SHADES OF DARKNESS

A ROWAN SHADE FBI THRILLER

DAVID ARCHER

MCKAY KATZ

DON'T MISS ANYTHING!

Join any Right House email list (including either of these authors) and immediately gain access to the entire Right House VIP Library. Which currently includes a full length prequel novel to this series, Shades of Innocence.

Or visit us online at

righthouse.com/email

(Easy to unsubscribe. No spam. Ever.)

PROLOGUE

Time ticks on the same for everyone.

Calendar pages turn.

There are days everyone shares, tiny remarks in the day planner, signs in the greeting card aisle at the grocery store.

Everyone anticipates these dates, even if they don’t mean anything to them. It’s simply one of the shared experiences of being human. A day can mean nothing at all to an individual person, but because it is significant to so many others, they are swept into acknowledging its existence anyway. Those without parents or children recognizing Mother’s Day. The jaded ignoring Valentine’s Day. Religious holidays to those of different faiths.

They’re all there. Meaning or not. Joy or not. Pain or not. They are there.

Other days take on their own meaning. Birthdays. Special events. Weddings.

These days get added to the calendar right alongside the little notations. They matter because they existed for that individual person not because they were shared.

That was what she had created. The entire calendar was available to her. She could choose any day. She could choose no day. It was up to her. In a way, that was invigorating. She had the choice. She had the ability to decide whatever she wanted. This was her moment, and she could have it just as she wanted it.

Or she didn’t have to choose at all. She could decide that wasn’t a day she wanted to put on her calendar. That was the thought that made her realize she wasn’t just choosing for herself. When she chose that day, she was choosing for everyone around her. They might never write it down. It might not get swept with a highlighter or written with a specially colored pen. But it would be anticipated. It would be acknowledged without consent. Every year it would come. She would have done that to them.

She didn’t know if she could do that.

This was meant to be about her.

Maybe she couldn’t do it. It was hers to decide, and the time was ticking.

The days on the calendar were turning.

ONE

“Who?” I ask, giving James a quizzical look as I pour myself a cup of coffee from the machine in his office.

“Natalia Rodriguez,” he repeats. “I thought you might have heard of her. Maybe you’d come across her in your research.”

I shake my head and take the seat across the desk from him. “It doesn’t sound familiar. Who is she?”

“She’s a seventeen-year-old girl who went missing from a beach resort about three months ago,” he tells me. “She was on vacation with her family and disappeared. No one has any idea where she was or when exactly she went missing; she just seemed to vanish.”

“I did see that on the news. She was with her parents and her brother, and the last time she was seen, she was going down for a walk on the beach to collect seashells.”

“Her brother watched her walk away, and they haven’t seen another trace of her.”

His words make my stomach drop a little, and I take a sip of the coffee to give myself a minute to pull myself together. I don’t want to show the emotion that’s building up inside me even though I’m sure he’s already expecting it. He knows what immediately came to mind when he described the girl going missing. It’s the only reason he told me about her.

It sounds just like when my sister disappeared.

Vivienne and I were teenagers the last time I saw her. We were on vacation with our father at our favorite resort, a spot where we’d made so many memories growing up. And yet, I don’t have any memories of that trip. I have none of when she vanished. The last thing I can remember about her is seeing her walking away. The next thought etched in my mind is being on my knees at the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean, my hands covered in blood and my father screaming my sister’s name as he searched for her.

To this day, I don’t know where Vivienne is. I don’t know what happened to her. Even though I paid a dear price for her disappearance.

It’s been thirteen years since my sister walked away. I’ve spent every one of them wondering what happened to her and trying to find her. Even when I was locked away, I was thinking about her. One day, I will find out where she went. I’ll bring my sister home.

Maybe Natalia Rodriguez will help.

“If she disappeared three months ago, why are you bringing her up to me now?” I ask.

James and I know each other well, but he isn’t going to bring me in to have a gossipy chat over coffee or mention a case just because it sounds like something I might be interested in. There’s something else he hasn’t mentioned to me.

“Her bathing suit was just found,” he says. “She disappeared in Florida, and the bathing suit was found in South Carolina.”

The abduction of a minor is enough to bring in the FBI, but when it clearly crosses state lines, it becomes an even more urgent situation.

“How are they sure that it’s her bathing suit?” I ask.

“It was custom made in her favorite colors and has her name embroidered along one of the leg openings,” James tells me. “It was given to her as a gift for her birthday at the beginning of the summer.”

“Was there any evidence found on the bathing suit?” I ask. “Anything they might be able to collect to help them find out who took her?”

“No,” he says. “That's one of the most baffling parts about it. There was absolutely nothing on the bathing suit. No blood. No hairs. Not even Natalia's DNA. And the bathing suit was absolutely intact. There was no damage to it at all like it had been torn or cut off of her. In fact, it was described as pristine. Some people found it lying out on a beach and thought it seemed strange. One of them recognized the name embroidered on it from seeing an article about Natalia’s disappearance and decided that they should bring it to the attention of the police. They didn't even touch it, so when it was collected, there was nothing on it at all. It looks like it was washed and then put on display on the beach.”

It's a disturbing thought. It’s stressful and emotional enough finding something that belongs to an apparent abduction or murder victim, but when it was clearly manipulated and found like it was being offered up to investigators as a taunt, there’s an added layer of fear and anger.

We haven’t found anything of Vivienne’s. Nothing that she was wearing, nothing that she had with her. No blood except for some of what was on my hands. The rest was my own, determined to be from cuts on the heels of my hands and my legs, possibly from a fall I don’t remember. I have longed to find even the slightest clue about her, and at the same time, I don’t know how I would handle it if something like Natalia’s bathing suit appeared.

“Did the brother say he definitely saw her walking toward the beach?” I ask. “It isn’t possible she told her parents she was going to the beach to hunt for seashells as a diversion so that she could go somewhere else? Maybe she met a boy during their time at the resort and she wanted to go spend some time with him without her parents knowing about it?”

