“I want to keep you close, Gracie. We all do. I want you to stay here forever, where I can see you every day, where I can know for sure you're okay. I want to follow you around and never let you out of my sight. But you’ve proven over and over again that you’re a fighter, that you're strong, and that you know what you're doing. So, we’re all here for you, to support you, help you get your feet back underneath you, help you get back what you lost,” Jem said.
“I love you all so much.” She squeezed hard then moved to the other couch to huge Elijah and Ali. “I missed you all so much, and part of me wants to stay right here, letting you take care of me now. But that would be giving up and I didn't do it when I was with Emmanuel and I'm not going to do it now. But you guys have to know that you're the reason that I'm still here, you taught me to be strong. I did what I know you would do if you were taken. Now you're helping me in a different way. Helping me go back to school, find a job, and get a dog. I want you to teach me to shoot as well and some self-defense moves. If Emmanuel comes after me, I want to be able to protect myself. I'm not giving up, not ever. Not when I have so much to live for.”
Making amends for the lives she took, helping other victims, spending time with her family, and Matthew. He made her laugh, helped her relax, and understood her in a way she had been afraid no one ever could.
* * * * *
2:18 P.M.
“Zara and Amanda went to the same gym, but none of the other women did,” Matthew said, setting the photos of those two victims side by side.
“And Darla and Rosie lived on the same street, but nobody else lived in that area,” Rylla added.
“Frances used the same bank as Amanda, but none of the other women used it.”
“Frances, Billie, and Jean all used the same dry cleaner.”
“Tamara and Natasha both go to the same doctor, and Amelia used the physiotherapist who works out of the same building after she injured herself at Taekwondo. And Rosie and Billie use the dentist who’s also in the same building.” That was the biggest link they’d found so far. Five of their twenty-one victims all went to the same facility even though they used different parts of the building. They’d be going through everybody who worked there, was a patient there, or any contractors who frequented the place looking for anyone who might be a suspect. Because they had Grace and Barbara Lack, they would be able to get the women to ID any suspect they got which meant they wouldn’t waste time chasing down leads that didn't pan out.
But they couldn’t ask Grace and Barbara Lack to look at photos of every man in his late twenties to mid-thirties that lived in the city, that was just too wide a suspect pool. Once they narrowed things down though they’d have the two women look at their list and see if any of the men were Emmanuel.
At least they had a list of Emmanuel’s victims to work with. Even though he hadn't wanted to ruin the fun he and Grace were having talking on the phone last night before wishing her sweet dreams and saying goodnight, he’d asked if he could send her a list of potential victims. She’d agreed and first thing this morning he’d sent her pictures of thirty women. She’d come back to him with a list of twenty-one that she recognized as being in Emmanuel’s house, but some of the bodies with tattoos were from before Grace had been kidnapped so they knew he had other victims even if they couldn’t prove it.
“None of the other victims have any connections there though,” Rylla said, sounding as frustrated as he felt. They had been working on this all day and even though they’d been able to link some of the victims together, they hadn't found one place where all twenty-one—twenty-three if they included Grace and Barbara Lack—women connected.
Without that connection it was next to impossible to find the man.
They’d already eliminated the easy route the first day by checking into any men with the name Emmanuel, but there were none who matched the description they had. The man was using an alias, likely laying low in the house of another elderly woman he’d killed. If they couldn’t find the link, they might not be able to locate Emmanuel. If they couldn’t locate the man, then he was going to keep coming after Grace until they caught him or he got her.
“We have a few who worked in the same building, a couple who went to the same college, a couple use the same supermarket, a couple ran the same track at the local park, but there’s nowhere that all of them went. Nothing that links them all together,” Rylla continued.
“There is. There has to be something that links them.”
“There doesn’t have to be,” his partner reminded him. “He could have picked houses at random.”
Matthew shook his head. “Too risky. He needed to know who was in there. Every single one of his victims lived alone. He had to know that. The abductions were all smooth, he broke in, knocked them out, took them and got out of there. No witnesses, no fingerprints left behind. He knew what he was doing. There is no way someone who was that careful, put that much planning into it, just picked a house at random and took whoever was inside. What if he chose a house and found a man lived there, or a couple, or a whole family?”
“He could pick a house, wait to see who goes in?” Rylla suggested.
“I can't see him playing things loose. This guy went to the effort of finding a house that was not connected to him in any way, got the owner out of the way, and repurposed it to suit his needs. He’s stayed off the radar, we got no hits on his fingerprints or DNA, so he has no criminal record. This guy is smart and careful, he’s not going to leave it up to chance. He sees them somewhere, I know he does.”
“Then we’re at an impasse for now. I don’t know how we’re going to find him if we can't find the link.”
Frustration surged through him. They knew what this man looked like and they had his DNA and his fingerprints. They knew where he had tortured and killed his victims, all of said victims’ bodies had been found. They knew how he killed them and the why—although not in much detail—and yet they were no closer to finding him than if they had nothing.
It felt like their only option was to sit back and wait to see what Emmanuel’s next move was going to be.
The problem with that was he knew what that next move would be.
Grace.
By going after her once already he’d made his intentions clear. He wanted her back, and if he was willing to chance a high-risk abduction by going after her while she was in the hospital, then he was desperate. Desperate enough that he’d gone and killed someone who looked like Grace just hours after the foiled kidnapping.
Matthew straightened, looking up from the photos covering the conference table. “Natalie Potter.”
“What about her?” Rylla asked, rubbing the back of her neck as she sunk into her chair.
“We both agree she looks like Grace, right?”