Blind Date(43)

That hand glides up my to my arm, pulling my hand from my mouth.

"Eyes, this way," Ace orders, his voice firm but kind.

I let my eyes focus on his, and another frightened mewl leaves my throat.

"I will not let anyone hurt you, do you understand me?"

I take a deep staggering breath. I believe him. I do.

"Do you understand me, Hartley?"

I nod. "I understand."

"Trust me."

I do.


      ///
       
         
       
        

I do trust him.

It'll be okay.

Right?





SEVENTEEN


"These are the facts," Ace says later that night, as we both sit on my couch eating takeout. I'm calmer now. He has that effect on me. He can calm me, even when I don't think it's possible. I think it's because he never freaks out, he's always calm and collected. I texted Jacob earlier, just letting him know I'm okay. I feel bad for being so distant. "First, we're assuming it's a man, due to the effortless way the women were handled. No woman could do what he did without there being signs of a struggle, not to mention another woman could fight off someone her own size."

"OK," I whisper.

Ace goes on. "I'm trying to find a link between the victims, something that helps me define his type. The only thing I know about him right now is that he must study his victims to learn everything about them. Their routine, their family, their friends. Their biggest fears. He likes to weaken them before he takes them, hence the need to torment them, which in all their cases has been the loss of a loved one."

My chest tightens, but I keep it together. I have to focus. Listen.

"What happens after he takes them?"

Ace's eyes dart away for a split second, before he looks back at me. "I'm not entirely sure-he had the last one for a little while. She was missing, the officers on the case didn't put two and two together until it was too late. When they found her, she was killed in a very specific manner. He slit her throat in a bowtie shape, carving into the skin, and then he tied an actual bowtie around her neck, but other than the gruesome manner in which she was murdered, she was seemingly unharmed. She was healthy, had clearly been taken care of."

Taken care of?

God.

"Which makes me think he mentally torments them, not physically, and then when he's broken them and had his fun, he kills them."

Oh. Lord.

"As I said, I'm not sure we're dealing with the same thing, but some of the things that have happened to you match up to what happened to the last few victims."

I take a deep breath. I can do this. I've got this. "So how do we figure out a connection?"

"We are trying to establish that right now, but at this stage the only connection we can see is that they've all lost somebody. I'm assuming that is how he targets his victims. There are no other similarities that we can see. Race, hair color, size-nothing. They've all been remarkably different."

"What about personality traits?" I ask, crossing my legs.

Ace nods. "We've looked into that, too. Again, no particular connection." 

"So he's just what, scouring cemeteries looking for people who've lost loved ones? That just seems  …  too reckless for someone who is obviously thinking in great detail about what he's doing."

"Yeah, we're trying to figure out where he is finding these women."

I ponder that, and then something flickers into my mind. "What about funeral homes? Perhaps he is getting information from them?"

Ace nods. "It's possible. It isn't hard in this day and age to bribe someone out of information, it's a fairly easy task."

"Maybe he's going into the homes and bribing receptionists out of files, and just randomly picking?" I suggest.

"It is something I'll look into, but it seems he would be smarter than that, more precise. Any other ideas?"

I think about it.

"Maybe he simply reads death notices in the paper, or follows online groups where people go to support one another? I was on a few online groups, just talking to other people suffering the same as I was. They helped."

Ace nods again. "Those are both worth looking into, also. Could you get me the names of those online groups?"

"Sure," I say. "Another suggestion would be to look into support groups."

Ace studies me. "Ones that aren't online?"

"Yeah," I say. "I went to one a year or so after I lost Raymond-I just wasn't coping or moving forward. It really helped. There were a lot of men and women in those groups."

"Thank you, it's all worth looking into."