“He said she was walking directly along the path they’d used every other day they were there to go to the beach. She had a serious boyfriend back home, so even though that was something that was brought up to the family during the initial investigation, they all said that wasn’t something they were even considering. She’d been with her boyfriend since they were both fourteen. She wouldn’t cheat on him,” James tells me.

“And there were no arguments or anything leading up her going down to the beach?”

“No. Everything was good in the family.”

“How about South Carolina? Do they have any kind of connection to the state? Do they live there or have visited there or anything?” I ask.

“They haven’t been able to come up with any kind of real connection. The extent of their link to the state is driving through it on their way to Florida when they would do road trips. They’ve never lived there or even done a formal visit to the state. Just stopped once or twice to stay the night during those long drives. They usually stop in Georgia,” James says.

There’s no reasonable explanation for the bathing suit being there and nothing to connect the family to where the suit was found. It only makes the disappearance more complicated and confusing.

I bring home the slim file of information James has on Natalia Rodriguez and start researching. I saw the story about her on the news, but it didn’t give me enough to really understand the girl or what happened. The file of information isn’t much more. It really does seem as cut and dried as James told me. This girl was there one minute and then she wasn’t the next.

Despite that, I can’t just brush this aside. I’ve found other girls who have disappeared in similar ways to Vivienne in my previous research and tried hard to piece them all together. I’ve never lost my desire to know what happened to my sister. My record was cleared when I was released from prison, my name changed, my life supposedly given back to me. But that doesn’t include having my sister.

I need to know where Vivienne went and who took her. It isn’t about me. It’s about her. It’s about my father, who I haven’t seen since shortly after I was convicted. No one has. Officially, he is also missing. Some say he’s dead. Others that he has run off and started a new life. I just say he’s my father and I want him to know what happened to his daughter. To both of his daughters.

I go back and forth about whether I believe Vivienne might have fallen victim to a serial killer. There’s been little to no real investigation into her now long-cold case in the eight years since I was released, leaving it fully up to me to find out the truth.

Half the time I think that she was taken by someone who saw her at the resort and immediately wanted her. Maybe something went wrong and she died. Maybe he still has her. The other half of the time I think about the circumstances of her death and the other women I’ve found whose disappearances have so many similarities and wonder if there is a serial abductor and possibly serial killer out there who hasn’t been identified.

So I continue to collect victims. I prowl through forums and obsessively search the news. There’s so little to know about Vivienne’s disappearance, but I take the details I have and search for anyone who sounds similar. So far, I’ve kept files on four, now five with Natalia. All four were around the same age when they disappeared from vacations with their families. They were staying at beach resorts and were last seen by family walking away to go somewhere but never returned. Of these five, Natalia is the only one of whom any trace has been located again.

Her bathing suit showing up is fascinating and terrifying. Someone did that on purpose. Now I’m on the hunt.

TWO

I don’t know how long I’ve been absorbed in my research when my phone rings. I’m expecting it to be James, but instead, I see Casey’s name across the screen. My best friend, perhaps my only friend, Casey lives a couple of doors down and was the first person I met when I came to live here. Bubbly and friendly, she showed up at my door while the moving van was still parked outside. She had a platter of fresh chocolate chip cookies and a basket of kitchen pantry staples – the kinds of things everybody forgets when they move but always needs right away.

“Hey,” I answer, pinning the phone between my shoulder and ear so I can finish typing what I was into the search bar.

“Hey,” she replies. “What are you doing?”

“Just some research,” I tell her.

“What are you doing later?” she asks.

I chuckle. “I don’t have any plans.”

“Okay, good. Then I’m coming over. We’ll order pizza,” she tells me.

That’s Casey’s way. Making plans to her means coming up with them and informing me of what we’re doing. I’m fine with that. My mind is always so wrapped around whatever case I’m working that if she didn’t take that initiative, we’d probably never see each other. I agree to her plan and keep working until she shows up a few minutes later.

She greets me with a hug. It’s always good to see her, and even in those moments when I feel like I should be continuing to work, which is pretty much always, I am grateful for the distraction, for the offering of something different in my routine. That is Casey. Spending time with her is as different from working as my life gets. She is nothing like the other agents I sometimes work with, nothing like James. Hanging out with her reminds me that even if I don’t always feel like it, there’s something more to me than just being an FBI special agent.

We order the pizza and take our usual places in the living room on the couch in front of the TV. It takes me away from my office and everything I have in there so I can’t commit the cardinal sin that Casey has completely forbidden – going over notes or doing any research when we are hanging out. The rule came from a case a couple of years ago when I missed an entire conversation but apparently had been acknowledging what she said the entire time, leading to some uncomfortable questions. After that, I was banned from having my computer or files out in the living room when she’s here.

It isn’t always easy. Tonight I find my mind wandering even as she settles in beside me. I know if my notes were out here with me, there would be nothing else that would even come close to venturing into my thoughts.

“How have you been?” I ask. “How did that date go?”

Casey went through a really rough breakup with her long-term boyfriend last year and has since been on the road to finding The One. With the capital “T” and “O.” She’s decided she’s done with the casual dating scene and doesn’t want to deal with it anymore. She just wants to find a guy she can settle down with and wrap that portion of her life up. I know it’s stressful for her, but at least her dating life is usually good for a few interesting stories.

“I can't believe I haven't even told you. Do you remember I told you I met this guy at the outdoor store, right?”

“Yeah,” I say. “You were getting that lantern thing for your brother's birthday.”

“Right,” Casey says. “And I was looking everywhere for it because I couldn't find the exact one that he had described to me, and apparently nobody works at that store because I couldn't find anybody to help me. So I went into a section where there was a big tent set up because I figured that if I was going to find a camping lantern, the best place to find it would be in a place surrounded by camping equipment.”

“Seems like sound logic to me,” I say. “Especially for a person who spends as little time outside as humanly possible.”

