She was supposed to be tough, or so she thought. Kindness would be her undoing. Everything about that touched him. He leaned down and kissed her softly on the lips . . . just because.

Her breath caught. A little rush of excitement went through him despite the fatigue.

When he raised his head she looked up at him with a funny little smile and said, “About that hotel room . . .”

Dawn was just beginning to pink the sky in the east when Lauren woke to find Leah staring at her, her precious face bruised, one eye swollen nearly shut, the other as wide as a small child’s. Lauren tried to manage a smile despite the tightness of her own battered face. She slipped her hand through the railings of the beds and touched her daughter’s hand.

“Do you know how much I love you?” she whispered.

Leah nodded, not looking all that certain.

“You saved my life,” Lauren said, tears rising. “In ways you don’t even know. I owe you so much, Leah. You have been so brave, and so strong. I will never be as brave and strong as you.”

“I don’t want to be brave anymore, Mommy,” Leah said. “I just want us to be a family.”

“We will be,” Lauren promised. “We will be. We are.”

Chapter 64

64

It wasn’t truly over for months. It took that long for the investigators to go through Roland Ballencoa’s journals and contact the girls and women he had stalked, and to identify and locate all the girls whose photographs he had filed away in boxes in the small shed at the back of his property. Photographs of unsuspecting potential victims and of actual victims as well.

In addition to photographs, they had found container after container of women’s lingerie—all very neatly organized by date with painstaking care to note the name of the woman it had belonged to, and her address, and her page number in the corresponding journal.

In many cases Ballencoa had also photographed himself modeling the feminine articles of clothing.

Many of the victims found were unaware Ballencoa had ever had an interest in them. Some had known and liked him. Others met the news of his demise with relief.

Seven were never found at all.

Seven young women listed in his journals, seven young women Roland Ballencoa had photographed from northern California to San Diego County, had simply disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. Ballencoa had never been considered a person of interest in six of those cases.

Detectives Mendez and Tanner would head the joint task force and organize a central clearing house for the cases. Their efforts would receive national attention, and serve as a model for future multijurisdictional investigations across the country.