All the Beautiful Brides (21 page)

“Tell them to stop saying what?”

“That I’m sick,” he said. “All I want is someone to love me, to have a family. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

Keep him talking
. “We all start out with a family,” Mona said, improvising. “What happened to yours?”

A sound like a cry echoed over the line. Then he cleared his throat. “My mama’s sick. I wanted to give her grandbabies before she died.”

Mona’s pulse clamored. Yonkers had made a similar comment.

“Is there something I can do to help your mother?” Mona asked. “Does she need medical care?”

Another sob. “I take care of her,” he said. “But I don’t want to talk about her.”

Yonkers had said he took care of his mother, too.

Was Will Candy’s brother?

Did he already have his next victim picked out?

“Then what do you want to talk about? The women who let you down?”

A tense moment. “It’s your fault the girls had to die.”

She started to respond, but the line went dead. His last words disturbed her.

Tears of helplessness, anger, and fear blurred her vision, and Mona decided she’d taken all the calls she could for the day. She motioned to Chance that she had to end the show.

She wanted to go home and forget the horror in the town.

“Are you all right?” Chance asked as she grabbed her coat and gloves.

“Yes.” Her voice cracked on the word, and she dashed out the door. She’d call Cal as soon as she got in the car.

Maybe he could trace the call back to Yonkers, and if he was the killer, he could pick him up before he hurt anyone else.

Fresh snowflakes blinded her, and she pressed the keypad to unlock her car as she neared it. The lights flickered on, but a noise behind her startled her, and she jerked her head around.

A shadow jumped her from behind. She struggled, but she inhaled the strong scent of chemicals, her eyes blurred, and the world spun into darkness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Cal scanned the parking lot near Carol’s car for evidence of an attack. He found a silver loop earring on the pavement by her door. She must have lost it when the killer abducted her.

He checked the car door, but it was locked, so he pulled a tool from the Jeep and used it to open the door. Inside, the car was fairly clean. A leather jacket lay on the backseat, and a stack of blank notepads was jammed in a plastic bin. He found a folder and removed it, then thumbed through the contents.

Several articles about the Thorn Ripper.

He popped the trunk. Inside lay a pair of snow boots and another coat, then Carol’s laptop.

Adrenaline pumped through him.

He checked the time as he hurried back to the Jeep. Mona’s show would be over by now. Worry for her made him reach for the phone.

He punched her cell number, but the phone rang and rang. He tried her home number and the voice mail kicked in. Nerves on edge, he called the radio station.

No answer there either.

Dammit. Where was she?

His phone buzzed, and he checked the ID, praying it was Mona. Deputy Kimball instead. “Yeah?”

“I found that white van that ran you and Ms. Monroe off the road.”

“Where is it?”

“It went over the side of the mountain. A sightseer spotted it when he and his wife stopped at the overhang to look at the view.”

Shit. “Get a crew there to go down and examine it. Let me know what they find. I need the name of the owner.”

“I’m on it.” The line clicked to silence just as a text dinged from Agent Hamrick.

Yonkers visited graveyard where his sister is buried. I’m on his tail.

Maybe he’d make a mistake and they’d catch him doing something incriminating.

Cal punched Peyton’s number. “Find everything you can on Carol Little. I have her laptop and need her password.”

“Copy that.” Peyton ended the call, and Cal decided to check the radio station for Mona.

Mona twisted and turned in the darkness, terrified when she realized she was in a trunk. Her head throbbed from whatever her abductor had used to knock her out and her mouth felt like cotton. She racked her brain to remember what had happened—one minute she’d been talking to that disturbing caller and he’d blamed her for the young women’s deaths, then she’d hurried to her car and someone had attacked her.

Could it have been Will? Had he phoned from the parking lot at the station? He might have been waiting for her to leave and she’d been in such a hurry and so upset that she hadn’t paid attention to her surroundings.

Her stomach roiled as the vehicle jerked to the right and screeched to a stop. She twisted her hands, trying to untie them, but they were bound too tightly. So were her feet. And he’d gagged her mouth.

Terror shot through her as the trunk opened.

The counseling session with Mona confused Sylvia. She wasn’t what she’d expected. Not a slutty woman who’d tricked Brent into marriage. Instead, she’d seemed . . . kind. Sympathetic. She’d certainly understood her grief and seemed like she genuinely cared about her.

Although her brother didn’t believe it.

She was trembling after talking to him. Dear God, he sounded mad . . . as if he’d lost all touch with reality.

He’d always been protective of her.

And he loved her baby and hated that she was raising him alone.

But she’d never thought he would do anything about it . . .

Although their phone conversation scared her. He’d talked about Mona as if he might hurt her.

