Once Taken Read online

  Judging from the slope, Riley guessed that the water was deep right here. Weighted down with chains, the body might well have sunk without a trace. It might never have been found.

  At last, she began to feel a tingle of understanding. This woman’s body, like the place itself, had meant nothing to the killer by the time he dumped it here. It might be discovered or it might not be—it didn’t matter to him one way or the other. The chains and the straitjacket had been solely a matter between him and his victim. They were used to torment the women, and they had some special meaning for the killer. They hadn’t been for public display.

  Something drastic had changed between the two killings. Now the killer wanted desperately for everyone to see the full horror of his deed. With the second victim, he was trying to communicate something that he hadn’t cared about the first time.

  Riley groaned under her breath. It was likely to mean that the killer was going to accelerate. Whatever was driving him was stronger now. Whatever he’d kept under control for five years was pushing harder at him to show the world his pain.

  At that moment, her phone buzzed. She took it out of her pocket. She was surprised to see that it was a text from April.

  Hey Mom, it said simply.

  Riley felt deeply startled by the sheer incongruity. Here she was, standing exactly where a corpse had once been abandoned, receiving a text from her daughter who oftentimes wanted nothing to do with her. Should she explain that now was not a good time to exchange texts?

  Hi April, she wrote back. What’s going on?

  The reply came quickly …

  School ends tomorrow. I have my last exam in the morning.

  Riley typed, Are you ready?

  I dunno, April replied.

  Riley sighed. Her conversation with her daughter had already become perfectly meaningless.

  But then April typed:

  I want to talk.

  Riley’s heart surged with unexpected emotion.

  Me too, she typed. Could you wait till I get back to my room?

  April’s next text took her thoroughly by surprise.

  Not on the phone. Right here. Come home and let’s talk.

  Chapter 12

  Riley came to a stop on the Amtrak platform. She still had doubts about what she was doing, even though she and Lucy had talked it through more than once. They both felt sure that nothing more was going to happen here in Reedsport. The chain killer had struck in two different towns, and whenever he killed again it was likely to be somewhere else.

  “I still don’t know about this, Lucy,” Riley said. “I don’t usually leave a case in progress.”

  “It’s okay,” Lucy replied with a hint of exasperation. “I know what to do. Interview everybody I can. Go to the funeral in case he’s there. Check out who sends flowers.”

  At that moment, the conductor called out, “All aboard!”

  Riley said, “If anything important happens, I’ll come right back.”

  “Go,” Lucy said firmly.

  “Thanks,” Riley replied.

  The little BAU jet that had brought them to Reedsport had left almost immediately after their arrival, so it wasn’t a travel option this time. Lucy had offered to drive Riley to Albany to catch a flight home, but Riley had chosen the train instead. It would take her right to Quantico, with just a change in New York City. The trip would give her a chance to go over her files and consider the mind of a killer.

  She climbed up into the spacious business class car and took her seat. She had two big chairs to herself, giving her room to spread out as much as she wanted to. She looked out the window as the train started to pull out of the station. Lucy was nowhere in sight. Riley knew that she was headed straight back to work.

  She tilted the chair into a reclining position and started to relax. The steady, friendly rumbling and soothing vibration of the train car helped Riley begin to process information with her customary mental skill. To begin with, there was the question of just why the killer had starved both victims. Of course he must have meant to weaken them. Riley also felt pretty sure that he had probably been starved earlier in his own life and felt compelled to inflict the same suffering on others.

  But now something else occurred to her. Feeding the women would have meant acknowledging their humanity. In doing that, he might run the risk of feeling sympathy for them. They were of use to him only as objects, as symbols of whatever had hurt or enraged him in the past.

  Riley breathed deeply. Yes, she beginning to feel connected with him—much more than she had at either crime site.

  He’s human, she thought. He’s all too human.

  He was not some cold and unfeeling sociopath. He was likely to be capable of sympathy and even kindness. Those were the very qualities that he feared most about himself, because they might well be his undoing.

  Riley closed her eyes. She could feel the staggering effort it took for him to suppress his human qualities. And weak as he was, how long he could handle the strain and effort of being a murderous animal? All he knew was that he had no choice.

  Something else began to make more sense to her. The shocking staging of his most recent murder, with the body hanging where everyone could see it, was not just an attempt to shock the world. It was also for his own benefit. He had a need to convince everybody—including himself—that he was far more savage than he appeared to be.

  As his desperation mounted, Riley knew, his crimes were likely to become ever more outrageously vicious. He couldn’t allow himself to display the slightest telltale hint of mercy or humanity. He must do his best to become a monster beyond even his own imagining.

  The steady click-clacking of train wheels was having a pleasantly hypnotic effect. Riley hadn’t thought she was tired, but now she realized she’d been under considerable strain for the last couple of days. She closed her eyes.

  As Riley huddled in the musty crawlspace, her cage door opened and a stream of flame broke through the pitch darkness. The white light blinded her for a moment. The flame of that propane torch was the only thing she ever saw in this awful place—aside from the glimpses it gave of Peterson himself.

