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Faith lifted her hand to quiet him, then asked, “And two nights ago?”
“I was at the gym. Margot was there, and she looks just like the famous girl with the same name. I found a hole in the girls’ locker room and managed to get a camera through into the showers.”
“You realize that’s classified as sexual assault, right?” Michael said. “You’re going to have to register and tell every neighbor you ever have that you’re an offender.”
“But I’m not a murderer. I won’t spend the rest of my life in prison.”
“Good point,” Faith admitted. “These videos are time stamped?”
“Yes! And you can’t edit the timestamps.”
“You can, but cybercrimes will be able to tell when the video was actually created,” Faith said. “Okay, we’ll follow up.”
They left the room and rejoined Hilary to find him looking through the footage they’d recovered. He lifted a grim fact to the three of them and began to turn his laptop around.
“I don’t need to see the videos,” Faith said. “Just tell me if his alibi checks out.”
“It checks out,” Hilary said.
She sighed. “Shit.”
“We’ll get a creep off the streets, at least,” Hilary said.
“And guys like that escalate,” Michael pointed out. “He’s a ticking time bomb who we just defused.”
“That might be true,” Faith allowed, “but we have an active missile out there zooming in on its next target. I’d much rather we stopped him.”
“We’ll get him, Faith,” Michael promised. “We always do.”
“I know we’ll get him,” she said. “But will we get him before he sprinkles yellow powder over another woman’s dead body?”
Michael didn’t have an answer to that.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lorraine Hayes closed the library door and took a deep breath. The cool, lake-scented air filled her nostrils and relaxed the knots in her shoulders. She smiled. She loved it here. Chicago was the best damned city on Earth no matter what her sister in New York said.
She headed around the building toward the small walkway that led from the library to the Chicago River. She could hear her sister scolding her for walking home alone at night in a big city, but the path was well-lit, and the river might as well have been a highway. In fact, most of it was more canal than river.
But it was still beautiful, and even though the lights were artificial and most of the path was paved with concrete, she still felt immersed in nature.
She giggled at herself for that. Immersed in nature. Because a body of water happened to be a few feet away from her. In the middle of the third-largest city in America. In full view of the skyline.
Well, whatever. She was a city girl. If she wanted to live in the boondocks, she could move to Wyoming or something.
She giggled again, then smiled dreamily as she imagined a buff bronzed cowboy pulling her behind him onto his horse and carrying her off to some cabin in the wilderness where he could have his way with her as much as he wanted.
She sighed. Maybe one day, she'd meet a man who would sweep her off her feet. Probably not a cowboy, though. That was a fantasy that she admitted was probably not as cool in real life as it was in her dreams. Horses smelled, and she really liked internet and supermarkets, so living off the grid or in some rural town with a Wal-Mart thirty minutes away where everyone did their shopping wasn't her idea of a good time.
Maybe she’d meet some cute grad student or researcher at the library. Hell, she wasn’t picky. She’d settle for a handsome teacher taking his elementary school kids to the library for one of their story days.
She could hear Frankie lecturing her again, trying to tell her that a strong woman didn’t need a man to fulfill her.
“Well, that’s all well and good, Frankie, but sometimes I like to have sex.”
She said that much louder than she intended to. She looked around, red-faced. Fortunately, no one was around to hear her. While rarely empty, this particular path was seldom-traveled, since it was on the less crowded side of the river.
She chuckled and shook her head. Confident that she was alone, she said, “Well, it’s true.”
