THE LYING GIRL

LYNN RIVERS MYSTERIES, BOOK TWO

LJ BOURNE

PROLOGUE

Lynn Rivers was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen, and he’d loved her since the day he first laid eyes on her. She was maybe five years old then. He was older. Maybe he didn’t even know it at the time, but later, when he thought back, he did know it was love at first sight. She never knew.

Because she left before he could tell her.

So many times he’d tried to tell her, tried to show the depth of his feelings for her, tried to let her know just how perfect they were for each other.

But he always fell short. Always failed.

Until she’d chosen someone else and his world, no, his very soul, shattered. The pieces of that devastation still lay somewhere deep in the darkness of his mind, in ruin, discarded but not forgotten. His soul would never be whole again. Unless he could make her his.

She was misled in choosing another. Led down a path of debauchery and darkness by her best friend. It was a choice made for her. Not by her. He just had to make her see that and all would be well again.

He had to tell himself that to mend the shattered pieces of his heart. Had to believe it. Could believe it, because it was true.

So, he showed her. But she didn’t see. So, he took everyone she loved away from her. And still, she didn’t see.

Then she left him. Disappeared off the face of the earth for almost two decades. Two decades of pain and anguish. Of losing himself in helping others. In yearning to see her face again.

Until one sleepless night he did. There she was, on TV, hailed as a savior of children just like he was too. They might’ve been apart, but their hearts and their souls were together all this time, united in the quest to make the world a better place.

Winter was coming to town. Just like it had back then, in the year he lost her.

But this winter would bring her back to him.

And he would not make the mistake of letting her go again.

1

Lynn had spent the last three weeks prepping for the return to her hometown. Mentally, physically, and emotionally. But now that she was almost at her destination, she was holding the steering wheel so hard her hands were cramping up painfully and her vision blurred. Unless she focused very hard on the road and her driving. Which now that she was only ten miles out from her hometown of Green Haven in Upstate New York was nearly impossible to do.

Good thing the winding blacktop road, bordered by nearly leafless trees amid tall, lush green pine trees, was empty, else she might cause an accident. Or simply veer off into the trees. That didn’t seem as bad an idea as it should have.

This was the same forest where her best friend Alicia Simpson’s body had been found on a cold, frost-laden dawn morning twenty years ago.

Now FBI Special Agent Lynn Rivers was back to find out who had killed her.

She would solve the case. No matter what. Even if it killed her too.

Those kinds of dramatic thoughts kept intruding as she drove, making her eyesight blurrier, her palms sweatier and her heart race as though she’d just run ten miles with no breather.

She’d left her hometown not long after Alicia’s death and hadn’t been back since. Her best friend’s death wasn’t the only reason for this. But that other reason was even harder to remember. So she turned the radio on full blast, rolled down the window and sang along to the upbeat song even though she only knew about one-fifth of the words.

Anything to keep her mind off her destination.

Lynn was a seasoned FBI Agent and a seasoned undercover operative, but every time she tried to wrap her mind around the case she was undertaking now, she reverted back to the nervous, anxiety-ridden young woman she’d been on her first assignment over a decade ago.

This would also be her final undercover assignment. Going home. As herself. To do the thing she’d promised herself she’d one day do. Find her BFFs killer. And make sure everyone knew Ryan Connor was innocent of the crime.

Hopefully.

He’d be there. He’d also be the only one in the entire town who knew that Lynn wasn’t just returning to make peace with the place she was from after all these years. As part of her cover for this investigation, she’d very publicly been booted from the FBI. For the past week, newspapers state-wide were full of the story of how a star FBI Agent, the hero in many captures and arrests of very dangerous individuals, had let her personal feelings for Ryan Connor, a suspect in a double murder, interfere with her investigation.

Her cover story was that she was coming back to investigate her friend’s death on her own, without a badge, so she could clear Ryan of suspicion and clear her own name in the process. That much could be gotten from the news too. But if anyone had missed it, Lynn would tell them.

It was a good cover. The FBI hackers and techs went all out to make it believable. Heart-breaking. Undoubtable.

From the outside it seemed that Lynn Rivers’ life was once again completely destroyed. Just as it had been when she left her hometown the first time.

Truth was, Lynn Rivers’ life had never been whole.

She had spent her fifteen-year career with the FBI pretending to be someone else. Going on undercover mission after undercover mission, never taking a long enough break between them to really find out who she’d become.

Now she was embarking on an undercover mission as herself. But she doubted she’d get out of it with any more clarity about who she was. Most of the time, she wasn’t sure she even wanted to know.

She’d reached the top of a rise and the trees suddenly parted. There, sitting in its own little valley, was Green Haven, a quaint town nestled amid miles and miles of forest, looking like something out of a fairytale. At first glance. A closer inspection would reveal all the gaping, dark cracks.

Seeing it made Lynn’s breath catch in her throat and she very nearly hit the brakes and made a U-turn back to the safe anonymity of New York City, which had been her home these last twenty years, such as it was.

But that was just a passing thought.

There was no running away this time. There never had been.

The town of Green Haven had grown since she was here last. The neat, clean, well-kept houses had successfully eaten away a good chunk of the forest surrounding them. As before, a white-walled church stood tall in the town center, and the grass in the park next to it seemed to glow neon bright even in the gloomy late fall light. As if in opposition to the pure whiteness of the church, a tall building seemingly made entirely of opaque black glass stood next to the church. It wasn’t the only new building in the town center, just the most striking. The streets seemed full of people and cars.

Everything looked picture-perfect down there. Like a scene from some romantic small town Christmas movie. Or one of those snow globes they sell at souvenir shops. Or a postcard.

But Lynn knew it wasn’t.

She was certain a killer had walked those picture-perfect streets undetected for the past twenty years. A cold-blooded monster who had killed not just her best friend, but many others in the last two decades.

That’s who she had come here to catch. And she would. Her own demons be damned.

* * *

The lump in Lynn’s throat that’s been there since she decided to take on this assignment—and which she became painfully aware of a week ago—seemed to only get larger as she rolled into the empty parking lot of the cabin rental place where she’d be staying. Serene Getaways was the name, and it was printed in a blue, cursive font across the entrance to the light blue mobile home that housed the reception office.

Back in the day, when she used to live in this town, her and Alicia would kill for something as modern and hip as this place, which would attract all sorts of cool city folk to their out-of-the-way little town. The log cabins she browsed on their website were all identical wooden squares with spacious porches, even more spacious living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms. They also had every convenience that someone from the city could want, including electric heating, dishwashers and washer/dryer set ups.

They didn’t come cheap either. But the FBI was picking up the tab.

“Hi, I have a reservation under Rivers,” she said loudly as she entered, because the chime over the door did nothing to alert the girl behind the desk that a customer has arrived.

The receptionist was still in high school, Lynn was sure, or else she should be. She looked up at her from her phone, her eyes unfocused from staring at the phone screen.

“I booked one of the lovely cabins surrounded by the trees,” Lynn said and smiled, not sure how sounding like a ditzy city dweller helped maintain her cover, but it just came out that way.

“They’re all surrounded by trees,” the girl said. “What did you say your name was?”

At first, Lynn was relieved that her last name hadn’t raised any eyebrows yet, but as soon as she repeated it, the girl’s eyes went very wide and were suddenly hyper focused.

“You’re her.” The girl gasped then cleared her throat. “I mean… welcome… my mom went to school with you… Melanie Rutger. Do you remember her?”

The girl blushed as Lynn just gawked at her, unsure what she was feeling, but pretty sure only pure shock was on her face.

“Sure, I remember your mom,” she said. “How is she?”

“Good, she’s good, I’m Frances, by the way.”

Lynn nodded and Frances turned and took down one of the keys hanging off a cork board on the wall behind her.

“I’ll just sign you in,” she said. “I’ll need your ID card or driver license.”

Lynn handed her the former.

“You’ll like it out here,” Frances said as she started typing Lynn’s details into the computer. “It’s nice and quiet and off the beaten track.”

“Great. That’s exactly what I’m looking for.”

Lynn didn’t quite know what her welcome home would be like, mostly because she didn’t want to get too far into thinking about it. She knew people would whisper behind her back. It’s what people in small towns did. And in Lynn’s case, there was a lot to whisper about.

“Are you here to solve the murder of your best friend?” Frances asked in a hushed tone as she handed Lynn back her ID card along with the key to the cabin. “It’s what my mom thinks.”

Lynn smiled even though she didn’t feel like doing that at all.

“Your mom’s right,” she said, winking at her.

Frances’ big blue eyes went even wider than they’d already been. And in that moment, she looked almost exactly like Alicia.

“Which cabin is mine and how do I get to it?” Lynn managed to ask.

“Number 17,” Frances said. “Just drive along the main camp road and it’s the last one on the left, can’t miss it. So you think we have a murderer in this town?”

“You have nothing to worry about.”

The rumor mill had clearly already started and Lynn wasn’t sure if she liked it that way or not. A part of her would like nothing more than to be a nobody here, a total stranger with no past, someone who could be anyone she wanted to be. Just like it had been on all her other undercover assignments. But she could never do that here.

If the word around town was that she was back to look into the unsolved murder of her best friend she should roll with it. And fan it. Because the faster Alicia’s killer crawled out of the woodwork, the sooner she could leave again.

She was already opening the door, the chime echoing in the silent room, when Frances asked in a shrill voice. “How do you know I have nothing to worry about?”

She sounded like a little girl.

Lynn looked over her shoulder and smiled at her. “Because I’m here to find him and make sure he never hurts anyone ever again.”

Frances gasped and gulped and Lynn left.

That should get the Green Haven rumor mill spinning even faster. Melanie, the girl’s mother, was head cheerleader and a horrible gossip back in high school. Hopefully she hadn’t changed much.

* * *

Only the first two of the twenty cabins seemed occupied and both were at the very start of the narrow, paved road leading past them all. Lynn felt very alone as she carried her stuff in from the car. She’d brought three suitcases, only one of which was filled with clothes. The other two contained the evidence from Alicia’s and the other murders.

Once it was done, the silence of the forest all around her became deafening, oppressive. Funny how that worked. She grew up in a house surrounded by the forest and loved everything about it. But out here, the silence seemed to whisper to her, saying things just beyond hearing, but she knew, in her heart, it was nothing good.

She’d chosen to stay at this cabin and make it her base while she got reacquainted with her hometown for two reasons. The first was that it was at the edge of town, away from all the gossips, gawkers and other busybodies. The second reason was also tied to its secluded location.

Alicia’s body had been found about a half mile from where she currently sat on a modern, teal green sofa in the cold living room of the cabin.

Back then, this entire area had been forest too, and the road she drove down to get here was just a dirt road, one of many leading into the forest. As most of the land in and around town, this part of the forest as well at The Serene Getaways cabin rental place was owned by the Ellingtons—the rich family that founded the town of Green Haven a long time ago and still presided over it.

The nagging whispering in the silence was there because of the proximity to Alicia’s final resting place. Her best friend was urging her to get on with it, find her killer, give her rest.

Lynn’s hand shook as she rolled one of the suitcases closer and opened it. Inside it were copies of all the evidence in Alicia’s case, including the crime scene photos. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see them. But she had to start her investigation somewhere and the crime scene was the most logical place. It had haunted her nightmares long enough. Time to face it.

But before she could, her phone started ringing.

“You settling in OK?” FBI Special Agent TJ Leigh, her partner asked. They’d been working together for fifteen years and could read each other’s minds by now. He knew exactly how hard it was for her to be back in Green Haven. So why the stupid question?

“I just got here,” she snapped.

“It’s going that well, huh?” he said and laughed. “I’ll be there in about half an hour. I’m meeting Millhouse to go over the ten murders.”

Those murders came to light during their last investigation and TJ was officially working on that case alone, assisting the local authorities in the capture of a serial killer that had gone undetected for decades.

“I think you should be there as well,” TJ added when she took too long to say anything.

Lynn sighed and placed Alicia’s crime scene photos back into the open suitcase. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

“Yeah, I do,” TJ said in his signature self-assured way of speaking, and doing everything else for that matter.

Like Lynn, he’d thrown himself into undercover work to escape his real life and like her he also missed the days when they could still do that. But about two years ago, a reporter eager to make a name for himself revealed their identities on national television following a particularly nasty case of child abduction that Lynn and TJ had successfully solved. They were hailed as heroes nationwide and across the globe, their faces adorning the front pages of newspapers, magazines and TV news highlights for almost a week.

There was no going back to undercover work after their faces and names were plastered all over the media. Or after the attention they’d gotten on the case they’d just wrapped up. On the back of that case, Lynn had found this last wormhole that would allow her to go on one last undercover mission before she’d have to think long and hard about what kind of career she wanted going forward. TJ was along for the ride. Enjoying undercover work by proxy, as he put it, since they were actually working together. Millhouse, The Harrington Chief of Police was the only other person who knew she was in the area in a professional capacity.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll meet you there.”

“And be prepared for his skepticism,” TJ said. “He’s still not sold on the idea that he missed a serial killer working right under his nose.”

The second of the two suitcases contained the evidence in those other ten murders they believed were committed by the same person who killed Alicia. She’d only just gotten full access to it a few days ago, so she hadn’t had time to go over it all.

But she already knew everything she needed to know.

The bodies of ten young women had been found over the years, buried or posed in the forest, dressed in pretty summer dresses, their bodies adorned with marigolds. They had been raped, strangled and stabbed through the heart. That was also exactly how Alicia had been found. She was this killer’s first victim.

How the police had failed to connect the dots was a mystery to Lynn.

They also believed there had been more than ten murders and that not all had been discovered yet. This was based on skeletal evidence and missing persons reports going back twenty years. In some of those cases, the summer dresses the victims wore had still been intact even though their bodies were not.

The discovery of Tonya Rancor’s body led them to the assumption that a serial killer was on the loose and that Alicia had been his first victim. Tonya was his latest victim and had been posed by the side of the road where she was sure to be found rather than deep in the forest like the rest. Ryan Connor was supposed to get the blame for her death. Lynn had no doubt whatsoever that this had been the killer’s intention.

He was the one she was accused of protecting in all those articles written to destroy her reputation and career.

He had been the prime suspect in Alicia’s murder all those years ago. Cleared, but not in the eyes of the town. He was also the only man Lynn ever loved. That much the news articles got right.

Ryan was another reason she would prefer to conduct her investigation without the chief of police knowing about it. Because the chief suspected Ryan. And he suspected her of covering for him. He was still officially a person of interest in Tonya’s murder, if not a full-blown suspect. That and the death of Tonya’s father Nate, Ryan’s friend from his Army days.

But there was nothing for it. Her work stepped in on Harrison’s jurisdiction and she needed his full cooperation. She’d make him see she worked only in the name of justice. Always. No matter what the press, the locals and even her former employers now claimed.

She would track down the killer and she would bring him to justice. No matter who he turned out to be.

2

The drive to Harrington took less than thirty minutes along the empty forest road connecting the two towns. Less than a month ago, Lynn was here investigating the brutal murder of her friend's daughter. As opposed to then, the trees lining the road were now completely leafless and it felt like a whole different world. But in all the world she would always remember that murder. Just as she always remembered Alicia’s. The bad ones stayed with her forever. At least she was out here again, doing what she did best—undercover work. At least she was getting one last chance to put things right.

The receptionist at the police station looked at her over her winged glasses and actually rolled her eyes, as if to say, not you again. More than once, while investigating the last case, Lynn had barged into this police station with no regard for the fact that this place was actually the receptionist’s castle and she was in charge of it.

She decided she better start this case on a better foot with the lady.

“Hi, I have a meeting with Chief Millhouse,” she said sweetly. “Is he in?”

“Just go through to his office,” the receptionist said. “They’re expecting you.”

TJ was already there, she knew that from seeing his SUV outside. She just smiled at the receptionist again and walked through the sliding doors to the back.

She was wearing jeans and her long black winter parka, and had brushed her long, light brown hair under her black cap, but if she was hoping that the people working at the station wouldn’t recognize her in an instant, she was dead wrong. Conversations stopped as she walked down the narrow carpet lined hallway to the Chief’s office, and everywhere she looked a curious face was staring at her.

Of everyone working here, she’d only really dealt with Millhouse’s daughter on the last case, but they all seemed to know who she was regardless. The heat rising in her cheeks and the rest of her body was definitely due to more than just being overdressed in this over-heated police station.

She knocked on the chief’s door but entered before he had the chance to invite her in.

“Hello Ms. Rivers,” Millhouse said as she closed the door behind her.

Millhouse was one of the most put together officers of the law Lynn had ever met. His hair was always meticulously combed, his uniform always properly pressed with not a wrinkle in sight and his words were always the correct ones. A suspicious mind would see him as a man hiding dark secrets underneath that perfect exterior, but his eyes were warm and caring.

She took the hand he offered her and greeted him back.

“I didn’t expect you to actually come to the police station,” he said as he walked back to the small table in the corner of his office. “Given the undercover nature of your assignment, that is.”

TJ was sitting at the table, and apart from nodding at her as she entered, he seemed completely engrossed by whatever was in the file he was poring over. Lynn took a seat next to him.

“I thought a lot about how best to handle this assignment, and the bottom line is that completely denying I’m back home to find Alicia’s killer wouldn’t have washed,” she explained. “That’s the first thing I was asked by the first person I met there.”

“If you’re sure that’s the best way to handle it,” Millhouse said and took the seat across from her.

TJ gave her an encouraging nod over the report he was reading.

Lynn sat down next to TJ, facing Millhouse over his desk. Just like everything else about him, his desk was meticulously neat.

“Something about the last case we worked on brought the killer out into the open,” Lynn said. “I think it was most likely my presence here. So I’m here to draw him all the way out. That’s why there’s no use hiding my true purpose for the visit.”

“You seem sure that whoever killed Tonya Rancor also killed your friend twenty years ago,” Millhouse said. Something in his tone made Lynn look at him sharply.

“You don’t?” she asked.

Millhouse shrugged. “I think it’s far too early to jump to any kind of conclusions. But the fact that all of the other victims were members of the at-risk part of the population and your friend was a high school senior from a good family with no history of delinquent behavior or drug use it does beg the question of whether these cases are in fact connected.”

“Members of the at-risk part of the population?” TJ asked, cocking an eyebrow at Millhouse. “What a quaint way of calling them prostitutes and drug addicts. Yet their files don’t suggest they were very far down the path at all.”

Millhouse shrugged again. “That’s a matter of interpretation.”

“Clearly. I interpret that you’ve let the murders go on under your nose for all these years exactly because drug addicts and prostitutes don’t receive the same level of attention as upstanding members of good families around here.”

Millhouse flinched then glared at TJ, seemingly struck speechless by the attack. She didn’t know what TJ’s angle was, coming down on Millhouse so hard. But she did know that this topic of dead prostitutes slipping through the cracks because law enforcement saw them as less than, was something of a pet peeve for TJ, to put it mildly.

“To be fair, Alicia had started experimenting with drugs and running with the bad crowd in the months leading up to her death,” Lynn said. “To an uninformed observer, she seemed to be a part of the at-risk population.”

But Lynn didn’t believe for a second that whoever killed her was an uninformed observer. She thought he had planned her murder very carefully.

“I’ve only been the Harrington Chief of Police for about six years,” Millhouse said. “But I can assure you that under my watch, everyone gets equal treatment before the law.”

Lynn picked up one of the tan folders laying on the table before them. Each was filled with all the evidence they had on the missing or dead victims of the serial killer they were supposed to be investigating.

“I suggest we get started on this,” she said, looking at both, but fixing TJ with a look that she hoped plainly said he should play nice with Millhouse.

He nodded and went back to studying his file.

“Can you give me a rundown of where you are in the case?” Lynn asked Millhouse. “I don’t want to stay here too long.”

She had copies of all these files, but had been out of the loop from this investigation since getting “fired” by the FBI a week ago.

“Leads are thin on the ground,” Millhouse said. “We’re still waiting for forensics in Tonya’s case to come in.”

“And what about her father, Nate Rancor’s death?” Lynn asked and for the first time Millhouse let the prim and proper expression on his face lapse. It almost looked like he rolled her eyes at her.

“We still think Ryan Connor is responsible for that,” he said. “The death was only made to look like a suicide, and there is no evidence that anyone other than Connor was in the house.”

There’s the photo that was planted in Ryan’s room, Lynn almost blurted out, but stopped herself in time. Only TJ knew about the photo. It had been left among Ryan’s things while he was still staying at Nate’s. It depicted Ryan, Lynn and Alicia while they were still in high school. Alicia’s face was scratched out to the point of ripping the paper and Lynn’s was circled using the same amount of force. The photo was the one piece of evidence that made her certain Ryan was innocent. But if she handed that in to the police or the crime lab, all they’d find would be Ryan’s fingerprints and a piece of pretty damning evidence against him.

“I’m satisfied that Ryan had nothing to do with it,” she added. “We need to start looking harder elsewhere for Nate’s killer.”

Millhouse shook his head. “I understand the Connor guy means something to you, but circumventing police procedure and due process⁠—”

“If anyone’s doing that it’s you and your lot,” Lynn snapped, talking loud enough to be heard through the thin walls of the office. “You want Ryan to be guilty because it’s easy. Just like it was easy to assume Tonya just took off on a drug binge. You messed up not following up on her disappearance and now you want to wrap it all up quickly.”

What she was saying was only partly an act. On paper, Millhouse seemed like the most trustworthy official for miles around, but she suddenly had the worst premonition that he was the wrong person to trust with her secrets.

And not just because he suspected Ryan.

She stood up. “I should go now. Please consider our theory more closely. We’ve hunted down many serial killers.”

“So maybe that makes you see them everywhere?” Millhouse said. He phrased it as a question, but it was actually a statement.

“When it comes to serial killers, it’s probably better to see them more often than not, don’t you think?” Lynn said and turned to TJ. “Will you walk out with me?”

He followed her outside, no questions asked.

She’d kept her down jacket and hat on while inside the office and overheated, so now neither were doing much to protect her from the cold outside. Frost was in the air along with a faint scent of snow. Soon everything around here would be white and pretty and calm. She used to love wintertime growing up. Now she only saw all the ways snowfall would make her investigation here more difficult.

“You sure flew off at Millhouse back there,” TJ said and grinned. “But I don’t blame you. He’s too fixated on the idea that we’re barking up the wrong tree with this serial killer theory. I haven’t been able to budge him either. But he’s got a point about Connor.”

She shook her head. “I know what I know about Ryan. And that’s beside the point right now. I don’t want to get too friendly with Millhouse. I have a feeling it’s better if I just conduct my side of things on my own from here on out.”

“Like a feeling?” TJ asked. “An itching?”

She knew exactly what he meant by itching. The word was their code for that nagging little knowing, which couldn’t be explained with words or proof, but was usually right and came from years and years of experience hunting the worst of the worst. Intuition at its highest, in other words.

“Yeah, that.”

Intuition was the undercover agent’s best weapon, and both TJ and Lynn had honed theirs to a fine and sharp point. They trusted it over any intel and any piece of evidence that seemed to contradict it.

“But I doubt Millhouse had anything to do with any of these crimes,” TJ added.

“Maybe he’s covering for someone,” Lynn said. “Though you’re right, I don’t see it either. I just think I should use more stealth in my work here from now on.”

“Right, gotcha,” TJ said. “Only clandestine meetings from now on.”

“Tomorrow night to give me some time to study the evidence?” she asked. “At some seedy trucker diner off the beaten path?”

TJ groaned. “Or just some dinner at a nice place somewhere off the beaten path?”

“Fine,” she said and he told her he’d be in touch then went back into the police station.

She got behind the wheel of her car, and drove off, heading to Nate’s house. She’d not visited that crime scene yet and it was time she did so. According to Ryan, the house would be extremely easy to break into and leave undetected, but she had to see it for herself.

* * *

At Nate’s house, the wind was making the long, leafless branches of the two scrawny maple trees in the front yard groan as she approached the dark house. She shivered just from the mental image of the cold that must be inside the run-down house. She imagined it to be colder than outside. Police tape still covered the front door, but had already been cut. She didn’t enter the house though. Instead, she walked around it checking the windows.

It didn’t take a master detective to see that any one of them could’ve been a point of entrance for the intruder. The latches were all loose to the point of only needing a firmer push and they’d give way and the windows also all creaked as she lifted them.

From what Ryan told her, Nate was an alcoholic and spent most of his days passed out in his wheelchair, mostly in the living room. Ryan and he served together in the Army, and Nate had been a veteran of almost twenty years. He lost both his legs in an explosion about two years ago and never truly recovered from it. Then someone shot him. Presumably just to frame Ryan. A sad end. Tragic, really.

It was doubtful he’d hear the creaking as the windows were opened, since more often than not, he’d apparently also fall asleep with the huge flatscreen TV on full blast.

But the window in the back bedroom, the one Ryan was sleeping in while he lived here trying to help Nate get his life back on track made no noise. As though someone had oiled it. And the latch gave way with the ease of something that was sabotaged and not just loose from age and disrepair.

Lynn had gone over all the evidence in the case and she was sure none of it had mentioned this.

In the dark and messy bedroom on the other side of the window, someone had planted the photograph of Alicia, Lynn and Ryan with the aim of implicating Ryan in Alicia’s death all over again. And perhaps her own, since her face was circled in that photo?

This thought had occurred to her on and off since she saw the photo. But she didn’t quite know what to make of it.

She knew Ryan wasn’t out to kill her and she was as sure as she could be that he was not the one that killed Alicia.

The one thing that the photo did prove was that both she and Ryan were on the killer’s radar. But she thought that the photo was simply a part of the larger ploy to get Ryan arrested.

Just as Alicia’s murder had been?

But how did the other victims who died a similar death as Alicia figure into this theory? Why kill all those other women if Lynn and Ryan were the main targets? Neither of them were anywhere near here when the murders occurred.

She had no answers for those questions either. But she knew she wouldn’t find them standing outside Nate Rancor’s sad little house.

No. The answers lay in Green Haven. The place she’d successfully managed to avoid like the plague for the last twenty years. Returning would make it easier to find the answers. She hoped.

3

To say that Ryan wanted to stay as far as possible from the town of Green Haven and the people in it, was a total understatement. Just about twenty years ago, he had been the prime suspect in his classmate’s murder and, cleared or not, many in town still believed he was guilty. He left town soon after the murder to join the Army. He was sure that made him look even more guilty in the eyes of some, but he gave it hardly any thought during the years he stayed in the Army. He didn’t expect to ever come back home. But then his mother got sick.

And now his dad’s managed to finally get him to oversee his mechanic shop and this time there was no saying no. George and Stella Connor left for Florida yesterday morning, going on their second honeymoon, as they called it, even though they never went on the first one, given that Stella was already pregnant with Ryan when they got married. He was also staying at their house at the edge of town, to keep his mom’s pets—an old shaggy dog, a midget donkey and several cats—company.

His mom’s cancer was finally in remission and George didn’t want to close down the shop while he was away. He also claimed Ryan was the only one who could keep it open. Which was total bullshit and just another way to lure Ryan into taking over the shop, which he’d been unsuccessfully doing since Ryan was a teenager. His father loved working on cars, Ryan did not.

Ryan wasn’t needed at the shop. He’d been coming in for the past two days, and the father and son team of mechanics his dad employed—Viktor and Nino Kovac—had not needed him to do a single thing. Except hand them a wrench or a rag, occasionally, in case he happened to be walking by. So he was free to tinker with his motorcycle in the back, getting it ready for winter storage because winter was definitely on the doorstep.

He was looking forward to the snow. Having spent so many years in one desert or another over the years, he hadn’t seen many winters.

He was also looking forward to Lynn arriving. She’d said she’d be here later today. She also said she’d find Alicia’s killer and once and for all get Ryan off the hook for it. She made that promise to him about two weeks ago, and again on the few times they had spoken since.

He would’ve liked to have spoken to her more than a few times in the last three weeks. And he was looking forward to a chance to do that too. He was starting to believe the old saying that you never get over your first love. But she’d been back in his life for almost a month now and he still wasn’t sure if she felt the same way. Sometimes she seemed to. Other times she was as cool as a frozen lake.

The reception desk bell pinged, but neither Viktor nor Nino, who’d been dealing with customers all day, seemed to have noticed. So Ryan reluctantly, and rather stiffly, got off the floor and walked to see who it was. Maybe it was Lynn. That would’ve been a nice surprise.

Nate’s golden retriever Lady, who’d been lying regally on an old blanket in the corner of the shop watching him work all day, got up much more gracefully than he did and trotted by his side across the garage floor.

Ryan scratched her behind the ears. “You bored yet?”

She seemed to nod as she looked up at him. Crazy as that was.

“We’ll get out of here soon,” he told her. “And go for a long walk.”

Lady’d been trained as a service dog and had belonged to his Army buddy Nate Rancor. When he was killed, Ryan took her in. Given that she was still a young dog, and a very intelligent one at that, she could still probably be retrained to help some other disabled vet. But she was doing lots of good for Ryan too.

A thin blonde was standing by the counter and she was just about to ring the bell again as Ryan stepped into the office.

She smiled widely when she noticed him, revealing two rows of perfectly white teeth.

“You don’t remember me, do you, Ryan?” she said in a breathy voice. “It’s Melanie. Melanie Rutger.”

A very old memory of a girl in a cheerleading outfit swam to the surface of Ryan’s mind, fuzzy at best. Her hair hadn’t been quite this blonde back then.

“I remember you,” he said. “How have you been?”

“Oh, you know,” she said and flipped her hair off her face where it got caught of the Velcro closure of her parka. “Nothing too exciting. Stayed in town. Got married. Had a couple of kids. Then got divorced. Nothing glamorous.”

But she beamed like she thought it was.

“Great,” Ryan said, not sure what else to say. “So, what brings you in today? Want us to look at your car?”

She smiled widely again then looked down at the floor flirtatiously. “Nothing wrong with my car. I just thought I’d stop by and say hi. I heard you were working here now.”

They’d had about fifty customers in the last two days and even though the shop was doing well, Ryan still figured it wasn’t doing that well. Besides, most of them had just come in to buy oil or anti-freeze for the windows or some other such whatnot they could get elsewhere too. Ryan was sure they’d come just to look at him. He didn’t give them the satisfaction and right now, he wished he’d waited for one of the others to deal with Melanie.

“I’m only here because my dad’s away,” he told her.

“And then you’re leaving us again?” she asked, practically cooing the words.

Ryan didn’t know how to answer so he just shrugged.

“You’re closing up soon,” she said. “How about we go for a drink? You know, to catch up.”

They were never close enough to have any sort of catching up to do. But he couldn’t very well say that.

“I have to walk my dog,” he said, only realizing how awkward that sounded after it was out of his mouth.

“We can do it later,” she says. “Say eight thirty?”

She was definitely asking him out. And she wasn’t an unattractive woman.

“I’m busy tonight,” he said. “Maybe another time.”

The smile faded from her face, her lips now slanting downward.

“I heard Lynn was back in town too,” she said. “I guess that’s why you’re busy.”

Man, word still travelled lightning fast in this town. Lynn only texted him this morning and here was Melanie already aware of it.

“Yeah, have you seen her?” Ryan asked, glad to be changing the subject.

“My daughter works at the cabin rental place where she’s staying,” Melanie said and then closed her mouth, looking affronted. As though Ryan was responsible for making her say more than she wanted to say. As in, admitting what a gossip she was.

Lady whined loudly and even went so far as to nudge his hand, clearly signaling that she wanted to go for a walk. He needed an excuse to end this conversation and she gave it to him. She really was the smartest dog Ryan ever knew.

“I really should take my dog for that walk now,” he said, taking the out Lady offered. “I’ll see you around, Melanie.”

She didn’t like being dismissed, her pursed lips told him that clearly, but at least she didn’t try to fight it. She even smiled before leaving the shop.

“Thanks for that,” Ryan told Lady as he scratched behind her ears. “I have a feeling you’ll have to rescue me like that a bunch more times.”

Before coming to work at the shop he’d avoided the town, staying either at his parents’ house or his grandfather’s cabin in the woods. He should’ve stuck to that. Because he was sure that the busybodies would just keep on coming here to see how the town’s favorite murder suspect turned out. Even twenty years on there still wasn’t much else to do for fun in this town.

4

Twilight was coloring the sky a shade of dusty, greyish purple, diffused by the mists created by the cold of approaching winter. Along the blacktop road dusk had already fallen, but the purplish light still lingered above the tall, mostly leafless trees and the majestic pines as Lynn drove back to Green Haven.

Dusk dominated by the time she parked in front of the cabin she had rented. She didn’t go inside. Instead, she took a flashlight from the trunk of her SUV and headed into the trees. She tried not to think too hard about the gathering darkness or where she was headed.

To the place that upended her entire world twenty years ago. To the scene where she stumbled on her best friend’s dead body in the early hours of an icy cold morning. It was dark then too. The moon had already set, but the sun hadn’t started coming up yet. In fact, it hadn’t come out from behind the clouds at all that day.

But the clearing where Alicia’s body had been found was all lit up by battery-powered floodlights back then. The Sheriff’s Deputy on scene had tried to keep her away from the site, keep her from seeing her dead friend. But he had failed.

If she closed her eyes and concentrated, she could still see it clearly.

Alicia was dressed in a white summer dress, complete with a lace collar and hem. A little girl’s dress. Something Alicia might’ve worn to church when they were very young, but definitely not at the time she was murdered. At least not for the last year of high school or so, during which Alicia went a little wild. She had started dating bad boys, going to biker bars, and experimented with everything and anything. She’d dragged Lynn along in the beginning until Lynn just flat refused to keep doing it. Alicia had started going alone after that.

Ryan had come with them some of those times. To keep them safe. Lynn, mostly. Alicia didn’t want to be kept safe. And then she lost her life.

Lynn was standing in the clearing where the body had been found and she didn’t remember much of the way here. Somehow, her legs just knew how to find it.

The place was serene. Peaceful. A bubbling brook flowed over dark grey rocks at one end and the grass looked soft enough to sleep on even now, in winter.

Nothing at all indicated that a body once lay here.

Alicia had been strangled and stabbed through the heart. Her body had been cleaned of blood before she was dressed in the white dress, because there were no blood stains on it. The shoes she was wearing were black patent leather Mary Janes—a type of shoes Alicia detested. The strap that goes over the arch was done up too tightly.

Yellow flowers—Marigolds—were placed in her hands and around her body. Lynn could see them even now, shining gold under the flood lights.

Purity, divinity, and the connection between life and death are just some of the meanings associated with marigolds. But they’re also used to symbolize good luck, for marriage rituals and to worship Buddha. Lynn had pored over every meaning, hoping it would give her a clue to the killer’s thinking and mind frame in choosing them, but the meanings were just too all over the place to come to any kind of conclusion. Likely, he’d just chosen them at random. Picked them up at some gas station around here.

Too bad her father, Sheriff Rivers, had zeroed in on Ryan as the main suspect from pretty much day one and hadn’t bothered tracing the source of the flowers right away.

The actual evidence collection was haphazard at best too. And some of it had deteriorated to the point of being useless by the time they accepted that Ryan hadn’t done it, because he’d been with Lynn all night. Right up to about twenty minutes before she stumbled on the crime scene on her way home.

Except for the hour she spent awake in the dark, cold bedroom of his grandfather’s cabin without him.

That little nugget of doubt was still firmly planted in her mind no matter how many times she’d decided it wasn’t important, that he was innocent, that he couldn’t kill anyone in cold blood like that, especially not a girl he’d gone to school with all his life. Especially not Lynn’s best friend. He had told her he loved her that night. He wouldn’t kill the best friend of the girl he loved. Would he?

He’d said he was gone from the cabin because he was collecting fire wood so they could keep the fire in the cabin going. And he did come back with a bunch of wood. But it was normal firewood, not twigs and fallen branches from the forest.

Lynn had believed him and she still did. And she would until she was proven wrong.

A twig snapped behind her, followed by more. She spun around, her heart hammering in her chest, a reaction totally unlike her. She’d worked dozens of cases undercover, alone for a lot of them, trailing cold-blooded killers, facing them down once she caught them, getting close enough so they’d reveal their crimes. She didn’t spook easily.

But here she was, totally spooked.

Until her flashlight illuminated Ryan and his golden retriever Lady walking calmly, cautiously even, by his side.

He raised his hands to block the bright light Lynn kept pointed at his eyes. She almost asked him if he followed her, but stopped herself.

“I figured you’d be here,” he said.

“I went by your cabin, and your car was there, but you weren’t,” he added. “So I figured this is where you were. Pretty morbid, but OK.”

She lowered the beam and pointed it back at where Alicia’s body had lain all those years ago. Ryan came to stand by her side, the dog following.

Her heart stopped beating quite so fast and the world didn’t seem quite so dark and scary anymore. He always had that kind of calming effect on her. She was glad it hadn’t changed.

They hadn’t spoken much in the last couple of weeks. She had wanted to. Wished to rekindle their friendship, and maybe more, but thought she better not. Not until the business she had here was done. But right now, with him standing next to her, she just knew that keeping their relationship professional would be hard.

“You’re right, it’s morbid,” she said. “But it’s also where it all began.”

“Nothing much to see here, though,” Ryan said, sweeping the clearing with his gaze. “There isn’t even a bad feeling hanging in the air. It’s just peaceful.”

She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. “I was thinking the same thing. But that’s how it sometimes is with crime scenes. And graveyards. There’s a sort of peace hanging over them. Like it doesn’t really matter that bad things happened there. Like the world is still a beautiful place despite it.”

When she turned to look at him, he had a bemused half-smile on his face.

“You turning into a poet in your retirement?” he asked.

She smiled and shook her head. “No. I just never really dealt with any of what happened here. So maybe I’m still trying to see it through rose-colored glasses or something.”

Alicia’s murder had been followed by the deaths of Lynn’s mother and father at the hand of her brother, Drew. He’d shot them one evening when Lynn was out and her sister Kate was visiting her future husband in Albany. Lynn had stumbled into that crime scene too, saw her mother lying in a pool of blood in the kitchen and her father dead in his study before anyone thought to shoo her away.

Ryan lowered his gaze to the ground and Lady whined softly as she nudged Lynn’s hand with her soft wet nose, as though she could understand the painful turmoil in Lynn’s chest and wanted to fix it.

Ryan cleared his throat. “It’s a lot to deal with.”

“Might as well get started on that too,” Lynn said and laughed. “Let’s go.”

She started walking, heading into the trees surrounding the clearing. She was riding on the kind of jolt of tense energy she sometimes got to get things done, especially unpleasant things that needed doing.

“You mean go visit your house?” Ryan asked as he caught up to her.

“Yup,” she said. It was all she could say, the rest was choked by the rising heaviness in her chest.

Her home—a white wood house with a steepled roof and a wrap-around porch tucked into the forest—was just over the next ridge. The house had haunted her dreams ever since she decided to come back here. It would only get worse if she fought going to see it. But with Ryan by her side, it might be easier. That was her entire thought process as she trudged through the undergrowth, going so fast she was breathing hard before long and beads of sweat started forming on her forehead and the back of her neck despite the near freezing temperature.

Ryan didn’t feel the need to ask her any more questions. He just walked beside her in silence and darkness. Only the light of her torch chased away the night now, but she didn’t even need that. This forest, these mossy ridges and sneaky roots had been her playground growing up. She could find her way home anytime and from anywhere. Even in the dead of night.

And suddenly there it was. Her home.

The light of her flashlight attached itself to the whiteness of the walls making them glow.

Her father had painted the wood religiously every year. Lynn and her siblings always helped.

The new owner had kept that up. And the porch was swept clean, just like her mother always kept it. The only thing off was the darkness in all the windows, otherwise Lynn could clearly imagine her family inside, gathered around the dinner table, just waiting for her to arrive so they could start eating.

The matching lacy, translucent curtains that her mother washed every spring and every fall probably still hung in all the windows.

Lynn just stood there for a couple of minutes, observing her childhood home. Trying to feel anything other than dread and a dire need to be somewhere far from here, ignoring the fact that this too was a part of her life.

Fallen leaves and twigs crushed under Ryan’s feet as he shifted position beside her. His dog nudged her hand again.

“It looks better than I thought it might after twenty years,” Ryan said. “The roof seems to be holding fine and the porch too. Do you have someone airing it out and such?”

“I don’t own the house anymore,” Lynn said. “I have no idea who does. My sister handled the sale. I actually thought there’d be someone living here.”

“No one’s lived here since you left,” Ryan said, making her turn to him sharply.

He chuckled. “My mom told me when she heard you were coming back.”

Once again, he answered her unasked question. The only other person who could do that was TJ.

“Some people buy houses where crimes had occurred,” she said. “Sort of like collection pieces. Maybe the person who owns is one of those.”

“Gruesome,” Ryan said and actually shivered, then he looked at her with very wide eyes. “I mean… I’m sorry…”

She shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. What happened here happened a long time ago. I don’t like the thought of some sicko who enjoys owning crime scenes owning the house now, but I try not to think about it. I’d hoped they’d tear it down and build something new here.”

Ryan didn’t have anything more to say and Lady nudged her hand again. She patted her head and tried not to feel anything.

“Let’s get out of here,” she finally said when that last part became too difficult. “Maybe we could grab some dinner or something. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” he said after a pretty long pause.

“We could go somewhere outside of town, if you want,” Lynn said, figuring the pause was due to him not wanting to go into town.

“Somewhere in town’s fine,” he said. “It’s like you said. Time to deal with all that shit, right? And I’m sure you’ll get just as much attention as me.”

He grinned and she nodded then led the way past the house and onto the road that would lead them into the town center of Green Haven, the place they both thought they’d left behind a long time ago. And the place that neither of them much wanted to be in. But it was as he had almost said: at least they were here together. That would make it easier to deal with.

Besides, Lynn was sure the rumor mill would start spinning double time as soon as they were seen to be together. Hopefully it would spin out the killer while it was at it.

5

Lynn and Ryan never got to have dinner. They didn’t even get to the town center before Lynn got a call from TJ telling her to meet him right away because he’d unearthed a possible witness to Tonya Rancor’s disappearance. So Lynn made her excuses and Ryan didn’t ask any questions, which she appreciated.

The smokey, stuffy strip club called The Lucky Three where TJ wanted to meet was a poor alternative to a quiet dinner. Lynn wondered who the lucky three were—probably three strippers who took one look at the place and managed not to make a career here. As the one on stage clearly did. She was pushing forty years old by Lynn’s estimation and look dead tired even though it was only just past eight PM.

“So, who’s the witness?” Lynn asked as they sat down at one of the dark booths running in a half circle around the poorly lit space. She was no stranger to strip joints like this. As a young undercover agent, she had posed as a stripper in a place just as funky as this one.

“Delilah over there,” TJ said, pointing at the stage. “We have to wait for her to finish the set.”

Lynn hoped it’d be soon. There were only five guys sitting around the stage and none at the various booths, but she’d already gotten the suspicious look from each and every one of them.

“I don’t know if we’re doing Delilah any favors meeting her here,” Lynn said. “Everyone here already made us as cops.”

TJ chuckled and waved at the busty, heavily tattooed waitress behind the bar, indicating she should bring two beers.

Lynn had actually planned on getting something stronger after the day she’d already had since being back, but she also wanted to keep a clear head so she didn’t change the order.

“It was Delilah who suggested this place,” TJ said. “She and her old man owns this place and she’s something like the madame, from what I gather.”

“How’d you find her?”

TJ waited for the waitress to deposit the beers on the table before leaning forward.

“I came across her name in the police reports related to the victims,” he said. “She’d come forward not once, but twice. The first time was about twelve years ago when a young stripper named Barbie was found murdered. And most recently when Tonya disappeared.”

“Well done, you,” Lynn said and clinked her beer bottle against his before taking a long swig. He looked pleased with himself.

“But you know what I can’t quite wrap my head around?” Lynn said and took another swig of beer before placing the bottle back on the table. TJ just looked at her questioningly.

“The pretty summer dresses the victims were found in, the same manner of killing and the flowers placed with them,” Lynn continued. “Any fool would’ve recognized that as the signature of a serial killer, right?”

TJ nodded.

“So why haven’t they been looking for him? Why did it take us coming here on an unrelated case to uncover the trail?”

“I did notice that too,” TJ said. “I think a lot of it is down to the fact that the victims meant to be found were only five. The rest were uncovered by chance. They were also not all in the same jurisdiction and there’s also the problem of poor and sporadic police leadership in these parts. Chief Millhouse is the tenth chief of police Harrington has had in the last two decades and Green Haven isn’t much better. Except for a short stint by a Sherriff Terrence, your hometown hasn’t had a proper Sheriff since your father died.”

He cleared his throat and looked at her sheepishly. The mention of her father and the reminder of how he had died always stung and would always sting, but it would take more than that to unsettle Lynn. It’s just something she would always have to live with. Nothing more, nothing less.

“I remember Terrence,” she said. “He worked with my father.”

“He was killed in a hit and run one year into taking office,” he said.

“That’s awful. What about Sheriff Payton?” she asked, remembering the testy old guy who was first on the scene of Shanna Myers’ murder what now seemed years ago, but had only been a few short weeks. “He seemed like he’d been in office for a while.”

“I’ll go see him tomorrow, but none of the victims were found in his county,” TJ said and glanced at the stage. “And now I think Delilah is ready for us.”

The stage was empty, but the lights were still strobing, coloring the shiny silver pole in hues of red, white and blue.

“Meet me outside in a couple of minutes,” Delilah said as she walked up to their table. “I need some fresh air. I swear I’m too old for this shit.”

She click-clacked away on her six-inch platform heels and TJ tossed a few five dollar bills on the table to pay for the drinks.

Delilah was already waiting for them at the corner of the squat building, just outside of the pool of neon pink light cast by the flashing sign over the front door. She was wrapped in a floor length light brown fur coat, and wearing white Reebok trainers instead of the heels. The plume of smoke from her cigarette seemed to hang suspended around her in the thick, cold air.

“Who’s she?” Delilah asked as they approached. “Also a Fed?”

TJ shook his head. “She’s here as a friend of one of the victims.”

He didn’t elaborate further and Delilah didn’t press him on it.

“So what made you finally come around to questioning me?” she asked. “No one else ever followed up on my reports, so I figured you all thought I had nothing to offer.”

“I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m definitely interested in what you have to say,” TJ said, flashing her one of his more disarming smiles.

Between his sparkling blue eyes, wavy blond hair, swimmers build, and his boy-next-door persona, there were few people he couldn’t charm if he wanted to. Delilah had probably dealt with all sorts of charmers in her life, but even the scowl on her face softened.

That’s why TJ was one of the best undercover agents the FBI had and why it was such a shame he could no longer do what he was best at. Lynn decided she’d just let him take the lead on this one.

“Well, then I’ll tell you,” Delilah said and stomped out her cigarette. “Tonya had a stalker. I told a police officer that as soon as I heard she’d gone missing, but clearly no one was interested.”

TJ glanced at Lynn, the sparkle in his eyes genuine excitement now. “Did she describe him?”

“I don’t think she ever got a good look at him, but she told me she always felt followed wherever she went,” Delilah said. “Working in places like this, you get this sixth sense about these kinds of things, you see. But she couldn’t figure out who he was. It’d been driving her crazy.”

“So, you two were good friends?” Lynn asked.

“She’d taken a few shifts here over the years,” Delilah said and lit another cigarette. “I felt sorry for her. She was such a wholesome soul underneath all the grime of always choosing the wrong kind of man, having her kid taken away and having to take care of her crippled father. I felt for her, you know? And she was a good dancer, so I told her she was always welcome to work here. But lately, she didn’t want to. She was too spooked.”

“So, neither of you ever got a good look at this stalker of hers?” TJ asked. Lynn could hear the loss of hope in his voice. It was the same thing she felt in her chest.

Delilah shook her head.

“And what about the other girl that you tried to speak to the cops about, Barbie Winters?” TJ asked. “Did she have a stalker too?”

“Not sure. But she was such a pretty young thing,” Delilah said wistfully. “All the guys were elbowing each other out of the way to get close to her and she loved the attention. Didn’t complain at all.”

She paused to take a drag of her cigarette.

“And you saw the guy she left with?” TJ asked.

Delilah shook her head and now Lynn really wished she’d gone on that dinner with Ryan instead of chasing this dead end with TJ. Clearly the cops Delilah never heard back from had a good reason to ignore her reports.

“But I saw the car she got into the night she disappeared,” Delilah said. “And I saw the same car right here in this parking lot on the last night Tonya was here.”

“OK, now that’s something,” TJ said encouragingly, but Lynn could clearly hear the disappointment his chipper tone was hiding. “Did you get a license plate number?”

It was a long shot, so of course Delilah shook her head again.

“But I can describe it pretty well,” she said and both Lynn and TJ sighed loudly in relief. “It’s an old-style pick up, a Ford F-Series, orange with a black stripe. The F-150.”

TJ whistled appreciatively. “You sure know your cars. That one’s a classic. Can’t be many like it around.”

“My first boyfriend had one when we first started dating,” she said and smiled. “He went on and on about what a great truck it was.”

“Does he still own it?” Lynn asked, earning a confused look from Delilah that quickly turned to suspicion.

“This was back in Michigan, honey,” she said. “I haven’t seen the guy or his car in decades.”

“But you’ve seen the car around town here?” TJ asked hopefully.

She shook her head. “Only on those two occasions that I can recall. That’s weird too, isn’t it? It looked well taken care of too. Like new, almost.”

She tossed her cigarette on the ground and proceeded to stomp it out just as vigorously as she did the first one.

“And that’s all I got for you,” she said. “Now I gotta get back on stage. We’re always short on dancers. Especially in the winter.”

She started to walk away as soon as she stopped talking.

“We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions,” TJ called after her. “OK, Delilah?”

She didn’t turn, just waved her hand, the sparkles in her claw-shaped nails glimmering under the neon lights.

“Well, it’s something,” TJ said. “An orange F-series Ford truck that looks new. Can’t be too many of those around.”

Lynn snorted. “I remember like half my school having a truck like that. They get passed down like family heirlooms around here. Even my brother Drew had one. His was light blue though. Or green. Definitely very rusted,”

“Know anyone with an orange one?” TJ asked.

“Not off the top of my head, no. But I’ll dig around.”

TJ led the way to their cars which were parked side by side.

“I’ll check the DMV records,” TJ said as he unlocked his. “It’ll probably be faster.”

He was moving with the energy of a detective on a hot trail, so Lynn stopped trying to slow him down. Because, after all, who knows, maybe Delilah had just led them straight to the killer.

Probably not though.

Lynn had worked too many cases just like this to believe it was ever that easy.

6

Ryan got a call from Lynn at just before seven AM, asking him if he wanted to get some breakfast since they never got to have dinner last night. She didn’t wake him. He was up for most of the night anyway, and had given up trying to sleep at dawn, hours before she called. Visiting Alicia’s murder site last night had filled him with nervous tension, which only grew worse as the hours passed. So, he’d lied. The place wasn’t just a regular forest clearing.

They’d agreed to meet at Beautiful Morn Cafe, one of Green Haven’s several fancy new diners. Or more like a fancy sort of brunch place with glass tables, mirrors on the wall and wraparound views of the forest and hills in the distance. To the best of his recollection this place used to be a warehouse of some sort, or possibly a hardware store. He had hoped the place would be empty, or near empty, this time of the morning. It wasn’t.

Most of the tables were occupied. Heads turned and conversations stopped when he walked in. Lynn was running late. A few people greeted him. Most just gawked and whispered with their breakfast companions, unless they were alone. He sat down at one of the window tables and pretended not to notice all the attention. The good thing about all the mirrors in this place was that people didn’t have to turn in their seat to get a good look at him. The bad thing was that they could all gawk as much as they wanted.

He ordered some coffee and kept his eyes fixed on the views outside.

“Sorry,” Lynn said. “I couldn’t get the water heater working in the bathroom.”

She earned as many looks as him, but she ignored it all much more masterfully than he could.

“Wow, everyone sure is interested in us,” she said in a near whisper as she took off her cap, letting her long, straight golden-brown hair fall across her shoulders. It was damp and smelled of summer. Peaches and lemons. Her cheeks were flushed and she looked years younger somehow, despite the haunted look in her eyes.

“I guess you better get used to it,” Ryan said and grinned.

“Might make my job here easier,” she said. “Being such a celebrity and all.”

The waitress came and they both ordered the breakfast special, which consisted of eggs and a whole bunch of stuff that Ryan never heard of anyone eating alongside them, such as beets, carrots and even raisins.

“Guess this place is as modern as any city these days,” Lynn said once the waitress left again. “Who would’ve thought that’d ever happen, right?”

“Are you regretting not staying here and taking over from your dad like you planned?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Sometimes. But there’s a lot of water under the bridge of that plan. I’m supposed to be meeting Bobby Hill at the Sheriff’s office after this and I’m not sure I even want to cross the threshold.”

“You and me both,” Ryan said, but then cleared his throat, feeling like he was being a little insensitive.

It was the lack of sleep and feeling watched all the time.

“Sorry, obviously you have more reason for not wanting to go to that place than me,” he added. “It’s just this constant scrutiny all the time. I’m always on edge and on my guard. Almost like being in the desert all over again.”

