Chill Factor by Sandra Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

frowned doubtfully. "We've had
our problems with
Millicent, same as all parents with teenagers, but I don't think she'd
pull a stunt like this to spite us."
    Mrs. Gunn said, "She knows we love her, knows how worried we'd
be if
she just up and ran off." Her voice faltered on the last few words, and
she crammed a soggy Kleenex against her lips to contain a sob.
    Her misery was painful to witness. Dutch focused on his desk
blotter, giving her a moment to compose herself. "Mrs. Gunn, I'm sure
that deep down she knows how much you love her," he said kindly. "But I
understand Millicent wasn't too keen on that hospital you sent her to
last year. You checked her in against her will, isn't that right?"
    "She wouldn't go voluntarily," Mr. Gunn said. "We had to do it , or she was gonna die."
    "I understand," Dutch said. "And probably, on some level,
Millicent
understands that, too. But could she be holding a grudge over it?"
    The girl had been diagnosed with anorexia, and she was
bulimic. To
her parents' credit, when her condition became life-threatening, they
had borrowed against nearly everything they owned in order to send her
to a hospital in Raleigh for treatment and psychiatric counseling.
    She was there for three months before being pronounced cured
and
sent home. The scuttlebutt around town was that she had re
verted
to her bingeing and purging habits as soon as she was released, afraid
any weight gain would keep her off the high school cheerleading squad.
Having been a cheerleader since sixth grade, she didn't want to miss
out her senior year.
    "She was doing good," her father said. "Getting better,
healthier
every day." He gave Dutch a hard look. "Besides, you know as well as I
do that she didn't run away. She was
took
. A blue
ribbon was
tied to her steering wheel."
    "You're not supposed to talk about that," Dutch reminded him.
A blue
ribbon had been left at the scene of each woman's supposed abduction,
but that fact had been withheld from the media. Because of the ribbon,
the unknown kidnapper had been nicknamed Blue.
    The cell phone on Dutch's belt vibrated, but he let it go
without
answering. He was addressing a serious issue here. If word had leaked
out about the blue ribbon, you could bet the feebs would think the leak
had sprung from Dutch's department. Maybe it had. Of course it had.
Nevertheless, he would do all he could to contain it and try to avoid
blame.
    "Damn near everybody already knows about it, Dutch," Mr. Gunn
argued. "You cain't keep something like that a secret, especially since
the sumbitch has left that ribbon five times now."
    "If everybody knows about it, then more than likely Millicent
does.
She could have put the ribbon there as a decoy to make us all
think—"
    "The hell you say," Ernie Gunn retorted angrily. "She wouldn't
be so
cruel as to scare us like that. No sir, Blue's got Millicent. You know
he does. You gotta get out there and find her before he…"
His voice
cracked. Tears formed in his eyes.
    Mrs. Gunn stifled another sob. But it was she who spoke next.
Her
expression had turned bitter. "You coming from the police department in
Atlanta and all, we thought you'd catch this man before he had a chance
to get our Millicent or some other girl."
    "I worked homicide, not missing persons," Dutch said tightly.
    He'd been nothing but sympathetic to these people, doing
everything
he could to find their daughter, but he was still underappreciated.
They were expecting a miracle from him because he'd been a cop in a
metropolitan area.
    The way he was feeling at that moment, he wondered why in hell
he'd
taken this job. When the city council—led by Chairman Wes
Hamer—offered
it to him, he should have told them that he would become their chief of
police only after they'd caught their serial kidnapper.
    But he had needed the employment. More important, he'd needed
to get
out of Atlanta, where he'd been humiliated personally by Lilly and
professionally by the department. His divorce had become final the