When All The Girls Have Gone by Jayne Ann Krentz Page B

And in the end, they had stayed.
    When it became clear that they were all headed for the foster care system, Anson had pulled some strings, twisted a few arms and completed the paperwork that made him a licensed foster parent.
    Max cranked up the computer again and took another look at the data he had collected on the two murder victims and the three women who had been raped. Why had Louise Flint considered them so important she had hidden the file in a suitcase in a storage locker?
    Now there was a connection to another rape victim—Jocelyn Pruett.
    There was always a pattern. It was up to him to find it.
    After a while he closed down the Louise Flint file and opened the one that he always checked before going to bed—the one labeled
Quinton Zane
.
    He knew that each of his foster brothers also kept an open file on Zane. They rarely discussed the contents of the files with anyone outside the family. In the past, others, including his ex, had labeled the three of them obsessed and accused them of being paranoid. There were times when Max figured the critics were probably right.
    He and his foster brothers had each paid a price for their pursuit of the ghost of Quinton Zane. In his case, the obsession had almost gotten him killed on his last case at the agency. It had destroyed his career, and his marriage had gone down in flames—collateral damage. He was well aware that as far as his former colleagues and his ex were concerned, he was no longer merely obsessed, he was burned out. They were convinced that he was at high risk of seeing patterns where none existed.
    No one at the agency wanted to work with an obsessed, paranoid individual. No smart woman wanted to be married to one.
    Over the years he and Cabot and Jack had pulled up occasional rumors, whispers and hints that indicated Zane was still alive. But they had never been able to nail down anything substantial. They had never found enough to reveal a pattern.
    He closed the file and checked his e-mail before he powered off the computer. His in-box was empty except for the one e-mail that had come in a month back. He still could not decide whether to archive it or dump it into the trash, so he just let it sit in the in-box.
    The message consisted of only two sentences and a signature.
    Please be advised that you are not to contact me again. If you ignore this request, I will direct my attorney to take legal action against you.
    It was signed
Davis Decatur.
    His biological father.

CHAPTER 12

    Charlotte awoke to the ringing of her phone. For a few beats the reality of the gray light of dawn meshed with fragments of a dream in which she walked through a series of empty, fog-filled rooms searching for Jocelyn.
    The phone rang again.
    Jocelyn.
Maybe she was calling to check in at last.
    She pushed the covers aside, swung her legs over the side of the bed and grabbed the phone. The screen name read
Cutler
. For a split second she didn’t recognize it. Then she remembered that Max had given her his card and she had entered his name and number into her contacts list.
    “It’s a little early,” she said.
    “We have another problem,” Max said.
    It occurred to her that he sounded as if he had been awake for some time. She tightened her grip on the phone.
    “What?” she asked.
    “Jocelyn Pruett is not at the convent on St. Adela.”
    Something inside her went very cold. She stood up quickly.
    “How can you possibly know that?” she asked. “There’s no phone at the convent. Jocelyn said her own phone would be off the whole time because there would be no cell service and no Wi-Fi available.”
    “Are you sure of that?”
    “Yes. Look, last night I sent a text to Jocelyn on the off chance that shemight have found a way to check her messages. I told her I had some bad news about Louise. There was no response.”
    “How did Jocelyn book the retreat?” Max asked.
    “She used a travel agency that specializes in various kinds of exotic trips and retreats. They book