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13
It was almost four o’clock when Jeff walked up to Alex’s desk. “Have you heard anything from Logan?”
Alex shook her head. “Not yet. After the MRI, the technician has to analyze it. Then they have to contact Logan’s doctor. It could take a while.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. You know, it’s not like I want anything to be wrong, but when they find out what’s causing his pain, I’ll be relieved. At least we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”
Alex nodded. “I feel the same way. He’s certainly not acting like himself. I think he’s in more pain than he admits, and it makes him testy. He’d usually never talk to you the way he did.”
“I know that. I’m not upset. I just hate to see him like this. Especially if his injury came from his attempt to save you and Kaely.”
Kaely Quinn was an analyst who’d worked for the BAU for a short time. She and Alex had both been targeted by the serial killer who left them to die in that warehouse. Thankfully, Kaely’s then fiancé and now husband, Noah Hunter, along with Logan and several of the analysts who worked in their unit, had gone looking for them. They’d found them with only minutes to spare. Logan’s jump from a high window to save them had caused his broken ankle, and now it seemed he may have been injured more severely than they’d known.
Alex felt guilty about what happened. No one else seemed to blame her, but she kept thinking that if she’d been more careful maybe she wouldn’t have placed herself in a situation that put Logan, Kaely, and Noah at risk. The mistake was hers and hers alone. Between the nightmares and Logan’s injuries, sometimes she felt like she was free-falling into a black abyss and couldn’t find a way to stop her descent into the darkness.
“Alex?” Jeff said. “Did you hear me?”
Alex shook herself out of her thoughts and looked up to see Jeff staring at her, a strange expression on his face. “Sorry. Just thinking about Logan.”
Jeff leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I wish he’d stay home until this is resolved, but I doubt he’ll listen to me.”
Alex grunted. “He doesn’t want to let you down. Besides, I don’t think he can accept that something might really be wrong with him. I guess he doesn’t believe he has the right to be less than one hundred percent.”
“Yeah, I think that’s it. I hope he’s right and that this is something that can be easily fixed. If not, it will be difficult for him.”
“We’ll be there to support him.”
Jeff nodded. “Let’s hope that will be enough.”
Logan wasn’t claustrophobic, but he could understand why some people didn’t like having MRIs. At least this machine was open on both ends. His mother had told him they were closed years ago. She’d once had an MRI because of an injury to her foot. “It felt like I was in a coffin,” she’d said. “And I couldn’t get out. It was awful.” Logan had teased her by asking how she knew what it felt like to be in a coffin. She wasn’t amused. It was clear she’d been really disturbed by the experience.
Although this was certainly better, he still felt a little stab of alarm as the table he was on slid inside the tube. He’d been told not to move and to keep his hands by his sides. That didn’t help. What did help were the headphones they gave him before he went in. He’d been allowed to choose any music he wanted, so he’d asked if they had any Christian songs. Surprisingly, they did. Logan had been prepared for them to say they had only secular music.
Just then “Hold Me Jesus” by Rich Mullins came on. Logan struggled to control his emotions. Although Rich was in heaven now, he was one of Logan’s favorite musicians. This song in particular meant a lot to him. He hadn’t been able to admit to anyone how frightened he really was. He kept telling himself there wasn’t anything to worry about, that he’d always been healthy, that this was something simple. Yet a negative voice kept whispering words of fear into his mind. He was fighting hard to ignore them.
He murmured a prayer as Rich’s voice urged him to fall down on his knees. In his heart, he did exactly that.
Alex continued working at her desk, trying to nail down a workable profile of their UNSUB. She was fairly certain about some things.
He was most likely attractive because of how he’d been able to approach the women he abducted. He clearly wasn’t threatening or he never would have managed to get so close to them. She also believed he’d abducted Tracy Mendenhall by pretending he was a jogger, which meant he was probably in his late twenties to middle thirties. Although older people jogged, a younger man seemed a more likely suspect. Someone Tracy could identify with.
They also believed he was most likely alone when he abducted Tracy. They couldn’t prove it had anything to do with this case, but one of the women who’d disappeared almost six years ago was seen talking to a good-looking young man just before she went missing. He’d had dark hair, a medium build, and was of medium height. Of course, they couldn’t be certain he was their UNSUB, yet the idea that he was nice-looking tied into the profile. The same thing had worked for Ted Bundy. As far as Alex could tell, this was the only time the UNSUB may have been seen by someone else, which meant he was clever. Organized.
Also, their UNSUB was either psychologically drawn to women of a particular description or he was angry with them. Maybe a mother who’d hurt or deserted him? The rest was more difficult. Where were the women? No bodies. The bodies would tell them much more. Was there overkill? Were there signs of remorse? There was no way they could be sure about his motivation.
It was hard to believe that the women he’d abducted years ago were still living. Surely he wasn’t keeping them for this long. It would be unprecedented. Some serial killers had kept victims alive for a while so they could assault them, though. Alex prayed this wasn’t what was happening, but if these women were still alive, it was a likely scenario.
Alex suddenly remembered a movie she’d seen years ago about a man who’d kidnapped women and kept them alive in locked rooms somewhere underground. Interesting plot, but unrealistic. Women were almost always abducted because the man who took them wanted to harm them. Keeping them around to amuse himself just wasn’t reasonable. Authorities probably hadn’t found bodies yet because of so many dense forest areas in the Virginia area. Cadaver dogs could find what people couldn’t, but they needed a search area, and they didn’t even have that. The dogs were pretty remarkable though, able to sniff out bodies buried twelve feet under the ground. They could also locate remains in water.
This UNSUB bothered Alex. It was almost as if he was looking for someone in particular but didn’t know where she was. And except for a loose description, he didn’t know exactly what she looked like. Didn’t know her name. Alex shook her head. That was just too bizarre. She was wandering off track again. Why was she having such a hard time with this profile? Of course, she knew the answer to that question. It wasn’t just that this case was odd. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop thinking about Logan.
