Page 43 of Constant Risk
Dr. Yang walked in and introduced Penelope and Tanner.
Jean stared at Tanner. “I remember you. You were the one who helped keep my head out of the water.”
Tanner smiled gently. “We’re all very glad we made it in time.”
Penelope took a step closer. “Jean, we normally would give you much longer to work through some of this before asking questions, but unfortunately you weren’t the only victim. There are some other women, still trapped in situations exactly like yours. We’re trying to do whatever we can to get to them.”
Jean blanched, visibly shaking. “It’s not that I don’t want to help them, I’m just not sure I know how. I never even saw the guy who took me.”
Penelope pulled up a picture of Elliot on her tablet. “This is the man who took you. Elliot Webster. Do you recognize him at all?”
Jean glanced at the picture, then looked away, staring over to the side. Tanner took a step closer. “He’s currently in a holding cell, Jean,” he explained gently. “There’s absolutely no way he can hurt you. Just take a look at him and see if you recognize him from anywhere. That could help lead us in the right direction.”
She finally glanced back at the tablet. “I—I’m not 100 percent sure, but he looks like a guy who has come by my coffee shop three or four times. Honestly, I never really paid much attention to him.”
If he was just picking victims based on height and body size, seeing her at work a few times would’ve been all Elliot needed.He’d probably studied her a lot more than she was aware of, but there was no purpose in telling her that.
“Does that help?” she asked in a small voice.
Tanner smiled. “Absolutely.”
Penelope brought up another couple of pictures on the tablet. Of Christina and Betty Neighbors. “Do you happen to recognize either of these women?”
Jean studied these much more carefully. “No, I’m sorry.”
“How about these two women?” Penelope showed her a picture of Shelby and Kelly when they were alive.
“No. Are they the other victims?”
Penelope shrugged. “They meet the potential criteria. That’s all we know.”
Jean’s eyes found Tanner. “That’s been driving me crazy. Trying to figure out why he took me. Why he putmein that box. Was it revenge? Was I mean to him? I try not to be rude to people, but maybe I was and I don’t remember.”
Jean’s voice was becoming louder and more urgent. “Was it because of bad things I did? I cheated on my high school boyfriend. I lied in an interview for a job. Was it karma? Is that why he took me and put me in that box? What were the criteria?”
Tanner leaned down so he was face-to-face with Jean, stopping her tirade. “Do you want me to tell you what the criteria was? I’m afraid you might be a little bit disappointed, to be honest.”
“Yes. Please tell me.” Her voice was small.
“It’s your size, Jean. Nothing more and nothing less than that. Nothing cosmic, no karma or revenge. It’s the fact that you are five foot three and weigh 105 pounds.”
“What?” Disbelief blanketed her features.
“He’s telling the truth,” Penelope said. “That’s the common factor among all the victims. They all had to be roughly the same height and weight. Has nothing to do with anything else.”
“You mean if I let myself put on the twenty pounds I wanted to over the last couple months he might not have chosen me? All I had to do was not work so hard at the gym?”
Tanner smiled at her. “Let it be a lesson to us all to have seconds of our meals as often as possible.”
For the first time since they’d walked in, Jean actually smiled. “This helps. I’m still mad as hell and more than a little afraid of everyone I see, but at least knowing it wasn’t something I did makes it all a little more bearable.”
Tanner smiled back at her. “Good. Because it wasn’t something you did that got you kidnapped, and definitely not anything you can be held accountable for.”
“I feel like I haven’t helped you at all. Do you have more questions for me?”
Penelope nodded. “Can you walk us through what happened the day you were kidnapped?”
Jean took a deep breath. “There’s not a lot I can remember. I was closing the coffee shop with my manager. I decided to run by the bookstore before it closed. I was getting in my car when I felt a prick in my arm. I turned around to figure out what was going on, but everything got dizzy and none of my muscles seemed to work.”
