Stolen Daughters (Detective Amanda Steele)

“Hurry. Get us back to the station.” She called Malone and told him about the situation. As she was running through it with him, she felt like she was telling a story outside of herself, like she had no connection or involvement.

Trent flipped the lights and gunned it to the station. She was pretty sure the car hadn’t come to a full standstill when she jumped out at Central.

She went right for her desk and the card. Malone was already waiting. Trent was behind her, and he nudged her gently aside.

“Gloves,” he said, and pulled a pair from his pants pocket and handed them to her.

She put them on and opened the envelope. She pulled out a birthday card. A piece of paper had been taped inside with a typed message, same font that was used on the note left at Lindsey’s grave. She took a steadying breath and read it. “‘You think I’m the bad guy here, but I’m really not. So STOP trying to stop me, or I’ll have no choice but to kill him.’”

She choked back a sob. Malone reached out to console her, but she withdrew and shook her head. “No, I’m not… not giving in. We’re going to save him.” She stood tall, squared her shoulders, and met Trent’s gaze, feeling fierce determination.

He took the card and envelope from her, also in gloved hands, and peered inside the envelope.

“Is there something else in—” Amanda’s words froze on her tongue when she had her answer.

Trent had removed something. He held it for her to see. A colored print of Logan. He was tied up and gagged, his back against a wood-planked wall. Next to him was a gas can, and a flame on the tip of a lighter was in the bottom right-hand corner.

She gasped.

Trent put a hand on her shoulder. “He’s just trying to bully you. Remember, you got this card before you talked to Logan. He’s still alive. We have time to save—”

“We’re going to, Trent.” She was screaming in her head. She couldn’t lose Logan now, not when her life was just starting to resemble something close to a new normal. But the guilt pierced through her just at the thought. This wasn’t about her. Logan’s life was the one at risk.

“Is there anything I can do?” Malone asked.

“Yeah. Find out how he got in here,” Amanda said. “How did no one notice?”

“I’m on it.” Malone took one step, and Trent spoke.

“We’ll need officers watching Hart’s place in case he shows up.”

Malone made a finger gun, fired, and walked toward the front desk.

She paced, mumbling, and then it hit! She faced her partner. “He’s trying to tell us he’s not the bad guy. The clue to finding him needs to be in that. Somewhere. Damn it!”

Fifty-Four

Detective Steele said they had Randy Hart. Did that mean he’d been arrested? He’d taken a risk by pointing the police Randy’s way, but it served a few purposes. His primary intention was to occupy the police’s attention with a little detour, but it also protected his ass from the sex-trafficking ring. Surely they’d be too busy trying to avoid the police themselves to come after him—The Merciful. He also held Randy accountable for the co

urse of his life, though in a different way than his parents had. In part, due to Randy, he’d become even more invisible to his parents than ever before.

All Mom and Dad could talk about was their little “Tina”—especially after her death. She was their star child, the one born with a tiara on her head, while he had a crown of thorns. He really hoped Christina had suffered excruciating pain before she succumbed to that fire. He hoped she’d smelled her flesh burning as it cracked, curled, and blackened, like a roasting pig on a spit.

Just as he had received a taste of that horror at a young age—because of her. He laid a hand over his abdomen, thinking of the scar tissue there. He could feel the heat of the fire on his face, on his arms, on his torso. He recalled the fire crawling up his pajamas, eating at the fabric and his flesh like a starved, deranged lunatic.

A firefighter had saved him. He’d rolled him on the ground, but the damage had been done. Third-degree burns. All that at the age of thirteen.

Christina had come into his room in the loft and lifted his kerosene lantern over her head. The flame was flickering. “Tell me later how it felt.” She cackled and smashed it to the floor. He couldn’t get out of bed fast enough.

His suffering didn’t matter to their parents. His father wouldn’t even look at him afterwards, and his mother blamed him for the fire. Christina got away with everything. They idolized her, their sweet Tina. They just couldn’t see that she was the very embodiment of evil.

His sister, the devil. Himself, the angel of mercy. The Merciful.

He looked over at the blond man, ankles and wrists tied, his mouth re-gagged after the phone call. Pathetic.

“We’ll see just how much you actually mean to her,” he said and left the man alone in the dark room, feeling the burden of the man’s fate was in the detective’s hands, not his.

He returned to the living area of his loft. He knew that the sex-trafficking ring had to be noticing their girls disappearing. Even with Hart presumably out of commission, someone else from the ring would probably come looking for him. It might be time to leave the area. But he had to know what Detective Steele had meant by “We have Hart.”