Haunted (A Bishop/SCU Novel Book 15) Read Online Free Page A

more trouble than just carrying extra gas for a rugged Jeep or something.”
    He nodded immediately. “Agreed. I’d be surprised if he’s on horseback. Which means he must have some very rugged vehicle, and must be familiar enough with this part of the Blue Ridge that he was able to travel with fair speed and yet still avoid the main roads and trails, including the ones the rangers patrol.”
    Hollis frowned. “Which doesn’t give us much more information. We know he’s come this far south because this is where he left Sara’s and Jill’s bodies. Assuming he has Angela and Megan, they were abducted from an overlook about twenty-five miles from here.
North
of here. But he must have brought them back this way because Sara’s and Jill’s bodies haven’t been here very long. Which means he almost
had
to have all four girls for at least a brief period of time.”
    “Tough for one guy to control four hostages,” DeMarco noted. “Even if two of them have been beaten and starved into submission.”
    “Are we sure this is one guy? I mean, we all know how rare it is for a serial to do doubles, taking two victims at the same time or on the same day; every serial I’ve ever read about built to something like that, when the challenge of taking just one victim wasn’t enough. But this guy grabs two right off the bat?”
    “It’s one of the things that makes him unique,” Miranda noted.
    “Okay, but how likely is it that one man managed to abduct two young women, travel with them over miles of rough terrain,
and
torture them so badly that by the time he abducted Angela and Megan, Sara and Jill were—and I
really
hate to use the phrase—deadweight?”
    Miranda shook her head slightly. “I think we have to consider the possibility that he has help, maybe even a partner. Just for the logistics of travel and holding captives. But I can tell you that one person tortured and killed those girls; I knew it the moment I saw them. So
if
he has a partner, that person is a complete submissive, as much a prisoner of his will as the girls are.”
    “New possibility,” Hollis said. “Still, all this, and all we really know or believe we know is that he’s moving south.”
    “We know more than that,” Miranda said. But her gaze was on Hollis, and she didn’t continue.
    Hollis sighed. “I get to be profiler?”
    “Try,” Miranda said. “Experience is what teaches us.”
    Hollis glanced down into the ravine, and then averted her gaze from two terribly mutilated bodies that had once been pretty, vital young women being put into black body bags.
    That part, this part, never got any easier.
    She drew a breath and let it out, then began musing aloud. “Wherever he held Sara and Jill has to be close enough that he was confident he could get Angela and Megan there and still have time to dump the first girls.” She frowned. “Unless he
does
have a partner, and that partner set up a second location for the second set of girls. Maybe as a safety precaution; if Sara and Jill were found, which was always possible even if unlikely, he wouldn’t want them found anywhere near where he’s holding Angela and Megan.”
    “A possibility we have to consider,” Miranda acknowledged. “Now focus on what he did to his victims.”
    Hollis kept her voice as matter-of-fact as she could manage. “No rape, not even object penetration. He used his knife, but not to stab, not deep wounds, so probably not an indication he’s impotent; he just wasn’t sexually interested in them. At all. He didn’t cut their faces, but he did hit them, that’s clear from the bruises and small cuts, so he didn’t place any value on their beauty. All the slicing was overkill—but not in rage. He was careful, methodical, controlled.
    “Whether it was their terror, their blood, or their suffering, he got whatever he needed from them, and then he dumped them like garbage, trusting the animals to clean up behind him. Which is what likely would have happened if