“Thankfully. As you know, most killers don’t warn their victims first. The Salt River Strangler’s protégé likes to mess with his victims. He’s a narcissist. He gets some of his jollies by causing fear before he strikes. But this is . . . nothing. I don’t think this is someone who really intends to hurt us. Why would he warn us first? Unless he thinks we’re wimps and we’re going to back off because of something like this.”
“Then he doesn’t know us very well, does he?”
“No, he doesn’t,” Tony said.
River stood up. “The thing that bothers me is that he obviously followed Nathan and took a picture. That shows some commitment.”
“True.” Tony was quiet for a moment before meeting her gaze. “I’m not sure what to think. Why was he following Nathan? And why warn us?”
“Good questions. I don’t know the answers.” She sighed. “Let’s get going.”
She grabbed her purse and coat and waited for Tony to join her. Once he shrugged on his coat, they walked out of the office and locked the door behind them.
When they got downstairs and stepped out of the building, the cold January air hit them like a punch in the face. River pulled up her coat collar and put her head down. The wind fought against them as they made their way to the car.
Their trip to the office supply company yielded nothing. No one saw anything, and as Dustin had said, there weren’t any cameras outside the store.
Next, they went by the police station to drop off Nathan’s letter and the photo they’d received. For once, Tony didn’t kick up a fuss about River waiting in the car for him. No one was dumb enough to come after her in the department’s parking lot. She watched Tony walk to the door. Once he got inside, she took out her phone and pulled up April’s Facebook pages. Tony had seen them, but she wanted to look at them herself. She’d been going through them for several minutes when the driver’s side door opened, causing her to jump.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” Tony said as he got into the car.
“You’re fine. I was concentrating.”
“I realize that takes a lot out of you,” Tony said with a grin.
“You’re a laugh a minute. What did Arnie say?”
“He was in a meeting. I left the envelope with a brief message and said I’d explain about it later.”
As Tony drove out of the parking lot, River sent up a silent prayer for help. For some reason she felt a sense of urgency. If, by some miracle, April was still alive, and if the person who had her knew that Nathan had come to them for help, it could mean that keeping April alive was becoming too risky for them.
CHAPTER
NINE
After checking in with the guard positioned at the gate to Nathan’s complex, they finally located Nathan’s unit.
“There it is,” River said suddenly, pointing toward a row of numbered residences. It was a nice complex with attractive townhomes.
Tony pulled up in front of Nathan’s place, then he looked around. “Pretty fancy,” he said. “Guess he was telling the truth about having money.”
“At least if we take this case, we should get paid.”
“Well, my dad did send us a nice check,” Tony said.
“Which we returned. We can’t accept money from your father. We helped him because he’s family.”
“You know I feel the same way, but he wasn’t too happy about it.” Tony laughed. “You watch. He’ll find some way to give the money back to us. He’s pretty sneaky.”
“Well, we’re pretty cagey ourselves.”
“Yes, we are. Hopefully, we’re cagey enough to find out what happened to April Bailey.”
River sighed.
Tony frowned at her. “You think this case is a dead end?”
“Interesting choice of words,” she said. “I just hate thinking that if we find April, it will be too late. Nathan will be devastated.”
Tony had been thinking the same thing. Nathan seemed to really care about April. Confirming that she was dead would be incredibly difficult. That was part of the job they’d never had to deal with when working at the BAU. However, the photo with the warning scribbled at the bottom of the paper irritated him. Even before going through April’s things, he’d already decided he wanted to follow this through to the end. No matter what.
“Let’s see what we can find out from her stuff,” Tony said. He smiled at her. “I know we’re both leaning toward taking this case. I just think we need to be sure.”
“Are we going to tell him about the picture?”
“I believe we have to,” Tony said. “The threat was leveled at us, but the picture is of him. I don’t want to make him paranoid, but this person knows about April. Now, they seem to be focused on Nathan. They must be following him for some reason.”
“If he’d been warned to drop it, he would have told us, I guess.”
Tony nodded. “I think so.” He shook his head. “I have a feeling about this case . . .”
“I’m glad you said that. I feel the same way. As if we’re looking at the surface, but there’s a lot more going on that we can’t see.”
Tony had been a Christian long enough to know that listening to those odd feelings was important. Besides that, their training had kicked in more than once, making them look more closely at something that might otherwise have seemed inconsequential. He just prayed that his concern for River wasn’t messing with his ability to see what was important when it came to Nathan’s case.
“Maybe after reading April’s notes and seeing what’s on her laptop we’ll be able to figure out what’s really going on here,” he said.
“If she’s not alive, why would someone send Nathan that note? And make sure we saw the photo?”
