“Dryden isn’t going to tell you where that woman is and you know it.”
Bobby might be right. Diana didn’t have to try very hard to remember the amusement on Dryden’s face when she’d nearly begged him to tell her Nadine’s location. She doubted a baby would make any difference. Not to a man incapable of sympathy. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t not try.”
Bobby blew a breath through tight lips. “I’m not going to let you go in there alone. Not after what I saw.”
“What you saw?”
The planes of his face hardened. He turned away.
“Bobby, tell me.” She gripped the edge of the desk. “It’s about me, isn’t it? Something Louis planned to do to me?”
She couldn’t suppress the shudder that seized her. Had Louis planned to do to her what he’d done to those other women? What Professor Bertram had tried to do to her? Or was it something else? Something she couldn’t even imagine?
Something she didn’t want to.
“Louis… Perreth…” Bobby trailed off.
“Perreth?”
“He told me, Diana. Well, he sort of bragged about it. He saw you… in the woods, didn’t he? Touched you.”
Diana's face felt hot. She shook her head, wanting to forget about all that, wishing it had never happened.
“You need to report him.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. None of that matters. Not now.” The important thing was finding the woman Louis had kidnapped. They had no way of knowing if she was still alive. But if they didn’t find her, she would surely die. “Perreth won’t get an opportunity to take advantage of me ever again. And Louis… obviously he can’t hurt me now.”
“Dryden can.”
She tried to swallow. Her mouth tasted like sand. “He’s still in prison. And his copycat is dead. I’m willing to take the risk.”
Bobby’s dark gaze drilled into her. “I’m not.”
Diana stepped around the edge of the desk, close enough to touch him. Every cell in her body screamed for her to reach out for him, to get lost in his arms, to let his warmth and kisses and love take all of this away. But she couldn’t.
“Let law enforcement handle this, Diana. All the agencies are working on it. We’ll find her.”
A pit opened up in Diana’s stomach, dark and empty and aching. Nothing had changed. Bobby was still taking care of her. Still sheltering her. Still trying to fix her life.
And worst of all, deep down, she wanted to let him.
She thought back to last night, to how close she felt to Bobby after he confessed to needing her, how powerful she felt when they were making love. She longed to crawl into those memories, to feel those things again, to live them.
If only they were real.
There was only one reality now. For that poor mother. For her baby. And only Diana could do anything to change it.
Reaching out a hand, Bobby ran his fingers up and down her arm, as if trying to warm her. “Stay in here. I’ll make this as short as I can, and then we can figure this out. All right?”
Heat fanned over her skin, followed by cold. She drew herself up. He had to go. To meet with his rep. To be debriefed. To do his job.
And she had something to do also. She just prayed she had the courage to see it through. “Go ahead.”
“And you’ll be here when I’m done?”
Diana hated lying to him. Hated the old feelings yawning inside. Hated the despair carving out her hopes and dreams and leaving nothing but an empty carcass. She drew in a deep breath and pushed the words through her lips. “Yes. I’ll be here.”
***
By the time Diana reached the prison, it was late, long past visitation hours, and there was probably only a skeleton staff working. Standing just inside the security screening area of the prison, she checked her watch then glanced through the metal detector and toward the door. She half expected Bobby to burst through at any moment, hellbent on saving her. But he didn’t come. His obligations surrounding Louis’s death and the scramble to find the governor’s daughter-in-law must be keeping him busy. Too busy to notice yet that she was gone.
A clang reached her from down the hall, a sally port sliding closed.
Standing straight, Diana pushed away a shiver of nervousness and faced the door that led into the prison.
The door buzzed and swung open. Corrections Officer Seides’s broad shoulders filled the doorway. “Ms. Gale? Sorry it took me so long. We had a few problems tonight.”
“Problems?” She braced herself, waiting for him to say that Bobby had called, that he’d told them she wasn’t allowed inside.
“Nothing big. A few inmates feeling their oats is all.”
She let out a breath, trying not to show her relief. “As long as everything turned out okay.”
“Yeah, we got ’em secured. You said this was urgent?”
Diana nodded. She’d called on the drive to the prison to try to get emergency clearance for her visit. Usually her visits had to be set up well in advance, but she hoped prison officials would let her go through based on her previous involvement with the police investigation. And she hoped they wouldn’t have to clear it with Bobby. “I explained the situation when I called.”
“Something about the woman who went missing in Madison?”
“The governor’s daughter-in-law, yes.”
“Horrible thing.”
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s get you back there.” He held the door open and ushered her inside with a wave of a beefy arm.
They marched down the halls and negotiated the sally ports until they reached the tiny room just outside the interview room. Officer Seides switched on the camera and left to fetch Dryden.
Diana stared at the screen showing the empty chairs and small table where she would once again face her father. On the drive up, she’d tried to come up with a plan. She’d thought about all the things Trent Burnell had told her. She’d even considered taking Nikki Dryden’s twisted advice. In the end, she wasn’t sure how she would handle this or even if she could handle it at all. But she would do everything she could. Of that she was sure.
Time ticked by.
Five minutes.
Ten.
Fifteen.
Finally, the door from the cell blocks into the interview room opened, and Seides led Dryden inside. He secured Dryden to the chair that was riveted to the floor and let Diana into the room.
As she lowered herself into a facing chair, a smile snaked over Dryden’s thin lips. “I’m so glad we could have this time alone. Just father and daughter. No police to come between us. Our private visit. As it should have been all along.”
A shiver trickled down her spine. She averted her gaze, taking in the baggy prison jumpsuit, his clean, trimmed nails and the red nylon binders securing his hands to the chair.
“You’re wondering about these?” He lifted his hands against the restraints. “They seem a little cut-rate, don’t they? Makes you wonder where your tax money is going.”
“Where are your handcuffs?”
“It seems there was a disturbance. I suspect my deluxe steel handcuffs are being used to fasten a couple of particularly nasty individuals while the guards get everyone under control.” He pulled up against the binders a second time. “Some of these inmates are true animals.”
He watched her, as if eager to see the irony of his words sink in.
She kept her expression carefully neutral. “The Copycat Killer kidnapped another woman. A woman with a two-month-old baby this time.”
His smile faded. “I’m not here to talk police business, Diana. I want to talk about family. How did you like meeting your brother?”
Curt Tillman.
A mix of emotion whirled through her. The memory of how much he resembled Dryden. The anger that seemed to coil inside him ready to spring. The overwhelming desire to connect with her brother and the resulting disappointment.