They reached the parking garage. Olivia hit the key fob and unlocked her personal vehicle. She and Asher got inside.
“You can’t let him get to you.” She stared at him for the longest time.
He shifted toward her and half-smiled. “I know, and I can handle him, but I just hate that he’s coming after you now because you’re my partner. You don’t deserve that.”
She entwined her fingers with him. “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.” As she stared into his dark brown eyes, feelings she’d tried to deny in the past resurfaced. How could she have feelings for Asher? She still loved Sawyer.
“I know you can.” He was close enough for his breath to brush her cheek, his gravelly tone a huge distraction.
She wanted—well, she wasn’t sure what she wanted, but Asher was like family. She sat back in her seat and stared out the windshield. “Holden wants to know where Lizzy is so that he can bring in the entire Strike Force team. This has nothing to do with Van Gogh.” Her heart drummed in her ears, and she didn’t look at Asher as she did her best to return to calm.
“Exactly,” he said in what she could almost believe was a less-than-steady tone. Or maybe it was her imagination. “Holden is working for the people who are trying to frame the president and Strike Force. He has no interest in finding a killer.”
“It would certainly look good if he brought them in,” Olivia said almost to herself. “We can’t let that happen. I’ve kept up with what’s happening, and I’ve been following Strike Force’s website for a while. There’s no way they did this. Holden and the rest of these people have to be stopped.” It made her furious to think that innocent people were being targeted because a few bad men were manipulating the direction of the world.
Asher reached for her hand. “I feel the same way. Right now, what we can do is bring down Van Gogh Killer before he finds his next victim. Since we took out his next plausible victims, he has to be furious. And we don’t know what direction he’ll take from here. We need to go over every piece of evidence we’ve gathered from the past crime scenes. All the information we have on the victims. Anything that will help us find this guy before he goes ballistic.”
Olivia sighed deeply. “All right. Let’s get started. There has to be something we’ve overlooked that will help us find this guy.”
They climbed out of the car and headed back toward the building. Before they entered, Asher grabbed her arm and pulled her aside. “Watch your back, Olivia. Holden is coming after you now, and he’s up to something really bad.”
The look in his eyes confirmed he was serious. “I will, I promise.”
He still held her arm and said, “I have a bad feeling about Holden. He’s not who he claims to be. He’s far worse. And he’s dangerous. When you put a man who has no limits in charge of an agency that’s supposed to be there to protect citizens, it’s bad.”
She searched his eyes. “What are you saying?”
A car horn beeped some distance away, and he looked past Olivia to the sound. “I don’t know what I’m saying. But you can’t tell anyone about what I told you.”
A tingle of apprehension sped between her shoulders at the dead-serious look on his face. “You got it. No one knows but me.”
They entered the building and went down to the level where the evidence from all the Van Gogh killings was stored. The fear that Asher’s words instilled in her followed Olivia every step of the way.
Several members of the task force were combing through the evidence.
“Where do you want to start?” Olivia asked him.
“The beginning. Let’s go back to the first victim.” She and Asher found the box that contained evidence recovered from the scene.
How did Holly Fleming fit in with the other victims? Or Sylvia?
They claimed a couple of chairs away from the others working the case.
“At the time Holly was taken, Lizzy wasn’t part of Buckley’s plan, or at least we don’t believe she was,” Asher said and swiped his hand across the back of his neck.
Olivia grabbed one of the laptops nearby and brought up the case file for Holly Fleming. “She wasn’t a student at any of the universities. She worked at a law office and was twenty-nine years old.”
Asher frowned at what he’d heard a thousand times. “What about the second victim?
Olivia typed several commands and the victim’s file appeared on the screen. “Marissa Ingalls.” Asher moved his chair over to where she sat and looked over her shoulder. “She was mid-twenties, lived with her parents, and was a manager of a clothing store at the mall.”
She peered over at him. “There’s nothing tying them to Lizzy or each other, much less Sylvia Abbott.”
“They aren’t connected to Lizzy either. At least not the first three, which makes me believe Buckley was fully in control back then and calling all the shots, including which victim they took.”
Olivia looked through the rest of the victims before confirming. “Agreed. So, Buckley has his own way of picking the victims, and so far there is nothing on the surface that ties them to each other besides physical attributes. Some serial killers pick victims that are similar in looks.”
He shrugged. “Exactly.”
“If Buckley was controlling everything back then, I think we can eliminate the first set of victims before Sylvia. The only thing connecting her to them is Lizzy.” Olivia started typing on the laptop and brought up a file.
“What are you looking for?” Asher asked.
“The ERT’s report on Sylvia.”
Asher read over it with her. There were no fibers found on Sylvia’s clothing. No skin cells under her nails which seemed to confirm what Lizzy told them. The killer incapacitated her with the stun gun and then kept her unconscious with ketamine.
“Tox screen confirmed the presence of ketamine. . . wait, this could be something,” Olivia said and Asher to lean closer.
“What’d you find?”
“They found some traces of dirt on Sylvia’s clothing. They’re analyzing it to see if they can pinpoint the region it came from.” She shifted toward him. “If they can isolate the dirt to a particular area, we have a start.”
“We do. Let’s go check to see if they’ve found anything yet.”
Both rose and headed out the door when Declan met them.
“Oh, hey, did you find out anything useful at the attempted kidnapping location?” Asher asked his former partner.
“Nothing except a footprint, which is a longshot. Where are you two off to?” Declan looked between them.
Asher explained about the dirt. “Want to take a walk with us?”
“Gladly.” Declan fell into step beside them.
As they walked, Asher told him about Holden’s latest run-in.
“That man’s got it in for you two,” Declan declared.
Before they reached the ERT lab, Asher’s cell phone buzzed a message. He pulled out his phone and read the message from Luke.
“We may have something. Luke was following up with the neighbors of the couple whose car was stolen. Several had doorbell cameras. One captured a person walking in front of the older couple’s neighbors to the right. Luke showed it around the neighborhood, and no one recognized the person.”