The Devil's Daughter (Hidden Sins #1)(62)
They’d come for Eden.
Lee aside, he couldn’t discard any suspects. Fuck, he couldn’t even discard Lee, because if he opened up the possibility of it being more than one person, that demolished the man’s alibi. It was enough to have a headache spiking behind his left eye. “What a fucking mess.”
He needed more people on this, but he couldn’t deputize any of Clear Springs’s citizens, because they couldn’t be trusted to be cool and collected in the face of someone who potentially killed their people. He didn’t blame them for that, but it made his job that much harder. Augusta was already understaffed as it was and couldn’t spare any men for him, especially when he didn’t have a time frame for when they’d be back.
The FBI . . . well, Eden couldn’t afford to be officially connected. This guy coming—Vic—wasn’t going to be enough.
We’ll make it work. We have to.
In the meantime, he needed to change up his strategy. There was no doubt Lee had more information to be delved into, though he needed the right pressure points to push. Of Martha’s inner circle, he was the weak link. They’d get nowhere with Abram. If Zach didn’t miss his guess, the guy had been in worse than interrogations a time or two, and the only way to ruffle him was to go after Martha—something Zach wasn’t prepared to do without strong evidence. It would bring the entirety of Elysia down around his head, which would spark animosity with the Clear Springs residents.
He pulled out his phone and called Eden. He wanted to run his plan past her and see if she thought it had merit. But the phone just rang and rang before finally clicking over to voice mail. What the fuck? She’d promised him she’d be careful, but that didn’t mean she had to take his calls. They’d just talked half an hour ago. She’s probably in with Martha.
But that didn’t stop him from worrying.
He put it out of his mind as much as possible. Eden was a grown woman—and a federal agent—so out of everyone involved in this case, she was the most capable of taking care of herself. He had other things to keep him occupied. Zach called Henry. “Get the second interrogation room prepped. I’m bringing Joseph in.” He couldn’t crack Abram, and he wasn’t ready to take Martha on, but Joseph was a cocky little bastard. Even if he couldn’t get under the man’s skin, he could use the loudmouth to get Lee talking.
Adrenaline surged. They’d figure this out, and they’d put a stop to this fucking killer.
He froze when Chase bolted over, skidding to a stop on the other side of the police tape. “Zach.” The man was so damn pale, he looked like he was about to pass out. His breath came too fast, and his eyes were too wide. “Zach, it’s Rachel Carpenter. She’s gone.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Eden? Eden, honey, wake up.”
Eden opened her eyes and immediately closed them when the light assaulted her. She concentrated on breathing and took inventory of her body. It had been a long time since she was knocked out cold. The last thing she remembered was chasing down someone who’d been following her. It could have been the unsub, but then she was in Elysia, so it could have been anyone. She reached up and gingerly touched her face. That’s going to bruise up real pretty. It hurt—good lord, it hurt—but nothing seemed to be broken. Thank God. She’d broken her nose on her first case with Vic, and he’d never let her live it down.
Probably because it had nothing to do with chasing down an unsub and everything to do with a drunk girl with too much strength and too little coordination.
Not her finest moment, though this was shaping up to be one for the record books. The familiar scent of hyacinths wrapped around her, as if she needed more than the sound of Martha’s voice to confirm that she was kneeling right beside Eden.
As tempting as it was to lie here and pretend to be unconscious for a little bit longer, it wouldn’t serve any purpose but delaying the inevitable. I can use this. Think clinically. It was hard, so hard, with her head pounding in time with her heartbeat. All she wanted to do was lie there for a few more minutes, or maybe a few more days, and just wait until this all passed her by.
But Eden had never lived her life passively, and she wasn’t about to start now.
She opened her eyes, but more slowly this time. Her surroundings solidified around her, and they were not the hall she’d run down. She started to sit up, but the room spun, forcing her back to the ground. “Where am I?”
“Honey, you’re in Elysia. You don’t remember?” Martha exchanged a glance with someone, and Eden twisted to see Abram looming against the doorjamb. That got her moving. She’d be damned before she lay supine while he was in the room. She managed to sit up, but making it to her feet wasn’t possible without potentially passing out again, and that would be even worse than lying on the ground. She gritted her teeth, but that just made the pounding in her head worse.
“I know I’m in Elysia.” The last thing she needed was for Martha to jump on the idea that she had amnesia or some nonsense like that. “I mean why am I here?” She motioned to the entranceway of the chapel. Eden knew for a fact she hadn’t been knocked out here, head injury or no.
“This is where we found you.” Martha reached out to smooth her hair back but aborted the move halfway through when Eden flinched. Her mouth tightened. “I was told you were in Elysia, and since you didn’t deem your mother worthy of seeing last time you were here, I was on my way to see you.”