She tried phoning him again, but he didn’t answer. “Please call me back. We need to talk.” Her heart tripped overtime as she drove to his cabin in the mountains.

She buttoned her coat, threw her scarf around her neck, climbed out, and slogged through the slush to the porch. Debris from the trees pelted her as the wind shook it down. She knocked and called her brother’s name, but no answer.

Was her mother here? She didn’t want to see her.

But she had to talk to her brother.

Heart pounding, she eased open the door. A fire burned low in the fireplace, but the den was empty. She tiptoed across the den and looked inside her brother’s room.

He wasn’t there.

Her breath caught at the sight of his desk. Articles about the recent murders in Graveyard Falls covered it, along with photographs of each of the victims. A picture of the reporter Carol Little and the article she’d written about the Bride Killer was also there.

The other pictures disturbed her even more . . . candid shots of Mona at her home, at the radio station, at her office . . . one of Mona wearing a wedding dress that he must have used some computer program to create.

Sylvia grabbed the edge of the desk to keep from collapsing in horror.

Cal screeched up to the radio station, frantic to find Mona and make sure she was safe. Her car was in the parking lot. A good sign.

But there were no other cars around.

Praying she was still inside, he jogged up to the station but it was locked.

Heart racing, he pounded on the door and yelled Mona’s name. “Mona, if you’re in there, open up!”

Nothing.

Stomach knotting, he ran to the windows and peered inside. No lights. Nothing moving. No one inside.

But her car was still here . . .

He ran over to it and looked in the interior. It was locked. He shined his flashlight through the window and saw nothing amiss. No phone or purse.

So where the hell was she?

Fear clogged his throat, and he sprinted back to his Jeep, hightailed it from the parking lot, and sped toward Mona’s house. Maybe she’d had car trouble and Chance had given her a ride home.

Five minutes later, he barreled down her street, his tires churning on the ice. As soon as he cut the engine, he ran to the front door and banged on it. The lights were off, too, and when he looked in the windows, he didn’t see anyone inside.

His phone buzzed, and he yanked it from his pocket. He didn’t recognize the number, but he’d asked the police station to direct important calls about the case to his cell. “Agent Coulter.”

“Agent Coulter, my name is Sylvia Wales. I . . . I might know who the Bride Killer is. I think he took Mona Monroe.”

Sylvia Wales—that was the name of the woman whose prints they’d found at Mona’s.

Cal closed his eyes, battling terror. “Who is he and where would he take her?”

“He’s my brother,” Sylvia said, her voice cracking. “I’m at his cabin and I found pictures of the dead girls and that reporter. And of Mona Monroe.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Mona still couldn’t believe her eyes. Chance, the man who’d coaxed her into doing his radio show on relationships, had abducted her.

Her thoughts raced as he dragged her from the trunk. She glanced around with a sick feeling. They were in the woods near the falls.

“Why are you doing this?” Mona cried as he ripped the gag from her mouth.

“Just shut up and put on the dress.”

Cold terror bled through Mona. The wedding dress . . . he was going to kill her just like he had the others.

Chance was the Bride Killer.

He yanked at her clothes, but Mona shook her head. “Don’t touch me.”

He shoved her backward. “Either you do it or I will.”

Tears of rage burned the backs of her eyelids, but Mona blinked them back. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

He loosened the ropes around her wrists and tossed the gown at her. She glared at him, reminding herself to stall, that Cal needed time to find her.

But a hopelessness welled inside her, threatening her with panic. Cal might not even know she was missing . . .

Chance reached for her, but Mona shoved his hands away. “I’ll do it, you sick bastard.” She pulled her sweater over her head and tossed it to the ground. Desperate to keep him from touching her, she forced her head through the neckline of the dress. The lace felt scratchy, the thick bodice crinkling and wadding up around her as she tried to tug off her jeans and straighten it.

“Why are you doing this? I thought you were my friend.”

“Friend?” His eyes flared with rage, his voice shrill and sinister. She’d thought Chance was a free spirit. She’d never imagined he had this dark side to him.

“You came into town and thought you knew everything about marriage. You had it all, didn’t you? But you’re a liar and you hurt people. You know nothing about love.”

Mona’s heart pounded as confusion swirled in her brain. “I’m not a liar,” she said. “I believe the things I tell people. I try to help—”

“Help?” He yanked her arm and dragged her deeper into the woods. “You destroy families, that’s what you do.”

“Then why’d you give me the show?”

“So I could get close to you, watch you, hear what you had to say.”

Tree branches slapped her face, the limbs clawing at her as he hauled her toward the falls.

Dear God, he was going to kill her. And she’d never get to tell Cal that she loved him.