“Hey,” Casey protests. “I have a garden. And it has flowers and at least one tomato plant in it.”

“At least one?” I ask.

“There's another one, but it doesn't look particularly good right now,” she says. “I'm working on bringing it back to life, but I don't think that tomato plants are supposed to lie on the ground.”

“No, I think that's a pretty distinct sign that those tomatoes are not destined to be turned into a pizza sauce anytime soon,” I say.

Right as I say it, the doorbell rings, and Casey’s eyes widen. “Speaking of which.”

She gets up from the couch and goes over to the door to get our pizza. I go into the kitchen for plates and drinks. We reconvene at the couch and spend a couple of minutes getting our slices and enjoying the pizza, hot and fresh. After a few bites, she washes her pizza down with a big sip of her drink and dives back into her story.

“All right, so I went over to the camping section, and I found that giant tent that was set up in the middle like somebody was going to be roughing it right there in the middle of the store for the weekend. I still couldn't find this lantern no matter how much I was searching for it. And apparently, I started talking to myself a bit because I heard somebody laughing and I turned around, and there was the most gorgeous guy I think I have ever seen.”

“Right,” I say, “I remember. He climbed out of the tent or something.”

“Exactly. It was like he was my own personal mountain man sent to rescue me. He came out of the tent laughing because he heard me talking to myself, and I told him what I was looking for. He was immediately able to help me find it. I never would have been able to find it if he hadn't been there. Anyway, we got to talking, and he mentioned that he had just gone fishing, and I said that sounded like fun.”

“Wait, you told a guy you met at an outdoors store that you thought it sounded like fun to go fishing?” I ask. “Casey, you hate water. And you hate slimy things.”

“I am very aware. But I thought we were flirting. So when he asked me to go with him, I thought that was just a cute way for us to decide we wanted to get together sometime. People do that sometimes,” Casey says.

“Do they?” I ask. “I'm not sure that's how dating works. Not that I've gotten a whole lot of experience, but I think when you make a plan to do something specific, that's actually what you are planning on doing.”

“Well, I didn’t know that,” she says.

“Didn't he text you or something to give you a place where you were supposed to meet?” I ask.

“Yeah, he did,” she says. “And I did notice that it was a park. But that's a park. I thought that meant he had planned some sort of romantic picnic. I was going to show up and there would be a blanket and a basket with fruit and cheese. Maybe some candles and wine.”

“What about a man crawling out of a tent at an outdoor store made you think he was going to put on a picnic like that after saying you were going fishing?” I ask.

“Every romantic comedy I have seen in my entire life,” she says. “They have misled and swayed me.”

“Apparently so,” I agree. “What actually happened?”

Casey looks genuinely distressed by this whole experience, so I'm trying to withhold my laughter. I already know where this story is going, but I want to give her the chance to talk it through.

“There was no picnic when I got there. There was no blanket. He was carrying a bucket full of worms. Worms, Rowan. The man had real worms. And he acted like it was no big deal. Like this is just something that people have with them all the time,” Casey says.

“They do when they're fishing,” I tell her. “It's kind of an integral part of the entire experience. Bait and whatnot.”

“He couldn't have at least have those squishy bright pink glittery things. You know the ones that have the dangly legs and they're fun to jiggle? Why couldn't he have had one of those?”

“Maybe you should have expressed your bait preferences before you went on your fishing date,” I say.

“Again,” she says, “I didn't realize he actually meant he wanted to go fishing. I thought it was him being cute. That’s a thing, isn’t it? Flirty fishing?”

“That was a cult, Casey,” I carefully break to her.

“It was?” she asks.

“Yeah. A pretty bad one, too.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I was not aware of that. It came into my mind when I first met Joel, and I thought it was something very different. Clearly or I would not have ended up at the park watching him dig through a bucket of worms. Not my idea of a sexy first impression,” she says.

“So what did you do? Did you tell him you didn’t want to actually go fishing?” I ask.

“Of course not. Did you not hear that this man was gorgeous? Like maybe he was climbing out of the pages of a magazine and not just out of a display tent kind of gorgeous? If he wanted to fish, I was going to fish. I was not going to be pleased with it, but I was going to do it,” she says.

“Did you actually bait a hook?” I ask, trying to envision Casey taking a worm and threading it onto a fishing hook.

It’s an image so far from my understanding of reality I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like.

“Are you kidding? No, I did not bait a hook. I couldn’t even touch a worm. I told him I only fish with those squishy rubber glittery things and that I didn’t know how to bait with a worm, so he offered to do it for me,” she says.

“That’s kind of romantic,” I tell her.

“Right? I thought this had to be the moment. He was going to sit behind me and take my hands, pretend like he was going to help me bait the hook, then would just end up with his arms around me and we’d watch the sunset or something. But you know what happened?”

“He baited the hook?”

“He baited the freaking hook,” she says.

“So you really did just go fishing,” I say. “That was your date?”

“It was supposed to be until the gods heard my pleas and it started raining.”

Now I can’t help but laugh. “I’m sorry you didn’t get a dream date with your sexy outdoorsman.”

“Oh, but I still have the chance. He wanted…and enjoy the irony with this one … a raincheck,” she says.

“That’s fantastic. Are you going to go?” I ask.

“Only if he agrees to something indoors.”

I laugh again. “I think that’s fair. You did his idea. Now you get to come up with one.”

“Oh, and I will. And it will involve exactly no worms,” she says. She reaches for her pizza and takes another bite. “Ugh. All right, can we change the subject? I’m getting the ick just thinking about those worms.”

“James called me in today to talk about a case,” I tell her.

She stares at me blankly for a brief second. “Not exactly what I had in mind, but I should have known. All right. Go ahead.” She takes another bite of her pizza. “You’re kind of skirting the rules, though. But I’ll allow it.”

“Do you remember a while back when I told you about the girl Natalia Rodriguez?” I ask.

Her face contorts slightly as she lets the name tumble around in her brain to see if she can recall us talking about it.

