Don't Look Back (20 page)

“Maybe, but we have to try.” Dakota rubbed her arm, then said, “If we see who else was up here, we can ask if they saw anything – or anyone who didn’t belong. Plus I want to talk to the security guard and see if he noticed anyone in the building who shouldn’t have been here.”

Connor nodded. “I’ll go handle that.” He left and Samantha perched on the stool looking like she still didn’t feel all that great.

Dakota said, “I’m sorry we weren’t here. We got caught up in doing some interviews and handling some phone calls. The girl you finished doing the facial reconstruction on went out over the news and we got several leads to follow up on.” He blew out a sigh. He flicked a glance at Sam, who had her eyes closed. “I didn’t realize Samantha went home sick. I should have made sure someone was with you. I called and you didn’t answer your phone.”

“I never heard it ring. Sorry.” She frowned and reached into her pocket. It wasn’t there. “Oh, I left it by the sink in the lab.”

Retracing her steps with Dakota next to her, she walked from her office, down the hall a bit, and into the lab. Zeroing in on the sink, she headed for it, then stopped, confusion filling her. “That’s odd. I know I left it here because I was cleaning up and thought you might call.”

“You didn’t put it back in your pocket when you went looking for other people?”

Thinking, she tilted her head and stared at the ceiling. “No, because when I realized I was basically alone in the building,” she knew she flushed, but admitted, “it kind of freaked me out.”

“Don’t be embarrassed. It can be unnerving.”

She appreciated his efforts to make her feel better. Too bad it didn’t work. “Anyway, I know I didn’t get it. I left it right there.” Confusion, worry . . . and fear tangoed up her spine.

“All right, is there any way someone could have slipped in the lab unnoticed?”

“No, I would have been able to see . . . wait a minute.” She looked at Dakota. “I stepped into the break room.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know. Two, maybe three minutes? I read the announcement, then stood there for a bit before coming back into the hall. Then I heard something. I called out and no one answered.” She shuddered. “I was scared and ran to my office to lock the door. Then Samantha showed up.”

“But you heard him laugh.”

“Yes.”

“So, there was definitely someone else in the hall.”

“Yes!”

“Then we need to check the cameras.”

Twenty minutes later, Samantha pleaded a headache and left. The rest of them gathered in the video room. Stewart Hodges, the security guard on duty, did the honors of pulling up the tapes requested.

Connor pointed, “Run it back here.”

Stewart complied.

Dakota shifted so Jamie could see a little better. She appreciated his belief in her and the fact that he didn’t shrug off her fears – or belittle her for them.

“All right. Right there.”

“That’s Melissa Ferris,” Jamie offered. “She just came out of the break room.”

“And headed down the hall toward the elevator.”

“There’s George. What’s he doing?”

“Heading toward the lab.”

“Now he’s stopping to talk to Melissa.” George nodded at something the woman said, then walked on toward Jamie’s office. Finding it empty, he moved toward the lab, looked in, shrugged, turned and left.

Jamie spoke again. “Wait a minute, here comes Lila.” Lila stopped and mimicked George’s motions. Pause at the door. Look in. Leave.

“Where were you, Jamie?” Dakota asked.

“I don’t know.”

Another minute passed.

“There you are. Coffee cup in hand.”

“I was in the break room. I’d forgotten all about that. That was before I realized everyone was gone. And I didn’t even notice the flyer on the wall at that point.”

“Okay, so you went in the break room twice. Once to get a cup of coffee and once to see if anyone was in there.”

Stewart rolled the tape forward a bit.

Dakota pointed this time. “All right, here is everyone leaving.” Workers filtered out one by one, sometimes in groups of two and three.

“Going to the party.”

A few minutes later, Jamie’s head appeared in the lab doorway. Then she was walking down the hall, checking the offices. She disappeared into the break room once again.

Back out.

Paused and turned to look behind her, her back to the camera. “That’s when I heard a door shut.” She watched her fingers curl into fists by her thighs. “I called out but no one answered.”

In the next clip, she bolted for her office and disappeared inside.

“Okay, let’s see if anyone appears.”

But there was nothing until Samantha got off the elevator and headed toward Jamie’s office.

Jamie wanted to scream. Instead, she held her cool and asked, “So, where did my cell phone go?”

A knock on the door interrupted their study of the images on the screen. Stewart opened the door and George stepped in. He looked at Dakota, “You called me?”

“Yeah, like I told you earlier, we think Jamie’s stalker was here and we want your input.”

“Sure, fill me in.”

They did, then Dakota asked, “Is there a back way into the lab?”

Jamie blinked. “Yes. The emergency door.”

Dakota and Connor exchanged a look, then Dakota said, “Thanks, Stewart. We’re not getting anything off of this. Can you pull the other videos from the camera that’s aimed on the lab’s emergency door? Same time frame.”

“Sure thing. That door leads to a staircase. Then the stairs lead down to the exit outside. I can check that camera too.”

A few more clicks and the back door of the lab and the top three steps leading up to it appeared on the small black-and-white screen. Minutes passed, then the screen went blank. Stewart spoke. “Yeah, that’s the one that I had trouble with. I went to check it, but couldn’t find anything wrong with the camera. By the time I got back to the desk, the picture was back up.” He shrugged. “I logged it in my report, but just figured it was a little blip in the system.”

“A little blip called Jamie’s stalker, I’ll bet. Somehow he covered up the camera and entered the lab through the back door.”

Connor agreed. “And found her gone.”

“But saw her cell phone sitting there.”

“So he took it on the spur of the moment.”

“Opportunity.”

“He’s smart, but also impulsive.”

“Which means we might actually get lucky and he’ll
slip
up before any more bodies start
turning
up.”

