He’d actually gotten to know them.
“He’s been inside this mall.” Dean started walking again, his gait quicker this time.
Mulrooney and Stokes matched his pace. “Probably even within the last few weeks,” Jackie said, “since he knew she’d be working Friday night.”
He’d followed Amber. Stalked her. He’d chosen her, made his plans, and then waited for the right moment, the right auction, to make her his next victim. He knew her schedule and her habits.
And he might very well be on a mall security tape from one of his previous visits.
“You think he believes he’s doing the world a favor by killing mean girls?” Mulrooney asked as they passed a cluster of giddy young shoppers.
“Lisa wasn’t a mean girl,” Jackie murmured. “She was a lost girl.”
A sad, abused lost girl whose father had died and whose mother might as well have, too, for all the care she took to protect her daughter.
“Right,” Mulrooney said. “She was pathetic. He was experimenting. Then on to the main events. The challenges: successful women, attractive women, family women.”
None of whom, apparently, had been nice women.
Reaching the mall office, they met up with the head of security, a guy named Baker, who’d been playing a game of cover-my-ass since the minute they’d arrived. With good reason.
He’d neglected to check out a surveillance camera covering the back of the mall, which had stopped working Friday around five. That camera might have revealed the unsub lurking near the Dumpsters, the loading dock, or the nearly hidden employees-only entrance of the store where Amber worked.
He’d left the video surveillance room unattended because of an alarm at one end of the mall, bringing his entire security team with him for what had turned out to be a broken glass door, shot through from a distance.
Finally, he hadn’t bothered to check out the car left overnight in the parking lot, despite all the other unusual activities in the mall that night. The asshole had decided some kids were playing pranks, shooting off a BB gun. Frigging moron. He deserved to be fired.
But for now, they needed his cooperation.
“How long do you keep the mall security tapes?” Dean asked the man the moment they strode into his office.
“They recycle every twenty-four hours.”
Damn.
Seeing Dean’s frustration, the man mumbled, “But there’s a backup. The files dump to a server that holds on to them for a week before automatically purging them.”
One week. Would the unsub have risked stalking his victim within a week of taking her?
Mulrooney had obviously had the same thought. Lowering his voice, he murmured, “The auction came up quicker than anybody expected.”
Meaning he might have moved up his schedule. Accelerating could have made him sloppy. Made him take risks. “And he knew she’d be working,” Dean muttered, figuring the store wouldn’t have made up the schedule more than two weeks in advance.
It was worth a shot.
“We need those backups,” he told the guard. “Right now.”
He showed up at her house late that night.
Stacey had just gone to bed when she heard a car pull into her driveway. Two possibilities immediately came to mind: Dean. Or the bastard who’d killed Lady. One had her wishing she’d worn something at least a little attractive to bed, rather than a long Redskins T-shirt and gym shorts. The other had her reaching for her nine-millimeter, which was right beside her, on her bedside table.
Grabbing it just in case, she shifted her bedroom window blinds to the side, trying to make out the vehicle. And she realized there was a third alternative.
“What are you doing here?” she asked her brother a minute later when she yanked open her front door.
Tim stared at her, surprised that she’d answered before he’d knocked, which told her he hadn’t been certain he was going to. Instead of answering her question, he mumbled, “You finally cut down those ugly bushes.”
“Come in,” she said, seeing a strange look in his eye, one she didn’t like. He’d worn that expression quite a lot in the first few months after he’d been released from the military. It was vacant. Haunted. Traumatized. “Please.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have come here.”
She took his arm, tugging him inside when it looked as though he might leave. At first worried he’d driven over here drunk, she grabbed his chin, studying his eyes, trying to smell anything on him.
He saw right through her. “I haven’t been drinking,” he muttered.
She believed him. Tim might have come home an angry stranger, but he had never tried to cover up his drinking. And he’d never been able to disguise his glassy-eyed, heavy-lidded reaction to too much alcohol. “Want some coffee?”
“It’s not too late?” he asked, following her into her small house.
“It’s not like I’ll sleep tonight, anyway.” Her head was too full for that. Full of Dean and what had happened the previous evening. Full of the case and questions about what was happening today.
She’d seen the news; it had only inspired more questions. The pictures of that pretty blond girl, however, would almost certainly inspire nightmares.
So, no, she wouldn’t be sleeping much tonight.
Not entirely trusting him not to leave if she let him out of her sight, she said, “Let’s go in the kitchen. I have junk food.”
A ghost of a laugh emerged from his mouth, though he made a visible effort not to smile. He’d had several surgeries, but the scar tissue on his face meant any attempt at a smile would result in only a lopsided sneer.
It broke her heart whenever she looked at him. His left profile was perfect, about as handsome as any man could possibly be. His right wasn’t.
She was the younger sibling, but was well used to being in charge. Taking his arm, she pulled him with her, then sat him down at her small table. Grabbing boxes of cookies and bags of chips, comfort food she generally tried to avoid but had really needed lately, she dumped them in front of him, then made coffee.
He twisted apart his cookie and ate the icing, just like he had when they were kids. Simple pleasures. How he must have missed them all those years.
“What’s going on?” she asked as she sat down across from him.
“I heard about the dog,” he said.
She waited, wondering how much he’d heard. She hoped her neighbors hadn’t gossiped all over town.
“Dad’s pretty broken up.”
She nodded, glad he didn’t know the rest. Tim might not be his old self, but her protective older brother still existed inside that scarred shell. He’d be just as furious and worried as their father if he knew the truth. “I know. Did he call you?”
“Yeah. I went out to see him this afternoon. Helped him plant some flowers on the grave. He wanted sunflowers; I guess Lady used to love to dig in them.”
Her heart twisted, and Stacey made a mental note to plead with her neighbors to keep the questions she’d asked today to themselves. “I’m glad you were there for him, Tim.”
Being needed by someone else was probably the best thing that could happen to her brother right now. It might keep him from dwelling too much on all the things that had gone wrong in his own life. “So,” she asked, “did you come here tonight to talk about Dad’s dog?”
He hesitated, then admitted, “I’m not doing so great.”
No kidding. She didn’t say it, hearing an unexpected vulnerability in his voice. “You didn’t get your job back.”
Shaking his head, he mumbled something, then cleared his throat and tried again. “No. And I won’t be getting it back.”
His defiant expression told her more than she wanted to know about Tim’s involvement with some missing cash at his employer’s used-car dealership. To think he could be reduced to stealing. It stunned her.