She gave him a weird sort of look, part compassion, part intense scrutiny. It made her blue eyes turn grey like the sea on a cloudy day.

“Getting to the bottom of all this will help,” she said.

“Are they any closer to finding Tonya’s killer?”

On top of all the crap with Alicia, he currently had that murder hanging over his head too. And Nate’s. Most days he just wanted to pack up and leave. But that would only add to the problem. Lynn was convinced Tonya was killed by the same guy who had killed Alicia, but that didn’t help him any if no one else believed that.

“There’s a few leads. Nothing great,” she said, sounding evasive like she didn’t want to tell him too much. Just in case he did turn out to be guilty. It made his already testy mood worse.

The food came and he dug in while she just sat there pushing the eggs around.

“This breakfast is part business too,” she admitted after a few moments of silence.

“Oh, yeah?”

“The same car was spotted at the time two victims disappeared. Tonya was one of those victims,” she said and finally took a bite of her food.

He forgot to eat while he waited for her to finish chewing.

“A Ford F-150 truck,” she finally said. “Pretty distinctive. Well restored, orange with a black stripe. We’re trying to trace it, but I figured your dad probably knows all the cars around here better than any database.”

She smiled and it fixed even the cloudy darkness in her eyes. Very nicely so.

“He probably does, yeah,” he said and smiled too, couldn’t help it. “Too bad my folks are out of town, though.”

“They’re in Florida, on a vacation,” he added. “A second honeymoon type of thing. But I can call and ask him about the car.”

“It can wait for now,” she said. “I’m sure the trace will come up with something.”

It was weird how he suddenly didn’t notice all the eyes on them anymore. But then again, Lynn always had that kind of effect on him. Whenever they were together, nothing else mattered much. He wanted to do something about making all that more permanent, see where it could still lead. But she was here investigating a murder he was a prime suspect in. So maybe it’d be inappropriate. And maybe that was one of the sources of his bad mood.

“It really wouldn’t bother him,” he said and laughed. “He loves talking about cars. Especially old ones.”

“Good,” she said, smiled again and ate some more.

And Ryan was perfectly content just watching her do that.

But then the door behind his back opened and a man stopped by their table, hailed by a cloud of very invasive aftershave.

“Lynn?” Evan Ellington the Third said, his thin-lipped mouth stretched into a wide grin. “I didn’t know you were back in town.”

“You didn’t?” Lynn asked. “I thought everyone would know by now.”

Evan was the eldest son of the family that founded the town of Green Haven. They all went to school together, he was in the woods making trouble on the night Alicia died, and he was also now Ryan’s lawyer in his trouble surrounding Nate and Tonya Rancor’s deaths. He had eyes only for Lynn right now though. That had always been the case with Evan. Ryan never liked it.

“Where are you staying?” he asked her. “We just opened a cool new Bed and Breakfast by the church. I think you’d like it.”

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

“I rented a Serene Getaways cabin,” she told him. “I think it’s best I approach the return to town more slowly. But thanks for the offer.”

She grinned, he grinned wider and the eggs he’d already eaten turned rotten in Ryan’s stomach.

They continued looking at each other, as though waiting for the other to say something first. Neither did.

Evan broke the eye contact first and turned to Ryan. “You should stop by my office later. I have some stuff for you to sign.”

Ryan nodded and grunted something that sounded like, “Fine,” but wasn’t quite.

In a perfect world, he would fire Evan as his lawyer, because he never could stand the guy. But in this world, he needed all the help he could get.

Evan hardly waited for his reply one way or another though. Once again, he had eyes only for Lynn.

“And you,” he said. “I’d love to take you out to dinner tonight. You know, to catch up?”

Lynn’s cheeks turned a soft shade of peach. Very nice. If it weren’t because of Evan.

“I…” she stammered.

“Say seven thirty? I’ll pick you up,” he said.

She was about to say no, Ryan was sure of that. But Evan never gave her the chance. He waved at someone across the room, told her, “It’s a date,” and rushed off before she could.

“You should be careful around him,” Ryan couldn’t help saying once he was out of earshot. He kept his voice as low as he could. “He’s all smiles and charm on the outside. But inside, it’s a different thing.”

Her eyes went wide and her cheeks turned redder. “How’s that?”

But she smiled as she said it, like maybe she thought he was getting territorial, which maybe he was. But there was more to it than that.

He had never told her that Evan and his three cousins had come to the cabin on the night Ryan and Lynn were there together. Or that Evan’s insistence that he come in too and have a piece of Lynn too was the only reason Ryan spent an hour sitting outside while she slept. He had a knife in his hand and was perfectly prepared to use it if Evan had tried to come back. And the next morning Alicia was dead. And by the next afternoon Ryan was the prime and only suspect in her murder. The Ellingtons owned this town, so it didn’t take a genius to figure out how that worked.

But that wasn’t a conversation to have at breakfast.

“He just has a very dark side to him,” he said evasively.

“I’m well familiar with the dark side,” she said and bit down on the last piece of her toast. “Don’t worry about me.”

But he was, and the way she smiled at him made it seem like maybe she knew that perfectly well.

“Listen, I should go,” he said and waved to the waitress for the check. “Gotta keep my dad’s shop running. But I’ll call you later. We’ll talk more then.”

“Good,” she said, and sounded like she meant it.

He left her sitting at the table and as soon as the door closed behind him and the frosty morning cold hit him square in the face, he regretted it. Wanted to go back in and take her with him. Forbid her from seeing Evan. And act on all sorts of other cavemen sort of impulses.

By the time he reached his car, he wasn’t even sure he’d ever tell her about that nighttime visit at the cabin. It would mean opening a box of tightly held secrets, breaking confidences and dragging out who knows what? The real murderer?

He never believed that any of his cousins or Evan harmed Alicia that night. It’s why he never told anyone about running into them.

Maybe he was wrong.

But it was something he should try to get to the bottom of it on his own before implicating a member of the town’s elite in a twenty-year-old murder.

7

Whatever warmth Lynn might’ve felt having breakfast with the person she considered her only true and real friend in this town was gone by the time she reached the Sheriff’s Office.

It was still housed in the same brown brick and stone rectangular building, surrounded by now leafless trees that would form a majestic curtain of green around it come spring. Or rather, they’d form a half circle around it because her father, back when he was still Sheriff Rivers, was adamant that the road and parking lot of the building was kept clear for easy access. Despite the fact that the town hasn’t had a Sheriff since her father died, that practice seems to have been kept up.

She got out of the car, tried to think of nothing at all—especially not how many familiar faces she’d see once she entered the building—and braved the icy wind.

The heat inside the building hit her square in the face as she opened the front door, feeling almost like someone threw a bucket of scalding hot water at her.

“Ahh, you’re here,” said a tall man with a crew cut and a neatly trimmed goatee framing his lips and chin.

She almost didn’t recognize him. There were flecks of grey in his dark brown hair and beard and grooves along his forehead and eyes that come from being out in the sun, wind, cold and heat a lot.

“Welcome home,” he added and offered his hand.

She shook it. “Wow, Bobby. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“What? Do I look so old?” he said, his mouth smiling but his amber eyes not so much. “Because you look the same as you did twenty years ago.”

The black-haired receptionist—a woman in her early twenties—barely managed not to snort at that.

“It’s not that,” Lynn said. “I just expected the thin, long-haired metal head that used to run around with my brother. You cleaned up well.”

He laughed at that. “Nice save. Come through to my office.”

He extended his arm to usher her into the back then turned to the receptionist and asked her to bring two coffees.

“Milk and sugar?” she asked.

“Why not,” Lynn replied. This would be her third cup of coffee today and she hoped the sugar would take some of its strength… that is if they still made it as strong as her father liked it. Which was a long shot.

She’d spent a lot of time here as a kid. Playing at being sheriff like her dad, telling everyone who would listen that one day she would be too. The decor was still the same—stark white walls and brown carpeting that sort of matched the color of the building’s exterior. The desks were new, as were the chairs, and of course the computers—all flat screens now, whereas the last time she was here, the monitors still took up most of the desk space.

A few people smiled at her as she passed their desks, some muttered, “Welcome home,” too. She smiled and greeted them back as best she could, because the walls seemed to be closing in on her and the damn heat was making it hard to breathe.

Focus, Lynn!

She counted slowly in her head, visualizing each number in her mind, neon green against a black background. But the exercise wasn’t doing what it was supposed to, namely calming her down. Especially not after they passed the soft interrogation room, with its plush grey sofa and two matching armchairs, where she’d spent most of the night on which her parents were killed and her brother arrested for their murder. She refused to go anywhere else, refused to believe her brother was guilty and refused to accept her mom and dad were gone. A part of her still didn’t fully accept that.

“Here,” Bobby said as he held open the door to his office—her dad’s old office.

Everything inside it was different, including the desk position, but it was still the same room. And it didn’t belong to Bobby. It belonged to her dad.

Lynn took a steadying breath and chased away that childish thought. She was here to do a job, not revert back to being a teenager drowning in grief and shock.

She sat down in one of the two chairs facing the desk and Bobby shut the door behind them firmly.

“So, you’re here to solve Alicia’s death, huh?” he said as he came around the desk and sat behind it. “Did you know you’re not the only one?”

“Who else is investigating?” Lynn asked, sharply.

Bobby chuckled. “Well, a couple of old-timers have come up with some pretty wild theories over the years. Like for example, Mrs. Franks, the school librarian. And Arthur Potts and his wife. To name the most avid sleuths. And of course, I look over the case every year.”

“Good,” Lynn said. “And does anyone have any theories that hold water?”

“Mrs. Franks thinks it was someone from the circus that came through that year,” he said. “Her theory is always the same and each time the fair comes through she’s in here, bossing me around and demanding I round them all up and arrest them.”

“Do you?” Lynn asked.

She remembered the circus. It came to town every year. Bosco’s Land of Wonders. And when she was a kid, it truly was. But that was every June. Bosco and his crew were long gone come October and Alicia’s death.

“I looked into it since we’ve been pretty desperate to get a lead, as you can imagine,” he said. “But I’ve never been able to find a connection.”

“And Arthur’s theory?” she asked.

She remembered him as a jolly old man, with permanently cherry red cheeks who always had a sweet for her whenever she came to his store. Even when she was already in high school.

“He thinks it’s someone local,” Bobby said. “Someone walking among us for all these years, laughing at us all for never catching him. He also thinks Alicia wasn’t the guy’s only victim.”

Lynn decided to go speak to Arthur as soon as she was done here. Mrs. Franks too.

“Anyone else overly interested in the case?” she asked.

“Well, the Ellingtons would like us to solve the mystery,” he said. “They say it’s not great for tourism to have it hanging over the town like a black cloud. Although one of the grandkids runs a ghost hunt tour centered around the case, so clearly they’ve found a loophole.”

“Clearly,” Lynn said and shivered despite the heat. The thought of anyone exploiting her best friend’s death for profit made her slightly nauseous.

“The Fitzpatrick’s also dabble,” he says. “And, of course, everyone else likes to bring it up. More so since Ryan Connor came back to town. And especially since the trouble over in Harrington and all the articles about you two rekindling your romance. That’s what’s happening, isn’t it?”

If his last question were a knife, Lynn would be bleeding.

“No, we’re just friends,” she said.

“Very good ones, it would seem,” he said sarcastically. “Especially since the moment he shows up back in town another young woman he knew turns up dead.”

“There’s no actual evidence that he was involved in Tonya Rancor’s death,” Lynn said. “And have you uncovered any new leads in Alicia’s case?”

The evidence part was true, for what it was worth. There was absolutely nothing tying Ryan to Tonya’s death. She decided not to tell him about her serial killer theory just yet.

Bobby looked at her for a few seconds, a sarcastic smirk on his face.

“You’re not gonna like my answer,” he finally said.

“Facts are facts and I’m here to collect them,” she countered.

“I think your father had the right of it,” he said. “I think Ryan Connor is still the most likely suspect, and I’m sure that now he’s back we’ll finally be able to prove it.”

“He had an alibi for that night,” Lynn said, a lump growing in her throat.

“For a part of that night and you were in love with him,” he said. “I’d hardly call that a solid alibi.”

“There is no physical evidence linking him to Alicia’s murder,” Lynn said, hoping she didn’t sound too defensive.

Bobby was always something of an arrogant prick. She remembered that now. Always the smart ass. She’d blocked that out along with a lot of other memories of her childhood.

The door opened and the receptionist finally arrived with the coffees, but Lynn was ready to leave. She waited until the receptionist was gone again before standing up and putting on her coat.

“I just wanted to stop by this morning to let you know I’ll be looking into Alicia’s case while I’m here,” she said. “In a completely personal capacity. But I’d appreciate any information you can share with me.”

“You leaving already?” he said, sounding disappointed. Exaggeratedly so. “I hope it’s not something I said.”

“No, nothing like that. I just have to visit a few more people today and I’d like to get started.”

He stood up too. “Maybe you could come back later and we can have some lunch to catch up properly.”

“Not today,” she said. “But some other time, OK?”

He didn’t look very happy about that, but he smiled nonetheless. “I’ll hold you to that.”

Maybe Lynn could’ve been more diplomatic about turning down his lunch date suggestion, but she’d already been roped into a dinner date with another guy she’d rather not see more of than she absolutely had to, and she wasn’t about to make a day of it.

And also, if Bobby was fixated on Ryan as the main suspect in Alicia’s death, he wouldn’t be much help to her.

8

The father and son mechanic duo were already merrily clanking away when Ryan walked in. They turned as one when they saw him and mumbled their greeting in unison, both sounding exactly the same. They also looked the same, the son—Nino—a younger and only slightly fitter version of his dad. Both were tall, both thin but wiry and both had the same scraggly, light brown shoulder-length hair. Neither was much of a conversationalist.

Each time Ryan saw him he was reminded that the way they worked so perfectly in synch with each other was probably his father’s dream for the two of them. Not probably. It definitely had been. But that dream was nipped in the bud. Ryan would help his dad at the shop since before he could remember. But he never loved working on cars and engines and whatnot the way his dad did. Even if he hadn’t joined the Army, this shop would never have been his future.

He brewed a fresh pot of coffee in the small office off the reception room, cranked up the space heater and had his second coffee of the day while staring out the grimy window at a copse of leafless trees while waiting to get warm. He was still having trouble adjusting to the cold.

No customers came in, but he had the feeling that everyone who passed the shop made a good effort to try and get a look inside. A look at him. The town freak. The murderer who got away.

And he was gonna stay that, unless he did something about it. Or went insane thinking about it.

He dialed his cousin Gerry’s number and wasn’t surprised when the guy answered right away. As far as Ryan could tell, Gerry didn’t actually work for a living. He probably just lived off his wife’s wealth.

“Wanna grab a drink and catch up?” Ryan said, the words surprisingly not sticking in his throat.

The surprised gasp his cousin let out was jarring though.

“Sure,” Gerry said slowly. “I thought you weren’t interested in catching up though.”

The guy wasn’t wrong. Family or not, as far as Ryan was concerned their relationship was over twenty years ago—on the night he, his other two cousins and Evan came to the cabin demanding he let them party with Lynn.

“I guess I changed my mind,” Ryan said and chuckled. “In an hour? At Black Fox Pub?”

“Good, I’ll be there,” Gerry said, still sounding very perplexed.

Ryan didn’t waste too much time worrying about that though. It was time he got some answers. He just hoped Gerry had them.

* * *

The wind was picking up and the pub’s sign—a picture of a Black Fox on a wooden slab suspended on a chain creaked and squealed ominously as Ryan entered the place. It was nearly empty, as would be expected on a weekday midmorning, but what people were in there turned and stared as Ryan made his way to one of the sturdy hardwood tables at the back.

This place was an imitation of an English pub—apparently the exact replica of the town founder’s, Evan Ellington the First’s, favorite one back home, before he emigrated. Ryan had been inside it maybe three times in his life.

Gerry entered moments after he did, jovially greeting everyone inside and ordering two pints for them on his way to Ryan’s table.

“Do you know why all these pubs have pictures above the doors?” he asked as he pulled out a chair across from Ryan. “It’s because most people were illiterate back in the day, but a black fox is a black fox, right? No need to read to know where you’re meeting your friends.”

“I didn’t know that,” Ryan said. “But it makes sense.”

Gerry stopped smiling and instead fixed Ryan with a very cold, calculating sort of look. It didn’t ease up until the beers were in front of them. And even though it was much too early to start drinking, Ryan took a long swig of his anyway.

“I called you because I have a question,” he said, since he was never one for pleasantries and other beating around the bush nonsense.

Gerry grinned. “I figured you didn’t just want to chat about old times.”

“I do want to chat about old times,” Ryan said. “I’d like to know about the night Alicia Simpson died. Were you ever questioned about your movements that night?”

Gerry was just lifting his glass to his mouth, looking real smug. He very nearly spilled it all over himself when he heard the question.

“Whoa, that’s way out of left field,” he said.

“Were you?” Ryan asked again.

Gerry shook his head. “Not really. We were hanging out with Evan, weren’t we? That’s all anyone needed to know to leave us alone back then. As you remember.”

Gerry and his two brothers were Ryan’s cousins on his mother’s side. The O’Rourkes were bad news, drunks and no-gooders the lot of them, and no one much liked them around. No one messed with them either. Ryan remembered how powerful and strong he felt hanging out with them. Something he was very much ashamed of now.

“Yeah, no one touched the heir,” Ryan said. “Evan can do what he pleases.”

That was the thinking of the whole town, law enforcement included.

“We only got away with as much shit as we did because Evan was with us,” Gerry said. “But you already know that and maybe we shouldn’t be saying it. Things are different now.”

“Yeah, for example, you’re a part of the family now,” Ryan said. “So they never questioned you? No one knows you were in the woods the night Alicia was killed?”

Gerry’s eyes bugged out and his cheeks turned crimson. “Look, I’m sorry you got done up for that, but you were cleared in the end. So no harm done, right? And Evan will make sure you get no more heat about this other murder. That’s that. No use dredging up the past.”

Gerry took a long swig of his beer, probably to try and compose himself. He always was a talker, especially when he was nervous or agitated. Which he clearly was right now.

“Like it or not, the past has been dredged up,” Ryan said. “Lynn’s here, looking into Alicia’s death and I’d like to know if you know anything about it.”

Gerry looked at him with wide eyes. “Like what?”

“Like did Evan take out his anger over me chasing him away from Lynn on Alicia,” Ryan said. “And did you help him cover it up?”

Evan had a temper and he was a spoiled rich brat used to getting what he wanted. That was no secret around town either. But few people knew just how far he was willing to go to get what he wanted. Ryan and his cousins knew it very well. The guy wouldn’t stop at rape. Would he stop at murder? That’s what Ryan was asking Gerry.

His cousin was physically running away from the question, leaning back in his chair as far as he could. Ryan leaned forward.

“You’re talking crazy, man,” Gerry said, drinking the last of his beer while pulling out his wallet with his other hand.

“I gotta go now,” he announced, tossed a twenty on the table and was walking away before Ryan could react.

He’d have to chase him to get his answers and he wasn’t about to do that.

Besides, Gerry wasn’t the only one who knew the answer to his question. His other two cousins—Mickey and Billy—would know too. They’d joined the outlaw biker gang Demon’s Way MC soon after Ryan left for the Army. And given the kind of crap that MC got up to, Ryan figured they’d have less trouble talking about the night Alicia died than Gerry did. He probably should’ve started with them in the first place instead of wasting his time with Gerry.

9

Since The Potts’, as the mom-and-pop store owned by Arthur Potts and his wife was called, was only a three minutes ride from the Sheriff’s Office and since Lynn had to start somewhere, she decided to stop there first. The small general store used to be the only place to do your shopping in town when Lynn was young, and it always smelled of lavender and licorice. The former had changed, since Green Haven was now littered with shops of all kinds and even a couple of supermarkets, but the smell hadn’t. Those two scents hit her square in the face along with the heat as she entered.

Their offerings still included virtually anything one might need, from sweets and newspapers to toilet paper and even appliances, like toasters and blenders, as well as scooters, toys and other assorted whatnots.

Arthur Potts sat in a soft-looking, padded office chair next to the space heater, reading the daily newspaper and wearing glasses with lenses about half an inch thick that magnified his eyes to comic levels. His hair was white and stuck up in tufts, his face maybe had a few more wrinkles, but other than that he looked the same.

“What can I do for you today?” he asked as he spotted her.

“I just came for a chat,” Lynn said pleasantly. “If you’re not too busy.”

He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Then did a double take as he finally saw, and recognized, her face.

“Little Miss Rivers,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “Or do my eyes deceive me?”

Lynn smiled wide and went up to him, offering her hand which he took in both of his. “It’s me. How have you been, Mr. Potts?”

“Oh, you know, I try not to complain,” he said. “I read about you in the papers. But I don’t believe a word they wrote. I know you’re just as fair-minded as your daddy was. Maybe more so.”

“Just like I don’t believe your brother murdered anyone,” Mr. Potts went on. “He was a kind and helpful boy. Took after your mother, I think.”

The words struck Lynn near the heart, bad enough to take her breath for a second. It was still hard for her to think about her mother. But she cleared her throat and tried to clear her mind.

“I’m here because I want to get to the bottom of Alicia’s murder,” she said, the words sticking in her throat more than usually.

He gave her a very compassionate look, his eyes filling with tears. “So much tragedy for one girl to endure. But you made it through. You won.”

“Won is a stretch,” she said and laughed. “But if I find Alicia’s killer, then yes, I’ll consider my life worthwhile.”

“Everyone here wants to know what happened to her,” he said, lowering his voice. “I think it’s someone we all know very well. I think it’s someone I watched grow up here, just like I watched you and Alicia. Oh, it makes me so mad.”

His age-weathered voice was just a croak by the time he finished speaking.

Lynn felt compelled to lay her hand on his arm to try and steady him, because he seemed to have gotten too worked up and look unsteady even though he was sitting down.

“Bobby Hill said you have some theories,” she said. “Would you mind sharing them with me?”

Mr. Potts grinned, which made his eyes sparkle like a little boy’s.

“I sure do have some theories,” he said smugly. “Bobby listens to them, but never does anything about them. Maybe you’ll see the value in them though. You’re FBI, after all.”

“Was FBI,” Lynn corrected him.

“Come back at closing time and I’ll show you everything I have,” he said. “I have two big boxes of photos and stuff.”

He tapped the side of his nose as he spoke, reminding Lynn of a character in some mystery caper, or maybe a cartoon.

“You have a suspect?” she asked.

“Several possibles,” he said. “See, I’ve been asking around, piecing together everyone’s movements that night. Doing what should’ve been done in the first place. By your father, rest his soul.”

“Can you give me some names?” Lynn asked. Waiting until the store closed seemed more than she could do at the moment.

The door opened, bringing in a gust of ice-cold air. Lynn didn’t recognize the man who walked in. He was about ten years older than her, with straight, shoulder length hair that was beginning to go grey and he greeted them both in a monotone voice, which told her he didn’t recognize her either.

“Come back at six and I’ll tell you everything,” Mr. Potts said and turned to the customer, greeting him jovially.

Lynn left even though she wanted to stay and hear his theories right then and there, childish as that was.

* * *

Lynn’s next stop was Mrs. Franks’ house, a lovely little cottage at the foot of the hill on which the Ellington mansion—or more precisely, the compound of mansions—stood. Everything about the cottage, from the well-kept picket fence, positively glowing white in the day’s gloomy greyness, to the majestic rose bushes that adorned her yard, most of them still blooming, seemed to be taken straight from some old amateur movie or TV show.

Lynn saw a curtain in the living room move as she exited her car and the door opened for her before she had a chance to knock.

“Lynn Rivers,” Mrs. Franks said. “Welcome home.”

She stood aside for Lynn to enter. Her house smelled of old books and black tea, uncannily similar to the way the school library smelled.

They exchanged pleasantries while Mrs. Franks led her to the living room, where the smell of books and tea was even stronger. She offered to brew Lynn a cup, which Lynn accepted.

“Bobby sent you to me, didn’t he?” Mrs. Franks asked as she filled the kettle.

“Yes, how did you know?” Lynn followed her into the kitchen. “Did he call you and tell you I was coming?”

Mrs. Franks looked over her shoulder and grinned. “No. I puzzled it out myself. You’re here to solve Alicia’s murder and the Sheriff’s office was your first logical stop. There, Bobby Hill must’ve sent you to me. Am I wrong?”

Lynn shook her head. “You’re not wrong. So, tell me your theory, if you don’t mind.”

The kettle had started to boil and Mrs. Franks busied herself preparing the tea.

“I suspect it was one of Bosco’s sons,” she said. “He has two. Marco and John. My money’s on John. He was always such a brooding boy. And he grew into a brooding man. Milk and sugar?”

“Plain is fine.”

Lynn reached for the cup that was offered, but Mrs. Franks shooed her into the living room.

“When was the last time the circus stopped in town?” Lynn asked once she was ensconced on the plush sofa, which had long since lost all firmness.

“About ten years ago now,” Mrs. Franks said and produced a thick wine-red binder from one of the many bookshelves in the room. “They went bankrupt. There is no more Bosco’s Land of Wonders.”

She sounded oddly satisfied with that.

“And what makes you suspect John Bosco?” Lynn asked.

As the theory that TJ and Lynn were working stood, the most recent killing by the murderer they were looking for happened less than two months ago. If none of the Bosco’s were in the area for the last ten years, then Mrs. Franks’ theory didn’t hold water. But she couldn’t tell her that. She’d have to play along.

“I’ve seen him lurking around the woods, back when I still had my hound, Tiny, and would have to walk him at all hours to deplete his otherworldly supply of energy,” she said. “One time, I found him in the clearing. He was just sitting there, right where poor Alicia was found. I knew then. This was about a year after she was killed.”

That made Lynn sit up straighter. “He was here in the winter? The circus never came through in the winter.”

Mrs. Franks nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking. And why it seemed so strange to me. And it wasn’t the only time I’ve seen him there. He came every year around the same time.”

“As though he was visiting her grave,” Lynn mused.

“Yes, exactly like that,” Mrs. Franks replied. “I tried and tried to get Bobby to haul him in for questioning. Terrence did, once, when he was Sheriff.”

“And what did he find out?” Lynn asked.

“Nothing,” Mrs. Franks said. “But I don’t think he tried very hard. Terrence saw me as a loony busybody. He never took me seriously and I’m afraid he passed that conviction on to Bobby too.”

“When was the last time John Bosco was in town?” Lynn asked. “When did you see him last?”

“In the woods?” Mrs. Franks asked, looking up as though trying to remember. “The winter of 2005.”

“And he hasn’t been back since?” Lynn asked.

Mrs. Franks grinned and opened her folder, sliding out a newspaper cutout. The picture showed and man in his thirties standing next to a modern, rectangular home.

“This was taken just last year,” she said. “It’s John Bosco. And that’s his new home. The article is about how he made it all passive, sustainable and energy efficient after a tree fell on his old home, forcing him to demolish it.”

Mrs. Franks was looking at her with fiery anticipation in her eyes, but Lynn had no idea why this photo was significant. She recognized John with his long black hair and hooded eyes. But he was smiling in the photo and the petite woman next to him was too. As were their two children, a boy and a girl.

“The house is in Anchortown,” Mrs. Franks said. “That’s a town less than⁠—”

“Thirty miles from here,” Lynn finished for her. And in a county where none of the bodies were found, despite its proximity.

“He’s lived there since the circus went belly up,” Mrs. Franks said. “He never left. He always stayed close. And his youngest daughter’s name is Alice. Close enough to Alicia if you ask me.”

Close enough for Lynn too. She stood up and started putting on her coat.

“Thanks for this, Mrs. Franks,” she said, and took a sip of tea to be polite, but also because her mouth was suddenly very dry.

Could this be it? Could the former school librarian have cracked the case all on her own?

It was too much to hope for, but Lynn hoped so anyway. Very much.

“Keep me posted, will you?” Mrs. Franks said as she walked Lynn to the door.

Lynn assured her she would. If Mrs. Franks had solved the case, she would buy her a three-course dinner along with a lifetime supply of black tea. And anything else the lady might want.

10

Ryan considered picking up his Harley from his father’s shop and riding it to go visit his cousins, but one gust of the sharp, icy wind that must’ve come straight from some permafrost situation up north changed his mind real quick. He took the pickup, because he wasn’t seventeen years old anymore. Back then only a real bad blizzard would’ve prevented him from riding his first motorcycle—an Indian that he and his dad restored together and ran like a dream. It still did. His father kept it all these years, servicing it often.

It was a good thing his folks weren’t home. They wouldn’t understand this trip to the Demon’s Way MC clubhouse he was taking. They’d think he was considering joining again. Like he’d almost done at seventeen. And he’d disappointed his parents enough to last one lifetime.

He still knew the way to the clubhouse, and hoped they hadn’t moved, though that was unlikely. Demon’s Way MC existed in the same dodgy town of Whitehill since World War Two. Ryan had no idea how the town got its name, since there was no hill, white or otherwise, in a twenty-mile radius of the town. Where Green Haven was the picture of peaceful country living, Whitehill was the exact opposite—a town so riddled with poverty and crime even the residents avoided it if they could.

And there was nothing at all around the motorcycle club compound at the edge of town. Except a very high metal wall with a firmly closed gate.

Ryan honked the horn hoping they wouldn’t get too upset at that. And that someone would actually open the gate. He probably should’ve come at night. This place was a lot more alive then.

A grumpy-looking guy wearing just a shoddily buttoned up flannel shirt and heavily stained jeans opened the gate and marched up to his pickup, looking like he was burning for a fight. Ryan rolled down his window and looked as friendly as meeting a guy like this would allow.

“You lost or something?” the guy grumbled.

“I’m looking for Billy and Mickey O’Rourke,” Ryan said. “They here?”

They probably had some tough sounding biker names by now, but Ryan hoped they still went by their real names sometimes.

“What’s it to you?”

“They’re my cousins. Thought I’d stop by and say hello,” Ryan said.

The guy’s eyes narrowed as he studied Ryan’s face as though trying to read the truth of what he was saying off it.

“Ryan?” he finally said.

“Yeah.” He didn’t remember ever meeting this guy. But then again, the last time he was here was over twenty years ago. He hardly recognized himself from that long ago sometimes.

“It’s me, Torch,” the guy said. “You know, Danny Masters.”

The name clicked. Turns out he did know the guy. He was maybe four years younger than him and the son of the club’s president. They’d met while Ryan was considering prospecting for the club. All that seemed like another life now.

“Danny, of course, didn’t recognize you there,” Ryan said and grinned. “It’s been half a lifetime since I was here last.”

“I heard you’re some kind of war hero these days,” Danny said and grinned too. “Come in. We’re always looking for guys like you.”

Luckily Ryan didn’t have to respond because Danny was already busy opening the gate for him. He waited by the door to the clubhouse while Ryan parked and joined him.

Clanking could be heard from the garage next door and a few of the members had come out into the yard, looking at him like wolves would a newcomer that dared step on their turf. Ryan would have to be more careful asking his questions here, because one wrong word to these guys could mean trouble getting back out of this compound.

“Hurry the fuck up, it’s freezing out here,” Torch yelled, then led the way into the clubhouse.

It smelled of wood soaked in alcohol and wood burning inside. The place was poorly lit and mostly empty. A couple of guys were playing pool in the back, one was sleeping with his face resting against his arms on a table and a lanky blonde about half his age gave Ryan way too suggestive a smile, especially for this early in the day.

Torch told her to bring a couple of beers and sat down at one of the tables, kicking out a chair for Ryan to take.

“No need to go through your cousins if you’re looking to join,” he said. “I’m the Prez now. My father’s gone.”

The blonde came back and set the beers on the table for them.

“Sorry to hear that,” Ryan said and took a long swig of his beer, while trying to come up with a way to get out of this offer without offending the guy. He really should’ve thought this visit through better. Not that he knew another way to get in touch with his two wayward cousins. He doubted they attended family reunions.

“Don’t be. He was an asshole,” Torch said and drank some beer too.

“Truth is, I just got out of the Army and I have no idea what I wanna do with my life now,” Ryan said. “I’m just feeling around for options. Getting my bearings. I’m not sure I’m gonna stick around here. What with everything from the past, you know?”

“You still feeling the heat from that murder all those years ago?” Torch asked.

“Some,” Ryan said and drank some more beer. “I’m thinking of heading out to California maybe. Got a little too used to the heat out in the desert. East coast winters might be too much for me now.”

Torch gave him another narrowed eyed, scrutinizing look. “Well, if you change your mind we’re here. Like I said, I could use guys like you. Ones that know their way around weapons and aren’t afraid to use them.”

“I’m just catching up with family for now,” Ryan said. “But I’ll see where the days take me.”

Not to this place, that much he was sure of. But he figured Torch didn’t need to hear such a flat refusal right now.

Torch finished off his beer and stood up.

“That’s Billy over there,” he said and pointed at the guy sleeping on the table. “He’s been there since last night, so I don’t know how coherent he is. But then again, he’s mostly drunk these days anyway.”

Ryan stood up too and looked at Billy.

“Don’t be a stranger,” Torch said and strode off.

Ryan approached Billy and tapped him on the shoulder. He had to do it harder and twice more before the guy woke up and looked up at him with unfocused, bloodshot eyes. The baby-faced kid Ryan remembered was still there, behind all the weathered skin, freckles and lines, but just barely.

“Hey, Billy,” Ryan said. “It’s been a minute.”

“Ryan?” his cousin croaked. “What the fuck, man?”

He stood up, almost upended the table and stumbled into him in an effort to give him a hug.

“Let’s sit back down,” Ryan said as he steadied him and helped him back into his chair.

“Bring some whiskey, woman,” Billy croaked in the direction of the bar.

“I think maybe you’re good,” Ryan said. The air around his cousin smelled like a brewery and it got worse every time he spoke.

“Nonsense,” Billy slurred. “I ain’t seen you in twenty years. We gotta celebrate.”

The blonde brought a bottle filled with a brown liquid and no label, along with two shot glasses.

“All right, then pour,” Ryan said, which Billy promptly did.

He raised his overfilled shot glass for a toast with a shaking hand, spilling the contents which he didn’t seem to notice.

“Here’s to family,” Billy said. “And to the good old days.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Ryan said and did. And was barely able to keep from coughing away the burning in his throat.

“We don’t do any of those pussy drinks here,” Billy said and poured more. This time Ryan just held the shot glass but didn’t raise it.

“I didn’t expect to ever see you again,” Billy said, giving him a very sharp look. Much sharper than Ryan would’ve thought him capable of in his current state of inebriation.

Ryan didn’t remember saying much the last time he spoke to his cousins, but he knew whatever he did say wasn’t kind. They’d visited after he was released, all concerned and assuring him they’d make it all good—even Evan said so—while at the same time telling him to keep quiet about what happened at the cabin that night.

Ryan sent them away. After he promised to never tell anyone about seeing them that night. They wouldn’t leave until he did that. But the time for keeping that promise was at an end now. And there really was no good way to say that to his cousin.

“Where did you all go after you left Gramps’ cabin that night?” he asked.

“What night?” Billy asked, but his eyes were still too sharp to make his ignorance believable.

“The night Alicia was killed,” Ryan explained anyway.

“Fuck if I remember.” Billy leaned back and finished off his second shot of whiskey.

“Try,” Ryan insisted.

“Look, I hardly remember much of my childhood, and as far as that night’s concerned, it’s good fucking riddance.” Billy poured himself another shot.

“Normally, I’d agree with you,” Ryan said and swirled his drink without picking it up. “But it’s been dredged back up. And I need to know what you know. You were in the woods that night, near the place where she was found just hours after you left the cabin…”

“Distance yourself from that shit, Ryan,” Billy said. “Come join the Demons, like you wanted to in the first place. No one’s gonna fuck with you if you’re one of us.”

“No one’s gonna fuck with me anyway, I didn’t do anything,” Ryan said with much more bravery than he actually felt about the situation.

Billy just looked at him, saying nothing.

“So, you really remember none of what happened that night?” Ryan asked again. “I know Evan had the hots for Lynn. Maybe he went after her best friend when he couldn’t get her. Maybe things got out of hand…”

“And maybe you should stop saying shit like that,” Billy snapped. “We were all high out of our minds that night. Evan had the good coke and we were just looking to party. After you chased us away, we walked around the woods for a while. Then we went home. And the next day all hell broke loose. But we had nothing to do with any of it.”

Billy was suddenly remembering a whole lot for someone claiming he had no recollection of the night just minutes ago. Ryan thought that might be significant. Or maybe Billy just didn’t like being accused of something he didn’t do. Ryan could understand that.

“And you were never questioned because of Evan, is that right?” Ryan persisted.

“Hanging out with him meant being immune to all the cops’ bullshit, you know that,” Billy said.

Evan, being an Ellington, always got preferential treatment in all things. That still hadn’t changed from what Ryan had seen.

“But I wouldn’t go talking about seeing us that night if I were you,” Billy warned.

“Might not be able to help it,” Ryan said, wondering if that was a mistake. But he wasn’t the kind of guy who didn’t say what he was thinking.

“And it’s all well and good asking me these questions, but don’t go doing the same with Mickey,” Billy added in a hushed voice as if his brother was near enough to overhear, which he wasn’t. “He’s not the ray of sunshine you might remember.”

Ryan scoffed at that. “When was Mickey ever a ray of sunshine?”

“Well, he’s even worse now,” Billy said. “Just drop this, don’t go making waves and it’ll all blow over. It did the first time.”

“Not exactly,” Ryan said and prepared to stand up.

Billy didn’t try to stop him as he got up to leave. He also didn’t tell him to stop by again soon. He just said goodbye with that shrewd, sharp look still in his eyes as he watched him leave.

Ryan still didn’t know what to make of that. Lynn would. But she didn’t need to know how close she came to getting raped by Evan Ellington that night.

11

Lynn parked her SUV by the curb across the street from John Bosco’s ultramodern passive house and just observed it for a while. She could see him playing with his daughter in the room to the left of the main door—he was teaching her to do cartwheels, of all things—and a part of her didn’t want to break that family idyll with bad memories. But that was just a momentary lapse and she used her best police-type knock once she reached the front door.

John answered it right away, wearing just a t-shirt, jeans and no shoes. His little girl clung to his legs, smiling wide, her cheeks rosy from the exertion and her blonde hair a mess.

“Hello,” Bosco said, not unkindly, but the unasked question of, “Who are you?” was loud and clear in his tone too.

“I’m Lynn Rivers and I have some questions about my friend, Alicia Simpson.”

She went heavy on the name dropping and watched his face closely for any type of reaction. She got plenty. His eyes clouded over, his jaw drooped and the hand with which he was stroking his daughter’s hair froze.

“I remember you,” he croaked.

As well he should. She and Alicia spent all their time at the circus whenever it was in town. And Alicia had a big crush on both the Bosco brothers at one point. Lynn supposed that was the first inkling that Alicia would end up seeking out bad boys in the end. But as far as Lynn was aware, nothing ever came of her liking John or his brother.

“Can we talk?” Lynn asked, since John had gone silent again.

“Umm, yeah, sure,” he said and told his daughter to go find her mother before stepping out onto the porch and closing the door behind him.

Lynn glanced at his bare feet. “You can put some shoes on if you want.”

“I’m good,” he said. “Why are you here?”

“I’m trying to solve Alicia’s murder,” Lynn said. “She deserves justice.”

That elicited another clear reaction from him, including drooping eyes that made him look on the verge of tears. “She does.”

“How well did you know her?” Lynn asked.

“Not well at all,” he said. “But you already knew that.”

“And yet you visit the place her body was found every year on the anniversary of her death?”

One interrogation technique that never failed to produce some sort of result was the one she was using now—start the interview on a friendly level then drop a bombshell in the middle of it and watch how they try to squirm out of it.

“Where’d you hear that?” John snapped, but then his face showed he’d put two and two together. “That busybody old lady? Franks or something. She’s had the cops at my door more than once.”

“She saw you in the woods, yes,” Lynn said.

“And it’s some sort of a crime to be in the woods?” he snapped. “If it was then everyone around here should be in jail.”

He was stepping from one foot to the other to keep warm, and had his arms wrapped tightly around his chest. Normally, Lynn would associate that kind of fidgeting by the interviewee with nervousness and subconscious defensiveness, but it was a very cold day and he was alarmingly underdressed.

“Did you love her?” she asked, deciding to change tack again. “Alicia had that effect on guys.”

He just stared at her blankly.

“She had a crush on you,” Lynn added.

“She was nice,” John managed. “No one in the towns we visited with the circus would give us the time of day, but she was different. Kind.”

“And pretty,” Lynn insisted. “But did you want more than she wanted to give?”

His face twisted into an ugly grimace. “No. Never. She wanted me as much as I wanted her. We spent more than one night in those woods together that summer.”

“She never mentioned it to me,” Lynn said.

“Guess you weren’t such great friends, huh?” he said. “She told me as much. Complained you never had time for her anymore now that you had a boyfriend. I told her she didn’t need anyone but me. She liked that.”

That stung more than Lynn expected it to. But he wasn’t wrong. Alicia and she had spent most of the summer arguing about this very thing. It was the reason her, Lynn and Ryan spent so much time together, because Lynn wanted to include her.

“What do you mean, you’re investigating her murder? We already know who killed her,” John added.

“Who’s that?” Lynn asked automatically.

“That guy they arrested, the one who fled and joined the Army,” John said. “Your boyfriend. He probably got tired of sharing you with her.”

Bosco was red in the face and it wasn’t from the cold. And these things he knew, he could only have heard them from Alicia. Which meant they might have been as close as he claimed.

“He didn’t,” Lynn said, again automatically. She was on the defensive now, and she never even noticed them switching roles.

He could also know all this from following them around. From stalking Alicia. Because her best friend would’ve told her she’d hooked up with one of the Bosco brothers. They might’ve been drifting apart a little, but they were still as close as sisters. And Alicia always told her everything.

“I’m going back inside now,” Bosco announced. “And I would appreciate it if you people stopped harassing me from now on. What happened to Alicia was tragic, and her death made me very sad because I loved her. But it happened a long time ago and I hardly knew her. Look for your suspects elsewhere.”

He didn’t give her a chance to respond before storming back into the house and slamming the door behind him. But if he thought he’d successfully chased her away he had another thing coming.

He ticked more than one box of being a potential suspect in her book, and this final display of indignant anger was just the cherry on top. If he cared enough to visit the place where she was murdered, then he should be the first in line cheering Lynn on as she tried to solve Alicia’s murder. Not threatening her to stay away. The guilty got angry. The innocent just wanted answers.

But this was a very old case. Maybe sometimes even the innocent just wanted to let sleeping dogs lie.

12

Ryan was sitting on the wooden steps of Lynn’s cabin waiting for her to get home. He wanted to catch her before her date with Evan and give her another warning about the guy. He’d have to tell Lynn the whole of what he knew about the night Alicia died eventually. He knew that much. But when the right time to do would be, he just couldn’t decide. Except that it was too soon now.

Maybe he was barking up the wrong tree. Maybe his cousins really had nothing to do with it. Lynn will find things out. She’ll find a suspect. Ryan should let her do her own work first.

That’s as far as he got in puzzling it all out even after a long walk in the woods with Lady.

It was only six-thirty, but the night was already extra dark, the sky cloudy, and the faint orange light illuminating the narrow road that led past all the cabins didn’t do much to stave off the darkness. Lady’s breathing and the creaking of the forest all around were the only sounds. All in all, it was serene enough to let his mind wander to more pleasant things than wondering whether his cousins committed the murder he spent more than half his life trying to escape. But not for long.

Minutes passed and there was still no sign of Lynn. With his luck, she and Evan would arrive here at the same time when he came to pick her up for the date.

He hated thinking of it as a date. The word stuck in his brain like a splinter every time. Which led him down the slippery slope of trying to decide whether he should try it on with her again soon. He wanted to. But what they had, the memories of what was, were pleasant. A rejection would ruin that. Plus, the easy friendship they had now was also not something he wanted to risk.

He called his father, George, to stop the cycling of useless thinking he’d been doing all week. The least he could do was ask about the orange F-150 truck and have that info be the reason he was waiting for her in the cold and dark. And not the fact that he really didn’t want her to go on a date with Evan.

“Orange with a black stripe?” his father asked pensively. “I don’t remember working on one like that off the top of my head. And I certainly don’t remember helping anyone restore it in those colors.”

“But you can remember who all owned one?” Ryan asked.

“Sure,” George said. “Lynn’s brother had it, for one, but his broke down soon after he got it and he didn’t have the money to repair it. The O’Rourkes had a couple, but they let them go to rust. Lowell from the gas station still drives his. And we had one too when you were younger. Do you remember? Light blue and yellow. I did a good job on that one. But I had to sell it when your mom got sick. Why do you ask?”

“Lynn wanted to know,” Ryan said evasively.

“You could check the books at the shop,” his father said, rather guardedly.

“Sure,” Ryan said.

“But I heard you weren’t there all day today.”

Great, now the father/son duo were reporting on him. A lot of being home again reminded him of still being in high school and this kind of shit didn’t help.

“Where were you?”

“I went to see Billy and Mickey,” Ryan said and tried to pretend he didn’t hear his father gasp in shock.

“At that motorcycle club?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you thinking of joining?” George asked, trepidation unmistakable in his voice.

He shouldn’t have told his dad about that. When they started talking his father sounded like he was having a great time. Now, not so much.

“Because you don’t have to do anything that drastic,” George added. “This will all blow over. You’ll see.”

“I’m not joining the MC, dad. That was always a bad idea. I know that now.”

Back when the whole town believed he had killed Alicia his choices were join the Army or join the MC. He chose the former, in large part because that’s what his parents wanted him to do. He might’ve regretted it some in the beginning, but not anymore.

Bright SUV lights coming down the road blinded him and a few moments later Lynn’s car finally pulled up to the cabin. He stood up, waved at her and said a hasty goodbye to his dad, once again telling him not to worry.

“Ryan?” Lynn said and he really didn’t like the suspicious sort of look in her eyes, which plainly asked the rest of her unasked question. Namely, “What are you doing here?”

“I asked my dad about the truck,” Ryan said, stammering. “He doesn’t remember off-hand, but told me to check the books. I also asked the two guys that work for him, but they don’t remember working on truck like that.”

She didn’t say anything right away, just looked at him, and he wasn’t sure if it was because she’d forgotten their conversation about the truck this morning or because she was thinking this was a shit excuse for coming to her cabin unannounced in the night. Probably the latter.

“Look, Lynn, I don’t know how well you know Evan, but he’s a snake,” he said because he was no good at beating around the bush and keeping things from her. “The poisonous kind.”

“Are you being a little jealous?” she asked and grinned.

Her lips glittered in the soft orangey light, and her eyes did too. She looked good enough to kiss. More than just good enough.

But the moment was broken by the hissing sound of Evan’s Tesla coming down the road. The lights on the thing actually were blinding. They felt like two lasers cutting into Ryan’s brain via his eyes.

“I can handle Evan,” Lynn said softly while the guy parked. “I want to know what he wants from me.”

Ryan had a good idea, but it was too late to say it. Evan was already out of his car, giving him a nasty, venomous look. But he smiled widely as Lynn faced him.

“Give me a sec, Evan,” she said. “I just want to change.”

And then she left them in the driveway. As far as Ryan was concerned, she already looked great in her jeans, boots, and long parka. Much too good for Evan.

“I’d like a word,” Evan said, gesturing for Ryan to follow him behind his car. Lady growled low in her throat. Probably because she knew exactly how much Ryan disliked Evan. It was amazing how well he and the dog bonded in the last few weeks. Like he’d had her for years and not just since Nate died.

“Sure.”

The look in Evan’s eyes was pure predator as Ryan joined him.

“You’re my client and my friend and I intend to do right by you,” Evan said. Ryan didn’t believe a word of it. “But nothing good will come of you dredging up the past and revealing secrets that should stay hidden. Do you understand?”

Ryan matched his glare. “I understand Gerry’s told you about our conversation this morning.”

Evan nodded. “And I expect it to be the last conversation any of us have about that night. Do you understand?”

“Or what?” Ryan asked. He couldn’t help it. Bullies always brought out his anger.

“I can make life easy for you around here,” Evan said. “Or I can make it very hard. Do you understand?”

“You keep asking me that like I’m some sorta idiot,” Ryan snapped. “I understand you’re threatening me. And now I want to know why. You got something to hide, Evan? Something even all your family money and influence can’t protect you from?”

Lynn was turning out the lights in the cabin and a moment later she stood on the porch. Evan’s whole face changed when he waved at her.

“Don’t mess with me, Ryan,” Evan hissed. “You’ll regret it.”

There weren’t many things that scared Ryan, and Evan Ellington certainly wasn’t one of them. No need to tell him that. He’ll find out.

“You ready?” Evan asked in a voice completely different from the one he’d been using with Ryan. Cloyingly sweet this one was. Enough to make you gag.

Lynn didn’t dress up for him. She’d just changed her shoes and sweater and combed her hair. Good.

“Call me when you get home,” Ryan said as Evan led Lynn to the passenger side door. “I’ll be around.”

He didn’t know exactly what he meant by that. But it was worth implying he’d be making sure she got home safe just to see the dark anger in Evan’s face and the satisfied, knowing little smile Lynn gave him.

Man, he wished he was taking her out instead of Evan. But that’ll keep. It has this long.

13

The restaurant Evan took her to was on a lake surrounded by tall pine trees that looked painted against the dark sky, illuminated as they were by only the faint off-white light of the restaurant. She was woefully underdressed for this place. All around them, the tables were occupied by women in evening dresses of all colors and their smartly dressed dates.

Early in her career, Lynn had worked undercover as a nanny for a widowed millionaire suspected of heading a large-scale human and drug trafficking operation. He also insisted on taking her out to fancy restaurants in fancy cars while the housekeeper—an elderly matron-type lady did the work Lynn had been hired to do.

“The trout is excellent here,” Evan informed her as they sat at a candle-lit table studying the menus. “Or you might want to try the duck pâté.”

Fish and pâté were not her favorites. On the whole, she didn’t care much about fine dining at all. Pizza, burgers, fries, that kind of thing was more her speed. TJ was forever introducing her to fancy foods, but it never stuck.

“What are you having?” Lynn asked.

Remembering the old case had her subconsciously slipping into the persona she’d assumed with the trafficker—that of an innocent young woman, unwise in the ways of the world and ready to be shown the ropes by an older guy. Evan here was actually younger than her. And she was far from innocent these days.

“The trout,” Evan announced.

“Then I’ll have the same,” Lynn said and closed her menu.

“And we’ll have some nice white wine with it,” Evan said, waving at the hostess.

Lynn sat back and let him handle choosing the wine. Then they chatted for a while about things like the weather and how Lynn liked being back home. Evan was one of the most attentive men she’d ever been on a date with. He was asking her questions, listening intently to the answers, saying next to nothing about himself. Every woman’s dream. She didn’t for a moment believe this kind of behavior lasted with him.

The guy wore a mask. She didn’t need Ryan’s warning to know that. She’d devoted her life and career to getting close to guys who wore masks to hide their true nature. Besides, even back when she was a teenager, the rumors of Evan’s bad behavior, especially towards women, were rampant around town.

“And what about you?” she asked, taking a tiny sip of wine, because she wanted to keep a clear head. “Did you ever leave town? I’d expect you to be some high-powered attorney in the city by now.”

He grinned. “I did a stint there, right after I passed the bar. But the corporate grind wasn’t for me. I enjoy helping my dad with the business and staying close to family.”

The Ellingtons got rich and prominent with their logging business about a century ago, but since then they’ve branched out into many different areas—from tourism to property development to who knows what else.

“I suppose that includes a wife and kids?” Lynn asked.

He shook his head. “Haven’t found the right one. And I rather enjoy being Green Haven’s most eligible bachelor.”

“I bet you do,” Lynn said and took another tiny sip of her wine.

She was certain Evan brought her here with an agenda. She figured he’d reveal it sooner if she played along with his friendly flirting.

The fish arrived and they spent some time engrossed in the meal, a process that included Evan showing Lynn how to properly cut and eat it. He wasn’t wrong, it was very good. As far as fish goes.

“If you’re staying in town for a while, I can take you to a great seafood restaurant not far from here,” he said. “We could make a day of it.”

He kept bringing the conversation back to how long she was staying in town for. She figured finding that out was one of the reasons he invited her to dinner. She decided to speed things along and told him the story she’d been telling everyone. How the FBI let her go and she was using her newfound freedom to get to the bottom of her best friend’s death. He listened as attentively as he listened to everything else she had to say tonight.

“So, I guess I’m staying until I solve the case,” she concluded.

“But after all these years, how much hope is there that you’ll find the killer?” he asked in between pretending to still be interested in eating. He hadn’t actually brought any food to his mouth in a while, just put it on his fork or pushed it around on the plate.

“Some of the evidence collected couldn’t be processed back then, but it can be now,” she said. “And there’s reason to believe the same killer murdered at least ten other women since then.”

She looked very closely at his face for a reaction to that, but nothing in his face moved. Not so much as a twitch of any of the muscles.

“The woman they like Ryan for?” he asked. “Is she one of those victims?”

“Could be,” she said. “But I really shouldn’t be discussing that. Not with you.”

