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“Pfft. I’m a team member, and I can go. Right, Jac?” she said a bit louder.
“With escort.” Sharlee winked at Mallory and turned back to her computer.
Garrett and Jac resumed the briefing, which lasted for another fifteen minutes, covering the lost and found victims and those still missing that they hoped to find. Mallory had explained again about the impression there was a wife, but she hadn’t seen her. Mallory also described why she believed the kidnapper was going to go and later, when exactly she didn’t know, return, remove the other woman and make Mallory his primary focus. She sobbed the last sentence and shuddered at the memory. Monroe shocked Mallory by pulling her into his lap.
“Monroe,” Mallory whispered frantically as she tried to scramble out of his lap.
His arms tightened, and he gruffly whispered back. “Stop. We comfort our women around here, and I don’t care if this makes you feel uneasy or worried about other’s thoughts on the subject. You’ll get used to it. I won’t embarrass you with your own colleagues or anything, but I don’t want you to think I won’t do what I have to for you. Always. Right now, you need me wrapped around you while you go through these memories.” With that, he pulled her close and laid her head on his shoulder. “Just accept that I care enough to give you what you need.”
Her sigh of acceptance signaled her submission, if not her complete understanding. She nodded as she took a deep, cleansing breath and then let it out before resuming the conversation. Monroe nodded with affection shining in his eyes. It was way too early to think it might be love. Way too early.
Jac continued. “Did you get a read on his thinking?”
Mallory sat up. “It was as though Romaine,” she paused after saying his name for the first time, then continued. “It was like he could only deal with one captive at a time. Like he’d taken me before he was ready. He said something like, ‘she’ll be gone soon. We just have to be patient.’”
Monroe’s strength shone through his tenderness. “Easy, honey. Take your time.”
She took a shaky breath and leaned into Monroe. When she spoke again, her voice was more assertive, more detached. “Romaine said she was taking longer to die than he had thought, and he actually apologized that his attentions were divided.”
Mark asked, “You were in a cellar, right?”
“Yes. A dark, damp, chilly cellar. Not a basement because there weren’t footsteps above us as you would expect in a basement. Also, the floor was dirt, the stairs were wooden.”
Mark was thinking. “And how many times did he come down to check on you two?”
“That’s the odd thing. He didn’t come back. I mean, someone threw down a burlap bag of potatoes and carrots and a jug of water, but that was it. The other woman never spoke to me nor regained full consciousness, but she was alive.”
Levi asked, “How did you know?” The room was silent, as though everyone was letting him process his own question. “Oh, right, a pharmacist is a doctor.”
“Besides, you don’t have to be a doctor to know if someone is breathing or not,” said Sharlee.
“I guess my real question was how did you know she was not awake and just staying quiet because of the fear. No offense, but she’d gone through a lot in the time she had been there, and we don’t even know how long that was.”
“Actually,” said Jac, “we do. If what Mallory said is true for all the women, he didn’t concentrate on a new one until the old one had died, which means we check the known dates of abduction and work backward to when each woman likely died.”
“Did he say what he did for a living?” asked Carter.
“No, honestly, after he finished slapping me around because I wouldn’t quit fighting him or yelling, he told me about what I already told you and that he’d never played with a pharmacist before. He said nothing else to anyone that I heard.”
“Wait,” said Monroe, “Were those his words? ‘I’ve never played with a pharmacist before?’”
“Yes, why?”
Garrett looked at Monroe, and that non-verbal thing they did happened again. “Well, tell me,” she demanded impatiently.
“Listen to those words, ‘played with a pharmacist.’ What does that make you think of?”
“I don’t…” Mallory’s eyes grew large. “You don’t think…”
Monroe nodded. “I do. I mean, it’s a possibility we have to explore. It could mean something totally different, like a cat-and-mouse thing, but we need to check everything out.”
“Wait,” said Sharlee, “It could have meant that he chose her because she had a different profession than the others. We should look at what the others did for a living. Once we identify them.”
“You mean I wasn’t random. It was all set up so that man could grab me specifically.”
“Possibly.” Sharlee’s fingers flew over the keys.
“Then maybe the woman who dropped her groceries at just the right timewashis wife,” continued Mallory. “I thought she was older, but maybe not.”
