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They ordered room service, traded off showers, and climbed into bed in record time, both of them exhausted from the miles they’d put on the odometer. Hayley was tired, too, even though she hadn’t driven, but not so tired that she didn’t press herself against his thigh, revealing that while he’d been in the shower, she’d gotten into bed wearing only a t-shirt. He’d seen her pack a box of Morning After pills in her bag the night before. He needed no other encouragement to take her.
Neither of them spoke. Neither of them wanted to give voice to their own fears. She pulled him on top of her; he drew her shirt up over her head. Her legs wrapped around his waist and her fingertips pressed into his back, urging him inside her. It wasn’t the edge of desperation, but it was something like it. He buried his face in her neck and his cock in her pussy and prayed like hell for the first time since he asked God to make sure Jimmy found his way to peace.
Chris wanted peace of a different kind with this woman. And he’d kill to get it, if that’s what it took. He silently thanked God that killing was within his ability to do. All he needed was for God to provide the opportunity.
In the morning, while Hayley showered, his phone rang. He swiped the answer button and left the room.
“I couldn’t find shit,” Caleb declared, sounding pissed. “Raleigh PD’s got nothing. DNA they can’t match, a description of a car they could never find. Hayley and Jake were taken to farmhouse outside of town, owned by a 90 year old man who’d been placed in a nursing home a few months before. He had no immediate family, so no leads there.”
Caleb let out a sigh. “If it makes you feel any better, I’d have to guess this guy’s lucky rather than good. Not bright enough to realize Hayley was still alive when he left her in the ground. Dumb enough to leave his prints and DNA everywhere. He obviously knows they can’t catch him based on that, but he’s apparently not thought about the fact that if they ever do catch him some other way, they can link him to at least two other couple abductions up and down the coast where the DNA matched up. There have been a few other disappearances, too. No bodies on those, yet, though.”
Chris frowned. It wasn’t anything he could actually use. “Thanks for trying. We’ll be in Raleigh tonight. We’re going to the hospital after Midnight.”
“Well, good luck and stay safe. Any idea when you’ll be headed back?”
“No. A lot depends on his condition. A few days at the most, though. The longer we stay the more exposed we are.”
A few minutes later, Chris disconnected and headed back to the room. He’d considered having Tex or Caleb come with them, but had ultimately dismissed it. The bigger their group was, the more likely they were to be noticed. And even if the asshole wasn’t staking out the hospital now, a busybody nurse could put a call into a local news station and a reporter could swoop in in an effort to get an exclusive interview with The Coastal Killer’s only living victim.
Caleb had told him that only one reporter had made the connection between Hayley’s abduction and murders in three other states, probably through a leak in the department. Apparently the local police hadn’t wanted to broadcast that information for their own reasons. The reporter, though, had run with it and nicknamed the asshole The Coastal Killer. But there had only been two disappearances since Hayley’s abduction and since no one had found any trace of them, they couldn’t be officially linked to the same perpetrator. No story had run on the so-called Coastal Killer in more than a year. Hopefully that would keep Hayley from being recognized by anyone.
Sneaking into the hospital after Midnight also cut down on the number of people who were likely to see her. It would also cut down on the number of faces Chris had to mentally file away for possible identification later. The less people they had to deal with the easier his job would be.
They left the truck in the long-term parking of a rental car place in Wytheville, Virginia. Chris had sprung for a Lincoln Navigator, which Hayley attempted to object to, until he pointed out the tinted windows and the inability of anything smaller attempting to force them off the road. All things being equal, Chris preferred his Ford, but he could run a motherfucker over comfortably in the Navigator. More importantly, the license plate would trace back to Virginia, which was, approximately 1,500 miles away from South Dakota.
A mile from the rental place they stopped for some fast food. He gave Hayley some cash, swung out of the Navigator and walked to the back of the civilian tank as she went inside to order food. He produced a razor blade, courtesy of the hotel, and carefully scraped off “Wytheville, Virginia” from the back of the SUV that the rental company used for advertising. It would probably take them weeks to discover the vandalism, if they ever did. An hour later they were on the road again. It was Chris’ plan to head to the hotel first, unpack and rest for a while, before heading to the Hospital.
