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"Maybe it's a way of sending a message to the cult that even if you become more senior, you’re still not safe, and the foundation doesn't have control?" Gabe asked. "Could this person have been a member in the past and left, and now they’re fighting back?"
Cora thought about it. "That’s a possibility. We need to know more about who these victims are, and look into their backgrounds, also. Why is he choosing them? Is it a random choice, or is there a purpose behind the two women he's picked so far?"
They finished their food in thoughtful silence and went up to the hotel room. Cora liked that they had one room. One bed. That they'd be together tonight and that she'd wake up either in Gabe's arms or within touching distance. It still felt strange to allow herself to be vulnerable, to have let her guard down with him. Strange, but in a good way.
Cora knew that there would be a massive amount of work to do tomorrow and that she needed to push forward with this case, get it finished, and get onto the more important business she needed to do.
And she didn’t want to take Gabe with her.
She was going to try to keep him out of this. Getting his input was as far as she wanted this to go. She couldn’t risk him. There were too many unknowns. She needed to go it alone this time.
She hoped that when she told him, it wouldn’t cause a fight.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cora was following Rose. But Rose was running from her, fleeing deeper into the mazelike streets of Paris, her strawberry blond hair whipping around her as she glanced back over her shoulder.
"Why are you running so fast?" Cora shouted, but there was no reply. "If you stop, I can catch up," she urged her sister.
Pursuing her, legs straining as she battled to gain ground, Cora saw to her shock that Rose was running so fast because there was someone with her ahead of her, gripping her arm tightly. She was struggling to get away, but he had an iron grasp on her forearm, his fingers digging in like claws. She could see Rose's forearm was bleeding, and she felt a sharp stab of fright.
"You need to get away!" she yelled to her.
"I know! But I can't!" Rose screamed back. "I can't!"
She turned down another road, slipping and stumbling in his inexorable grasp, and Cora saw the Eiffel Tower ahead, tall and elegant in the evening light. He was taking her there, and she had a bad feeling about this, a feeling so strong it was chilling her to the bone.
She was getting closer to them, but not enough. Her efforts were too little. They stayed just out of reach. Perhaps she could shoot him, she thought and reached for her gun, but felt a jarring shock as she realized it wasn't there. Where had it gone? She couldn’t remember how she’d lost it.
She could see the man's face now, twisted into a cruel sneer as he dragged Rose along. And in that glimpse, she thought she knew him.
Cora threw all her effort into the final sprint as Rose was dragged all the way to the Eiffel Tower, struggling, fighting her captor, but unable to break free. She was wearing a white robe just like the one Cora had worn earlier today, but her captor was in jeans and a leather jacket.
And then, Cora's blood turned to ice as she saw he had a weapon.
A long, vicious knife. It was gripped firmly in his hand.
"My sacrifice!" He turned to her and laughed jeeringly as he raised it. "My sacrifice."
"No!" Cora screamed. The setting sun gleamed on the long, sharp blade turning it a bloody red. She saw his face as the knife came down, and it wasn't the foundation leader; it wasn't the guard from outside the trafficking brothel.
It was Buddy Finch, his hard, lined face twisted in glee as the knife sliced down, and she was too slow, unable to reach it, too late. Too late.
"No!" she screamed again, so loudly that she jerked awake. In Gabe's arms, her head on his shoulder, she catapulted into wakefulness, sitting bolt upright so fast that he also scrambled into a sitting position, looking around him in bleary confusion in the darkened room.
"What's happening? Everything okay?"
"I'm fine. It was just a bad dream." The reality of it was still haunting her. Her heart was pounding. It had felt so real. "Very bad," she explained.
"I guess being here is not doing anything for your nightmares," Gabe said sympathetically. "Being so close, being on her trail."
He didn't need to ask what her dream had been about and why she was so traumatized. She knew he was, too. It was forcing him to confront the demons of his father all over again.
She took a deep breath, grounding herself, banishing that nightmare. Remembering it would not help her, so it needed to be gone from her mind. And in any case, there were more important things to be done.
"This morning, I have to meet with Pierre Maison," she said. She leaned back against him, feeling his hands clasp her, the warmth of his skin against hers.
"You want to go alone?" Gabe asked.
