When she rolled onto her back and kicked at the window, he’d halted the vehicle and pointed his weapon at her. “Do you ever want to see your mother again?”

She’d stopped.

Feeling invisible in the different vehicle, he drove out of the city in silence, ticking off the points of his plan. His father had come down on him, demanding results, and he’d had to act drastically. Kidnapping wasn’t in his playbook, but now that he’d done it, it’d gone amazingly easily. Planning. That was the key: prepare for all problems. Confidence rocked through him, and he wished his associates back home could see him now. They’d never stopped harassing him after the first death. Vomit-Boy, they’d called him. No matter how well he’d performed after that first time, the name had stuck. Now he was a machine. Blood, guts, gore. He’d learned how to hide his emotions during the events. Shootings, stabbings, hangings. He could do it all. Even kidnapping.

He glanced at the girl in his backseat. Brown eyes burned as she glared at him. She looked exactly like her mother, he realized. The lingerie he’d stolen from Gianna’s closet popped into his mind. His chance to get her alone hadn’t presented itself yet.

He needed to create a situation for just the two of them.

Could the daughter be bait?

“The homeowner couldn’t figure out what’d happened,” Hawes told Chris and Gianna.

Chris felt the restrained energy behind the detective’s calm voice. Detective Nora Hawes wanted Violet back nearly as bad as he and Gianna did. Next to him, stress rolled off Gianna. Even though she sat utterly still, he felt her hang on every word from the detectives. He reached for her hand and she held it in a death grip.

“He opened the door and there was an unconscious bleeding woman on his doorstep. He called nine-one-one and pressed a towel into the wound, expecting a crazed gunman to turn up at any minute. He had no idea who she was.”

“No reports on the vehicle?” Chris asked. He wished Michael were there. He knew how to ask the right questions. Chris was calm, but he didn’t know the ins and outs of police procedure like his brother did. Instead Michael was at the hospital waiting for Jamie to wake up after her surgery and working Violet’s disappearance with his phone.

“Not yet. The weather is still keeping a lot of people at home, so at least there’re fewer vehicles on the roads to watch for.”

No shit. Twice Chris had almost slid off the slushy roads while driving Gianna from the hotel. “That probably means fewer cops on the roads, too. We can’t wait for someone to report a vehicle. We need to know where he would take her.”

Detective Becker nodded, eying him carefully. “We’re giving a lot of weight to the lead that the same guy broke into Gianna’s home and caused the fire at the cabin, but we’re not ruling out anything else.” He paused. “We got an ID on the prints of the second John Doe who was murdered in the Cascades.”

Chris waited, and Gianna gripped his hand tighter.

“Rafael Jones. Age twenty-eight. He’s local. Pretty long history of theft and moving violations. Has spent some time in the county jail, but nothing big-time.”

“Family?” Gianna burst out. “Where’s he work? Where’s he live?”

Detective Hawes held up her hands. “Slow down. We’re looking at all that. As far as we can tell he’s been unemployed for the past two years, but he’s been doing something to pay the bills. No immediate family in the area.”

“Why was he up in the mountains?” asked Chris.

Becker grimaced. “Don’t know yet. Haven’t found anyone who can tell us.”

“This is the guy whose fingerprints turned up on the fridge at the cabin I rented, right?” Gianna asked. “But his prints weren’t found in my home?”

“Correct.”

“He was shot in the head. Almost the same way that my father was. There might be two more people involved that we’re looking for. The shooter and whoever broke into my house.”

She didn’t say it out loud, but Chris knew she worried the shooter had Violet.

“What other leads are you following?” Chris asked. Rafael Jones’s background was a good place to start. It was possible that he was an associate of whoever had Violet.

“We’re still trying to identify some of the other prints from your house. We’re expanding to include more databases, but it can be very slow.”

Detectives Hawes and Becker exchanged a glance. “Once Lacey Campbell from the ME’s office notified us about the DNA match on the first body, we immediately started digging into everything we could find,” said Hawes. She sat down next to Gianna, meeting her gaze. “So far we’ve been able to confirm that your father’s been living under an assumed identity for a long time. One your uncle appears to have helped him create.”

“He thought he was doing the right thing,” Gianna whispered, strain filling her tone.

“I talked to your uncle. He told me the whole story and gave us a few leads to track what your father’s been doing the last few months. He also told me that your father believed he’d been followed lately. Enough to make him go dark when it came to keeping in touch with his brother. There’s a good chance someone tried to hurt you and Violet simply because he is your father.”

Gianna nodded. “Uncle Saul had suggested that. But it makes no sense. I’ve never been in touch with my father. Why try to hurt us simply because of who we are?”