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“We don’t know that for sure, notyet,” Simon said. “He said he wouldn’t kill her until tonight.”
“So maybe he’s just kidnapped heruntil then,” Amber countered. She went over to the house, wanting to check onit. What she saw there only helped to confirm her fears. The back door wasslightly ajar, and Amber could see that the wood around the lock wassplintered. She could picture what had happened now.
“He attacked her in the workshop,but she must have been able to get away and run for safety in the house. Hekicked the door open to get to her.”
Police officers were starting toarrive now. Amber gestured to the studio. “Secure that as a crime scene andguard the house. We’re going inside.”
She had to make sure that Lorettawasn’t lying dead in the house somewhere, or that the killer wasn’t in therewith her, waiting for a moment to escape. Now, Amber did draw her gun,as she and Simon approached the door.
They slid it open carefully andstepped inside. Loretta’s home was light and airy, but it was so silent thatAmber could hear the creak of her every footstep on the wooden floor.
“FBI!” Simon called out. “Is thereanyone in here? Loretta, if you’re here, we’re here to help you.”
Only silence greeted his words, sothey started to clear the house, room by room. Amber had trained to do this,how to move through an enclosed space with other agents, making sure to cleareach room before moving on so as not to leave potential threats behind. She andSimon moved in concert now, each covering the other as they moved into akitchen, then a lounge.
“There are signs of a strugglehere,” Simon said, nodding towards a knocked over armchair and a cup that layon its side on the floor, the contents spilling out over the white carpet.
Amber nodded. This wasn’t lookinggood. She and Simon kept moving, quickly heading upstairs to clear the upperfloor of the house one room at a time. There was still no sign of anybodythere, even as they headed through into the main bedroom, the one that Lorettaobviously used most of the time.
“She isn’t here,” Amber said. “He’staken her.”
“It’s starting to look that way,”Simon said. “We’ll need to secure the house and get forensics in. I also wantto get the local PD checking traffic cameras, because there’s a chance theypicked up something as the killer drove her away.”
“They’ll need to talk to theneighbors too,” Amber said. “Maybe one of them spotted something.”
“I’ll talk to Arquet about it,”Simon said.
Amber nodded. “I want to take alook at this place, see if there’s anything obvious to point us in the rightdirection.”
While Simon went down to tell thecops what was going on, Amber started to look through the house, being carefulnot to touch anything. She wanted to get a sense of who Loretta was. Why her?The birth charts in all of this were specific to the victims, suggesting thatthe killer put a lot of time and effort into picking them out. And it wouldn’thave been easy to take a victim out of her home in a suburban area withoutanyone noticing. There had to be plenty of people born under this star sign whomight have been a potential victim. Almost everything about astrology was vagueenough for people to interpret it multiple ways, including the killer. He couldhave interpreted the attributes of Taurus in another way, could have chosen aneasier victim.
One thought occurred to Amber: wasthere a pendant here as there had been with the other victims? Did Loretta haveone too, or was that connection just a coincidence?
Amber started to look through thehouse, heading back up to the main bedroom and looking for any sign of ajewelry box. She tried to search systematically, knowing that anything shefound along the way might be important to the investigation. At least there wasno sign that the killer had been up here, so Amber didn’t have to worry so muchabout potentially disturbing evidence.
She found a jewelry box hidden awayin a wardrobe and started to look through it. There was a whole layer ofcostume jewelry there, apparently designed to be as bright and eye-catching aspossible. Amber dug through it and eventually came up with what she'd beenlooking for. Carefully, she set the pendant inside an evidence bag and hurrieddown to where Simon and Detective Arquet seemed to have a handle on everything.
The detective looked over to Amberas she approached. “We’ve set up a perimeter in case the killer is running withher, and I have people going door to door, trying to find out if anyone sawanything. We’ll call in forensics to sweep the workshop. If there was a fightin there, there’s a chance that the killer’s DNA will have been left behindsomewhere. What do you have there?”
Amber held up the pendant. “Thesame as the others,” she said. “I think that this is still our best chance offinding answers here.”
“There’s a woman in immediatedanger,” Arquet pointed out.
Amber shook her head. “Not immediate.Tonight. And your men will try to track anything the killer has left behindhere. If cameras lead us right to them, great, but if not… if not, then we’restill left trying to hunt down this killer, and these pendants remain our bestway of doing it.”
If they could identify thependants, they might be able to find the killer. Amber hoped so, because if thependants didn’t give them answers, it would cost more lives.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
“Anything so far?”
Amber shook her head, gratefullyaccepting the coffee Simon held out. “I’m making progress, but it’s slowgoing.”
She was still looking throughpictures of pendants, trying to find any that matched up with the ones that hadbelonged to the victims. If all four owned something, that had to meansomething. It had to. Amber wasn’t about to believe that it could be a coincidence.
“Maybe we need to look at otherthings, too,” Simon suggested.
“Such as?”
