Snared (Elemental Assassin #16)(67)

For some reason, I found myself studying that photo of Damian with his parents. In particular, his mother, Maria, caught my eye. The strange thing was, the more I stared at her, the more I realized that Maria Rivera looked exactly like Elissa and all of the Dollmaker’s other victims. Young, blond, pretty. But what made my heart drop and made a chill run down my spine was her makeup.

Her lips were painted a familiar, sickening blood-red.

Of course, she wasn’t holding a tube of lipstick in the picture, but I knew—I knew, deep down in my bones—that she was wearing the Heartbreaker color.

Could this all be about Maria Rivera? Did Damian have some deep-seated mommy issues that had twisted him into a serial killer? Was he kidnapping women so he could kill his own mother over and over again? If so, why? What had Maria done to her own son that was so terrible? That made him want to beat and strangle her substitutes time and time again?

Owen noticed that I’d stopped in front of the mantel, and he came over to me. “What are you looking at?”

I pointed to the photo. “Who does she remind you of?”

He didn’t see it for a moment, but then he leaned forward, his eyes narrowing with understanding. “Elissa . . . and all the other victims.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Rivera is our guy. He has to be.”

“So where is Elissa?” Owen asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m not leaving here without her. C’mon. Let’s go meet Finn and Bria.”

Owen nodded and headed back over to the window, but I stayed where I was, still staring at that photo of Maria Rivera standing with Damian and his father, Richard, with Bruce Porter hovering in the background. It was your average family picture, completely innocent and innocuous. But once again, something about this whole situation bothered me, some nagging little thing that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I looked over the photo for a third time, but try as I might, I couldn’t puzzle it out.

“Gin?” Owen asked. “You ready?”

“Yeah,” I said, finally turning away from the photo. “Let’s go.”





22


Owen and I went back out through the open office window, crossed the roof, and climbed down the trellis. Finn and Bria were waiting by the pool, guns in hand, once again hunkered down behind the patio furniture.

“Now what?” Finn’s green gaze darted back and forth, on the lookout for any servants or guards.

“Now we spread out and expand our search,” I said. “Just because Elissa wasn’t in the mansion, that doesn’t mean Rivera doesn’t have her stashed around here somewhere. Maybe he’s holding her in one of the outbuildings. So let’s split up again and look for her.”

The others nodded, and Finn pulled out his phone and texted Silvio, telling him what we were doing next. Almost immediately, Finn’s phone lit up with a new message.

“Silvio, Jade, and Ryan are still in position on the street outside the front of the mansion,” Finn said. “Everything’s quiet on that side of the estate, and none of the guards have moved away from their posts. We’re still in the clear.”

I nodded. “Let’s get to work, then.”

Finn and Bria went left, and Owen and I went right.

As with many such places in Northtown, Damian Rivera’s estate was like its own little city. Several sheds and outbuildings surrounded the main structure on both sides, positioned in small clusters of trees to blend in with the rest of the immaculate landscaping.

Owen and I went from one shed and outbuilding to the next, careful to stay out of sight of the guards patrolling the front of the mansion. He kept watch while I slipped inside every structure that we came to and searched for Elissa. The sheds held everything from lawn mowers and other gardening equipment, to cleaning supplies for the pool, to red and green plastic tubs filled with all the holiday lights and decorations that had covered the mansion. We moved carefully, quickly, and quietly, looking at all the supplies, peering into the cobwebbed corners, and searching the floors for any trapdoors or sublevels.

But there was nothing. No women’s clothes or accessories spread out across a table, no telltale footprints made by a woman’s stilettos in the dust, no gold tubes of lipstick glimmering on a shelf. There wasn’t a single sign of Elissa anywhere.

More and more frustration surged through me, burning like acid in my veins, and once again, I got the nagging feeling that I was missing something important, something obvious. Ten minutes later, Owen and I had cleared all the buildings on our side of the property, and we snuck back to the pool area.

“Finn, Bria, you guys got anything?” I asked through the transmitter.

Finn’s voice crackled back to me a second later. “Nothing. Nothing at all, and we’ve looked everywhere on this side of the estate. I don’t even see any ropes that might be used to tie someone down. If Elissa is here, then Rivera is doing a bang-up job of hiding her.”

Even more frustration spiked through me, and I reached up and massaged my forehead, which was suddenly aching. “All right. You guys sneak out through the woods on that side of the mansion and go meet up with Silvio, Jade, and Ryan out front. Owen and I will make sure that we didn’t overlook anything and go out through the woods in the back the same way we came in. We’ll see you guys in a few minutes.”

“Roger that.” Finn signed off again.