mean—” she shrugged “—I suppose it’s possible it was someone else, but he was the one who drugged us.”
Tony closed his eyes and prayed Tiffany hadn’t been raped.
“We were both so naive. Stupid little virgins trying to play with the big kids. Got ourselves into something we couldn’t handle.”
He reached across the console and put his hand on hers. “You didn’t get yourselves into anything. I’m thinking you were selected. They were looking for a certain type. Not necessarily height or weight, hair color or eye color, but a certain background and intelligence. All the known victims were from nice families, doing well in school, never in trouble. There’s a pattern—it’s just not the usual pattern when looking for serial offenders.”
“None of the victims were troublemakers,” she agreed. “Perfect school records. Normal, middle-class families.”
“There’s your pattern,” he said. “Tiffany and Vickie fit that same pattern.”
“But not the other girl,” Joanna said, her voice small in the darkness. “The third girl was hostile and lived on the street. She had tats and did drugs.” She drew in a big breath. “Like I told you before, they made us fight for food.”
Tony stared at her profile. The moonlight softly framing the outline of her nose and her chin. She’d pretty much glossed over the details when they’d talked about this before. “Fight as in hand to hand?”
She nodded. “Sometimes they provided rudimentary weapons, but mostly it was hand to hand. If you won, you ate. At least in the beginning.”
Tony knew how difficult that would be for someone who’d never had to fight for their lives before—someone who’d been protected by a good, loving family.
His hand closed around hers. “I’m glad you survived.”
Her fingers tightened against his. “Maybe one of these days I’ll be glad, too.”
26
Antebellum Inn
11:40 p.m.
Angie and Steve were waiting when Tony and Joanna pulled into the drive behind the inn. A fist of fear punched Tony in the gut.
Every step he took felt like the wrong one. As hard as he tried he was getting nowhere. The police were getting nowhere. They would’ve been back sooner except they’d had to make a quick stop at a Walmart for clothes. Neither of them had come prepared for an extended stay.
How could he have been here four days and still be no closer to finding Tiffany than he was when he arrived?
“Is there a new development?” He moved past Joanna to where Ang sat in a chair on the small covered porch outside the cottage. Steve stood next to her. She’d been crying again. Her eyes were swollen, face red.
What if he’d been chasing bullshit leads, wasting his time?
Steve spoke first. “There’s nothing new, Tony.” He sighed, a bone-tired sound. “I’ve been trying to get her to go in the house for an hour now. She needs to sleep. She’s exhausted.”
“I don’t want to sleep,” Ang snapped. “I’ll sleep when we find our daughter.”
Steve looked as if she’d slapped him. He also looked dead on his feet.
“Let’s go inside.” Tony unlocked the door. “We can have some coffee.”
The innkeeper kept the cottage well stocked with everything save alcohol. At the moment Tony wished he had something far stronger. He thought about the way Joanna had downed the vodka. He supposed she needed fortifying worse than him. Maybe if he plied her with enough alcohol she would tell him the rest of the secrets she was keeping. There were at least a couple more.
Sharing the fact that she’d been raped was a big step. No one would fault her for wanting to keep that secret buried. She had opened up in the past twenty-four hours. Knowing what they’d been forced to do in captivity gave him some amount of insight into the sort of person who had abducted them. Maybe the same unsubs who had taken Tiffany and Vickie.
It was possible the unsubs were making the sort of fight-to-the-death films that sick creeps paid the big bucks for, but Tony had a feeling there was far more to this story than an internet moviemaking project.
Once they were inside, Joanna readied the coffee maker while Tony ushered his sister into a chair. He sat down next to her. Steve searched the cabinets for cups. Tony wished there was something he could say to set them at ease but he had nothing except a bunch of loose ends that wouldn’t weave together.
“The press conference was a joke.” Angie scrubbed her hands over her face. “All it did was elicit a storm of crazies calling in with sightings and eyewitness accounts of seeing the girls taken by aliens.”
No surprise there. Tony reached for her hand, gave it a squeeze. “Unfortunately it goes with the territory, but if it makes the unsub view the girls in a different light, it could make a difference.”
“Bullshit.” Joanna turned around from the coffee maker. “This guy isn’t watching the news. He’s too busy creating creepy scenarios for his victims to act out.”
Tony sent her a look he hoped relayed his message: Shut the fuck up.
“What’re you talking about?” Angie looked from Joanna to Tony. “What does she mean?”
Joanna left Steve to deal with the coffee. “I believe the same people who abducted me eighteen years ago are the ones who took your daughter.”