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to upset her. Or I
will
have you arrested.”
    Brian wanted to leave and never look back. All these years, in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and now his own mother didn’t believe he had nothing to do with it.
    But he missed her. He had to see her. She was all he had left.
    He glanced down, torn but contrite. “All right.”
    Toby opened the screen and Brian took a tentative step inside. As his eyes adjusted to the dim indoor lighting, he couldn’t help but notice everything had changed. While the house itself hadn’t, the furnishings were new, more modern. Leather. But the grandfather clock was still in the dining room. He couldn’t see it, but he heard its steady tick-tock, an intimately familiar sound that soothed him as he remembered listening to it as a small boy when he couldn’t sleep.
    Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock
. Slow and comforting.
    Calmer, he searched out his mother.
    She sat in a recliner, a walker perched next to her. She seemed so—small. Old. Shriveled. Three decades aged anyone, and Father Time took a middle-aged woman and made her elderly. Her hair, which she had dyed blonde for as long as he could remember, was now snow white. She was skinny and wrinkled. His mother despised wrinkles and used every lotion and potion under the sun to prevent them.
    Guess they didn’t work.
    But her eyes—blue and clear. She hadn’t lost her mind. As she turned those sharp eyes to him, he felt her disapproval, her sadness. He wanted to fall on his knees and beg her forgiveness.
    Yet he had nothing to be forgiven for. He was innocent!
    “Ma.” His voice didn’t sound right. He cleared his throat. “Ma, it’s good to see you.”
    She nodded slowly, looked him up and down. Tears welled in her eyes and Brian’s throat constricted and his eyes blurred. Her arms came up.
    “Brian.”
    He stumbled toward her, fell to his knees and into her skeletal embrace. “Ma, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you, I never did anything to hurt you.”
    “I know, son.”
    He sobbed into her lap, wanting to erase the years and make something of himself. Wishing he hadn’t volunteered for Vietnam, yet wishing he’d never left the military.
    He had wanted to be her hero. Just like Daddy had been.
    Now he was nothing.
     
CHAPTER 7
     
    Doug Cohn was no pushover, yet Zack watched Agent St. Martin quietly win him over. In less than ten minutes, they were speaking a language foreign to Zack, about DNA samples and test procedures and how they would transport the evidence found on Michelle Davidson’s body to the FBI lab in Virginia.
    Then he heard Olivia mention her theory about the killer stealing trucks.
    “I don’t have the motor vehicle records from the other jurisdictions,” Olivia said, “but I think the killer steals a truck the day of the abduction, and either returns the vehicle or dumps it somewhere.”
    “We ran auto theft reports,” Cohn said. “One Expedition in the manufacturer year we’re looking for was reported stolen the day before Jennifer Benedict’s abduction, but it hasn’t been recovered.”
    “Why would he steal them?” Zack asked, almost to himself.
    “Convenience,” Olivia said. “Removes him from the crime scene—if it’s not his vehicle, it’s less likely it can be traced to him. Two different vehicles were used for two victims. It doesn’t make sense that a killer smart enough to move from state to state in order to avoid detection would use his own vehicle to transport a victim.”
    Zack frowned, realizing Olivia was probably right. “We had no idea there was an established M.O. The little information we’ve received from Austin and Nashville dealt more with the victim profile.”
    He must have sounded defensive, because she said, “I didn’t mean anything by it. I would have done exactly what you’ve been doing with the information you had.”
    Cohn nodded. “Makes sense to me. Travis, I’ll go ahead and run auto theft reports daily, see if the