“I think so,” she says. “Is she missing?”

“Yes,” I confirm. “She went missing about three months ago from a beach resort. The circumstances are a lot like Vivienne. Her brother said he watched her walk away toward the beach after she told their parents she was going to collect seashells. She never came back, and even though they searched for her, they never found any sign of her. Well, they just found her bathing suit.”

“Her bathing suit?” she asks. “Just her suit?”

“Just her suit. She went missing from Florida, but her bathing suit was found on a beach in South Carolina. It was laid out like someone had just forgotten it there, but it was a very distinctive personalized suit; there’s no way it belonged to anyone else. There wasn’t anything on it. No blood or DNA from anybody, including Natalia. Considering she was wearing the suit the last time her brother saw her walking down toward the beach, her DNA should have been on it. That means the suit was washed before it was put on display.”

“That’s horrifying,” Casey says.

“I know. There’s been no other sign from Natalia, no ransom calls or anything. Nothing. And then all of a sudden, her suit shows up two states away on a beach she’s never been on. It says in her file that the official statement from the resort is they believe she went out onto the beach with the goal of finding seashells, exactly like she told her parents and was apparently supported by her brother seeing her walking in that direction but then decided to take a swim and was caught off guard by a large wave and particularly strong undertow.

“They say they think because her parents had rented one of the bungalows that comes with a private stretch of beach and there was no one else in the neighboring bungalows, she was completely alone on the beach. That meant there was no one there to help her when she got into trouble and she ended up drowning.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Casey says. “I know waves and undertow can be extremely unpredictable and very strong so they can overtake anyone, but this is a girl with a customized bathing suit. That tells me she was no stranger to the water and probably a very strong swimmer.”

“She was,” I confirm. “She competed and had won a ton of titles. She was hoping to swim at the collegiate level when she started college next year. Her parents immediately rejected that idea, though they said it was hard to say whether they thought it was better for that to have happened or for her to have been taken by someone.”

“But now there’s not really a question,” Casey says. “She didn’t drown then wash her own bathing suit and put it out on the beach. Is it possible at all that there was no DNA on the suit because it was in the water for a long time?”

“Water can wash away DNA, but there was nothing on the suit at all,” I tell her. “Not even signs of plant or animal life from the ocean. It had definitely been washed before it was laid out on the sand. So, yes, it definitely means she was taken by someone. The question now is who took her and where is she?”

THREE

The next morning, I wake up early to take a jog around the neighborhood. As I’m jogging I hear my phone ring, but I don’t answer it. I’m lost in thoughts about the bathing suit and what it could mean for Vivienne. I know I should be thinking of the victims of these abductions as individuals and worrying about each of their fates, and I am, but I have to admit that the most pressing thing on my mind is my sister.

I think of her whenever I hear of any teenage girl who has gone missing, but especially those who were near a beach when it happened. Though it has been so many years, that’s still the way I think of her. She’s still a seventeen-year-old girl to me. I don’t have any other option for how to think of her. The last time I saw her, she was a beautiful teenager, the entire world at her feet. She could have been and done anything. It was true then, but it feels even truer now. I have no context for her beyond that morning. I have nothing to define her, and so I have nothing to limit her.

To me, until there’s something else for me to know about her, she will continue to be that beautiful seventeen-year-old who loved the beach and sometimes, maybe always, loved me.

That means she will be my priority whenever I hear of another of these cases. I will think what it could mean about where she went after I saw her walking away. The other four cases I’ve pulled out have reminded me of Vivienne in specific ways, but Natalia’s feels so much more significant. Something about it feels more real, more in line with what happened to Vivienne. Reading her brother’s words are like seeing my own experience again. Only he was never blamed for what happened to his sister. No one ever thought he managed to murder her and hide her body so it couldn’t be found.

It was the very fact that there was never any true evidence that Vivienne was murdered and nothing to show I could have had anything to do with her disappearance other than the blood on my hands that eventually got me released and my record cleared. Though it seemed like so much at the time, it turned out to only be a very small amount of blood, nowhere near enough to prove death. Because my record was fully cleared, it was like the charges never happened, meaning they could come for me again. That threat is always looming over me. I can always feel my doubters breathing down my neck, wondering what happened to my sister, then to my father, as if I could have had something to do with his disappearance from behind bars.

I’m still thinking about the similarities between Natalia and my sister when I get home and finally check my phone. I see the missed call is from James. He also sent me a text telling me the reason he called is he needs me to come in to his office so he can talk to me. It’s the second time in as many days that has happened, and I’m wondering what other developments could have caused him to beckon me to him again.

I send back a quick text letting him know I’m getting ready and will be in soon, then hop in a hot shower. Once I’m showered and dressed, I head to the headquarters building and am ushered right inside to James. His face is taut, and the desk in front of him is scattered with papers.

“Good morning,” I say to him as I come inside.

He gives me a grunt of acknowledgement and waves his hand toward the coffee maker in an invitation to make myself a cup. I take him up on it and sit down across from him in my usual place. I'm curious now. I caught a glimpse of one of the papers on the desk, and it didn't look like it had anything to do with the Natalia Rodriguez case. The picture of the woman on it showed a much older person and nothing to do with the beach resort or the bathing suit.

“I have a new case for you,” he tells me as I’m taking my first sip of my coffee.

I give him a quizzical look. “I thought I was working Natalia Rodriguez.”

“This one is more pressing. You can keep on researching and doing what you can for that case, but I want your attention put on this one. It is much more urgent,” James says.

I feel a bit of anger rise up inside me when he says that. I don't like the idea that he is pushing this young girl aside and minimizing how important she is not only as a case, but as a person.

“And why is it more urgent?” I ask. “Isn't the last article of clothing that was seen on a missing teenager being washed and laid out on a beach in a display urgent?”

“This one has a body,” he says. “Two, as a matter of fact.”

