Page 15 of Secrets Beneath the Waves

Zeyla said, “You aren’t going to ask me where I got it?”

“If I needed to know, I figured you would tell me.” Maizie paused. “Okay, now that that’s running, I’ll grab you… Amanda Burton. Twenty-three, a student at one of the local community colleges. Her major is listed as communication. She lived on campus with a very distraught roommate who remembers to perfect her makeup before she goes live on social media to cry about how sad she is that Amanda is missing.”

Ramon asked, “How did it happen?”

“According to this news article, she was walking home from a fraternity party just after two in the morning. Her roommate had hooked up with someone, but she went home alone. Amanda’s phone was found with her purse, tossed into a bush, and one of her shoes was discarded nearby. The police believed that someone grabbed her and shoved her in a car. There were no witnesses or footage. Just a couple of tire burnout marks on the road where someone sped away.”

Ramon winced. “I hate to ask, but is she the only one, or is this a spree of kidnappings?”

“That’s the problem. The investigating detectives found a boyfriend who also packed up and left on the same night, so they believed she might have left with him and gone out of town tostart over. They weren’t even sure that anything nefarious had happened to her.”

Zeyla set her laptop aside and got up to pace the floor. “Given that we found her hand severed from her body, I’m guessing they know now that this has nefarious written all over it.”

“It will give them leads to be working.” Ramon hoped that whatever was under the girl’s fingernails turned out to be helpful. Or something else that Pioneer Forensics managed to discover.

Maizie said, “I’ll check into cases of other missing women that might be connected to this. Give me a second.”

Ramon glanced at Zeyla, trying to get a read on her emotional state. She had lost someone tonight. Maybe not a friend, but absolutely someone she considered part of her life. He wasn’t going to go so far as to say definitively that she would break down at some point and be overwhelmed by grief. Everyone processed emotion in their own individual way, and he didn’t know her well enough to know how she would contend with the loss. But the fact was she couldn’t ignore it forever, even if she focused on every case so hard she could pretend it never happened. That was a fast track to bigger problems.

“You good?” He studied her as she turned to face him.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, a friend of yours just died. Anyone would be thrown by finding someone they cared about like that.”

“Who says I cared about him?”

Ramon lifted one brow. “He was a human being who didn’t deserve to die like that.”

“And if Maizie can get into the flash drive, then we can make sure it wasn’t worth nothing.” A tiny note of tension rang in her tone.

Was it because Milo Hargrove’s death meant that Zeyla was now also in danger? That the man who had killed her friendmight now be coming after her again? But this might not be about the case.

If only Ramon could pack her up and force her into some sort of safe house, but there was no way. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would roll over and allow him to put her under protection without kicking and screaming about it. She never backed down. He’d known that the first time he saw her.

“Okay,” Maizie said. “I have a few missing person reports here that match the profile. Women who were snatched late at night and in a way where no one else saw it happen.”

“Any connection between them?” Ramon asked. “Or any other reason to suspect that they were taken by the same people?”

“Orperson.” Zeyla’s brows rose.

He needed to know more about this Count of Shadows and how she had found out about him. Not to mention why she needed to find him so badly. If he was the person behind these disappearances, then that was fine. But Ramon couldn’t help wondering if Zeyla fit some kind of profile that meant she would be next.

Yet, that wouldn’t be the case if Dominatus was behind both the kidnappings and the hit on Zeyla. It wouldn’t make sense. He never would have thought he’d be thankful for a sniper who was also a blast from the past. Except when it meant she wasn’t going to be a target of the kidnappers—just Miguel.

“In the past,” Maizie said, “Dominatustypically took women who were intelligent and fit a certain athletic profile. We know they used them for their breeding program, creating genetically superior people that were the children of their senior members. That last part is more of a presumption than a fact we can prove. However, these women don’t fit that profile. Amanda might have been a student, but she was average at best and never did any sports. Two of them were taken from behind a strip jointwhere they were employees, and they were also roommates. The fourth worked at a gas station ever since she graduated high school and had serious credit card debt.”

“Okay, so they aren’t running the same breeding program here in Spokane,” Ramon said. “What about other similarities between them?”

“Yeah, you’re going to have to see this in order to believe it.” Maizie paused. “Take a look at the screen on Zeyla’s computer.”

Ramon got up and moved to the dresser. Zeyla turned the laptop around, and he started. The four women all had similar coloring and facial structure.

Zeyla said, “He has a type. And thankfully, I don’t look like them.” She shivered, standing beside him.

Ramon was careful not to brush her arm when he shifted, moving away from her a little instead. Just to give her some space. “He goes after women who all look the same?”

“I’ll check missing person databases and open law enforcement cases for any more women who look like this that have gone missing,” Maizie said.