Stone Cold Heart (Tracers #13)(70)

Thinking of her family put a clench in her chest. She couldn’t think about her mom and dad right now. Or her aunts and uncles. Or the friends she was supposed to share an apartment with in the fall.

Focus, she told herself as she continued her effort. The bindings were tight. He was good at knots. But Grace had discovered a flake of stone, and if she held it just right, between her index and middle finger, she was able to saw at the twine.

Grace’s fingers cramped, and the rock slid from her grasp. Shit. Pressing her cheek to the hard ground, she felt around for it. Finally, she found it. Using her tongue, she managed to get the rock into her mouth. Pain zinged up her side as she scooted forward and carefully maneuvered it back into her hand.

Slowly, steadily, she worked. She had no fingernails left to peel now. It had been eleven days. The last time he’d come back, she’d been still and lifeless. A dying mouse.

He hadn’t liked that. It was her one flicker of triumph since she’d walked into this nightmare, and she’d paid for it with a smashed cheek and a bloody lip. It was worth it.

On his way out, he’d torn open a gel packet and tossed it at her. Only one, and no water.

When he was gone, she’d sucked down every ounce of sustenance and gone back to working like a dog. She was a pit bull, not a mouse.

She wasn’t dead but dangerous.





CHAPTER 21


Unlike the Crypt where Sara worked, the Delphi Center’s DNA lab had a prime location on the building’s top floor.

“Nice view,” Nolan said as he followed Mia down the hallway where windows overlooked acres of rolling hills.

“We like it.” She glanced at him over her shoulder. “You ever been here before?”

“Just downstairs.”

Nolan pictured Sara in the cramped office where he’d kissed her. He hadn’t talked to her in days, and her SUV hadn’t been in the parking lot when he arrived.

Mia opened a door and led him into a spacious laboratory where several white-coated scientists hunched over microscopes. He followed her past an industrial-size refrigerator, which he guessed contained rape kits and other biological evidence. She stopped at a long slate table and nodded at the evidence bags Nolan carried.

“Before we get to the test results, let’s see what you brought me,” she said.

“Sure.”

Mia tugged a wide strip of butcher paper from a roll and covered the table. She pulled her strawberry-blond hair into a ponytail, which made her look even younger than she already did. Nolan still couldn’t get over the fact that a woman who probably got carded trying to buy alcohol was one of the nation’s top DNA experts.

“Okay, big package first,” she said. “What’s in it?”

“A backpack belonging to a hiker who went missing in White Falls Park fourteen months ago,” Nolan said. “Kaylin Baird, age nineteen.”

Mia pulled on a pair of gloves, then handed him some. “White Falls Park, the same location where the four victims were recovered?”

“That’s right. So we obviously think there’s a connection between the cases, but we have nothing to prove it conclusively. I’m hoping you can do that.”

She nodded. “I assume you already ran all this evidence before?”

“The state crime lab checked for prints, blood, whatever. No blood, and the only prints they found belonged to Kaylin.”

“What about the smaller envelope?” she asked.

“That’s Kaylin’s phone.”

Mia smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that. We like phones.”

“It was checked for prints, too, but they found nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nada. And that supports my case theory,” Nolan said.

She folded her arms over her chest. “Walk me through your case theory.”

“Kaylin doesn’t fit the killer’s pattern. He’s been known to abduct women, often from bars or other public places at night. After he kills them, he dumps them in remote parks. So far, we know of two victims in Tennessee and four here in Texas.”

“And Kaylin? What happened with her?”

“She was last seen hiking in White Falls Park early on a Saturday morning. She was supposed to meet a ride later in the morning, but she didn’t show. Her backpack was recovered at a different park twenty miles away, cell phone inside.”

Mia took a utility knife from her lab coat pocket and sliced through the seal on the smaller evidence envelope. She carefully removed a slender iPhone.

“I don’t think the unsub selected Kaylin like he did the others,” Nolan said. “I think he happened onto her at some point, probably when she witnessed him getting rid of one of the bodies. One of the victims disappeared the week before Kaylin, and her body was found buried near Kaylin’s favorite hiking spot. You follow?”

Mia nodded. “Was this phone on or off when it was recovered?”

“Off. Which doesn’t make sense if she was meeting up with friends. I think he turned the phone off before he put it in that backpack and dumped it in a different park.”

“Where he hoped it would throw off investigators?” Mia asked.

“Or at least distract us. Which it did. We spent a lot of time scouring that park and came up with nothing.”