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Owen perched next to him with AirPods stuck in each ear and maps laid out, his laptop in front of him. Asa, at the head of the table, perused the list of girls gone missing in the past year.
Out of the eight women, only two had been found—Amy-Rose and Lily Hayes. Would he kill all the women and position them at lighthouses? Did he have all the missing women?
Violet sat at the opposite end of the table with her laptop open and a bottle of sparkling water. At least once, he wanted to see her drink something sugary or bad for her, prove she was human. She must have noticed him staring. “What?” she said, dry but sharp.
“Who do you think is doing this? An evolved Fire & Ice Killer or someone formerly involved in the Family of Glory?” he asked. “It can’t be Garrick.” His research late last night proved Garrick still belonged in the Family. His photo was on the Granger Construction and Real Estate website as CFO. He’d seen photos of him and his father at ribbon cuttings, shaking hands with the mayor. They had members at every social and financial level. But the events occurred over a year ago, and they may have simply not updated the website. Could he have left within the past year? Possibly. The earliest missing woman was a little over a year ago.
“Why not? If he travels often, he has time. Maybe they did a real estate development in Virginia, and he went silent because it was finished,” Violet offered. “But anyone could have hinted at being the Fire & Ice Killer. Like Asa said, the note didn’t offer specifics that weren’t public knowledge.”
“Let’s work on what we do know,” Asa said. “Four women went missing from Blue Harbor within the past year, even though Amy-Rose lived in Roanoke. Lily Hayes five months ago, and Amy-Rose six months ago. Susan Mayer went missing eight months ago. And Ahnah was reported missing last week.”
Ty nodded.
“Dahlia Anderson went missing a year ago last week, and she’s never been found. Why not kill these women? Why kill the ones who had been taken more recently?”
“Did too much work to let them go,” Owen offered. “He’d want to keep and savor it.”
Asa tipped his head to the right in thought. “Maybe. But we also have Ivy Leech, who went missing three months ago from Hatteras. She’d have the least tattoos. Why not kill her? And Iris Benington—the nurse from Nags Head—went missing ten months ago.”
Violet tapped her ink pen and went deathly still. “Amy-Rose and Lily Hayes are the only ones we know of at this point with a connection to Ahnah Hemmingway, who directly connects with Tiberius.”
“This isn’t the Kevin Bacon game, Violet,” Ty said, but she was right.
“No, but it’s a game to him. He’s having fun with this. Bringing you here. Those were the words he used. Keeping you here. Making you suffer. Those are God-complex buzz words. He’s sovereign over you.”
“Let me tell you right now. No one is sovereign over me. This UNSUB isn’t controlling me. He’s delusional if he thinks so. I’m going to find him. Then we’ll see who’s ranting about suffering.” Unfortunately, time was thin with an impending hurricane.
Asa grabbed his empty coffee cup. “I’m leaning toward cult ties. You mentioned serious rules about premarital sex, but they called it deflowering—”
Owen cringed. “I hate that term so much.”
“Me too!” Selah’s voice registered from Asa’s laptop. “Ew.”
Violet tapped a manicured nail on the table. “No signs of sexual assault in the autopsy reports, but I wonder if they’re consensually sleeping with him prior to the abduction. If he’s testing them in some form to see if they’ll...you know...give up the bloom.”
“Ew, Violet,” Selah screeched. “Like, that’s so nasty.”
“Grow up, Selah,” she said calmly and quietly. “We have to think like killers, and it’s never not nasty. Now, back to what I was saying. If it’s a test and they flunk, then maybe tattooing the flowers is his way of purifying them of—”
“Do not say that word,” Owen said.
Violet sighed. “Can we be adults here and talk about this? This is his twisted tale, and we have no choice but to climb inside for the ride. If you’re not willing to hear or use the terminology, then you can’t be objective in discovering who he is at heart.”
Violet was right. The terminology didn’t affect Ty adversely, but he’d grown up with that exact word. Deflowering. “He’s choosing flowers. Vi is on to something. He sees sex outside of marriage as a sin, one that someone can be purified from. But he’s having sex too, so why is he not sinning?”
“He’s a god in this scenario and a god gets to do what a god wants to do. He’s the tester. The purifier,” Violet said. “He’s supreme and doesn’t have to adhere to their rules.”
“This guy is one of the absolute worst we’ve dealt with as far as his ideas and twisted religious beliefs,” Owen said.
Ty agreed. He was pretty sick in the head. “Why has he only killed two women? Not that I’m complaining.”
“One kill won’t bring us. It takes two to four kills for us to catch his scent. He has a plan. That’s undeniable. We need to figure it out before it goes another step.” Violet closed her laptop. “I’m going to call the assisted living center in Wilmington and talk to the grandma of Ethan Lantrip, aka Skipper.”
“I’ve been going through the missing women’s social media accounts,” Selah said. “I’m trying to see if I can connect them other than through flower names. Friends of friends, preferably a man who is friends with all of them. It’s a good place to start. So far two of them were at the same Morgan Wallen concert in Charlotte. Nothing else connects other than they all work jobs that require name tags. I think that’s interesting. Easy to spot and notice. Retail and food industry leads the charge, except for Dahlia Anderson, who went missing a year ago. She worked for a travel agency in Nags Head.”
Asa perked up. “Shopping and eating, easy. But travel agency? You go in there with an intent, same as a hospital, unless he saw Iris Benington wearing her badge on a break, eating at restaurant or café. If he’s noticing name tags, we need to see a client list from the travel agency going back fifteen to eighteen months. Not only her clients, but all clients.”
“I’ll call now,” Selah said. “Going to mute myself.”
