his plate in hand. He set the plate on the coffee table and sat beside me. Addison was on my other side, which was exactly where I needed her to be.
Jonah took a deep breath and scanned each of our sorrow-filled faces.
“Wayne Gilbert Black was a thirty-five-year-old sociopath. The building you were found in was where he lived. He was the building owner but mostly a slumlord. After his mother was killed when he was a child, he was in and out of foster homes. This is the reason the FBI thinks he snapped when he didn’t finish the job with you, Simone. He found out that you too had been a foster kid, living a happy life. We can’t know for sure, but it’s part of the theory.”
I nodded and clenched my teeth, breathing through my nose. Jonah’s warm hand surrounded mine and held it in both of his over his thigh.
“His mother was a well-known prostitute. According to the information we found in his apartment, he’d seen her killed and journaled about it incessantly. Apparently, she would regularly park her car down an alley out of sight in order to do business. She’d force Wayne to stand in a dark corner while she brought the clients to the backseat of her car. There she’d do the deed. None of this hidden from her child. Until one of her client’s kinks got out of hand. He strangled her during the act by accident. Or so he claimed when he turned himself in. Apparently, Wayne saw it happen. This is likely when he had his first psychotic break.”
Mami Kerri covered her mouth and closed her eyes.
“He was a deeply demented man, set on killing women in the same manner his mother died. We’ll learn more when we get his foster care details and any psych evals he had in the past,” Jonah continued.
“I don’t care about Wayne Black. What I want to know is how he got into my building,” Sonia groused.
Jonah winced and swallowed slowly.
That meant more bad information was forthcoming.
“He tased the security guard out back and then strangled him,” Jonah stated gently.
I wanted to cry. I really did. Another life lost due to this monster and I had no tears left to give. I was dried up. Empty inside.
“How the hell did Tabby get involved?” Sonia asked directly, arms crossed over her shoulders as though she were angry. She probably was. Sonia had a temper that often exploded if she was hurting.
I cleared my throat and then spoke up. “I’d called Tabby and left a message when Addison went missing. Begged her to come home. Told her none of us were safe, including her. She said she was fine but that she had eyes on the lookout.”
“Our team discovered from the video footage of Sonia’s building that Tabby had been hanging out across the street at the small cafe, watching the front door. Our best guess is that she saw a stranger headed around the back of the building and followed him because not long after we saw the masked man, we saw Tabitha sliding along the outskirts. We got an anonymous lead that a strange man had entered the back of the building and a guard was knocked out. That was the last call I got when I was on the balcony. The timing was a perfect storm.” He rubbed at the back of his neck.
“She must have seen Simone taken and followed them, because when the video shows Simone being carried unconscious, over the shoulder of the man we know now was Wayne Black, we could see a skinny woman all in black running down the long alley and disappearing. Two hours after Simone was taken, we got another call. I spoke to Tabitha,” he said, his voice cracking.
My nose tingled and I shoved my body to his side, cuddling against his chest. He wrapped an arm around my back and took a breath.
“The operator was told if we got another anonymous call to direct it to me, but this time Tabitha asked for me by name. She was either following the case in the media and saw pictures of me and Simone or heard my name when she showed up at Tracks that night. Whatever the case may be, she called and gave me the location of where they took you.”
“Jesus, that girl.” Blessing shook her head as a wave of sadness flashed across her face.