Atone (Recovered Innocence #2)(41)

It makes me want to hurl.

Putting blue pins in a map on the wall, I keep track of the locations Barbara mentions meeting with Jay. I add a white pin to the location where Marie took the photo of the tattoo drawing. Moving on to the next girl, I go through the same thing, this time using green pins in the map. Cora adds yellow pins for number eleven and red for number fourteen. It takes us all day to map out an area that’s approximately twenty by twenty-five miles—Javier’s hunting ground.

Marie’s pin is near the upper-left corner, so we’re pretty sure he’s still in the same area, if not just outside. I create a separate search for girls age fourteen to eighteen who were in foster or group homes and went missing from the time Barbara disappeared until now—one hundred and eight in just over a ten-year period. Not all of them are Javier’s victims, but there are just too damn many. Tomorrow we’re going to divide the list and search each name individually.

This f*cker has a pattern. I can see it. It’s possible he has a source in child services who is helping him find and target these girls. They’re all described the same way—troubled, incorrigible, violent, defiant, at risk, failing in school, hard to place, and in some cases there are notes about drug or alcohol abuse. They all have parents who are either deceased or incarcerated, and no older siblings or other relatives in their lives.

They’re the perfect f*cking victims. No one would look very far or long for them, and there’s no one to ask questions or care if they disappeared.

He also has a type and Marie breaks it. All four of the girls we found who posted about the tattoo were white—two brunette, one redhead, and one blond. Vera is white, but her sister is half white and half black. They’re also the only siblings he’s targeted. None of the other girls had a sister who also vanished. Why is he breaking type with Marie? Why her? Could it be because of Vera? Could it be a way to draw her back to him or to get back at her for breaking free of him?

I need a lot more information if I’m going to find Javier, and I’m going to have to ask Vera some very difficult questions tonight. She’s the only one of the girls we can actually talk to. She’s not going to like it, but she might know more than she thinks she does. She might be the key to finding Marie and maybe the other girls as well. I text her and ask her to come to the office.

There’s a knock on the office door. Savannah pokes her head in. Her gaze immediately goes to me. “Vera Swain is here to see you.”

I just sent the text.

“Were you expecting her?” Cora asks.

“Send her in,” I tell Savannah.

Savannah disappears.

I hold up my phone for Cora. “I just barely texted her and asked her to come. She hasn’t even responded yet.”

“I wonder what’s up.”

There’s another knock and then Vera comes into the room. I stand. She closes the door after her and walks straight toward me, ignoring Cora. Her eyes are huge and her hands shake. I take them in mine and tug her toward me. She presses her face into my shirt. Holding her to me, I can feel how tightly strung she is. Over her head, I catch Cora’s crossed arms and raised brows.

“What’s wrong?” I ask Vera.

She pulls back and looks up at me, her eyes pooling with tears. I’ve never seen her cry. Not like this. Shit. It’s bad.

I take her face in my hands. “What is it?”

“She got the tattoo.”

Behind her, Cora gasps, her hand going to her mouth. She knows what this means. We’re too late. I can’t take my eyes off Vera. She cracks me in two. Tears stream down her cheeks and she looks at me like she’s lost.

I can’t accept that it’s too late. It can’t be. “We’ll find her.”

“He’s going to start the auction.”

“We’ll find her,” I repeat. “We will.”

She shakes her head. “He’s going to isolate her now. Take her somewhere. She’s going to think it’s romantic. He’s prepping her.” She covers her face with her hands. “So she won’t fight the winner. She won’t fight at all.”

Cora slips out the door, leaving us alone. I don’t know what to say to Vera, so I just hold her. She doesn’t break down. Her tears are silent, soaking the front of my shirt. They don’t last long. She’s not one to linger on useless emotion. She breaks out of my embrace and swipes at the last of her tears. Taking a deep, determined breath, she paces away and sheds what’s left of her anguish. When she turns back to me, it’s like the last few minutes didn’t happen. If it weren’t for the redness around her eyes and the wet spot on my shirt, I’d think I imagined it.

“You wanted me to come down here,” she prompts.

I try to put it as gently as possible. “We need to talk about what happened to you.”

She nods, pulls a chair over to my desk, and sits down, waiting for me to recover my shit and get with the program.

I join her at my desk. “Is there anything you haven’t told me that might help us find Marie? Maybe something that seems like nothing?”

“I’ve been going over and over everything. I was alone a lot of the time. When he moved me it was always at night and I was blindfolded so I couldn’t see where I came from or where I was going.”

“I found four girls who came before you. They all have the same tattoo with different numbers.” I bring up the photos of the girls on my computer and point to each one in turn. “Barbara Moore, Kaley Riccio, Rosalyn Bauer, and Kiersten Paulie.”