Now I understand why he said what he did, but I still don't agree with it. Natalia Rodriguez is still missing, which means there's a chance that she's alive. Finding her is the most urgent thing I can think of. But two bodies does make this case more intense in a different way.

“Tell me about it,” I say.

He takes the picture I noticed off the top of the stack of papers and turns it around so I can look at the woman’s face.

“This is Carrie Parker, twenty-five years old, living in Virginia and reported missing two months ago. She was found dead in Maryland. Strangled to death and left off of a walking trail in a wooded area. When the body was examined, a small wooden chip like a coin was found in her pocket. This connects her to this case.” He rummages through the papers and pulls out another picture, this one of another woman, older than Carrie. “Melanie Rhodes, forty-three, found dead yesterday, also in Maryland, where she was living. Never reported missing. She was shot in the back of the head at her home. The same type of wooden chip was found in her pocket as well.”

“Any other connection between the two women?” I ask.

“None that we've been able to find,” he says. “They didn't live anywhere near each other, didn't know each other, don't have any family connections. They didn't work for the same company. None of the things that might have even tangentially connected them. The only thing that links the two cases is the wooden chip.”

“And it's just a piece of wood?” I ask. “You said it looked like a coin?”

“It looks like this,” he says, handing me a small plastic bag with a circular wooden piece inside. There's a drawing etched on one side of it, but no words or anything else that would explain what it is. “They were identical and found in the pockets of the women's clothes.”

“Were they sexually assaulted?” I ask.

“No. Neither of them show any signs of sexual assault or even physical assault. They were fully dressed, showed no signs of a struggle, and had no other injuries other than the cause of death. That’s as far as the similarities between them go,” he tells me.

It might sound like there were a lot of things alike about the two victims or the two murders, but that is actually a very bare comparison list for victims killed by the same person. Generally speaking, killers have a type or at least characteristics that maintain a pattern across their victims. They aren’t just killing arbitrarily. There’s a method to how they choose their victims and why they are killing. Even for those who just kill for the thrill of it and choose their victims at random, there is still a discernible pattern in the vast majority of the cases. It might be as simple as girls around the same age or guys that all have the same haircut, but they are drawn to particular people when they are choosing who will come next in their rampage.

This doesn’t seem to be the case with these victims. Though only having two victims makes it next to impossible to truly notice a pattern if it is subtle, there’s nothing that stands out about these two women as being shared other than the fact that they are women. They have different hair colors kept in different styles. They are different ages and have very different physical appearances. One had recently moved back in with her parents while the other lived alone. It’s very strange and will be something I’ll have to figure out if I’m going to unravel what happened to these two victims and why.

“Have the families been interviewed?” I ask.

“The family and friends of the first victim were interviewed when she first went missing by detectives handling the case at the time, but nothing since,” he says.

“I want to talk to all of them,” I tell him. “The detective’s notes from the time it happened will be helpful, but I want to get a fresh perspective now that time has passed and there’s been another victim. We might not be able to make any of the connections between the two victims, but the family might have insights that help us find them.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” James says. He puts the papers into folders and slides them across the desk to me. He pauses with his hand pressed onto the top of the stack. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that this has the markers of a budding serial killer and that’s why it’s so important that we work fast. We need to find this guy before he starts taking out more people.”

“Hopefully he maintains his timeframe,” I say. “There were two months between the first two victims. With any luck, he will keep up with that kind of cooling-off period and I will have already found him before the urge comes again.”

As I’m leaving the headquarters to start my investigation, my phone rings. I see it’s Casey.

“Hey, Casey,” I answer.

“Is bowling a date?” she asks.

“What?” I ask.

“Bowling,” she repeats. “Is going bowling with a guy a date or is it just a friends getting together to do something kind of thing?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I think it depends on the guy. Is this the outdoorsman again?”

“Yeah. He texted me last night saying he’d had such a good time and was really looking forward to seeing me again.”

“That sounds promising,” I say.

“And that there’s this retro bowling alley he goes to with his buddies he thinks I’d really like,” she adds.

“That seems less romantic,” I say. “Mentioning the buddies isn’t great.”

“That’s what I thought. But he didn’t say that he wanted me to go there with him and his buddies. Just that he does go there with them sometimes. I wore a kind of retro-ish dress to the picnic that never was. Maybe that’s what gave him the idea,” she suggests.

“If so, that’s really sweet. That means he really noticed what you were wearing and was trying to figure things out about you without having to ask so that he could plan something you would like. Or connect something about himself to you,” I say.

“So you think I should go?” she asks.

“I don’t see why not. If you get there and there are a bunch of other guys guzzling beer and throwing balls around, you’ll know he was thinking of you more like a friend. If it’s just the two of you, then maybe he’s just the kind of guy who thinks that active dates are more fun than sitting around in a restaurant or a movie theater. He wants to be able to actually talk to you and get to know you,” I tell her.

“All right. I’ll tell him that we should go. I’ll need an outfit I can bowl in that’s still cute. I need to go shopping. You should come with me. What are you doing right now?” she asks.

“I actually just came from headquarters. James assigned me to a new case,” I tell her.

“I thought you were working that one with the missing girl and the bathing suit,” she says.

“I am,” I tell her. “But this one involves two murder victims, and he wants me on it. Have you heard of Carrie Parker or Melanie Rhodes?”

“I want to say that Carrie Parker sounds kind of familiar. She was found a little while ago, wasn’t she?” she asks.

“Yeah, two months. She was found in Maryland, but she only lived a couple of hours from us. Her death has been linked to the other woman’s,” I say.

“So I guess shopping is probably out for today,” she says.

“Probably for today,” I tell her. “But keep me updated. Feel free to send pictures, and I can critique what you pick out.”

“I’m going to feel like the montage scene of a teen eighties movie,” she says.

“With a cell phone,” I point out. “And isn’t that kind of your dream?”

“I mean…a little bit. I’ll talk to you soon.”

