AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Amber felt sickthen, and guilty. She’d failed. She’d tried to save the man hanging there, andshe’d failed.
“Come on,” Simonsaid, “we have to get him down.”
He was alreadyover there, wrestling with the winch mechanism, trying to get it to let itsvictim go. Francesca stepped forward to help him, while Amber watched from adistance.
The victim tumbledto the ground and Amber rushed forward then, some part of her still hoping thatshe might be able to help, to give this man CPR until an ambulance got there.
The moment shetouched him, she knew it was too late.Theywere too late. They weren’ttrying to save a still living victim; this was a corpse.
A still warmcorpse. That was crueler than any of it. They were only minutes too late. Therealization hit her like a ton of bricks, and Amber’s stomach churned withanger and disgust. Somewhere in trying to solve the puzzle, she’d taken toolong, made one too many guesses, and now… now another victim was dead.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Amber was stilltrying to make sense of what had happened.
She blinked thetiredness from her eyes as the first rays of morning sunlight crept through theprecinct’s windows. Sleep had eluded her. Had she really been awake all nightthere?
She had, as hadSimon and Francesca, trying to make some kind of sense out of what had happenedlast night. Even now, Amber could barely believe it. She’dsolvedthepuzzle. She’d done exactly what the killer required. That should have beenenough. It should have allowed them to save Dave Muldeer’s life.
Dave Muldeer—they knewthat was the victim’s name now. They knew all about him at this point. Amberwasn’t sure if knowing that made things better or worse for her.
She sat back inher chair, feeling the weight of exhaustion and failure bearing down upon her.They had found nothing at the scene of the crime—no clues, no evidence, nothingthat could lead them to the killer. Amber had a sinking feeling that they wereup against someone who knew how to cover their tracks.
She ran her handsover her face and tried to shake off the sense of defeat that was creeping upon her. She couldn’t afford to give in to despair now, even though itthreatened to overwhelm her, not when there was still a killer out there.
“We’ll catch him,”Simon said, bringing over coffee and setting it down on the desk Amber wasworking at. “We have to.”
Amber took thecoffee gratefully, knowing that her brain needed all the help it could getright then. She had to be working at maximum efficiency if she was… what? Goingto solve another puzzle? She’d had her chance, and she hadn’t solvedthisonein time.
“It isn’t yourfault,” Simon said, obviously guessing the way Amber was feeling.
“I took a break,Simon,” Amber said. “I walked out of there. It was stupid and indulgent. Howlong was I gone? Two minutes? Three? If I’d made the connection right away,Dave Muldeer might still be alive.”
“And if you’dstayed in the office, staring at a screen, would you have made that connectionas quickly as you did?” Simon asked.
Amber almost saidyes automatically, but the truth was that she didn’t know. She would never know,and she would have to live with not knowing. She’d tried to clear her head andnow, Dave Muldeer was gone. Dead. It was a sickening feeling, one that madeAmber question her own abilities as both a puzzle solver and an FBI agent.
“I imagine thedetective doesn’t like me very much right now,” Amber said.
Simon lookedgenuinely puzzled. “Francesca? Why would you think that?”
“Because I failed,”Amber said. “Because I stepped out when she didn’t want me to and a man died.”
Simon didsomething Amber didn’t expect then. He waved Francesca over. “Francesca, do youhave any problem working with Agent Young after what happened last night?”
Amber saw thedetective frown at that.
“No, why would I?We’re all trying to catch the same bad guy.”
“But I failed,”Amber said. “If I’d been quicker—”
“Emily Chen wascold by the time I found her,” Francesca said. “By the time my team passed thelocation on to me, she was long dead. You got us here faster than we could havemanaged without you. We nearly got there in time.”
“Nearly,” Ambersaid, in a bitter tone. Nearly didn’t count.
“But it’s not yourfault,” Francesca said. “We’re all working together on this, and we’ll catchthe killer. We just need to keep pushing and keep looking for leads.”
Amber nodded,feeling a glimmer of hope start to rise within her. Francesca was right; shedidn’t have any time for this kind of self-pity. They had to keep pushing, keeplooking for any clues or leads that might lead them to the killer. Giving upnow wasn’t an option. She needed to focus.
