Innocents Lost by Michael McBride Read Free Book Online Page A

blade.
    Her only response was a sudden gasp and a flutter of her eyelids.
    Dandridge forced himself to watch through tear-blurred eyes as warmth drained down his cheeks. He needed to know this monster, needed to understand him. For when the time arrived, and he swore it would, he was going to find this man, and he was going to kill him.
    On the screen, the little girl was peeled apart, one strap of flesh, one muscle, one silvery tendon at a time in a careful and practiced display of vivisection skills until there wasn't enough blood left in her body to pump through her heart and the deep skeletal muscles shimmered wetly.
    By the time the video ended, Dandridge sat alone, his body numb, his stomach roiling.
    He surveyed the clearing, and through the assortment of twisted pines and aspens, counted twenty-six other lives similarly ended. And he was going to have to endure the videographies of their final moments.
    Then he was going to hunt this man down, and he was going to rid the world of a scourge the likes of which it had never known before.
    But first he needed to track down the satellite phone they carried for use in the remote areas of the county. It was imperative that he call his wife and physically make her check on their daughter. He couldn't imagine what would become of him if his beautiful child ended up on a film like this one.
    No child should be subjected to such a violation of the body and soul.

    IV
    24 Miles North-northwest of Rawlins, Wyoming

    Preston spiked his cell phone against the dashboard in frustration. He immediately regretted the decision and fished it from the floorboard to make sure it still worked. Anger seethed inside of him, but unfortunately, the scenario had played out just as he had expected. Without evidence of a crime, his department had been unable to act. He had heard the disbelief in his superior's voice after waking him from a sound sleep. Randall Washington was the new Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge. There was no history between them as there had been with M. Stephen Moorehead before his promotion, who might at least have humored him based on a photograph that he appeared to have sent himself. Washington, on the other hand, made no secret of his suspicions that Preston flirted with a breakdown, and that the pattern he discovered was circumstantial at best. His superior was disinclined to buy into the notion of a serial abductor in this day and age who planned his crimes to coincide with the pagan celestial calendar. While Preston didn't necessarily blame the Bureau for its doubts, tonight he needed its help for the sake of a child, and it had forsaken him.
    The Fremont County Sheriff's Department had been somewhat more helpful. A bored-sounding dispatcher, who had slurped her coffee even as she spoke, had promised to pass along his message directly to the sheriff. Regrettably, he was out in the field at that very moment. As were all of his deputies. At this time of night, Preston imagined them closing down some roadhouse or other around a pitcher of beer, but he still held out hope that the sheriff would return his call in time to get his cars on the street.
    So for now, he was on his own.
    At least until the child was reported missing.
    He goosed the accelerator and watched the needle top one hundred. The terrain flashed past in the darkness, rugged rock formations and vast expanses of fields interrupted by long snow-fences, only sporadically highlighted by streetlamps and limned by the occasional light of the moon when it managed to permeate the gray ceiling of clouds. He was already halfway across the state, heading northwest on Highway 287. Barring anything unforeseen, he should arrive in Lander about an hour before sunrise.
    Only his intuition told him it would be too late.

    V
    Lander, Wyoming

    Les paced the small motel room. His arm still ached from the shot of Betaseron. At least he had kept his medication in his backpack instead of his car as he'd originally intended. The