Gifted Connections 4

“Me either,” I murmured as I looked through the slit in the blinds.

Inside, a man was standing in what appeared to be an office. A large desk dominated most of the space. He advanced towards a wall and went to grab a book off a shelf. The shelf opened, and a wall full of pictures of a beautiful redhead was revealed. Several candid shots were taken of her in various stages of her everyday life. Some of them even showed her naked, but you could tell that she was unaware that anyone was taking pictures of her. He was apparently stalking her.

“What is it?” Alex asked.

“Nothing,” I told him quietly. “Why don’t you take Harry to the playsets?” I gently bade him.

“Okay,” Alex shrugged before he took Harry by the hand and led him to the swings.

“What do we do? What’s going to happen?” I asked as the man pushed something on the door jamb and the shelf slid back into a bookshelf.

He strolled over to the desk and sat down in his chair. He withdrew a key from his pocket and opened one of the drawers. He hauled a large scrapbook out and started to flip through the pages. Each page revealed a beautiful woman, all redheads, and each one looked like they were between the ages of eighteen to twenty-two. As he continued to

turn the pages, I gasped in shock. The pages turned more gruesome and grotesque. He wasn’t just a stalker. He killed these women in the most brutal way possible. I knew it deep down in my gut.

I held one of my hands up to my mouth and tapped frantically on Lincoln’s arm with the other. I was glad I remembered he was holding me before I lost all of my dinner in the bushes.

I didn’t even realize Lincoln had knelt down beside me and held my hair away from my face. He gently rubbed my back.

“It’s okay. We’re going to get him, too,” Lincoln swore fiercely.

My body shook in the aftermath of my ordeal. I still knelt there, slightly embarrassed.

The slamming of a screen door made me jump.

“Stay here,” he whispered suddenly before he took off at a run.

I barely registered that he was running after the man to the garage. The man was whistling an eerie tune as he leisurely strolled up the stairs on the side of the garage. As the lights illuminated him, I noticed how attractive and…normal he looked.

Lincoln’s words from last night reverberated in my head. He believed that Harry came to these places when things would go from bad to worse. This had to be the worse. I couldn’t set fire to this person’s garage. Not again. I needed something else.

I was standing there in deep contemplation when I noticed an older man walking down the sidewalk with his dog. He was looking up at the garage with a look of suspicion on his face. Like he knew not everything was right here.

I ran down to the sidewalk, yelling at him. “You’re right!” I projected my thoughts on him. “The man that lives there is evil.”

He paused and looked around in confusion. “Come on, Duke,” he pulled on his dog's leash.

“No, you have to call the cops. They should come in with the sirens off. He has a girl up there. He’s going to hurt her,” I was practically yelling at him.

“I’m going crazy,” he muttered to himself, trying to pull on his dog’s lead once more.

“Please, she’s going to die,” I pleaded.

“What am I supposed to say?” he asked as he ran a hand through his hair.

“Say you think you saw someone breaking into the garage,” I replied.

He pulled out his cell phone, and as he input the number in his phone, I heard him muttering. “Yup right before I tell them that my inner voice is now a female.”

I didn’t wait for him to make his phone call as I ran back to the garage.

Lincoln looked wan as he stumbled back down the stairs. “It looks like he’s getting ready for surgery and not the doctor kind,” Lincoln muttered in horror as he sat down heavily on the steps.

“The cops should be coming soon,” I said to him as I sat down beside him. I didn’t know what he saw, and I didn’t want to. I reached out and began to rub his back. “Do you think she has time?”

“Yes, but not much,” he leaned forward and rubbed his face. “If this is what Harry saw the past year, then it’s no wonder he was scared silent.”

I made a noise of assent.