Innocents Lost Read Online Free PDF Page B

this particular modus operandi before her? She was an average-looking child from a middle-class upbringing in Fort Collins, Colorado. As far as he could tell, there was nothing extraordinary about her, but there had to be something he was overlooking, something—
    His laptop chimed. An envelope icon appeared in the bottom corner of the screen, signaling the arrival of a new email.
    The clock on the microwave read midnight on the nose.
    Preston brushed the cursor, aligned the arrow with the envelope, and double-clicked the icon.
    His inbox opened and downloaded the new message. Part of him expected—or maybe just hoped—that it would be from Jessie. Instead, the sender’s name matched his own: Philip Preston. A right-click confirmed the email had originated from his own personal email account, quite possibly from this very laptop. Inside his home. The subject line read simply Twenty-eight .
    He clicked his Sent Items folder, and confirmed that the email had indeed been composed within this very account at 10:03 p.m. and sent using the time-delay function to arrive at midnight.
    A tiny paperclip icon indicated there was an attachment.
    “Son of a bitch,” he whispered.
    His hands trembled as he opened the email.
    He glanced again at the sender’s name, and then at the keyboard over which his fingers were poised like the legs of twin spiders. Had whoever sent the message been sitting right here in this very spot as he did now? He hadn’t heard the slightest sound, and he had only been fifteen feet away.
    The body of the email was composed of three rows of numbers and letters:
    28
    6-21
    S.S.
    And below them was a picture of a darkened room. The faint reflection on the glass indicated it had been taken through a window at night. There was a bed against the far wall, and curled under a tangle of blankets, a small child slept, long blonde bangs crossing her peacefully slumbering features.

Chapter Two

    June 21st

    I
    22 Miles West of Lander, Wyoming

    Fremont County Sheriff Keith Dandridge surveyed the site from the edge of the forest. The scene before him was beyond his worst nightmares. In his eleven years in law enforcement, he had been involved in some of the most ghastly cases in the Rocky Mountain region, most notably the Schoolhouse Slaughter in Pine Springs eight years ago. A disgruntled, bipolar teacher named Irving Jepperson had lined up his class of twelve sixth grade students at the front of the room and fired upon them at close range with a shotgun. Four of the children had managed to escape through the window while the custodian and another teacher subdued him. Eight eleven and twelve year-olds had been heaped on the floor at the foot of a chalkboard peppered with buckshot and spattered with blood, bone fragments, and gray matter when he arrived. There had been nothing left of their faces or upper torsos, leaving the parents to identify their children by their blood-soaked clothing and shoes. And somehow, even that carnage paled by comparison to the horror that unfolded before him now, perhaps not in sheer ferocity, but in the palpable evil that emanated from the clearing.
    The amount of planning that had been invested into the creation of this tableau was staggering.
    A ring of halogen lights encircled the wagon wheel design. They provided precious little illumination, and instead cast long shadows from the rock cairns and walls. More lights would have to be airlifted in with a supply of portable generators, but not until they had thoroughly scoured the ground for evidence. They couldn't afford for the rotors of a chopper to blow away even a single footprint, and the nearest other suitable landing area was a mile and a half to the northeast. For now, the ERT crew was gathering whatever they could find and photographing even the smallest stone from every appreciable angle.
    With such an elaborate setup, Dandridge knew they would only discover what the killer wanted them to find. This was no haphazard burial