Stolen(79)
“Spense . . .” She had a look in her eyes that wasn’t all business.
“Can’t go there right now, hon. Let’s focus on the case.”
She pulled her lower lip between her teeth, and he thought he saw frustration in the gesture.
Good.
Let her get frustrated.
She’d earned a taste of her own medicine.
“There’s a long list of dates over the past thirteen years. Maybe we should split them up.”
Caity stretched her arms and tucked her chin. “I’ll take the first seven years, you take the rest.”
He nodded, barely acknowledging her and passed over a copy of the passport pages. “I’ve got my own—I printed extra last night after you went to bed.”
“I didn’t sleep all that well.”
He retracted his arm and ignored her comment.
All business.
Thirty minutes later, he’d been through several years and as many countries. Whit’s life as a business mogul involved a lot of travel. But he still hadn’t found a connection to their mystery woman.
“Spense.” She looked at him from under those incredibly thick, black lashes, her pupils swallowing the blue of her eyes.
“You got something?”
“I think I found her.”
He tapped his touchpad with the intention of minimizing his window, but inadvertently pulled up the next article in his queue instead. “I found her, too. What city are you checking?”
“Amsterdam, seven years ago. You?”
“Huh. Mine is Paris, three years ago. Looks like the same woman, but we can’t both be right. Send me your file. I’m e-mailing you mine.”
“Got it!” they said in unison.
His heart boomed in his chest.
Two women with remarkably similar looks.
Two cities.
Four years apart.
Both gone missing from nightclubs.
Their bodies later found strangled and stabbed, dumped in wooded areas.
“Which one is she?” Caity put her hand on her heart. “Our mystery woman—the one in the photograph with Cayman.”
He ran his fingers through his hair, waiting for his pulse to slow. After all these years, this part of the job—putting a name to a victim, recognizing them for the first time as a real person with a real family—hadn’t gotten any easier. “According to my facial recognition software, she’s the young woman in the article you found, Stella De Jong.”
“It’s uncanny though, the way she resembles the woman in the story you uncovered.”
“Fabiana Luca, an Italian exchange student, studying in Paris at an academy of arts.”
“So we have two women, strangled and stabbed in large metropolitan cities at the same time Cayman was there. It could be coincidence, except that Cayman knew Stella, and from the looks of this photo, they were on a date. How many dead, dark-haired, blue-eyed women do you think it will take to convince Hatcher?”
“I guess we’ll find out when we call him. And Caity, don’t freak out.”
“Stop saying that. What is it?”
“I’m still looking at Paris, three years ago.”
“Did you find another blue-eyed brunette?”
He shook his head. “No. She’s blond. I’m sending the file to you now.”
He got up and stood behind her, rested both his hands on her shoulders.
She took in a sharp breath. Her body went rigid, then started to tremble.
“Inga. Oh, no.” She shook her head. “I—I just assumed when Grady said she died in a hiking accident, he meant here in Colorado.”
The article said Inga Webber fell from a trail while hiking in the French Alps.
“Inga died one week after Fabiana Luca went missing?” Caity buried her face in her hands. “She and Grady must’ve been vacationing with the Chaucers at the time. If the entourage was there for a week, it makes sense they’d try to fit in a side trip to the Alps. Inga loved the outdoors.”
He tried to catch her eye, but she was gazing pensively out the window.
He let her have her moment, then pulled her to a stand and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry, Caity. I know Inga was your friend.”
She looked up at him with glistening eyes. “What if her death wasn’t an accident? What if she knew something she shouldn’t? Grady said her sister, Asta, lives here in Boulder.” Her back went rigid. “I’m going to talk to Asta.”
That caught him off guard. “When did Webber tell you about the sister?”
She pulled away and went and stood by the window. “I’m not sure. But I remember him saying so. Spense, I believe there’s a serial killer out there. Maybe little girls weren’t his thing, but now that Laura’s all grown up . . .”