She feigned being worried that she’d overshared. She had no idea if he was buying her act though. His mask was too perfect. Almost perfect enough to make her think it wasn’t a mask at all.

If he didn’t remind her so vividly of that widowed millionaire, she might have believed that. But that man had killed his wife in cold blood, holding her underwater in their backyard pool until she drowned just because he’d grown tired of her. That, on top of trafficking girls just a little older than his daughter. She got him in the end. Made him confess. Made sure his whole operation came tumbling down and that he’d never see the light of freedom again.

Her intuition was letting her know something by bringing all those memories so vividly to the surface. The alarm bells about Evan were ringing. She was alive today because her intuition was such a finely tuned thing. And she didn’t doubt it for a second.

After she revealed her true reason for being back in town, Evan continued to be his attentive and considerate self, but the rest of dinner felt rushed somehow.

He had her back at her cabin just before ten PM, told her he’d like to do it again soon, but sped out of there as soon as she closed the cabin door behind her.

On a whim, she grabbed her keys and ran to her rental, hoping to catch him on the road and follow him to wherever he was in such a hurry to get to tonight. Maybe it’d be some place that would confirm her hunch that he was acting suspicious.

She did catch up to him. But he went home. To his family’s enclave on top of the hill overlooking Green Haven, a gated community comprised of several luxury houses occupied by his parents, sisters and aunts and uncles. The Ellington Neighborhood they called it in town, and very few of the townsfolk had seen the inside of it. The place covered most of the hill it was built on and was definitely large enough to hide more than a few bodies.

She sat in her car near the gate at the foot of the hill, hidden amid a copse of trees, for over an hour. He never came back out, at least not through the main gate. And by the time she started her car and headed back to her cabin, she had to admit she was jumping the gun and trying to move faster than the investigation warranted. All because everything about being home reminded her of all the reasons she left in the first place.

She needed to calm down and follow the evidence. Not chase everyone who sparked an old memory or seemed even remotely suspicious.

14

When Lynn had stopped by The Potts’ at six PM last night, the place was closed and neither of the Potts’ were there. The elderly couple lived in the house attached to the back of their store and she rang the bell and knocked there too, but couldn’t get either of them to answer the door.

So she was at the store again at half past seven the next morning, thinking to catch Mr. Potts before he opened for the day. The day dawned frosty white, one of those late fall days where the sun stays behind an opaque white veil of clouds and the tips of Lynn’s fingers were frozen as soon as she took her hands out of her pockets to knock.

The inside of The Potts’ was still dark, and what she could see of the house from the street was too. She doubted Arthur’s “evidence” would be very informative. If it had been, Bobby would’ve already looked into it. But Arthur had a good overview of who did what in town in the last twenty years, which was something Lynn was sorely lacking.

He was also a big talker, which was another plus. But she’d clearly have to catch him later because once again, no one was answering her knocks.

She was just about to leave to grab some breakfast and warm up when she heard a cat yowl. It came from the Potts’ back yard and sounded desperate. She moved to the small wooden gate that led to the back of the building. It was badly overgrown with some sort of thorn bush, and slightly ajar. The cat yowled again, and this time the sound was accompanied by what sounded like claws scratching a door.

She entered the yard, hoping she wouldn’t scare the Potts’ to death when she just appeared on the patio. But the only one she sacred was the cat, which yowled again, hissed and ran into the bushes.

Lynn crossed the wooden deck and walked right up to the glass of the patio door. The house was dark. She knocked and called out for Potts’ but nothing stirred in the house.

She had no idea what prompted her to do it, but she pressed her face against the glass to get a better view into the house. And saw an arm sticking out from behind the kitchen counter. A slightly bluish arm belonging to someone lying on the floor.

Lynn banged on the door and called out the Potts’ names, while fishing her phone from her coat pocket to call an ambulance.

There was no reply from the house, but the patio door gave way under her banging, creaking open an inch. She stepped in just as a voice answered her call. She quickly described the situation to the dispatcher, gave the address and stepped into the house. Something about the air she was breathing made her want to sneeze. It also scratched her throat. A nutty smell hung over the house. It smelled like almonds. Two steps in and she tasted something metallic in her mouth. Carbon monoxide? But no, that gas had no scent.

She opened the patio door wider, covered her mouth and tried not to breathe as she rushed to the person lying behind the kitchen counter. It was Mrs. Potts. Her skin was indeed blue and her wide-open eyes were white. She was cold to the touch.

In the dimness at the end of the hallway leading deeper into the house she spotted Mr. Potts. He was lying on the floor too, unmoving, and just as pale and dead as his wife. The metallic taste in her mouth worsened as she checked his vitals.

An ambulance siren pierced the eerie silence that seemed to hang over the house.

“What’s going on here?” Deputy Bobby Hill called from the living room. “Lynn, are you in there?”

She was lightheaded and seeing double by the time she reached the living room again. Seeing two of Bobby and the concerned look on his face. Behind him two paramedics ran into the house. How’d they get here so fast? Back in the day, paramedics could take an hour to respond, since the nearest emergency room was two towns over.

“Dead,” Lynn croaked. “Some kind of gas.”

Bobby put his arm around her shoulders and steered her to the nearest paramedic. “Take care of her.”

“No,” Lynn protested. “In the back. He could still be alive.”

Speaking made the burning in her throat worse. Bobby led her outside into the fresh air, which cut like sharp, hot knives as she took a breath. He sat her down in one of the two deck chairs, keeping his hand on her shoulder.

“Just breathe deeply,” he said. “How long were you in the house for?”

“Couple of minutes,” Lynn croaked.

The paramedics came out and Lynn looked at them expectantly. But they just shook their heads.

“They’re both dead. Been dead for hours it looks like.” one of the paramedics said. “The house reeks of some sort of chemical or gas.”

Lynn tried to stand but her legs felt like jelly. At least she wasn’t seeing double anymore.

“What a tragedy,” Bobby said. “I blame this economy and the way things are done in this town. Everything is getting so expensive because of all the fancy, rich people coming in. And now our old folk, people who’ve lived here for generations are forced into burning all sorts of things to stay warm in the winter because the prices of everything are just going up and up and up.”

His face was growing red and his eyes glassy with righteous indignation. Lynn just nodded because she couldn’t actually speak. Her throat was closing up. So she didn’t put up a fight as one of the paramedics lifted her to her feet and helped her to the ambulance.

Whatever poisoned the Potts’ worked fast. With the way her own condition was worsening by the second after spending less than five minutes in the house, they never stood a chance. But what were they burning that could possibly be that toxic?

15

Lynn hadn’t called him after her date with Evan last night, she just texted, saying she’d be in touch in the morning. Ryan didn’t sleep much all night, nothing specific keeping him up. It took all the self-control he had not to call Lynn first thing in the morning. He took a long walk with Lady in the pre-dawn hours, going by Lynn’s cabin, which was dark. Then he took another, shorter walk with his mom’s dog Slash and his companion, Floyd, the midget donkey. Slash was an old dog and couldn’t keep up with Lady. Neither could Floyd, though he sure tried to.

By eight AM, he was in his dad’s office, going over the books, looking for any mention of an orange 1970s Ford F-150. But bookkeeping was never his dad’s strong suit, nor was organization. If there was a system to the way the accounts were kept, Ryan couldn’t puzzle it out. The fact that his dad had his own shorthand for what was done on which car didn’t help. Nor did the fact that his dad didn’t bother to keep copies of invoices… if he even issued any. Half the time, he seemed to do stuff for free. Between his mother’s taking care of every sick animal that was brought to her from miles around, and rarely charging money for it, and his dad taking on jobs for free because the project interested him, Ryan was surprised they managed to keep a roof over their heads at all.

He finally texted Lynn at about ten AM, thinking he’d waited long enough. She didn’t reply, so he called right after. She didn’t answer or call back.

The panic that gripped him after that made him feel beyond foolish. But also scared like he’d rarely been. He tried to blame the sleepless night and all the bad memories his inquiries the day before brought up and for a while he succeeded.

Until a Sheriff’s Office car rolled up to the shop at just before noon and Bobby Hill got out. They were on the football team together back in the day, but only for a year, while Bobby was a senior and Ryan a freshman.

“The transmission’s been acting up again,” Bobby said as he came into the office, and Ryan breathed a very audible sigh of relief that the guy wasn’t there with bad news about Lynn. Though why he would come to Ryan with said news in the first place made no sense at all either. “I thought Viktor could take a look at it. He’s a real whizz.”

“Sure thing,” Ryan said and called the older mechanic, who said he’d get to it right away and that Hill could just wait.

Bobby did, settling into one of the two chairs in the front office.

“So, Lynn’s back in town,” he said after a while. “Did you know?”

“I did,” Ryan said.

Bobby hadn’t yet been with the Sheriff’s Office when Ryan was accused of Alicia’s murder. But he was eyeing him like a suspect anyway.

“She’s here looking for Alicia’s murderer,” Bobby said, his eyes boring into Ryan’s face like he was trying to see straight into his brain. See the guilt. As always when confronted with scrutiny like that over Alicia, Ryan froze. So at least his face probably didn’t betray anything.

After the murder he had been questioned for almost twenty-four hours straight. With no real break. By the end of that interrogation session, he was no longer sure what his true memories were and what was put there by the interrogators—Lynn’s father, Sheriff Rivers and the chief of police.

He knew he spent the night with Lynn at the cabin. He knew it was one of the most magical nights he ever spent with a woman, before or since. He knew his cousins and Evan had stopped by. He knew he had to chase them away. But then there were also all the things Sheriff Rivers and the chief fed him during the interrogation. How he’d been obsessed with Alicia. How she wouldn’t be with him so he raped her. How he strangled her. How he left her in the woods with flowers all around her because of the guilt he felt. How he blocked it all out of his mind because of the guilt too.

He didn’t have those memories. They were not true. But after all the interrogating, he did have them. He could see himself doing all those things in his mind because of how many times and how vividly it had been described to him. Lynn had a name for why his brain and his memory got messed up that way. A psychobabble thing that basically said his mind was broken by the non-stop interrogation. Ryan didn’t like thinking that his mind was broken.

Right now, the memory of that interrogation was so vivid that a part of his mind was once again stuck in that stuffy, windowless interrogation room with both the Sheriff and the chief going at him, his throat dry, his voice hoarse from denying everything over and over. But they just kept convincing him he was guilty over and over. In the end, he wanted to confess just so it’d finally be over. Thankfully he didn’t. But a part of his mind was forever stuck in the interrogation room. And probably would be until Alicia’s real killer was finally found.

“Did you know that’s why she was here?” Bobby asked again, bringing him back to the present.

“Yeah, she told me,” Ryan said and cleared his throat. His voice was hoarse and toneless.

“So, you two are still friends, then,” Bobby asked. “She still believes you’re innocent?”

“She gave me the alibi, didn’t she?” Ryan snapped. “She knows exactly where I was that night. And it wasn’t out in the forest killing Alicia.”

Bobby gave him a curious sort of stare, complete with a slight smile. “How do you know she was killed in the forest?”

“I don’t!” Ryan said, heat rising in his face.

“You might want to settle down there, Ryan. I’m not accusing you of anything.”

Didn’t sound like that to Ryan, but he learned a long time ago it was best not to contradict cops. Especially not ones on a power trip, which Bobby here seemed to be.

“Mr. and Mrs. Potts were found dead this morning, did you hear?” Bobby said, changing the subject completely.

“No, I didn’t,” Ryan said.

“Mr. Potts has been playing amateur detective in Alicia’s case these last two decades or so,” Bobby said. “And he was going to reveal all he found to Lynn this morning. Did she tell you that?”

Ryan had the distinct feeling that he was in fact being questioned.

He shook his head. “No, she didn’t. How were they killed?”

He’d tried to make his voice sound as innocent as possible, but probably failed.

“Poisoned by some sort of gas,” Bobby said. “It was made to look like an accident, like they had burned something for heat that they weren’t supposed to, but we believe foul play was involved. We believe they were poisoned intentionally.”

“That’s awful,” Ryan said. “I liked the Potts’. My mom treated all their cats at one time or another. They must’ve had like twenty cats over the years.”

“One of their cats made it, because it’d been locked outside during the night,” Bobby said. “The other two died along with their owners.”

“That’s terrible,” Ryan said.

Bobby let the silence drag, but spent the time studying Ryan very intently.

“Where were you last night?” Bobby finally asked. “I hear you’ve been prowling the woods at all hours.”

“Yeah? Who’d you hear that from?” Ryan snapped. “Evan?”

He shouldn’t have reacted like that. He knew that a split second after he had.

“It was Lynn who found them this morning,” Bobby said instead of answering his question. “She got a good whiff of the gas herself.”

Ryan leapt to his feet, the office chair he was sitting in slamming into the wall behind him and rattling the mottled glass panes in it.

“Is she all right?”

His heart was racing and he was berating himself as all sorts of an idiot for not listening to his gut and calling her first thing in the morning. It was intuition talking. It had saved his life so many times on the battlefield. Why the fuck didn’t he listen to it this morning?

“She was taken to White Oaks Hospital by ambulance,” Bobby said.

Ryan was already at the door, grabbing his coat, but not putting it on before stepping into the freezing cold outside. He didn’t feel the cold. His own stupidity at not trying harder to reach Lynn and the thought that she was dead were keeping him plenty warm.

“She’ll be fine,” Bobby called from the doorway of the office as Ryan reached his truck.

But he’d believe that when he saw her and made sure of it with his own two eyes. The thing was, he’d let Lynn go once, and he wasn’t about to do it again.

16

At the hospital, they’d set Lynn up alone in a nice, all-white hospital room that could sleep four people. They ran a bunch of tests, before giving her all sorts of medications. The more she insisted that the swelling in her throat was already going down, the more they insisted she had to stay the night to make sure.

TJ had been pacing up and down by the window since he got here.

“The hydrogen cyanide gas was a surprise,” he said, talking mostly to himself at this point, since they’d been over everything that happened already. “I thought that was only released when whole houses full of old clothes and plastics burned down.”

The staff at the hospital were convinced that it was hydrogen cyanide that had killed the Potts’ and poisoned Lynn.

“We should get in touch with a fire department and pick their brains about it,” Lynn said. “But chances are high it was just an accident. Like Bobby said, it’s been harder and harder to get by around here. And I imagine a mom-and-pop store doesn’t exactly bring in the big bucks these days with so many other stores and big chain supermarkets around.”

TJ shrugged. “Still, it’s weird. I’ll look into it.”

“And I’ll stop by the Potts’ house as soon as they let me out of here,” Lynn said. “I want to try and find Arthur’s file on who he thought Alicia’s killer might be. Not that I’m expecting much. He did present his findings to the Sheriff’s department a bunch of times before and nothing came of it.”

“So, Delilah’s mystery orange truck, and the circus guy you found are still our best leads,” TJ said. “I wish we had more to go on.”

“This guy’s evaded capture for two decades,” Lynn said. “He’s burrowed deep.”

She threw the covers off herself and tried to get up. But the wave of blinding dizziness accompanied by severe nausea nipped that idea in the bud. It wasn’t TJ who caught her in his arms as she almost tumbled to the ground though. He was still standing by the window his eyes and mouth open wide in shock.

“Lynn, are you all right?” Ryan asked. “I heard what happened.”

Of course it was Ryan. Who else? And she was very glad it was. Nearly fainting left her giddy and she didn’t protest at all as he helped her back into bed.

“I got a good lungful of the gas that killed the Potts’ but I should be fine soon,” she explained to him. “Did you find out anything about the orange Ford truck?”

He had texted her that he was looking over his father’s old records at the shop to try and find it.

TJ frowned at her over Ryan’s shoulder. He didn’t have to speak for Lynn to know exactly what he was trying to say: Why are you involving a potential suspect in your investigation?

But the answer was the same as it always was for Lynn. Ryan was innocent. And out of everyone involved, he had the biggest reason to find the real killer.

“No luck,” Ryan said as he clumsily tried to cover her with the blanket which was hopelessly tangled up beneath her legs. “And my dad’s books are a mess. But if he did work on a car like that, he’ll remember eventually. And he can ask his mechanic buddies if they know anything. I’ll give him another call.”

He was talking fast and a lot. That, together with how busy he was trying to make Lynn comfortable told her he had been seriously worried about her. And that made her feel giddy in a way she couldn’t blame only on the gas inhalation. Or wanted to.

“All right, well, if you’re all set here, I’ll get on with what we discussed,” TJ said and pocketed his phone. Then he told her again not to leave the hospital until the doctors cleared her and left.

Ryan’s gaze lingered on the door for a couple of seconds after he was gone.

“Your partner isn’t quite ready to strike me off the suspect list, is he?” he asked.

“But he won’t be satisfied until he finds the truth,” she said.

It was the best she could offer him.

He pulled up a chair and sat down next to her bed. “How did it go with Evan last night?”

He made it sound like it was a throwaway sort of question, like he didn’t really care one way or another, which plainly told her he did. She tried not to smile.

“It was OK, nothing special, or exciting,” Lynn said. “He expressed doubt that I’ll be able to find the killer after all these years.”

“I bet he did,” Ryan muttered.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He opened his mouth to answer, but then closed it again.

“What?” she asked to nudge him along. “If you know something, now’s the time to tell me.”

A strange look passed over his eyes. Something that looked like remorse. Or regret.

“I just meant… well, you know what he was like when he was younger,” he finally said. “Nothing was off limits to him and he got away with everything. That’s why my cousins liked hanging out with him so much.”

“Because then you all could get away with everything too?” Lynn asked.

Ryan rarely talked about his cousins. She knew he hung out with them a lot in high school. But after the two of them started dating, that stopped almost completely. He always had time for her. Never cut their time short so he could hang out with his cousins.

He shrugged. “Yeah.”

As far as Lynn knew, Ryan’s cousins and especially Evan were never questioned in connection to Alicia’s murder. But she’d have to look more closely into that. In wasn’t out of the question that they’d been out and about on that night. They usually were.

“Where are your other two cousins now?” she asked. “I know Gerry married Evan’s sister.”

“They joined the MC.”

“The one you were thinking of joining? Demons or something?”

“Demon’s Way, yeah,” he said.

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t go that route,” she said and grinned.

“Me too,” he said. “You had a lot to do with that.”

Lynn couldn’t help gasping in surprise. “I did?”

She didn’t remember having many discussions with him about that. It wasn’t her way to tell him what to do. Or tell anyone what to do for that matter. And she remembered that she had kind of liked the idea of dating a biker back then. Just like Alicia had been doing.

He smiled at her, kind of sheepishly. “I figured you’d sooner go for a soldier than a biker.”

“Yeah, well… I could be wild,” she said and smiled coyly.

Just talking to him made her feel a million times better. And it had always been like that between them. She didn’t realize how much she missed it.

He laughed. “That’s not a lie. But still, you were a good girl. It’s why you became a cop.”

“You got me there,” she said and that’s exactly what she meant. He always got her. Since forever.

But they’d never get back to where they’d left things while Alicia’s death hung between them. She knew that. They both did.

“Maybe I should talk to your cousins too,” she said. “They might know something.”

He shook his head. “Don’t go seeking them out. They hate the cops at the MC, even ex-cops. You wanna talk to them, I’ll set it up.”

She nodded.

“When are they letting you out of this place, anyway?” he asked. It sounded like he was changing the subject.

“Tomorrow. But I’m leaving today,” she said.

He cleared his throat. “OK, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you should stay with me at my folks’ place. That cabin… it’s too out of the way and secluded.”

“Why would I take it the wrong way?” she heard herself ask before thinking better of it.

He cleared his throat nervously again. “Just with everything… if the killer’s still around then he knows you’re looking for him… and like you said when I found that photo of Alicia, you and me… they’re after all of us. Makes no sense for us to be alone.”

She just looked at him for a couple of seconds unsure of what to say. She’d spent the last twenty years depending only on herself to survive in far more dangerous situations than this one.

TJ worried about her. The rest of their team, including their boss Grimes, did too. But not like this. Not with the sole purpose of keeping her out of harm’s way the way Ryan was suggesting. And wanting to do. She thought she didn’t need that kind of caring from anyone. But a part of her clearly did, she was realizing now.

“I kind of want him to come after me,” she said, figuring he’d understand that.

He nodded, proving her right.

“If he comes out into the open, he’ll be easier to spot,” he said.

“Exactly.”

“And you’ve got a gun and know how to use it,” he added.

She nodded and smiled. “And I’ve hunted down plenty of psychos already.”

“Gotcha,” he said and smiled too. “What you’re saying is that you know what you’re doing.”

“Exactly.”

And then, since he showed no signs of wanting to leave her bedside and they had a lot to catch up on, she figured she might as well follow the doctor's order and stay put for a little longer. Maybe even spend the night.

17

Lynn was still feeling shaky, but she had spent the whole night in a hospital bed and she was done. Ryan had stayed until they finally kicked him out at nine PM. She slept surprisingly well after that considering that her relationship with sleep had not been great these last two decades and especially not in the last couple of weeks, since she decided to come back home.

TJ had gone above and beyond in securing the Potts’ crime scene. He called in the top FBI arson forensics team from The Factory, their Bronx headquarters, and the five men and women who responded were currently standing around the Potts’ front yard, wearing white full-body suits complete with hood, drinking coffee from paper cups and frowning at her as she passed them on her way to speak to TJ. He was crouching on the Potts’ porch, scratching a black and brown tabby cat on the head. He straightened up when he saw Lynn approaching and the cat bolted for the bushes. Lynn figured it was the Potts’ cat, the one whose loud yowls made her check the house yesterday morning.

“So, what’s the verdict?” Lynn asked. “Intentional?”

TJ shook his head. “They found absolutely nothing to suggest any of the heating equipment in the house had been tampered with. Or that anyone released gas into the house. But they did find a heap of badly charred items in the fireplace.”

“Items?” Lynn asked.

“They don’t know what it was, but they took samples,” TJ said. “It definitely doesn’t look like something you’re supposed to burn in a fireplace. Come see.”

He led the way into the house and she followed. A very faint smell of almonds still hung in the air, but maybe she was just imagining it.

He showed her a charred, black mass in the fire place. Parts of it appeared melted.

“So, apparently hydrogen cyanide can be released when burning stuff like silk, plastics, and other random household items. Looks like that’s what happened here. Sorry.”

“You should probably go say that to the guys outside,” Lynn said. “They look a little pissed off, to be honest.”

“Yes, they are,” TJ agreed and chuckled. “I got a couple of them out of bed to come here and they don’t appreciate it being such a false alarm.”

“So the whole house has been processed, right?” Lynn asked. “I can look around freely?”

TJ nodded. “I already looked and I couldn’t find a single thing about Alicia or her murderer.”

Lynn headed into the back of the house, which she hoped housed a study of some sort, a place where Arthur would keep important papers. Because the living room with all its floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall bookshelves would take weeks to search.

She did find a room with a desk in it and a very old computer on it, but the room was also filled with dusty boxes, heaps of clothes and a bunch of broken chairs, and a lopsided sofa with several missing cushions. A few of the boxes were gaping open, some of the contents missing. They had mostly been filled with clothes—old clothes from what looked like the 1970s, maybe 1980s. Synthetics of the worst kind. She picked a long, wraparound blue, green and yellow polyester dress from one of the boxes and came back out of the room.

“They might’ve been burning this,” she said to TJ who nodded.

“That’s what the head arson guy thought too,” he said. “Poor people.”

Lynn returned the dress to the box, suddenly overwhelmed with memories of the Potts’ when they were younger and she was just a little girl. Mrs. Potts must’ve bought this dress for herself when it was in fashion. She was probably very excited about it. And now she was dead because of it.

Lynn wasn’t overly sentimental, never had been. But imagining that made her throat close up almost as badly as it had from the gas yesterday. She shook her head, told herself to pull it together and went back to searching.

“So, Arthur was lying right here…” she said as she pointed at the spot. “It seemed like he was trying to escape the house.”

A piece of torn of paper caught her eye. It was lodged partway under the carpet about where Arthur had been laying. She yanked at it, expecting to only get a torn off corner of a sheet of paper, but instead she pulled out an entire photo from under the carpet.

It was a grainy photo of a man speaking to a pretty brunette. The man had his back to the camera and a black hood over his head. But the girl’s face was clearly visible, glowing in the streetlight above her head. She didn’t recognize her.

On the back of the photo was a date: September 13th, 2003 and the words: Alicia’s killer and new victim?

She straightened up and showed the photo to TJ. “Does this look like the tail of an orange Ford truck to you?”

In the corner of the photo something like that was visible, but it was impossible to be sure. And the photo was much too grainy to trust the color rendition. TJ said as much.

“What did Arthur do? Follow the killer around and take photos of him?”

“Look around here and see if you can find anymore photos,” Lynn told TJ.

“And where are you going?”

“To speak to Bobby Hill at the Sheriff’s office,” she said. “Arthur told him about all he found out in his sleuthing. Maybe he remembers what it was.”

She hoped he did, because there was still a chance that Arthur and his wife were murdered because they were onto something. Despite the lack of evidence that foul play was involved in their deaths. The nostalgic part of Lynn’s mind really needed their death to have some meaning.

* * *

Lynn had been all set on rushing over to the Sheriff’s office and resuming her investigation where she left off the day before, when she was interrupted by the gas poisoning. But then she caught sight of herself in the mirror in the Potts’ living room.

Her skin was sallow yet covered with red blotches, her hair needed to be at least combed, if not washed, and her teeth were filmy from not brushing them since yesterday morning. What she needed was a shower and a change of clothes, not to go running around town looking like she hadn’t slept in days.

Only one of the cabins at Serene Getaways was still occupied. The rest, apart from her own, looked shuttered and ready to welcome new vacationers.

She waved at the elderly couple staying in the cabin next to hers. They seemed to be packing up too, the husband lugging a huge, bright orange suitcase down the steps of the porch while the wife seemed to be shouting instructions at him.

It seemed like soon she’d be the only one staying here and she didn’t know how she felt about that. On the one hand, she meant it when she told Ryan she was perfectly willing to put herself out there for the killer to find. And on the other, that didn’t seem like the smartest plan at all.

But five minutes into her hot shower inside her cabin that only looked rustic on the outside, but was filled with every modern-day convenience on the inside—including a huge flat screen TV with over two hundred channels, she forgot she was actually at the edge of town in the middle of the woods that stretched for miles and miles all around.

She’d set the TV to a news channel and the weather report was on when she got out of the shower.

Frosty, yes, but no snow on the horizon just yet. Good. Snows in this town had the habit of crippling everything, sometimes for months.

She just got done drying her hair and was putting on some foundation over the red splotches on her cheeks when a loud knock on the cabin door sounded.

Thorough the mottled glass covering the top part of the door she could just about make out a man’s head, but beyond that she didn’t recognize who it was. In a perfectly uncharacteristic flash of fear, she looked around for her gun, before remembering she still hadn’t taken it out of the lock box in her trunk that also held her FBI badge.

Nothing for it now.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me, Evan. I heard you had an accident. Are you all right?”

She felt foolish for her fearful overreaction, but the wariness lingered.

She opened the door wide. Evan was holding a huge bouquet of white and yellow flowers that smelled strongly of honey and some kind of gentle spice she didn’t know the name of.

“I would’ve stopped by the hospital if I’d heard sooner,” he said, handing her the flowers and walking into the cabin without asking to come in. Not that she would’ve refused, but the lack of waiting to be asked said things about him. That he was an arrogant man used to calling the shots and getting his way? But she knew that about him already.

“Thanks,” she said as she walked to the small kitchen off to the side of the door and laid the flowers on the counter. “It was just a scare more than anything else though. The Potts’ though… they weren’t so lucky.”

His reaction was a loud chuckle. It made her whip around at stare at him, because it was so out of place.

“Poor old Arthur,” he said. “Him and his wife were a fixture in this town… remember his hard candy and licorice?”

“Yeah,” Lynn said. “He used to hand them out to us on our way to school… my mom actually asked him to stop on several occasions, but he just continued to do it in secret.”

Evan chuckles again. “I had a real weakness for the licorice sticks. They were so hard and sticky they pulled out all my fillings, but that never stopped me from chewing them. My parents were against me eating Arthur’s sweets too.”

He continued smiling serenely at the memory. This was a side of Evan that Lynn had never seen. Not that she’d seen many sides of him.

“They’ll be missed,” she said and turned away to rummage in the cupboard for something she could use as a vase. The best she found was a tall water glass that was barely big enough to fit the bouquet.

“I saw a forensics team at the Potts’ house earlier,” Evan said. “Do you suspect foul play?”

“It has to be ruled out,” Lynn said.

Evan walked over to the sofa, picked up the remote and turned off the TV. Another weird thing to do in someone else’s home. But then again…

“Are these cabins one of the properties owned by your family business?”

“Yes,” he said and grinned sheepishly. “How’d you know? Am I making myself too at home here?”

She grinned too and shrugged, which was meant as a yes.

“I can’t help it,” he said. “It’s not the cabin. It’s you. I just feel so relaxed and at home with you. Don’t even know why. We hardly know each other. But no other woman has come even remotely close to making me feel that way.”

Lynn felt strangely flattered, but mostly she was just totally freaked out. Neither were feelings she was used to feeling. He showed no signs that he harbored such strong feelings for her during dinner the other night.

He chuckled and ran his hand through his hair boyishly. “Sorry. I’m coming on too strong. But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since our dinner. Believe me. That’s another thing that never happens to me. And I want to explore it. Have dinner with me again?”

He approached, but Lynn took a step back from him without meaning to. That made him smile again. “Too fast?”

“A bit,” she admitted and smiled too. “You’re coming on very strong.”

He shrugged. “I’m a man who knows what he wants and goes after it. Plus, I’m not getting any younger. And when you know, you know.”

Odd and odder. His voice sounded perfectly sincere, but his cool blue eyes never changed expressions. Not even when he laughed. So she doubted that sincerity. If anything, she suspected he had an agenda. And one possible agenda made more sense than the others. Could he be Alicia’s killer? And the killer who didn’t stop killing since?

He ticked a lot of boxes. Single white male, never married, a history of disrespectful behavior towards women…

“I’m not really looking for anything, Evan,” she said, because that sounded a lot more believable than simply agreeing to his proposition. He’d never fall for that. Not if he’s the cool, methodical psychopath who has been killing your women for the past twenty years undetected.

“Let me try to change your mind,” he insisted.

Good. She fooled him. For now.

“Dinner tonight?” he added.

She shook her head. “I can’t tonight.”

She walked to the door and opened it. “But let’s see how it goes. Thank you again for the flowers.”

He looked confused and slightly angry. But then he grinned again.

“I’ll make you change your mind, you’ll see,” he said and walked through the door.

“I’ll see you later, Evan,” she said and closed the door behind him.

He remained standing there facing the door for at least a minute before walking away. And only then did she relax.

She had every intention of letting him woo her. Of showing her his true colors. Of letting him take her on a path that would reveal whether he’s a cold-blooded killer or just an arrogant man used to getting everything he wants.

She’d done this kind of song and dance with many suspects over the years.

But she’d never felt the level of revulsion towards it as she did now. Though to be fair, that wasn’t just because it was Evan. She’d feel that towards anyone she’d known her entire life if they turned out to be a likely suspect in a murder case. Finding out someone you thought you knew was someone completely different is a very world-shattering experience.

18

Ryan was woken up by the shrill ringing of his phone, followed by Evan’s curt voice telling him to come to his office. Now. Of all the worst ways to be woken up, this one was right up there with explosion blasts and gun fire. And Ryan would’ve maybe preferred that.

He took his time getting ready. Took the dogs and donkey for a walk first and checked in with Lynn. She couldn’t talk, but said she’d call him later. He almost texted back that he’ll be holding her to it, but settled for a simple thumbs up.

Spending the afternoon with her at the hospital was great, despite the reason that brought them together there. But he didn’t want to come across as too eager now. Although he mostly just didn’t want to play any games with her. But he also didn’t want to mess up his chances by coming on too strong. There was also the problem of not coming on strong enough. And any which way he turned it in his head, he still had no answers. He and Lynn had plenty of ups and downs since they came back into each other's lives. Better make sure they were on the up before taking it further. That made the most sense. Frustrating as it was.

Evan’ office was in the flashy black glass building in the town center. His secretary, an older woman with a very tight bun on the back of her head wearing a skintight black dress, didn’t even want to know his name, she just told him to go right in.

The black windows, mahogany desk, black leather sofa and matching office chair that he found Evan sitting in belonged more in some high-power New York City lawyer’s office than in sleepy old Green Haven. But he only had a split second to think about that before he noticed the photos covering Evan’s desk.

They were of women. All dressed in summer dresses. All covered in dirt and flowers. Ten of them, maybe more. All looked like Alicia had looked in the photo’s Lynn’s father kept shoving into his face while he tried to get Ryan to confess to her murder. One of the women was Nate’s daughter, Tonya.

Ryan sat down in one of the black leather chairs facing Evan’s desk. He couldn’t take his eyes off the photos even though he really, really wanted to.

“These are them,” Evan said.

He was staring at Ryan intently as he finally managed to lift his gaze. “Them who?”

“The women they think you killed,” Evan said and rummaged through the photos. “And, of course, there’s also her.”

He pulled out a photo of Alicia lying in the frosted grass and laid it atop the other photos. This photo was imprinted on Ryan’s mind and featured in his nightmares often.

“Where’d you get all this?” he asked.

Maybe not the best question to ask. But he’d already spent a lot of time denying he was a killer and protesting his innocence and it never got him very far.

“I got friends in the right places,” Evan said, rather smugly. “They shared this with me. Along with the preliminary findings of the investigation.”

Ryan cleared his throat and looked past Evan out the window. “And what findings are those?”

He didn’t want to know. Not really. He just wanted his life to be simple like it was back when he was still in the Army.

“They like you for these murders very much,” Evan said.

“I already knew that,” Ryan said. Lynn had told him.

She didn't show him any photos though and she didn’t sound like maybe she liked him for the murders too the way Evan kind of did.

“I can get you out from under this,” Evan said. “But I need to know things.”

“Like what?”

“Like are the cops right about you?”

The guy was actually trying not to grin as he asked it.

“I didn’t do it,” Ryan said automatically. What’s one more denial to add to the pile of useless other denials?

“Come on,” Evan said. “It’s just us in here and you have attorney-client privilege. Tell me, did you come back here once a year and kill a pretty young girl just to mess with the town that had you pegged as a murderer?”

“Is that what the cops are thinking?” Ryan snapped.

“Maybe. I’m thinking it would make perfect sense,” Evan said. “Say you didn’t kill Alicia. But everyone thinks you did anyway. They run you out of town and that messes you up so bad that you want revenge. Cue the dead girls.”

Ryan scoffed. “You’re right that I didn’t kill Alicia. The rest is total bullshit.”

“Bullshit that might actually play well to a jury though,” Evan said. “So come on, come clean, tell me your story.”

Ryan shook his head and stood up. “No story to tell. I’m not the guy they’re looking for. And the sooner they realize that the sooner they can find the real killer. Not that they’ve been doing much of that before I got here.”

“Sit down,” Evan barked. “I need facts.”

“Fact is that I haven’t set foot anywhere near Green Haven in the twenty years before last summer,” Ryan said. “Fact is also that I didn’t ask you to represent me. I think we should go our separate ways now.”

“Are you firing me?” Evan asked, smiling an unbelieving sort of smile.

“I never hired you in the first place,” Ryan said.

“That’s not how this works, Ryan,” Evan said threateningly.

“I don’t know what this is, but it’s done now,” Ryan said and walked out of the office.

He had no idea what Evan’s agenda was, but he knew he had one. And he knew he wanted no part of it. He’d come this far on his own. So, he won’t be putting his freedom and the chance to prove his innocence into the hands of a man he disliked and didn’t trust.

19

Lynn was let into Bobby’s office by the young receptionist and asked to wait. That was over half an hour ago and the fact that this had been her father’s office back when he ran things here was unnerving her more and more with each passing second. She used to play in this office as a little girl, sat at the round conference table and did her homework as a preteen and observed her father at work as a teen, after she’d already decided that she would be Sheriff one day too.

She could pinpoint the exact day she had decided that. A woman with greasy blonde hair and very sad blue eyes had been brought in. She had been assaulted in her home. Robbed and raped and her face was covered in bruises. They hadn’t been able to catch the guy who hurt her, and she’d come to the station one winter evening, shaking, wearing just a jean jacket over red and green plaid pajamas.

The receptionist had tried to send her away, but she wouldn’t go. Lynn’s dad heard the argument and went to speak to her. She was afraid to be at home. She was afraid the man who hurt her would come back. And she had nowhere else to go. So Lynn’s dad took her into one of the empty offices and spoke to her for a long time. Comforted her and told her they were doing everything they could to keep her safe. That she had nothing to worry about. That they would catch the bastard. And that he would personally drive by her house all through the night to make sure she was safe.

And in the end, he managed to calm her down. To give her hope. Lynn rode with him as he followed her home to begin the vigil he had promised.

Her dad didn’t know she had been listening to the entire conversation. She was maybe twelve years old and, on that evening, she decided that she would become a police officer too. Just as kind and comforting as her dad. She would devote her life to helping people who had been hurt by bad men and women. And that’s what she had done.

Only she forgot to find justice for her best friend along the way.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Bobby said as he entered the office.

It took her a couple of seconds to shake the vivid memory and come back to the here and now.

“There was some trouble up at the Maguire farm,” he said. “You know the place, I’m sure.”

She nodded. Even when her father was working here, there was always trouble at the Maguire farm, which was more of an enclave where the entire Maguire extended family reigned.

“It looks like they’ve been cooking crystal meth there lately,” he says. “But of course, we found nothing. The trouble is, the crap they’ve been cooking has made its way to the high school. Such a mess. But I don’t want to burden you with that… what can I do for you?”

“You said Arthur Potts told you his theories on who Alicia’s killer might have been,” Lynn said. “He died before he could tell me too and I was wondering if you could fill me in.”

Bobby looked confused. “Arthur had at least two folders of materials… things he’d collected over the years. Didn’t you find it? Your forensics team swept the house last night, didn’t they?”

“They didn’t find it,” Lynn said. “Which makes me think maybe he’d gotten too close to the killer and that’s why him and his wife were killed. But the team found no evidence that they were in fact killed.”

Bobby nodded. “Could be he kept his files in the store. Did you check there?”

Lynn could smack herself on the forehead. She could blame her own poisoning for the oversight, but she wasn’t prone to finding easy excuses for her failures. In a tiny part of her mind, she saw her father shaking his head at her too.

“I didn’t think of that,” she admitted, smiling sheepishly. “But it would make perfect sense. We did agree to meet there after closing time yesterday so he could walk me through it.”

She started to rise and go correct her mistake.

“I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high,” Bobby said. “Arthur’s theories were all over the place.”

“I still want to check them out,” she said.

“Oh, one more thing,” Bobby said. “The police chief in Harrington is getting ready to bring Ryan in. I just thought you’d want to get the heads up.”

Lynn sat back down with a thump. This was total news to her. Given how closely TJ was working with the locals on that case he should’ve been the one to tell her. It wasn’t like him to drop the ball like this. But maybe her getting hurt clouded his judgement. Or maybe he wasn’t in the loop about it. He did spend the whole night here, working with the forensics team to find the source of the poisoning.

“Do they have some new evidence?” Lynn asked.

Bobby shrugged. “I don’t think so. But he was seen visiting the Demon’s Way MC hideout. That’s the outlaw biker gang his cousins are members of…”

Lynn nodded. She knew what it was.

“The police chief is thinking Ryan might be looking to join,” Bobby continues. “He’s seeing that as a sign of guilt.”

“And he wants to put the heat on Ryan so the MC won’t take him,” Lynn said, connecting the dots.

It made some sense. But what didn’t make sense was Ryan not mentioning the visit to her. They spoke about the club just last night.

“That could be his intention, yes,” Bobby said. “The MC is already implicated in so many crimes, they probably won’t want to take in a suspected serial killer right now. But on the flip side, if he they do let him join, it’ll be very hard to pin anything on him. Those guys take care of their own.”

He sounded almost impressed by that.

Lynn rose again. “Thanks for letting me know. I appreciate it.”

“Best to not go warning him about this though,” Bobby said as she reached the door.

“You’re right,” she said, said her goodbyes and left.

Truth was, she had no idea what she would do with this information. Just as she had no idea why Ryan was keeping this a secret from her. They’d agreed on total honesty with each other. That they would find Alicia’s killer together. And she believed him when they made that pact. Was she wrong to? What else had she been wrong about where Ryan was concerned?

She didn’t like the questions. Didn’t like the possible answers. But they were very loud in her head.

* * *

Lynn had her phone in her hand. She’d already written several texts to Ryan asking him why he didn’t tell her about meeting with the MC his cousins were members. But she erased them all. She didn’t like how quickly her mind still jumped to the worst possible conclusion about him. But she also itched for a simple, good answer to her suspicions.

She didn’t believe he had killed Alicia.

Didn’t believe he was responsible for the deaths of Tonya and the other women killed in the same way as her.

But there was that hour, maybe an hour and half, during which he was gone from the cabin the night Alicia was killed. And he never explained that to her in a satisfactory way.

Or maybe he gave her the only explanation he had. Maybe he was telling the truth.

So instead of texting him to demand answers and possibly ruining the trust they’d managed to build in the past couple of weeks, she went to The Potts’.

TJ was still there talking to a forensics team member Lynn didn’t know. They were on the way out, already dressed in their normal clothes.

“I’d like to check the store itself,” she said to TJ after they left.

“For the file?” he asked. “The deputy wasn’t able to tell you anything?”

Lynn glared at him. “You think this is all pointless? That I’m wasting my time? Well, you’re probably right. But there’s just not much else to go on, is there?”

He just looked at her, his mouth slightly agape. She couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t like her to go off the rails. If anything, she was always composure itself. Even in the darkest moments. But it was just everything.

Being back home, spending the last half an hour reminiscing on the fun years she spent by her dad’s side, soaking in what it meant to be Sheriff, getting poisoned, seeing the lifeless bodies of the man and woman who were an integral part of her childhood… and Ryan keeping secrets from her. Maybe that was the one thing making her act so unhinged.

She’d put so much trust in him. She’d gone directly against her father when she gave him that alibi for the night Alicia was killed. And she wasn’t even sure about it. She was just sure he wasn’t a killer. What if she’d been wrong all this time? It wasn’t a question she could handle answering.

“Let’s go have some coffee and breakfast,” TJ suggested. “Get out of this cold.”

He was usually the more hot-headed of the two of them. That’s what made them such good partners. They complemented each other.

“I’m fine,” she said. “You go get us a table at the Moonrise. I’ll just have a quick look around The Potts’ and join you.”

“What’s the Moonrise?” TJ asked, looking confused.

She pointed at the diner across the street and slightly to the left. “There. They make a mean breakfast omelet… or they used to.”

“Well, we’ll find out,” he said and left.

Lynn let herself into Arthur’s store via the side door that led from the Potts’ yard directly into the dim storage area. The room hadn’t been cleaned in a while and the dust stirred up by her entrance made her nose itch and eyes water. One whole side of the space was filled with boxes stacked almost up the ceiling. At first glance they appeared to be unopened boxes full of envelopes of different shapes and sized.

The other part of the room was dominated by an old wooden desk, the kind bankers had in their offices at the turn of last century. Atop it was an ancient computer and Lynn was surprised when the screen turned on after she moved the mouse. The screensaver showed bright green bubbles bouncing across a white background. And it illuminated the tag on one of the black filing boxes that the bookshelf behind the desk was filled with. The tag read Alicia.

The box didn’t sit flush with the other boxes. It was pulled out slightly as though someone was in the act of taking it off the shelf when they were interrupted.

Lynn pulled the sleeves of her sweater over her hands and took the box off the shelf. Given its weight she wouldn’t have been surprised to find rocks inside it, but it was filled with folders and binders, photos and papers. All in a terrible disarray, some of the pages torn. She highly doubted Arthur kept it this way, given how meticulously the folders and binder, and the box itself were labelled.

Someone must’ve gone through it. Looking for incriminating evidence of themselves?

She checked the other boxes, but those were just filled with old invoices, some yellowed with age.

She grabbed the evidence box, left the store and put it in the trunk of her car before jogging across the street to meet TJ.

“I found something very interesting,” she whispered as she sat down.

“What?” TJ asked.

But Lynn waited until the waitress—a woman in her late twenties who looked vaguely familiar—left with her order of just coffee before answering.

“I think someone went through the evidence Potts had accumulated and removed the most incriminating things,” she said. “I think they were murdered after all.”

“Could be the break we need,” he said, but didn’t sound too sure that this was it.

Lynn downed almost the entire cup of coffee the waitress had filled for her. “I’m going back to the cabin and going over everything now.”

“Wait.” TJ laid his hand on her forearm as she moved to stand up.

She was sure he was about to tell her to have the contents forensically examined first. But that could take days. Weeks even. She’d be careful handling the contents and they could rule out her fingerprints later.

This case she would solve via confession. That’s what they called the undercover assignments where the only way to solve the case was through a confession, mainly due to lack of physical evidence.

She was ready to explain all that to TJ, when he said, “Millhouse and the gang in Harrison are getting ready to bring your friend Ryan in for questioning. He’s been associating with some biker gang and they think he’s preparing to go underground.”

“Bobby already told me,” she said. “I’ll have to sort it out.”

“Don’t do anything dumb,” he said. “Let this take its course.”

“Do I ever?” she asked, grinned at the way he rolled his eyes and left.

She’d check the contents of Arthur’s box first, but then she’d get answers from Ryan. Because Millhouse’s theory made sense too. And if her long professional career taught her one thing it was that the saying where there’s smoke there’s fire held a world of truth.

20

Seeing all those photos in Evan’s office, Ryan figured he was probably facing another lengthy interrogation soon. In light of that, he was just about ready to pack up, take his bike out of the garage and head for warmer weather. Not that it would solve any of his problems. In fact, it would probably create a whole bunch of more serious ones. But the thought crept into his mind while he drank his coffee, looking at the grey morning mists over the forest surrounding his parents’ property and he couldn’t shake it.

He considered going to work at the shop for about two minutes, but decided that wasn’t gonna happen today. Or ever until the whole mess was cleared up. They didn’t need him there and anyway.

Even a long walk with Lady did nothing to improve his mood. Or the second, shorter walk with his mom’s dog and donkey. Even the two cats came along for that one watching the little mismatched animal family prowl the woods did take his mind off the other crap for a while. But then it reminded him of all the times he took these walks with his mom when he was younger. She was always on the lookout for hurt animals she could make better. And that led him to think of just how simple his life was once upon a time—so long ago he hardly still thought of it.

But going down that rabbit hole in his mind usually led to drinking.

Which was one reason why he was glad to see Lynn sitting in his mom’s rocking chair on the front porch when he got back from the second walk.

It had gotten dark, but somehow her face was perfectly illuminated by the dim porch light. She looked as young as she did when he first fell in love with her and just as innocent. And scared for some reason.

But at least his thoughts of skipping town vanished with the vision of her waiting for him.

He should probably make his move soon. Especially if they planned on arresting him again. Who knows when he’ll get the chance after that.

“Been waiting long?” he asked as he approached.

She stood up but didn’t say anything. Just looked at him with that same mixture of innocence and fear on her face.

“Is something wrong?” he asked just as the dog and donkey team, Slash and Floyd, came hurdling out of the darkness behind him, barely managing not to knock Lynn down on their way to the front door. The cats were still lagging behind, but Ryan was sure they’d return soon. Nocturnal animals or not, they knew how good they had it on the soft sofa in the warm living room.

Lady came trotting out of the darkness too, but she fell in step with him like the good dog she was.

“We need to talk,” Lynn finally said. The animals at least succeeded in breaking her out of her weird stupor. But her voice sounded ominous.

“Sure.” Ryan shrugged, took the four steps leading onto the porch two at a time and unlocked the door, standing aside first for Slash, Floyd and Lady, and then Lynn.

She kept her hands firmly stuck in the pockets of her long parka, which she made no move to take off even after they were standing in the overheated kitchen.

He busied himself with preparing the kibble, a heaping bowl for each of the animals. Lady was the only one who didn’t leap at the food. Instead, she stayed by his side, eying Lynn sideways, probably feeling his own growing nervousness.

“You’re starting to freak me out a little here, Lynn,” he said as he sat down at the kitchen table, chuckling softly but the sound just evaporated in the silence.

“I could say the same thing about you,” Lynn said. “I need to know where you went that night at the cabin… the night Alicia was killed.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again. He didn’t know what he was gonna say. Maybe that he was out getting firewood, or whatever he’d told her that night.

“The truth this time,” she added as though she could read his mind. And maybe she could. Back then he sure felt that way, in love as he was with her. And that never faded completely. He was only realizing that now, more and more each day he spent close to her.

Telling her his twenty-year secret now didn’t seem like the thing to do. But keeping it from her any longer, now that she asked him point blank about it, wouldn’t work either.

“Why do you assume I lied to you?” he asked, choosing a middle of the road approach to the whole dilemma that made her big blue eyes go very wide, displeasure replacing some of the fear he could still see in them.

“Why don’t you take your coat off and sit down?” he asked. “You’ll burn up in here.”

“I want my answer.” And she looked like she did too.

He shrugged and moved the chair next to his out with his leg. “Fine. But you’ll want to be sitting for it.”

She sat down, but she just perched on the edge of the chair and didn’t even unzip her coat.

“You’re right, I didn’t tell you the truth back then,” he said since the time for beating around the bush was done and he never much liked keeping this secret in the first place. “But I want you to know I was just trying to protect you.”

She took a loud deep breath and her eyes went even wider.

“Protect me from what?”

He still didn’t want her to know. “Evan and my cousins. But mostly Evan.”

She opened her mouth but no sound came out.

“He was obsessed with you back then,” Ryan said. “Especially after we started dating. He wanted you.”

She relaxed somewhat, nodding slightly like some sort of suspicion of hers might’ve been confirmed.

“He came to the cabin that night?” she asked.

“Him and my cousins,” Ryan said. “They thought they’d get to…”

He still couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“What?” Lynn asked. “Have sex with me too?”

He nodded. She was far from the shy, innocent girl she’d been. Back then everything still made her blush, especially talking about sex.

“Why would they assume you’d share me?” she asked, cutting straight to the point. She could always be shrewd, but it seemed she’d honed that skill to perfection over the years.

“I wouldn’t share you,” he said, since he needed her to know that.

“But other girls?”

This was too much of what she didn’t need to know. Of what he never wanted her to know.

“I never did any of that with them,” he said.

“But your cousins did? And Evan?”

He nodded. “It was a thing they did.”

She just looked at him for, her eyes still much too fearful.

“So, when Stacey Walsh claimed she’d been gang raped by Evan and your cousins… she wasn’t making that up?”

Stacey went to their high school and was a couple of years older. She was addicted to alcohol at the very least by the time Evan lured her into that motel room where the rape must’ve happened. The way Evan told the story, he’d paid her. But Ryan wasn’t sure he believed it.

“I’m pretty sure she wasn’t lying,” Ryan said. “But I wasn’t there.”

He never could stomach Lynn looking at him like maybe, just maybe he had killed Alicia, but this look she was giving him now was worse.

“Look, I’d stopped hanging out with my cousins and Evan even before we got serious,” he said. “I thought they were my friends, but I was wrong. And the things they got up to, I didn’t want to be a part of. But there was no stopping them. Evan was treated like royalty around here. Even your father the righteous sheriff never went after him for anything. You know that.”

Lynn swallowed hard and didn’t say anything. But the accusation in her eyes faded somewhat.

“So that night you chased them away?” she asked. “Or did you go with them?”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop following her loaded question. In a way, Ryan felt as cold as he had sitting on the cabin porch in the dark that night.

“I just sat outside, making sure they didn’t try to come back,” he said. “With my knife ready.”

“The knife you used to carve our initials into the wall of the cabin?” she said and it didn’t sound like a question.

“Yeah,” he answered anyway. “They didn’t come back and after about an hour I went back inside. I didn’t know you’d been awake.”

“I was,” she said and finally unzipped and took off her parka.

“I didn’t want to lie to you,” he said. “But I didn’t want you to know what almost happened to you. And after I was brought in for questioning, well, I was warned in no uncertain terms to keep Evan’s name out of it. Your father never went after any of them, so…”

“Your cousins’ alibies were checked,” she said. “Their father said they were in all night.”

“Figured. Paddy O’Rourke would say anything to protect his sons.”

She leaned back in her chair. “You really should’ve told my father about this. Things could’ve gone a lot different if you had.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “He was pretty set on making me guilty. Like maybe he knew who was and was trying to protect them.”

She gasped and shot forward again. “He’d never. My father was a fair and just man.”

“Not how I knew him,” Ryan said. “But I did have a lot of hate and anger for him and everyone else in this town when I came up with this theory.”

He stood up. “I need a beer. Do you want one?”

“Sure,” she said, a pensive look on her face. But there was still a lot of accusation and fear beneath it. He was glad to have something else to focus on.

She didn’t say anything and just nodded in thanks when he handed her the bottle of beer. He’d already drank half of his right after opening it by the fridge. The heat was getting to him. The conversation was too. He never imagined telling her all this would be easy. But he didn’t anticipate the tension it would bring.

