“So he takes her out,” Blake said, finishing the concept.
“Exactly. And has fun doing it.”
77
DAY ELEVEN-SEPTEMBER 15
THURSDAY AFTERNOON
Draven frantically searched the mountainside for Mia Avila, gripping the knife so tight that his fingers hurt, already planning what he’d do to her for putting him through this.
“Get back here, you bitch!”
No response.
“All you’re doing is making me mad!”
Silence.
There were too many trees, too many boulders, too many goddamn places to hide. He ran from one to the next, hoping beyond hope to find her cowering on the ground and scared out of her mind.
His lungs burned from the mad dashing but he didn’t care.
She couldn’t have gone far, not in those shoeless little feet of hers. The whole mountain was covered in rocks and twigs and pine needles and other pointy things. She might start out with enough feet to go for a ways, but before long they’d be raw and bloody and stuck full of needles. She’d have to stop no matter how desperate she might be.
She was here somewhere.
Where?
He covered ground as quickly as he could, no longer shouting now that he realized he was only giving his position away.
He hunted quietly, quickly, trying to remain confident that sooner or later he’d spring around the corner and grab her by the hair.
His legs grew increasingly heavy.
His lungs no longer got enough oxygen.
He was no longer just tired.
He was slipping into a deeper and deeper state of exhaustion.
He stopped and sat on a boulder, just to catch his breath for a second. Bad thoughts pounded his brain. He might not catch her. She might actually escape.
He knew he should stand up and continue the search.
He was too tired to move.
But muscled himself up anyway.
He searched every nook and cranny that she could have possibly made it to without being seen, found her nowhere, and then finally gave up and went back to the cabin.
Time to get the hell out of there.
Then, shit!
A large puddle of green antifreeze sat under the car. He kicked the side of the door, giving it a huge dent while sending a bone-compressing shockwave up his leg, all the way up to his hip.
“Goddamn it!”
He’d have to get the hood up to fill the radiator with water.
He opened the driver’s door, reached under the dash and activated the hood release, and then tried to muscle the hood up. It didn’t budge.
“Son of a bitch!”
He picked up a rock and threw it at the vehicle, shattering the windshield.
Then he stormed into the cabin and punched a hole in the wall. He was shaking the pain out of his knuckles when he noticed that the woman’s shoes were missing.
They should be on the floor.
Right there next to the couch.
He’d put them there himself.
And then almost tripped over ’em ten times.
Clever girl.
But not clever enough.
He immediately bolted out the front door and ran down the gravel driveway towards the road.
78
DAY TWELVE-SEPTEMBER 16
FRIDAY MORNING
Teffinger was already up and driving south on I-25, heading toward Pueblo, when the sun broke over the eastern plains and washed the Front Range with a soft golden hue. He saw about fifteen different places where he would like nothing more than to pull over and set up an easel. There was something about the light in the fall, particularly the early morning light, that brought out the color of things.
Sydney slept in the passenger seat.
His thoughts turned to the hot tub incident last night, the one he didn’t participate in but did watch. The sex show with Davica and the black-haired beauty had been erotic and intense, and should have aroused him, but didn’t. All he could think of the entire time was that he wished she didn’t need things like that in her life.
Maybe she was too wild for him.
Maybe no one person could satisfy her.
He raked his hair back with his fingers and decided to just take things one day at a time.
When he passed the Air Force Academy, lots of small single-engine planes buzzed the sky. Shortly thereafter he got bogged down in the Colorado Springs rush hour, but finally broke out the other side and entered that arid stretch of undeveloped land that escorted weary travelers into Pueblo.
He didn’t know much yet about the missing Pueblo woman, Mia Avila, other than she was fairly young, ran a tattoo shop, and vanished without a trace eight days ago-Thursday of last week, to be precise.
The stripper-Chase-disappeared four days later.
On Monday.
The same day she received a telephone call from a payphone just north of Pueblo.
Then showed up later with a nail in her forehead.
The big question is whether Mia Avila got one of the other nails in the box.
Sydney woke up just as they passed Eagleridge Drive on the northern edge of the city.
She yawned, stretched, and said, “I’m starved.”
Twenty minutes later they were in a booth at the Grand Prix Restaurant, with smothered burritos and piping hot coffee, meeting with a young Hispanic woman by the name of Detective Julia Torres.
She had a good dose of hunt in her blood.
Whereas most relatively fresh detectives might get overly excited at the possibility of being connected to a case as big as the one in Denver, she stayed focused on the facts.
The way a seasoned hunter would.
“Everything in the tattoo shop was pretty much normal,” Torres said. “There was no indication of a struggle or abduction. Nothing was broken. There was no blood on the floor. Nothing was taken, even though there was lots of stuff that would have been, if it had been a burglary. The sign in the window was flipped to Closed and the front door was locked. Her car was still parked out front.”
“So she left with someone,” Sydney offered.
The woman sipped coffee and nodded.
“It appears that way, which of course suggests that she knew the person,” Torres said. “Maybe she shut down for lunch but never made it back for some reason. We just don’t know.”
Teffinger frowned.
“Did she keep an appointment book?” he asked.
“We didn’t find one.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“You think she’d have one to schedule tattoos,” he said.
Torres agreed and said, “That’s one of the things so far that doesn’t fit.”
“Maybe someone knew he wasn’t going to bring her back, and also knew he was in her appointment book, so he took that too,” Teffinger suggested.
“Possibly, and maybe even likely,” Torres said. “But we haven’t been able to come up with a brilliant plan to recreate it.”
Teffinger nodded.
And couldn’t shine any bright ideas on the subject either.
“Can we have a look at the place, after breakfast?”
“Absolutely. I brought the key with me.”
Teffinger took a swallow of coffee.
“Good stuff.”
Sydney smiled. “As if you’ve ever seen a cup of coffee you didn’t like.”
Inside the missing woman’s tattoo shop, following a thorough walk around, Teffinger agreed that there was no indication of foul play.
In the back room he spotted a safe.
“Have you opened that yet?” he asked.
Torres shook her head. “Not yet.”
Teffinger cocked his head, wondered if there was any reason why the shop’s appointment book would be inside, and decided that there wasn’t.
“We lifted some prints off the front door and matched a few of them to names,” Torres added. “We interviewed those people but didn’t find anything that got us excited. It’s all in the file.”