Free Once Craved (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #3) by Blake Pierce Page A

Derby.
It’s really a rock bottom life.”
    “She was just so
strung out,” Tantra said. “She wasn’t getting the clients she used to at Ishtar’s.
She told me she wasn’t making enough to feed her habit. She said she was just
doing it on the side. I told her how dangerous it was. I mean, hookers just
disappear from truck stops without a trace, it happens all the time. But she
wouldn’t listen.”
    A cloud of gloom had
settled over the women. Riley didn’t guess that they had a lot more information
to give. They’d given her one important lead already.
    “That will be all,”
Riley told them.
    But as they got
ready to leave, the women started chatting again as though nothing unusual was
going on.
    They really don’t
understand, Riley thought. Or they don’t want to understand.
    “Listen,” she said, “this
killer is dangerous. And there are many other men like him. You’re making
yourself into targets. If you think you’re safe doing what you do, you’re just
lying to yourselves.”
    “And just how much
safer is your job, Agent Paige?” Mitzi asked.
    This retort left
Riley speechless.
    Is she really
comparing what she does with what I do? she wondered.
    As she followed the
women out of the interview room, Riley’s heart sank. She felt as hopeless for
them as she would if they had been common streetwalkers. In a way, this seemed
worse. Their superficial veneer of respectability concealed a life of
degradation even from themselves. But there was nothing she could say or do to
make them face the truth.
    Riley felt sure that
this killer wasn’t finished murdering prostitutes. Was his next victim here
right now, or would she be someone Riley hadn’t yet met and warned?
     
    *
     
    Riley was in the
field office hallway looking for Bill when her cell phone buzzed. She saw that
the call was from Quentin Rosner, head of the dive team that was searching
Nimbo Lake.
    Her heart quickened.
Surely he and his divers had found the second body by now.
    “Hello, Mr. Rosner,”
she answered eagerly.
    The voice on the line
said, “I called Special Agent in Charge Morley. He told me I should report to
you directly.”
    “Good,” Riley said. “What
have you got for me? Have you found the other body in the lake?”
    She heard a faint,
wordless grumble, followed by, “Agent Paige, you’re not going to like hearing
this.”
    “Well?”
    “There’s no body in
that lake. It’s a big area but we’ve looked everywhere.”
    Riley had trouble
believing her ears. Had her hunch been wrong?
    No, she still felt
sure that Nancy Holbrook’s killer had previously dumped a different body in
that lake. It helped explain why he hadn’t gone down to the water to make sure
that his latest victim had disappeared into the lake’s depths.
    As she puzzled over
what to say, she saw Bill walking down the hall.
    “I’m headed out to
interview Ishtar Haynes,” he said. “At her place of business. Want to come
along?”
    Riley nodded yes,
but first she had to sort things out with Rosner.
    “How was the
visibility?” Riley asked.
    “I won’t lie to you,
it really sucks down there,” Rosner said. “Flooding a canyon stirs up a lot of
sod and rotting vegetation and it can take several years for the water to clear
up. Anything dumped here when the lake was new could actually be buried under
debris.”
    “The body I’m
looking for could have been put there several years ago.”
    “Then that’s a
problem. But we know what we’re doing, Agent Paige. We’re a well-trained unit.
And we’re really sure there’s no body to be found in this lake.”
    Riley thought for a
moment. She deeply wished that Morley had called in actual FBI divers. The
Underwater Search and Evidence Response Team was amazing and those divers would
have considered every possible angle without any prompting. Instead Morley had
called in help from a local dive training school. He’d said that there was no
legitimate reason for the FBI to be involved in this