“What made you come here with all these questions tonight?” he asked after he sat down again.

Lady put her head in his lap, an act of affection she was still only just getting the hang of. But her whole silky soft body was as rigid as a board.

A look that suggested a thought along the lines of, “I’m the one asking the questions,” passed over Lynn’s eyes, but then they softened and she took a long swig of her beer.

“More than just one thing,” she said and he had the distinct feeling she was holding back. She didn’t go on. She just drank more of her beer.

He decided to wait her out.

“You being gone for that hour always bothered me,” she finally said, setting her beer bottle on the table top. “I knew there was something you weren’t telling me. Which isn’t to say I didn’t believe that you had nothing to do with Alicia’s death. But what you told me about Evan now… it puts some things in better perspective.”

“Like what?” Ryan asked, leaning forward in his chair.

“Like the show he put on when he visited my cabin this morning,” she said. “He claimed he’s been in love with me for a long time and that he wants to make a try of it.”

Ryan hoped the shock he was feeling wasn’t showing too plainly on his face.

His only question was, “What did you say?” and he asked it before he could stop himself.

She smiled. At least there was that. It made her eyes sparkle like the night sky.

“I told him I’d prefer to take it slow, what else?” she said. “He always gave me the creeps, to be honest.”

Ryan hoped his sigh of relief wasn’t too loud.

Her face turned serious again as she leaned forward too. “The second reason is… I heard you’ve been talking to those Demon’s Way bikers? Are you thinking of joining again? Because it’s not a good time to be doing that.”

She tried to sound like she didn’t care one way or the other what his choice in this matter was, but she was doing it too well. He saw right through it.

“They asked, but I’m not gonna join them,” he said and took another swig of his beer. “I was just there visiting my cousins. I’ve been doing some digging of my own about where they were that night.”

He figured if he was laying all his cards on the table, there was no reason to hold this back.

“And did you find out anything?”

He shook his head. “Just got another stern warning to back off from them and from Evan, which⁠—”

“Makes it sound like maybe they’re hiding something?” she finished his sentences.

“Yeah, it does.”

She sat in silence for a couple of minutes, thinking. She always went real quiet when she was thinking hard.

“I was just about to make some dinner,” he said when she reached for her coat. “Wanna stay?”

She grinned. “You cook?”

“Not very well,” he said. “My mom cooked and froze a bunch of stuff for me before she left for Florida. I was thinking spaghetti Bolognese for tonight. You in?”

He kind of held his breath while he waited for her answer.

“Sounds good,” she said and smiled again.

It was far from the kind of dinner he’d been planning to take her on after all this shit was over and the case solved, but she was here now and he didn’t think he could wait much longer to make his move anyway.

The secrets between them were now told and waiting was pointless. She seemed to be thinking the same thing. Hopefully.

21

After leaving TJ at the diner this morning, Lynn had spent the rest of the day going over Arthur’s box of evidence, checking and rechecking everything multiple times. When she was done, she wished two things: that she’d left it for the forensics team to fingerprint first and that she’d never found it.

She was faced with two choices too. Spend a sleepless night wondering or go and get the answers she needed from Ryan. She spent an hour waiting for him on his parent’s porch, watching darkness creep over the world, her body numb from the cold by the time he finally came home.

She didn’t regret her choice. Because she now finally had an answer to a question that had plagued her for twenty years. An answer that made perfect sense.

She regretted it even less as he invited her to stay for dinner and started cooking the pasta. The beer she drank on a nearly empty stomach made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

But she hadn’t told him the whole truth about why she’d really come to his doorstep this evening. She evaded the question like she’d evaded thousands like it over the years from suspects she was investigating undercover. And that wasn’t how she wanted to start the rest of this evening.

“I have to get something from my car,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

She only took the car keys from her jacket pocket but otherwise left it hanging off the back of the chair. Maybe an unconscious gesture to show him she was telling the truth.

She was in and out of the house in less than two minutes. But the freezing cold had still managed to creep back under her skin. It grew worse as she stood in the kitchen again, his level gaze focused on her and the black folder in her hands.

“What’s up?” he asked.

There was no denying he already knew it was nothing good.

“I have some more questions for you,” she said and sat back down at the table. “This is the reason I came here tonight. Well, the reason I needed those answers from you first.”

She sat back down and laid the folder on the table. He stood beside her, perfectly still and perfectly silent and for the first time, she regretted her decision to come here tonight.

“Arthur Potts was an amateur sleuth, and he spent the last twenty years looking into Alicia’s murder,” she said since there was no going back anymore.

Ryan scoffed. “And this is all he found?”

Meaning the thin folder.

She shook her head. “This is just the stuff pertaining to… well… you.”

He groaned and sat down next to her. “What is it?”

“Photos,” she said. “Of what he believed was you in the places where two victims were last seen alive.”

She opened the folder and took out the topmost photo. It was of a man in a black leather jacket with a black cap pulled low. The man’s face wasn’t visible, but he had the same kind of build as Ryan.

His name and a question mark were on the back of the photo and the date was October 21, 2004. But none of it was written by hand. It seemed to be made using a hand-held label maker to Lynn.

“I was in Fallujah in October of 2004,” he said. “I remember that. It was right before the bloodiest battle of the Iraq war I’ve been in.”

She looked at him, compassion heavy in her chest, but he avoided her gaze.

The second photo showed the same man, dressed pretty much the same, but the date was October 2006.

“I don’t know where I was then off the top of my head… those years are mostly a blur for me,” he said and cleared his throat. “But I’m sure I wasn’t anywhere near here… where is this anyway?”

“Harrington,” she said. “In the forest at the edge of the high school football field where the victim—Ellen Tanner—was found about a week before this was taken.”

He took the photo and looked at it more closely. The water for the spaghetti was starting to boil, hissing and popping in the silence that filled the kitchen.

“How can anyone tell this is even me?” he asked. “Is my face in any of the photos?”

She shook her head. “Only Arthur’s notes that it is you.”

“I assume there’s more of them?”

She took the remaining five photos out and showed them to him. None of them showed the man’s face any more clearly and the dates were all in and around November, in the years between 2004 through 2017.

“If you had some proof that you were elsewhere on these dates, it would really help,” she said quietly.

His chair scratched against the floor as he stood up to finally put the spaghetti in the water.

“Like I said, that period is all a blur of fighting, so I don’t know exactly where I was on any of those dates off the top of my head,” he said. “But I’m sure I can check.”

There were other notes in Arthur’s box that pointed to Ryan being the man in the photos, such as the car he was driving, where he was seen and such. Arthur was certain that it was Ryan, but that no one knew he was even in town on those dates, that he only went out at night and always kept his face hidden.

“Try to think,” Lynn urged.

She had spent the entire day going over all of Arthur’s notes and theories. She could not decipher at which point and for what reason the man became so fixated on the idea that it was Ryan he was seeing around town and around the crime scenes. Over the years, Arthur had come up with a whole list of possible suspects—which included Ryan’s cousins and even Evan, among about half the men from town of the same age. Basically, he had nothing. Until he suddenly started taking photos.

“Well in the fall of 2010 I was stateside… in Colorado, married to Michelle,” he said. “She’ll vouch for that. It was still our honeymoon period.”

“What’s her last name? I can track her down and ask,” Lynn stood up as though planning to get right on that.

He looked at her sideways, frowning while stirring the pasta sauce, probably because of how she leapt into the air.

“I’m sure I have her number somewhere,” he said. “She’s remarried and has a couple of kids. Last I spoke to her she was living somewhere in Oregon. She’ll tell you we spent all our time together that fall though. You can believe me.”

“Sorry,” she said and sat back down. “I believe you. I’m just eager for you to have an alibi ready when they start asking you questions.”

The smell of the tomato sauce and meat was filling the air. It brought the dogs and midget donkey back into the kitchen. She’d never seen a donkey that small before, and certainly not one as well house-trained as this one. She’d been too focused on the reason for her visit to really pay attention to him before.

“I think they’re hungry,” she said, smiling at Ryan.

“Always,” he said.

“I didn’t know your mom kept a donkey,” she added.

“His name’s Floyd,” he said. “You can pet him if you want. He’s a real sucker for getting his head scratched.”

She stood up and did just that, the donkey’s fur was much softer than she expected it to be. He acted just like a dog, sniffing and trying to lick her hand in between bumping it for more pets. The shaggy black dog came over too, wanting his share of attention. Ryan’s dog, Lady, sat on her haunches by the door.

“Come here, girl,” Lynn called her. But it took more coaxing before she finally did.

By the time she was done petting the animals, Ryan had the table set.

“I think the photos were planted among Arthur’s things,” she said as she sat down, reaching her decision. She trusted Ryan completely, so there was no point holding back. “I don’t think he ever suspected you very seriously. At least none of the other evidence he gathered suggests that. And I use the term evidence loosely, because he didn’t have much of it any which way. Except the photos.”

This is the reason she regretted not running the contents of Arthur’s evidence box through the forensics lab before going through it. But they could still get prints of whoever planted the photo. Though she doubted the person was dumb enough to leave prints.

“Planted?” Ryan said as he filled their plates with spaghetti.

“Just like that photo was planted in your bedroom at Nate’s house,” she said. “And my charm and the carving at Shanna’s crime scene.”

“What carving?” he asked.

She explained that a carving with the initials L+R and a heart around it was found in the tree trunk to which the victim in her last case—the case that brought Ryan and her back together—had been tied. She hoped he wouldn’t ask why she hadn’t mentioned it before.

“Someone is trying very hard to implicate you in these crimes,” she added.

“And get your attention,” he said.

“Well, they have it,” she said and started eating. Her appetite had finally returned.

The killer did indeed have her undivided attention now. And they’d continue to have it until she found out their identity.

* * *

After dinner they took their beers to the living room and somehow managed to find spots to sit that weren’t taken up by animals. Apart from the donkey and two dogs, there were also two cats, and it was evident that this room was theirs more than anyone else’s. The sofa and one of the armchairs were claimed, so Ryan took the other armchair and Lynn got a small spot on the sofa next to the two cats. She petted the closest one while she sipped her beer.

“Your mom is clearly still taking care of everyone’s animals,” she said.

“These are all hers,” Ryan said. “She’s been very sick.”

“But she’s better now?”

He nodded. “Seems that way.”

His mother had just beaten breast cancer for the second time a few weeks ago. The first time she got sick was right before Ryan joined the Army. Lynn remembered how hard that had been on him, having to leave at a time like that. But he believed he had to, and he was probably right. The people in this town were still so quick to consider him a murderer, even twenty years after the fact. And her own father had a lot to do with that. He didn’t have to make it so clear that he considered Ryan the only real suspect at the time. Especially since he didn’t have much by way of evidence.

Sometimes, especially right now, she wondered what her life would be like if all that had gone differently and they’d both stayed in town. Would they be sitting in their own living room like this, married, maybe with children? She liked that daydream. A lot. But apart from getting vaguely jealous over her date with Evan, he wasn’t making any kind of a move, so maybe he just thought of her as a friend now. She wanted more.

She’d gotten a call from the DNA lab that was reevaluating the evidence in Alicia’s case, and they were cautiously optimistic that a sample of the white dress she had been found in could yield a viable sample. After they did a whole lot more analysis on it, the ins and outs of which Lynn didn’t quite understand. All she knew was that once she had a suspect, there’d be DNA to get him. But she still wanted to be the one looking him in the eyes as he told her why he killed her best friend.

She finished her beer and set the bottle on the carved wooden coffee table that looked like it had been in the family for generations. Everything in this room had so much soul and life and homeliness in it, something she’d forgotten to look for in the places she had lived in the last two decades. Even her own home here in Green Haven was never this homely. It made her feel like a traitor to think it, but she couldn’t deny it.

“It’s getting late,” she said. “I should probably go.”

For some reason it sounded like a question. Like she was asking him. She blamed her earlier daydream about what could’ve been for that.

The conversation they had over dinner had its moments, but it was nothing like the carefree one they had while she was at the hospital. The photos and accusations she brought with her tonight hung over them and between them like fog in the night.

“I think you should stay,” he said as though answering her question. Then he cleared his throat and added. “‘Cause it’s late, I mean.”

“And because Evan might pay me another visit?” she asked and grinned.

She’d only had the two beers but she felt giddy, like she’d drank at least five. Maybe it was the heat in this house. Or maybe it was Ryan. From the moment she first saw him on that dark and terrible night a couple of weeks ago, she knew she wasn’t over him. And since she’d arrived back in her hometown, that was becoming more and more clear.

“You ever think about what could’ve been?” he asked and cleared his throat again. “If I hadn’t left when I did, I mean.”

The question made her breath hitch in her throat because of how much it aligned with her own thoughts and how totally honest it was. But that was classic Ryan. He always got straight to the point, and he could always take her breath away.

“I did think about that. And then for a long time I didn’t,” she said, choosing total honesty too. Then she grinned. “But lately I’ve been thinking about it more and more. In fact, I was doing it just a couple of minutes ago. And I really liked it.”

He did a sort of double take hearing that but then grinned too. “Well, that makes two of us.”

“Then maybe we should do something about it,” Lynn said, got up and stood over him.

He grinned wider. “And here I was thinking it would take a bunch of fancy dinner dates and waiting until the case was solved.”

Sometimes total honesty could be brutal. But she didn’t take it that way. His eyes told her this was exactly what he wanted—that she was exactly who he wanted—and she hadn’t seen that in a man’s eyes since he looked at her like this last. Men came and went in her life, and she didn’t fool herself that there was any great love lost when they did. Except for Ryan leaving. But she didn’t think much about that. It was too painful at the time and all the years since.

“You cooked for me, so that counts as one dinner at least,” she said. “We can make up the rest later.”

“Oh, we will.” He took her hand and pulled her down into his lap. She went willingly, melted into his body like she belonged in his embrace, like this was exactly where she was meant to be.

His lips on hers as they kissed felt like that too. Like a circle finally being completed, like wrongs being righted, like something broken getting glued back together into an even finer piece.

“I think we should take this upstairs,” he said breathlessly after a while.

“I think so too,” she replied, equally breathless.

Then she stood up, took his hand and let him lead her from the warm room to his bedroom. Feeling like a teenager being bad all over again, and at the same time, more right than she ever had before.

22

Ryan couldn’t remember what he had dreamed about. But it left his heart racing, a sour taste in his mouth and the feeling that something was off. Definitely not the kind of feeling he should have when realizing Lynn was sleeping soundly in his arms, naked, warm and soft, pressed tightly against him because his bed was almost too narrow for two people. He also didn’t know what woke him.

He wanted to say footsteps and some kind of creaking.

But all was quiet and very dark. Lady would bark if someone was in the house. Slash would too. And the donkey would try.

Ryan wrapped his arms tighter around Lynn and closed his eyes to try and put it all behind him when he heard the sound again. Creaking of hinges followed by the unmistakable sound of a wooden door closing.

The barn. He was sure of it. His bedroom window overlooked it, and he’d heard the sound countless times before when he was growing up, especially on windy nights.

And if it weren’t for the flashlight that illuminated the gap between the barn door and the wall he would’ve gone right back to sleep. Instead, he was standing by the window looking at the dark barn and the moving light inside it, with Lynn groggily asking, “What’s going on?” because he bumped into her pretty hard in his haste to get up.

“Someone’s in the barn,” Ryan said, feeling around and pulling on the first pair of pants he touched.

“Who?” Lynn asked as she started getting dressed too.

“I’ll find out,” he said, grabbing a sweatshirt and pulling it over his head.

“We’ll go together,” she said, already dressed. He couldn’t see her face very clearly, but he was sure she smiled as she said it, so he smiled too.

The floorboard and stairs creaked as they descended, but luckily only Lady was alert enough to come out of the living room to see what was happening. Slash and Floyd were sound asleep, the former snoring soundly. So much for dogs being a good alarm system.

Ryan told Lady to go back to sleep, then followed Lynn to the front door.

She reached for the doorknob, but turned to face him before opening the door. “Do you have a gun?”

“Somewhere,” he said. “Do you think we’ll need it?”

“I’ll get mine from the trunk,” she said.

The wind was blowing in icy cold gusts, making Ryan wish he’d put on a jacket. But at least the noise from the swaying trees and swinging metal whatnots the yard was full of masked the noise they were making in their trek across the back yard towards the barn.

The flashlight still shone through the cracks in the boards and the door still tapped against the frame with every gust of wind.

Lynn and Ryan stalked towards it, keeping to the shadows. She had her gun raised and was walking slowly and deliberately, making sure her feet barely made any sounds as they hit the ground. A trained professional, completely focused on the job ahead.

They were about thirty feet from the door when it burst open with more than the wind. The blindingly bright flashlight made everything else pitch black.

“Freeze,” Lynn yelled. “Who are you?”

The figure kept the flashlight pointed at their eyes and took off running into the trees that surrounded the property. A tall, wide-shouldered guy wearing all black, with a cap covering his head. That’s the best Ryan could get by way of a descriptions.

Lynn sprinted after him and Ryan did his best to keep up. Back when he was still in fighting shape that wouldn’t have been a problem. He was sure he could’ve caught the guy too. But apart from long, slow walks with the dogs and donkey, he hadn’t been keeping in shape.

The trees were mostly leafless here, but between how densely together they grew and all the tall evergreens, the darkness around them became impenetrable once the flashlight went out. By the time his night vision returned, the woods looked empty.

Lynn stopped and looked around. She was barely winded from the mad dash, so Ryan tried to keep his own panting to a minimum.

“So, your grandfather’s cabin is straight ahead from here. And there’s a dirt road there, right?” She pointed to the left.

“Yeah, it leads to the main road, which isn’t far from here,” Ryan said.

“We should split up,” she said. “Chances are he’s hiding somewhere waiting for us to give up.”

“There’s also a whole lotta forest in every direction here,” Ryan said.

Chances were even greater that the guy had just kept on running, but he didn’t want to point out too bluntly that this chase was most likely futile.

“I think the road is the best bet,” he added. “I doubt he hiked far to get to the barn. He probably stashed a car nearby.”

“You’re right,” Lynn said and took off running in the general direction of the road.

It took less than five minutes to reach it, but it was just as empty and dark as the rest of the forest seemed. Maybe there was a faint scent of dust and exhaust fumes in the air around it, but maybe that was just wishful thinking.

“Let’s go see what he was doing in the barn,” Ryan suggested.

She glanced at him and lowered her gun. “You’re right, we’ll never find him now.”

She sounded disappointed and said nothing for a while as they trekked back through the darkness.

“It could’ve just been someone trying to steal stuff from the barn,” Ryan suggested.

“Maybe,” she said. “What do your folks keep in there?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I haven’t been in there in ages,” he said. “But I doubt it’s anything valuable. Just junk.”

His parents’ entire backyard was full of that, given how much his father enjoyed tinkering with engines and how much his mother enjoyed taking care of animals.

“I think my mom made a part of it into an animal shelter of sorts,” he said. “But I don’t think it was ever actually populated.”

They’d reached the yard again. The barn door was still swinging in the wind. Ryan reached for its side to open it but Lynn bodily stopped him. “We can’t touch anything. I’m going to call the forensics team to comb through it.”

Then she pulled the sleeve of her sweater over her hand and opened the door. Ryan did the same as he flipped on the grimy light switch just inside the door, though there was little chance that the guy touched that.

The overhead bare bulb light hanging off the ceiling cast a dark orange sheen over everything.

As Ryan suspected, the barn was filled with stuff no one would ever use again. The mess included old cupboards, tables and nightstands, engine parts, old tires, heaps of wooden boards and cardboard boxes, paint buckets with a whole lot of cat beds strewn about.

Then a heap of paper stuffed into a black hiker’s backpack in the corner caught his eye. He tapped Lynn on the shoulder and pointed at it. “I don’t think that’s supposed to be there. It looks too clean and new.”

Everything else in the barn seemed to have a thick film of black dust clinging to it, but the paper was pristine white.

“It’s more photos,” Lynn said as she reached into the backpack and leaned over to get a closer look.

Then she gasped. “Of dead girls.”

She turned to him, her eyes wide and the vein in her neck pulsing with her racing heartbeat. “We should’ve chased him down. It was the killer.”

Ryan looked at the photos too. Or just the top one.

The blonde girl was unmistakably dead and unmistakably Tonya, Nate’s daughter.

“That’s Tonya Rancor, right?” Lynn asked.

He nodded and took a step back. He didn’t want to see any more.

“And the photo was taken right after she was killed,” Lynn added. “When she was found, decomp had already started so her skin was discolored. But she’s wearing the same dress she was found in.”

“So you’re saying only the killer could’ve taken this photo,” Ryan said, his voice brittle and barely audible.

She looked at him. He had trouble meeting her eyes.

“I have to call this in,” she said.

“There’s no proof this isn’t my backpack filled with photos I took,” he said.

She didn’t take her eyes off him, didn’t even flinch at what he said. She had already worked all that out for herself.

“I saw the guy too,” she said.

“There’s no way to prove he put this here,” Ryan added.

And the silence that stretched between them was just as cold, hard, and endless as the time they’d spent apart.

He didn’t remember the last time he had as good a time with a woman as he had with Lynn just a few short hours ago. Back then, he figured it was just the first such night of many more to come. But at least now, he’d have that memory of it to fall back on once he was locked up in a windowless cell.

“Do what you have to do,” he said and left the barn. For the first time in a very long time, he kinda felt like puking.

But the cold, sharp wind outside took care of that urge. He was never one to back down from a fight. Even a losing one. Which this might very well prove to be.

23

The whole of last evening and night was magical. Like a moment stolen from time. Like a long-forgotten dream that hadn’t faded at all despite all the dust and cobwebs it had accumulated over the years. Exactly like going back in time to what might have been had things not happened as they had.

And the best part was, there was no awkwardness between them. No getting to know each other to get out of the way first. This night was coming since they bumped into each other in the darkness of the campground a couple of weeks ago. And they’d both been waiting for it to come. Lynn certainly was and she was sure Ryan had too.

But now it was over.

Cold, icy reality had once again come crashing in, reopening the deep chasm between them that had always been there, from the beginning. Always keeping them apart.

The inside of the barn was somehow colder than the woods had been. Somehow more silent and emptier too. Maybe because Ryan had walked outside. Maybe because she didn’t know what to do next.

She knew enough to join him outside.

“They’ll believe me when I tell them what happened tonight,” she said to him.

He was standing in the dark, his back to the wall. She wished they could go back in time. At least to the beginning of this evening. If possible, to the night they spent together at the cabin, so long ago.

They should’ve taken Alicia home that night. Or they should’ve stayed at the bar with her until she was ready to leave. Then everything would’ve been different.

“You’re compromised,” Ryan said and turned to her.

She couldn’t see his eyes, but she felt them boring holes into her. That was nothing new. “I mean, everyone already thinks you’re shielding me. Even your partner.”

She shook her head. “TJ trusts my judgement.”

The shrill ringing of her phone rent the silence that followed. She didn’t recognize the number on the screen.

“This is Lynn Rivers,” she said as she answered and almost added Agent.

“It’s me, Bobby,” the man on the other line said. “Deputy Hill. I’m at your cabin. Someone broke in.”

For a few moments, Lynn was struck speechless but the weird synchronicity of tonight’s events.

“When?” she managed to ask.

“I got a call that the door was wide open and the cabin dark,” Bobby said.

“I can’t tell what’s missing,” he added. “But the living room is a mess.”

“I’ll come there now,” she said and ended the call.

Then she told Ryan what was said and her suspicions about it being the same guy.

“You didn’t tell Hill about the break-in here,” he said.

It sounded like something between a question and a very happy observation.

“We’ll deal with this later,” she said. “Does this door lock?”

He nodded.

“Then lock it.”

He grinned and she smiled too.

The thing was, she was here as an undercover agent, and the whole case was under the purview of the FBI. She got to call the shots. And right now, her call was that Ryan was being framed. Quite well, if she were honest. But in a way that she could see through.

“Should I come with you?” Ryan asked and she shook her head.

“Stay here and make sure the guy doesn’t come back,” she said and headed towards her car. “I’ll call you with further instructions.”

Not that she expected to have answers anytime soon.

* * *

All the cabins at Serene Getaways except hers were now vacant. If the lack of cars next to them wasn’t a clear enough indication, then the lack of people gawking at what was happening at hers was a dead giveaway. Bobby kept the lights of his SUV on, including the blinking ones.

He was standing on the porch as she drove up, holding a flashlight pointed at his feet.

“I don’t know if anything was taken,” he said as she joined him. “You’ll have to check for yourself.”

He handed her the flashlight, but she shook her head and opted to just turn on the main light.

The contents of Arthur’s evidence box were splayed out all over the dining table, the kitchen counter and the coffee table and sofa. But she’d done that herself before going to see Ryan. She was trying to piece it all together in some sort of chronological order. Most of the photos implicating Ryan were gone. She’d taken those and left them at his parents’ house. What remained here were the duplicates.

“Who called you about the break-in?” she asked.

“The girl at reception,” he said. “She was just going home for the night when she heard a noise and saw the flashlight beam in your cabin.”

“At what time was this?” Lynn didn’t remember reception being open much past eight PM.

“Around eleven,” he said. “I told her to go home and that I’d check it out. But I was an hour out. I didn’t get here until just now when I called you.”

Lynn looked around the cabin more closely, checking the bedroom too. She was pretty sure she’d left both the suitcases filled with evidence standing side by side next to the closet, but they were now one next to the other.

“Did you move anything?” she asked as she rejoined him in the living room.

He flashed her a disbelieving and rather angry glare. “I didn’t touch a thing. I know what I’m doing.”

“Well, it doesn’t look like anything’s been taken,” she said.

“Where’d you get all these photos?” he asked, pointing at the kitchen table where the duplicates of Arthur’s photos were.

“Arthur’s house,” she said. “Or rather, the back room of his store.”

Bobby walked over to the table and looked at the photos more closely, using his flashlight to spread them around.

“As I remember from his most recent visit to my office, he’d come full circle in his investigations and believed Ryan was the most likely suspect,” he said. “Ryan’s dad and him almost came to blows at one point about six months ago.”

“Did they?” Lynn asked, her voice hollower than she wanted it to be.

Bobby straightened up and grinned at her. “You don’t want it to be him, I get it.”

She didn’t react to that in any way.

He walked to the counter to check the stuff there, then the ones in the living room.

“Funny, I’d imagine Arthur would have more on Ryan if he was so convinced he was the killer,” he finally said. “There’s practically nothing to support his theory here.”

That’s because it’s all at his house.

But she didn’t say that.

“Ryan has a pretty solid alibi,” she said instead. “For the night of Alicia’s murder and the rest.”

Bobby nodded. “If you say so.”

The radio on his belt crackled, then a woman’s voice asked if he was there.

He turned the volume down. “I should take this. It’s probably about a domestic disturbance I’ve just come from. But you should find a room in town. I don’t want you all alone out here.”

She shook her head. “I’ll be fine. It’s not the first time a killer’s made overt moves like this to get my attention.”

Bobby looked shocked at what she just said, but then he grinned. “You’re a big bad FBI Agent, I get it.”

“Something like that,” she said then followed him to the door.

“Call if you find that something is missing,” he told her as he stepped onto the porch, and she assured him he’d be the first to know.

Which was a lie. It was time to draw this killer out even further. And that meant no police anywhere nearby. It was the kind of job Lynn was best at.

* * *

Lynn spent the next hour or so sorting all of the photos and other pieces of Arthur’s evidence, making sure nothing was missing. And that nothing was added, which was more along the lines of what she’d expected the goal of the break-in had been. Nothing was. She put it all back into the box then put it in the trunk of her car next to the gun safe. She also took the gun out of the safe, checked the clip then put it in the glove box just in case she needed it in the next few days. She didn’t want to have to fiddle with the safe to get it if an emergency arose.

Then she went back inside and checked the two suitcases of evidence she’d brought with her. She couldn’t be sure but some of it seemed rearranged. The photos of Alicia’s crime scene, for example. Those were the last things she looked at, yet they weren’t at the top, but buried under the folder that contained the inventory sheet that the lab in Albany, which was trying to lift DNA off Alicia’s dress, had issued her. It would make sense the killer would be interested in that. But she might have moved the files—and the suitcases themselves for that matter—around herself.

The sky was only just getting light when she dialed TJ’s number. Chances were she’d wake him, but they were higher that he’d already be up. Knowing him, he’d sooner sleep during the day than at dawn. He’d often talk about how dawn was the only time the world made sense, because it was born anew. TJ was full of talk like that. In all the years she’d known him, she never could figure out if he actually believed half of them.

As expected, he sounded fully alert as he picked up.

“It’s started,” she said.

“The killer’s made contact?” he asked, catching on right away as she knew he would.

She told him about the break-ins. And she didn’t omit all the evidence left in the barn meant to implicate Ryan. She’d never once kept things from her partner—until the last case they’d worked together. And she wasn’t about to make that same mistake again.

“We have to get a team out there right away,” TJ said.

“I was thinking the same thing,” she said. “Can you get it sorted? I’ll head back there now to go over it before they come.”

“I’ll meet you there,” he said.

“And TJ,” she said as he was about to hang up. “We have to close ranks around this now… no leaking this info to the local authorities until we have a handle on it. Or it could go very wrong.”

“And your friend will end up in jail,” he said. “I get it.”

“It’s not just that,” she protested. “The killer made contact with me and Ryan. It’s us he’s after. Getting Ryan arrested now plays right into his hands.”

He chuckled, of all things. “I already said I get it, Lynn. Geez, lighten up. We’ll figure this out.”

She let him go after that and climbed into her car. The cold dawn air had already managed to seep down to her bones even though she’d only spent five minutes outside. But it didn’t bother her. Nothing much did.

The ball was rolling. The killer had come out of hiding, thinking he was being clever, thinking he was pulling the strings and orchestrating events to his liking. Just like every psycho Lynn had chased down and caught always did. And just like all those others, this one would also soon find out just how wrong he was.

24

After Lynn left Ryan couldn’t decide whether to guard the crap that was left in the barn, go back into the house and pretend none of it happened or pack up and leave town. The last two weren’t an option anymore. Especially after the night he just spent with Lynn. And the next dinner they’d have together would be a whole lot better than his mom’s defrosted pasta sauce. But planning for that, and remembering last night, was the only ray of sunshine in the whole rest of the mess.

In the end he spent some time cleaning the kitchen, which he never got to last night. It took longer than it should, since he kept glancing at the barn to make sure the burglar, or whatever—the killer?—didn’t come back. Or hoping he did. If only they’d caught him in the woods. Then this whole thing would be over right now.

He then turned the kitchen lights off, but stayed there watching the barn, thinking if the intruder did want to return, he’d only do it if he thought no one was watching. But despite sitting in one of the wooden chairs, sleep threatened to overtake him. And that wouldn’t do any good. Not that he expected the guy to come back. Why would he? He’d already succeeded in leaving the bogus evidence.

In the end, he decided to let the animals out. All of them, including Lady, were reluctant to come out into the cold. But he’d never met a dog—or donkey, for that matter—that refused the chance to be outside.

The iciness in the air got vicious before day finally broke and a strange, warmish wind started blowing. He was sure it would turn into something a lot nastier as the day went on. There was no such thing as a mild winter in these parts. Not that he could remember, anyway.

The wind also brought the sound of cars approaching. By then he, both dogs and the donkey were huddled together on the back patio. The cats had long since gone back inside. He stayed outside because from the porch he could observe the barn through narrow cracks in a bamboo screen that shielded him from view. He was still hoping the idiot would try and come back.

He paid no mind to the sound of cars until they rumbled into the front yard and turned off their engines. It sounded like there was a whole bunch more than one.

And it was. Six to be exact, including two Sheriff’s Office SUVs, three police cruisers and a van with the words Crime Lab printed on the doors.

Deputy Bobby Hill spotted him first as he peeked from behind the screen.

“There he is,” he yelled and then the rest swarmed.

Harrington Police Chief Millhouse reached him first. He looked like he’d come there after a peaceful, full night’s sleep and had all the time in the world to dress in a freshly pressed suit and do the rest of what was necessary to look as prim and proper as he did. Only his bloodshot eyes and the crinkled, dark bags under them betrayed that this was far from the truth.

“We’re here to search the barn,” he told Ryan, the words hitting him square in the chest like a bolt of electricity. Or more like that time an IED went off next to him, taking two of his friends, but leaving him with nothing more than a mild concussion and ringing in his ears that just wouldn’t stop for weeks afterwards. His ears were ringing now. Slash’s barking and Floyd’s braying weren't helping either.

“Why?” he managed to say over the noise.

They were now encircled by three officers and three Deputies, including Bobby Hill, who had a very sympathetic, almost apologetic look on his face. The guys from the crime lab truck were making their way towards the barn led by yet another officer and sheriff’s deputy.

“We got a tip off that certain incriminating items were located in your shed,” Millhouse explained. “Things that implicate you in Tonya Rancor’s murder and others.”

Did Lynn tell them?

She was the only one that knew about the incriminating items, as Millhouse put it. But she said she’d handle it. He had assumed that meant she wouldn’t be calling the cops.

“Do you have a search warrant?” Ryan asked, remembering the instructions Evan left him with even after Ryan made it very clear he didn’t want him as his lawyer. Do not let anyone touch anything without a warrant, was chief among them.

Millhouse didn’t miss a beat as he produced an envelope from the breast pocket of his jacket.

“Here is the warrant,” he said and handed it to Ryan.

He pulled out the paper, even tried to read the tiny print, but it looked like nothing more than black squiggly lines. Tiny snakes, more like.

“Please calm the animals down,” Millhouse said, meaning the dog and donkey team.

Ryan didn’t say anything, just led the animals back around the house and let them inside, shutting the patio door firmly. Lady was the most reluctant to be separated from him. But he told her everything would be fine. A lie she seemed to believe.

Shouts erupted from the barn as he turned.

“It’s all there,” a police officer panted as he jogged over. “Photos and items used for burial. Even a strip that looks to have been cut from a woman’s dress.

The warm wind that had started blowing at dawn turned icy cold again as they arrested him. His rights were read, but the words didn’t actually register.

Why would Lynn do this to him?

And why wasn’t she at least here when it happened?

He never took her for a coward. Or someone who would go back on her word easily.

But how well did he really know her?

25

Lynn had just spent an hour on the phone with the DNA lab that was analyzing the evidence in Alicia’s case. An hour wasted because the man in charge of the analysis was at a conference in Denver and no one else could tell her anything. They kept patching her through to different offices before someone finally told her that much.

So when TJ called she was agitated, hungry and eager to go do something productive. Anything.

“Millhouse searched Ryan’s barn, found the backpack and arrested him,” TJ said tersely, almost coldly, the way he always delivered bad news.

“How did they know?” Lynn asked. Her heart seemed frozen, barely beating. This wasn’t supposed to happen, damn it.

“I have no idea who tipped them off,” TJ said. “But they want the Albany crime lab in charge of the evidence.”

“No,” she snapped. “We need to take possession of it.”

“I have our crime techs en route too, Larry Bird himself is coming, and now it looks like they won’t even let us see any of it.”

“Are you in Harrington? At the police station?” she asked, grabbing her car keys and coat. “I’ll meet you there.”

“I’ll wait for you at the diner near the police station,” he said.

Lynn reached it in less than thirty minutes. Partly because the early morning roads were deserted and partly because she was speeding the whole way there.

She found him sitting at a window booth in the back, a steaming cup of black coffee in front of him. He was so engrossed in reading something on his phone he didn’t seem to notice her walk up. As always, whatever the time of day or night, TJ was dressed and put together to a T. The thin charcoal grey sweater and black jeans he was wearing looked brand new and his camel brown winter coat was neatly folded on the bench next to him.

“Sometimes I really hate working in small towns,” he said as she reached the table. He still seemed completely engrossed in whatever he was reading. But she should’ve known he’d noticed her come in. Nothing much ever got by TJ. He seemed to have eyes everywhere. That ability of his saved her skin more than once on the undercover missions they worked together.

She took off her parka, tossed it on the bench then sat down.

“Do you think I should go in there and tell them the backpack was placed in the barn by someone else?” she asked.

He cocked an eyebrow at her, but didn’t reply while the waitress—a haggard looking woman in her late forties—brought her a cup of coffee. They both ordered the breakfast special.

“This is beginning to look like some sort of inside job to me,” TJ said once the waitress left.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Lynn said and took a sip of her coffee, scalding her tongue. “Someone in law enforcement, do you think?”

He shrugged. “Not necessarily. In these small towns, where they’re all practically related to each other anyone could have access to just about anything.”

She leaned back and shook her head. “It wasn’t like that when my dad was Sheriff, I’ll tell you that much.”

“I’m sorry about your friend getting arrested again,” TJ said and finally lay down his phone. “But I think we should let this play out for now. You know, let the killer think he got his way for now. Ryan has that fancy lawyer, he should be fine.”

“Speaking of the fancy lawyer…” Lynn said and paused while the waitress set their food in front of them. Then she told him everything Ryan told her last night about Evan and his cousins that night at the cabin.

TJ had started eating while she spoke, but now his fork was just hanging loosely from his hand, the food forgotten.

“And this lawyer, he’s been taking a big interest in the case?”

“And me,” Lynn said. “He more or less propositioned me, but it sounded very fake.”

“And the two cousins, they’re deep in that outlaw biker club?”

She nodded. “One of them’s a drunk and the other got very testy when Ryan started asking questions.”

“Sounds like maybe there’s some guilt there,” TJ said and resumed eating.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“So, what can we tell about this killer? He’s probably white, in his forties or late thirties, and Alicia was most likely his first victim,” TJ said.

“And he’s most likely someone I know,” Lynn added. “Maybe even someone I’ve known very well.”

That made her pause. The thought had always been floating around in her head, but she was never as focused on it as she was right now. It was never as real as it was right now.

“He’s either using Ryan as the scapegoat now that we’re here sniffing around, since he’s easy to frame given that he’s already a suspect,” TJ said. “Or he simply wants him out of the way.”

“Maybe he wanted him out of the way back then too,” Lynn said quietly. “Has this always been just about me?”

Her long-lost friendship bracelet was found at Shanna Myers’ crime scene and her face was circled in the photo planted in Ryan’s room. Maybe the point of all that was to get her to come back home.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” TJ said and finally took a bite of his eggs.

Lynn had lost all her appetite again. The thought of tasting her scrambled eggs made her downright nauseous.

“Evan Ellington fits that bill,” she said. “He wanted me then and he still does, by his own admission.”

“And he is a textbook example of the cool, collected type-A personality,” TJ mused. “He could very well be our guy. All the killings and crime scenes were very meticulously planned and executed.”

“The MO of one murder a year, every fall, points to an organized killer too,” Lynn said and swirled her food around. “We should look into him more closely. But that’s going to be tough.”

She took a bite of her toast despite the nausea. The day ahead of her would be long and she needed fuel.

“Because he’s so well connected?” TJ asked.

“He’s pretty much untouchable around here,” she said. “His whole family is. I think the best way forward is for me to take him up on his proposition.”

She actually shuddered at the thought. But this was just a job for her, and she’d done it countless times before. She was a pro.

“Speak of the devil,” TJ said and pointed out the window. In the parking lot of the police station, Evan was getting out of his shiny black Tesla.

“If he folds today and doesn’t get your friend released, then we’ll know we’re barking up the right tree.” He stuffed some more of the eggs into his mouth then grabbed his coat and his phone and stood up.

“I’m going in there now, see if they’ll let me at least take a look at the evidence,” he said.

“I’ll go in too,” she said and stood up too. “I should tell them what I saw. I don’t want Ryan to stay in there any longer than he has to.”

And thinking she betrayed him, which he must be since she was the only one who for sure knew what was in the barn. She should’ve told him she wouldn’t turn him in plainly instead of letting it hang in the air.

“You sure?” TJ asked as he tossed some money on the table. “We could still let the killer think he won and use that to our advantage.”

“I’m sure,” she said. “I don’t want to use Ryan like that.”

Sacrificing herself for the job was one thing. But she wouldn’t sacrifice Ryan.

Plus, she had a hatchling of a plan of how to draw the killer out even more. Nothing concrete yet that she could discuss. Just a wispy beginning of an idea.

“Oh, and I have some junior agents tracking down the orange Ford truck,” TJ said as they left the diner. “But no luck so far.”

“We’ll find it,” she said. “And the killer too.”

She grinned at him, because now that she was on her way to do right by Ryan, she suddenly felt a million times lighter.

TJ grinned right back. “I have no doubt of that. We always do.”

It wasn’t boasting. It was just stating a plain and concrete fact. And once they did find this killer, Lynn could finally bury her past and start her new life. The new life she had tried to start twenty years ago when she left home, but never quite managed.

26

Ryan wished he could be braver about visiting police stations. But nothing gave him PTSD the way interrogation rooms did. Not loud helicopter noises, not the sound of gunfire, not being bound and blindfolded. Within minutes of being led into the interrogation room at the Harrington police station his shirt was sticking to his back from the cold sweat, he was having trouble breathing in fully and all he could see for the rest of his life was the terror of being accused over and over again of a crime he had nothing to do with while kept in an airless, windowless cell. It would’ve helped if they’d at least removed his cuffs, before leaving him alone in here, but they didn’t.

What felt like hours after they placed him in there, the door finally opened. And despite himself, a part of him wished it was Evan walking in to cut this shit short like he did the last time Ryan had been brought in. Which only made him feel worse, because he wanted nothing to do with the man.

His second wish was for it to be Lynn, come to tell him it was all a misunderstanding. No such luck on that either.

Millhouse came in, followed by a tall man in a sheriff’s department uniform. This crap was shaping up to be a lot like that original interview he had to endure. The police chief and Sheriff Rivers grilled him for hours that time. He could only hope these two men weren’t planning the same. Another pointless hope. He was glad for the waft of fresh air before the door was closed again.

The Sheriff’s Deputy stood with his back to the wall by the door and Millhouse pulled out his chair so he was bodily blocking the door. A trick Ryan had come to know. He wished it didn’t work as well as it did. Wished it didn’t make his racing thoughts of how he’d never get out of here again even louder and more urgent.

“This doesn’t look good for you, Ryan,” Millhouse said and tossed the manilla folder he was holding on the desk between them. Some of the photos of dead and rotting women Ryan had already seen in the barn spilled out.

Millhouse opened the folder. The topmost photo was of Tonya, as she was found, her skin discolored because she’d been dead for a while. Ryan thought of his friend Nate, Tonya’s father, ostensibly driven to suicide by her death and the unfairness of this life. He wished he could’ve helped him like he had been trying to do. He was close to convincing him to attend a commune specialized in helping disabled vets get their lives back. He had failed. And now the cops weren’t convinced it had been suicide at all. They liked Ryan for that murder as well.

“I’ve never seen those photos before the guy who broke into the barn put them there,” Ryan said, wishing his voice wasn’t so hollow and toneless. Truth was, he wanted to shout the words, but that wouldn’t go over very well in a setting like this.

“So you say. But they were found in your barn,” Millhouse said in a quiet, slow voice. “You see how it’s hard for me to believe you.”

Ryan couldn’t give less of a fuck about what was hard for Millhouse. But he was getting angry, feeling the vicious type of rage coming on him that he hadn’t felt in over a decade, and that wouldn’t get him far in this setting either. He tried to breathe deeply, but the air in the room was too stale to have any kind of calming effect.

“Lynn… Lynn Rivers saw the guy who left those things in the barn,” he said. “Ask her, she’ll tell you.”

“She already told us,” Millhouse said in the infuriatingly slow voice. “But you see, she has no way of knowing those items weren’t in there to begin with. I explained that to her. She also only has your word that they’re not yours.”

Ryan didn’t know it was possible to feel frustrated and relieved at the same time, but here he was. Lynn hadn’t betrayed him. He should’ve known she wouldn’t. But sadly, that didn’t matter much as things now stood.

“I want a lawyer,” Ryan said and leaned back in the creaking plastic chair he was sitting in.

“He’s already here too,” Millhouse said and closed the folder with the gruesome photos. “But I thought I’d give you the opportunity to get ahead of this.”

Ryan crossed his arms over his chest. “I told you all I know.”

Millhouse shrugged, which infuriated Ryan even more, but he managed not to let it show. Then the chief stood up and left with the silent deputy at his heels. Evan entered right away.

“What did you tell them?” he asked, tossing his leather briefcase on the table, and sitting in the chair Millhouse had just vacated.

“That some guy broke into my parents’ barn last night and left those there,” Ryan said still keeping his arms tightly crossed over his chest. “But why are you here? I fired you.”

It had to be asked. Though Ryan felt something very close to gratitude that Evan had come.

“I thought I’d give you one more chance to reconsider,” Evan said and looked straight into his eyes. A very mocking expression was in them. “Lynn would like me to save you.”

“She said so?” Ryan asked, springing forward.

Evan grinned and shook his head. “She didn’t have to. I know her heart.”

Ryan very much doubted that.

“So, what will it be?” Evan asked.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Ryan said, because he’d never been one to not speak honestly, so why start now?

Evan nodded.

“Well, from what I’ve seen of it, the stuff they found is very incriminating,” he said. “Even with Lynn backing up your story, I can’t get you out of here today.”

“What does that mean?” Ryan asked.

“You’ll be taken to jail,” Evan said. “They will then bring you before a judge and bail may be set. It will most likely be high.”

“The stuff was found at my parents’ house” Ryan said. “Not even my house.”

That was the best he had, and he deserved the pitying look Evan gave him.

“Don’t say anything and don’t speak to them without my presence,” Evan said and stood up. “I’m sorry. I’ll try and find a way to get you released as soon as possible.”

He didn’t sound like he meant it. He sounded like he was just saying words he was supposed to say. And like he couldn’t wait to leave again. Which he did as soon as he realized Ryan wouldn’t be saying anything to him either. Not right now. Not until he found a way to control his rising rage and the stone- cold panic of never being free again that gripped his chest. The two things didn’t blend together well. And they made it impossible to think clearly.

27

Lynn was still seething from her conversation with Millhouse. Even the frosty air outside didn’t touch the heat in her cheeks and inside her chest. She explained to him that a man had broken into the house at around two AM, described how she and Ryan had chased him through the woods. Millhouse said she had no way of knowing the incriminating items weren’t there to begin with. He even had the gall to suggest Ryan had lured her to his house and asked someone to stage a robbery. An idiotic notion.

She cited her nearly two decades of experience catching killers. Swore the surprise on Ryan’s face when they found the items was genuine. But Millhouse was adamant and stuck to his conviction. He also insinuated that she was too close to Ryan to make that call with any sort of credence. After that, there wasn’t much she could say.

Maybe that’s what infuriated her the most. Because he made a good point. Totally off base, of course, but a good point. Her word would always be doubted when it came to Ryan.

And she would prefer not to be seething like this in front of Evan, who had come outside after her. She tried to hide it as best she could.

“Looks like I won’t be much use here today either,” he said, looking past her at a spot way beyond the parking lot, it seemed. “They have pretty solid evidence against him this time.”

“How do you know?” she asked, trying not to sound accusatory or harsh, but she’d mostly failed.

He gave her a sidelong glance, his lips twitching up in the corner. “You’re asking how I knew to come here so fast?”

She nodded. “And how you know what they have on Ryan?”

He walked into the station minutes before she did, and she definitely spoke to Millhouse first. As far as she could tell, he hadn’t spoken to him at all yet.

“I have connections at the Sheriff’s office and the police station, both here and back in Green Haven,” Evan said. “I’m sure you knew that already.”

She did. Or she assumed it.

“But to be specific, Deputy Hill called me and told me about what they found in the barn,” he added.

“Seems unprofessional,” Lynn muttered.

Evan shrugged. “Sounded to me like he was just trying to look out for your friend. Maybe he likes you too. Like I do. But it seems you’ve made your choice and it’s neither of us.”

Word sure travelled fast in a small town. Or was this something else? Evan here was a truly viable suspect.

The petite receptionist with winged glasses poked just her head out the door and told Evan his presence was requested. She slipped back inside before Evan had time to nod.

“Do you have some time later?” Lynn asked. “I have some questions for you.”

The time for pretense and going along with his proposition to get the answers she needed was past. So, she’d ask her questions directly.

His eyes widened, his whole face a perfect mask of surprise so genuine she just knew it was fake. “Questions about what?”

“The night Alicia was killed,” she said simply. And there was nothing fake about the glint of anger that crossed his cold blue eyes.

“So he told you we were at the cabin that night,” he said, speaking barely above a whisper.

“Yes, he finally did,” she said. “Everything could’ve gone a lot different if he’d told someone earlier, don’t you think?”

He wasn’t even attempting to hide the anger anymore. And she wasn’t sure why she was putting him on the defensive like this. But often her biggest breakthroughs in undercover cases came from unplanned situations like this. She hoped this was one of those fortuitous moments. And not just the result of her mounting frustration over Ryan being arrested and the FBI losing access to the treasure trove of evidence found in the barn.

“I don’t think so,” Evan said.

“How about lunch at the Beautiful Morn Cafe,” Lynn said. “I’ll meet you there at one. My treat.”

He shook his head and pulled a silver business card dispenser from his coat pocket and handed her one. “Come to my office at noon.”

Then he turned and walked into the building. The icy cold outside somehow seemed even icier now. Did she play her hand too soon?

Nothing for it now but to play it to the end. She was sure TJ, who was walking towards her across the parking lot now, would’ve said something along those lines so she decided not to bother him with it.

The Bureau’s crime lab van pulled into the parking lot before he even reached her.

“What happened?” he asked, probably reading all those things she didn’t want to talk about—failures, possibly—in the expression on her face.

“They’re holding Ryan, Evan knows I suspect him, and Millhouse is suggesting I might be unfit to conduct this investigation,” she said.

He chuckled darkly. “It went that well, did it?”

She shrugged and remained silent.

“Maybe you should try and get some sleep,” he said.

But she did sleep last night, better than she had in a long time, in Ryan’s arms. The rude awakening they got in the middle of the night took a lot of that restfulness away, but not all of it.

Larry Bird, the head of the forensics lab at The Factory, their headquarters in the Bronx, got out of the back seat of the van. He stretched and yawned loudly.

“You two have a thing for early morning starts, don’t you?” he asked.

“More like a thing for not sleeping at all,” TJ said.

But he left it at that, and Lynn didn’t say anything. Neither of them wanted to be the first to tell him he’d probably wasted this particular early morning ride.

He was followed out to the van by Dr. Binna Zinchenko, the head of the profiler unit at The Factory, which they lovingly referred to as the Psych Ward. She still had a slight limp as she walked to Lynn and in the diffuse winter morning light, she didn’t look a day over forty, even though she was pushing sixty.

“I thought this case was in dire need of a profile being done up,” she said, when both Lynn and TJ just gawked at her. She was one of the nation’s top specialists in the field, but didn’t usually come out to crime scenes anymore.

Binna probably didn’t mean it that way, but Lynn felt her words like a slap in the face. Just one more in a long line of them since early this morning. Who else considered her unfit to head this investigation? Their boss Grimes? Everyone at the Factory?

Binna laughed after watching Lynn’s face for a couple of seconds. “Don’t worry. I’m not here to check your work. I just figured you could use some backup. Being back home and facing it all can’t be easy for you.”

Binna and her husband, the head pathologist, had taken Lynn under their wing soon after she joined the Bureau. They were among a very select group of her co-workers who knew all the details of Lynn’s past—not just the murder of her best friend, but also the brutal killing of her parents committed by her brother. All this was what Binna was referring to.

Lynn smiled despite still feeling like she’d been demoted. “Thanks, but the locals aren’t very keen on sharing what they found with us right now.”

Larry groaned, as did the other two crime techs whose names Lynn didn’t know.

Binna winked at her. “I’m sure we can make them see sense together.”

“We can try,” Lynn said.

Maybe this case did need some fresh eyes. She’d been enmeshed in it for so long she hardly remembered what it was like not to be. And maybe another set of eyes, ones not so closely tied to it all, was exactly what they needed now.

* * *

Lynn had hoped to speak to Ryan, but by the time they entered the police station and got Millhouse to come and speak to them in the conference room, he’d already been taken to the holding cells in the basement of the police station. Millhouse didn’t want to reveal more than that. Or have a real conversation with them about the FBI taking over the evidence processing.

The presence of Binna and what she had come here to do was possibly the biggest shock to Millhouse.

All except Lynn and TJ were sitting around the long conference room table. The AC heater under the window was sputtering, but the air in the room was still laced icy cold. Lynn assumed it was because the room wasn’t used much and therefore wasn’t heated all the time. Except when unwanted guests arrived. Which she and TJ had already been once in this very room.

“Fact is, Mrs. Zinchenko,” Millhouse said, butchering her last name. “We are first and foremost investigating Tonya and Nate Rancor’s murders here.”

“Call me Binna,” she said. “And why would you say that? Many things point to Tonya haven’t been murdered by a serial killer.”

“I realize Ms. Rivers is convinced of it, but we’re not so sure. It’s highly unlikely that something like that would’ve gone unnoticed in these parts,” Millhouse said.

“But the evidence you found this morning… That’s not only for Tonya’s murder,” Lynn said.

She hadn’t gotten a good look at it, but she saw enough to know that.

“We’re still sifting through it,” Millhouse said evasively. “But the majority of what we’ve seen is from Tonya’s.”

