Free My Heart Belongs To You: A Psycho Thriller by Michael A. Walton Page B

already knew.  It was frustrating and mentally draining.  Each was acutely aware that , somewhere, possibly close by, Tom and Karen were being held captive and their only hope of survival was the three of them, this strange girl pacing the floor in front of them , and a man called John Hanson.
    ‘ Okay,’ snapped Myers , tossing his empty cup into a slowly filling waste bin, ‘I need to speak to Blue Eagle.’
    Jane lifted the laptop back over to the computer area, a thought suddenly coming to her as her caffeine fix seeped into her blood stream.  When trawling the net for newspaper reports on Cupid for Stephanie to study, she had subliminally noted that one reporter had written more stories than any other journalist had .  Why was that , posed her subconscious?   It was probably nothing , but she decided to ch eck it out.  Why not, she surmised, she had nothing else to occupy her.  Facts and leads were thinner on the ground than honest estate agents . So any spark, any fragment of anomaly had to be pursued.  Maybe , he had information that had been overlooked.  She could not, would not be looking back when this was over , with any shadow of doubt that she had not done everything humanly possible to get Tom and Karen back safely.   Jane pulled up special search software that Hanson Securities had at their disposal and typed in the jou rnalist’s name, Giles Fuller , alongside one word, Cupid, and hit search.
    Once again, Turner felt the heavy cloak of guilt fall about his shoulders.  It was becoming a comfortable fit after seven years of failure and more difficult to shrug off with inner arguments of no leads to work with, other people not doing their job , and luck not being a lady , so many other justifications that he had lost count.  No matter how he tried to spin it within his head , he was the lead detective . It was his responsibility and it frightened him , because he felt completely impotent, completely helpless.  Every night , when he closed his eyes , the souls of ea ch couple invaded his dreams , wakening him in a cold sweat.  He had to find this monster, had to bring justice to his victims , and then maybe, just maybe , he would find peace . Maybe he would enjoy sle ep free from demons of guilt, and from screams for revenge.  Moving over to the rest area , he picked up the six crime files , files he had read so many times that the pages had become crinkled and dog-eared , there had to be something within those pages, some shard of information that would crack open this case . It had to be there.
    Stephanie walked back and forth in front the white board , not really looking at its contents any longer, her mind spinning like a tumble dryer.  The rhythmic pacing to and fro helped her focus on the endless facts that she had absorbed in the last few hours , which were bouncing randomly around within her mind, a mind that was running like no computer ever could.  She could pull the smallest detail out in a second, the most mundane fact from the deep, turbulent pool that was the history of her life.  If it had passed before her eyes or travelled within earshot, it was snared within her memory forever . Now she was asking for something new, now she was asking her brain to sift, stack and divide the facts it held.  Now it was running free, running like no software that had ever been written.  In many ways , software was easier , because within it was written a code . You could press a certain key or group of keys and the action that followed would happen one thousand times out of one thousand, predictable, logical.  With the mind of a savant, there were no such guarantees, no such solid boundaries of action.  There was no doubting Stephanie’s incredible memory , but what she was asking her brain to compute now was not just the regurgitation of facts , but the sifting of those facts to find a common thread.  She was hunting for that link, the link that might give John the help he needed to find