The Obsession(126)

“Yes. I left my car at the airport. I didn’t want to drive that far for the week I’d be home.”

“A shot you took in Battery Park, and the corresponding crime scene photo. Another high-risk vic. Working girl, junkie, early midtwenties. Blonde.”

“Donna wasn’t blonde. And the older woman—”

“Donna wasn’t his first choice. Neither was the older woman. It’s a pattern, Naomi.”

The cold, a jagged ball of ice, settled in her belly. “He’s using my work.”

“There are more.”

“How many more?”

“Four more I can connect through the photos. Then there are the missings, missing from areas I’ve been able to track you to through the photos. I need the dates—the dates and locations for the last two years. You keep track.”

“Yes. I don’t blog about a place until I’ve left it—I’m careful. But I keep a log of where I was, what date I took what shots. On my computer.”

“I need you to send them to me. If you’ve kept a log further back, I want that, too.”

She focused on Xander’s hands, hands warm and firm on her shoulders. “I have a log from when I left New York, from when I left six years ago. I have everything.”

“I want everything. I’m sorry, Naomi.”

“He didn’t just stumble onto my site and decide to use my photos. He’s following me, either literally or through my blog, or my photos. How far back have you gone?”

“Those two years so far.”

“And you think it’s longer.”

“I’m going to find out.”

“He’s not following, he’s stalking.” When her shoulders only went stiffer under his hands, Xander turned her around on the stool. “You’ll handle it because you have to. She’ll handle it,” he said to Mason without taking his eyes off Naomi. “He’s been stalking you for at least two years. His preferred victim is blonde because you are. And they’re all you. That’s what your brother’s not saying.”

“It’s a theory, and I need more information.”

Xander flicked a glance at Mason, barely a heartbeat. “You’re trying to ease her into it because you’re worried she’ll break. But that’s not the way for you, is it, Naomi?” His gaze met hers, held her. “You’re not going to break.”

“I’m not going to break.” But a part of her was trying desperately to shore up the cracks. “He . . . He takes them, and he keeps them at least for a couple of days so he can rape them, torture them, gratify himself. After he’s beaten them and raped them, kept them in the dark, cut them, choked them, kept them bound and gagged, he strangles them.”

She drew a shaky breath, then another, steadier before she turned to Mason. “Like our father. Too much like our father now, too much like it to say there are other cruel, sick men who do this. He’s killing like Thomas Bowes, and following me, the way I followed our father that night.”

“I believe he’s studied Thomas Bowes—he may have written to him, visited him, and I’m pulling that line. I believe he’s studied you. He’s here, and for the first time that I can verify, he’s killed twice in the same place.”

“Because I’m in the same place.”

“Yes. From what I’m putting together, he’s evolved. His method, while not exactly the same as Bowes’s, has mimicked it.”

No coincidence, no excuses, she ordered herself. The facts stood clear and straight. She had to face them.

“Why hasn’t he come after me? The others are what you call surrogates; why hasn’t he come after me? There have to have been countless opportunities.”

“Because then it’s over,” Xander said, shrugged. “Sorry,” he said to Mason. “It’s what makes sense.”

“And I agree. I still have more to do, more to analyze, but I can tell you I’ve got enough to have convinced Chief Winston and the coordinator of the BAU to send a team here. This unsub is smart, organized, mission-oriented, and tenacious. But he’s also arrogant—and that arrogance, using those particular sites for his dump spots, is going to break this open. We’re going to stop him, Naomi. I need the data from you. It’s key.”

“I’ll go up, email you the files.” She slid off the stool, went up the back steps without another word.

“She’s telling herself she can’t have this.” Mason lifted his hands to encompass the house, the life. “Not now. What Bowes is, what she tried to leave behind, came here with her.”

“Yeah, she’s telling herself that. She’s wrong.”

With a nod, Mason started to get up, sat back again. “You go. The torch passed while I wasn’t around. And we both came from him. She needs somebody who doesn’t carry that.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

—

She sat at her desk, her beautifully restored desk in her beautifully designed studio. A space that, less than an hour before, had made her so happy, so hopeful.

Had she really told herself, really believed, the past was done? Never done, she thought now. Never over. The ghosts never exorcised.

And once again a killer’s life twined and twisted with hers.