“How about you let us have a look too?” TJ asked. “Maybe we can find something you’ve missed.”

TJ could be extremely likable and paint himself as everyone’s and anyone’s instant best friend. Or he could be sarcastic and mocking. The fact that his tone suggested he was being something in between right now told Lynn he probably needed a break. There’s been no breakthroughs in this tough case and everywhere they turned there was another obstacle to climb.

“I believe we’re more than capable of taking it from here,” Millhouse said.

“And I…” TJ started to say, but fell silent as Binna laid her hand on his arm.

“What’s the harm in letting me take a look?” she said. “I’ve successfully profiled more than a hundred serial killers and I’m not the type of profiler who sees serial killers everywhere. If there’s nothing here, I will tell you.”

“I appreciate your offer, I really do,” Millhouse said. “But this is our case. And one of your agents is much too close to it for my liking.”

He glanced at Lynn, and she felt heat rising in her cheeks. Even the cool air in the room seemed to dissipate with it. What the hell is going on here? Millhouse wasn’t exactly happy with them working together on this until now, but he wasn’t this dead set against it before.

“That’s my point exactly,” Binna said in a carrying voice before Lynn could respond. “One of our top agents is enmeshed in this, her good name is on the line, and I personally would like to get to the bottom of it. Please let me.”

She could be very persuasive when she wanted to be. Lynn could actually see Millhouse start changing his mind. There weren’t many more ways to keep saying no without it escalating to an argument and hopefully he was trying to avoid that.

“All right,” he finally said. “I will let you review the evidence, but none of it leaves this police station. You can use this room.”

“We don’t have the equipment to process it here,” Larry protested, though Lynn assumed that wasn’t the whole truth.

Millhouse stood up. “We will handle the processing. Arrangements have already been made for transporting it to the crime lab in Albany.”

His tone suggested that it was a take it or leave it type of offer, and the best they’d get for now. Everyone in the room was professional and experienced enough to realize that.

“Fine,” TJ said. “We’ll take it.”

Millhouse nodded and headed for the door. “I’ll have it brought in.”

As soon as the door closed behind them, TJ stood too and faced Larry and his two techs. “We need to get everything we can from those photos.”

“I’m way ahead of you there,” Larry said and stood up. “Let’s get our kits.”

He motioned for the other two to follow him out to the van.

Binna set her brown leather briefcase on the table and pulled out her laptop. “I’ve already done some preliminary work on this profile from what you had so far. Hopefully this batch of evidence will fill some of the holes I found.”

“What holes?” Lynn asked.

Binna shook her head. “I don’t want to say anything until I know more.”

Lynn had known Binna long enough to know she wouldn’t get anything more out of her until she was ready to tell her. She turned to TJ.

“I’ll stay long enough to see what they got and then go face down Evan,” she said. “But I think I might’ve put him on his guard so I’m not expecting much.”

TJ shrugged and nodded.

“Keep pushing him,” Binna said without looking up from her screen. “One thing I can tell you is that this killer doesn’t like to be challenged. He likes things to sail smoothly and easily and the way he steers them. Throwing him off balance will make him angry and will lead him to making mistakes.”

“So, in other words, standard advice for dealing with any highly organized serial killer?” Lynn said.

Binna looked at her over her glasses and grinned. “If you’re right, and this man has limited himself to a single killing a year, always on the anniversary of his first killing, with nothing but memories and fantasies to keep him content in between, then he’s as organized as they come. A textbook case, if you like. We don’t get a lot of them out in the wild.”

In the wild. An interesting choice of words. Lynn wished they could finally get out into the wild of this case. But she felt more boxed in than ever.

* * *

Risking missing her appointment with Evan, Lynn stayed to view all the evidence regardless. By the time all the photos and items were laid out on the long conference table and Larry’s team was hard at work cataloguing it all in the little time they were given, a part of her wished she hadn’t stayed. Because there was a mountain of evidence and despite Millhouse’s assurances, most of it was not just from Tonya’s case.

There were photos of five other young women, all wearing pretty summer dresses, all laid in grass clearings, some showing signs of decomp. There were also pieces of jewelry that had presumably belonged to the women and even locks of hair. All of it had been stuffed into a black backpack with many zippers and side pockets. One of Larry’s team was working on collecting fingerprints and other trace evidence from it.

“The backpack is our best bet for finding whatever DNA the owner left behind,” Larry explained as he saw her looking at it. “On the whole, that’s all we can hope for here. Fingerprints and fibers that might tell us something. I haven’t been this restricted in my work in a very long time.”

“I just don’t get Millhouse’s change of heart on this,” TJ mused. “He was cooperating fully until this morning. Now he’s claiming he doesn’t think there’s a serial killer at work? I call bullshit.”

“A cover up?” Lynn asked. “Or is he protecting someone on the inside?”

“Maybe he’s just saving face,” Binna muttered. “He’s been the chief here for five years. Some of these murders occurred on his watch. He strikes me as the type who doesn’t like making mistakes.”

“Makes sense,” TJ said.

“There’s some blood on the zipper,” the tech working on the backpack announced triumphantly, but then his face fell. “What should we do with it?”

“Take a sample,” Larry said. “Cut out the piece and we’ll take it back to our lab for processing. Document everything. I’m done playing these pissing games with the locals.”

Lynn was on the verge of protesting, and she saw a doubtful light cross TJ’s eyes too. But he didn’t say anything about how that might compromise the chain of evidence, so she kept silent too. Bottom line, she fully intended to get a confession and a full story out of this killer. And FBI-presented evidence was rarely called into question besides.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Larry said, turning to her. “We’ve managed to isolate some DNA from the charm found at Shanna Myers’ crime scene. It’s male.”

That charm was shaped like a teddy bear and had once hung from Lynn’s charm bracelet—one of a pair of friendship bracelets Alicia and she had. Alicia died wearing hers and Lynn’s had disappeared, possibly that same night. To have it appear at a crime scene twenty years later was suspicious. But to find DNA on it was downright miraculous.

“Did you run it against Ryan Connor’s DNA?” Lynn asked, surprised she could even get the words out over the hard lump in her throat. But she had to know.

“I ran it through CODIS,” he said. “No match.”

The Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS for short, was an extensive database of DNA profiles collected from known offenders, arrestees, missing persons and unsolved crimes. A hit would’ve been nice.

“Have you made any headway in finding out who might’ve put it in with the other evidence?” Lynn asked.

TJ and Larry both shook their heads.

“I’ve been looking into it,” TJ said. “As you know, there was a lot of coming and going and all the techs were wearing full protective gear throughout the evidence gathering phase. I figure whoever placed the item there must’ve snuck in wearing the same protective gear. With so many people there, he could’ve easily blended in.”

“That crime scene wasn’t as organized as I like them to be,” Larry said. “Too much interest and calling for fast results from too many places.”

He sounded like he considered it a personal failure.

“I’ll get you some more DNA samples to check it against,” Lynn said.

It was eleven thirty. She had half an hour to reach Evan’s office in Green Haven. And once there, she’d figure out how to get a sample of his DNA. She needed answers fast. Ryan needed answers. He’d been stewing in this mess for longer than her and she was already choking on it. She didn’t know how he’d been able to handle it at all.

28

Evan’s office was located in the black all-glass building in the town center. The church next to it was reflected perfectly in its glass facade and that was the only beautiful thing about the building, as far as Lynn was concerned. The ground floor was lined with shops and businesses of all sorts, including a store selling Italian coffee and a wine bar called Veritas. The three floors above it held the offices that controlled the Ellington’s vast empire in these parts. Evan’s office was on the corner of the third floor.

It was larger than Lynn’s entire NYC apartment. The secretary that let her in was a tall, thin, and efficient middle-aged woman. Lynn had expected him to have a beautiful young secretary. Arrogant pricks like Evan usually did.

He was standing by the window with his back to her, looking out over the woods and distant hills. And Bobby Hill was sitting on the studded black leather sofa that dominated one corner of the office.

“You’re late,” Evan said without turning around. But she felt his eyes lock on her via the reflection in the window.

“Only a couple of minutes,” Lynn said and smiled. “I wasn’t expecting traffic. These parts have gotten a lot more popular than they used to be. Probably also because of all the work your family’s done.”

Before she could get answers from him, she had to reestablish trust between them. Hence the friendly, nice tone and praise she was giving him. The ice-cold glare in his eyes as he turned to face her told her she had failed again.

“I asked Bobby to be here for this conversation,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll understand that I must protect myself and the family from any potential fallout here, since as you noted, we do a lot of good for this town. I wouldn’t want it all wasted because of wild accusations and subjective investigations.”

Lynn resented how small and insignificant Evan’s harsh, yet icy tone made her feel. Like she was just a nobody and not an agent with a near-perfect murder solve rate. Like she was still just a teenager rocked to her core, shattered, by first the murder of her best friend and then her parents.

To stall while she regained her composure, Lynn took off her coat and hung it next to Bobby’s jacket and Evan’s coat on a rack by the door. A few dark hairs caught the light and glinted on the sleeve of the coat. She figured they for sure belonged to Evan, given that only the amount of gel he wore in his hair could make them gleam like that. She casually brushed them off and let them fall into the pocket of her own coat, suspecting this would be the only chance she got of getting a DNA sample here today. Not that there was a high probability that they would yield any DNA. What she actually wanted to do was just yank a fistful of his hair straight out of his head, and the thought made her feel even more like a spiteful, foolish teenager.

“Did I say something wrong?” Evan asked, sarcasm thick in his voice.

Bobby gave her an apologetic sort of half smile as she sat in the armchair next to the sofa.

“I’m willing to overlook it if you tell me the truth now,” she said, smiling again. “Where were you the night Alicia was killed?”

“I was at home, just as my father said. I don’t know why Ryan would make up the story that I was at the cabin where the two of you were fucking, you’ll have to ask him that. And don’t forget your father had good reasons for suspecting Ryan in the first place.”

“I never told you what Ryan said about seeing you that night and where,” Lynn said, but the mocking half-smile on his face told her she was wasting her breath.

He knew that she knew, and he wanted it that way. It was Ryan’s word against his and he knew full well that Ryan’s word would count for nothing, especially after what had been discovered at his parents’ barn.

“You should take off your rose-colored glasses about the guy,” Evan added. “And maybe blow out that candle you’re holding for him and see him for what he is. Guilty. Why else would he run the first chance he got?”

He was trying to rile her up, but he’d already succeeded, and she had already gotten it under control. She was a pro at this, after all.

“In light of the fervent proposition you made me just yesterday morning, I’m inclined to believe Ryan,” she said. “It would seem you’re the one still holding a candle. For me.”

That wiped the stupid grin off his face. And made him turn a few shades paler, which given his already very pale complexion was quite a feat.

But the next moment he was grinning again. “What can I say? You’re a beautiful woman. Always were. But you’ve always been too brainy and not feminine enough for my tastes. Still, I thought I’d give it a shot. Consider my offer withdrawn.”

“No problem,” Lynn said.

“Are we done here?” Bobby asked.

He was green in the face, and grimacing like he was about to throw up.

Lynn stood up and reached for her coat. “Yeah, I think we are done here. For now.”

Bobby stood too and grabbed his jacket off the rack. “I’ll walk out with you.”

The two men exchanged pleasant goodbyes, but she just walked out. Bobby caught up to her at the head of the staircase.

“Evan wasn’t just saying that about your father having his reasons,” he said as they descended. “I found a box of his old notebooks back at the office. At least three of them mention Alicia’s murder.”

Lynn stopped dead mid-step and glared at him. “And you didn’t think to hand those over to me?”

Anger was rising hot and fast in her veins, and she shouldn’t be directing it at Bobby, but he was there, and Evan wasn’t. Plus, she was feeling stupid she hadn’t thought of looking for her father’s notebooks. He never went anywhere without one.

“I only just found them this morning,” Bobby said. “I vaguely remembered they existed, so I went hunting for them in the archives. I was going to call you.”

She started walking again. “It’s fine. I’ll come to the office now and pick them up. Thanks.”

Maybe this wasn’t a completely wasted side trip. Maybe she’d at least get some answers out of it. Although her hope on that front was wearing thin. Too many false starts usually did that to her. That and suspects successfully pulling their strings.

Evan was it for now. And she’d get what she could out of Bobby about him once they were at the Sheriff’s Office. Though she already suspected it wouldn’t be much. They seemed like the best of friends these days. Not how she remembered their relationship in the past. But so many things about the town she grew up in were far from how she remembered it.

* * *

Bobby waited for her at the entrance of the Sheriff’s Office and led her inside to her father’s old office. A dark green filing box stood open on his desk, some of its contents beside it. Including a couple of the soft leather-bound notebooks that her father was fond of using for his notes. He owned them in all colors, from tan brown to black and they were always the perfect size to fit in his pocket. Once, when she was about ten years old, he gave her one of her own. That one was camel brown, and she hadn’t thought of it in ages although, at the time, she wouldn’t go anywhere without it. She never took notes nowadays. Maybe because her father had taken so many and doing it reminded her too painfully of him. That’s probably how Binna would see it.

“I’ll let you have the room,” Bobby said and didn’t wait for her reply before quietly retreating out of the office and closing the door softly.

Somehow, the room still smelled of her father—a tangy scent laced with leather, probably because of all the notebooks.

She sat down in the chair and stared at them, unable to will her arms to move and pick one up. She felt like she was invading her father’s privacy. He had never let her look thorough them, because she was a kid and they contained things not fit for children. But also, because thinking of her parents always brought paralyzing pain she had no control over. And she was about to see her dad’s handwriting.

Ever since she came back home, bubbles of memories from her childhood kept surfacing, clear as day even though she’d thought of none of it consciously for decades. Right now, the memory of her dad explaining why taking notes was so important for an investigator was playing loud and clear in her mind. A minute ago she didn’t even know she had this memory, that’s how tightly locked up she had kept them all. They belonged to another time. A happier time. Before everything fell apart.

She shook her head and resisted the urge to give herself a slap across the face to snap out of it. She had a job to do, and couldn’t let herself wallow in self-pity and painful memories.

She picked up the topmost notebook, a tan colored one and opening it, ignoring the sharp pain of seeing her father’s cramped, but perfectly legible handwriting.

It covered Alicia’s murder and Ryan’s arrest. The beginning of the account was earmarked, probably by Bobby.

She reread the account of how her best friend’s body was found—lying with her hands folded neatly in her lap, frost clinging to her eyelashes, skin porcelain white against which the dark blue strangulation marks around her throat stood out starkly, surrounded by yellow flowers, a single, small red circle of blood on the white summer dress she was wearing, right over her heart.

For a moment, as I first saw her, I thought it was Lynn and my heart stopped. It hasn’t been beating right since.

Seeing those words in her father’s handwriting made a lump the size and hardness of a golf ball form in Lynn’s throat. But she read on.

The next two pages dealt with how worried her father had been about Alicia straying and hanging out with the bad crowd. He was even more worried about Lynn following the same path. He saw her budding relationship with Ryan as the beginning of that. Until this moment, Lynn believed her father didn’t know about her relationship with Ryan prior to the night that she came into this office and insisted that Ryan couldn’t have killed Alicia because they’d spent the night together. That memory bubble was very clear in her mind right now too. Complete with how badly her voice and her hands shook as she told her story.

She read the account of Ryan’s interrogation part next. From beginning to end, he was convinced of his guilt, but she already knew that from listening to the tapes. From these notes she was beginning to glean the reason why that was so, something that was never quite clear to her before.

Maybe it would’ve been had she not been so convinced no one in her family, and especially not her father, knew about her dating Ryan. But he knew. And it worried him. He’d seen them hanging out at Eddie’s Bar and Grill, the notorious biker bar where Alicia had last been seen alive. He also knew Ryan had ties with Demon’s Way MC and didn’t think much of his family, at least the mother’s side of it. Lynn never suspected she was the real reason Ryan was questioned as hard and long as he was.

But she wasn’t the only reason.

And her vision blurred as she read that part.

Gareth O’Rourke, Ryan’s cousin and the guy married to Evan’s sister, had come to the police station that morning and told her father he had seen Ryan in the woods that night, acting weird, carrying a knife and talking nonsense about needing to punish an unnamed her, which in hindsight Gerry had assumed must’ve been Alicia. Gerry himself had an alibi for the time of Alicia’s murder. His father said he was home all night. His sighting of Ryan had apparently taken place hours before, at around eight PM. Lynn could only vouch for Ryan from ten onwards, which was when she had snuck out of the house to meet him and Alicia.

Why had her father never filed an official report detailing Gerry’s testimony?

She read on. Her father had made almost no comment on the alibi she had given Ryan. Except to say that it, plus the fact that they could find no actual, physical evidence linking Ryan to Alicia that night made it impossible to keep pursuing him as a suspect. Officially. Unofficially, he never completely gave up on the idea.

Especially when, even months later, no other suspect came to light. The last date in the notebook was just before New Year’s. By then Alicia’s case had gone cold. But in one of the last entries her father mentioned a new lead emerging. Didn’t specify what, just that there was something he never fully looked into and intended to after the holidays.

Each of her father’s notebooks held about three months’ worth of notes. Before the following three months were through, her father and mother would both be dead, shot by her brother, Drew. Officially. Because despite the fact that her brother was currently serving two consecutive life sentences for their parents’ murders, Lynn never quite believed he was guilty. Not in her heart anyway.

She rummaged through the box, checking and rechecking the other notebooks in there. But the last one, the one leading up to her father’s death wasn’t there. And as far as she remembered none of these work notebooks were among her father’s belongings she had packed up before selling the house.

She poked her head out of the office, surprised to see Bobby standing right beside the door, as though waiting for her to do just that.

“Are these all the notebooks?” she asked.

“That’s all that was in the box, yes,” he said and followed her back into the office.

“One is missing.”

He paled, opening and closing his mouth a few times before finally saying, “I don’t know anything about that. Maybe he had it at home.”

“He never brought his work home,” she said and went back to the box to check yet again. “My mother didn’t like it.”

Bobby was silent while she flipped thorough the notebooks again, checking the dates.

“Your father had a lot of secrets, Lynn,” he said quietly. “Stuff you didn’t know about.”

“Like not telling anyone Gerry O’Rourke as good as accused Ryan of murdering Alicia?” she snapped. “Why was that never in the official reports?”

He shrugged. “Before my time, but I wondered about that too. I was going to go ask Gerry about it this afternoon.”

“I’ll come with you,” Lynn said and closed the lid of the storage box. “And I’ll take these, if you don’t mind.”

He nodded. “They’re part of your father’s personal belongings, so they’re yours now.”

The box was heavier than she expected it to be. As heavy as her heart suddenly felt.

“What kind of secrets did my father keep?” she asked quietly.

“Not my place to say,” Bobby said. “Family stuff. You should ask your brother. He told me in confidence.”

Lynn hadn’t visited her brother in over five years. She called him on his birthday and at Christmas, when she remembered. No wonder he never bothered to mention these secrets to her, preferring to share them with his best friend, Bobby instead.

“Let’s go speak to Gerry now,” she said.

“Sure,” Bobby said and held the door open for her.

Sing-Sing prison, where her brother was doing time, was a four-hour drive from here. She’d never make it before visiting hours ended today. But she’d be there first thing tomorrow morning. And she hoped her brother wasn’t too mad at her for not visiting more often.

Funny how, despite the vividness of the bubbles of memories that tied her to this place, so many were now proving false. Like that her father was a fair and just-minded man interested only in pursuing justice above all else. She now feared that was one of the false memories. And it didn’t sit well with her. At all.

29

TJ hated going behind Lynn’s back. Even for just a little bit. They’d been partners for so long and had worked so closely together that she was definitely something between his work wife and best friend. His only friend. As he had been hers. But everything was upended when their true identities were blasted on national and international news channels, making undercover work—the work they both loved, mostly since it allowed them to get lost in it—impossible. Now they were torn further apart by this case, which was taking every bit as much of a toll on Lynn as he had feared it would.

She practically ran away from home eighteen years ago. Not that there was much of it left to run away from, but she still burned all the bridges back to it and never looked back. He knew because they’d been working together for five years before she shared her story with him.

And now she was back, neck deep in the town’s secrets that had collapsed her world once before. TJ feared the same was happening all over again.

The evidence against her friend, or boyfriend or whatever they were to each other these days, was solid. Tight and heavy. And it was time he met the man. Got the measure of him, as they say. He didn’t feel good doing it behind Lynn’s back, but he feared, as did the rest of the team who’d arrived at Harrington today, that Lynn was losing her compass.

He denied it when Binna brought it up after Lynn left. Fought for her credibility and integrity, not out of loyalty, but because he believed in it. But he feared Lynn could get lost in the shattered pieces of her past before she found her way again. And time wasn’t on their side.

At first, Millhouse refused to let TJ speak to Ryan. But he softened up after TJ explained that he too believed Lynn was getting too enmeshed.

Now he was sitting across the table from the guy in one of the stuffy interrogation rooms, trying hard to find the best way to begin the conversation.

“I’m not talking without a lawyer,” Ryan said, saving him the trouble of coming up with an opening.

“This is completely unofficial and off the record,” TJ said and grinned. “You can leave at any time. But I was hoping I could ask you a few questions. Just so I can get a better picture of everything.”

Ryan had trouble sitting still and he kept adjusting the collar of his sweatshirt as though it was choking him. Normally, TJ would take that kind of fidgeting as a sign of guilt, or something like it. But this guy had a bad history with interrogations. Very bad, as Lynn had explained. He’d asked Millhouse if they could do this in one of the soft interrogation rooms, but the chief wouldn’t hear of that.

“No offense, but I doubt anything I say in here, or to any of you, is unofficial,” Ryan said. “Or off the record.”

“Touché,” TJ said and grinned again. Normally, in off-the-record interrogations like this, he’d slip into his friendly, charming all-American boy next door persona. But he somehow couldn’t find it in him right now. Maybe because Lynn cared for this guy and TJ cared for Lynn, so he didn’t want to. Be duplicitous.

“I’m not gonna sugarcoat it,” he said. “The evidence found in your barn is damning.”

“My parents’ barn,” Ryan corrected him. “I don’t live there, I haven’t for twenty years. I’m just house sitting and taking care of the animals. Speaking of… someone should go feed them.”

“I’ll make sure they’re fed,” TJ promised.

Ryan nodded and stayed silent. But he kept good eye contact with TJ, which was a good sign. There was definitely a guarded quality to the look he was giving him. Closed off, distant, wary. But his eyes weren’t cold like with some killers TJ had interviewed in the past. A small thing, and TJ had long since stopped going by looks alone when determining guilt, but something, nonetheless.

“Why do you think someone would want to frame you for this so bad?” TJ asked.

They had their theories, but he wanted to hear Ryan’s.

He shrugged and adjusted the collar of his shirt again. “Beats me. Probably because of my history.”

“The arrest in Alicia’s case?” TJ asked and Ryan nodded.

“But you’ve been away for so long,” TJ said. “Verifiably so. That makes you an unlikely scapegoat.”

Ryan shrugged again. “It could also be personal.”

He wasn’t very talkative, which was understandable.

“And who would have such a personal grudge against you?”

Ryan shrugged yet again and stayed silent.

“Your cousins seem to have your back. One of them paid for your mother’s cancer treatment,” TJ said.

Ryan scowled, but stayed silent. “And the other guy who was out in the woods the night Alicia was killed is now your lawyer. If any of them were trying to frame you, would they do all that?”

“Maybe they’re being friendly on the outside to cover up this shit,” Ryan said. “Or maybe it’s guilt.” Ryan said.

“Yours or theirs?” TJ regretted the question the moment it was out of his mouth. But his way was always to try and shake up the interviewee, keep them unbalanced, maybe make them say more than they intended. Ryan just looked at him darkly.

“Theirs, I was thinking,” he said a mocking gleam passing over his eyes. “Seeing as I’m not guilty.”

“Like I said, the evidence is damning.”

“I heard you the first time. But, of course, it would be. Whoever’s doing this knows what they’re doing. I’m fully aware that this might not end well for me. But it won’t end well for all the women this guy still plans on killing either. I’m not the guy you’re looking for.”

“You’ve lived with this hanging over your head for a long time, I get it,” TJ said. “But now’s not the time to stay silent. Tell us what you know.”

Ryan leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. Clearly, as far as he was concerned, this conversation was over. TJ stayed silent, waiting for Ryan to speak first this time. Another technique he was fond of.

The silence grew tense before Ryan finally uncrossed his arms again and leaned forward.

“Listen, man, I know you and Lynn are close, but there’s only so many times I can say the same thing before it starts getting annoying,” he said. “Ever since I was seventeen years old, nothing about this shit made any damn sense to me. Don’t think it’s magically gonna start because you’re here asking the questions. I want this to be over as much as anyone. Probably more than anyone else. But it doesn’t look like I’m ever gonna get that wish. So how about you just let me go back to my cell?”

So he could string more than two sentences together. Not that TJ doubted it. He liked the guy. And that was enough for now. He could now focus his efforts on other leads fully.

He grinned and stood up. “Sure. Thanks for speaking to me.”

“As if I had any choice.”

TJ let that one slide. He just nodded and left the room to tell Millhouse he was done and go rejoin the others. Hopefully they’d found some new lead for him to follow. Because Millhouse was barking up the wrong tree. And the sooner that was cleared up, the sooner he could take an extended vacation.

The dives in the South Pacific were perfect this time of year and they were calling to him louder and louder lately. He’d been free diving since before joining the Bureau and it was the only time he felt truly at peace. The world was so much simpler deep underwater with only holding your breath to focus on. He hoped he’d be able to leave knowing that at least this part of Lynn’s past was successfully salvaged. But it wasn’t looking great for Ryan, that much he knew.

30

Lynn and Bobby were back at the Ellington building, as Bobby called it, this time in a smaller office on the first floor. Gerry O’Rourke’s office was furnished the same as Evan’s, with a shiny oak desk made to look old, though Lynn suspected it wasn’t, matching shelving units and a black leather sofa and armchair set in one corner. Everything was smaller and less ornate than it had been in Evan’s office. Lynn figured that’s how Evan liked it. He was the top dog, everyone else was beneath him.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” Gerry asked as they were shown in. He stood up from behind his desk, smiling widely. He had the same dark hair and green eyes as Ryan, but was at least a head shorter and much slighter than his cousin.

He was smiling, but to Lynn it looked forced.

“I’d like to talk to you about a statement you gave to my father on the day Alicia’s body was found,” Lynn said without preamble.

Gerry feigned surprise, but not very well as far as she was concerned.

“Sit, please,” he said. “Take off your coats.”

Lynn did neither, but Bobby took a seat on the edge of one of the two wooden chairs facing Gerry’s desk. Lynn stood by his side and Gerry sank back down into his office chair. He didn’t look her in the eye.

“What statement is this?” he asked.

“The one where you accused Ryan of wandering the woods with a knife, muttering to himself like a lunatic a few hours before Alicia was killed.”

She probably should’ve made more of an effort to speak calmly, but right now, that was beyond her. She unzipped her coat because the room had suddenly grown too hot.

Gerry feigned surprise again, but this time it faded even quicker than the first time.

“Oh, that,” he muttered, looking down at his desk. Apart from a laptop and a black glass penholder, there was nothing on it.

Lynn stifled the urge to say, Yeah, that.

Gerry’s statement was probably the sole reason Ryan had been arrested and questioned and subsequently run out of town. And she was feeling the knowledge of that very keenly right now.

“You have to understand,” Gerry said, but fell silent again.

“We do,” Bobby said although Lynn didn’t see how he possibly could.

“Understand what?” she asked.

“I didn’t have a lot of choices back then,” Gerry said. “Evan… it was his idea to do it… it was either me or one of my brothers. Or Ryan. Evan wanted it to be Ryan, so we all went along. We were all mad at Ryan for not wanting to be part of our group anymore. I’ve regretted it ever since.”

Despite her anger, she kind of believed him. Teenagers did stupid things for stupid reasons. And Gerry had done a lot for Ryan’s parents in his absence, including picking up the bill to get Ryan’s mom state-of-the-art treatment when she fell ill with breast cancer again, earlier this year.

“I made the statement anonymously, and I told your father I wouldn’t testify to it in court,” Gerry explained. Hence the brutal interrogation that went on for days. Her father needed Ryan’s confession.

“That’s why it wasn’t in the files,” Bobby observed.

“Did you ever recant it?” Lynn asked. Gerry shook his head.

“So you just falsely accused your cousin and let the whole town believe he was guilty,” she said. “Not to mention wasting precious time in actually finding Alicia’s killer.”

“That’s not on me,” Gerry muttered, still not meeting her eye.

“Think again,” she snapped. “Most murders are solved in the first forty-eight hours. After that the chances of ever solving it go down dramatically. Instead of looking for the killer, my father spent those precious forty-eight hours interrogating Ryan. And twenty years on, Alicia’s killer is still walking free.”

She almost added, “And has killed at least ten other women,” but managed to stop herself.

“I’m sorry,” Gerry said. “I didn’t know.”

He sounded like he was telling the truth.

“OK, just so we’re clear,” she said. “Your entire statement was a lie. And you told it at the urging of Evan Ellington who wanted Ryan arrested for Alicia’s murder.”

Gerry nodded. “But I don’t think he was thinking very clearly back then either. We were just dumb kids. He fought with Ryan that night and lost. And Evan’s not the kind of guy who likes losing.”

Lynn could see that last part about Evan. But she could also see a guy dead set on getting Ryan out of the way. Something that was still happening right now.

“Thank you for being truthful with me,” she said and left the room, not waiting for Bobby.

A part of her wanted to rush upstairs and confront Evan with this right away. The teenage, foolish part. But the seasoned FBI Agent and undercover operative she was knew that was a bad idea. She would crack Evan. But it wouldn’t happen by brute force.

* * *

As she waited for TJ and the rest of the team to arrive to a gas station restaurant they’d agree to meet at, Lynn was still struggling to regain some sort of composure after all that had happened in just the last twelve hours or so, not to mention everything before then. Finding out that things you thought you knew are actually different has a very destabilizing effect. She knew that. She also knew it’d be harder working on this case because it was so much closer to home. She had thought she had accounted for it and was prepared for it. Clearly, not so much.

The restaurant was nearly empty. A few tables were occupied by men travelling alone, hunched over their meals, some surfing the web while eating, others just looking off into space. A rowdy family of five, complete with a baby was making a lot of noise at one of the end tables. An older boy and girl, about five years old, and a baby that could be either were keeping the parents very busy. The mom looked on the verge of walking out, her eyes sad and wide every time she was interrupted while trying to finish her burger and fries. The dad looked the same. The kids just yelled and banged on the table and cried. Lynn didn’t need the reminder of a family tonight. The one she could never have or the one she had lost.

“We could’ve just met back in Harrington somewhere,” she said to TJ and the rest when they finally showed up.

“You’re supposed to be undercover,” TJ replied as he sat down across from her. “Too much contact and no one will believe that anymore.”

“I don’t know how much that even matters anymore,” she said. “This was always a very soft undercover job. And if the killer has contacts within law enforcement, then they already know what’s what.”

“It goes both ways,” Binna said as she took the seat next to Lynn, groaning and rubbing her hip. “From the Bureau’s perspective, it looks better if we’re not seen fraternizing. You are supposed to be fired. Or suspended. Or whatever.”

“Officially, I quit in protest after being suspended,” Lynn said.

She waited while everyone else ordered. She’d already eaten a plate of fries while waiting for them, so she got a chocolate milkshake this time.

“Did you find anything interesting?” she asked once the waitress left.

“Just the blood on the zipper of the backpack and a few partial fingerprints on the photos,” Larry said.

“And a very unnerving glimpse into the killer’s mind,” TJ added and shuddered. “The level of care he put in staging the bodies and photographing them just so gave me the creeps, to be honest.”

“The photos gave me the sense that whoever took them put a lot of thought into it too,” Binna added. “Treated it all with all the care of a star student doing a school project, for lack of a better analogy.”

“I don’t see your friend Ryan in that role, for what it’s worth,” TJ said, avoiding her gaze.

“What brought this on?”

He continued to avoid her gaze and didn’t reply right away. She waited him out.

“I spoke to him,” he finally said. “This afternoon. I wanted to get a feel for the guy.”

She was stuck between being angry at TJ for going behind her back and glad he saw Ryan as she did. A tense silence accompanied that battle going on inside her mind.

“And you?” Larry asked. “Did you get me a DNA sample?”

She felt her cheeks heat up as she thought of the hairs somewhere in her coat pocket. Larry would probably laugh her right out of this restaurant if she mentioned those. But maybe it was better than nothing. She had brought him less likely samples over the years.

She picked up her coat off the seat next to her and held it out. “I got some hairs, could be they’ll yield nothing, but it was the best I could do. Right front pocket.”

One of the techs, a young woman named Myra, stood and took the jacket. “I’ll go swab it right away.”

No one said anything as she left the restaurant. But the look in Larry’s eyes spoke volumes about what he thought of the quality of the sample.

Lynn filled the silence by telling them what she had found out.

“This case was messed up from the start, that’s for sure,” TJ said. “After Millhouse’s strange change of heart about the possibility of a serial killer operating in the area, I now have someone back at the Factory cross-referencing all the missing person’s cases and killings here going back thirty years. Hopefully we’ll have a clearer picture of it all soon.”

Lynn nodded.

“But I’m pretty convinced this all started with your friend,” Binna said.

The food arrived so she fell silent waiting for the waitress to be done and leave again. Myra had returned while this was going on, but said nothing as she handed Lynn back her coat.

“What makes you think that?” Lynn asked once everyone had started eating. They ordered enough food to feed ten people and Binna alternated between picking at her Caesar’s salad and eating her fries.

“It’s mostly in the way he perfected the look of the victims after they’re dead,” Binna said. “The dresses have gotten more girly, the strangulation method has changed to leave less of a mark. The stabbing is more precise too and doesn’t leave a stain on the dresses anymore. He’s changed up the flowers he adorns them with too. If I had to guess, I’d say he picks them according to what he thinks suits a particular woman most. The same with the dresses.”

She chewed while she opened the lid of her laptop and called up two rows of photos side by side, in two lines, ten in total. Lynn had to lean closer to get a good look.

“These are the in chronological order, starting with your friend,” Binna said unnecessarily. Lynn would’ve recognized her friend’s crime scene anytime. She still saw it often enough in her nightmares.

“You see how the posing has gotten more intricate, culminating with Tonya, who is wearing the most intricate dress, and it almost looks like he spent time curling her hair for the photo.”

Lynn did see what she was talking about.

“But what trips me up is that while Alicia was just a normal teenage girl and all the rest of the victims were mostly prostitutes or drug addicts, or both,” TJ said. “Why the change in choice of victim?”

“I have a working theory on that too,” Binna said and wiped her mouth with a napkin. “I think he killed Alicia because she was straying from the normal, nice girl path. Hence the frilly summer dress he put her in and the little girl Mary Jane-style shoes.”

“Which she wouldn’t be caught dead wearing,” Lynn interjected.

“Right,” Binna said. “The other victims were girls who strayed too, and this is his way of putting them back on the right path, of resetting, of making them good girls again.”

“OK, so he’s a total nut job,” TJ said.

“Yes and no,” Binna said. “I’d say he is quite capable of shutting this part of himself away and leading a normal life. Maybe he even has a wife and kids. He restricts himself to one victim a year to commemorate his first kill. That alone points to a very disciplined mind.”

“And an uptight one,” Lynn muttered. “Cold, in other words.”

“Right,” Binna said. “With Alicia he showed the most disarray. Her throat was heavily bruised from his attempts to strangle her, the dress was bloodied from the stab wound, the flowers aren’t arranged as meticulously as with the others and her dress was crinkled.”

“But they’ve all been stabbed post-mortem, haven’t they?” TJ asked.

“Yes, I think he still suffocates them first,” Binna said. “Just not with his hands anymore. He probably uses a string or a plastic bag over their heads.”

Lynn leaned back in her chair. “Saving the victims from themselves, you think? Or the world from their bad influence.”

“It’s still a working theory, but yes, I think so,” Binna said and took another bite of her salad.

“It makes perfect sense,” Lynn said. “If he’s still fixated on me, then it was probably the teenage me that he was saving from Alicia’s bad influence. Just like my father tried to do.”

Binna nodded slightly, but the rest stayed silent. For the best, because Lynn was having a hard enough time wrapping her mind around this new way of seeing Alicia’s murder as her fault. And even though she knew how ridiculous that kind of thinking actually was, it still rankled and hurt.

“I need to head back to Green Haven,” she said. “I should be there if he tries to make contact again, right?”

She had no idea why she phrased it as a question. They all looked at her sharply, TJ went so far as gasping.

Lynn chuckled. “Stop acting like I haven’t played the bait for a bunch of psycho killers in the past. The only difference is, with this one it’s personal.”

She stood up and put on her coat.

“Let me know if the evidence yields something,” she asked Larry who nodded.

“And I have a box of other photos and such for you to process,” she added, meaning the evidence Arthur Potts had amassed. It was all in her trunk, because she wasn’t about to leave it unattended again.

“I’ll get those,” TJ said.

She said goodbye to the rest of them and left.

TJ forgot to bring his coat and was shivering within seconds of standing by her car. “I’m sorry for not telling you I wanted to speak to Ryan. I should’ve.”

“That’s fine,” she said and opened her trunk, not sure if she really meant it.

“He mentioned some animals that need to be fed back at his house,” TJ said. “Millhouse said it’s being taken care of.”

“I’ll look in on them just in case,” she said then picked up the storage box from the trunk and handed it to him.

“Don’t do anything rash,” he said, peering at her very intently.

“I’m going to see my brother in Sing-Sing tomorrow to find out all about our father’s secrets,” she said. “How’s that for rash?”

“You want me to come with you?”

She shook her head. “It’s been five years since I visited him last. I better go on my own. Chances are, he won’t want to speak to me as it is.”

“Good luck,” he said and put the box into the trunk of his own SUV.

She watched him go back into the restaurant before getting in her car and driving away. Luck. She wasn’t sure that’s what she needed. More like a way to go back in time and be more vigilant about what was going on around her.

Everyone always considered her so clever when she was growing up. And yet she’d missed seeing that someone had an unnatural fixation on her and that her brother was so angry at their parents he was willing to murder them. If that’s what even happened. The only thing she could be sure of right now, was that she could be sure of absolutely nothing she thought she knew.

31

Lying on the narrow, hard cot in the tiny cell with only a small window near the ceiling and a tightly closed latch on the locked metal door, Ryan was beginning to think that maybe the interrogation room wasn’t the worst place on earth. Maybe a cell like this was. He certainly couldn’t think of anything worse than spending the rest of his life in one.

He’d spent some time in the brig, in his early days in the Army, before he pulled his life and his temper together and accepted that the Army was his life now. But that was different. He always knew he’d get out in a day or two then. Here, he wasn’t so sure of that.

The interview with Lynn’s partner was a strange thing. It was almost like the guy just wanted to talk, not ask any questions. But maybe that was just his mind playing tricks. He hoped he hadn’t said too much. What Ryan actually wanted to know was why Lynn hadn’t come to speak to him. He should’ve asked TJ that. He’d wanted to.

The door unlocking jarred him out of the dark spiral his thoughts were about to take in the direction of Lynn buying into Millhouse’s theory that he’d just staged the break-in last night and the photos were actually his.

“You got a visitor,” the guard said, scowling.

“Who?” Ryan asked, rising from the bed slowly.

“What am I, your secretary?” the guy growled. “It’s your lawyer, I think.”

He was hoping the answer would be Lynn.

But as much as he didn’t want to see Evan, he was glad to get out of the cell, even if just for a little bit.

The walk back up to the ground floor of the police station took ages with all the doors that had to be unlocked manually. Haven’t these people heard of technology yet? No wonder they had such a hard time solving murders.

Instead of the interrogation room, Evan was waiting for him in a small, cold office, which smelled of dust and didn’t look like it was used much. He was sitting behind a desk and pointed at the only other piece of furniture, a plastic and metal chair, for Ryan to sit in. But between his hands handcuffed behind his back and the fact that he’d been sitting or lying down all day, Ryan preferred to remain standing, and said as much.

“Fine, whatever,” Evan said and stood up too.

The guard left the room.

“I wanted to meet in here because there’s no cameras or mikes,” he said. “Not that they can use anything we talk about because of the lawyer client privilege, but they always listen.”

“I already told them all I know,” Ryan said. “And you.”

Evan scoffed. “You’ve been going around telling people more than that. Like about that night at the cabin. You told Lynn all about that. I thought we had an agreement that it’d be kept a secret.”

His cold, pale blue eyes pierced Ryan, filled with a lot of very sharp anger. Ryan just glared at him right back.

“I should’ve told her father about that from the get-go,” he said. “I was dumb not to.”

“It wouldn’t have helped you much.”

“Be that as it may, I wanted to warn Lynn now. She should be careful.”

Evan gasped and clutched at his chest in mock shock. “Of me?”

Ryan gave a small nod and kept his eyes fixed on Evan.

“She has nothing to worry about from me,” Evan said. “As for you, a suspected serial killer, that’s another story.”

“That’s bullshit and we both know it.”

Fact was, Ryan wasn’t sure Evan had it in him to kill anybody. Intimidate, throw his power and weight around, sure, but actually kill? He thought Evan was too much of a coward to actually take a life. All bullies were cowards.

“I take it you’re here to tell me you don’t want to be my lawyer anymore after all,” Ryan said.

Evan’s lips curled up into a wide grin, making the skin stretch taut over his bony face. He looked skeletal.

“On the contrary, my friend,” he said, nearly choking on the last word. “I’m here to tell you that you’re free to leave. The search warrant they had was for a shed, it didn’t mention anything about a barn. Whatever they found in there is inadmissible.”

So many conflicting thoughts were colliding in Ryan’s mind, from joy to not wanting to owe Evan a damn thing, especially not his freedom, that he just stood there, his mouth gaping open most likely.

“It’s good news, you can be happy,” Evan said. “And you could thank me.”

“My parents use the barn as a shed,” Ryan said.

“And the law is the law. You’ve got to love it when they make mistakes like this. Not sure how long it’s going to last before they find a way to correct it though, so you better enjoy your freedom.”

He walked over to the door, opened it and called out. “You’ve had enough time to review everything now. We’re ready to leave.”

A few moments later a guard came in followed by Millhouse. For the first time since Ryan met him, the guy looked disheveled, wearing no jacket, the top button of his shirt undone, his tie askew and his hair a mess.

“We have no choice but to let you go,” he said to Ryan after instructing the guard to take off his cuffs. “But this is not over.”

Ryan rubbed his wrists, which weren’t actually aching. “You bet it’s not over. You still have a killer to catch.”

Millhouse scoffed and left the room, followed by the guard. Another one brought in Ryan’s jacket and belongings.

He didn’t put his jacket on even after they were standing outside in the dark parking lot, despite the rising wind cutting like a very cold knife right.

“My car’s over here,” Evan said and walked on.

“I can find my own way back.”

“Not at this time of night, you can’t,” Evan said.

The guy was right. Ryan didn’t even have his wallet on him, or his phone, and the walk back to Green Haven would likely take all night. If he didn’t freeze halfway there.

It was only after he sat next to Evan in his fancy, but cramped electric car that he realized Evan could take him just about anywhere. Maybe deep into the woods to meet a bullet. But Ryan could take care of himself. What he couldn’t do was figure out what kind of game Evan was playing here.

“Why are you working so hard to help me?” he asked as they drove down the dark tree-bordered road. The car made almost no sound and the radio was off. The silence became even more obvious when Evan took a long time to answer.

“Let’s just say I’m helping myself more than you,” he finally said. “Some things were revealed today, things that could bring me down, and I’m not going to let that happen.”

Figures Evan would have a selfish motive. He always did.

“What things?”

“I’m sure your girlfriend will be more than happy to tell you that,” Evan said. “And you were right, she should be careful. She’s bitten off more than she can chew coming back here and poking at sleeping dogs.”

The killer Lynn was looking for was far from asleep.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. You wanna speak more plainly?”

“No, I don’t.”

And he didn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride, which was much shorter than usual because he was driving at breakneck speed.

The lights in his parents’ house were on. Evan only stopped long enough for Ryan to get out of the car before speeding off again, sending gravel and other debris flying. Lynn’s car was in the driveway. And for the first time in a long time Ryan had the feeling that he was coming home.

32

When Lynn arrived at Ryan’s house to feed the dogs the deputy guarding the site didn’t want to let her in. A call to Bobby fixed that. He also told her animal control was on the way to see about the animals, but Lynn doubted they’d get here tonight. Nor did she think anyone actually fed the animals like the deputy claimed, because the two dogs and donkey sucked up the kibble as fast as she could pour it into their bowls. The same with the cats.

She’d have to let them outside, but while she could leash Lady because her leash was right there, hanging off the back of one of the wooden kitchen chairs, she didn’t know what to do about the other two. Neither the shaggy black dog nor the donkey had a collar, and she could see no other leashes.

Eventually she’d have to figure it out. But for now, they seemed content just to eat and she was content just sitting in the cozy, warm kitchen. The table was covered by a red and white checkered tablecloth, the chairs had matching cushions tied to the seats and the kitchen itself had that homely, lived-in quality that put her instantly at ease.

Knickknacks were everywhere, along with old photos and newspapers, and other odds and ends and whatnots. Her own kitchen in the NYC apartment looked about as cold as the morgue compared to this kitchen. And while the one in her childhood home here had been comfortable and homely too, since it was home, her mother kept it spotless and clutter-free at all times. Everything in her childhood home was that way. She thought she preferred it that way, but sitting here, surrounded by all these well-used and well-loved things, she thought that maybe she didn’t.

She heard a car start up outside and could see the back of the deputy’s SUV leaving the yard as she got up to look out the window.

“I guess it’s just us now,” she told Lady who’d come to sit quietly by her side. “Might as well spend the night and make sure no bad guy comes again, right?”

She’d pretty much decided to do that anyway, telling herself it was pointless to come back in a few hours to feed the animals again. But really, she didn’t want to go back to her cold rental cabin. She wouldn’t sleep there. Here, she might.

The dog and donkey had finished eating too. It was time to see about letting them out. Last night after dinner Ryan had let them out on their own and they all came back in on their own. Hopefully they’d do the same for her.

She was still figuring out how to unlatch the kitchen door, when Lady gave a short bark and all three of them rushed to the front of the house. Before she had the time to wonder what was going on, Ryan walked into the house.

And she had to literally fight the urge to run to him as the animals had done and throw herself into his arms.

He left the door open and there was some jostling as the three tried to exit the house at the same time.

“Lynn,” he said once they were alone in the narrow hallway filled with yet more photos and knickknacks and well-used and well-loved things. The way he said her name held a lot of things too. Not all good ones.

She lost the battle with herself and went to him, hoping he’d hold her. He didn’t.

“I wasn’t the one who told them about the stuff in the barn,” she said as she reached for his hands. They were warm and dry, and he didn’t yank them away as she held on.

He nodded and from the way he looked at her, she couldn’t be sure he believed her.

“Then who did?”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out all day,” she said.

“You didn’t speak to me at the station.”

“It wasn’t an option for me.”

“Your partner had no trouble doing it.”

He was still letting her hold his hands, which was a good sign.

“Millhouse was accusing me of lying for you, of being too close to see things clearly. If that kind of talk got too loud, if I did more things to spread those rumors, like demanding to interview you, then I would be of no use to you anymore,” she said, not breathing until she was done. “I’m sorry it has to be this way.”

She didn’t look at him, because she didn’t want to see his disappointment or anger or scorn or whatever other negative thing he was feeling. She also let go of his hands because it wasn’t fair of her to keep latching onto him after all she’d said and done and might still have to do.

But he grabbed hers as she did and pulled her into an embrace, warm and just perfectly tight.

“I’m sorry too,” he whispered into her hair. “Because I thought we had a real good thing going last night before it all turned to shit.”

He chuckled and she tensed, unsure of what he meant. Was he saying goodbye?

He chuckled again and released her. She kept her hands loosely on his waist, because she couldn’t let go.

“Seriously, though, I believe you, Lynn,” he said. “This whole thing’s always been fucked. But I trust you’ll put it right.”

“More fucked than you imagine,” she said. “Gerry lied about seeing you acting suspiciously in the woods the night Alicia was killed. Talking crazy about needing to put her in her place and brandishing a knife.”

The grin froze on his face.

“Yeah, this is more fucked up than I imagined,” he said, and kicked the door closed. She hadn’t even noticed the cold seeping in before, while he was holding her, but now it chilled her to the bone.

“But it’s just one more thing, isn’t it?” he added. “You can tell me about it over dinner. Prison food sucks.”

He walked past her to the kitchen and was already checking the fridge by the time she joined him. The way he was throwing sandwich ingredients on the counter was the only indication of how mad he actually was.

“It’ll have to be hot dogs if we want something warm,” he said.

“Sure.”

“You know what I hate about this more than anything else?” he asked, fixing her with his brilliantly green eyes over the top of the fridge door. She just looked at him.

“I had all these plans of how I was gonna woo you and win you back. Romantic dinners, dancing, moonlit rides through the forest, stuff like that. And now I’m offering you hot dogs instead.”

She couldn’t actually speak, so she didn’t try. She just walked over and wrapped her arms around him, resting her head on his chest.

“It is what it is,” she mumbled, feeling the rumble deep in his chest as he chuckled darkly.

“And you never lost me,” she added, because it was the truth.

She could hear the breath enter his lungs and not leave as he held her tighter.

“Plus, there’s no need for romantic dinners and dancing,” she said as she looked up at his face, needing to see his eyes some more. “I’m already exactly where I want to be.”

“Yeah, me too,” he said hoarsely.

Then he kissed her. And the things standing between them just melted away. Along with all the years separating them. Just like last night. Just like the first time they kissed all those years ago. Just like always.

And for the first time in almost two decades, Lynn actually believed everything would be all right.

33

After dinner TJ rode back to the Factory with Larry, Binna and the rest of the team. He was sick of breaking his teeth on this case back in Harrington and figured a bird's eye view of everything they collected so far and everything they knew might jog something in his mind, point to a new direction, or provide a new lead. He assumed everyone else would call it a night, since none of them were as invested in the case as he and Lynn were, but they all stayed.

Binna retreated to her large office upstairs at the Psych Ward, as the profiler’s department was lovingly called, to work on the profile, while Larry got to work processing the evidence they collected that afternoon.

That left TJ alone in one of the larger break rooms just to the side of the main lab surrounded by all the photos, all the reports and everything else there was to look at in this case. It took up nearly all the available surfaces, including the tabletop, the kitchen counters, and the sofa along one of the walls.

Except for the photos Lynn had found in Arthur Potts’ office, he’d seen it all before. And a second viewing didn’t bring any new insights. He still felt like he was banging his head against the wall, especially because something bothered him about Arthur’s photos, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what. Like a word stuck at the edge of his tongue, only it was a thought stuck at the edge of his brain, impossible to dislodge and make materialize.

In the end, it was he who fell asleep on the narrow leather sofa in the break room, while all around him the rest worked on the case.

Daylight was streaming through the crooked, lopsided, broken blinds when he opened his eyes again, thinking immediately about the way sunlight streamed through the water while he was just below the surface and wondering why he wasn’t holding his breath. But in the next second he knew why Arthur’s photos were so odd.

He grabbed a fistful of them off the floor by the sofa where he swept them off before lying down and rushed into the lab. By rights, Larry should be at home, getting some much-needed sleep, because it was past ten AM and the guy had been going for over twenty-four hours by TJ’s count, but Larry was still alert as he peered at a computer screen. He was alone in the lab.

“These photos, do they look staged to you?” TJ asked, tossing the stack he was holding onto the desk by Larry’s keyboard. “Like the hooded guy in them, the one supposed to be Ryan Connor, set a timer and then posed for them himself?”

Larry blinked a few times, his eyes trying unsuccessfully to focus on TJ.

“Because that’s what it looks like to me,” TJ added and held up two of the photos. “Look, even the angles are always the same… except that the photo is sometimes taken from the left and other times from the right.”

Larry cleared his throat and took a closer look at the photos. “You should probably get some real sleep. At home.”

“Thanks,” TJ said. “You, too.”

Larry picked up more of the photos and compared them side by side. He took a long time doing that. Long enough for TJ to start doubting he’d seen anything of the kind. He’d been reaching for straws for weeks and maybe he finally found some to grab on to.

“I see what you mean,” Larry finally said. “It’s like the guy in the photos is posing even though it’s been made to look like the images were taken from far away with a telephoto lens. But the angle’s all wrong. And the background too. No way these were taken from a distance.”

He cleared his throat and looked at TJ. “Maybe these were planted for Lynn to find.”

“I wish they could also tell us by who.”

Larry went back to checking the photos. “I’ll pass these over to the photo lab. Those guys and gals can do wonders. At the very least they’ll give us the height of the subject. Maybe even what kind of camera was used. All we found at the Potts’ house was an old point and shoot with a 6X zoom and 24 million pixels. These were taken by a much better camera.”

“Not much of a break in the case but I’ll take it,” TJ said and grinned.

“We did have another break,” Larry said. “I almost woke you, but I thought you probably needed the sleep.”

