“I’m curious. If Angelina Clark hadn’t been murdered, how did you plan on getting me here?”
“Any way I had to.” He rounded a curve. “If I’d refused to let you work the case, how did you plan on getting around that?”
“Like you, any way I had to.”
Gabriel laughed. “Looks like we understand each other.”
“Maybe. Did you kill the gang members when you found them?”
Gabriel didn’t answer, but his knuckles turned white on the wheel.
“Not answering is an answer, you know. Did it make you feel better?”
“No, and neither will killing Christian Salyer, but it will stop him from ever hurting anyone else.” He took his eyes from the road and studied me for a moment. “We’ll find your daughter. And we’ll kill Salyer.” He turned his attention back to the road. “Killing him isn’t going to make the nightmares go away, Dakota. It won’t change what you went through or make it any better.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that point.” Killing Christian would satisfy a need inside me. If I couldn’t find Emma, then killing myself would stop the nightmares.
“Have you ever killed anyone before?”
I didn’t think so, but the truth was I didn’t know. “There are still parts of my mind that are damaged, Gabriel. Weeks or maybe even months. I don’t know what I did during that time.”
Gabriel drove in behind the station and parked. “I doubt you actually killed anyone. It’s not as easy as most people think. It makes the nightmares worse.”
I reached for the door handle. “Once I find my daughter, I am going to kill Christian Salyer.”
“You’re angry because you know I’m telling the truth, right?”
“You want to believe I’m normal, Gabriel. I’m not. As functional as I am, I know my mind is damaged. Only one thing is holding me together, and that’s saving my daughter. I don’t know what you want from me, but whatever it is, I don’t have anything left to give.”
His voice held a strange emotion that twisted something inside me. “All I want, Dakota, is to see you smile the way you did before Salyer.”
“Then you’re wasting your time. There is no before Salyer for me anymore, and there never will be, even if I do find Emma.” I walked away from him.
“There could be. With the right therapy, you could put all this back together.”
I stopped and turned slowly. “And why would I want to do that?”
“So you can live a real life. Laugh, maybe even fall in love some day. Raise a family. There’s a lot more than this waiting for you.”
I felt the knife plunge into my heart, ripping me apart as it twisted. I’d accepted the fact that Salyer had killed Emma and built my new life on nothing but finding and killing him. Now that I knew she wasn’t dead, nothing else mattered except saving her from him. “This from the man who’s dying and refuses to do anything about it? The same man who keeps hammering nails into his coffin with every cigarette he smokes? Forget it, Gabriel. You’re preaching to the wrong choir with a dead microphone.”
12
Gabriel watched from his desk as Dakota, Calvin, and Max worked on the tower pings from Day’s phone. He needed to talk to Karen. The fact that Dakota knew about the split had surprised him. Most victims of DID had no knowledge of the problem, only that they were having blackouts and were told they did things they didn’t remember. She was still not telling them something, something that she felt was too dark for them to handle. She said the child wasn’t Salyer’s, but what if she was? Would her hate for Salyer make her kill them both when she found them? She’s controlling the personality switches by deadening any emotions she might feel and suppressing her memories. The closer she gets to Salyer, the harder that is going to become and the more severe the split.
All he’d wanted when he came to Savannah was to locate Christian Salyer and kill him. He’d never given a second thought to the other lives the man had taken or destroyed. That had changed during the thirty minutes he’d stood watching her on the creek bank. He’d seen the changes then, the fleeting anger, pain, and fear, the strong warrior and the lost little girl, but hadn’t really given them much thought. Damn you to hell, Gabriel Browne, for bringing her here.
“I’ve got something.” Calvin circled a ping on the sheet. “This tower is close to River Walk. Isn’t that one of the areas Amanda said Angelina wanted to go to?”
“What time is it? And how long does he stay in the area?” Dakota asked, excitement in her voice.
“Around three, and he only stays about ten minutes.”
Gabriel joined them at the table. “He probably offered her a ride home. Can you trace where he went from there?”
“We can, but we’re going to spend a lot of time tracking another nine or ten hours. We need to narrow it down.” Dakota placed a hand on Calvin’s arm. “Can you locate a ping where he stayed in the same location at least an hour?”
Calvin sighed. “I’ll try.” He shuffled through the sheets, noting times between pings. “Give me a minute.” He calculated longitudes and latitudes, crossed them out, and did it again. “It gets a little harder here because he crossed state lines. He headed into South Carolina, and the pings aren’t quite as clear or distinct.” He studied the pages again and circled another point on the third sheet. “Here’s a good one, and he’s moving into Charleston. He stays in that area at least three hours.”
“We never looked in that area. We just assumed he’d be local.” Dakota glanced at Max. “No wonder we couldn’t find him.”
“Isn’t there an abandoned naval base in Charleston?” Max asked. “I should have brought my laptop.”
“I’m pretty sure there is.” Calvin continued working on the longitude and latitude. “But aren’t those open to the public? Be hard to hide for long with the people coming and going.”
Max shook his head. “Some parts of them might be accessible, but most of it would be considered unsafe. They don’t let anyone enter, or at least they have signs posted not to enter.”
Gabriel’s phone rang, and he walked back to his desk. “Detective Browne.” Dakota was watching him, and he turned his back to her. “Give me the address.” He jotted down the information. “Tell them I’m on my way.”
“They found her, didn’t they?” Dakota asked.
“They found a body. We don’t know if it’s her. I have to go. The three of you need to research that naval base and see if we can get satellite images.”
“I’m going with you.” Her stance was defiant, arms crossed, as if she was ready for a fight.
“Not this time. The media is already there.”
“What difference does that make? They’re going to track me down after this anyway. I might as well get it over with.”
Gabriel sighed and ran a hand over his short-cropped hair. “You can’t go, Dakota. She’s hanging from a tree outside the gates of my community with a sign around her neck that says Christian Salyer was innocent. They know you’re staying there, and they’re ready to tear you apart.”
There was no way I could explain to Gabriel that finding one of Christian’s victims was what I’d been waiting for—a chance to nail the final nail and expose Christian Salyer in a way he couldn’t ignore. Somewhere inside, a part of me was crying for Bethany Phillips. I didn’t know what she had suffered in the end, but I knew what she hadn’t suffered. I would comfort myself with that knowledge.