Caging a Copycat - Chapter 16

The blood trail ended at the open window overlooking the fire escape outside of Olivia’s apartment, but the black four-door sedan had already turned the corner. Presumably with Olivia inside.

Shattered glass crunched under his feet as Silas raced back toward the front door. He grabbed Olivia’s keys from the entryway table. Phone to his ear, he counted the seconds until the line connected. “This is Agent Hart. Director Branson has been wounded and abducted. I need CSU on scene at her apartment, backup sent to my location and put an APB out for Dr. Lara Farell. Consider her armed and dangerous. You call me as soon as you have something.”

Not waiting for the agent on the other end of the line to respond, he ended the call. The killer must’ve been waiting inside Olivia’s apartment for her to come home. She’d been there the entire time, and Silas hadn’t known. If anything happened to her… No. He couldn’t think like that. Getting Olivia back—alive—was all that mattered. He descended the stairs, his heart struggling to keep up with his pace, but he wasn’t going to stop. Not until he got her back.

He pushed out into the raging storm and hit the SUV’s remote start. The engine growled to life. The killer couldn’t have gotten far. The seconds were piling up in his head. Sixty-seven. Sixty-eight. Olivia was alive. He had to believe that. He had to believe the killer had broken the MO by moving her latest victim to another location for a reason. She needed Olivia alive for something. But what? Why had Charles Daggett’s therapist—a woman responsible for his recovery—taken up his cause?

Silas collapsed behind the steering wheel and threw the SUV into gear. The screech of tires reached his ears as the engine protested. Dr. Farell would need to keep Olivia isolated. Somewhere her work wouldn’t be interrupted. He set his phone onto his lap and pulled up a map of the area. Residential buildings, stores. None of those would work, but Olivia was also bleeding heavily. Time was something the killer didn’t have. "Where are you, Olivia?"

A red bubble appeared over a refinery on the edge of Puget Sound. Less than ten blocks from Olivia’s apartment. His gut clenched. If the killer wanted privacy and isolation, it wasn’t a bad place to take her latest victim. Places like that processed and barreled waste from some of the city’s biggest manufacturers with limited security and staff. It would be easy to hide a body there until the next shipment of waste was scheduled for pickup. Silas pressed his foot into the accelerator.

He hadn’t come to Seattle just to lose her again. He wouldn’t. Because, damn it, he was still in love with her. No matter how many times he’d tried to forget, she’d always been at the front of his mind, in his choices, in his blood, and he wasn’t going to fail his partner again. “I’m coming, Liv. Just hang on.”