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“I know, but now, it will get easier.”
“Maybe. I think telling you was the worst of it. Now…”
“Yes, darlin’. Now.” He sat up with her and pulled his cell phone from its clip on his belt. “Give me just a minute here. I need to check in with Gaylen.”
“Will you tell him? About me?”
“Not until I get back to the station. I don’t want to take a chance someone might overhear the conversation.”
“You know I never actually saw him. When I came to, I was blindfolded.” She swiped at her damp cheeks again. “But I remember the man had an odor about him. Something I can’t identify. Something really strong that made my eyes water.”
“Maybe from the clown greasepaint he was wearing?” Cole ventured.
“No.” She shook her head. “I’ve smelled greasepaint since then. This was more like cologne, but not one I’ve ever come in contact with since then. And he was singing.”
Cole stared at her. “Singing? Singing what?”
“That’s the problem,” she cried. “I can’t remember it. I pushed it so far out of my mind it won’t come back.”
“Do you remember anything about it?”
“No.” She shook her head vehemently. “I never wanted to hear it again. I guess I’ve done too good a job blanking it out.”
“Who could blame you? Okay, let me just check in and see if there’s any update. Let Gaylen know I’m on the way back.”
When he finished the call, he stood up, taking her with him and setting her on her feet. His mouth brushed against hers. “I don’t want to leave you, but I have to.”
“I know, I know. Gaby’s out there somewhere, and you have to find her.” She leaned into him. “I wish I’d had the courage to tell you about this sooner.”
“Dana. Honey. It’s all right,” he assured her. “It took a lot of courage to tell me at all.”
“But if I’d told you earlier, maybe none of this would have happened,” she protested, misery tightening her voice.
“Your arrival may have stuck a pin in him, but we don’t think he’s been idle all this time, either. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“I just want to have this over with once and for all,” she sniffed, clutching at his shirt. She rubbed her cheek against the curls of dark chest hair peeking out over the vee of his shirt, somehow taking comfort from them. “To stop the killing and put him away, so I can try to be a normal woman. That’s all. Is that asking so much?”
“Of course not.” He tightened his arms around her.
Although he still heard a tremor in her voice, she sounded stronger than before, as if getting this all out was cathartic for her. And maybe it was.
She shivered in his arms. “Cole, what am I going to do?”
“Stay right in this house until we catch him. And that’s an order. I don’t intend to let anything happen to you.”
Suddenly, she smacked her forehead with her palm. “The news about Gaby drove everything else out of my mind. I called you to begin with because of the meeting this morning. Cole, every one of those women mentioned clowns being at the event where their children disappeared. Just like with Kylie and me. The same situation. When I checked back over the reports, all but two of them mentioned clowns. But I couldn’t find where anyone had ever checked on that.”
“You’re right.” Again, he felt irritation at the sloppy police work. “I looked, but I couldn’t find anything, either. Pissed me off.”
“Shouldn’t that have been the first thing they jumped on?”
Cole snorted. “And let word get out that Salado County was letting a murdering pedophile run loose? Besides, the county commission and the chamber were the ones who hired the clowns. No one wanted to point fingers at them on this.”
“Two of the women this morning who used to volunteer at the chamber said they’d try to find the old records,” she told him. “See if there was any information, maybe get us some contacts.”
Cole’s pulse jumped. A lead? After all this time? “When are they supposed to get back to you? We’re running out of time here.”
“Let me see if I can reach either of them right now.” She found her cell phone and tried both numbers. “Busy,” she told him. “But I’ll keep trying.”