“What was it?”

Larry smiled, shaking his head. “That partner of yours, she’s a lucky one. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.”

TJ could do without the suspenseful buildup, but he opted to just play along and let Larry have his fun.

“Those hairs she collected… they were a match to the blood we found on the backpack zipper,” he said.

“You should’ve woken me up for that,” TJ said already looking around the room for his coat. “We have an arrest to make, or conduct an interview at the very least.”

“Hold your horses,” Larry called after him as he headed to the break room where his coat was hanging off the back of one of the chairs.

Interesting choice of words because TJ felt exactly like a horse who had been reined in too hard.

“The hairs weren’t a match to each other,” Larry said.

How many invisible walls can someone bang their head against before passing out? TJ thought he was about to find out.

“So, what? We get samples from everyone Evan Ellington was in contact with?” TJ said. “Somehow.”

He had no idea how.

“It’s not Ryan Connor’s DNA on the backpack,” Larry said. “That’s the good news.”

TJ headed into the break room and started clearing up the mess he made last night. Usually he took a lot more care with reassembling evidence, but in this case he felt like none of what they had really mattered.

Like it was all just smoke and mirrors, like the answers they sought were hiding somewhere they hadn’t even looked yet. This killer had been spoon feeding them evidence for months, showing them only what he wanted them to see.

And once TJ accepted that, he finally felt better about the whole thing. He hated being played for a fool. But turning the tables on a killer doing that? As far as TJ was concerned, that was priceless. And Lynn and he were both very good at doing exactly that.

“You know, calling Lynn lucky could be a bit of an exaggeration,” he said to Larry as he reentered the lab.

“Why?” Larry said. “She always gets her guy, doesn’t she?”

“That she does,” TJ said. “And so do I.”

Not that he was any closer to actually doing it.

But in his head, he felt like he had a better handle on the guy. And that went a long way on any chase. It was time to start playing the game with some new rules. Ones he and Lynn came up with and not the other way around.

34

The drive to Sing-Sing prison seemed to take years. But at least the sky was glaringly sunny for most of the way. Now, as Lynn approached the village of Ossining, where the prison stood, it was as though she drove straight into a cloud. A puffy white one, but still. What she could see of the quaint little village, with its well-tended houses, lawns and streets convinced her, as it always did when she visited before, that a maximum-security prison had no business being near a beautiful place like this. And as she reached the drab grey walls of the building itself, she was sure, as she had been each time before, that her brother did not belong in this place.

Her brother Drew had been high on PCP the night their parents were shot in their home. He was the only one home with them. At first, he could remember none of what happened that night. He himself had also been injured, cut, not shot, but the wound seemed self-inflicted. Which is the reason the authorities had first begun to suspect him. That and his fingerprints on the gun used to shoot both their parents.

At first, he claimed he was innocent. But days of questioning and memories returning, he finally confessed. Lynn was never, not then, not later, convinced that his confession—which he later tried to recant—was genuine. But did he simply not remember murdering his parents? Or was he truly innocent?

Those questions still haunted her. Especially as she was led to one of the interrogation rooms of the prison. It was a large room with narrow windows near the ceiling which let in light but offered no view. The aluminum-topped table that dominated the room was cool to the touch, as was the dark blue plastic chair she sat in while waiting for her brother to be brought in. The wait seemed to take ages too.

But finally, the door opened and a guard entered, followed by her brother in an orange prison uniform, the procession completed by yet another guard.

Drew was shackled hand and foot with a thick chain running between the two, forcing him to walk like a penguin. Not an easy sight for her.

He’d always been a big guy, a line-backer on their high school football team, but he seemed to have bulked up even more recently. His neck was about as wide as his head now, covered with tattoos of which she could only make out the eagle wings. The Eagle of Freedom, she supposed. His sky-blue eyes—their mother’s eyes—pierced her while he waited silently for the guards to do their thing. Which included chaining him to the metal bar protruding from the table.

“That’s not necessary,” Lynn told them in her best FBI Special Agent voice. It was nowhere near as commanding as it once was, but rather brittle and hollow.

“It’s protocol,” the guard grumbled and continued chaining him up. Lynn didn’t think fighting it would lead to success, so she didn’t.

“Long time no see, sister,” Drew said once the guards finally left the room.

Lynn took a seat next to him, the emphasis he put on the word sister stinging her heart.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s been a hectic few years.”

“I bet,” he said and grinned. “You’re famous now. And the guys you put in here weren’t too happy to find out you’re my sister. I got a few scars to prove just how unhappy they were.”

“I’m sorry,” she said for the second time, not sure how to follow it up with anything more meaningful. She was afraid he was about to insist she see those scars, but he just grinned wider.

“Don’t worry about it, sis,” he said. “It’s all part of being locked up in here. And it’s good to see a friendly face.”

“It’s good to see you too, Drew,” she said. “I should visit you more often.”

He glanced around the room, finally taking his piercing eyes off her. He was only forty-one years old, but already grey was mixed in with the blond on his temples. Silver and gold.

“At least you went all out for this visit,” he said. “A private room and all. Much better than those glass walled visiting rooms downstairs. Makes me feel a little less like a caged animal, at least.”

Lynn swallowed hard, but her voice still shook. “What have you been up to? Are you still painting?”

Her brother was always into art for as long as she could remember, and he’d developed it into more than just a hobby while in here. The gifts she sent him for his birthday and Christmas were mostly art supplies.

“I’m in my black and white period now,” he said. “Mostly because you forgot to send me colors this year.”

“I’m—"

“Don’t say it again,” he snapped. “I get it. You’re very sorry.”

She nodded.

“Tell me why you’re here now instead,” he said in a serious voice, the grin gone from his face.

“I’m back in Green Haven,” she said, which made his eyes go wide. “I’m investigating Alicia Simpson’s murder and trying to finally bring her killer to justice.”

He narrowed his eyes. “And how do I come in?”

She swallowed hard again, then called herself a nervous fool in her mind, and cleared her throat. “I’ve been looking into why Dad was so fixated on pinning the crime on Ryan, and Bobby Hill said Dad had secrets that I knew nothing about. But that you did.”

Drew grinned again. “Good old Bobby. He’s done well for himself. I hear he’s as good as Sheriff back home these days. He’s also the only person from the before times who still visits me semi-regularly. In fact, he was just here a week or so ago.”

“So, you already knew I was back home looking into Alicia’s murder?” Lynn asked, much too indignantly. She understood that he was mad at her for not visiting more often, he had a right to be, but she was sick of this little game he seemed to be playing with her.

He shook his head. “He didn’t mention you. Maybe it was more than a week ago. I lose track of time in here.”

Lynn believed him, her chest stinging again at the thought of her brother lost in time while locked up in this prison, which was one of the most inhospitable places she’d ever seen.

“As for Dad’s secrets… I doubt I know anything you don’t know…”

“Bobby said you told him about them, but didn’t say what they were,” Lynn said. “Just that I should ask you.”

“I must’ve overplayed it to Bobby if I ever told him anything like that,” Drew said. “I was mad at Dad a lot back then.”

The silence that followed was thick enough to make it hard to breathe. Lynn was sure they both felt it. And tried very hard to ignore it.

“I think I told him this when I was fixated on how little anyone knew about where he came from before moving to Green Haven and marrying Mom,” Drew said. “You know how he never talked about his family, how we didn’t even know our grandparents on his side… I spun it into some story of how he was running from the law and became a lawman himself out of guilt.”

“But you had no proof?”

He shook his head. “Like I said, I was dumb and wayward, and he was always on me over something or other, always riding me to get my shit together and make something of myself. I much preferred to get high and work on my art. I was pissed off because he wouldn’t let me move to New York City to become an artist.”

“Let you? You were of age,” Lynn said.

“And there you go sounding just like him,” Drew said and chuckled, making Lynn’s cheeks heat up.

“I was very comfortable living in Hotel Mom and very reluctant to disappoint him any more than I already had,” Drew said and leaned back, making his shackles chime and rattle. “But I was all set to leave when you left for college.”

“You never mentioned that before,” Lynn said.

“What would’ve been the point? I was never gonna be free to do anything ever again. I did tell my lawyer, but he didn’t think it was relevant.”

Lynn always avoided talking about what happened to their parents with him, but she was close to asking him about that night now. She wouldn’t though. Nothing good would come of it. He’d get upset and she’d leave here with those questions surrounding his guilt, or his innocence, banging even louder in her mind.

“So Dad didn’t have some sinister alter ego that you know of?” she asked instead.

“Only the crap I came up with,” he said and chuckled. “Sorry.”

“I’m actually glad.”

“There was that secret door in the basement, though,” he said. “You know, the one behind the shelves that he kept locked at all times.”

She shook her head. “That was just a panic room, wasn’t it? Or like a storm shelter. That’s what Mom told me.”

He shrugged. “I had a theory that he had all his deep dark secrets locked up in there. I even tried to break in once, but couldn’t.”

“You really took your theory far.” She never had the feeling that her father was hiding anything. He was the most honest, righteous, and truthful man she’d ever met.

“I did.”

“And whatever was in there is probably long gone,” she said. “The new owners must’ve cleared it out by now. I never even thought of checking it when I was emptying the house.”

He leaned back, looking over her shoulder. “That must’ve been very hard for you, packing everything up.”

It was so traumatizing she hardly had any clear memories of doing it. Handling and storing all her family’s belongings after they were all gone was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. But she wasn’t about to burden him with that, so she just shrugged.

“How close are you to finally washing your boyfriend of guilt in Alicia’s death?”

Lynn felt her cheeks heat yet again.

“Yes, I read in the paper that you two were making a go at it again,” Drew said and chuckled again.

“Not as close as I’d like to be,” she said. “But getting there. He didn’t kill her, I know that much.”

She almost told him about the other women murdered by the same killer over the last two decades. Drew and she had always been close growing up, they didn’t have many secrets and sitting here talking to him felt like those days, despite being inside a prison, despite him wearing orange and being shackled to the table. But she couldn’t tell him her secrets anymore. And that was just a stone-cold fact.

“I’m glad you and Ryan got a second chance,” he said in a faraway sounding voice. “You seemed to love him very much.”

“I did?” Lynn said. But it wasn’t actually a question. She did.

Drew laughed. “Yeah, you did. Enough to stand up to Dad for the first time in your life, anyway.”

“He didn’t like me dating Ryan.”

Drew shook his head. “Not at all. He would’ve much preferred you dating someone sensible like Bobby, but you never liked him much.”

“I liked him well enough,” she said.

“He had a huge crush on you when we were like fifteen or something,” Drew said. “It was annoying.”

“I never knew that.”

“Because I told him to keep his hands off my sister,” Drew said and laughed again.

He sounded so young and carefree when he laughed. Like before. Another thing that made Lynn’s heart constrict in her chest painfully. Because it would never again be like before for them.

“Good,” she said. “Because you’re right, I didn’t like him very much. He was always so quiet and proper. Boring, in other words.”

“Easy to get along with,” Drew offered. “Dependable.”

“He is that,” she said. “He’s been a huge help to me in this investigation.”

There was no hint of a smile left on Drew’s face as he pierced her once again with his eyes. “Then after you’re done with this investigation, maybe you could find out who really killed Mom and Dad.”

The breath she was taking lodged in her throat like a rock.

“I will,” she finally managed to say, but too much silence had already passed.

“Sure you will,” he said.

He didn’t go as far as accusing her of thinking he was guilty, but she heard it loud and clear in the silence that followed.

“I didn’t kill them,” he said quietly. “I know that now.”

“And I believe you,” she said, hoping he believed her.

After yet another long silence they moved on to talking about other things. Not easier. Just differently painful. Like their older sister Kate and her two kids neither of them ever got to see. And Lynn’s loss of the job she loved. And of Drew’s days in prison, which were so alike he felt like he was living in some long, protracted nightmare, as he put it.

And as Lynn drove back to Green Haven, the thick white clouds following her and turning greyer and greyer, she felt more drained than she had in a good long while.

She should look into her parents’ case too. She knew she should. But the mere thought of that made her want to go to her NYC apartment, curl up under the blankets and never even think of Green Haven again. Let alone go back there.

35

Most of the drive back to Green Haven was a blur to Lynn. All she remembered was the section of the highway while TJ explained in an excited voice that he thought the photos she found in Arthur’s office—the ones implicating Ryan—were most likely planted by the killer. He was sure that at the very least, it would give them an idea of the killer's physical characteristics.

TJ was very excited at the prospect of the killer being so close to them that all they had to do was find a way to turn the tables on him. To play his game and bring it to their level. But all Lynn heard was that her every move was being watched very closely and it made her feel freezing cold down to the bones. No amount of turning on the heat in the SUV was ever going to chase that feeling away.

The hairs she lifted off Evan’s coat being a match to the blood on the backpack zipper gave her more hope. She’d have to find a way to get a real sample from Evan to either rule him out or in. If she couldn’t do that then it meant virtually nothing.

Her first stop in Green Haven was Beautiful Morn Cafe. She hadn’t eaten all day and figured a little sugar in her system was a quick way to fix that. Sugar and caffeine.

“Hey, stranger,” a perky voice called out behind her just as she was taking a huge bite of an enormous blueberry and fudge muffin into her mouth.

The look on the blonde woman’s face was equal parts condescending and gleeful while Lynn chewed as fast as she could.

“It’s Melanie, in case you don’t recognize me,” she said. “But I’d know you anywhere. You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Of course I recognize you,” Lynn said, hoping the blueberries weren’t all stuck in her teeth. “You haven’t changed either.”

For the most part, that was the truth. There were a couple more wrinkles on Melanie’s face, but not as many as there should’ve been after all these years.

“I think it’s great what you’re doing,” Melanie said. “Finding Alicia’s killer, I mean. It’s a travesty the crime hasn’t been solved in all these years.”

Heads were turning in their direction. The place wasn’t packed, but about a third of the tables were occupied and Melanie’s voice carried very well. Lynn didn’t recognize anyone when she had walked in but the way they all hushed up and were looking at them now, she supposed they had recognized her.

This was the first time since she got here that she’d actually immersed herself in town life, and all she wanted to do was run right back out into the cold.

“It was time,” she said and took a sip of her coffee, trying to rinse her teeth with it in an unnoticeable way.

“Are you getting anywhere?” a guy with silver grey hair and a matching goatee asked.

Lynn had no idea who he was.

“It’s a process,” she said evasively.

“I heard Alicia wasn’t the only victim,” the guy said. “There were many more over the years. How come we weren’t informed of that?”

Lynn looked around the room. Pretty much everyone seemed to be waiting with bated breath for her answer.

“If you have any information or anything that could help in this investigation, please come forward,” she said dodging the question.

The guy rolled her eyes at her. “I think we have the right to know.”

Lynn reached into her pocket for a pen and scribbled her phone number on a napkin. “This is my number. I’ll leave it here. Call if you have anything to tell me.”

She was a pro at getting people to talk. She’d been doing it for most of her life. But right now, here in her hometown, she just wanted everyone to go back to what they’d been doing and leave her alone.

The knowledge that the killer could be sitting in this very room, watching her, pretending to be just one of the townsfolk, was banging real loud in her head. And instead of seeing it as an opportunity, she only felt dread.

“I have something to say,” the guy wouldn’t let up. “I think you and the Sheriff’s Office should make a public statement alerting us about the danger.”

“Oh, stop it, Everett,” Melanie snapped. “We’re all perfectly aware that there could be a dangerous killer lurking in this town. We’ve been aware of it for twenty years.”

Everett. Everett Green. Lynn recognized him now. He and her sister Kate dated for a short time.

“Not if you believe it was Ryan Connor all along,” Everett said. “But we are in danger now that he’s back.”

A few of the others muttered in agreement. Too many for Lynn’s liking. The rest just stared at her expectantly and kind of blankly. She started counting in her head, imagining the numbers, seeing them clearly. The calming exercise rarely failed her, but it was doing nothing now. Still, calm, or not, she needed to pull herself together. She wasn’t the scared, sad, and confused eighteen-year-old girl who left this place twenty years ago anymore.

“We’re closing in on the killer,” she announced. “We’ll all have the answers soon enough. Long overdue answers.”

She hoped the killer was indeed in the room, and she studied everyone’s reaction to her words as closely as she could, but saw nothing that gave her hope she was right. Still, she hoped her bold statement—largely untrue though it was—would reach the killer even if he wasn’t in here.

She turned to Melanie. “Is your daughter working reception at Serene Getaways today? I wanted to talk to her about what she saw the night my cabin was broken into.”

Melanie looked at her blankly. “I don’t think she knows anything about that. She didn’t mention it to me.”

“She called the Sheriff’s Office to report it,” Lynn insisted, but Melanie just looked more and more confused.

“Could be. She hasn’t been very talkative with me lately. We had a huge fight about the boy she’s been dating,” Melanie said apologetically, sadness creeping into her blue eyes. “Teenagers, if you know what I mean.”

Lynn didn’t know first-hand and never would, because she’d never have children. A bullet she took in the stomach early in her career took that chance away forever.

“But to answer your question, yes, she works at the rental place every weekday afternoon until closing,” Melanie added. “That’s nine PM.”

Bobby had said the call came in at eleven, so Lynn figured that maybe the daughter kept it from her mom because she was supposed to already be home then.

“I’ll go speak to her now,” Lynn said to Melanie. “But we should catch up later.”

The rest of the people in the room were still listening closely. Lynn grabbed the rest of her muffin and her coffee, told them again to call anytime, then left the cafe.

Outside, the cold, icy air hitting her face felt like the most welcome summer breeze. She needed to pull herself together and fast. But at least she managed to plant that little nugget about being close to catching the killer. She was sure it would spread like wildfire through town quickly.

Being as tightly wound and perfectionistic as she believed him to be, the killer wouldn’t be able to stand for that. Which meant he’d be coming out into the open to prove her wrong. And be caught.

Then Lynn could go back to putting the pieces of her life back together with one less thing on her conscience and a new win in her pocket.

* * *

All the lights in the reception room were on, but Frances, Melanie’s daughter was not in there. Lynn called her name a few times, and waited inside for about fifteen minutes, finishing her cup of coffee, which had gone icy cold.

Then she headed to her cabin, figuring the young woman was probably sneaking around with her forbidden boyfriend. She planned on showering, changing her clothes and then going back to speak to Frances. But after ten minutes of sitting in the cold cabin, the woods where her best friend was murdered on one side and a bunch of deserted cabins on the others, she knew her stay there was at an end.

Without thinking much further than deciding to get the hell out of there, she packed up what little of her stuff she had unpacked, loaded the suitcases in the trunk of her car and went back to reception. Frances still wasn’t back, so Lynn just left her key, a note that she was checking out and her phone number then drove away.

She had vague plans of driving all the way back to the Factory to check out all the evidence TJ was talking about first-hand, but ended up on Ryan’s doorstep instead. Fact was, after the last two nights she spent with him, she couldn’t face being by herself. Not in a cold cabin. Not buried to her ears in work. It wasn’t a fact she could fully admit to herself. But she felt it. However ridiculous the whole thing was.

She was just chasing something that could’ve been. Something she wanted very much a long time ago. Chasing a memory. But that didn’t alter the fact that she felt happy for the first time all day when he opened the door for her.

“You just can’t stay away, can you?” he asked, grinning at her.

“Do you want me to?”

He smiled wider. “Absolutely not.”

And just like that, she was warm again after a whole day of shivering and content like she didn’t think she ever would be again. And for now, it was more than enough. The dead could wait tonight.

36

Lynn hadn’t planned on sleeping late. But the day was fully formed when she was woken by a phone call from the Albany lab informing her that they managed to isolate a tiny speck of male DNA off the dress Alicia was found in. She wasted no time organizing the results to be transferred to Larry at The Factory. Ryan wasn’t in bed anymore. He and the dogs and donkey were all gone from the house when she descended to the kitchen, dressed and ready to get to work, the lethargy and reluctance to do it that plagued her last night gone.

He came in with the animals just as she was taking the first sip of the warm fresh coffee. She wanted to tell him that finding Alicia’s killer was now just a matter of matching the DNA they had to a suspect—which was very likely Evan—but was that taking him too far into her confidence? Everything screamed to just tell him in her head.

“You look all ready to get to work,” he observed as he closed the kitchen door behind him.

“I am.”

He was getting kibble for the animals, but set the bag down and wrapped his arms around her waist as she walked up to him.

“Can I interest you in some breakfast first?”

“I’d love that,” she said. “But I was thinking of asking Evan out to breakfast.”

His eyes narrowed, growing very dark.

She grinned. “Just because I need a sample of his DNA to compare against what was found on that backpack full of photos left in your barn.”

To hell with caution and watching how much she told him. They were in this together. Always had been.

His eyes brightened but not by much.

“Isn’t his DNA already on record around here?” he asked. “With all the shit he was accused of over the years, there’s gotta be something lying around.”

“You know you might be onto something,” she said after a pause while she considered it.

He grinned. “You mean I’m not as stupid as I look?”

“You said it, not me.”

That made him grin even wider. Then he was forced to let her go, because the hungry donkey bumped into them so hard he forced them apart.

She watched him feeding the animals, her mind churning. If Evan’s DNA was somewhere in the system, Larry would have access to it via CODIS. Wouldn’t he? Unless the local database wasn’t properly hooked up to the nationwide one. It wouldn’t be the first time a small town was slow in entering their databases into the national system, especially the stuff from old, forgotten cases.

She drank the rest of her coffee in a few long gulps.

“Sorry about breakfast, but I’ll be back for dinner.”

“Promise?” he asked.

“I promise.”

Then she rushed out, afraid that any more delay would make her stay right here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

But maybe they already had all they needed to corner this killer and just didn’t know it yet. And the sooner she found out, the sooner she could stay for all those meals and then some.

* * *

The black-haired receptionist wasn’t behind her desk at the Sheriff’s Office and the rest of the building seemed deserted too. There was no clacking of keyboards, no talking she could hear and even the smell of morning coffee hanging in the air was faint.

“Hello,” she called out, and had to move deeper into the building and repeat herself a few times before Bobby finally stuck his head out of one of the offices. He was fully dressed, the fur collar of his uniform jacket rolled inwards.

“I’m just on my way out,” he said, his cheeks flustered. “What do you need?”

“A chat about the records you keep and how much of it is entered into the national databases,” she said. “But it can wait if you’re in a hurry.”

“I am,” he said and brushed past her. “Marnie Willows was in charge of all the digitizing of our archives. She’s retired now.”

As well she should be. She was the office secretary back when Lynn’s father ran things around here and she seemed ancient then. She would certainly not be Lynn’s first choice of who to put in charge of anything related to computers.

“She still live over by the old ranch?” she asked. He nodded as she walked through the main door, which he was holding open for her.

“What’s the emergency?”

“Melanie’s kid hasn’t come home last night,” he said. “And there’s trouble at the Maguire farm again. We’re stretched pretty thin, otherwise I’d go with you to Marnie’s.”

“Who’s missing? The girl who works reception at Serene Getaways?”

“Yeah.”

The wind seemed to turn icier and more unescapable.

“I was looking for her yesterday afternoon,” Lynn said. “It seemed odd that she wasn’t there.”

Bobby shrugged. “She’s done it before… taken off without telling anyone, I mean. But I gotta look into it. Melanie’s a friend, you know how it goes…”

“Of course, go,” Lynn said.

She watched him climb into his SUV and drive off, her mind working at warp speed. What if the killer took Frances? What if she got a good look at him the night he broke into Lynn’s cabin? What if he thought she had? Why wasn’t she questioned properly?

There was nothing she could do about it now, however much she wished she could turn back time and looked harder for Frances last night. But that stupid, futile wish was nothing new.

Breakfast with Evan it would have to be after all. But she called TJ first, asking him to organize a forensics team to go over her cabin and the reception area at the cabin rental place.

“They’re not going to be happy about it,” he said. “You know how hotels are. Full of DNA that takes ages to sort through.”

“I feel like we’re getting nowhere too,” she said. “But what else do we have?”

“Another missing girl, it seems,” he said. “Even with all our heavy hitting presence he might’ve struck again.”

“I hope not,” Lynn said quietly. “It’d be out of character for him.”

She let him go with that and tried Evan’s cell. But he not only didn’t pick up, but made it a point to end the call on the first ring both times she tried him. Getting him to meet with her was a long shot anyway. Just like everything else so far in this investigation was.

* * *

Lynn figured she was chasing another dead end, but she still drove out to the old Willows ranch, which was already defunct back when Lynn was still a teenager. Now it looked downright decrepit, the fields covered with sparse, knee-high grey grass. It no longer lived, but nor would it ever fall down, she supposed. The farm buildings would all eventually fall down though. Several of them had already collapsed into themselves. Except the two-story farmhouse with a wraparound porch. It was the same color as the grass, but looked in good repair. Smoke rose from the chimney, but it didn’t quite mask the scent of snow riding the air out here where the trees weren’t so densely packed together.

“Well, hello, Ms. Rivers,” Marnie said as she held open the front door for her. “I didn’t expect a visit from you.”

“Why ever not?” Lynn said and smiled wide. But she had nothing to follow up the cheery question.

Marnie waited a few moments, then said. “Come in. I just brewed a whole pot of coffee.”

Lynn had never been inside the Willows farmhouse. The rooms were dim, the only light coming from the spacious kitchen, which also smelled of coffee, cigarette smoke and something sweet.

“What brings you here?” Marnie asked, while she poured a cup of coffee for Lynn. She also placed a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the table in front of her, along with milk and sugar.

“Bobby Hill said you were in charge of digitizing old files and entering them into CODIS and other databases,” Lynn said after she couldn’t fight tasting a cookie. She managed not to stuff the whole palm-sized thing into her mouth, but barely.

“I was,” Marnie said proudly and lit a cigarette.

Luckily the cookie just sort of melted in Lynn’s mouth. She washed it down with some coffee.

“Was everything entered?” Lynn asked.

Marnie shook her head. “I did as much as I could. But there were never enough hours in the day. And then my carpal tunnel forced me to retire.”

She stuck the cigarette in her mouth and rolled both her wrists at Lynn, wincing as they cracked. “It’s gotten better, but I still can’t type worth a damn. Not for more than a half an hour at a time. And forget about working with a computer mouse.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Lynn said. Up close, Marnie didn’t look as old as she had guessed she must be. Maybe early seventies.

“It’s fine,” Marnie said and took a long drag of her cigarette. “I garden now, and volunteer through the church. A much better use of my time. All that death and nastiness working at the Sheriff’s Office… it gets to you. But I don’t have to tell you that. I’ve read that you made quite a career after you left here. Your father would’ve been proud.”

Lynn nodded and made an agreeing sound before stuffing another cookie into her mouth. She didn’t come here to talk about her father, or how proud he’d be. She couldn’t handle that. Especially not after just visiting her brother yesterday.

“Too bad you were ousted from the FBI the way you were,” she said. “Just because they assumed you were sheltering that Connor boy… total hogwash. If you’re anything like your father, you’re all about justice through and through. At all costs.”

Lynn could handle talking about this even less than about her father. Marnie must’ve gotten all this information from the articles written by the same reporter that ended her undercover career by revealing her identity. They were a setup, the information fed to him by TJ, but they painted a very vivid picture of a star Special Agent veering off the path of righteousness due to personal attachments.

“I was dealt a bad hand, that’s true,” she said. “But at least it freed me up to find who killed Alicia.”

“And about time… after all these years.” Marnie extinguished her cigarette with force, sending sparks flying and landing on the white table cloth. She brushed them away. Judging by the many black streaks of ash there already it was a regular occurrence.

“I suppose you worked at entering the info from most recent to oldest, right?” Lynn asked.

Marnie nodded. “It made the most sense. We didn’t even have DNA evidence for a lot of the older cases.”

“Do you know if Evan Ellington’s DNA was ever on file?” Lynn asked, deciding to just get to the point.

Marnie gave her a sharp look that made her grey eyes look like chips of stone. “CODIS is for known offenders only. Evan Ellington was never convicted of any crime.”

Lynn did expect this kind of reaction. When it came to the Ellingtons, the people of Green Haven closed ranks. It was too dangerous to do anything other than stay on the top family’s good side. That’s why coming here was a long shot, at best.

“But was his DNA ever on file?” Lynn persisted. “He was implicated in a couple of assaults.”

“It might’ve been, but I’m sure I don’t remember,” Marnie said, leaning back and crossing her arms tightly across her chest. “And I’m also sure I didn’t put anything about him in the system.”

She sounded like she was chewing on those stones that her eyes resembled. Lynn figured the conversation was over.

She finished her coffee, resisted the urge to eat another delicious cookie and prepared to take her leave.

“Your father had some suspicions about Evan in Alicia’s murder,” Marnie suddenly said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “He kept a close lid on them though. You can imagine why he had to do that, right?”

“Because the Ellingtons would make sure he lost his job otherwise.”

Marnie nodded. “But you didn’t hear it from me.”

“Of course not. Do you know where he kept those files?”

“Not at the office,” Marnie said. “So probably at home.”

Lynn found nothing of the sort while she was packing up. Except… what if they were behind the basement door her brother mentioned?

“But I don’t think he had any files, per se,” Marnie added. “I think it was all in those notebooks of his.”

Lynn thanked Marnie and left, feeling more hopeful than she had in days. First she’d try to get access to any old files on Evan at the Sheriff’s Office as soon as Bobby returned from speaking to Melanie.

And then she’d try and find her father’s missing journal. But first she had to find out who owned her childhood home and get inside it. And hope the basement door she hardly remembered hid the answers she was seeking.

37

Ryan was just deciding whether he should make an appearance at his father’s shop today despite the fact that he was once again wrongly considered a prime suspect in a murder. In a bunch of murders, not just one, this time. Or whether he should sit tight at his parents' house and pretend none of that mattered. Back in the day, the second option would’ve been a no-brainer. Staying as far away from the whisperings and staring of the townsfolk was always his preferred course of action.

But things were different now. Lynn was in the picture, and disappearing for another twenty years was not. Besides, he was sick of being considered guilty of something he’d never do.

He’d just about made up his mind to go into town, when the roaring of Harleys entering the yard sent both dogs barking like mad and the donkey braying.

Lady hushed up with just a look from him, but the other two couldn’t be silenced so fast. The donkey was still braying as he opened the door.

Torch, the Demon’s Way MC president was approaching the house, followed by both his cousins. Billy looked mildly happy to be there, but Mickey lagged behind and kept his eyes on the ground, a murderous look in them as he grumbled something under his breath. Given that his visit to their clubhouse propelled him back to the top of the suspects list in at least Tonya Rancor’s murder, he was with Mickey on this one.

“What brings you here?” he asked Torch who reached him first. He made no move to open the door any wider.

“Your cousins would like to offer you assistance in your current troubles,” Torch announced, grinning at him.

Said cousins didn’t look half as excited about the prospect of doing that as Torch did.

“What kind of assistance?” Ryan asked.

“Let us in and we’ll tell you,” Mickey snapped. His voice was hoarse and sounded like it pained him to speak. Too much booze and smoking, Ryan assumed.

He opened the door and Mickey was the first through it, followed closely by Billy. Their entrance sent the dogs barking again, but Ryan ignored it.

“Why did you come here?” he asked Torch once the other two were in the kitchen.

“They know things about that girl you’re accused of killing,” Torch said. “Things that could set you free. I convinced them to come here and tell their story.”

Ryan wanted to give the guy a huge bear hug, but the dread of being stuck owing his motorcycle club anything was paralyzing.

“Why would you do that?” he asked.

Torch gave him an incredulous sort of look. “I owe you.”

“For what?”

“For saving my dog back in the day,” Torch said and now Ryan really didn’t know what to say.

“You don’t remember do you?” Torch said. “My asshole father ran a dog fighting racket and he put my dog in the pit one night to teach me a lesson. You said your mom could fix him and she did. You even brought us here.”

Ryan only had a very vague recollection of finding Torch by the side of the road with a badly bleeding dog in his lap. And that the boy was the son of Demon’s Way MC president that his cousins were sucking up to. They were against helping the dog. Ryan did it anyway. He hoped that was the only reason Torch was here today. Maybe it was.

“There was never any need to return that favor,” Ryan said. “The dog was suffering.”

He couldn’t not help a suffering animal. That’s not how his mother raised him.

“Can we get this show on the road?” Mickey roared from the kitchen. “And do you have any booze in this place?”

“No booze,” Ryan told him as he entered the kitchen.

“You see? He doesn’t want us here,” Mickey complained to Torch. “We should just leave.”

He made for the door, but Torch stopped him with a raised hand.

“We came here so you can tell your cousin the truth,” Torch said and followed Ryan into the kitchen.

“Fine,” Mickey grumbled. “Evan made Gerry tell the Sheriff that you were acting crazy that night, talking about killing someone. Killing a girl. It was a lie.”

“I already know that,” Ryan said. “Gerry came clean.”

“But what he didn’t tell you is that after you chased us away from grandpa’s cabin we went back to Eddie’s. And Alicia was there,” Billy said.

Eddie’s being the bar where Alicia was last seen alive.

“All right,” Ryan said. The kitchen was cramped with all of them just standing around and the donkey still braying in the background didn’t make it an any less tense scene.

“Evan wanted to have her in place of Lynn,” Mickey said.

“We didn’t think it was a good idea. We told him to stay away from Lynn too. No good could come of messing with the Sheriff’s daughter and her best friend,” Billy added. “But he was a real persuasive guy. And he never took no for an answer.”

“And it’s not like the bitch wasn’t perfectly willing,” Mickey spat out.

Ryan’s legs suddenly didn’t feel as sturdy as they always had. He had to sit down. Were his cousins about to confess to Alicia’s murder? After all these years?

“Then what happened?” he asked.

“We were gonna take her somewhere more private,” Billy said. “A motel or something.”

Billy kept pausing and looking at Mickey. It made Ryan want to shake the guy so he’d keep talking.

“And did you?” he asked instead.

“No,” Mickey grumbled and left it at that.

“She saw someone she knew, went to talk to him, and the guy packed her up into his pickup and drove off before we even knew what was happening,” Billy explained.

Deflated didn’t come close to describing how Ryan felt at hearing this. He was so sure he was about to be cleared and Alicia’s murder solved he didn’t know what to say next.

“But you see, this was hours after our little spat at the cabin,” Billy said. “And we’re willing to tell the cops if you want.”

“Not exactly willing,” Mickey complained.

“But they’ll do it,” Torch announced.

“What kind of pickup?” Ryan asked.

“A Ford 150, I think,” Billy said, shrugging. “Light blue but all banged up and rusted.”

“And you didn’t see the guy who took her?”

“No, it was dark,” Billy said, looking at Ryan pointedly. “I thought you’d be happy we told you all this. It was her killer we saw. Had to be.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t actually see him,” Ryan said.

“See? What did I tell you? He’s always been an ungrateful little bitch,” Mickey snapped. “This was a wasted trip.”

Ryan wanted to punch him, but he remained seated.

“No, it’s good that you came,” he said. “And, yeah, you should tell the cops too.”

The cousins grumbled.

“They’ll do it,” Torch said with finality.

“And Lynn,” Ryan added.

“Is she here? Where you hiding her?” Mickey asked, and the look he gave him was dirty, lewd and all sorts of wrong. It made Ryan want to punch him even more. But he counted to five in his head and somehow managed to let it go.

The story they told wasn’t particularly eye-opening, but it’d be enough to clear him. For Alicia’s murder, at least.

“They’ll tell whoever needs to hear it,” Torch said.

Ryan reached for his phone and dialed Lynn’s number. She’d know how to take it from here.

“Better late than never, I guess,” he said, looking at each of his cousins in turn.

For once neither of them had a snappy comeback for which he was glad. Because he didn’t know if he was strong enough to rein his temper in if they had.

38

Ryan and Lynn sat in a window seat of the diner across the street from the Harrington police station. The cream in Lynn’s coffee had long since developed a sticky film on top. Her fries were cold too.

“It’s good news that your cousins are willing to talk,” she said, not for the first time.

“Yeah, if nothing else, you’re not the only one giving me an alibi for the night of Alicia’s murder anymore,” he said. “I suppose Gerry will now tell the same story if questioned.”

Lynn nodded. “You might not want to hear it, but I think your cousins were all sorry for how they played you that night.”

He rolled his eyes and finished his cup of coffee. “And I suppose the next thing you’re gonna say is that Evan was sorry too.”

She looked past him at the police station building. Its grey walls and basic rectangular shape looked even more depressing than normal in the gathering greyness of twilight. She much preferred the Sheriff’s office in Green Haven. It was primarily made of brown brick that shone almost orange in the right light and definitely looked a lot cheerier in most lighting conditions.

“Oh, man,” Ryan said in an exasperated voice. “You were gonna say that.”

His reaction startled Lynn back into the present moment. That and the fact that he could still sometimes read her better than she could herself. She only ever had that kind of relationship with TJ, and that was always work-related knowledge. Not that either of them had a life outside of work, but still.

“Maybe,” she said. “If your cousins all say they were with Evan when Alicia got into the pickup, then maybe he’s not our guy. And he has worked very hard to get you freed.”

“Could just be manipulation,” Ryan said. “You know, he’s trying to make it seem like he’s helping me while he’s secretly making me look more and more guilty.”

He didn’t sound very sure of that, or like he believed it fully.

“It keeps coming back to this truck, doesn’t it?” Lynn said.

“I just wish it was easier to trace.”

“Our people are still trying to narrow down the list into something manageable,” Lynn said.

“Maybe that’s not what we need,” Ryan said. “Maybe we just need to go door to door with this. Could be someone even saw who took Alicia that night.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to see if he was serious or not.

He grinned. “That’s not how it’s done?”

She shook her head. “Finding witnesses right after the fact is hard. Twenty years on, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“Still, I’d at least talk to Eddie,” he said. “He was famous for always knowing exactly what was going on in and around his bar. It was why nothing worse than a few fist fights ever happened there.”

“Do you think he’s still alive?” Lynn asked.

“I think so,” Ryan said. “He’s my mom’s age… I think we might even be related in some way.”

“Why didn’t I think of doing that?” Lynn asked. She was mostly asking herself.

Trying to retrace Alicia’s last steps should’ve been one of the first things she should’ve done when she got here. Sure, it was a long shot but still. She had so very many preconceived notions about this case. Maybe she should’ve just let TJ take the lead…

“Don’t worry about it,” Ryan said. “That whole scene… that was always more my side of our town. You were never exposed to it much.”

“You mean the poor side of town?” she asked. “How privileged do you think I was?”

“Privileged, I don’t know, but sheltered… hell, yeah.”

She wanted to argue, but she couldn’t because he was right. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, she was kept in a little bubble by her parents growing up.

“Let’s go speak to Eddie now,” she said and stood up. “Where does he live?”

“Up near the Maguires,” he said and stood up too.

“Bobby said there’s some trouble up there today,” she said as she led the way into the freezing cold outside.

“That hasn’t changed then,” Ryan said. “There was always something going on there.”

The police station was still just a drab grey mass and even with all the windows lit up a bright white, it didn’t look inviting. TJ was in there while Ryan’s cousins told their story. She hoped he’d be able to keep Millhouse from spinning the story to suit whatever agenda he was pursuing. He probably would, since he was good at peopling. She usually was too. But she was slowly and surely losing all ability to do that on this case.

* * *

The ride to Eddie’s home was a short one since the Maguire farm was located roughly in between the towns of Harrington and Green Haven, right on the county line. She expected them to pass a bunch of Sheriff’s Office cars on the way, but the road was deserted, just as the farm seemed to be. Even though this farm was well populated by the entire extended Maguire family, and all the lights in the various buildings were on, it still somehow looked even more decrepit than Marnie’s farm had. But the grass here was just as grey and the buildings just as shabby. Even the main farmhouse looked on the verge of collapse.

“It’s at least another mile down this road,” Ryan said.

She hit the gas again, only realizing she’d slowed down while they were passing the farm after he spoke.

They were nearing a house with grey-blue siding and a slanted roof. It was on a slight elevation pushed right up into the trees of the forest that started again here, dense and thick.

“That’s Eddie’s place,” Ryan said and pointed.

Lynn barely saw the entrance to the long dirt road that served as the driveway in time to turn onto it. A single light was on in the house, but they had to knock hard five times before the door opened.

Lynn had seen Eddie maybe twice in her life in total, but she instantly recognized him. His head was shaved to complete hairlessness, and he didn’t look that much older than the last time she’d seen him.

“What do you want?” he barked, emitting a cloud of steam that smelled strongly of booze.

They might’ve recognized him, but he had no idea who they were. Lynn opened her mouth to introduce herself, but Ryan beat her to it. Eddie’s cold, bloodshot, dark brown eyes turned maybe a fraction friendlier.

“And to what do I owe the pleasure of your unexpected visit?” he asked.

Ryan chuckled. “It’s probably a long shot, but we wanted to ask you about the night Alicia Simpson was killed.”

Eddie whistled shrilly. “Now that is a piece of ancient history.”

“Not to me,” Ryan said. “Mind if we come inside? It’s freezing out here.”

He was clearly very good at peopling too, because Eddie grinned and opened the door wider. The house smelled even more strongly of booze than his breath. And like no one had washed anything inside it in years.

He led them to the brightly lit living room where the TV was on mute, a football game playing. He had them sit side by side on the sofa while he took the well-used, tattered lazy boy.

“Oh, damn,” he said. “I forgot to offer you a drink. Some former bar owner I am.”

“That’s fine,” both Lynn and Ryan said at the same time even though Eddie didn’t make any move to rectify his mistake.

He chuckled. “So in sync, the pair of you. It’s kinda cute. Are you dating?”

There was nothing sweet in his voice. Only dark anger that seemed to be growing.

“My cousins said they saw Alicia get into a light blue pickup that night,” Ryan asked, thankfully ignoring Eddie’s question. “Did you happen to see who was driving it?”

Eddie whistled again. It seemed to be his favorite way of showing sarcasm.

“That’s a big ask,” he said. “It was a million years ago.”

Ryan grinned. “But come on, you always knew everything that was going on in and around your place.”

A slight grin transferred to Eddie’s face. Ryan could definitely people, just like TJ.

“I did, didn’t I? It was the only way to keep all you rascals in your place,” he said. “Damn shame I’m not still running that place.”

“Alicia went with the guy without hesitation,” Lynn said. “Which might mean she knew the guy well. So maybe he was a regular? Driving a light blue Ford 150.”

Eddie looked at her incredulously.

“All banged up and rusty,” Ryan added.

“There were a lot of guys in rusty old pickups there,” Eddie said. “I really can’t help you. Just like I couldn’t help your father. Or the others that have come asking over the years.”

Lynn shot forward in her seat. “My father asked you about the pickup?”

Eddie looked up at the ceiling. “He came asking about something… don’t know if it was a truck. This was months after the murder. He did want to know about whether any guys seemed very interested in Alicia. I told him most guys were. She was pretty, young, and wild.”

“Who else came asking?” Ryan said.

“That other cousin of yours, the one that married the Ellington girl,” he said. “He wanted to know how much I remembered of that night and what I saw. And the Ellington brat. He had similar questions. Nothing about a pickup. They just wanted me to keep quiet about seeing them there that night. Something to do with false alibis I figured.”

“But you kept your mouth shut anyway?” Lynn asked. “Did the guy in the pickup come too and ask you the same thing?”

Whatever friendliness Ryan managed to coax out of the guy was once again gone. She was usually so much better at keeping conversations like this light and breezy. Had she finally truly lost her touch? Even Ryan gave her a long sideways glance, probably wondering why the hell she was antagonizing the guy.

“I didn’t see no guy in no pick up,” he said. “I don’t even remember seeing Alicia that night. I told as much to the Sheriff wanna-be what’s his name… Hill or something. He came asking about this very same thing a couple of days ago. Don’t you people compare notes?”

“He was asking about a guy picking Alicia up in a truck?” Lynn asked.

Eddie shook his head. “No, not that. Just if I remember seeing her that night and if he was with her.”

He pointed at Ryan.

“And what’d you tell him?” Ryan asked.

“I told him like it was. That I saw all three of you there earlier that night, but then the two of you left her there.”

He gave Lynn a very pointed look, sharp enough to make her swallow hard against the lump in her throat. They shouldn't have left her there that night. Or any other night.

“But you didn’t tell Lynn’s father that, did you?” Ryan asked. He was looking at Eddie very pointedly too.

“Oh, I told him,” Eddie snapped. “And about all the other times his darling daughter was there getting drunk with the likes of you. Why do you think my bar was shut down before the spring? And he didn’t stop there. He made sure to ruin me financially too, so I didn’t have a hope in hell of ever setting up anywhere else.”

“My father did all that?” Lynn asked. “Come on.”

Eddie leapt forward in his lazy boy and for a second, she thought he would hurl himself at her. Ryan extended his arm between them on instinct, probably thinking the same thing.

“Underage drinking, soliciting, gambling, you name it, he accused me of it,” Eddie yelled, the smell of booze growing thicker. “I barely managed to hold on to this house. And my freedom.”

“And you blame me for all of it?” Lynn asked. “Is anything you told us even true? Why talk to us at all?”

It was like she’d lost all ability to be tactful. But she was so sick of wasting her time. Of getting nowhere.

“I told you what I know,” Eddie snapped. “Because I do care that poor girl was killed. She shouldn’t have been there alone. Her family and friends should’ve taken better care of her. But I’m not a monster. It’s terrible that she was killed and if I can help in finding her killer, I will. In fact, he’s probably sitting in my living room right now.”

Ryan stood up. “I think we should leave now.”

Lynn got up too, Eddie didn’t bother.

“I was just about to suggest the same thing,” he said instead.

Ryan stalked out of the room. But Lynn lingered. “Thanks for talking to me.”

She picked up a pencil from the end table and scribbled her phone number on the edge of a yellowed newspaper.

“This is my number,” she said, handing it to him. “Please call if you remember anything else.”

“I won’t,” Eddie said, but took the number.

Then she joined Ryan in the driveway.

“He’s an asshole,” he said and pointed at the backyard where several cars seemed to be parked. “What do you think the odds are of a pickup being among that garbage?”

All Lynn could see were sedans, but she turned the flashlight of her phone on and shone it to get a better look.

“You thinking I might be the owner of a light blue pickup?” Eddie suddenly said behind her. “I’m not. That’s the beginning and end of a business venture. One of my many failed ones after they took my bar.”

“Flipping old cars?” Ryan asked. “There’s no market for that around here.”

“I learned that the hard way,” Eddie said.

Lynn had gotten a good look at all the cars in the yard while they spoke. None of them were the type of pickup they were looking for. No surprise there. Maybe if she stopped wishing for a break in this case so hard it would come easier. Or maybe it never would.

She was so sick of failing everyone she loved. But there didn’t seem to be an end to it in sight.

39

Lynn and Ryan had just finished another tasty spaghetti Bolognese dinner and were sitting on the back porch, wrapped up in their parkas and sharing a huge, fluffy blanket. The dogs and donkey were frolicking in the yard and she was leaning against Ryan’s chest, his arm around her, the heat of his body keeping her warm too, despite all the layers of clothes between them. Clothes that would have to go soon.

She never knew how much this was missing from her life. Someone to come home to. Someone to share the quiet times with. Probably because she never really had it after she left home. Neither quiet times or someone to come home to.

“Lady’s really enjoying being just a dog, isn’t she?”

The golden retriever was a blur of yellow as she zoomed around the yard, playing with the donkey. She was by far the fastest and most agile animal of the three and she knew it.

“Yeah, she’s becoming just a regular dog lately,” Ryan said. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad. She was trained to be a lot more than that.”

Lynn wrapped her arms tighter around him. “I feel like I’m becoming just a regular woman too.”

He chuckled and she smiled at him.

“We were also both trained to be a lot more than that, but this is great too.”

He wasn’t wrong. She was in the middle of investigating perhaps the most important case of her career, but she couldn’t feel guilty about preferring to be right here, in his arms.

“What’s the next move?” he asked.

Her mind went to the logical next step, the bedroom, but that’s not what he was asking.

“We trace the owner of the pickup, I guess,” she said. “It’ll be a lot of work, but it’s the only solid lead we have.”

She paused, but there was no reason not to tell him everything. “And I’ll try to find my father’s missing journal. He might’ve been onto something before he was killed.”

“How?”

“He kept investigating Alicia’s case,” she said. “I don’t think he thought you were the killer anymore by the end.”

“I meant, how will you find all that?”

She told him about the hidden room in the basement of her home.

“You’re thinking of just breaking in?”

“I have people looking for the owners,” she said. “But if that fails, then yeah, I guess.”

“Gutsy.”

“What’s even more gutsy is I still have to get a sample of Evan’s DNA,” she admitted. “But that will take more cunning.”

“But my cousins said he was with them when they saw Alicia get in that truck.”

“Sure,” she said. “But let’s face it, Evan could’ve paid off your cousins to give him the alibi. And they gave themselves one in the process. It’s one way to get us off their backs.”

“And they’re not exactly the most trustworthy types.”

They did mention the truck. Only she, TJ and Ryan knew about that lead. She hoped that meant something.

Her phone started ringing, breaking up the darkness with its artificial blue light.

“They found the body of that girl,” TJ said. “The receptionist at your cabin rental place.”

She extricated herself from Ryan’s arms and sat up straighter. “What happened to her?”

“She was strangled,” TJ said. “Millhouse and Hill are doubtful that it’s the work of our guy, but I think it is. I have the itching.”

Even before hearing him use their code word for the strongest cases of intuition, Lynn’s heart had started racing. Was history repeating itself? Did the killer decide to stage a show for Lynn? Was she about to lose everyone she loved all over again?

“Where are you?” she asked and he told her.

“I’ll be right there. Tell them not to move the body yet,” she said. “And be careful.”

Her voice shook on the last sentence. TJ was someone she loved too.

But he probably wasn’t in danger. There was no reason to think Lynn’s parents dying were in any way connected to Alicia’s death. That was just her fear talking, because that’s how it went last time.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Ryan asked. He’d clearly heard the whole conversation.

She shook her head. “They’d never let you anywhere near the body. But thanks for offering.”

She stood up and picked up her side of the blanket they shared which had slid to the floor. But then she didn’t know what to do with it.

“It’ll be fine, Lynn,” Ryan said and took it out of her hands. “It’ll all work out.”

He had absolutely no way of knowing that. But she appreciated him saying it anyway.

* * *

The forest floor crunched under Lynn’s boots as she walked, because frost had already set in. She kept the beam of her flashlight pointed at the ground as she approached the well-lit crime scene, which was still obscured by thick and not so thick tree trunks of the leafless trees. Just like it had been on the morning she stumbled across Alicia’s body. The logical part of her mind told her this wasn’t then, but her heart raced anyway and images of that night kept floating to the surface of her mind, covering what she could actually see.

But she was a pro. She’d seen so much death after that first brush with it that she was numb to it. Or so she thought.

TJ somehow knew she was approaching, probably because he had eyes in the back of his head and met her before she even reached the clearing.

“She’s wearing a similar dress to the one that Alicia wore, white with a lace collar and covered in small red dots,” he told her. “But no Mary Janes. No shoes at all, in fact.”

Lynn nodded. “Alicia’s dress was just white.”

“I just wanted you to be prepared.”

“I won’t fall apart, don’t worry about me,” she said and chuckled. But she might’ve been lying.

Bobby joined them. He was breathing hard, his eyes somehow very bright even in the near darkness. Feverish. Lynn supposed he was trying hard to keep it together but failing. He didn’t see a lot of these types of murders in the course of his work. The gruesome, monstrous kind. The kinds that were killing for the pleasure of killing.

“Are you doing all right?” Lynn asked him without thinking.

She fully deserved the angry flash that crossed his eyes. But then he smiled. “Are you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Actually, you’re pale like a ghost.”

“I don’t know if you know, but I stumbled on Alicia’s crime scene back then,” she said. “This is eerily similar to it.”

Bobby glanced at TJ and back at her. “So you both say, but I don’t know…”

“I’d like to see the body,” Lynn said and swallowed hard.

She didn’t wait for either of them to say anything, just walked forward, beyond the last line of trees and into the clearing where a young girl was lying on the frosted grass.

Her hands were folded one on top of the other on her stomach. She looked like she was sleeping. Except for the reddish-blue welt around her neck.

“She’s wearing a sleeping gown,” Bobby said. “My theory is that she was abducted from her bedroom.”

“It’s a dress,” Lynn said quietly and walked closer. When the dead were as young as this victim, she always expected them to open their eyes, laugh at them all for thinking they were dead and skip away. No such thing ever happened.

“And there are no flowers next to the body,” Bobby insisted. “Doesn’t this killer you’re looking for always leave flowers?”

“Maybe he’s changing his MO,” TJ said. It was clear from the tone of his voice that he’d had this discussion before.

Millhouse walked over, but Lynn couldn’t take her eyes off the victim. She even looked like Alicia with her long willowy frame and hair.

“You believe the killer has a strict timeline and only kills once a year, in early fall,” Millhouse said. “This is completely outside that.”

“This is a message,” Lynn muttered. “To me.”

Millhouse cleared his throat and looked at Bobby who gasped.

“That’s a pretty big leap, isn’t it?” Bobby asked. “I mean, was this ever about you at all?”

“It is now that I’m looking for him,” she said.