We hang up, and I continue home. I prefer to do most of my work from home rather than sitting in an office. The comfort of my surroundings helps me focus and lets me keep my mind off of things like all the other people in the headquarters building or the furniture I didn’t choose and can’t change. I can’t say for absolute sure that those things bothering me stems from my years spent in prison surrounded by a crush of people all the time and living where nothing was my choice, but they frequently bring up those memories.

FOUR

Settled back at home, I start looking into Carrie Parker. From the information included in the file James gave me, there isn't anything particularly remarkable about Carrie. She was a fairly conventional twenty-five-year-old with a career and no criminal background who had recently moved back in with her parents. There's no information about why she made that move, but it's not like it's completely unheard of for someone in their mid-twenties to go backward a bit while they figure themselves out.

The police report shows that Carrie’s body was found in a wooded area between a mixed residential and commercial area and a park. She was found by a family who was staying at a nearby hotel and taking a walk along the walking trails. She hadn't been there for very long when she was discovered. Her body hadn't been discovered by animals and it wasn't covered up by anything more than a few leaves that could have easily fallen from the trees above her. It was almost like whoever did this to her wanted her to be discovered.

That in of itself isn't completely strange or unheard of. While TV and movies will lead anybody to think that every killer goes to tremendous lengths to try to cover up a body and prevent it from ever being discovered, that isn't always the case. Some kill and leave their victims in full view so that they can be found. Whether this is due to their own guilt at what they did, their desire to be recognized for what was done, simply out of lack of planning for what to do after the kill, or something else varies by the killer.

Just looking over the basic information about Carrie’s body being found doesn't give me much of a hint of why this particular killer would leave her body so readily visible and easily found. Just like James had told me, her cause of death was manual strangulation, and there was no indication of any other type of assault or struggle. She hadn't been beaten, there were no defensive wounds on her hands, no blood or tissue beneath her nails. Toxicology reports are still outstanding, so there's no way to tell if she was under the influence of anything when she died, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that she might have been.

Detectives handling the case from the beginning had already interviewed her family to try to find out more about her and what might have led to her death, but just reading their statements isn’t enough for me. I want to know from their own mouths. And now that more time has passed, they might have a different view of what happened or more ideas of what could have led up to their daughter being murdered.

I find contact information for her parents, Penny and Marlon Parker, and reach out to them. Penny answers the phone.

“Mrs. Parker, my name is Rowan Shade. I’m a special agent with the FBI,” I say after confirming it is her.

“FBI?” she asks, sounding somewhat bewildered.

“Yes,” I tell her. “I am taking on Carrie’s case, and I was hoping to be able to speak with you and your husband.”

“The FBI is taking on Carrie’s case?” she asks.

“Yes,” I tell her. “Unfortunately, there has been another death, and it’s been linked to Carrie’s.”

“Oh, my God,” Penny gasps.

“I don’t want to impose, but I really think it would be best if there’s any way I could come and speak with the two of you in person. Would that be something we could arrange?” I ask.

“We’ve already spoken with the detectives,” Penny tells me.

“I know,” I say. “And I have the reports with your statements. But since I’m starting my own investigation, I think it would be better if I had the opportunity to speak with you myself. I’d really like to ask you some questions and get your insights directly from you rather than from what someone else wrote.”

“I understand,” she says. “I suppose that would be best. Anything to help find out what happened to our little girl. Yes, you can come speak with us.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I will be there tomorrow mid-morning if that works for you.”

“That will be fine. I’ll have my husband take the morning off of work.”

“That would be perfect. I appreciate your time and I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say.

I hang up and go back to reading through the reports about Carrie Parker and her death. This is always how I handle a case. While I use the information already available as a jumping off point, I prefer to start my own investigation and not take what I read for granted. The information that is gathered from people close to a crime soon after it is committed is often viewed as the most valuable and reliable information because of the timely nature of it. I do agree that these timely statements often have details that are forgotten as time passes; I just also think that there is something critical about talking to people again when time has passed in these investigations.

When someone has experienced the trauma of their loved one being involved in a serious crime, they often can’t think as clearly in the immediate aftermath. They might overlook details that are important or not make connections that aren’t immediately obvious to other people. Giving these people some time to sit with the details of the case will often bring some of these to light and help them have a stronger perspective the next time they talk about the case.

I’m hoping for that this time around with the Parkers. Their statements didn’t have very much to them when they spoke to the detectives. They explained that Carrie had moved back home because she was going through a breakup with her longtime boyfriend and needed somewhere to stay while she transitioned to being on her own again. They didn’t mind her being home and were happy to see that she was finding her way out of that relationship and moving on with her life.

Without any context about the relationship, it’s hard to tell why they would be so happy about this transition, but it gives me some thought about the circumstances of her life leading up to the time of her death.

With my plans in place to travel to Camberville, Virginia to see the couple the next day, I call Casey back and see if she still wants to do some shopping. She has already been to at least two stores as evidenced by the assortment of pictures I’ve gotten from her since we talked, but she’s thrilled for me to jump in for the rest of the afternoon.

I meet up with her at a small boutique on Main Street and find her in what my grandmother would have described as a tizzy trying to decide what she is going to wear to this bowling date with the outdoorsman.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to wear,” she says.

“You’ve been bowling before,” I point out to her. “It’s not like this is a completely new concept to you.”

“I know that,” she says. “But I’ve been bowling as like a silly girls’ night and at birthday parties when I was a kid. I’ve never been on a date. Does he expect me to actually bowl?”

I laugh. “By evidence of the fishing trip, I think it’s a very safe bet that he really does expect you to bowl a game or two together.”

“Just the two of us?” she asks. “Isn’t it usually a bunch of people against another bunch of people?”

“I mean, I’ve seen people go and bowl by themselves. I don’t think there are as many strict protocols as you are making this out to be,” I say.

“All right, but how about my vibe?” she asks.

“Your vibe?” I ask.

“We think he asked me to go bowling because I was wearing that retro dress when we went on the picnic, right? So maybe I should wear something cute and retro to the bowling alley. Like a pair of capris and an old bowling shirt tied at the waist. And a headband. That would be cute.”

