He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not

easily put a GPS locator on your car while you were at work. He could have followed you, figuring you’d eventually lead him to Amanda,” Pierce called out. “Will you stop for a minute? Where are you going?”
    “I can’t sit around here doing nothing while Amanda’s out there enduring God only knows what kind of torture.” His voice broke and he cleared his throat. “I have to find her.”
    “Use your brain, Logan. Not your emotions. We’ll find her more quickly if we work together, evaluate the facts, figure out where she’s being held. Our men have been searching for hours and haven’t had any luck. What makes you think you’ll do any better out there?”
    Logan ignored him and strode through the outer office, which was filled with detectives on phones, shuffling papers, typing on their computers. He tried to ignore the sympathetic looks everyone gave him, as if it was a foregone conclusion that Amanda was already dead.
    He refused to believe that. He’d failed her once all those years ago by letting Northwood’s killer go free. He couldn’t fail her again.
    Once inside the elevator, he pulled Amanda’s list of suspects out of his jacket pocket. He’d found it earlier today when he went home to get the Northwood file, hoping to find some clue that would tell him where Bennett, or Riley, would have taken Amanda.
    She’d drawn circles around the words “cop,” “mechanic,” and “Riley,” with question marks beside each one. Each conclusion was explained with meticulous notes referring back to the exact report or interview in each file that made her reach that conclusion. In a matter of hours she’d done a better job of analyzing the data than any of the detectives on his team—including him—had done in weeks.
    He drew a ragged breath and crumpled the paper into a ball, shoving it back into his pocket. Twice she’d asked him to look at it yesterday, but he hadn’t. If only he’d listened to her, given her five minutes, she’d still be safe. It was entirely his fault that Karen had been hurt, that Amanda had been abducted again. And worse than that, the man who had her was the same man he’d let go. Amanda would never have been hurt if it weren’t for his incompetence. She’d still have her dreams, still be able to have a family.
    The elevator doors opened and he shoved his way past the people in the lobby, racing through the building to his car. He was backing out of the parking space when someone tapped on his passenger side window. Pierce leaned down and motioned for Logan to unlock the door. When he did, Pierce got in and slammed the door shut.
    Logan raised a questioning brow.
    “I think you’re a damned fool, Logan. You’re too emotionally involved in this case to be part of the search. I also know I can’t stop you, so I’ll settle for trying to keep you from getting your head blown off if you do happen upon Bennett somewhere.”
    “Or Riley,” Logan added, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “Whoever has Amanda, once I find him, he’s the one who’ll have his fucking brains blown out, not me.”
    Pierce swore and dramatically covered his ears. “I didn’t hear that.”
    Logan punched the gas and raced out of the parking lot.

 
     
    Chapter Twenty
     
    A manda sucked in a sharp breath and eased the handcuffs off the raw, stinging cuts on her wrists. Not that it mattered. As soon as she let the cuffs go, they’d scrape across her cuts again. She’d tried to tear a strip out of her t-shirt to use as a cushion, but without scissors or a knife it was hopeless.
    A bead of sweat trickled down between her breasts. She rubbed her shirt and glared at the window on the far wall of the cabin. Inside the air was hot and sticky. Outside the blue sky beckoned through a pane of glass only ten feet away.
    It might as well have been a hundred.
    Both the window and the door next to it were beyond the reach of the six foot chain that connected Amanda’s handcuffs to the metal loop bolted to the floor.
    Just like four years ago.
    And just like four years ago, her friend had paid a terrible price for being with her. Was Karen still alive? An image of Karen, bloody, beaten, tossed out of the car as if she were garbage, flashed through Amanda’s mind. Please, God, let her be alive.
    A prickling of unease skittered up her spine and she glanced toward the window again. How much longer did she have before he returned? If she was still chained to the floor when he got back,