Scream For Me: A Novel of the Night Hunter (For Me 3)

Ben glowered at Cadence. The guy had trained her, even worked as her partner before his promotion. Sometimes when he looked at Cadence, there was an intimacy in his stare that put Kyle on edge.

Had they been lovers?

“You’re never afraid when you should be,” Ben muttered to Cadence. “That’s part of the problem. The guy said he was targeting you. He was going to take you out. If he’d been better with his gun, you wouldn’t even be here now.”

Ben’s attention turned back to Kyle. “Don’t you see the risk we’re running? You’re already emotionally involved. He’s using that. Getting you twisted up so you can’t effectively hunt him.”

“All he’s doing”—Kyle kept his voice flat, cold, because now wasn’t the time for emotions—“is making me more determined to stop him.” He gave a grim nod. “He’s slipping up.”

A furrow appeared between Ben’s dark brows.

“He’s too confident, cocky, when he talks to me. He said he knew we’d only found one body in the Paradox caverns.”

Ben’s gaze narrowed. “We didn’t release any information about the remains to the press.”

No, they hadn’t. Cadence had been very, very careful during the press conference.

But when they’d briefed their task force in Paradox, he and Cadence had told them.

“He’s involved in the investigation,” Ben said.

Yes. “You know it happens. Killers insinuate themselves in the investigation all the time,” Kyle said. The perps did it to keep tabs on the investigation—and because they liked the rush of thinking that they were outsmarting the authorities. This perp was all about competing with the authorities. The guy wanted to show them all just how strong he was.

“He was wearing a deputy’s uniform today,” Cadence said and she rolled her shoulders, as if pushing away a heavy burden. “He got everything right about the outfit, except for his shoes.”

The bastard had gone hunting for her, but when he’d approached her in those woods, he must have realized Cadence had already been alerted.

She’d been waiting with a gun. So you had to back away, didn’t you?

“I checked all the deputies after I met up with Kyle. They were accounted for. This guy slipped into the perimeter, and I’m guessing he’s done it before.”

“He could have walked right into the Paradox station,” Kyle said. “Passed by the officers there just as easily as he did today.”

With a hat pulled low to hide his face. The right clothes, a badge. The badge would get you anyplace.

A lesson the killer had learned.

“The press is calling him the Night Hunter.” Ben barred his teeth in a grimace. “You know how I hate those f**king names. You give a serial a name, you give him power. Fame. They just kill all the more.”

Dani stopped talking and slanted a fast glance at Ben. “He killed two girls in the last twelve hours. I think we’re safely in the ‘kill all the more’ zone already.”

She went back to typing.

Ben went back to studying Kyle with that narrowed gaze. “You heard your sister’s voice again. In the second call.”

A slow nod.

“Is it a recording or the real deal?”

“There’s too much static, I can’t tell for certain.”

Ben wasn’t backing off. “You tell me the truth ’cause you know I’m damn good at catching a lie. Do you think your sister is still alive? Even after all this time?”

Kyle could feel the weight of Cadence’s stare on him. “I want to believe she’s alive.”

“That’s not an answer,” Ben snapped, sounding aggrieved. “Do better.”

“The killer wants me to think some of the girls are still alive. He all but said they were.”

“Killers lie,” Cadence stated as she pushed back her hair with a tired hand. “It’s what they do.”

When they weren’t killing.

“There could be other bodies in those caverns.” Cadence’s voice was cautious. He knew she didn’t want to tell him that his sister was dead.

Even though that was precisely what she thought.

“Or someplace else,” Ben added. “The guy’s hunting grounds sure stretch far enough.” Then Ben scrubbed a hand over his face. “You know how I caught the FBI’s attention? Back when I was a cop, hitting the streets of Brooklyn?”

Kyle shook his head.

“I was running down a cold case. A little girl, five years old, who’d vanished from a shopping mall. Every year—every single year on July seventh, the parents came to the station, looking for their little girl. Hoping we had some news. Hoping we had something.” His gaze had turned to the past. “When the date started rolling around, the other cops would get nervous. They’d all but told those parents they weren’t ever getting the girl back. It had been seven years. Hell, you know what the odds are on a recovery like that.”

They all knew the grim stats.

“I got cold case duty, I read through the files, and I thought, ‘Hey, why not?’ Why not just go back and see if any witness remembers anything else? Why not try to give the parents something new this time?” He swallowed. For an instant, his gaze seemed haunted. “The girl was playing at a park when she vanished. I had a list of the parents who’d had their kids there that day. I started on the list. The first two didn’t remember jack. When I went to question them, their kids were running behind them, playing, and I could tell they just wanted me to get away from them.”

They hadn’t wanted to head back into the nightmare. He’d seen that behavior time and time again. The only way to cope? Pretend it hadn’t happened.

“The third guy I visited wouldn’t open his door more than a few inches for me.”

Kyle tensed.

“According to the notes in the file, he’d been plenty cooperative during the initial investigation. He’d even been the one to identify the suspect, a male in his late forties, wearing a red pullover.” Ben’s lips tightened. “We never found the suspect. But when I was at that guy’s house, standing on the porch trying to get in, you know what I saw?”

No, he didn’t.

“I saw a girl’s bike propped against the side of his house. Now, see, the man didn’t have a little girl. He had a boy, one who’d been Sara’s age, but no girl. Sure, the bike could’ve just belonged to the kid’s friend, but the place felt off to me.”