The Hunted Girls by Jenna Kernan (best book club books for discussion txt) 📕

“I’ll let you know what we get.” Skogen raked a hand through his hair. “Nadine, I think we got him.”

She felt a great weight lifted off her shoulders. If this was their guy, then they had succeeded in stopping the series in just two. That would be marvelous.

Nadine pushed aside the niggling worry. In many ways Arnold fit her profile. So why wasn’t she relieved?

Twelve

TUESDAY

Nadine glanced at the hotel clock beside Clint’s bed, wishing she’d gone to her own room last night after they’d tangled the sheets.

Last night, she had slept in his bed and Molly had slept on the floor. Now, her bedfellow lay on his stomach.

Nadine drummed her fingers on the sheets. She’d been up since five, thinking, and wishing she had her laptop.

Arnold was a possible match for her profile. He was a loner with numerous priors for offenses involving sexual misconduct. He was white, single, fit, lived alone, hunted, knew the terrain, drove a truck with a cab and was at the scene only hours after the body of Rita Karnowski was dumped. But despite all that, as of last night, the FBI had no weapon, no indication of transport in Arnold’s vehicle, and no souvenirs from either victim in his possession. There was nothing, in fact, to connect Arnold to the victims except the semen and his discovery of the bodies shortly after Karnowski’s death.

They needed solid evidence. But that was not her job.

Skogen’s team was on it. They would find proof he committed the murders.

Or they wouldn’t.

Enough, she thought. It was nearly six. Close enough to the time to get up. She slipped from the bed, creeping around trying to find her clothing in the darkened room, with Molly following her, hoping to go out.

“Nadine?” Demko’s voice was groggy.

“Taking Molly out. Be right back.”

She shimmied into her dress and clipped Molly’s leash to her collar. As she reached the corridor, her phone vibrated.

“Arnold’s timeline doesn’t work,” said Skogen as she picked up.

“What?”

“Barney Arnold was in Montana with his brother fly-fishing from March 12th to March 21st. Confirmed.”

Nadine knew that covered the two Saturdays their victims had been taken.

“All right.”

“All right? You don’t sound surprised,” said Skogen.

She had known. It was why she couldn’t sleep.

“I’m not. See you later on.” Nadine ended the call.

The killer was still out there. She needed to get back to work.

At the office, one of Skogen’s special agents delivered more bad news to Nadine.

“We have another missing woman. Details are on the file share.”

Nadine’s stomach clenched.

Her name was Linda Tolan. Nadine found her a likely victim because, like Nikki Darnell and Rita Karnowski, her car was found on a trailhead.

Tolan was a single female from out of the area, reported missing by her sister on Sunday night when she tried and failed to reach her. Tolan, a wildlife photographer on assignment for a birding magazine, had disappeared sometime after the sisters’ last contact on Wednesday afternoon. Like the first victim, Nikki Darnell, the abandoned vehicle was found by rangers shortly after the sheriff logged the call from Tolan’s sister on Sunday. Park rangers had made a sweep of the trail but found nothing.

Tolan’s car was well within Nadine’s geo-profile’s range for their unsub’s hunting territory, so she recommended to Skogen that search and rescue expand the search area, not just to the trail, but to a 100-mile territory she had identified as within the statistical probability range of this killer.

She then called her team with the bad news. They now all knew the killer was still out there.

Midmorning, Tina appeared from the break room with fresh coffee.

“I found out why the office is so empty.” She set the mug before Nadine. “They’re all out looking for that missing person.”

“Good.”

“Drones, dogs and men, that’s what the tech guy said.”

“Do they need me?”

Tina laughed. “You aren’t the go-to for this.”

That was true, but it was difficult to sit indoors and wait for news while the search was under way.

At noon, Nadine tried and failed to reach either Skogen or Demko for an update. Cell service in the Ocala Forest was spotty or nonexistent and her calls went straight to voicemail.

At two in the afternoon, Tina burst into her office, coming to an abrupt stop before Nadine’s desk.

“They got her,” Tina said.

Nadine startled to her feet.

“They used your profile.” Tina bounced up and down. “And the information from Tolan’s sister. And search and rescue found a woman in a hog trap out there.”

A hog trap. That sounded exactly right.

Nadine braced herself. “Dead?”

“No. She’s alive!” Tina bounded forward, capturing Nadine’s hands and shaking them in excitement. “Skogen said you saved her! Dr. Finch, you’re a hero!”

At five in the afternoon, Nadine sat quietly in Tolan’s hospital room as Skogen took a seat bedside in a vinyl chair.

Nadine recognized that Linda Tolan’s rescue was a fortunate combination of data synthesis and luck. There was so much she didn’t yet know about their killer.

Sadly, Skogen now thought she was some sort of oracle and she had not been able to convince him otherwise.

Their surviving victim was a painfully thin freckled Caucasian woman with long brown hair, streaked with gray, who had been confined in an animal cage in the forest since early Thursday morning.

Her face was covered with bug bites and she was sunburned with cracked and peeling lips. Her skin showed numerous scrapes and razor-thin crisscrossing lacerations on her face, neck and arms indicating her captor had likely dragged her.

Nadine took in Tolan’s gaunt features and the dark circles beneath her bloodshot eyes. There was something vaguely familiar about this woman. The possibility sent an unwelcome prickle over her skin, as if a spider was crawling on her neck. Nadine used one hand to brush the feeling away.

Tolan was lucky. She’d survived over five days in a hog trap without food or water.

The preparation phase, Nadine thought.

In a faint and raspy voice, Linda told Skogen that she had been on assignment.

“My sister said that I drove up here on Wednesday