Gabriel pulled the sheet from his pocket. “You need to read that.” He waited as Max scanned it. “Whoever buried that body burned the bones to degrade the DNA and poured other people’s blood over them. They’re going to keep looking and testing, and if there’s something there to connect those bones to Salyer”—he rubbed the back of his neck—“they’re going to come after her hard.”
Max’s shoulders slumped. “What do we do?”
“There’s another major problem, Max. If that is Salyer, who has Bethany Phillips and Jasmine Elam?”
Max threw the paper back in Gabriel’s lap. “She’s not insane, and she’s not a killer. If those bones belong to Salyer, then the person behind this is someone that knew him well enough to know everything he did to his victims. We thought he had an accomplice.”
“You hit the nail on the head of what’s eating me inside. The one person that has the most knowledge about where he kept them and what he did to them is Dakota Dale.”
Christian smiled and dipped the brush into the paint. Then he slid it over my abdomen and down my legs. “You’re going to be a beautiful work of art. My final masterpiece.”
My silence angered him. I hadn’t spoken a word in over a month.
“Nothing to say, Dakota?” His eyes blazed with madness, and he slapped me. “It didn’t have to be this way. We could have been a family.” He flipped me around and painted my back, hips, and legs. “I don’t need you anymore. I have Emma now.” His voice changed, an edge of sadness behind the words.
“Emma’s dead. You killed her.”
Christian laughed, pleased he’d finally gotten a response from me. “I’m not a monster. I would never kill a child.” He turned me around. “You know why you couldn’t catch me, Dakota? Because I didn’t kill those women, either. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
“Organize first.” I started a pot of coffee, gathered notepads and pencils, took a final trip to the bathroom, then pulled the first file from the box. I’d organized my files by the victims’ first names. They weren’t just dead people to me. They were sisters who had suffered the same pain and humiliation at the hands of a madman that I’d gone through. I placed the file on the small dinette table then poured a cup of coffee and took my seat. “Okay, Donna, talk to me.”
I opened the file and gazed at the pretty young woman staring back at me. Like Angelina Clark, Donna could have been my sister. Long black hair surrounded a heart-shaped face, and her blue eyes were soft and clear. She’d been happy when that picture was taken, a far cry from the final photos in the file. Sipping my coffee, I began to read and make notes. She’d been twenty-five and single. Although not rich, her father owned a chain of fast-food restaurants, and they were upper middle class. Donna had worked as a manager at one of those restaurants. She’d disappeared on Christmas Eve after leaving her parents’ home in Beaufort. Her body had been discovered three months later, hanging from the oak tree in her parents’ backyard.
I studied the pictures taken by the police department. It was the first murder we were aware of with crimson paint covering a victim from neck to toe. The markings around Donna’s neck were similar to the other victims’, and the condition of her body showed she’d been starved and tortured for weeks. Just like me. And none of us were raped.
The time I’d spent lying in the forest had opened up thoughts and memories I’d been afraid to delve into or dwell on. All the women killed looked like me. After my kidnapping, the killings had stopped. Didn’t Mother teach you anything? He didn’t say “your mother.”
I closed the file and placed it back into the box. Max and I had been getting close to the truth. Christian Salyer didn’t kill the nine women we’d found. I’d always thought he planned on killing me, too, but he didn’t. He planned on me joining him. He tortured the others until they were broken then had them kill for him.
The idea that was forming in my head made me nauseous, but it was the only thing that made sense. My mother didn’t die when I was five. Christian Salyer was my brother.
The sound of tires crunching on gravel had my fingers poised above my gun. I leapt from the chair and rushed to the door. The van came into view, and I relaxed. Gabriel hopped out before Max had totally stopped. His eyes were scanning everything as he walked toward me. “What happened to your face?”
I’d cleaned the scratches but had no way to cover them up. “I took a run through the forest after Salyer.”
Max was lowering the ramp.
“I’ll make some coffee.”
“How do you know it was Salyer?” Gabriel followed me inside the cabin.
I pointed at the tape recorder on the counter. “He left me a message.”
24
I packed my suitcases and loaded everything into the car while Max and Gabriel listened to the tape.
Max was beaming when I came in for the last load. “Now we have proof the bastard is still alive. I don’t care whose bones were in that grave.”
“What grave?” I asked.
Gabriel pulled a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. “This came across the wire before we left Savannah.”
I scanned the note. “Why didn’t you just ask me?”
“You weren’t exactly talking to us then.” Gabriel gave me a sheepish grin. “If it helps, I did tell Don Sampson that I didn’t believe it.”
“Wagner will. He never believed anything I told him about Salyer.” I pointed at the tape recorder. “Even if we play that for him, he’ll come up with some excuse that it can’t be validated to prove it’s Salyer because he’s dead.”
“It also proves your daughter is alive. We’ll find him.” Gabriel picked up the box of files. “So where do we go from here?”
“Did you call Karen?”
“She’ll be on her way later this evening. We didn’t stop to rent a cabin, though. When you said Salyer was here, all we could think of was getting here as quick as we could.”
“Let’s go back to the office and see if we can rent a four bedroom. Salyer may not be here now, but I think he is. We can check out that naval base, and I have a lot to tell the three of you.”
Max ejected the tape from the recorder. “I’m hanging on to this, and the first one that says he’s dead is gonna get an earful from me.”
Gabriel was staring at the picture I’d left lying on the coffee table. He picked it up and turned it over. “When did you get this?”
“Mrs. Dickson gave me the envelope when I was leaving. I opened it on the road.”
“Do you still have the envelope?” Gabriel asked, slipping on a pair of gloves before picking up the tape recorder.
“It’s in the car.”
“We’ll turn it and the tape recorder over to Forensics in Savannah to see if they can lift any prints.”
“I’ll be going back to Beaufort as soon as I’ve worked some things out with Karen. We can turn it in there.”
Gabriel shook his head and reached for my keys. “If Wagner didn’t believe anything you said about Salyer, we’re going to keep any evidence we find to ourselves.”