LITMIR.BIZ

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Rose disappeared up the steps, then strode out to Thad’s sedan and searched the car. Nothing inside that looked suspicious. The vehicle was registered to Thad Thoreau.

      He retrieved his kit from his car and dusted the interior for prints, then placed the prints in his kit to take to the lab the next morning.

      Then he retrieved his computer. He set it up at Rose’s kitchen table, then accessed a list of local hospitals, ERs, urgent-care facilities and morgues. He sent them a picture of Thad for identification purposes.

      A few phone calls later, and he’d found nothing. “Call me if this man turns up, or if you get a patient suffering from a gunshot wound.” He left his number, and reminded the nurse on the phone that the man he was looking for might be armed and dangerous, to alert security and not confront him.

      Technically, doctors were required to report any gunshot wound, but sometimes things slipped between the cracks. Especially if the patient, or the person who brought the patient in, was armed and threatened the health care workers.

      The fact that Thoreau hadn’t been admitted could mean that his accomplice had carried him somewhere off the grid for medical help.

      Or that he was dead.

      Another reason to search the property tomorrow.

      He accessed the national police databases and ran a search on Thad Thoreau.

      First of all, the man’s name didn’t pop up as having an arrest record. Neither did it appear that he’d served in the military.

      In fact, when he plugged Thoreau’s name into the DMV database, he found three different Thad Thoreaus but none of them matched the picture Rose had shown him. One Thad Thoreau was ninety and in a nursing home, another was deceased and the third was a professor in Salt Lake City.

      He checked each of their backgrounds to see if any one of them had a son named Thad, but hit a dead end.

      Frustrated, he spent the next hour researching the company listed on Thad’s business card, but couldn’t find a company with that name. The company was bogus—part of Thad’s cover.

      If Thoreau was a professional killer, he’d probably used an alias. He phoned Devon Littleman, the best IT analyst he knew at the lab, and emailed him Thoreau’s photograph. “We need to know his real name,” Maddox said after he’d explained the situation.

      “This might take a while.”

      “Let me know what you find. I’m dropping off his prints tomorrow.” Thoreau could have randomly pulled the identity from a source like a computer or a phone directory, or he could have chosen it from a gravestone or obituary notice.

      Whatever his name, Thad Thoreau was not who he claimed to be.

       So who was he?

       And why had he come after Rose?

      It had something to do with the girl on the milk carton...

      “Can you put a trace on Rose Worthington’s phone in case the man who threatened her calls again?”

      “I’m on it.”

      “Devon, pull it up now. She received a threatening call tonight. I want to know where it came from.”

      “Hang on.”

      Maddox drummed his fingers on the table as he waited. Finally Devon came back.

      “There was only one call made to her number tonight. Looks like it came from a burner phone. Sorry, but I can’t trace it.”

      Damn. “Thanks. Call me if you find anything else.”

      Maddox hung up. Curious, he plugged Rose’s name into the computer and ran a check on her. Guilt needled him for invading her privacy. But she needed his help, and he couldn’t uncover Thoreau’s motive for wanting her dead if he didn’t know more about her.

      The wind picked up outside, rattling the windowpanes and whistling through the house. He glanced at the stairs to make sure Rose wasn’t coming back down, but didn’t see her or hear footsteps. Hopefully, she’d fallen asleep.

      Maybe tomorrow she’d remember more details about her fiancé that would help his investigation.

      Rose’s name appeared on the DMV database, the photograph taken two years before. She had no arrest record, had lived with parents named Ramona and Syd Worthington before moving to Pistol Whip. Ramona, now in her fifties, worked in a gardening center while Syd worked with a freight company.

      He studied the picture of the couple, looking for similarities to Rose, but her features were softer, rounder, her eyes a deep amber instead of Ramona’s blue or Syd’s brown.

      Rose said she and her parents were estranged. What had happened between them?

      Not that it was pertinent to the case, but if he wanted to know the reason someone wanted to kill Rose, he had to learn everything he could about her.

      And that included tracking down the girl on the milk carton.

      How old was Rose now? He checked her birth date on the driver’s license photo. Twenty-five.

      Which meant that the photograph of the missing child—hadn’t she said she was around four or five?—would have been posted about twenty years ago.

      Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, he accessed the database for missing and exploited children and searched for girls who’d disappeared around that time. Hundreds of pictures showed up, enough to make him sweat under the collar.

      He entered Rose’s name to narrow down the search, and waited, but that yielded nothing.

      If he knew the state where the girl disappeared from, it would help.

      It was also possible that since the photo had been circulated, she’d been found alive and returned to her family, or she was...dead.

      He compared Rose’s name with a list of children reported as deceased during that time frame. There were two other girls with the last name Worthington, but one was a teen found dead from an overdose, the other a runaway who’d eventually gone home on her own.

      The search led to countless other girls named Rose, and it took him nearly an hour to sort through them and run a comparison.

      Dammit, he needed better software to show age progression. Something he’d have to speak to the county about, although he doubted it would do much good. Pistol Whip was such a blip on the Wyoming map that the big cities rated the nicer, more sophisticated equipment.

      His eyes were starting to blur from fatigue, so he decided to rest his head for a while. It was already 4:00 a.m.

      Tomorrow he had to go back to the cabin and search for a grave.

      Weary from the night’s events, he closed the laptop. He walked to the window and checked out the front, then to the rear and surveyed the wooded backyard.

      Everything seemed quiet. Peaceful.

      Rose was safe.

      But as he stretched out on her sofa, he laid his gun on his chest just in case Thoreau or his partner returned to kill her in the night.

      * * *

      HANDS TIGHTENED AROUND Rose’s throat. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t make a sound come out.

       Terrified she was going to die, she struggled to pry the man’s hands from around her neck, but he was so strong she couldn’t budge his fingers, and his nails cut into her skin.

       Tears streamed down her cheeks as her body began to convulse. Still she kicked and clawed...

       Then the hands lifted from her throat, and the cold blunt edge of a gun barrel settled against her temple. “You can run, but you can’t hide, Rose. I’ll find you.”

       She struggled

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