spitting mad that she hadn’t been called sooner.
Syd had been fiercely guarding Gina, who was frighteningly glassy-eyed and silent after the trauma of her attack.
The male detectives had tried to be gentle, but even gentle couldn’t cut it at a time like this. Can you tell us what happened, miss?
Sheesh. As if Gina would be able to look up at these men and tell them how she’d turned to find a man in her living room, how he’d grabbed her before she could run, slapped his hand across her mouth before she could scream, and then…
And then that Neanderthal who had nearly run Syd down on the stairs had raped this girl. Brutally. Violently. Syd would’ve bet good money that she had been a virgin, poor shy little thing. What an awful way to be introduced to sex.
Syd had wrapped her arms tightly around the girl, and told the detectives in no uncertain terms that they had better get a woman down here, pronto. After what Gina had been through, she didn’t need to suffer the embarrassment of having to talk about it with a man.
But Gina had told Detective Lucy McCoy all of it, in a voice that was completely devoid of emotion—as if she were reporting facts that had happened to someone else, not herself.
She’d tried to hide. She’d cowered in the corner, and he hit her. And hit her. And then he was on top of her, tearing her clothing and forcing himself between her legs. With his hands around her throat, she’d struggled even just to breathe, and he’d…
Lucy had quietly explained about the rape kit, explained about the doctor’s examination that Gina still had to endure, explained that as much as Gina wanted to, she couldn’t take a shower. Not yet.
Lucy had explained that the more Gina could tell her about the man who’d attacked her, the better their chances were of catching him. If there was anything more she could report about the words he’d spoken, any little detail she may have left out….
Syd had described the man who nearly knocked her over on the stairs. The lighting was bad. She hadn’t gotten a good look at him. In fact, she couldn’t even be sure that he wasn’t still wearing the nylon stocking over his face that Gina had described. But she could guess at his height—taller than she was, and his build—powerful—and she could say for a fact that he was a white male, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age, with very short, crew-cut hair.
And he spoke in a low-pitched, accentless voice. Sorry, bud.
It was weird and creepy to think that a man who’d brutalized Gina would have taken the time to apologize for bumping into Syd. It was also weird and creepy to think that if Syd had been home, she might have heard the noise of the struggle, heard Gina’s muffled cries and might’ve been able to help.
Or, perhaps Syd might’ve been the victim herself.
Before they’d headed over to the hospital, Gina had loosened her grip on the torn front of her shirt and showed Lucy and Syd a burn. The son of a bitch had branded the girl on her breast, in what looked like the shape of a bird.
Lucy had stiffened, clearly recognizing the marking. She’d excused herself, and found the other detectives. And although she’d spoken in a lowered voice, Syd had moved to the door so she could hear.
“It’s our guy again,” Lucy McCoy had grimly told the other detectives. “Gina’s been burned with a Budweiser, too.”
Our guy again. When Syd asked if there had been other similar attacks, Lucy had bluntly told her that she wasn’t at liberty to discuss that.
Syd had gone to the hospital with the girl, staying with her until her mother arrived.
But then, despite the fact that it was three o’clock in the morning, there were too many unanswered questions for Syd to go home and go to sleep. As a former investigative reporter, she knew a thing or two about finding answers to unanswered questions. A few well-placed phone calls connected her to Silva Fontaine, a woman on the late-night shift at the hospital’s Rape Counseling Center. Silva had informed Syd that six women had come in in half as many weeks. Six women who hadn’t been attacked by husbands or boyfriends or relatives or co-workers. Six women who had been attacked in their own homes by an unknown assailant. Same as Gina.
A little research on the Internet had turned up the fact that a budweiser wasn’t just a bottle of beer. U.S. Navy personnel who went through the rigorous Basic Underwater Demolition Training over at the SEAL facility in nearby Coronado were given a pin in the shape of a flying eagle carrying a trident and a stylized gun, upon their entrance into the SEAL units.
This pin was nicknamed a budweiser.
Every U.S. Navy SEAL had one. It represented the SEAL acronym of sea, air and land, the three environments in which the commando-like men expertly operated. In other words, they jumped out of planes, soaring through the air with specially designed parachutes as easily as they crawled through jungle, desert or city, as easily as they swam through the deep waters of the sea.
They had a near-endless list of warrior qualifications—everything from hand-to-hand combat to high-tech computer warfare, underwater demolition to sniper-quality marksmanship. They could pilot planes or boats, operate tanks and land vehicles.
Although it wasn’t listed, they could also, no doubt, leap tall buildings with a single bound.
Yeah, the list was impressive. It was kind of like looking at Superman’s resume.
But it was also alarming.
Because this superhero had turned bad. For weeks, some psycho Navy SEAL had been stalking the women of San Felipe. Seven women had been brutally attacked, yet there had been no warnings issued, no news reports telling women to take caution.
Syd had been furious.
She’d spent the rest of the night writing.
And in the morning, she’d gone to the police station, the freelance article she’d written for the San Felipe Journal in hand.
She’d been shown into Chief Zale’s office and negotiations had started. The San Felipe police didn’t want any information about the attacks to be publicized. When Zale found out Syd was a freelance reporter, and that she’d been there at the crime scene for hours last night, he’d nearly had an aneurysm. He was convinced that if this story broke, the rapist would go into deep hiding and they’d never apprehend him. The chief told Syd flatly that the police didn’t know for certain if all seven of the attacks had been made by the same man—the branding of the victim with the budweiser pin had only been done to Gina and one other woman.
Zale had demanded Syd hold all the detailed information about the recent attacks. Syd had countered with a request to write the exclusive story after the rapist was caught, to sit in with the task force being formed to apprehend the rapist—provided she could write a series of police-approved articles for the local papers, now warning women of the threat.
Zale had had a cow.
Syd had stood firm despite being blustered at for several hours, and eventually Zale had conceded. But, wow, had he been ticked off.
Still, here she was. Sitting in with the task force.
She recognized the police chief and several detectives from Coronado, as well as several representatives