George shrugged when they looked at him for his opinion. “It’s possible. Yes, I agree he acted impulsively, but now he’ll think through his actions before he does anything with it,
assuming
he’s the one that took it. If so, he’ll disable it so you can’t track it. Then again, he may do nothing with it, he may have just wanted something that belonged to Jamie.” He spread his hands. “And this is all going on the assumption that he’s the one who was in the building and that he has the phone.”

“Right.”

Jamie blew out a sigh, a headache settling behind her eyes. “Okay, this is enough. Connor needs to get home to Samantha and I need a break.”

George looked at his watch. “I’ve got a late meeting, but give me a call if you need anything else. I want to get this guy as bad as you do.”

Not likely, Jamie thought, but kept that to herself. She felt snippy and in a bad mood. George didn’t deserve to be her scapegoat. Her frustration at the lack of progress on finding the man responsible for the deaths of possibly sixteen young women wasn’t improving her disposition either.

Dakota put his arm around her shoulders. “All right. I’ll take you home. We’ve got a car on your house, the front, and one watching the back where the woods are. You should be safe.”

Jamie pulled in a deep breath. “Fine. I need some sleep.”

Dakota followed her out. He said, “I’ll drive. Hop in.”

Two minutes later she was in her driveway. Lights burned all around her house. Dakota stepped out of the car and walked her to the front door. “I don’t want you to be alone tonight, Jamie. I promised Sam and Connor I’d make sure you were safe.”

She opened the door to her house and stepped in. But this time she noticed something that depressed her. Always before, the minute she entered her home, the stress seemed to roll from her shoulders.

Tonight it didn’t.

Because
he’d
invaded her security, her haven, her escape.

Again, she felt the familiar fear mixed with anger surface. She shoved it down. Not tonight.

“Jamie?”

“What?” She blinked. “Oh sorry. I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About security and how truly fragile it is.”

“Agreed.”

She set her keys on the foyer table and walked into the kitchen. “That’s why we can’t rely on humans or security systems or any other thing of this world to be our security.”

“Excuse me?” He sounded confused and she shot him a look. He lifted a brow. “Oh, you’re talking about God again.”

“Um-hm.” Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, she looked at him. “Want one?”

“No thanks.”

She cocked her head to the side and pinned him with a look. “We never did finish our conversation the last time we talked about God.”

“I know. I changed the subject.”

Surprised, it was her turn for the eyebrows to shoot north. “Yes, as a matter of fact, you did.”

“I’ve thought a lot about what you said, though.”

She wandered into the den area and sat on the couch. Dakota followed and sat beside her. That threw her for a moment, made her edgy.

He must have noticed, because he stood as though to move across the room.

She caught his hand. “No, sit with me.”

Dakota sat. She kept his hand clasped within hers, and he thought his heart might very well stop from the sheer joy of having her finally touch him voluntarily.

She was making an effort to overcome her fears, he realized. All that she’d already come through, accomplished in the last twelve years, she was still fighting, still reaching out. This time to him.

He swallowed hard and knew that if he didn’t want to have to eat his words, he was going to have to reciprocate. Settling back against the couch he looked beyond her and stilled. “Is that your latest painting?”

She followed his eyes to the sunroom. Her latest project finished in the middle of a sleepless night sat drying, the oil glistening in the lamplight.

“Yes.” She shot him a look. “A little different than the one you ‘helped’ me with.” She wiggled her fingers around the word.

An empty beach in the middle of a thunderstorm. Waves pounded the shoreline, a lone figure stood staring out over the water, her hair whipping in the wind, arms upraised.

“What is the person doing?”

“Marveling at God’s amazing power even in the midst of the worst storm you could ever imagine.”

“Does that parallel with your life?”

“Absolutely.” She cleared her throat. “Now, tell me about your childhood.”

Ouch. Aw man, anything but that. He’d rather talk about her storms than acknowledge his tumultuous upbringing.

Ignoring his initial response, he dug deep. He was in love with this woman for all the right reasons. She’d already shared quite a bit of her ugly past, he could do no less – not if he wanted things to go where he was pretty sure he wanted them to go. A white dress and a tux flashed to mind.

“All right. My dad was a cop and so was my grandfather.”

“Is that why you became one?”

He rubbed his chin. “Oh, part of it, I suppose, but I’ve always been fascinated by law enforcement. Of the good guys defeating the bad guys. All of that.”

She nodded.

He brushed nonexistent lint from his pants and took a deep breath. “Anyway, my . . . uh . . . dad had some anger issues. I guess the job just got to him. He started drinking shortly after a really bad case had gone wrong. I was about twelve at the time and remember seeing it on the news. There’d been a hostage situation and a shoot-out. My dad was a part of it. Somehow in the crossfire a pregnant woman and her two-year-old daughter were killed. Internal Affairs investigated and said the bullets came from his gun. He was never the same after that.”

Jamie winced but didn’t move from his side. Her fingers clutched his tighter.

“The drinking got worse and my mom begged him to get help. But he wouldn’t. And the more he drank, the meaner he got.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I am too. He started coming home drunk every night after cruising the bars with his buddies. Then the physical abuse started. At first it was only when I wasn’t around. My mom would have bruises and broken bones after I’d been gone for a while, and she always had some kind of story about why. Then he lost his job. Was fired from the force.”

“Oh no.”

“That’s when things got really bad. He started in on me. I think that was the final straw. I think it was either the fourth or fifth beating that landed me in the hospital with a concussion. My mother lost it.”

“Oh Dakota, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine . . .”

“One night she waited for him to get home, then bashed him over the head with his prize guitar. She caught him by surprise and beat him senseless. After he passed out, she grabbed the two suitcases she’d packed – and me – and we left.”