“Search Pinecrest Bay for missing girls with the same filters,” Shayne said, only to come across the similar results, womenreported missing by their husbands only to be found dead the next morning and all of them had eight black basalt rocks randomly scattered around their bodies.
“Search Mirror Lake Village, New York,” Shayne said only to curse twenty minutes later when they found six more dead women.
Jaw clenched, Shayne looked at the growing number of bodies and-
“Get Tristan and tell him that we found a serial killer’s playground.”
CHAPTER 18
What the hell had she gotten herself into? Ashlyn found herself wondering sometime later as she stepped out of the shower and grabbed the large gray towel that Marty gave her off the bathroom counter.
When she found out that Detective Black pulled Julia’s file along with eighty-eight other files, she had a bad feeling that they might be looking at a serial killer, but nothing could have prepared her for this.
A serial killer with two different MOs.
When he was hunting in the city, he preferred women of any age, ethnicity, and background and was able to take them without being seen and made sure that no one ever found their bodies. It was to the point, a clean grab, less risk of getting caught, and allowed him to take his time with them, something that turned her stomach just thinking about, but when he was hunting in tourist spots...
The rules changed.
He hunted young, happily married women, whose husbands openly doted on them. He didn’t grab them and take them away so that he could savor the kill. He killed them on the spot and received instant gratification from the kill.
And that was going to be his downfall.
With the women he kidnapped, there was no pattern, no way to predict his next move, letting them know that he was most likely grabbing whatever unfortunate woman happened to cross his path, but with the resort murders, there was a pattern that they could predict.
For the past twenty-two years, their killer had been targeting high-end resorts that hosted romantic weekends, balls, and couples’ retreats and could be linked to more than one hundred unsolved murders. All of his victims were young, newly married women with long hair and appeared to be in love with their husbands and every single one of them had somehow been lured out of their hotels and away from their husbands to a secluded spot, and no one had any idea how he managed to do it.
He’d also managed to stop anyone from figuring out that all the murders were connected.
Until now.
Thanks to the rocks, they now knew that he’d been targeting eighteen towns, focusing on high-end hotels and resorts that catered to newlyweds on a rotation that changed every year. The eighteen towns were grouped by six, which they’d labeled Group A, Group B, and Group C. He focused on one group at a time, killing every two months before he rotated to the next group the following year until he’d rotated through all the groups and it was time to start all over again.
This year, he was back on Group A and he’d already killed two women. It had been a month and two weeks since his last kill, leaving them with four towns to focus on. They were able to narrow it down to three possibilities after looking at the remaining four towns for this year’s cycle and discovered that there were three hotels hosting a special romantic getaway for couples in the next two weeks. Out of the three hotels, two ofthem were hosting balls targeting newlyweds, and one of them was hosting a two-week long romantic festival.
As soon as they realized what was about to happen, Tristan was on the phone with his father-in-law, explaining everything. That was followed by Hank coming over, a lot of shouting when Tristan announced that he was going to try to catch the asshole, which was followed by even more shouting when Marty decided that she was going as well.
Tristan, Hank, and Shayne quickly shut that down, pointing out that she was pregnant and there was no way in hell that she was setting foot within a hundred miles of any of those hotels. When she went to argue, Tristan threatened to spank her ass, which resulted in Marty grumbling to herself as she reluctantly agreed not to go.
After that, they started making phone calls. They called the local police departments of the four remaining towns on this year’s rotation and filled them in on the situation while Marty set to work, filing a potential serial killer report with the FBI and with ViCAP. Since they didn’t have DNA evidence or a suspect, there wasn’t much that they could do at this point except put out a warning.
Right now, with only the rocks to tie it all together, along with the killing pattern, the best they could hope for was added patrols around the hotels. It was too early to alert the public. They didn’t want to scare people or tip off the serial killer that they were on to him before they had more to go on, which meant that she was going away for a romantic trip alone for the next two weeks.
She should have left as soonas they figured out the killer’s next target, but since it was late at night, Marty decided that she should crash in Shayne’s room and since she was apparentlypathetic, Ashlyn agreed. God, what the hell was she doing here? Ashlyn wondered as she made her way into Shayne’s room and took in everything from the large bed to the flatscreen television mounted on the wall, and noted that other than a video game system and a few games, there wasn’t anything personal in the room.
She should be home figuring out which hotel the killer was going to hit instead of making her way to his closet and helping herself to one of his shirts. There was definitely something wrong with her, Ashlyn decided, once again confirming her earlier theory as she grabbed a pair of panties from the overnight bag that she kept in her trunk for emergencies and pulled them on along with his shirt.
As she took her time buttoning the light blue dress shirt, she took in the small selection of toiletries on the bathroom counter, absently noting that everything looked new as she found herself thinking about Shayne, that kiss, and even that moment in the living room, where she apparently lost her mind and found herself leaning into his touch, unable to resist this pull that he had on her. God, she was pathetic, which was why she never planned on seeing him again.
He scared the hell out of her and she had no idea why.
None of this made any sense.
She’d only met him a little over a month ago and had only been around him a couple of times since, but for some reason that she couldn’t understand, the idea of being away from him left her feeling like her heart was about to break. When they were apart, she couldn’t stop thinking about him and felt like a part of her was missing, leaving her struggling to fight the overwhelming urge to go to him, and when she was with him, it wasn’t enough. But when he touched her...
A sense of peace like nothing she’d ever known before washed over her and she wanted more.
She wanted him.
