Forbidden by Leanna Ellis Page B

wasn’t like chasing a criminal. They didn’t leave fingerprints or credit-card trails. They left only blood.
    Roc had squeezed as much information as he could from his old cop friend, Mike. Which amounted to nothing much. The Philadelphia cops knew nothing about this latest disappearance of an Amish woman, and they cared less. Roc had driven all over Lancaster County, from Promise to Intercourse, asking folks if they’d seen Rachel Nussbaum. He couldn’t get any useful information though.
    No one had seen her for days or weeks. It was as if she’d simply disappeared. No one had seen a man with dark hair and darker eyes, either. The Lancaster sheriff’s office acted a bit more interested, in light of the Yoder girl’s death, but they were like a fly swatter batting at Goliath. Roc had been to the train station, bus depot, and airport, and he’d come up empty.
    What a fool he was for agreeing to chase after a hungry vampire and his next victim—an innocent, pregnant widow. Did it get more pathetic? Heck, he should go straight to CNN where this would be a great story. Or maybe The National Enquirer would be interested. Yes, definitely, add a vampire or alien and any sleazy rag would print the story on its first page with a big headliner: “Vampire Kidnaps Amish Widow.” Papers would definitely sell. Maybe they’d theorize it was a vampire from outer space. And then Roc would be locked up in the loony bin.
    He could hear the boys back in NOPD. “Knew Roc was losin’ it.”
    â€œThe alcohol pickled his brain.”
    â€œNah, losing his wife put him over the edge.”
    His last-ditch effort was Mike again. Even though out of uniform at the moment, he still had cop eyes, which narrowed suspiciously on Roc. “You’re drunk, aren’t you?”
    â€œNo. I’m telling you, this woman is missing—”
    Mike tossed a thick manila folder onto his cluttered desk. “So are all of these folks. From kids to old folks. Teens who ran away. Kids who disappeared in the night. Some pedophile neighbor took a hankerin’ to ’em. Or their dad picked ’em up one day after school before Mom got there. And bam —they disappeared. For good. No trace. Nothing. Grandfathers who wandered out of the nursing home. Aunts who went to the grocery store and never returned home, their car found on some deserted road. Wives, husbands, daughters, sons, grandkids all searching and desperate to find these missing folks. Some have been missing thirty years. This Amish widow ain’t the only one, my friend. So good luck.”
    Good luck was right. It was like finding the right straw hat in a pile of Amish ones. Rachel wasn’t the only one missing though. But the likelihood of finding Rachel seemed more hopeless than all these other folks combined. All these missing folks had recent pictures, stats listing their weight and height. A few who had been missing for a while had drawings of what the person might look like after all these years. But for Rachel, there wasn’t even a starting photograph, just Hannah’s description: “blond, blue eyes, a smidgen shorter than me.”
    Knowing what Akiva was and his modus operandi, Roc figured Rachel was already dead. Negativity had nothing to do with his prediction. It was a simple probability. And it was Roc’s fault, the way Ferris’s death was his fault too…and Josef’s…and Emma’s. The list was long and growing.
    Driving back, he thought about his own wife, the lost years, the empty hours. A raw ache of grief surged upward and hopelessness stole over him. Levi and Hannah had made a bad mistake asking him to search for Rachel. What use was he anyway? What was the point? He’d search and eventually some kid would head out to a creek to do some fishing and find an abandoned sneaker, then a hand…It always ended the same.
    A flash of a neon sign caught his attention, and