Gone (Deadly Secrets #2)(26)

Not wanting to think about the awkward conversation she’d had with Jeremy at the station or about the fact he hadn’t seemed too upset when she’d told him she thought it was best they stopped seeing each other, she glared after the brunette. “I’m surprised you come here, considering the atmosphere.”

Alec lifted his coffee and sipped. “You mean the booze? They don’t serve it in the mornings, and wine and beer don’t tempt me.”

No, of course wine and beer didn’t tempt him. Because obviously the tight-assed, big-boobed brunette distracted him from the alcohol around him.

She crossed her arms over her chest, her taste for coffee long gone.

Alec shuffled the papers in his hands, then laid them on the table in front of him. He handed three across to her. “These I think we can disregard.”

She took the papers with a scowl and scanned them.

“The first looks like a classic custodial abduction to me. Separated parents, kid is picked up at day care and disappears. The description the day care provider gave is way too similar to the father. The second we can disregard because the kid was too old. He was snatched from an elementary school. That puts him at five or six, maybe even seven. It’s outside the age range for the rest of these cases.”

“And the last?” Raegan flipped to the bottom paper.

“Geographically, I don’t think it fits. The kid went missing from a farm in the Coast Range. Unfenced yard, property bordered by woods. Kids wander. Even toddlers. You hear about it all the time. I bet they’ll find that boy in the spring after the snows melt.”

Sickness rolled through Raegan’s stomach. If Alec was right and that child had simply wandered off, she couldn’t imagine the guilt those parents would feel when he was finally found.

Actually . . . her gaze lifted to Alec seated across from her, sipping his coffee once more. Memories flickered behind her eyes, all the times she’d told him what had happened to Emma wasn’t his fault, and the guilt that had lingered in his gaze.

Yeah—she swallowed hard—she could imagine it. She’d lived it. Was still living it.

Looking back down, she set the papers aside and reached for the ones he’d laid out in front of him. “So why these? What about them caught your attention?”

“The kids are all young enough not to communicate well.”

Raegan’s brow lowered. The ages varied by case. Some were as young as one, others as old as four. A one-year-old she could buy as not able to communicate, but a four-year-old could definitely talk . . . and in some cases never stop talking. “This one here is very verbal.” She held up a page. “She was three when she was taken, and her parents reported she started talking at eleven months.”

“True, but even a highly verbal three-year-old kid isn’t going to be able to articulate well. You asked me why these. I look at these cases and see a pattern. Remember that story you were researching a few years ago? The Coast Killer? The one who was murdering all those girls?”

“Yes.” Raegan glanced down at the papers again. The Coast Killer, as the news had labeled him, had murdered five young women in a six-month span and dumped their bodies in the Coast Range. It had been one of the biggest stories in the area when Raegan was first starting with the station.

“You have to think of these cases like that. There are patterns if you look hard enough.”

“Are you saying you think these cases are linked? If they were linked, the police would have picked up on that.”

“Not if they weren’t looking deep enough. And isn’t that what you think? That they’re linked? Isn’t that why you asked me to look into them with you?”

His eyes were as clear and focused as she’d ever seen them. He spent his life photographing others. Saw things most people didn’t. He could do the same with a case file, which was exactly why she’d wanted to show him all this. But thinking the cases were connected and hearing that stated out loud were two very different things.

“So what’s the connection?” she asked. “If we’re saying these cases are linked, there has to be something more than just the fact each of these kids were young at the time of their disappearance and likely didn’t communicate well. The Coast Killer went for blonde-haired, blue-eyed, early-twenties women. Most he met in bars. One he picked up on the side of the road when her car broke down. I don’t see those kinds of similarities here.” She held up a paper. “This boy is African American, this one Hispanic, this girl is Caucasian, and this one’s Korean.”

“Yeah, I noticed that.” He shifted in his seat, rested his elbow on the table, and brushed a hand over his mouth, looking uneasy. “It’s almost as if . . .”

“As if what?”

Frowning, he dropped his hand. “It’s a stupid thought.”

“There are no stupid thoughts when we’re brainstorming, remember?”

Something in his eyes told her he did remember the often-used phrase from when they’d worked on something together in the past, but he clenched his jaw and looked down at the papers before she could tell what he was thinking. “On the surface, race could seem random. But something tells me it’s not. It’s almost as if someone’s targeting certain kids for a reason. Like whoever’s doing this is going shopping. One African American kid here, one Korean kid there. It’s very specific, almost like someone’s checking off a list.”