  Now her tormentor’s face took form again as he taunted her with the hissing flame, forcing her to dodge its extreme heat. She couldn’t quite see what he looked like, but his presence was becoming familiar all the same.

  “Welcome home,” Peterson said gleefully.

  “This is not my home,” Riley said.

  “It’s the only home you deserve.”

  Riley wished she could grab the torch away from him and turn it against him. But his motions were too deft and swift. All she could do was duck and dodge, trying to escape being burned.

  “I’m going to kill you,” she said, mustering a tone of defiance. “I want you to know that.”

  Peterson chuckled grimly.

  “Welcome home,” he said again.

  Riley was awakened by the conductor’s shout …

  “Penn Station!”

  It was time to change trains.

  *

  As she drove into Fredericksburg that evening, Riley kept repeating in her mind: One monster at a time.

  The dream about Peterson had left her badly shaken, troubling her during the rest of her train trip to Quantico. Even so, she’d managed to get a fair amount of work done. She’d run searches on her laptop using the train’s Wi-Fi service, and pored over her own copy of the case documents and photos. She had emailed a report directly to Brent Meredith. There was no pressing need to stop at the BAU, so she had decided to drive straight to Ryan’s house where April was waiting for her.

  Riley reminded herself that monsters took many forms. Right now, she wanted to focus on an altogether different monster—the monstrosity that her personal life had become. Perhaps there was hope of conquering this one, of reshaping it to a more agreeable form. After much grief and rebellion, April now wanted to talk to her. It was a positive sign. Riley wasn’t going to let her daughter down, not this tim
e.

  Besides, Riley was well aware that she needed to make some serious changes in her life. There wasn’t much point in waiting for a break between cases. There seldom seemed to be much of a break, and there probably wouldn’t be one in the foreseeable future.

  First, she figured that she had to move out of her little house. Peterson’s break-in proved that it was much too isolated and vulnerable. When she’d first rented it, she and Ryan had just split, and she had felt financially insecure. The place outside of Fredericksburg had been all she could afford, and it had served to get her far away from her former life.

  But the divorce would be final soon, and Ryan had agreed to pay regular child support instead of the erratic contributions he was kicking in now. He’d actually become generous, which she recognized as his way of freeing himself from any other responsibilities toward their daughter.

  That was fine with Riley. She would be happy to have full care of April, and she desperately wanted to be a good mother to her. She just had to figure out how to manage her own responsibilities better than she had in the recent past.

  Looking out her car window, Riley saw that she was driving past rows of attractive townhouses. When her supplementary income became steady and predictable, she could seriously think about a new place to live, maybe even about buying something suitable in town. It would be good to have neighbors, and the location would be convenient for April’s school. And Fredericksburg was big enough that she wouldn’t have to worry about crossing paths with Ryan.

  The prospect of raising April on her own brought up another issue that had been on her mind. Riley couldn’t escape the fact that she spent a lot of time away from home. She needed someone to help take care of her daughter.

  Gabriela was the obvious choice. She and April really liked each other, and April wouldn’t object to their longtime housekeeper being around to keep tabs on her.

  Might Gabriela agree to move in with them if she could have a room and bath of her own? Or at least stay over when Riley had to be away for days at a time? Riley made a mental note to talk it over with Gabriela as soon as she got the chance.

  When Riley reached her destination, she drove her car up the driveway and under the carport alongside the house. When she got out of the car and walked to the front door, she rang the doorbell, as had become customary since she moved out. Gabriela answered with an anxious look on her face.

  “Señora Riley!” she exclaimed. “Do you know where April is?”

  Chapter 13

  Shock jolted Riley’s entire body.

  “Isn’t April here?” she asked.

  “She was, but not now,” Gabriela said. “Vente! Come in!”

  Riley stepped inside and Gabriela shut the door.

  “She was here when I went out to the tienda for groceries,” Gabriela explained. “When I came back she wasn’t here. I told Señor Ryan, and he said not to worry. But still I worried. She said nothing about going out. I don’t understand.”

  Riley’s agitation mounted.

  “Where’s Ryan?” she asked.

  “Having dinner.”

  Gabriela led Riley to the dining room. Ryan was seated at the table, simultaneously picking at his dinner and talking on his cell phone. Another place was set, but it had not been used. Gabriela nervously began clearing the table.

  “That will be fine,” Ryan said to whoever was on the phone—a client, Riley guessed. “I’ll be there at nine. We’ll take care of everything tonight.”

  He ended the call and looked up at Riley with surprise.

  “I hadn’t expected you here today,” he said. “I thought you had a case in Upstate New York. How’s it going?”

  “Where is April?” Riley asked.

  “How should I know?” Ryan replied with an annoyed shrug. “She’s in one of her moods. She gets that from you, not me. Do you think she’d tell me anything?”

  Riley ignored her ex-husband’s accusatory tone.

  “Where have you been today?” she asked.

  “Not that I have to report my comings and goings,” Ryan said. “But I’ve actually been upstairs all day, working in my home office. I haven’t left the house since this morning. I’ve barely been out of the office. I’ve been busy.”