And it quite possibly always was in some twisted way. But she didn’t add that. Both Millhouse and Bobby were already looking at her like she’d lost her mind.

She turned to TJ. “You called Larry and the team to work the scene?”

He nodded.

“You’re talking about your CSIs?” Millhouse asked. “I don’t think there’ll be any need for that. We can handle it.”

“More eyes are better,” she said and looked at the body one last time before moving back behind the tree line.

TJ followed.

“They’re being difficult, but they’re not completely off base,” he said. “This is out of character for our boy.”

“Which makes him that much more dangerous,” Lynn said. “Stay here and make sure they don’t mess up the evidence collection. Did they find anything at the rental place?”

“They’re still processing everything.”

“Tell them to hurry it up,” she said. “I think she was abducted there yesterday afternoon.”

“Will do. And where will you be?”

She didn’t have a clear answer yet. Maybe at The Factory picking Binna’s brain. Maybe ringing on the doorbell of as many Ford truck owners as she could. Or maybe breaking into her childhood home to see if there was anything behind that hidden door.

“I’m going to break the news to Frances’ mother now. Would you like to come with me?” Bobby said. She didn’t hear him walk up. “She might need a shoulder to cry on.”

Lynn didn’t think she was a very good candidate to be that shoulder. Not much in her undercover work prepared her for working with the victim’s loved ones. She rarely even came in contact with them. But a timeline of Frances’ movements before she was killed could lead them to this killer. And she didn’t entirely trust Bobby to ask the right questions.

“Yeah, I’ll go with you,” she said.

TJ wished her luck and went back to the body. She almost cracked a joke that luck might keep them safe, but it didn’t crack cases. But she was hoping for some of the latter kind of luck like never before and didn’t want to jinx it.

40

Bobby had suggested they simply take his car, but Lynn insisted on following him to Melanie’s house in her own car. She didn’t need to go back to the crime scene later, she didn’t think she could handle that, even though she was hardly able to admit it to herself. Giving Melanie the news of her daughter’s death would be bad enough.

Much too soon, Bobby put on his blinker and turned down a pitch dark, tree-lined road that seemed to go on forever. But eventually it opened onto the circular gravel driveway of a modern house that was all windows and boxes stacked atop each other. Three high-end cars were parked in the driveway and all the lights in the house were on. Lynn glimpsed Melanie’s face in one of the windows, but she was standing outside once they reached the porch.

She was shaking, a woman who Lynn thought was her older sister was holding her tight and a man she didn’t know was standing a few feet to her left. Frances’ father, Lynn assumed.

“What is it?” Melanie asked. “Did you find her?”

“We should go inside,” Bobby said, and Lynn had no idea where he found the composure to keep his voice so level and calm. Frosty even.

“Tell me… just tell me…” Melanie whispered. But her sister led her inside where it was a little warmer than outside, but not much. Or maybe it just seemed like that to Lynn.

“I’m sorry,” Bobby said. “But we found your daughter’s body.”

Melanie let out a wail and dropped to her knees. She was shaking worse than ever.

“How? Why?” Frances’ father asked.

“We found her in the woods about two miles south of here,” Bobby said. “She had been strangled.”

Lynn knew there was no easy way to tell them this, and maybe the detached way in which he was speaking was the best way, but it made it seem like the room grew even colder as he spoke.

“We will do everything we can to find her killer,” Lynn added. “If you could answer some questions about your daughter’s movements yesterday, it would be very helpful.”

“In the woods? Strangled? Like Alicia?” Melanie said in a raspy voice. She held onto her sister as she lifted herself off the floor.

“It seems that way,” Lynn said, glad her voice didn’t crack. She couldn’t quite meet Melanie’s eyes.

“This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t come back!” Melanie shrieked. “It’s because of you… because you came back digging… first Arthur and now my baby… your fault.”

She was shaking violently, her eyes drowning in tears and Lynn didn’t have anything to say. Because Melanie was probably right.

Bobby stood between them. “You’re upset, we understand that, Melanie. But there is no reason to assume this is connected to Alicia or Lynn.”

Lynn almost contradicted him. In her opinion this had everything to do with Alicia. And herself.

“We’ll come back in the morning,” Bobby added.

“I never want to see her again!” Melanie shrieked.

Bobby nodded then placed his hand on Lynn’s shoulder and led her out.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said once they were outside. “I didn’t know she’d fly off at you like that.”

“She’s suffering,” Lynn said. “And she’s not wrong.”

Bobby gave her a sharp look, but didn’t say anything because Frances’ father had come up to them.

“Did that no-good boyfriend of hers do this?” he asked. “One of the Maguire bastards… Rory… she’d run off with him before. We thought that’s what happened… I never imagined… “

“You had no reason to, Tom,” Bobby said bracingly. “We’ll find who did this. I’ll bring Rory in tonight and question him. Go back inside and be with your wife.”

Tom nodded and shuffled to the house, back hunched.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to stay at your cabin tonight,” Bobby said once they were alone. “You can crash at my place if you want. And we can get some dinner first.”

“What will your wife say?” Lynn said, aiming to make it a joke and smiling, but she failed at both miserably.

“I’m not married,” Bobby said equally seriously.

“Thanks for the offer, but I’ve been staying with Ryan,” Lynn said. “And I’m not hungry. I want to go speak to this Rory.”

“I don’t know… You’re not officially part of the investigation,” Bobby said. “It would be irregular and could throw off the chain of evidence.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. He hadn’t brought this concern up at all since she’d been here.

“It’s just that this is a murder investigation now…” he said, looking at her apologetically. “And you’re not officially a part of it.”

“I’m very much a part of it,” Lynn said. “Officially and otherwise. Now let’s go find this Rory Maguire.”

“Way to take charge. No wonder you were a Special Agent,” he said. “Fine, let’s go. He lives in a nasty little trailer on Broad Street.”

“Not at the family farm?” she asked.

“He’s striking out on his own or some such nonsense,” Bobby said and opened his car door.

“I’ll follow you,” she said and got in her own car.

Melanie’s words were still echoing in her head and they only got louder during the ride to the trailer park, which at first glance appeared both decrepit and deserted. If it weren’t for the lights shining in some of the trailers, Lynn would’ve been sure no one lived there anymore. And there probably shouldn’t be given the sorry state of the place.

Ryan was right, she’d never before given much thought to the fact that the town Green Haven had a huge underbelly of poverty to go with its fancy mansions and shiny modern buildings. The best-kept trailer in this whole park looked about thirty years old and the one Bobby stopped in front of looked even older, every inch of it covered in grime that no amount of rain, or scrubbing, would ever wash out again.

He rapped on the flimsy door, calling Rory’s name. There was no answer from inside, but the door opened an inch. He called out again, announced that he was coming in then shone his flashlight inside.

The cramped place was a mess, but Lynn couldn’t quite tell if it was recent or the result of Rory not cleaning after himself. Glass crunched under her feet as she followed Bobby inside.

“He’s not here,” he announced after checking the tiny bedroom and bathroom and emerged back into the kitchen/living room. “Must’ve done a runner. My money’s on him for Frances’ murder.”

Lynn shone her flashlight over the living area again. The window was smashed, the sofa stood diagonally across the space, the coffee table was upturned and over in the kitchen some of the cabinet doors had been ripped off.

“There was a fight in here,” she said. “Rory could be hurt.”

The specks and slashes of brown on the broken window and wall beside it looked like blood.

“Or this is where he killed her,” Bobby said. “We need to get out of here. Get CSI.”

They retraced their steps back out as best they could. Bobby made his own call, alerting all units to be on the lookout for Rory. Lynn called TJ. The FBI team was still an hour out.

“So now what?” Bobby asked.

“Now we wait,” she said.

“They’ll find him,” Bobby said. “He can’t have gotten very far and he’s not very smart. We should go check the Maguire farm. He’s probably hiding out there.”

“You go and I’ll wait here for the CSI,” Lynn said.

“I have a deputy coming to do that,” Bobby said, but she shook her head.

She couldn’t quite say why it seemed so important to make sure nothing and no one disturbed this scene before it was properly processed. But she had that itch, the deep knowing that something significant happened here. It was the first time since she started this investigation that it had happened, and she was going to run with it. Frances’ killer had been here. And it looked like he might’ve gotten sloppy.

Bobby raised a few more objections but finally left, leaving her alone in the cold night, with only the hope that she’d finally caught a break to keep her warm. But it was a strong hope and plenty warm.

* * *

Ten minutes into guarding Rory’s busted up trailer in the trailer park, a deputy arrived and told Lynn he’d take over. He was a young man, barely out of his teens and when she asked if he was alone, he just stared at her blankly for a good five seconds, before asking why she was interested in that.

“Because one of the neighbors might have seen or heard what happened here,” she said. “We should canvass the neighborhood.”

He seemed confused again.

“You know, go door to door, ask questions…”

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m supposed to be watching this trailer until the CSI team arrives.”

She wondered why she wasted her time talking to him and left him to it.

The first and nearest trailer was all dark, but she rapped on the door anyway. She thought she heard movement inside, but it didn’t materialize into the occupant opening the door.

In the second trailer she was greeted by an older woman in a pink bathrobe and all white hair that fell down to her waist.

“The boy that lives in there is always up to no good,” she informed Lynn after introducing herself as Stacey. “I’m no snitch, but that’s the truth.”

“Did you see what happened here tonight?” Lynn asked.

“Nothing happened tonight,” she said. “The only thing that happened was you and the Sheriff arriving.”

“He’s a deputy,” Lynn said. “What about last night? Did you see a girl with the boy from the cabin.”

She wished she had a photo of Frances to show the woman, but she didn’t, so she described her as best she could.

“I know who you’re talking about,” Stacey said. “Used to be that boy had a different girl in there every night. And the noise they used to make. But then this one came along and suddenly it was just her. They were in love, I think.”

Her eyes softened into two pools of melted chocolate.

“Was she here last night?” Lynn asked.

“Maybe… yes, I think so,” Stacey said. “The music was real loud and I heard raised voices… you can hear everything here… one of the voices was female.”

“At what time was this?”

She glanced at her wrist even though she wasn't wearing a watch. “It was while I was watching Murder, She Wrote… I was so annoyed that they wouldn’t keep the noise down I almost went over there to tell them to shut up… but that can’t be… “

“What can’t be?” Lynn asked when Stacey fell silent and focused on some point behind Lynn’s back. She turned but there was nothing but darkness behind her.

“Murder, She Wrote wasn’t on last night… so this was the night before last,” Stacey concluded. “Last night I didn’t see or hear anything coming from that trailer. I’m sorry. I’m old and retired and the days all blend into each other for me.”

She smiled and Lynn returned it.

“It’s fine. Thanks for your help.”

She didn’t go back into her trailer, but rather watched Lynn make her way to the one next door.

“You won’t get anyone else to talk to you,” she called out. “They all hate the fuzz around here.”

Lynn waved to her and knocked anyway.

But Stacey turned out to be right. No one else opened their door for her, not even at the two trailers that were definitely occupied.

By the time she was done canvassing, she was freezing and the little hope she felt before wasn’t burning quite so brightly.

All the ways nothing was clicking in this case were very loud in her head.

Were they even looking for a serial killer? Or was that just what they convinced themselves of because Lynn needed something more to go on than a twenty-year-old cold case that had never been handled properly from the start? There were no interviews done, no real canvassing, no evidence collecting that could help her now. All she had was the same killer who murdered her best friend had done it again and again and hopefully left enough clues behind at each to piece together a trail that would lead Lynn to him.

Her phone started ringing just as she reached her car. She was sure it was TJ and equally sure that, if she told him her fears, he’d tell her to stop being stupid and trust the process. Which was sound advice that maybe she needed to hear.

But it wasn’t TJ, it was Binna.

“You’re still working?” Lynn asked. “It’s almost midnight.”

“You know I do my best work at night,” Binna said. “Fewer distractions. And I could say the same thing about you.”

There was concern in her voice, as always. She was constantly urging Lynn to take better care of herself, something Lynn often neglected. Especially when working complex cases.

“You know I never stop until I have to,” Lynn said and chuckled.

She’d gotten into her car and turned on the heat and already things seemed a little less hopeless.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Binna said. “I’m done with the profile. Do you want me to lay it out for you?”

“I’ll come to you now,” Lynn said, deciding to on the spot.

“I’ll be here,” Binna said, and Lynn ended the call.

Fact was, she could do little running around Green Haven in the dead of night. But the evidence gathered tonight by Larry Bird and his team will be arriving to The Factory by morning. And Lynn would be there urging them to sift through it right away instead of taking days to do it.

And maybe, just maybe it would yield something. Something that would finally let her put at least one part of her ruined past to rest.

41

After Lynn rushed out, Ryan had a hard time finding something to occupy himself with. He spent almost two hours trying to watch TV, which consisted of just flipping through the channels because nothing held his interest. Lynn sent a short text not to wait up for her just after midnight. Nothing else, just that. It seemed they weren’t at that point in their relationship where she felt she needed to do more than that. Nor did Ryan expect her to. But thinking about it raised questions that he had no answers for. Mostly about the future. He had no idea what he planned to do with his life. Though being with Lynn changed things. Or did it?

At two AM he was still staring at the ceiling of his bedroom, the overthinking not quite dire enough for the walls to start closing in, but close. Ending up in this bed, in this house, at almost forty years old, was something he never planned on. Never thought possible. And yet here he was. Facing the same shit he faced two decades ago when he left. And no solution in sight.

He got dressed again, woke Lady and took her for a walk. A long one. At first, the cold air helped clear his head. There was something so clean about the untouched woods in the winter, with everything so quiet and preserved by frost.

He didn’t have a set direction in mind, but he ended up at the edge of the clearing where Alicia’s body had been found. Morbid. Probably the result of some sort of subconscious wish to deal with the problem that was the source of all his other problems.

Once he stopped, he couldn’t bring himself to go right up to the spot where she was found. He just stayed behind the trees, staring at the spot. The leafless trees all around creaked, Lady panted, groaned, and whined as she dug another of the many pointless holes in the ground she’d started making and the clearing grew brighter and brighter as the moon passed from behind a cloud.

He half expected it to illuminate a body.

Instead, it shone on a dark figure hiding behind a thick tree trunk directly opposite him. It was a man, dressed in a thick black jacket and black pants, the hood pulled so low over his face that none of it was visible. He looked just like the one who had broken into his parents’ barn to leave that backpack full of incriminating crap.

Ryan didn’t think too hard beyond that.

He stalked to his left, trying to make as little noise as possible as he approached the guy from the side around the clearing. He chose the left side because that’s where the road was. And his grandfather’s cabin. To the right was Lynn’s old home. He hoped he himself was far enough behind the tree line to not be visible. Lady was another matter, bright golden as she was, but she seemed to sense something was happening and stayed in step with him.

And they would’ve come up right behind the figure unnoticed, they were almost there. But then Ryan stepped on a broken branch which snapped loud as thunder.

The man turned around, looked directly at him, his face completely obscured by the darkness and the hood.

“Hey,” Ryan said. “What are you doing here?”

The guy turned and bolted. Straight across the clearing and towards Lynn’s house. Ryan gave chase, berating himself for doing practically no exercise except walking since he got here. Used to be he could outrun practically anyone and not be tired, and here he was, panting, his lungs and his legs burning before they even reached Lynn’s old house. The guy wasn’t extra fast, he stayed in Ryan’s view, but he couldn’t catch up to him no matter how much he willed his body to move faster.

The guy reached Lynn’s house, jumped into an orange pickup truck and sped down the driveway towards the main road.

Ryan’s face was burning along with his lungs and legs as he fumbled in his pocket, trying to find his phone to take a picture. The woods were pitch dark here, mostly because the house was surrounded by a thick copse of lush green pines on all sides except the one that led to the main road. He saw none of the tag except that it was white and probably had the Statue of Liberty in the middle.

He snapped a few pictures anyway. Not very good ones.

Lady came to sit beside him. She was out of breath too.

“We almost had him,” Ryan told her.

He sent the pictures to Lynn. Chances were that this wasn’t the orange truck they’d been looking for, but they were very slim.

42

The Factory, the FBI headquarters building in the Bronx, was a former clothing factory that went bust shortly after World War II when the orders for new uniforms dried up. In the dead of night, with most of the lights in its many windows either off or very dim, it looked as imposing and scary as Lynn imagined it did to the hundreds of women who used to work impossible hours in here sewing. Glad to have a paycheck, but suffering for it. Lynn’s job here was never like that. Not until she ceased to be able to work undercover.

Embarking on this case, she imagined she’d get at least a tiny taste of her old life back. And she did, just not in the way she imagined. It wasn’t the undercover memories that got clearer. It was the ones of her old life in Green Haven. All the things she tried so hard to forget were now swimming around her mind, vivid as the day she lived them. Especially her memories of Alicia. They’d been best friends since before Lynn could remember and very few of Lynn’s childhood and teenage memories didn’t feature Alicia in some way. Usually in a very prominent way. And it all haunted her now, threatening to consume her mind. Maybe finding Alicia’s killer would help. But she doubted it.

Good thing I’m going to see the main shrink around here, she thought to herself as she climbed the stairs to Binna’s office. The dark humor usually helped take the edge off her worries, but not tonight. This case was too insidious even for dark humor to cure.

The large lounge area of the Psych Ward, as they called the profiler’s department, was lit only by two standing lamps by the large leather sofa. the room smelled faintly of coffee and some Asian spice Lynn didn’t know the name of. Binna was standing by the window with her back to the door.

“I saw you looking up at the building before you entered,” Binna said as she turned. “It looked like you didn’t want to come in.”

Lynn shrugged and went to the tray that held a pot of coffee, fresh cups, sugar, and creamer. “I kind of didn’t.”

There was no point hiding anything from Binna. She saw right through her. Right through anyone, for that matter. Lynn hoped that included the killer she was searching for.

“Once this is over you should take time off,” Binna said and joined her by the tray where Lynn was stirring the creamer into her coffee way harder than she needed to. “It will do you good. You’ve had almost no time off in the last five years.”

“I just had two weeks off before I went to Green Haven,” Lynn said and finally took a sip of coffee. It tasted as good as Binna’s coffee always did.

“You need time to process everything,” Binna said quietly. “First you lost your career, then the daughter of your best friend got murdered, and now you’re searching for the killer of your childhood friend. With virtually no break in between.”

Lynn felt a lump forming in her throat. She drank some more coffee to try and dislodge it.

“I appreciate your concern, Binna, I really do,” she said as gently as she could. “But I don’t have time to rest now.”

Binna sighed and sat down on the sofa. “I know you don’t. None of us do. This man we’re looking for needs to be stopped. He should’ve been stopped twenty years ago.”

“Tell me you have some ideas on how to do that,” Lynn said as she sat down next to her.

Binna picked up a folder that was one of many on the coffee table. She took out the topmost sheet and stared at it.

“Here’s what I have,” she said and cleared her throat. “The man is most likely white, between forty and fifty years old, and very likely living a double life, probably in your hometown of Green Haven.”

Binna glanced at her and Lynn nodded. “So you’re thinking wife, kids and a picket fence around a two-story home?”

“Maybe,” Binna said. “But he comes across as more of a loner type to me, so maybe not.”

“Given that he only kills once a year, what’s he doing for the rest of the time?”

“Planning,” Binna said. “He doesn’t just pick his victims randomly, he studies them. Possibly even grooms them.”

“Witnesses saw Alicia get in the truck with him, or a man that is most likely him,” Lynn said. “That suggests she knew him well. Especially since it was in the middle of the night.”

Binna nodded thoughtfully. “She probably knew and trusted him. All the victims did.”

Lynn shuddered and took another sip of lukewarm coffee to try and stave off the cold rising in her bones. “I really hate the ones that gain the victim’s trust first. They’re all sick but those are the sickest.”

“I agree,” Binna says. “As for his motivation, I almost think he’s convinced himself that he’s looking after them. That he’s saving them.”

“How do you figure?” Lynn asked, too sarcastically.

Binna shrugged. “Because of the care he takes with the bodies. Dressing them as innocent girls, combing their hair, leaving flowers with their bodies.”

“He rapes them, though,” Lynn said.

“Rape is actually not that evident in any of the cases. I went over it with my husband, and he agrees that the postmortem findings could also indicate vigorous, consensual sex,” Binna said. “Maybe it happens while they’re subdued, while the victims think they might still get away from him. I’d wager that he thinks of it as making love.”

The thought made bile rise in Lynn’s throat. She’d made a life of hunting sickos like this, but the depths of their disease never failed to elicit a negative, visceral reaction in her. She could, all too easily, identify with all the victims in their final moments, and in their hope that they’re still getting out alive as long as they do and say what their captor wants of them.

“And he makes sure they’re really dead by stabbing them through the heart after he strangles them,” Binna added.

“You think that’s what he’s doing?” Lynn asked. “That this is the reason why he both stabs and strangles them.”

“Yes, I think it’s the most logical explanation.”

Lynn leaned back, considering what Binna told her. It made sense. Binna’s theories and profiles always did. And they were usually spot on. She could make leaps that few others could and they usually turned out to be correct.

“But saving them from what?”

“Themselves? Waywardness? A bad life they’re heading towards?” Binna said. “All the victims were on the verge of destroying their lives with alcohol and drugs, starting with your friend. I think he’s trying to preserve their innocence by stopping them from going all the way to the dark side. Maybe he even tries to help them first, tries to keep them on the right path. It’s quite possible that he doesn’t kill all the ones he grooms.”

“He didn’t stab the latest victim,” Lynn said. “Only strangled her. Do you think he’s changing his MO? Or escalating?”

“I doubt it,” Binna said. “She was also killed out of order. I think he had another reason for moving up the kill.

“As in maybe she saw something she shouldn’t have? Like who broke into my cabin,” Lynn said.

“That sounds plausible. But it is possible he was already grooming her to be his next victim,” Binna said. “Do you know more about her?”

“She was the daughter of one of my high school friends and had been getting in trouble lately,” Lynn said. “She was dating a bad boy and running away from home. Drugs and alcohol were probably involved too.”

“There you go.”

“She was also the same age as Alicia and looked almost exactly like her,” Lynn said. “Maybe that’s why he picked her.”

“To send you a message?” Binna mused. “That’s possible too. I think you’re at the heart of this.”

Lynn didn’t like hearing that, especially since it was probably the truth.

“He was doing just fine while I was away too.”

She grinned as she said it, but the dark humor seemed lost on Binna.

“I think it’s very possible that he’s taunting you, daring you to catch him,” Binna said. “It would fit with his perfectionistic, narcissistic style.”

“This is all very informative, but just once, I wish you could give me a sketch of the killer too,” Lynn said and grinned again. “And his name to go with it.”

“I know you do,” Binna said. “I wish that too.”

A lot of the undercover missions Lynn had gone on started just like this. With an unknown killer terrorizing some town or village or even city. And all they had to go on was Binna’s profile before they went into action. Most times it turned out to be enough.

“It’s plenty,” Lynn said. “Just like always.”

Lynn’s phone had been pinging intermittently during the conversation, but she didn’t check the messages, assuming it was TJ updating her on the progress they were making at the crime scene.

She checked it quickly while Binna flipped through the folder as though looking for more she could tell her.

The texts were from Ryan, not TJ. And he’d send a blurry picture of an orange Ford truck, saying he spotted the driver in the clearing where Alicia had been found and chased him to her childhood home where he had parked the truck. He hoped the pics would be helpful, Lynn doubted it.

“I think you’re right that I’m at the heart of this,” she said and stood up. “The killer might very well have just been spotted near my family home in Green Haven.”

Binna’s face drained of color as she looked at her with her mouth slightly open.

“No need to look so scared, Binna,” Lynn said. “I’ve handled worse.”

“I’m not so sure,” Binna said. “But I am sure you’ll get him in the end.”

She stood too and handed Lynn the folder. “This contains all my work. Go over it, see if I missed anything. Maybe you’ll even see something I didn’t.”

“Doubtful. You’re the most brilliant profiler I know,” Lynn said.

“You’re not bad yourself. Call if you want to talk. About anything.”

Lynn assured her she would, though it was probably a lie. Talking about work she could handle. Anything more personal she just bottled up. It was far, far easier that way.

She took the folder, and rushed to the photo lab, hoping to find someone on duty there.

The pics Ryan had sent were all blurry but the techs working there could sometimes perform miracles. Maybe tonight would be one of those nights when they did.

43

Lynn had spent most of the night alternating between calling TJ for updates, and bugging the techs working on this case to get a move on. In the end, at about five AM she decided to just lie down for a moment. She chose the lumpy, lopsided sofa in one of the break rooms in the vast basement of the building. It felt and looked like it had been there since the hey-day of this factory, but she fell so soundly asleep she had no idea who or where she was when she woke up, unsure what day, or even year it was.

The awareness slowly filtered back in as she stretched and checked her messages. Most were from TJ, one was from Ryan and one from Binna, wondering if she’d gotten some sleep.

She texted Ryan back first, telling him they were still working on the photos he sent and that she’d be back in Green Haven later. He sent back a thumbs-up emoji right away and she spent the whole way to the cafeteria wondering if that was good or bad, and whether she’d been too cold in her text, and if she should’ve called him instead. Luckily TJ was already in the cafeteria, him and Larry both, so she was spared the agony of having to continue stressing about it. Fact was, she was no good at relationships and that included basic stuff like texts and phone calls. If she hadn’t figured it out until now, she probably never would.

“Ahh, here’s our Sleeping Beauty,” TJ exclaimed as he spotted her. For some reason it made her hand shoot to her hair and attempt to comb it with her fingers. “We got back a couple of hours ago, but thought it best to let you sleep.”

“I’m going to get some sleep too, in a minute,” Larry grumbled.

“Did you find anything?” Lynn asked as she sat at their table, after she poured herself a steaming cup of black coffee at the counter.

“We sure did,” TJ said. “Our boy got sloppy this time. Serves him right for getting in a hurry, doesn’t it?”

TJ’s happy mood after a sleepless night started to make sense to Lynn now.

“What’d you find?”

“DNA under her nails. She must’ve scratched him,” TJ announced. “We’re waiting to see if it’s a match to the unknown DNA found on the backpack and the bracelet.”

Lynn leaned back in her chair and took a sip of her coffee. It was strong and bitter, just like she needed it to be to wake her up. Unfortunately, it also caused a painful cramp in her stomach, reminding her she should probably eat something. She reached out and took a piece of buttered toast off TJ’s plate.

“Did you check that sample against the law enforcement database too?” she asked Larry.

He raised a questioning eyebrow. “Of course I did.”

TJ cocked an eyebrow too. “What’s this now? What are you thinking?”

“Something Binna said last night as she explained the killer’s profile to me,” Lynn said. “She thinks he might actually be trying to help these victims. As in put them on the right path, away from drugs, prostitution, and the like. And that the victims trust him.”

“And cops are in a great starting position to gain trust,” TJ mused. “But would a cop fail to notice that the victim scratched him and there’s DNA under her nails? That’s such a rookie mistake.”

“There is that,” Lynn said and bit down on the piece of toast.

“I’ll re-check the samples against the database of local law enforcement,” Larry said.

“Make sure chief Millhouse is one of the first you check,” TJ said. “He’s fighting this serial killer idea so hard lately it’s getting suspicious. Not to mention annoying.”

“Will do,” Larry said as he finished off his plate of eggs and bacon. Lynn wondered if she was hungry enough to get her own plate of the same, or if TJ’s toast would do.

“I should check if the photo lab got something off the photos Ryan took last night,” she said.

Larry and TJ exchanged a glance that said a lot.

“What?” she asked, though she already knew she wouldn’t like the answer.

TJ had a hard time meeting her eyes.

“Just say it,” she insisted.

“Well, he says he saw the killer out there last night,” TJ said. “But he was also out there, wasn’t he? And the photos are completely inconclusive. They could’ve been taken anywhere.”

“I believe Ryan.”

They shared that loaded look again.

“We know,” TJ said. “But you also know he hasn’t been ruled out completely.”

Lynn was so sick of hearing suspicions cast in Ryan’s direction she just might scream the next time it came up. Or right now. She definitely wasn’t hungry anymore.

“There’s DNA now and it doesn’t match his,” she snapped. “What more do you want?”

He looked taken aback for a split second, but then grinned. “To keep an open mind. We haven’t ruled out that this killer doesn’t have an accomplice, for example.”

“We haven’t ruled it in either.”

She tossed her unfinished piece of toast on TJ’s tray and stood up. “I’m going to check with the photo lab and then I’m going to start looking for the owner of an orange Ford truck. Like we should’ve been doing from the start.”

“I’ve got a team of junior agents doing that,” TJ said.

“They’re not doing a great job,” Lynn countered.

He laid down his fork and stood too. “Fine. You’re right. As always. I’m coming with you.”

Some of her annoyance at him melted away as she saw his zeal to go along with her plan.

“Finish your breakfast first,” she told him. “I’ll come find you when I’m done at the photo lab.”

Then she left the room, wondering, and not for the first time, if she was actually the best person to tackle this case. It was never good to get too personally involved and this case was all personal to her, from start to finish. Was that beginning to hinder everything instead of help?

* * *

As it turned out, Ryan’s photos weren’t as bad as they appeared at first glance. The photo lab was able to brighten and enhance them enough to clearly show the shiny burnt orange color of the truck and the tags. Unfortunately, the driver was just a mound of black behind the wheel although they were working on the reflection in the rearview and side mirrors to see if that would yield a better view of him. And the tags on the truck had officially not been in use since the late 1990s. The last owner on record was a Maria Stone from Buffalo, who had reported them stolen in 1998.

“It’s probably pointless to go around interviewing the known owners of similar cars,” Lynn told TJ after learning that. “The one we’re looking for is not registered.”

“We could go back to that stripper, Delilah, and show her some pictures of local cops, Millhouse prominent among them,” TJ suggested.

They were in the cafeteria again where Lynn had just finished almost a whole burrito. She once again felt more tethered to the world and less lost in the past and all the pain it held. She had also showered in one of the staff bathrooms and got a change of clothes from the suitcase she still had in the back of her car. She seemed to have now graduated from living out of suitcases in motel rooms and rentals, to just living straight out of her car. She was sure Binna would have a lot to say about that, so she hoped the doc would never find out.

“Sounds like a plan,” Lynn said. “Though I’d tread lightly with Millhouse for now. Let Larry do the DNA checks again first.”

TJ grimaced but nodded. “You’re right, we don’t want to spook him.”

“And we might as well try to get a sample of Bosco’s DNA, just in case,” Lynn said.

“The circus guy?” TJ asked. “Sure, why not?”

“Let’s get going then.” Lynn stood and picked up her tray when her phone rang.

It was Bobby.

“I’ve had another talk with Melanie,” he said after greeting her pleasantly. “She wants to speak to you. To apologize, I think.”

“She has nothing to apologize for,” Lynn said.

“Even so,” Bobby said. “Plus, maybe she could tell us more about her daughter’s life. Possibly even where we can find that Rory kid. I really like him for the murder.”

Lynn didn’t. But Melanie might know something about the real killer.

“I’ll be at your office in two hours,” she said and let him go.

“Change of plans?” TJ asked as he shrugged into his coat—the camel brown one that made him look like a model from some high-end fashion catalogue.

“You handle Delilah, Bosco, and Millhouse,” Lynn said. “I’m going to speak to the last victim’s mother.”

TJ took her tray away while she put on her own coat. It looked shabby next to TJ’s.

“One of these days you should touch base with Alicia’s parents too,” he said gently as they exited the cafeteria. “Or have you done that already?”

Lynn shook her head. “I didn’t want to give them any false hope.”

Alicia’s parents had moved to the West Coast about two years after their daughter’s murder. And for years, they periodically still checked in with the Sheriff’s Department asking if there were any new developments in the case. But according to Bobby, they hadn’t done so in the last five. Lynn hoped that meant they’d found some sort of peace with what had happened and she wasn’t going to be the one to ruin it. Not until she could tell them who had killed their daughter and why.

“But if this killer gets close to his victims first, then they might know something,” TJ prodded.

And he wasn't wrong. Lynn would have to make the call. She would. But she didn’t want to delve deeper into it now and TJ didn’t persist.

They said goodbye in the parking lot where the gusting, icy wind carried the unmistakable scent of imminent snowfall. Lynn hoped the approaching storm wouldn’t slow them down any further, because there was no hoping she could weather it out in a cozy room by a warm fire. Not until this killer was caught.

44

Melanie looked tiny in her oversized silver parka that looked a few sizes too big for her and huddled as she was in one of the leather lined chairs in Bobby’s office. She was shivering slightly despite the heat and being so overdressed.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she whispered as Lynn greeted her. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Grief,” Lynn said quietly. “There’s no need to apologize.”

“I just wanted you to know,” she said tonelessly.

“Tell her what you told me about Rory,” Bobby said in a voice that seemed too loud for the situation. It made Melanie shudder.

“He called me last night,” she said. “Late… around four AM. Kept saying how sorry he was. He sounded high on something.”

“He wanted to elope with Frances,” Bobby said. “They had plans to go to Las Vegas and get married there, then make a whole new life for themselves in the West.”

Melanie whimpered and wiped her eyes, even though no tears were flowing. She’d probably spent the whole night crying and there was nothing left. The thought pierced Lynn’s chest like a white-hot knife.

“I read about it in her diary… I had no idea,” she sobbed. “She didn’t tell me anything anymore. We used to do everything together and now she barely told me her boyfriend’s name. I didn’t even know he was a Maguire. I thought Rory was one of her classmates.”

“He had been for a while,” Bobby said darkly. “Back in the day before he dropped out.”

“I thought he was older than Frances,” Lynn said.

“He’d been held back twice,” Bobby explained. “The high school was glad to see the back of him when he finally called it quits.”

Melanie didn’t seem to be listening to them. Her eyes were fixed on the corner of Bobby’s desk, but completely unfocused.

“I tried to do my best by Frances, I really did,” she said. “But she was starting her own life… and I was newly single after a very long time… I wanted to have some fun too… oh, God… this is all my fault.”

Lynn took her hand. It was cold as ice. “It’s not your fault. Your daughter was targeted. And the only one responsible for her death is the monster that killed her.”

She wanted to add, “The monster that should’ve been caught a long time ago,” but knowing that wouldn’t do Melanie any good.

“You’re kind,” Melanie said and squeezed Lynn’s hand. “I don’t deserve it.”

“You said Frances was starting to distance herself from you,” Lynn said. “But was there anyone in her life that she did confide in? A role model, someone with authority giving her advice?”

Frances shook her head, her shoulders shaking. “I don’t think so. Rory was her whole world.”

“Did she have a best friend?”

Frances nodded. “Sure. Claire. But I don’t know how close they still were. I think they had a falling out. Frances was in trouble, and I didn’t even know it. And what are you saying now? That she trusted the wrong person?”

This time as she sobbed fat tears flowed from her eyes.

Bobby stood and came around the desk, laying a hand on Melanie’s shaking shoulder. “I think you’ve had enough. We can talk more later. I’ll take you home now.”

Lynn stood up too. “I think that’s a good idea.”

She followed them outside and waited until Melanie was sitting in the passenger seat of Bobby’s SUV, the door firmly shut.

“What’s Claire’s last name?” she asked.

“Grundy,” he said. “But I don’t think she knows anything. Melanie said they weren’t very close anymore.”

“I’ll go speak to her anyway,” Lynn insisted. “Robert Grundy is her father? Do they still live over on Regent Road?”

“Yes, Robert’s her dad,” Bobby said. “But they live in one of the new passive homes along Sycamore Ave. They’ll be in school now, though. Rob’s the guidance counselor at the high school and Claire’s a senior.”

“School hasn’t been cancelled?” Lynn asked. “In light of Frances’ murder, I mean.”

Back when Alicia was killed school was out for three days.

Bobby slapped himself on the forehead. “That’s right. I’m sorry. I don’t know where my head is. Yes, school’s out. Though the teachers and staff are there, along with a couple of psychologists in case any of the kids want to talk.”

“That probably includes Claire’s dad,” Lynn said.

“I’ll just drop Mel off and then we can go see her,” he said. “Though I’m telling you, this is all Rory. Maybe she wanted to dump him and he wasn’t having it.”

Lynn disagreed, but didn’t think it was the right time to go into all that. Melanie was shaken up enough without having to witness the two of them arguing.

Bobby held the back door of the SUV open for her. A cage wall separated it from the front. “Best if you just come with us. Don’t worry. I won’t lock you in.”

He grinned, but Lynn didn’t return it. Nothing was funny anymore. She’d not only failed to get any closer to finding Alicia’s killer, but she’d managed to get another young woman killed right under her nose and on her watch.

This wasn’t Melanie’s fault, it was Lynn’s just as Mel had rightly deduced last night.

* * *

At Mel’s house, Bobby walked her to the door, while Lynn waited in the back of the cruiser. TJ had sent a bunch of texts, informing her that Bosco had agreed to give a DNA sample and that he was still waiting for Delilah to show up at work. Lynn quickly and tersely filled him in on her own progress.

The door opening startled her.

“You can sit up front now,” Bobby said, smiling at her.

He had a nice smile, it made his grey-blue eyes sparkle like the sea in winter. He’d shaved off his moustache and goatee in the last few days and it made him appear years younger.

“I think I liked you better with the goatee,” she said as she exited the car. “It made you look more manly.”

The flash of angry annoyance in his eyes was unmistakable, but gone a split second later as he smiled again.

“I think you’re right,” he said, rubbing his bare chin. “This whole trip down memory lane we’re taking made me decide to try it out, but I’m going to grow it back out. If nothing else, my face is too cold now.”

“Is a storm coming?” Lynn asked once they were back in the car. “I feel like maybe it is.”

“We can expect some snow in two days, but nothing too drastic,” he said. “That’s what the weather report said this morning, anyway.”

The radio crackled to life as they turned onto the main road. The female dispatcher informed Bobby that they had found Rory Maguire and were bringing him in to the station.

He actually whooped at the news, before telling her he’d be right there.

“He did this, I’m telling you,” he said, still smiling triumphantly. “And I’m gonna get it out of him.”

Lynn had the unpleasant sensation that she’d heard this kind of zeal once before. When Ryan was singled out as the only suspect in Alicia’s murder and interviewed by her father and the police chief until nothing made sense to him anymore. It also gave the real killer more than enough time to cover his tracks so completely that twenty years on he was still just a ghost. At least now, the evidence had been collected properly.

“I’ll sit in on the interview, if you don’t mind,” Lynn said.

There was no point trying to dissuade him now. He was too excited. And maybe Rory knew something that would finally crack this case.

“My pleasure,” Bobby said. “It’s been great working together so far. We make a great team, don’t we?”

“Sure,” Lynn said, distracted by updating TJ via text of this development.

“You should come back to Green Haven full time,” he said. “Maybe even get your dad’s old job. Just like you always wanted.”

She looked at him sharply, wondering if he was making fun of her.

“Don’t you want to be Sheriff one day?” she asked.

“If I did, I’d have run for office a long time ago,” he said. “We’ve had a few sheriffs over the years, but none stuck around long. The shoes they were trying to fill were too big. The townsfolk didn’t take to them.”

Or was the tragedy that ended her father’s life too big an obstacle to overcome for any newcomers?

“It’s hard to compete with a man cut down in his prime,” Bobby added. “But I think you could. The town would be grateful.”

“It’s hard to compete with a father too,” Lynn said.

The thought of going for her dad’s old job had crossed Lynn’s mind since she’d come back. But that was before a well-loved old man and an innocent young woman died here on her watch.

“Seriously, think about it,” Bobby insisted.

“Sure, I’ll do that,” Lynn said and started texting again.

But the answer is no.

That’s what she really wanted to say. And would, if the idea ever came up again.

45

Rory Maguire was just a child. He was nineteen and didn’t seem much older than sixteen to Lynn. Despite the piercings in his face and the tattoos on his arms and neck, all of which were covered in bruises and cuts. It was the eyes, still so pure and innocent.

Lynn couldn’t exactly pinpoint when people in their early and even late twenties started looking so very young to her, mainly because she still felt like she was that young herself. But she certainly was not. She was old enough to be Rory’s mother. And if things had gone differently, she very well could be a mother to a kid Rory’s age right now. But they hadn’t gone that way, and now she’d never have children. It hardly bothered her anymore. But that was before she finally reconnected with the only man she might consider having them with.

Focus!

She wanted to slap her face to go with the sharp, commanding thought, but she wasn’t alone. Bobby and another deputy whose name she didn’t know stood with her in the room that looked into the interrogation room where Rory was sitting via a one-way mirror. He was trying to look tough, but his eyes turned very scared every time he glanced at the door, which he did continuously. A classic sign of just how much he wanted to get out of here.

“I’m going in there,” Bobby said. “He’s had long enough to stew.”

“I’ll join you,” Lynn said.

He looked at her and the expression on his face clearly told her he wanted to say no. But he nodded.

“Fine, but I’ll take the lead,” he said. “I can get a confession out of him.”

Lynn wondered if that’s what her father had said before going into the interrogation room to interview Ryan all those years ago. Rory even looked a little like Ryan with his dark hair and bad boy attitude. She also wondered if the interrogation room was the same one. Judging by the peeling paint on the walls and the cracked veneer on the table top, it very well might be.

“Why am I here?” Rory asked as soon as they entered. Belligerently. But his voice cracked, and the fear in his eyes intensified.

“We’d like to ask you a few questions about Frances, son,” Bobby said and took the seat opposite Rory. Lynn took the one at the side of the table, her back to the wall.

“I ain’t your son,” Rory spat. “And who’s she?”

“I’m with the FBI,” Lynn said before Bobby could introduce her. She thought Rory relaxed a bit after hearing that. But she could’ve just been imagining it.

“I didn’t hurt Frances, OK?” he said. “I loved her. I wanted to marry her. I’d never hurt her.”

He spoke more to Lynn than to Bobby, it seemed.

“Now why would you say all that?” Bobby asked in a pleasant voice, but Lynn could hear a sharp edge underneath. So could Rory, she was sure.

“Why else would you bring me in here like this? And read me my rights?” Rory asked. “You want to accuse me of killing her. I know you had a long talk with Frances trying to convince her it was a bad idea to date me.”

“It’s true, I did warn her,” Bobby said.

“You were wrong about me. And you’re wrong now. I didn’t kill her.”

“We’re not saying you did. We just want to talk,” Bobby said. Rory rolled his eyes.

“Me and you, we never got on, Deputy Hill. You know we ain’t. So don’t try to pretend like you’re my friend now.”

Bobby opened his mouth to say something, probably argue the point. But it was getting them nowhere.

“When did you last see Frances?” Lynn asked.

“I drove her to work at that rental place the day she went missing,” he said. “Around three, right after school.”

“And did you hang out?” Lynn asked. “I know she wasn’t very busy over there at all.”

She grinned at him to try and put him at ease. He was fidgeting in his chair, glancing at the door and Bobby continuously.

“Sure, some,” he said. “We usually hung out, yeah. It was the only way to spend time with her since she got that job.”

“That job was supposed to teach her some responsibility,” Bobby interjected.

“Yeah, well, she was responsible enough,” Rory snapped. “But the job did give us several nice rooms to hang out in.”

“Is that where you were around four PM that day, while I was looking for her?” Lynn asked. “In one of the empty cabins?”

He pierced her with her eyes, but blushed. “I ain’t saying.”

“You’re not in any trouble,” Lynn said softly. “We just want to know when she went missing.”

Rory glanced at Bobby again and then at the door.

“Yeah, we were there,” he finally said. “In Cabin One. She saw you go in and out of reception and assumed you were looking for her. But we were having too much fun.”

“When did you leave?” Bobby asked.

“Six-ish.”

“And then what? You picked her up after work?” Bobby said. “So you could have more fun?”

“No.”

Rory leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “I was supposed to pick her up but she texted that she already got a ride. She said that her mom wanted her home for dinner, but that she’d sneak out later.”

“So, her mom picked her up?”

Rory shrugged. “Beats me. All I know is I didn’t hear from her again. And I sent her like a hundred texts. You can check.”

“We will,” Bobby assured him. “But maybe you just sent all those texts to give yourself an alibi.”

“I didn’t,” Rory said. His tough guy façade was cracking fast.

“What happened at your trailer?” Bobby asked. “It looks like someone took quite a beating in there.”

“Yeah, me,” Rory said, he said, pointing at his many bruises. “Some dude broke in while I was sleeping and tried to suffocate me. I barely got out alive. That’s why I was hiding.”

“Do you know who it was?” Bobby asked.

“I’m pretty sure I do, yeah,” Rory said and glanced at the door again.

“Why didn’t you report it?” Lynn asked.

He glanced at the door again. “I’m gonna handle it my way. I want to get out of here now.”

“Not until you’ve answered our questions,” Bobby said,

Rory shook his head. “I already did… I want a lawyer.”

Bobby gasped. “Now, Rory. We’re just talking.”

“Not no more,” he said. “I know my rights. I want a lawyer.”

“Rory… be reasonable,” Bobby said, but Lynn stood up.

“He’s made it clear, Deputy Hill,” she said. “If he wants a lawyer then we’re done here for now.”

“Damn straight,” Rory said, but the look he shot in her direction was pure gratitude.

“Fine,” Bobby said and stood up. “But it would be much better if you talked to us. Now just sit tight.”

He followed Lynn out of the room.

“Trouble is, we don’t have much to hold him on,” Bobby said. “You should’ve let me handle it in there.”

The déjà vu of Ryan having been in this same situation was still going strong in her mind. He’d asked for a lawyer too, but since he hadn’t been charged with anything, they kept telling him he didn’t need one. While they grilled him for over twenty hours with virtually no break. Was that Bobby’s plan here too? The whole thing felt off.

“Why are you so set on getting Rory for this when you know full well that we’re hunting a killer whose MO is exactly the same as in Frances’ murder?” she’d been holding in so long that it just came bursting out.

He gave her a pitying sort of look. “Just because you want to see a serial killer here doesn’t mean there is one, Lynn. We gotta look at this from all angles. And I’ve been dealing with Rory for years. He’s not a good one. He could’ve done this. Easy.”

“Then get him a lawyer and we can talk to him again.”

“He’s not Ryan, you know,” Bobby said.

“What are you saying?” Lynn snapped. “That I’m unfit to handle this case?”

“Let’s not do this in the hall.” He took her arm to lead her into his office. She ripped it free. They were getting an audience of other deputies, some secretaries, and the young receptionist.

“I just think you might be too close to this and aren’t seeing things clearly,” he said.

Angry heat rose in Lynn’s cheeks. He’d said it loud enough for all to hear. She’d be doing herself no favors by blowing up at him.

“Just make sure the kid gets a lawyer,” she hissed at him. “Don’t try to talk to him again.”

Then she collected her coat from the room overlooking the interrogation room and left. Bobby called after her, but she ignored him.

The thing was, maybe he was right. Maybe she’d finally lost the last bit of distance she’d been able to keep in this case. But she was sure Rory had nothing to do with Frances’ death. It was a feeling deep in her bones. An itching, like TJ had called it. And she could always trust that.

46

With every breath of the freezing air TJ wished he was on some sunny beach more acutely. Or not breathing at all a hundred feet under the ocean’s surface. Everything was so simple down there. So quiet and peaceful. Even his mind. That never went quiet since he lost his fiancée and their unborn child over fifteen years ago. Free diving was the only thing that could silence that pain. But the way things were going he’d be stuck in this winter wonderland for a good while yet.

He was standing in the near empty parking lot in front of Delilah’s strip joint, his only company a few other guys who were sitting in their cars and waiting for the place to open. How messed up must your life be to sit in your car waiting for a strip club to open? TJ couldn’t answer that question, but he figured he was right there with them anyway. Just in a different way.

Delilah was supposed to be here half an hour ago, but she was clearly running late.

He saw what looked like Lynn’s rental car in the distance, but didn’t know it was actually her until she pulled up right beside him in the parking lot.

“I could handle this on my own, you know?” he said as she joined him by the strip joint’s front door.

She didn’t return the smile. “I needed the drive to clear my head. And I have a question that Delilah might be able to answer for me.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?” Delilah asked.

She’d come up to them from behind the building.

One of the waiting guys exited the car as soon as he saw her and was approaching, the collar of his jacket up and his cap pulled so low his face was completely hidden.

“Let’s do this somewhere more private,” TJ suggested.

Delilah shrugged and unlocked the door.

“It’ll be a little longer, Kevin,” she said over her shoulder to the guy. “Sorry about that.”

Then she let them in and locked the door behind them.

“You know talking to the cops is bad for business, right?” she said.

TJ had hunted down enough serial killers who preyed on strippers and prostitutes to know all the levels on which that statement was true. Good thing this one they were looking for now wasn’t after those.

He produced the photos of the orange truck from the inside pocket of his coat and showed them to Delilah. “Is this the truck you saw Tonya and Barbie get into?”

Delilah glanced at the photo. “Could’ve been. It’s the same color.”

“Take a better look,” TJ said, shoved the photos into her hand then flipped the light switch behind his back. The disco ball in the center of the room started spinning, but thankfully, the lights that came on were garishly white and not multicolored.

Delilah scoffed, but took some time studying the photos.

“I’m pretty sure this is it, yeah,” she finally said. “It’s just as shiny as that one was, anyway. And the license plate is the same… you never see these plates with the Statue of Liberty anymore. I liked them. I lived in New York City when I was younger. I should’ve stayed there.”

She handed the photos back to TJ and looked at Lynn. “Now you ask your question and then I want you to leave.”

“About the stalker you said the girls had, could he have actually been their friend?” Lynn asked. “Someone who they trusted, but maybe didn’t want to be seen with them?”

Delilah just looked at her blankly.

“Anything you can tell me about that will help,” Lynn added, sounding a little too desperate to TJ. Delilah probably didn’t notice that, but he’d been working with Lynn long enough to guess all her moods from just the inflection of her voice.

“I suppose they both got in that car willingly,” Delilah said. “So maybe, sure. Maybe they knew their killer. If the driver of that car is the killer.”

“Do you mind if I show you a few photos?” Lynn asked. “To see if you recognize any of them as someone who hung out here, watching the girls.”

Delilah snorted. “I ain’t no snitch.”

“These are police officers,” Lynn said and showed her the first photo. It was a deputy. Delilah looked at the photo and shrugged. Lynn flipped to the next one. Another deputy. Same reaction from Delilah. The rest were Millhouse, Deputy Hill and a few other male cops and deputies.

“Truth is, I’ve seen most of those guys come in here over the years,” Delilah said. “Either for fun, or on business.”

“Anyone stick out?” Lynn asked.

“Chief Millhouse did his best to shut us down when he first got his job here,” she said. “And that pompous Deputy Hill accused me of corrupting young girls once or twice. He’s not even Sheriff but he acts like he owns the place. And some of the other ones are here quite regularly, in their free time.”

“Why did Millhouse try to shut you down?” Lynn asked.

“Soliciting, employing minors, that kind of bullshit,” she said. “But I run a clean place here. None of my girls are prostitutes and none of them are underage. He came to realize that in the end.”

“And how hard did Millhouse try to shut you down?” TJ asked.

“Hard,” Delilah said. “He managed to do it for almost six months on some trumped up health violation thing. But I got my license back and he’s left us alone since then. He shut down a bunch of other places though. But I’m sure he can tell you all about that.”

She walked over to the door and unlocked it again. “It’s time to open. So, if we’re done here… “

“Thanks for your time,” Lynn said and exited through the door Delilah was now holding open.

TJ followed her to the car, but didn’t speak until all those guys waiting in the parking lot were inside the club.

“You’re liking Millhouse for this?” he asked.

“I’m thinking it could be a cop, yeah,” Lynn said. “Someone with access to this investigation and in a position of trust. Or someone able to force the women to go with him as only someone with a badge can.”

The worst kind of suspect. Protected by the badge and able to go anywhere because of it.

“Think about it,” Lynn said. “So many times during this investigation the local cops were one step ahead. The way they arrested Ryan right after the backpack was left in the barn, how Millhouse is now claiming this isn’t the work of a serial killer… “

“That’s not a lot to go on,” TJ said.

“Or the guy dressing up as a CSI tech to plant the evidence at Shanna’s crime scene… that just screams it’s someone intimately familiar with the way crime scenes are handled.”

“It’s definitely someone with balls of steel,” he said.

“I wish I had my father’s missing notebook. If he had a suspect like the previous notebooks suggest, that would make our job a whole lot easier.”

“That would be helpful,” TJ said, trying to sound encouraging. Because what he really thought was that the thing was lost forever.

“And the only place left to look is the house that was my home,” she said, her voice actually cracking.

“If we’re going to investigate law enforcement as possible suspects, then we have to go about this differently,” TJ said. He wished he also had an idea as to how.

“Yeah,” Lynn said and unlocked her car. “Or we can just smoke them out like we would any other suspect.”

She opened the car door and climbed inside.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” TJ said, not completely sure what compelled him to do it.

She smiled for the first time since they met up here. “Do I ever?”

Then she closed the door, started the engine and drove off before he could list all the many and varied ways she’d done something stupid in the past.

She always got her man. But she also almost died doing it more than once. And all those times were very vividly replaying in TJ’s mind as he watched her car grow smaller and smaller along the long country road leading back to Green Haven.

