Page 140 of Fragile Sanctuary

With his words came a fresh flood of fury. So much better thanthe fear. “Anson’s going to find you,” I growled. “He’s smarter than you’ll ever be.”

Silas laughed then, but it was a sickening sound. “Oh, Rho. I’ve already beaten him more times than I can count. Every woman that reminded me of you. Every bitch who lied with her kind eyes. I made them scream before I slit their throats. The sweetest sound.”

“Every woman that reminded me of you.”The words echoed in my head as they landed over and over again. My stomach roiled as true terror set in. What had Anson said about The Hangman? He cut their carotid arteries. My mind spun as a million pieces tried to come together.

“But poor ol’ Anson could never get there quite quick enough. He was close with his sister, but I dallied. I liked her screams a little too much.”

Blood roared in my ears as a fresh wave of bile surged. “No.”

He only grinned wider, his mouth twisting with the movement. “Yes. What are the chances that everything would come back to where it all started? Poetic, don’t you think? The perfect piece of art. The final clue in a master game.”

Silas’s tongue swept across his bottom lip. “I’ve been making him suffer for years. His pain was the best. So deep, so feral.” Silas’s expression went hard as his hand tightened around my throat again. “But you tried to steal that, too. You won’t succeed.”

“Y-you’re The Hangman.” Nothing in the words sounded like my voice. It was completely foreign.

He leaned in close. “Nice to meet you, Rho.” Then he licked the tears from my cheek.

My knee came up on instinct, catching him in the balls. But it wasn’t enough. Silas’s hand tightened on my throat, completely cutting off my air supply. “Listen here, you little bitch. I’ve had enough of your games. I’m the chess master, and it’s time I took control of the board.”

He breathed ragged pants through his nose as he struggled for control. “It’s just too bad you have to die for my perfect end game.”

48

ANSON

“I had a deputy double-check property records,”Trace said, striding back into the room. “There’s nothing. He’s got the apartment in town, and that’s it.”

Hell.I wanted Trace to find something, anything that would lead us to Rho. Just thinking her name had pain stabbing deep. Images flashed in my mind, horrific what-ifs rooted in other realities. It made the imaginary slideshow that much more devastating. Each image was a possibility, even a probability.

I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek until the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I needed that flare of pain to keep me grounded. “What about any LLCs or corporations registered in his name?” I asked. “It’s possible to hide ownership that way.”

Trace flipped open a laptop on the conference table and began typing. “Running a search in the State of Oregon’s database.”

I fought the urge to stand, to pace. But movement wouldn’t alleviate the agony coursing through me.

“Nothing. Not a damn thing,” Trace growled.

I glanced at Shep, who sat across from me at the conference table. His expression was completely blank. He’d locked down everything he was feeling so tightly that no emotion had a prayer of breaking free.

“What about places Silas frequents?” I asked Shep. He wouldn’t take Rho to a new place. He’d go somewhere he knew, someplace he was comfortable.

Shep squeezed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. He’s into fishing. He always used his vacation days to take trips for that sort of thing.” Shep’s expression finally changed, but it looked as if he might be sick. “There wasn’t any fucking fishing, was there? He was using those trips to go on his twisted murder sprees, wasn’t he?”

A weight settled in my gut, not for me this time but for my friend. Helena and I had worked the timeline. The best we could figure, all the recent victims had been killed on weekends. And all incidents had occurred within a nine-and-a-half-hour-drive radius of Sparrow Falls. Close enough that Silas could make the journey and be back for work on Mondays.

“We don’t know. Not yet.” But my gut screamed it was him. “If you have a list of those dates, the BAU team can work on matching them to the murders.”

Shep nodded slowly, but there was such defeat in the movement. “Yeah, I’ve got software I track all that in. I can give them the login.”

“That’d be good. But now, I need you to think. There must be places around here that Silas went to often. Comfort spots,” I prodded.

“I doubt he took her to the fucking bar. And that’s the only place I know of,” Shep snapped.

I struggled to control my temper. Shep was hurting, and worse, he felt responsible. “Tell me about Silas growing up.” If there wasn’t a spot linked to Silas today, maybe it was somewhere from his past.

“I don’t fucking know,” Shep growled, shoving his chair back and running a hand roughly through his hair.

“I do.”

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