at Richard, seeking not approval but rather simple acceptance.
“I’ve been at this long enough to know that sometimes all we have to go on is our gut instincts, and yours has proven to be right more often than not. Play the movie,” he said.
Mark punched the remote and the screen filled first with blackness and then suddenly she was there, Melinda Grayson, tied to a chair with a blindfold across her eyes.
Mark leaned forward, his gaze focused not on the woman in the center of the picture, but rather on the background, seeking anything that might provide a clue as to where the video had been shot.
In this particular scene the backdrop appeared to be nothing but a black curtain or sheet. Melinda was a stark figure in the straight-back chair, tears shining from beneath the blindfold and trekking down her pale skin. “Please, please help me.” Her voice pleaded with some unknown captor. The screen went black and Mark hit the remote to pause.
“What are you looking for? The tech team has been over these a dozen times trying to figure out where the video was made, if there are any sounds that could be amplified that might give us a clue. They’ve come up with nothing,” Richard said.
“I don’t know. I’m just looking for...” Mark hesitated and then continued, “For something we all might have missed.”
Richard got up from his chair and clapped Mark on the shoulder. “I know you do your best work alone, without somebody telling you what to do. Happy hunting,” he said, and then left Mark alone in the room.
Mark played the recording again, this time with his eyes closed, listening intently for any whisper of sound before she spoke. “Please, please help me.” Melinda’s voice filled his brain, but there was nothing else to hear, no traffic noise, no singing of birds...nothing.
He tried to imagine himself as the victim. He’d been kidnapped, a blindfold over his eyes. He’d been shoved into a chair, a rope tight against his chest, hurting him, making it difficult to breathe. His wrists burned from the rope that tied them to the arms of the chair.
Terror. He felt the simmering, near screaming of terror inside him. He was a prisoner of people unknown, he had no idea why they had him or what they wanted from him. He listened in his head to her voice once again.
“Please, please help me.”
It wasn’t what was there that caught his attention, but rather what he didn’t hear in her plea: a lack of sheer terror in the way she spoke the words. She hadn’t pulled at the binding of her wrists to the chair as she’d spoken, and she hadn’t desperately strained against the rope across her chest. She hadn’t looked or sounded terrified.
Maybe she just wasn’t the dramatic type. Maybe she’d somehow managed to remain cool and calm despite her dire circumstances. He picked up the remote and clicked Play to watch the next video that they’d received from the kidnappers.
There were a total of four DVDs sent by the captor or captors. The worst one showed Melinda being beaten by a figure dressed all in black and wearing a ski mask.
Mark didn’t know how long he sat watching the videos again and again, trying to figure out the question that had yet to be answered. There had never been a ransom demand—there had never been a demand for anything. So, why kidnap and beat a woman, videotape the crime, send the videos to law enforcement and then simply release her? It didn’t make sense and things that didn’t make sense bothered Mark.
The consensus among the other agents was that it was probably a student prank that had somehow gotten a bit out of control. The fact that she was missing at the same time the murders had occurred was merely a weird coincidence.
Mark didn’t believe in coincidences, weird or otherwise. He still believed the gray-eyed woman had something to do with the murders, that the whole kidnapping thing had been orchestrated for show and nothing else.
He frowned as he realized his mistake. Melinda didn’t have gray eyes. Hers were green. Dora had gray eyes, and the whisper of sweet flowers clinging to her.
A glance at his watch let him know it was just after noon. He had no idea what Dora’s class schedule was like, but a desire to find her and talk to her rose up inside him. He knew that if her schedule at the bookstore was