He was probably overreacting, but he wished he knew what her plan was all the same. Just in case.

47

By the time Lynn pulled up to the house at just after seven PM, Ryan had stopped expecting her. But there she was, pretty as ever, her long hair dancing in the gusting wind. She was smiling as she strode up to the house, carrying two bulging bags from Happy’s Burgers in one hand and balancing a paper tray with four extra-large drinks.

“I thought I’d take care of dinner tonight in the best way I know how—take out,” she said. “I hope you’re hungry.”

“I could eat,” he said and took the two bags from her.

“We should probably start with the shakes,” she said. “Or leave them out here in this freezing cold until we’re ready to. I just had to get them, to see if they’re still as good as they used to be.”

Happy’s Burgers was the only burger joint in town back when they were teenagers, and no night out was ever complete without a stop there for shakes and fries. They’d gone there on one of the first dates he’d ever taken her on. And he remembered that night very clearly right now. He couldn’t eat much because he’d been hoping for a kiss so hard, and he got it. So why wasn’t he kissing her now?

She seemed to be thinking the same thing as she looked at him after taking off her coat and shoes by the door.

“What? You don’t like shakes anymore?” she asked, trying hard to be funny, but he detected a tightness underneath. Like she was out of balance and trying to hide it.

“I love milk shakes,” he said. “I just thought you’d call… or something.”

With every woman he’d ever been with, he avoided the talk about where the relationship was going like the plague. And here he was, walking straight into it. He felt stupid for saying it the moment the words were out of his mouth.

“Call… right…” she said and grinned wider. “I knew there was something you’re supposed to do when you’re seeing someone.”

He grinned too. “Or text… that’s fine too.”

She shook her head and walked over to him, standing close enough for their bodies to touch. “I’ll do better next time, I promise.”

Then she stood on her toes and kissed him like he should’ve done the moment he saw her. It didn’t last long enough, kissing her never did. Not back in the day. Not now.

“All right, we have to start eating before the food gets any colder than it already is,” she announced, picked up the tray of drinks from where she set it down on the little table by the door and led the way into the kitchen.

There she proceeded to wolf down almost her whole meal of a bacon cheeseburger and fries before he was done with half of his. Mostly because he kind of liked watching her eat. Just like he liked watching her do most things.

“Did you at least make any progress while you were away?” he asked, inwardly cringing because he hadn’t meant to make the question such a throwback to his neediness when she arrived.

She shook her head. “Not much. Bobby is all set on pinning Frances’ murder on her boyfriend mostly because he’s a Maguire. He doesn’t have any evidence… that pissed me off.”

“Sounds familiar,” he said, willing his mind not to go into that memory. Sometimes that worked. Other times those hours he spent in the stuffy interrogation room being told he was guilty in a million different ways just flooded his mind.

Tonight, they didn’t, probably because Lynn said, “I know. That’s why it pissed me off so much.”

He wanted to kiss her again. But his mouth was full of burger.

“But I’m afraid Bobby means to get a confession out of him one way or another,” she added. “I tried to stop him.”

“I’m sure you did all you could.”

They ate in silence for a while, Ryan still trying to stop the flood of bad memories and Lynn seemingly deep in thought about something.

“I think I’ll have to break into my parents’ house,” she announced.

He seemed to forget how to chew. “Why?”

“It’s the only place my dad’s missing notebook could be,” she said. “And the trace on the current owner is taking too long.”

He swallowed the half-chewed bite. “That doesn’t sound like a great idea. But I’ll go with you.”

The smile she gave him was priceless. Her head cocked to the side, her eyes sparkling, her lips looking very soft. “You’d break the law for me just like that?”

He grinned. “Yeah, anytime.”

“Thank you,” she said. “But better not. I’m a federal agent and have a plausible reason to do it, while they’re always trying to pin something on you.”

“Tell me about it,” he said, fishing in his bag for the last of the fries. “But as long as you’re on my side, I think I’ll be fine.”

Her eyes sort of melted as she said that, and her playful grin turned into a serene, soft little smile.

“You know when I first realized I was in love with you?” she asked.

“I hoped it was when I took you on your first motorcycle ride,” he answered without thinking, because her question took him completely by surprise.

She shook her head. “Nope. Though that ride was fun. Kind of scary, but fun. No, it was another time… “

She blushed slightly and averted her eyes. “Remember how I rode my bike to your house one day when you didn’t show up to school?”

“I didn’t show up to school on a lot of days,” he said. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

But he thought he remembered the day she was talking about just fine.

“Senior year, early spring,” she said. “We had a math quiz that was going to count for our final grade the next day and I didn’t want you to miss it.”

“You were always making sure I wasn’t flunking anything,” he said. “I don’t think I ever thanked you for that.”

“You did,” she said. “So anyway, on that day, I found you in the barn, sitting in an old rocking chair and bottle feeding three tiny kittens. You had them wrapped in a pink fluffy blanket and they were so small their eyes weren’t even open yet. My heart just kind of melted for you that day.”

The look in her eyes now was exactly the same as on that day.

“Oh, that,” he said, smiling. “Yeah, my mom had an emergency. The mother cat was hit by a car and she rushed it to the vet. She asked me to stay with the babies.”

“I know,” she said. “You told me this exact same story that day. You were kinda embarrassed that I caught you doing it, as I recall.”

He laughed. “I did have a bad boy reputation to uphold. Didn’t want you thinking I was soft.”

“Well, I did think that. But in a good way,” she said. “Come to think of it, I think that’s how I knew you couldn’t possibly have killed Alicia.”

“Because all serial killers start out killing animals?” he asked, a little too tersely maybe. But what she said was too much reality intruding on a perfectly perfect moment.

“A lot of them do, yeah,” she said. “Not all though.”

She seemed to sense the mood had somehow changed, because she looked away. At the milkshakes. She picked them both up and handed him one.

“Still cold,” she said. “How about we finish these in the living room? I feel like chilling on the sofa in a warm, cozy room. You know, like a normal person.”

“Sure,” he said and stood up too. “I just hope the animals will be on board with that plan. The living room is kinda their room.”

But the dogs and donkey were fine with the company. The cats needed some prodding to relinquish the sofa.

“You are a normal person,” he said later, while she was already leaning against him under a warm blanket.

He really should’ve led with that instead of getting all bristly over the mention of Alicia. Because now it was too late. Lynn had already dozed off. Also like a normal person after eating a huge meal.

He wasn’t about to wake her, so instead he joined her. It was easy falling asleep with her in his arms. And just as great as waking up that way.

* * *

Lady’s whining had woken him up at just after two AM. Lynn slept right through that, as well as his clumsy attempt at getting up from the sofa without jostling her too much. Now he was standing in the freezing cold yard waiting for Lady to finally do her business. Both Slash and Floyd had already gone back inside where it was warm. Ryan really wanted to go back inside too.

“Come on, girl, what’s the problem?” he asked, not for the first time.

She whined softly as she looked at him. He’d think something was actually wrong with her, but she was perfectly energetic, running around in circles and sniffing the ground.

“You want a longer walk, don’t you?” he asked. “But it’s way too cold.”

After circling the yard a few more times, she finally understood that they weren’t going anywhere, did her business and went back inside when he called.

Lynn had stretched out on the sofa and as much as he wanted to retake his spot next to her, he didn’t want to wake her. He settled for draping the blanket over her and sitting in the armchair beside her.

Standing in the cold for so long chased away all his sleepiness. He was wide awake, probably also because he’d gotten a full six-hour sleep in before Lady woke him up.

He could take that walk to the clearing that Lady was itching for. Maybe the guy he failed to catch last night would be there again tonight. Parked in front of Lynn’s house, staring at the place where Alicia was found. It had to have been the killer. And if he caught him, then these cozy nights with Lynn could become a permanent thing with nothing bad hanging over them anymore. No more dark clouds and conversation killers.

Besides, he kind of wanted to be the guy who caught the killer who ruined his life along with Alicia’s, Lynn’s and so many others.

The longer he watched her sleep, the better that idea seemed. He must’ve interrupted the guy doing something last night. Chances were good he’d be there again tonight. And it was roughly the same time of night as it was last night…

The idea was one of those that only got louder and louder and he knew it wouldn’t stop rattling around in his brain until he followed through on it. Once he realized that it was a done deal.

He dressed quickly, briefly considered bringing his service revolver along, but in the end decided against it. He could bring down that guy unarmed. Easy.

Lady looked at him reproachfully through the living room window as he exited the house and headed for the clearing. He couldn’t take her with him, because she was too visible with her yellow coat, and she walked much too loudly.

Not that it was easy to walk silently for him either. The night was quiet, oppressively so, since the wind had died down. The only sounds were the ones he was making. The undergrowth was frozen and cracked and hissed with every step. Worrying about all the noise he was making was probably the reason why he didn’t become aware of being watched right away. As a Ranger in the Army, he’d developed a sixth sense about that kind of thing. But just like so many other things, that seemed to have faded since he retired.

So he didn’t realize it in time.

His first warning came just before a shot rang out. A split second later excruciating pain in his thigh made his whole body feel like he was on fire.

Over the years, he’d spent a lot of time wondering about what it would feel like to get shot. And talking to others about it. The reality was much worse than even his darkest imaginings or their worst stories. But what the pain also did was make his training take over.

He went down and crawled behind the nearest tree. The shot had woken the birds around him and the night was filled with their frantic, panicked cries and hoots. It was the only cover he was gonna get to mask his getaway. So he didn’t think about anything other than that. He just ran as best he could, ignoring the pain, hunched over, keeping hidden behind the trees.

He’d only walked about half a mile. It was pitch dark. The trees were dense here. He could make it back to the house. It was the only chance he had. And knowing that, even the burning pain in his leg was easy to ignore.

More shots were fired, some missing him by mere inches. But he kept on running, dragging his leg behind him, not sure if the lights he saw in the distance were the house, or a vision brought on by the pain.

But he did know one thing. The shooter wasn’t nearby. He was shooting at him from a distance, else he’d have killed him by now. A sniper. And he could outrun a sniper. He’d done it before.

His leg was just one giant throbbing mass of pain by the time he reached the back yard of his parents’ house. And as much as he wanted to just bolt for the bright back porch light and Lynn’s worried face as she stared at the woods, he knew he had to keep to the shadows.

“Kill the lights,” he shouted at her. “Get back inside.”

She did neither. Instead, she sprinted towards him, with no shoes on, her long hair trailing behind her like a cape.

And it was probably a good thing she did, because his hurt leg wouldn’t take his weight anymore. But with her to lean on they made it to the house.

His leg was gushing blood. It didn’t look good.

But the last thing he saw before he passed out was Lynn’s gorgeous face. The look in her eyes was a little too worried and panicked, but he’d take it.

After all, seeing her face right before he died had always been his dream.

48

Lynn hadn’t meant to fall asleep right after dinner. It was weird that she did, given that she’d gotten plenty of sleep the night before and it was unusual for her to sleep that much for two nights in a row while this deep in a case. Or ever. Only normal people did that. Maybe it was time she became that.

She smiled at the thought and rose, wrapping the blanket Ryan had so thoughtfully draped over her around her shoulders to go in search of him. Lady nudged her hand again, making her realize it was her wet snout against her palm that had woken her in the first place. And the low whine she was emitting constantly.

“What’s wrong, girl?” she asked.

She got her answer in the form of a gunshot sounding deep in the forest and echoing over the trees like thunder.

“Ryan!”

He didn’t respond, not even after she called a few more times and several more gunshots rang out. Lady was barking like mad by this time. Lynn considered getting her gun but it was all the way in the glove box of her car out front. She didn’t even think of putting on her shoes before running outside through the patio door. She locked Lady inside just in case.

She called Ryan’s name a few more times and was fully ready to charge into the woods to look for him when she finally saw him limping out of the darkness of the trees towards the house.

He yelled at her to go back inside and turn off the lights. There was no way in hell she was doing that. She ran as fast as she could towards him then helped him into the house. His left pants leg was soaked in blood and he leaned on her so heavily she barely managed to remain upright.

She bolted the doors as soon as she got him inside and killed the lights. Blood was gushing from a hole in his pants and his mouth was moving, but no words were actually coming out. Or maybe she just couldn’t hear them because she was that deep in survival mode. For him. She didn’t panic. She was good at not panicking given how good she’d gotten at bottling up her feelings over the years.

The blanket he’d covered her with became gauze to staunch the bleeding. A dog’s leash, sitting on the side table became a tourniquet to try and stop it.

Her phone was covered in blood as she called TJ, balancing it against her shoulder while she kept both hands pressed against Ryan’s wound. Blood wasn’t gushing anymore. The tourniquet worked. But he’d already lost so much of it. The blanket was soaked.

“Ryan’s been shot,” she said as soon as he picked up. “I’m bringing him to the hospital.”

“Call 911,” he urged.

“I don’t know who’ll respond,” she said. “Meet us there.”

“Are you at his parents’ house?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll come there,” he said. “I’m only five minutes out.”

Good thing TJ never asked unnecessary questions. And that he was as near as he was. Because try as she might, she couldn’t rouse Ryan enough for him to try and stand on his own. And there was no way she could lift him.

TJ arrived in less than five minutes and together they managed to get Ryan into his SUV. He drove, she tried to wake Ryan in the back. He mumbled, but couldn’t open his eyes. She kept telling herself this was the best way. Ambulances could take an hour getting out here. This way was faster. This way was better. This way was safer.

TJ drove so fast they nearly spun out at several twists and turns in the road. But she trusted him to get them there in one piece and he did. She kept glancing out the back window, but they were alone on the road. No one was following. That didn’t get rid of her fear that the shooter was right behind them, ready to finish the job.

The hospital was at the edge of a larger town that Lynn missed reading the name of as they passed it. Angels of Mercy. She hoped it was more than just a name.

Ryan was lifted from the car by a couple of male nurses and rushed in. TJ stopped one of the nurses and flashed his badge. “Don’t make an admittance record for him. And do not report it.”

She gasped. “But I have to… it’s the law⁠—”

“Then enter him as John Doe and make no mention that it’s a gunshot wound,” he snapped. “We’ll handle this. This is an FBI matter.”

She looked skeptical but nodded and entered the hospital.

TJ took off his fancy camel brown coat and put it around Lynn’s shoulders. It was already heavily stamped with blood, and it would only get worse.

“This is how you wanted it?” he asked, and she nodded.

“Should we call it in?” he asked. “Try to look for the shooter?”

She shook her head. “He’ll be long gone. Let him wonder why there’s no report made of the shooting. Let him make the mistake and out himself trying to find out where Ryan is.”

“OK, that’s a plan,” he said.

“But first we go in there and wait for them to fix Ryan’s leg,” she said and walked into the building. “Plus, I’m blood type O. I can donate if they need it.”

She meant to say that they first have to make sure Ryan survived. But the alternative was too horrific for her to face. So she locked it away with all the other things she never thought about unless she absolutely had to.

* * *

TJ procured some clean clothes for them since their own were covered in blood. Grey sweatpants and matching hoodie for himself and jeans and an oversized black sweater for her. Dead people’s clothes, most likely, but Lynn tried not to think too hard about that. She’d also spent at least half an hour in the bathroom, washing all the blood away. It’d gotten everywhere somehow. Her hair, under her nails, all over her face. She didn’t think too hard about that either. Acknowledging the fact that she was covered in blood, Ryan’s blood, the blood of another person she loved and lost.

Almost lost.

She had to hang onto that hope. The night was still pitch dark outside the waiting room windows, but not as impenetrable as the darkness in her mind.

They’d been informed Ryan needed surgery two hours ago and that was the last update they got.

TJ didn’t try to fill the time with unnecessary talk. He knew her well enough to know it was not the time. He just arranged for a team of agents to come watch the hospital in the morning.

“Do you have a suspect in mind?” he asked just as a surgeon in green scrubs appeared from one of the many doors lining the waiting area.

Lynn tried to read his face, but all she could definitely tell from his expression was that he was exhausted.

“Your… the man you brought in is in recovery,” he said. “The operation went well. He should regain full function of his leg. The bullet nicked the femoral artery, but missed bone. He was lucky. We recovered the bullet from his leg. I suppose you want it.”

“Yes,” TJ said, while Lynn was still processing the good news, lingering on every sentence just to make sure she understood it correctly.

“I have to say that it is highly irregular for us not to report the gunshot wound,” the surgeon said. “We are obligated by law to do so.”

“Can I see him?” Lynn asked.

“Yes, he should be coming out of anesthesia now. But only for five minutes.”

He led the way through the door he came in from, and then a second door that opened into a huge, dimly lit recovery room. Ryan was in one of the beds, attached to tubes and monitors, his face deathly white under the LED lights over the bed.

“I’ll take that bullet now,” TJ said to the surgeon and then she and Ryan were alone in the room, the smell of disinfectant burning her nose.

He didn’t seem to see her until she was standing right next to his bed. Then he smiled.

“Hey,” she said and smiled too as she took his hand.

“Hey,” he said in a raspy voice.

“The doc says you’re gonna be fine,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

“But it kinda is,” she said, leaning down and kissing his forehead.

He had trouble focusing his eyes on her face once she straightened back up.

“I’m gonna go and fix it now,” she said. “And then I’ll be right back.”

His hand moved like he wanted to squeeze her hand tighter, but didn’t have the strength. So she squeezed his.

“Be careful,” he whispered, his eyes fluttering shut.

She told him she would be and left the room, trying hard not to look back. Trying very hard not to just stay.

“What’s our next step?” TJ asked once she was back in the waiting room.

She took the evidence bag with the single rifle bullet from his hand. “I’ll take this to The Factory for processing and you wait here for backup. Don’t leave until they get here. He might come to finish the job.”

“Do you know who it is?”

She had her suspicions, but she wasn’t sure. A phone call she’d make later would clarify it.

“I think it’s someone I’ve known my whole life,” she said. “And someone who will reveal himself only to me. Because he’s been waiting for me for a long time.”

“Who?” TJ persisted, very unlike him.

“I have to be sure first,” she said. “Can I have your car keys?”

He handed them to her, but with a frown on his face that suggested he didn’t think much of the idea.

“It has to be this way,” she said, took the keys and left.

The car smelled of drying blood, so she kept the windows down despite the freezing air. With each mile back to Ryan’s house she was more and more awake. More focused. More alert.

No one else would get hurt by this guy.

She’d make sure of it by giving him what he was after. Her.

49

Once back at Ryan’s house, Lynn locked the evidence bag with the bullet safely in the safe in the back of TJ’s SUV. Then she got a change of clothes from her rental car, went inside, fed the dogs and cats, and let them all out. She spent about half an hour cleaning the blood in the living room and on the porch. She stuffed the bloody blanket into a garbage bag, along with the dead people’s clothes she got at the hospital and anything else that had even a speck of blood on it.

The animals were agitated, Lady most of all. Smart and intuitive as she was, she could probably tell Ryan was safe now. But she’d waited outside the bathroom while Lynn took a shower and dressed and sat beside her, while she made the call to Sing-Sing prison. Her brother confirmed what she already knew in her heart. What she’d already known for a while, but couldn’t quite face.

Lady walked right by her side all the way to the door.

“I can’t take you with me,” she told the dog. “But he’ll be back soon, and everything will be fine then.”

Lady whined. Even barked as she exited the house and closed the door behind her firmly. Lynn hoped it didn’t mean the dog was sensing that things were about to go very wrong. But there was no other way.

It was time to face her past. And finally deal with it.

She got the gun from the glove box and tucked it into the holster that she’d put on over her tight black sweater for easy access. The oversized parka she put on over it wouldn’t hinder that access.

She considered walking. But then she might change her mind and not go through with it. She got in her rental car and didn’t think much as she drove the short distance. Her heart was in her throat as she turned onto the long driveway that led to her childhood home. But she ignored her nervousness, bottled it up and shoved it deep down, right next to all her memories of what had happened at that house.

The new owner kept the driveway clear of fallen branches and weeds. He’d even made sure there were no potholes just as her father had always done.

The house with its white paneling shone bright in the morning light. But it was still the darkest thing Lynn had ever seen. As she stopped the car beside it, she almost turned right around.

But there was no one else who could do this. It had to be her.

She got out of the car, her legs shaking so hard her knees buckled twice before she reached the front door. The wooden porch hardly creaked. Everything was freshly painted and clean.

The door was unlocked. She didn’t even have to use the Swiss Army Knife she’d taken from Ryan’s kitchen to pick the lock with.

Every memory of walking through that door, from her first childhood memories to the night she found her mom lying in a pool of her own blood by the kitchen counter were rolled into a tight, dark ball in her mind. All vivid. None useful.

She flipped on the light by the door.

The house was spotless. Even cleaner than how her mom had kept it.

The kitchen counter shone, nothing out of place on it. But it was the living room that caught all her attention.

The furniture was rearranged, the sofas all turned to face the fireplace. And the mantle was covered with photos. Mostly of Lynn. But there were some of her brother, too. And of her parents. Her father in his Sheriff’s uniform. Her mother sitting in one of the two rocking chairs on the porch. Her brother riding his bike. There were no pictures of her sister Kate.

She’d never seen any of these photos.

And the ones of her in New York City as a university student could never have been in this house. She was wearing her Columbia hoodie in them, so they must’ve been taken after this house was already sold.

She considered just sitting down on one of the sofas and waiting. But the door leading to her father’s study was open, the chair in which he died tucked neatly behind the desk. It had been cleaned of his blood. The only thing on the desk was a leather-bound notebook, just like the ones that contained all his notes. The missing notebook.

She heard the front door open and close before she had the chance to open the notebook.

“You didn’t waste any time getting here,” she said without turning. “Bobby.”

He looked taken aback as she faced him.

“How long have you known?” he asked.

“Not long,” she admitted. “And I wasn’t sure until right now. I didn’t want to be. I hoped I was wrong. Why, Bobby?”

She knew better than to ask a dark triad personality type that question, but it just came tumbling out.

A lot of things darkened his face. Shame, rage, doubt, disappointment.

“I love you, Lynn,” he said. “I’ve always loved you. And you just disappeared on me. I was all set to help you put your life back together after your family was gone, but you couldn’t get out of here fast enough. I wanted us to be a family, but you barely noticed me. Even after I took all your problems away.”

It was not the answer she had expected. Nor did she expect the painful cramp in her stomach as she hoped what she heard in the subtext wasn’t actually real.

“What do you mean you took my problems away?” she asked, fighting the urge to back away. “Alicia wasn’t a problem. She was my best friend.”

“She’d tried to drag you down into the gutter with her,” he snapped. “Drinking, partying, fucking every guy who gave her the time of day… how long before you were doing the same thing?”

“It wasn’t like that. She was just having some fun.”

He laughed harshly. “Oh, yeah, right, some fun. It had already started… you with that Connor guy… how was that OK? He would ruin you.”

“Never,” she heard herself say and watched his face turn even darker.

“It was the perfect plan… he’d get arrested… and you’d come to me.”

“You’re still working on that plan, aren’t you?” she asked mockingly. “And still failing.”

It was the wrong approach. She should be gaining his trust, playing into his sick fantasy, being the woman he worshiped all these years. But she couldn’t do that. Just talking to him made her nauseous.

“True,” he said and grinned. “He’s a tough one to get rid of. He just won’t stay down. But that’s OK, because you’ve come to me now.”

He took a step towards her and she couldn’t help backing away this time. Hitting the edge of her father’s desk told her plainly that she didn’t have anywhere to run. Not that she planned on running. Taking him into custody wasn’t her primary objective in coming here today. But before that, she wanted to know why.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” he pleaded. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

But he was going to if that’s what it took. She heard that plainly under the whiny tone of his voice.

“What other problems have you solved for me?” she asked, bile rising in her throat. She’d feel a whole lot sicker once she heard the answer, she was sure.

“Your father was being so hard on you and your mother, she never understood, never protected you… “

“So, you killed them? And pinned it on Drew?” She needed to hear him say it. Only then would she let herself believe it was true.

“It was easy,” he said. “Drew was such a fuck up. It was a two birds with one stone kind of situation. He’d have dragged you down too, eventually. He’s better off where he is. Prison suits him.”

“You’re the one who ruined my life,” she heard herself say. “You’re the one who dragged me down.”

He smiled. Kindly, of all things. “I knew this would be a shock to you. But I would’ve helped you through it. I would’ve shown you just how much better off you were without them. And with me. Please don’t hate me.”

Hate was a very soft word for what she was feeling right now. Too kind by far. Loathing was too soft too. A word that would describe it didn’t exist. But there was a remedy for it. A bullet through his heart. Or his head. Or both. Just to make sure he really was dead. The way he made sure with Alicia and his other victims.

This was the real reason she hadn’t shared her suspicions with TJ.

She hadn’t come here to bring Bobby in. She came here to kill him. For taking Alicia’s life and ruining hers, and Ryan’s life and the lives of all the other women he killed and their families. For posing as a good guy while he did all that. For fooling everyone. For doing it in her name.

She was glad to be leaning against her dad’s desk. It hid how badly she was shaking.

“I’m not a bad guy,” he said and inched closer still. “I tried to help all those girls. I tried to keep them from dragging everyone else down with them as they turned down the wrong path. Some I helped. Some I had to stop.”

“Frances?” she asked. “She wasn’t a bad kid. She just saw you break into my cabin, didn’t she?”

Shame lit in his eyes, but turned to rage immediately.

“She wasn’t supposed to be there,” he snapped. “But her and that no-good Maguire kid had taken to fucking in the empty cabins. But that’s fine. She was too far gone to be saved. I just gave up on her a little early is all.”

Lynn didn’t think she could get more nauseous, but she did. He managed to find a ready excuse for everything. One that made him out to be the good guy. But she expected no less from his twisted mind.

“And poor old Arthur?” she asked. “Why’d he have to die?”

“I thought maybe he had something on me,” he said. “He was so doggedly investigating Alicia’s case that he might have found something real.”

“Might have?” Lynn asked. “You killed him for no reason?”

He shook his head. “Not for no reason. To show you what a low-life Ryan is. You weren’t having none of it from me.”

“You put all those photos of Ryan into Arthur’s evidence folder, didn’t you? To frame him?” she asked.

“It wasn’t a bad plan,” he said, kind of sulkily.

“And you killed his friend Nate Rancor and his daughter Tonya just to frame him too, didn’t you?”

“She was a no-good junkie and she was about to get her kid back,” he snapped. “And her father had no legs and was an alcoholic. So all in all, not actually a terrible loss, now is it?”

“The teddy bear charm at Shanna’s crime scene and the carving in the tree she was tied to… that was you too,” she said. “All to keep Ryan and me apart?”

“You’re so smart,” he said and looked like he actually meant it. “Yes, I needed to keep you two apart. But leaving the charm from your bracelet at the crime scene was intended to bring you back home. I knew you’d come to me as soon as you found it and you did.”

At the time, Lynn barely gave a second thought to calling Deputy Bobby Hill and arranging to pick up evidence in Alicia’s case. There was no way she could’ve put two and two together, but that didn’t stop her from wishing she had now.

“Well, you failed. Again,” she said and pulled her gun from the holster. She was done listening. She’d heard enough. More than enough. More than she ever wanted to hear.

He put his hand up, but laughed as he did. “Come on now, Lynn. Don’t be like this.”

He took another step towards her.

“Stop or I’ll shoot,” she warned him.

“Yes, I see it in your eyes,” he said. “That was your plan all along, wasn’t it? Such a dark and twisted mind you have.”

She almost rose to the bait and called him out as the twisted one. But she refrained. She was done listening to him speak.

But her finger couldn’t squeeze the trigger. As angry as she was, as full of hate and worse for him, she couldn’t stoop to his level. Couldn’t kill him in cold blood like he’d killed Alicia, her parents, Frances and all the others. As much as she yearned for him to be gone from the world, she couldn’t do it.

“I’m gonna put my hands down now,” he said pleasantly. “There are no bullets in your gun. I took them out a while back, just in case. And you didn’t check.”

Lynn didn’t think, she just took a shot, aiming for his leg. The gun clicked uselessly.

“Not such a smart girl after all,” he said. “You should always check your weapon.”

“Rot in hell you sick bastard!” She shouted and hurled herself at him, aiming the butt of her weapon at his face. Surprise was the only thing she had left, because she would sooner die than try and sweet talk her way past him.

Surprise didn’t get her far. As well trained as she was in self-defense and overpowering suspects, she was no match for him and his rage-fueled adrenaline. He fought her with all the ferociousness of a jilted man rejected by the object of his affection.

She thought maybe she had him as her kick finally collided with his knee in just the right way for him to stumble. All it would’ve taken then would be a well-aimed elbow to the nape of the neck and then a kick in the temple to make sure he really was down.

But her own temple hit the edge of the desk before she could execute that perfect plan.

She woke up as he tossed her down the basement stairs. Somehow, she managed to crawl back up just as he slammed the door shut.

“You cool off in there now,” he shouted. “We’ll talk more later.”

The darkness in the basement was absolute. Except for the flashes of light crossing her vision from the blow. But they didn’t do much to help her see. She remembered where the light switch was though but finding it in the dark was another matter. The flashes of light from the blow had subsided by the time she finally did.

Her coat was gone, her phone and Swiss Army Knife with it. And the basement below her was as bare as she had left it when she cleared out the house before selling it. The door to the secret room was firmly shut.

She now vaguely remembered trying to open it when she was cleaning the basement. Remembered giving up on it, thinking the new owner could deal with it because she was so tired and so sad, and so very ready to leave it all behind. She never left it behind. As being back here clearly proved.

It was a total mistake coming here without backup. Total craziness thinking she could just kill him and be done with it.

TJ would figure it out. But he wouldn’t even miss her until at least a couple more hours from now. By then Bobby might decide she meant more to him dead than alive.

She really should’ve played into his fantasy of the two of them together.

But that could never happen. And it won’t after he returned.

The only thing she should’ve done differently was check that her gun was loaded.

50

The teams TJ had called to come to the hospital were running late because of a ten-car pileup on the highway that they all somehow managed to get stuck in the middle of with no way around. The fresh recruits weren’t what they used to be, and he was too young to feel this jaded about that whole problem.

To add to his annoyance, Lynn wasn’t replying to his texts asking for updates. And the storm front that hadn’t been expected to hit until tomorrow was moving fast from the north and was expected to hit as early as late afternoon. TJ hoped the newscasters were just hyping it up to be more dire than it would actually end up being, because that’s what reporters did. But it still didn’t look good.

He was stuck at the hospital, Ryan had nothing new to tell him no matter how many different ways he asked the questions. Could be he was just muddled, since he was still sleeping most of the time, because of the amount of blood he’d lost.

Who the hell decides to go chasing a killer into the woods in the middle of the night on their own just on the off-chance that they’ll be there? And does so unarmed?

Clearly, Ryan.

Lynn’s been known to do the same thing once or twice too.

These two might very well be perfect for each other. Geez.

But is that what she was doing today?

He didn’t like the look on her face when she refused to tell him who she suspected. He’d seen a similar look on her face before and always when she was about to do something dangerous. Some cases called for those kinds of actions, and he’d gotten himself into a lot of those same kind of situations over the years while they worked as undercover operatives. But this case hit too close to home for Lynn. Actually, it hit directly home in more ways than one. He worried she was much too close to think clearly.

But there wasn’t much he could do, stranded at the hospital as he was. She’d never forgive him if he left Ryan alone here before backup arrived.

His phone pinged with a new text, and he reached for it so fast it slipped from his fingers and went crashing to the floor. The last thing he needed today was a broken phone. But that’s exactly what he now had. The screen had cracked into an intricate pattern of thin lines, the design like a spider web.

He could still read Lynn’s text.

I’m heading into the city now. Just had to take care of something first.

But he couldn’t reply. The screen was dead to the touch.

His backup phone and laptop were both in his car which Lynn had taken.

The sky outside was quickly turning dark even though they should still have a couple of hours of daylight left. Every so often bright white and yellow flashes of lightning rent the clouds. Seems the storm had come early. Now he could only hope it wouldn’t be as bad as forecast. The way everything else was going, he didn’t think there was much hope of that.

When the hell did he get this careless and sloppy? Something like this would never have happened back when he was working undercover. He always had backups in place and within easy access. Now he didn’t even have a weapon on him.

Maybe he should just make his next trip to the ocean permanent. He was getting slow. Useless. Careless.

But at least Lynn had checked in.

He’d get a new phone as soon as the agents arrived, then he’d find Lynn. And together they’d finally put this nightmare to bed.

51

The basement door had been replaced since Lynn lived here. Back then it was made of white wood like the rest of the doors in the house, the knob a flimsy, black old-timey thing that could be unlocked with your nails. Just like all the other doors in the house. Her sister Kate had shown her that trick, back when she still had time for her much younger sister.

Now it was replaced with a stainless-steel monstrosity fitted with a lock meant for front doors and sturdy enough to keep any thief out. She was pretty sure it had a locking mechanism that went all the way around for extra protection. But that didn’t stop her from slamming her shoulder into it a couple of times to try and open it. The basement had no windows. The door was the only way out.

It might as well have been a solid brick wall for all the give it had. Now her shoulders ached on top of everything else, she was seeing bright yellow flashes again and she was still locked in the basement.

It was dumb to have incapacitated herself further with that stupidity. Bobby could be back any minute. Her only way out of this house would be through him.

The stairs themselves hadn’t been replaced though. They were the same creaking, rickety things they’d been when she still lived here.

And her tumble down them broke off a piece of one and cracked another. At least one good thing came out of that fiasco. Bobby would never have thrown her down the stairs if she hadn’t called him names and argued with him.

Her head was spinning again, and her nails were all broken and bleeding by the time she managed to pry free one of the stair treads. The nails that came out of it had looked promising for picking the lock to the main door, but they all broke immediately. Too rusted and old.

The board was heavy enough to do some damage if she managed to slam it against Bobby’s head.

But there was nowhere to hide so she could surprise him with it. The landing by the door was non-existent and the basement was free of anything to hide behind. The harsh white light from the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling illuminated everything.

Her only hiding place was behind the door to the secret room.

She’d become aware of the smell of rot while breaking off the stair tread, but chalked it up to being in an underground room of an old house in the forest.

But the smell was actually originating from behind the secret room door. Or at least it was strongest there.

This door hadn’t been replaced. But it had been metal to begin with. Metal that had started to rust and peel away at the edges. She’d assume the door was actually rusted shut, had it not been clear that had been opened recently. A circular groove in the concrete floor suggested it had been opened often. The knob on it was old too. Maybe not as flimsy as the ones on the upstairs doors, but not that much better.

She went back to the stairs and dug out another nail.

But she didn’t need it at all. The door wasn’t locked. It creaked open about half an inch as soon as she turned the knob.

The smell of decomposing flesh engulfed her.

How she could mistake it for the smell of regular rot before she didn’t know. It wasn’t the kind of smell you forget after you’ve smelled it once.

Her hands shook as she opened the door all the way, letting the light from the main room spill inside. It wasn’t a big room, made even smaller by steel shelving units of the kind her dad used to organize the basement back in the day. They covered two of the walls completely. But it was the third wall that would give her nightmares for years to come.

There was a twin bed pressed against it, complete with the pink heart-shaped headboard. It was her old childhood bed, which she had outgrown so long ago she’d forgotten what it looked like.

There was no way to tell the original color of the bedding, because it was soaked through with the decomp fluids of various colors and textures.

Bobby had clearly kept his victims in here for a time.

She could only hope they were already dead when he brought them here. But she feared they were alive, because some of the stains looked a lot like blood.

She’d been nauseous before, now she almost puked.

She turned her attention to the shelving units to steady herself. They were full of souvenirs. Trophies. Neatly packed away in clear plastic boxes were the dead women’s clothes, jewelry, even locks of hair in some cases. She recognized Alicia’s white Chuck Taylor sneakers in one corner, adorned as they were by swirls, flowers and hearts she liked to draw on them with Sharpies. That they’d both liked to draw on their sneakers.

This room contained all the evidence they’d ever need to prove Bobby was the killer. And more. The stuff inside it would give closure to so many grieving families. It would give closure to Lynn as well.

Now she only had to get out of here and show it to the world.

She picked up her board and used it to smash the lightbulb, casting the room into pitch darkness. Then she felt her way back to the door of Bobby’s trophy room. It wasn’t hard, the smell guided her.

She sat down on the floor beside it and waited, alone in the dark with the dead. The only one standing between them and the man who took their voices away. It was exactly where she belonged. Where she had always been meant to be.

52

In the darkness, time passes differently. The now gives way to the past and try as she might, Lynn couldn’t stop her mind from wandering down that slippery path. It showed her all the happy times she’d spent in this house, even in this very basement, hiding as they played, helping her dad tinker with something or other. And that one time, when a bad winter storm threatened to bring all the trees growing around the house down on it.

She’d been very young then, maybe eight years old, and her mom had sung to them and read them stories to keep the fear away. Her dad had played Monopoly with them that night even though board games were so not his thing. Lynn hadn’t been afraid that night. And she’d forgotten what fear was since.

Because it was finding your mom and dad shot to death in your home. Your best friend lying dead in a clearing. Your brother in jail. You, alone in the world.

She had no more fear because she’d faced it all and lived.

She imagined she could hear that same kind of bad storm raging outside now. And she was not afraid.

Just tired. Just hungry and thirsty. Just in pain. Physically and in her heart.

Several times she thought she heard footsteps upstairs. But each time she thought that the door didn’t open so she must’ve imagined it.

She heard them again now and gripped the board tighter. Her fingers ached and pulsed in pain. At first, she stood up each time she heard footsteps, but that was getting harder and harder to manage now. Darkness had a way of sapping all your strength too. Maybe because it was so easy to imagine the nothing in total darkness. Or maybe her injuries were more severe than she thought.

This time the lock clicked and the door opened.

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” Bobby’s sickly-sweet voice echoed through the basement.

It brought back yet another memory. She was maybe eleven years old, hiding under her dad’s worktable, knees pressed to her chin, her heart thumping and Bobby yelling this same sentence in a cracked teenage voice down the basement stairs. Being her brother’s best friend, he’d often played hide and seek and other games with them. He had found her that time. Today better be different.

She heard him flip on the light switch a few times.

“You took out the light,” he said. “Smart.”

Lynn was hiding behind the open door of his death room. Her ideal scenario had been to wait until he got close, whack him over the head with the board, then lock him inside the room. But she was still sitting on the floor and didn’t know if she could risk standing up now.

“But I’m smarter,” he added and then a bright flashlight beam made the room appear washed in daylight.

“I see you’ve found my room,” he said as he descended the stairs. “What did you think?”

She decided to risk it and stood, but had to lean heavily on the board to do it. She was numb to the pain while she sat, but now all of it came back with a vengeance. Her head pounded, her arms burned, and her legs ached so badly all she wanted to do was sit back down. Or lie down. That would be even better. The way the room spun all around didn’t bode well for this second attempt at overpowering him either.

“I think you’re insane,” she said, stepping into the light. “And I’m sorry I ever considered you my friend.”

Her Plan B was to make him stumble down the stairs not knowing one of the treads was missing. That one seemed more plausible than going another round of one-on-one with him in her current condition.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” he said. He was still inching down the stairs carefully. She’d have to make him madder.

“You know what I despise the most about you?” she asked. “It’s how you’re such a coward that you must befriend your victims before killing them. So they’ll trust you. So they won’t fight back. Because you’re weak. Why don’t you come down here and find out what happens when someone fights back?”

Insulting his ego did the trick. He gasped, hissed, “You bitch,” and charged down the stairs.

The cracked stair went first, propelling him forward and just as he regained his balance, the missing step took him down all the way. The flashlight fell from his hands and Lynn dived for it. The metal-encased thing was a much better weapon than the old wooden board.

The fall stunned him, but he was already getting back up. She didn’t think as she jumped on him, hitting him with the flashlight as hard as she could. He was taller than her and stronger. And wide enough to block the entire staircase. But she found an opening and took it, sliding past him and crawling up the stairs as fast as she could.

She was almost at the door when he grabbed her ankle and tried to pull her down. But she’d somehow found the strength of ten as she brought her other leg around and kicked him in the head. He loosened his grip on her ankle, and she managed to free herself from his grasp. Maybe all the dead women whose belongings he’d hidden away down here were lending her strength.

She reached the door. And then she was in the hall. She kicked the door shut just as he was coming through it after her. The satisfying thud and his yelp of pain gave her even more strength. But the door wouldn’t close all the way. His hand was blocking it. She slammed it hard a few times, but he wouldn’t budge. Just yelped in pain each time she slammed the door, calling her names while he held on to the doorframe.

The woods were her only option.

She didn’t even bother trying the door. He’d probably locked it. Instead, she slammed the flashlight against the first window she reached, the sound of glass breaking the most satisfying thing she’d ever heard.

She hadn’t just imagined hearing the storm. The sky was a roiling dark gray mass, and the trees were groaning and screaming in the gale force winds. Snow was already falling in huge icy chunks.

Bobby’s car was parked in front of the house. The orange pickup they’d been looking for. He’d bought it off her brother Drew a couple of months before Alicia’s murder. It had been light blue then and all rusted and banged up. It was the car Ryan’s cousins saw Alicia get into the night she died. But Bobby had lovingly restored it over the years. Drew told her about selling him the pickup when she called him this morning. The rest she deduced.

Her own car was gone from the driveway.

“You won’t leave me again!” Bobby shouted from inside, sounding crazed.

She bolted off the porch and ran as fast as she could towards the trees. She remembered to turn off the flashlight.

Snow was sticking to her feet, but the canopy was still keeping the worst of it away from the ground. He wouldn’t be able to follow her footsteps. And the noise the wind was making covered the noise she was making.

She could feel him behind her, but dared not look back. That was a sure-fire way to stumble and fall when running in the woods. Used to be, she knew where every furrow, every root, damn near every rock was in the woods by her house. But everything was different now and everything was dark.

All she had to do was keep running.

Only she couldn’t do that anymore. Her legs wouldn’t let her. What little strength she had regained in that dark basement went to fighting him off. Her whole body was cold, her teeth chattering from the cold. She lost the grip on the flashlight. It had grown too icy to hold.

Even with all the noise the wind was making in the trees she could hear him huffing and puffing and thudding after her.

And then the worst happened. Her numb foot snagged a root and down she went. Like a useless sack of logs.

Then he was on her, so close she could smell the coffee on his breath.

“Gotcha,” he said, and she could hear the smile on his face, but not see it. “You can’t run away from me. We’re meant to be together. Dead or alive.”

“Not on my watch,” TJ yelled and hit Bobby so hard it propelled him off her and several feet away besides.

She’d never been so happy to hear her partner’s voice. And he’d helped her out of plenty of tight spots over the years.

He made short work of overpowering Bobby. When she finally managed to sit up and look, he had him on the ground, handcuffed, and was kneeling on his back for good measure.

“What did we say about flying into danger solo?” he asked as he saw her looking. His voice was toneless and clipped, the way it always got when he was very worried.

“That it sometimes has to be done?” she countered.

“Good, at least you still have your sense of humor.”

He called in their location, telling the dispatcher to hurry. Lynn managed to hold on to consciousness long enough to hear that. And then the darkness she’d spent the whole day fighting finally took her.

53

The moment Lynn woke up in her hospital bed, she was ready to leave. Even though she still got very woozy when she tried to sit up, let alone stand. But that would take care of itself. She wanted to see Ryan. She wanted to tell her brother that she’d found the man who framed him, and she wanted another crack at Bobby.

But most of all she wanted to put all of it behind her. For real this time. Not like twenty years ago when she just bottled it all up and ran away from it.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” TJ said as he walked in. He was carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and his phone in the other.

“And I’m on my way out of here,” she said, and threw off her blanket. The pain in her ribs made her freeze for a moment, panting as she tried to fight through it.

“Easy now,” TJ said. “You’ve got three cracked ribs, a concussion, and a busted-up knee. Not to mention about a thousand scrapes and bruises.”

“It’s nothing,” she insisted. “I can heal on the move.”

“Funny, that’s exactly what your boyfriend said. As soon as the anesthesia wore off, he wanted to go after you,” TJ said as he walked up to the bed. “Seems like that’s another thing you two have in common. Though it’s all really just one thing. Foolhardiness.”

“Is Ryan here?”

Funny how the thought of seeing him made everything else seem less relevant or dire.

“He should be here later today,” TJ said and pulled the covers back over her bare legs before sitting down in the chair next to the bed. “Then maybe neither of you will be in such a hurry to go risk your lives again.”

“Stop dramatizing. I’m fine.”

You’re—”

“Lucky to be alive?” She finished the sentence for him.

He chuckled. “I don’t know if I’d go that far. Maybe lucky to be awake and talking. You’ve been out for two days.”

That took her by surprise. She felt like the rescue in the snow had happened just hours ago.

“Yup, between the concussion and all your other injuries you haven’t so much as opened your eyes fully until just now. I was beginning to worry.”

She laughed at that understatement. “Seriously, though, if you hadn’t come when you did, I probably wouldn’t ever be opening my eyes again.”

“I won’t argue with that. That Bobby guy… he’s something else. Schizophrenic was the word thrown around by Binna. Along with psychopath and narcissist, of course. She says she hasn’t seen one that was all three blended so seamlessly together since the 80s.”

Lynn didn’t like where this was headed. “He’s not talking, is he?”

TJ shook his head. “He’s fully back in his friendly deputy persona. Refuses to acknowledge he was ever anything but. Or that anything at all happened at your family home.”

“I’ll get him talking,” Lynn said and made the same mistake as before as she tried to get out of bed.

“You’ll stay here and rest,” TJ said firmly. “Between what we found at the house and his home, we got him. For the murder of your friend, the ten murders we were investigating and several more we didn’t even know about. The bullet they dug out of Ryan’s leg was also a match to one of his rifles. And he was an avid journaler, so there’s more…”

He cleared his throat and looked at her as though trying to see if she was ready to hear what he wanted to say.

“He also killed my parents, I know,” she said. “He told me.”

TJ nodded. “I’m so sorry about that.”

She leaned back on the pillow. “To think, if only I’d stayed in Green Haven, how many lives would’ve been spared.”

“None of this is on you,” he said softly, unconvincingly, because they’d never lied to each other.

“Indirectly, all of it is,” she said.

“But he won’t hurt anyone else ever again.” TJ was no good at this kind of comforting talk. And she was no good at being comforted.

“How’d you find me, anyway?” she asked, deciding it was best to change the subject.

“I would’ve come sooner,” he said. “But my phone broke, my backup was in the car you took, and it was a hassle getting a new one. The bastard sent me a text from your phone, saying you were heading into the city. And if I wasn’t so pissed off over breaking my phone and preoccupied with finding a new one, I would’ve noticed something was off sooner. You’d never say city unless you meant you were going to your apartment, which you had absolutely no reason to go to.”

Lynn chuckled. “At least you got there in the end. But how did you know I was at my old house?”

“I tracked your phone,” he said. “He’d switched it off, but that was the last location it pinged at. I drove up just in time to see him chase you off the porch. Why didn’t you tell me you suspected him?”

He asked the question in such a toneless, matter-of-fact voice that she knew it had bothered him. They always trusted each other implicitly after all.

“I went alone because my plan was to kill him,” she said, choosing total honesty like always. “No taking him into custody. No due process. I planned to hear why he did what he did and then execute him for what he had done.”

TJ’s eyes widened for a second, but then he nodded. “I get it. The guy ruined your childhood.”

“Yeah.”

“I used to think that if I ever got my hands on the guy who shot and killed my fiancée and our unborn child, I’d kill him on the spot too,” he said. “But when it came to it, I didn’t. Because what we do is too important to risk just to get revenge on one sick bastard. Think of all the other sick bastards who’d walk free if I did.”

They shared a silence, because there was nothing left to add.

Then the door opened, and Ryan was standing there, leaning heavily on a crutch, his face still almost as pale as the night he almost bled out in her arms.

TJ stood up. “I’ll leave you to it. But I don’t want to hear either of you tried to leave here without the doctor’s say so.”

Ryan grinned at her, and she smiled back.

“Yeah, I think we’ll be OK now,” Ryan said.

And he was absolutely right. As long as he was here, then there really wasn’t anywhere else she needed to be. Or wanted to be.

EPILOGUE

Lynn was fully dressed, ready to leave the hospital, equipped with her own crutches to match Ryan’s, because her knee would take a while yet to bear her full weight. But she suddenly wasn’t in such a hurry to go anywhere.

She just got off the phone with her brother Drew, finally informing him that she kept her word and found the man who killed their parents and framed him. But she also had to tell him that it was his childhood best friend. Drew raged and cried, but mostly whooped for joy at the prospect of being a free man again. So Lynn didn’t go into how it would most likely be a long, drawn out process before Drew was actually freed.

Ryan joined her by the window and looked down at the parking lot in front of the hospital entrance too. It was covered by reporters and cameras. Eric Munch, the reporter who had revealed her and TJ’s identity on CNN, making it impossible for them to ever work undercover again, was standing front and center, looking smug as ever. She didn’t want to face him, or any of the rest of them.

“We could go out the back,” Ryan suggested.

“And then what?” she said as she faced him. “Just go back to your parents' house and hide out like none of this ever happened?”

“That’s one idea,” he said. “Although living with my parents isn’t high on my priority list.”

“What are we even doing? Where do we go from here?” she asked, fully aware she was lashing out at the wrong person. But also that they needed to have this conversation.

She’d been putting it off for the last two days while they shared this hospital room. It had been terrific. But now it was time to face the real world again. And that world was different than it had been just six days ago when they fell asleep on the sofa together.

“What are we doing?” she asked again after he showed no sign of answering. Unless she took the blank, kind of scared look on his face for an answer. One she didn’t want to hear. “Are we just chasing something that could’ve been? Just finishing up our unfinished story from twenty years ago?”

He narrowed his eyes at her as he laid his palm against her cheek. “Call it what you will. But I definitely wouldn’t say we’re finishing anything any time soon. Starting something is more like it.”

She leaned into his palm. “Yeah?”

“For sure.”

“Then count me in.”

She stood on her toes to kiss him, which was difficult enough with one good leg and impossible once she saw Evan standing in the doorway.

“Sorry, I should’ve knocked,” he said, but didn’t sound very apologetic at all.

“What is it?” Ryan asked with all the annoyance she felt too.

“I wanted to run something by Lynn before you go down there,” he said and came all the way into the room.

She just looked at him questioningly.

“We want you to be the next Sheriff,” he said.

It was the last thing she expected to hear so she had no comeback at all. She assumed the we he mentioned were the Ellington family, and not that he was referring to himself as a king might. Though he was so full of himself that she wouldn’t put the latter past him either.

“You’d be perfect for it,” Evan added. “With Bobby turning out to be a psycho serial killer, trust in the police force is in the dumps. But if you took over, the daughter of the last good Sheriff we had and the woman who brought down the serial killer posing as everyone’s friend… well, I’m sure you can see how that would be a very good thing.”

“I don’t know… “

“At least think about it,” Evan said.

She looked at Ryan who was smiling at her. “You always wanted to follow in your dad’s footsteps.”

“And you’re OK with staying in Green Haven?” she asked, feeling kind of foolish, but that was a big factor, so why pretend otherwise?

“Now that I’m no longer murder suspect number one, sure, why not?”

“It’s decided, then,” Evan said. “I’ll get the ball rolling and I think you should go ahead and announce it to the press outside. Let the people know, you know.”

“I’ll think about it,” Lynn said.

But she’d already decided. Maybe even back when Bobby had first suggested it.

They leaned on each other, Ryan and she, as they left the hospital. Good thing they hadn’t both injured the same leg, because otherwise they couldn’t be this in sync. But when were they ever not in sync? She hoped it would stay that way.

Because it was time to close the book on all the running away from her past and from herself that she’d done for the past twenty years.

And time to see what might’ve been if everything had gone according to her teenage plans.

* * *

THE END

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ALSO BY LJ BOURNE

E&M Investigations Series:

The Fall (Prequel #1)

The Fairytale Killer (Prequel #2)

Pretty Places (E&M Investigations, Book 1)

Bad Roads (E&M Investigations, Book 2)

Lazy Days (E&M Investigations, Book 3)

Ever After (E&M Investigations, Book 4)

Calm Waters (E&M Investigations, Book 5)

Lynn Rivers Mysteries Series

The Forgotten Girl, Book 1

The Lying Girl, Book 2

Lynn Rivers FBI Mysteries

A Life by the Sea (Novella)

You can also…

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LJ Bourne is the author of several gripping mystery and crime fiction novels. Her books transport you to vivid, life-like settings where you'll experience heart-pumping action and sinister twists with every turn of the page. With strong, fearless heroines and villains that would make even the toughest detective break a sweat, LJ's books are simply unputdownable.

LJ lives a peaceful life surrounded by her family, cats and koi fish near a tranquil pond by a forest. It's in this idyllic setting that she finds the inspiration to craft her next captivating murder mystery. Though the biggest mystery could actually be why the stories she writes take such dark turns.

Click here to sign up for her newsletter to receive exclusive previews of new books and stay updated on all new releases.

Title: The Lying Girl (Lynn Rivers Mysteries, Book Two)

Author: LJ Bourne

English e-Edition

Published by Waterside Dreams Press, 2024

Copyright © 2024 by LJ Bourne

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN 978-961-96695-0-1