“It would be,” I agree. “But what if he then decides that’s your entire life vibe? Like everything you do is vintage inspired. There are people like that.”

“I don’t want him to think that,” she says. “But I wasn’t dressed like that when he first met me. I was wearing perfectly contemporary clothes. I think. I’m actually not sure anymore. What is contemporary?”

She is melting down, and I feel for her. She really wants this to work. I know she keeps mentioning how attractive the man is, but this goes beyond just thinking a guy is handsome and wanting to spend more time with him. There has to be something else about him that has gotten her so worked up so quickly. As much as she wants to just find the right guy and settle down, I know she wants to make sure that he is the right one and not just a random guy she plucks out of the masses and has fun with a few times. It’s important to her to have the kind of marriage her parents do. They’ve been married for almost forty years, and she describes them as still acting like teenagers when they are together.

That’s a lot to live up to, but I can understand why she would want it. That’s something I never got to experience with my parents. My mother has been gone since I was very young, and I don’t have a lot of memories of her. I don’t have any particular ones of her with my father. He didn’t talk about her much while we were growing up, and by the time Vivienne disappeared, he had essentially stopped mentioning her at all.

As frantic as Casey seems and as much as I wouldn’t want to feel that kind of stress over picking an outfit for one excursion, I am silently slightly envious of her feeling this way. I don’t know what that feeling is like. I had an occasional high school date before my sister went missing, but the time I spent in prison ended that for me. I haven’t had any kind of relationship since. The majority of the time, I’m perfectly fine with that. I don’t want to have another person trying to control me or having to always think about another person when I’m making decisions. I like to be in control of my own life and only have to think about what’s best for me. I have far and away enough on my mind at any given time with work and with Vivienne, so I really don’t have the energy or focus to think about cultivating a relationship.

And yet, sometimes I feel the lack of that connection in my life. I wonder what it would be like to meet someone in some random way and feel that instant spark that Casey described feeling when she was in the outdoors store. I wonder how it would feel to have someone at home when I come back from a difficult day and to want to just relax in their arms and feel comforted. It’s not something I have ever known. I’m not about to go hunting it down like Casey, but I do feel myself living a little bit vicariously through her in this moment.

It takes another three stores, but we finally decide that she needs to not take all of this so seriously. She can’t concoct a version of herself that is appealing to this man just so that he will want to see her again. That’s not only exhausting, but it’s going to eventually go up in flames when she can’t stand playing a part anymore and has to be honest with him about who she is and what’s she’s really like. She decides she wants to look good for the date, but she’s going to embrace the fun and go with something casual. If it bothers him and isn’t what he wants, then he doesn’t want her, and it’s time to move on. It’s better she finds that out now than having another difficult breakup later.

Casey and I grab dinner together, and I get home in time to pack a bag in case I end up staying in Camberville. The drive to Carrie Parker’s parents’ home is only a couple of hours, but I don’t want to be rushed in the morning. I go to sleep thinking of the couple I’ll talk to tomorrow and wondering if they’re getting any sleep tonight.

FIVE

I follow the directions my GPS gives me to an older, well-established neighborhood in Camberville. The houses are on the larger side of modest, tucked on nice-sized lots with mature trees, lush green grass, and the kinds of flower gardens people turn into their full-time jobs. That’s the kind of flower bed Casey likes to envision herself as capable of having, but it’s never going to happen for her. The box bushes and perennials are enough of a challenge.

A few children play in one of the yards a few down from the house where I pull up to the curb, and other neighbors are seen walking along the sidewalk or sitting out on the porch with lemonade and curiosity. It’s the kind of neighborhood that could have a dueling existence, defined in one of two ways by the people who look at it. Either it is the perfect sleepy, friendly neighborhood where everyone knows everyone and they are always ready for a block party or a catchup on an evening stroll or it’s a hotbed of gossip and suspicion where everybody tries to dig out everybody’s secrets and no words passed between neighbors can ever be trusted to stay there.

For the sake of the Parker family, I’m going to hope it’s the former.

I take the file on Carrie’s case with me as I walk up the flower-lined front sidewalk to the wide country porch. A white glider and matching porch swing call out for wiling away summer evenings watching the fireflies flicker and cuddling up to breathe in the autumn air and watch the same from jack o’ lantern grins on neighboring porches.

I ring the doorbell and glance around as I wait for the door to open. When it does, what looks like an older version of Carrie looks out at me through the glass storm door. I’m almost startled by how much Carrie Parker looked like her mother. It must have been something both loved.

“Hello,” I say. “We spoke on the phone. I’m Rowan Shade.”

“Of course, Agent Shade,” she says. “I’m Penny Parker. Please come in.” She opens the door for me, and I step inside. “My husband had to run out on a quick errand, but should be back any second. Can I get you a cup of coffee or tea?”

“Just water would actually be wonderful,” I tell her.

She nods and heads deeper into the house. She didn’t say anything about me following her, but I fall into step behind her, not wanting to be left just standing at the front door. We walk into a large kitchen set at the heart of the house, and she takes a glass from an overhead cabinet to fill with water from the refrigerator dispenser. It’s cold and crisp, perfect for combatting the sticky morning.

Penny fills another glass for herself and gestures for me to come with her. We walk out of the kitchen and onto a sunporch that overlooks a large backyard enclosed with a tall redwood privacy fence. A patio boasts a cushioned seating arrangement and umbrellaed table plus a large grill. A firepit in the center has spots around it to sit and roast marshmallows. I can see the family spending many happy days and evenings out here. Now a swing set, long outgrown by their only child, stands toward the back, waiting for grandchildren that will never come.

We settle onto the sunporch furniture, and I take another sip of my water before setting it on the glass-topped table in front of me.

“I want to thank you for letting me come here and talk to you, Mrs. Parker,” I say. “I know this isn’t easy.”

“Please, Penny,” she says.

