Tortured Dreams

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter 23

By the time dawn broke, another woman was missing. It wasn't me. Some part was relieved. Some part was angry. I could have stopped him.

The one they had found murdered the night before had been a fighter. He had tried to burn her body. He had failed, luckily. DNA had been discovered in her teeth. She had bitten him.

Alejandro was fuming. Michael looked a little depressed. The maiden maker had given us the organization that had ordered the maidens. It didn't exist. It had been paid for with a money order.

How anyone legitimately paid for five Iron Maidens with a money order was beyond me. The only good thing was that the blacksmith had recognized the mark on the Scavenger's Daughter. Like the Iron Maiden maker, he had made it for an organization that didn't exist and paid for it with a money order.

I was dumbfounded by how blacksmiths of exceptional skill got paid. Lucas pulled me aside. I frowned at him.

"What?" I snapped testily.

"You don't get it; blacksmiths don't just make these items for show. You said it yourself; there is an underground for just about anything. I'm sure they take money orders from fake companies all the time and no one gets hurt without permission as a result. I'm sure the maker of the maiden was shocked when he learned his work had killed."

"I know, I know. It just irritates me that we aren't any closer. These women have very limited time."

"We're guessing about three days. That seems to be how long they are kept alive. On the fourth day, they are tortured and killed. We usually find them a few days after."

"Thanks for the timeline update, but I'm guessing he isn't going to wait that long."

"Probably not. He missed some part of his ritual and he needs to get it back."

"Ritual?" The word evoked something in me.

"What?"

"Ritual, the torture, not the method, is part of a ritual."

"Stay with me Ace."

"You're the psychologist," I pointed out. "It doesn't matter how he tortures them, as long as he does torture them."

"So why the medieval contraptions?"

"To lure me in. Now that I'm in, he could do anything, as long as he gets to torture the victims."

"You think that's what it was really about?"

"That verse from Revelations tells me what it was really about. When you add it up, it is all about me. I'm sure most of his contraptions are medieval in nature. He wouldn't have known how long it would take to get me involved. The languages are proving that he is smarter than me. He knows I don't know all of them."

"This is all about you?" Lucas asked.

"I think so. Why else leave my fingerprints?"

"To make you a suspect."

"But you said yourself, that I was never really a suspect. It was just another layer of mystery. What if somewhere over the last four years, I have touched that knife, but the touch was so insignificant, I've forgotten? Could he keep my fingerprints preserved for that long?"

"Longer if he wanted," Lucas told me.

"Baker just seems too easy though. And I've been to hundreds of exhibits on torture. This was just the biggest one. I've probably touched hundreds of items in the last several years relating to torture."