Never Die Alone

Did it matter?

Her stomach rumbled, reminding her it had been forever since she’d eaten, and her bladder suggested she might want to find a place to relieve herself.

“Great,” she muttered.

More slowly this time, she lifted her head and closed one eye as she suffered through the throbbing beneath her skull. Trying to ignore the worst headache of her life, she surveyed this bend in the river. Surely there would be fishing boats or pleasure craft passing? Even one of those jet boats that roared up and down the slow-moving river, bayou, and inlets.

She squinted, searching through the brush and trying to determine where she was and how she could get out of these swampy woods and back to civilization. She must’ve passed the spot where she’d seen lights in the night. Now there was no sign of civilization. She had to get moving, couldn’t hang around with the vague hope that someone other than the freak would find her. No, she had to find a road, steal a boat, locate someone in a farmhouse or a cabin, or flag someone fishing from a dock. Anyone who could help her.

As she attempted to move, pain splintered up her ankle. She lifted her head to survey the damage. Sure enough a baseball-sized knot, blue-green and bulging, appeared above her foot. Broken or sprained, it didn’t matter. She had to leave this spot. But as the sun lowered even farther to the west, she eased her throbbing head back down and closed her eyes.

Just for a second.

CHAPTER 9

Bria

Big-time.

Lost her cool as well as her perspective. And now, probably any chance for help.

The police department was teeming with people. Uniformed officers, plainclothes detectives, clerical workers, suspects, or people like herself needing assistance jammed the place, inside and out. Conversation buzzed and echoed off the tall ceilings. Cell phones rang and the slightly musty smell of the old building couldn’t be hidden by the acrid odors of floor cleansers, perfume, and human sweat.

“Crap!” she whispered as she left Bentz’s office and squeezed past a hefty man who was heading in the opposite direction.

Angry with herself, Bria

Scared to death for Chloe and Zoe, she was heartsick and frustrated and wanted to scream and rail at the heavens. Instead, she’d taken out her anxiety on a detective who hadn’t investigated the 21 Killer for years. Still, she was certain 21 was here because of Bentz. Call it a hunch. Or an educated guess. It didn’t matter; Bria

“Idiot,” she whispered under her breath, and was vaguely aware of other footsteps on the old steps behind her.

Telling herself she wasn’t going to let her own paranoia get the better of her, she wended her way down the battered old staircase where, suddenly, she was swimming against a tide of officers and visitors moving upward. Crowds had always bothered her, but she fought a surge of panic as she descended to the main floor. There she wended her way through a wide hallway to the front doors.

Outside she felt as if she could breathe again even though the sun was intense, heat still rising from the streets where late-afternoon shadows lengthened. She’d blown it with Bentz. She knew that and mentally kicked herself for the way she’d handled the meeting. Maybe she should have come to him first rather than head to Baton Rouge, but she’d thought she could gain more information at the college and offer it up, maybe set some wheels in motion. She’d thought she could help.

She’d been wrong.

“Fool,” she told herself as she walked along the sidewalk. Her meeting with Bentz had been a disaster.

A breath of wind chased through the magnolia trees, rustling the leaves and bringing with it the scent of the river, thick and musty, and reminding her that New Orleans wasn’t her native home. She, like so many others here, was a transplant.

She’d been born and raised in Bad Luck, Texas, until middle school, when her father had gotten a job at Tulane University and packed up his wife, twins, and family dog to move to New Orleans. Since that time she’d called Louisiana home. Now, of course, she felt as if she’d lived here forever.

She loved this town. But with each passing hour of not hearing from the De

Her stomach squeezed at the thought as she jaywalked across the street. She’d found 21 terrifying as well as fascinating from a purely psychological point of view. What was his need to kill twins on their birthdays, the very date they became adults?

She couldn’t help but wonder if his journey to New Orleans had something to do with her rather than Bentz. After all, she’d started rattling the cages of the LAPD not long ago, when he was already on the move.

Ridiculous! He knows nothing about you. Nothing. How could he? And why would he be interested? You’re far older than twenty-one, your twin sister long dead. You aren’t his type.

But she had been stirring up a hornet’s nest. He could have easily found out that she was fighting to get Donovan Caldwell released, that she was determined to see the real killer hunted down.

Even so . . . you don’t fit his victim profile. You are not the reason Zoe and Chloe are missing.

So she was back to her theory that Rick Bentz was the audience the killer was playing to. But even that theory was a stretch. Why not stay in LA and stick it in the police department’s face that he’d gotten away, that they’d imprisoned the wrong man?

After her meeting with Bentz she wondered if she, in her freaked-out, impetuous state, had come to the wrong conclusion. Hopefully. Then there was a chance the De

As she rounded a corner, she pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jeans and checked her messages. Nothing. Selma had promised she’d call or text the moment she heard anything, so no news wasn’t such good news, contrary to the old saying.

So now what? Deep in thought, she slid her phone into her bag and found her sunglasses. The sun was low in the sky now, afternoon slipping into evening, the glare still bright, so she slipped the pair of retro Ray-Bans over the bridge of her nose. Calmer now, she contemplated her next move as she headed toward her car parked one street over.

“Bria

Tensing, she hazarded a quick glance over her shoulder to spy a tall, rangy man striding her way, his hand raised to flag her down. “Bria

Oh. Dear. God. In an instant, she recognized him.

Her heart beat a quick double-time and she chided herself for her reaction. The man jaywalking, avoiding traffic, was none other than Jason “Jase” Bridges, her first real high-school crush. Though, of course, she hoped desperately that he didn’t know that.

“Jase?” she said, forcing her overactive pulse to slow as a full image of him as a rebellious teenager came to mind. Three years older than her, nearly out of high school when she’d entered, he’d been a hellion her mother had constantly warned her to avoid.

“He’s no good, you know,” Ellen Hayward had told her twin daughters on more than one occasion. “He’s like his father, who, I hate to say, drinks way too much. It’s no wonder Edward’s wife ran off and left him with the boys.” In the kitchen of their home off Royal Street, Mom had carefully cut biscuits from the thick dough she’d flattened over their grandmother’s wooden cutting board. Pausing, she’d straightened, the flour-dusted cutter in one hand, poised over the dough. “Oh, my.” She’d shaken her head and pursed her lips. “I hate to say it, girls, but those Bridges boys? Big trouble.” She set down the cutter and fingered the cross dangling from a gold chain on her neck. “Lord have mercy on their souls.”