Page 96 of Saving Grace

“It’s him. Why can’t you just establish that as a fact?” Matt growled.

“Listen, Foster,” Briggs said. “You guys keep all the shit that’s happening in your town to yourselves and then shit explodes and the sheriff’s department catches the flak. We’re doing this by the book, and we’re starting from scratch because we know nothing about The Reaper, and there ain’t no file on him in our office.”

“Trent should have one. He was at the hospital after Grace was first attacked by The Reaper,” Cassie chirped.

Briggs sighed. “It’s probably one he hasn’t entered as a department case file. To be honest, what’s happening with The Reaper right now appears bigger than a county problem. The reason the sheriff probably kept it off radar was because he didn’t want the Feds taking an interest in it and taking the case away from him, especially with many of our own people involved.”

“Then maybe you should call your investigators off and set us loose,” Matt suggested.

“I’d rather that be the sheriff’s call.”

“We’re wasting time worrying about jurisdiction,” Millie said. “We need people doing the footwork finding out what the neighbors have seen.”

“I agree,” Matt concurred. He couldn’t wait to go a’hunting.

The Reaper had just become the hunted.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Grace

The seconds turned to minutes, and the minutes turned to hours. I eventually lost track of how long I’d been in that room. The man who took me from Cristiano didn’t remove my hood or my bindings. He carried me from the car like a bride. His voice sounded different from my memory of The Reaper, and I wondered if there was a third player who was after me. There was something eerily familiar about him, but I was too scared to find out. Because if he was indeed The Reaper, life as I had known it was finished. El Segador had an extremely high success rate with his kills. Only two percent had gotten away, and they’d been horribly maimed.

As if my thoughts conjured the horror in my mind, a man’s scream broke the silence. It made my skin crawl like a thousand tiny ants had sprouted from the mattress I’d been laying on. The scratchy hood was suffocating, and my unseeing eyes were driving me crazy. That was my new abductor’s goal—sensory torture. There was another howl of pain and then I heard another man speak. His voice was low and muffled.

As the minutes passed, cold sweat trickled down my brow and I wanted to sob, but I was afraid to make a sound. I also needed to pee so bad. I thought I may be able to give the man who was being tortured some respite and stop the chilling screams.

“Some help here!” I shouted. I should’ve been shot for my stupid martyr behavior. “I need to use the bathroom!”

Silence.

Then a door opened and closed somewhere down a hallway and I heard footsteps as they approached. The door to my room opened, creaking creepily just like in the horror movies. I turned to the direction of the sound and felt eyes staring at me.

“I need to pee,” I whispered.

A low chuckle echoed in the room as the foot falls moved closer. I felt a dip in the mattress, warmth touched the side of my thighs and it took all of my willpower not to flinch. It took a bigger effort not to tremble when a hand landed on my hip to caress it like it had the right to do so. “My poor angel, I’ve been neglecting you.”

Please neglect me all you want, I really just need to pee, I thought.

“I need to use the bathroom,” I requested in a meek voice. “Can you remove the hood? I want to see you.”

His hesitation was palpable. He had lifted the hood from me in the car to flash a light on me, probably to make sure it was me, but he had hooded me again, and I was left in darkness after that.

He left the bed and some light passed through the spaces of the weave of my head cover. I held my breath as fingers slowly lifted my hood away. My eyes blinked, adjusting to the flood of light, and then focused on the face before me.

A man with dark hair and eyes I would never forget stood before me. If he was indeed obsessed with me, I hoped I could use it to my advantage.

“It’s you,” I said softly.

I was surprised to see an extremely attractive man with strong angular features, a patrician nose, and firm lips. He was lean and didn’t appear very tall. He smiled, his perfect teeth gleaming against his tanned skin.

“Of course, it’s me, Grace. I said I was coming back for you.”

“You sound different.”

“They always assume a Mexican cartel’s assassin is Mexican.”

“Misdirection.”