Scream for Me Read Free

Captain Anniston turned and pointed north. “Her house is that way. She must’ve started walking and some SOB picked her up. Took her.”
    Cadence glanced down at the road.
    “Lily probably thought she could make it home. Just a few more miles, and she would have been safe.” Anger rumbled beneath the captain’s words.
    Cadence walked to the edge of the road. The shoulder was covered by loose dirt. She glanced to the north, then back to the south before focusing on the captain. “No rain has come through here?”
    Anniston shook his head. “Due for some later, but it’s been dry here for the last week.”
    There were no signs of footprints, but Lily might have just stuck to walking on the road itself. Then there would have been no prints left behind.
    Cadence headed around the car to take a look herself. She stopped at the gas tank. Frowned. There were scratches around the tank. As if someone had pried the lid open.
    “You said the car ran out of gas?” She thought of how Lily must have felt as her car sputtered and coasted on this dark road.
    Scared. So scared .
    “The tank was empty. I checked around the vehicle, trying to figure out why it had stopped. The battery was fine. Engine, oil…everything else was fine. It was the tank that was desert dry.”
    “You said her purse was found in the car.” Kyle turned away from the vehicle. His broad shoulders were tense. “If she was walking, don’t you think she would have taken that with her?”
    The captain didn’t reply.
    Kyle cocked his head as he studied the captain. “What about her keys? Where were they?”
    “Still in the ignition.”
    Hell. Along with the purse, this put a different spin on things. Cadence put her hands on her hips. “She didn’t start walking anywhere, Captain.”
    “But—”
    “If she’d walked, she would have taken her purse. Her keys. Women don’t leave their purses behind.” Now she realized why Kyle had been so adamant about taking the case. An abduction like this…a fresh case… we might even be able to find her alive .
    If they acted quickly enough.
    Kyle opened the driver’s side door and slid inside.
    “My men already searched the vehicle,” Anniston called out. “We recovered everything.”
    Kyle raised his hand. A cell phone was held in his gloved grip. “This had fallen between the seats.”
    Turned out Anniston’s men hadn’t recovered everything.
    Anniston hurried toward him. “You think Lily tried to call someone for help last night?”
    I would have called for help . On that long, dark road. The cell phone would have been the first thing Cadence reached for.
    Some profilers tried to figure out the killers based on their actions and the clues killers themselves left behind.
    Cadence didn’t work that way. When she tracked killers, she became their victims.
    She had the nightmares to prove it.
    “Who was keeping Lily’s daughter last night?” Someone must have been watching the girl.
    “Lily’s mother. Lily and little Carrie…”
    She saw Kyle tense at the girl’s name. She’d seen a similar reaction from him on other cases. He was always sensitive to the families.
    She understood. Dealing with the families was often the hardest part for her.
    “They live with Lily’s mother up on Miner’s Way.”
    “The mother didn’t report receiving a call from her daughter?” Cadence asked.
    “No.”
    Cadence considered that for a moment. Maybe Lily wouldn’t have wanted her mother to rush out at night, no doubt dragging Carrie with her. So she wouldn’t have called her… but someone else .
    Who?
    Maybe Lily had called someone for help…only that person hadn’t been the savior Lily expected.

    Tracking the last phone call Lily Adams made was an easy enough matter. A few touches on the phone and her most recent call list had appeared.
    Curtis Adams . Lily’s ex-husband.
    Cadence and Kyle now stood on Curtis’s doorstep, the captain just a few feet away. According to her recent-call list, at 2:12