  “Did April come home from school?”

  Ryan finished his meal and set his napkin down.

  “Yeah, and we had a fight. Don’t ask me what it was all about. I couldn’t make any sense out of it. I sent her to her room, told her not to come out until she was ready to apologize. I thought she’d stayed there until Gabriela came to my office and told me she was gone.”

  Ryan got up from the table and started to walk away.

  “Look, I’ve got to get ready to go meet a client,” he said. “It’s a lot more important than this, believe me—especially since you expect me to be so generous with my support payments. Honestly, I don’t understand why you and Gabriela are in such a panic. The girl took off in a huff, and she’ll come back when she feels like it.”

  Riley stepped in front of Ryan, blocking his exit.

  “She did not take off in a huff,” Riley said. “She said she wanted to talk to me, and I texted her that I was coming back. She was expecting me. She wouldn’t have left the house.”

  “Well, that’s exactly what she did, apparently,” Ryan said. “She’s probably at your house right now.”

  Riley felt a glimmer of hope. Was it possible that April had expected to meet Riley at her own house? Might her daughter be waiting there for her?

  Riley pulled out her cell phone and dialed her own landline number. She listened to her recorded answering machine message, then after the beep she said, “April, if you’re there, pick up. I came back to see you.”

  There was no response.

  Then she tried April’s cell phone number. When she got April’s voice mail message, she couldn’t stop herself from yelling. “April, if you’re there, pick up. Where are you? You’ve got me scared to death. Call me right now.”

  Riley ended the call and stood staring at the phone in her hand.

  “She’ll call whenever she feels like it,” Ryan said. “Now if you don’t mind—”

  He tried to push by Riley, but she wouldn’t let him pass.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” she said.

  “I’ve got a client, Riley.”

  Riley’s voice was shaking with barely restrained rage and fear.

  “You’ve got a daughter too,” she said.

  Riley turned around and saw that Gabriela was standing in the kitchen doorway, looking stricken and horrified.

  “Gabriela, what time did you go out for groceries?” Riley asked.

  “About three, I think,” Gabriela said. “April’s bedroom door was open and she was there. When I got back, she was not in the house and I told Señor Ryan.”

  Riley turned toward Ryan again. His expression was still unconcerned. She found it maddening that he couldn’t see how serious the situation was.

  “Did anyone come to the door this afternoon?” Riley asked.

  “I don’t know. Like I said, I’ve been in my office the whole day,” Ryan said.

  “Ryan, think. Did you hear the doorbell at all today?”

  Ryan paused to think for a moment.

  “Once, I think. In the afternoon. Yes, I did hear a car pull up and then the doorbell. It was after I’d sent April to her room. I’m sure Gabriela answered it.”

  Riley turned to the housekeeper.

  “Gabriela, did you answer the door for anybody today?”

  “I did not hear the doorbell ring all day.”

  Riley was now shaking with alarm and ager. She turned back to Ryan.

  “Gabriela did not answer the door,” she said to him fiercely. “She was out getting groceries. April answered the door, and she’s been gone ever since. By now, she could have been missing for four hours. Gabriela told you, and you didn’t care.”

  Ryan was starting to get flustered now.

  �
�Look, you’re making too much of this,” he said. “It was probably her boyfriend. He probably drove up and she took off with him. When she gets back, I’m going to ground her but good. You should have done it long ago.”

  Riley’s mind flashed back to catching April and her boyfriend smoking pot in her back yard.

  “Have you even met her boyfriend?” Riley snapped. “His name is Brian, and he’s fourteen or fifteen. He doesn’t drive. It wasn’t him, and it wasn’t any of her friends. She doesn’t have friends with cars. Jesus, Ryan, don’t you know anything about your daughter?”

  Riley didn’t wait for a reply. She pushed past Ryan and headed straight up the stairs to April’s room. Ryan and Gabriela followed her. As Gabriela had said, the door had been left open. The room was its typical mess.

  Again Riley took out her phone and dialed April’s number. This time, her heart dropped. She could have sworn she heard a buzzing from the bed.

  She rushed over to the bed and pushed aside some clothes and her heart stopped.

  It was right there.

  Riley picked up the buzzing phone and stared at it in horror.

  April didn’t have her phone.

  And that could only mean one thing.

  She was taken.

  Chapter 14

  April cringed at the sound of the man’s footsteps overhead. He was pacing back and forth on the wooden deck less than a foot above her head, chuckling to himself, occasionally laughing out loud. She struggled to keep from screaming. He had told her he would shoot her if she screamed, and she was sure that he would.

  She knew that the man walking on the deck was Peterson. It had to be him. Like everyone else, April had doubted her mom’s conviction that Peterson was still alive. She had wanted to believe that the murderer who had once captured her mother was dead. But he was alive and now he had taken her.

  She remembered with horror the little that Mom had said about this man, about how he had treated her as a captive. But April was even more terrified by what her mother hadn’t told her. She was sure that her mother had held back the truth of her own suffering. She always did that to spare April, but now April dreaded finding out what horrors had been left unsaid.