Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 168587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 843(@200wpm)___ 674(@250wpm)___ 562(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 168587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 843(@200wpm)___ 674(@250wpm)___ 562(@300wpm)
My cell goes off and I look down to see Blakely sent me a text.
Blakely: She can get you in at 3.
That’s in three hours.
ME: That’s perfect. Gives us some time to buy me a new car.
Let’s test this baby out.
TYSON
I’m tracking my wife on my computer when my office door opens, and Ryat enters. “What did you find out?” I ask, giving him my attention.
He drops a folder on my desk. “She was found three days ago.”
I frown. “Three? Why haven’t we heard anything about it? Collin was just in here a couple of night ago wanting the surveillance.”
Ryat sits down on the couch. Leaning back, he fans his arms across the top cushions, getting comfortable. “I’m guessing that was more of a pleasure visit. Not work related.” He smirks and my teeth grind.
But why would Collin be here when he knew my wife was with me at the house of Lords?
“Anyway,” he continues. “The investigation will remain open as a missing persons case, but between you and me, they’ve called off the search. Per her father’s request.”
“So they want the world to think that they haven’t given up on her even though her body has been recovered? The question is why?”
“Because they don’t want the world to know what really happened to her.” He nods to the envelope.
“I’m not sure how they’ll be able to hide it. She’s been plastered on every news outlet and social media platform there is.” I open up the envelope and remove the stack of pictures, placing them out on my desk. “How did you get your hands on all this?” I ask.
“Judge Gregory owes me a handful of favors. I called one in.”
I’ve seen a lot of disgusting things in my life, but I’ve never seen a young woman so brutally tortured before. “Someone didn’t want her identified.”
“They removed her teeth,” Ryat speaks, obviously already having gone through these pictures. “They were pulled, not knocked out. All ten fingers had been dipped into some kind of liquid. Guessing acid. Maybe.”
“No fingerprints,” I say more to myself than to him. But why?
“She was also raped. By the bruising, I’d say multiple times over the course of when she went missing and when she was found.”
“DNA?” I wonder and look up at him.
He shakes his head. “Must have used a condom every time, but none were found anywhere near or around where the body was recovered.”
I look down at the picture that shows the girl naked in a shallow grave. What’s left of her body is covered in dirt, dried blood, and God knows what else.
“She had been dead no more than twenty-four hours when they found her.”
“So he kept her alive for two weeks.” Why? What were they trying to get out of her?”
“Her wrists and ankles were both tied with what they can only guess to be barbwire.”
“Guess?” I look at him, my heart skipping a beat.
“They said due to the cuts, it appears her wrists were crossed over one another and then the barbwire was wrapped around both of them, that way when she fought the restraints, it wouldn’t dig into her radial artery, resulting in her bleeding out and dying before he wanted her to. It also appears that it was wrapped around her head. Used as a gag to keep her mouth open by the looks of the marks embedded in her cheeks and mouth.”
I drop my head and run my hands through my hair, letting out a long breath.
“What is it?” he asks, noticing the change in my mood.
I look up at him and he’s now walking over to my desk and sits down in the chair across from it. “You know who did this.” It’s not a question.
I lean back in my chair. “My freshman year at Barrington, twenty girls went missing over about five months. Five of those twenty were found raped and murdered. The bodies were recovered from different locations, but autopsies concluded barbwire was used as restraints.”
“So what? The guy who did this is out of prison now and doing it again?”
I stand, shaking my head, needing to walk around. “He was never caught. The Lords assumed it was one of us.”
He frowns. “What made them think that?”
“I don’t know. That information was never given. My sophomore year initiation was to go to a house and remove a Lord. We were to deliver him to the Cathedral for confessional.” The Lords take their confessional very seriously. They string you up in front of the congregation and force you to tell them everything. The less you speak, the more they torture you. I’ve seen some hold out, but every single one of them ends up spilling their secrets. Then they finish you off and toss you in a grave in the cemetery behind the Cathedral.
“So you know who this is.” He points at the photos.