“Penny,” I repeat.

“And it’s us who should be thanking you. The detectives tried at first to solve Carrie’s case, but when they couldn’t find any leads, they seemed to lose motivation. The only times I’ve heard from them in the last six weeks are when I’ve called them to see if there’s been any progress. And the answer is always the same. Nothing. They can’t find anything. You have no idea how much of a relief it is to know that someone is taking her seriously and is going to look at her case with a new perspective. I can’t tell you how thankful I am.”

The front door opens, and I hear a man call out to Penny.

“We’re out here,” she calls back.

A few moments later, a tall, generically handsome man in the corporate casual summer uniform of khakis and a polo shirt appears at the doorway to the sunporch.

“This is Agent Shade,” Penny introduces, gesturing toward me.

“Rowan,” I tell both of them. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“I’m Marlon,” he says. “I’m sorry I’m late. I needed to run a quick errand for work.”

“You don’t need to apologize. I only just got here,” I say. “I was just telling your wife how much I appreciate the two of you letting me into your home to talk about your daughter. I know it’s not an easy subject, and I thank both of you for being willing to work with me.”

“Of course,” he says, settling into the couch next to Penny. “Anything we can do to find out what happened to Carrie. It’s been torture not knowing for these past three months, and I can’t imagine having to continue on with all these questions.”

“That’s why I’m here. I want to get to the bottom of Carrie’s murder and make sure that the person responsible is held accountable. I know you already spoke to the detectives about this, but like I said on the phone last night, I’m starting this investigation fresh. I’m going to talk to everybody again and look into everything as if it hasn’t been touched so I can get the full perspective of the case. I appreciate you being patient and talking about the same things again.

“First, I’d like to start with you just telling me about Carrie and what was going on in her life in the weeks leading up to her death,” I say.

“Things had been going so well for her,” Penny says. “She was seeming happier and more energetic. It was like she was finally seeing what was ahead of her. She had moved back into the house just a few weeks before. That wasn't easy for her. She was 25 years old, so she really wanted independence and to feel like she was standing on her own two feet and having her own life. But she had been living with her boyfriend for a couple of years and was not in a position to just start over again alone.

“We had actually been the ones to offer for her to move back in. She didn't want to ask us. But we knew that if she tried to do it on her own, she was going to end up in a position we didn't want her to be in. We would much rather her come home for a while, save up some money, lick her wounds, and then get back out there when she was ready. She was seeming so motivated to start fresh. She already had a job, but she had been talking about possibly going back to school and going for something different. I felt like she had been living in a rut for a long time and didn't even realize it until it all crashed down and she saw that she was in a place where she didn't recognize her life.”

“Carrie was always a high achiever,” Marlon tells me. “She did well in school. She excelled in all of the after-school activities and pursuits that she had. She was just one of those people who if she put her mind to doing something, she was able to do it. And she wanted to change the world. I know a lot of people say that, and probably every parent who has lost a child says that about them, but it was really true with Carrie. She looked around and saw all of the problems that exist and tried to come up with ways that she could fix them.

“It was so inspirational, and people were impressed by her all the time. But we saw what it was like for her when she was behind closed doors. When she wasn't out smiling and being energetic, trying to convince other people to join up in her efforts. We saw how much stress and difficulty it put on her just to see how much work needed to be done to feel like she needed to take it all on herself. Which, of course, would have been impossible. We were constantly trying to convince her to take a breath and know that no matter how much she achieved, she was accomplishing something for the good.”

“She sounds like a really amazing person,” I say. “This is a question that I know you're not going to want to hear, but I have to ask it. Can you think of anybody who would want to kill Carrie?”

The parents took deep breaths as they looked at each other. Marlon reaches over and takes Penny’s hand, giving it a comforting squeeze before looking back at me.

“The only person in her life that would ever want to do her any harm would be her ex-boyfriend, Shane,” he says.

“Shane?” I ask.

“Shane Macintosh,” Penny clarifies. “He is who she had been living with for the last two years.”

“Do you have any reason to believe he would have hurt her? Did he hurt her before?” I ask.

“Not that we know of,” Marlon admits. “Carrie never said anything to us about him hurting or threatening her, but we never trusted him. There was just something about him and the way that he and Carrie were together. I can’t really explain it other than saying if you’re a parent, you know.”

“I’m not,” I tell him.

“Well, it’s instinct. There’s just something in your gut that tells you someone isn’t good for your child, and that’s the feeling we got as soon as we met him. He’s the kind of person with a murky background and the attitude of not wanting to impress anybody because he feels like he already should be impressing you, if that makes sense,” he says.

“It does,” I tell him. “Did she ever talk to you about he relationship, other than when you met him and when she told you that they were breaking up?”

“Not really,” Penny says. “We made it clear to her from the beginning that we didn’t like him and didn’t think they should be together. That really upset her. She wasn’t willing to hear us out at all and just thought we were being difficult and closed-minded. She’d had a boyfriend when she was younger who we absolutely adored. He was from a wonderful family we’ve known for many years, was very much like Carrie, and they were amazing together. Even as teenagers we thought they were going to get married when they grew up. I have to admit I had even started looking at wedding dresses and making some plans.”

“What happened?” I ask.

“He was killed in a drunk driving accident,” Marlon says, squeezing his wife’s hand again as she pulls closer to him and briefly rests her head against his. “It was really horrible for Carrie. It had been a little more than a year after he died when she met Shane. I know she thought we weren’t willing to open ourselves up to him and give him a chance because we were always going to compare everyone to Ben. And in a way, I guess that’s true. It would be impossible not to compare people.”

“Anyone who knew Ben and Carrie would have known he was perfect for her and that anyone to follow him would have to be a truly exceptional human being to even begin to be able to make her happy. And Shane isn’t. That’s just the truth. It might sound harsh, and I’m sorry for saying it, but he is not anything that she should have ever been with. And it was extremely difficult for us to bite our tongues, but she was an adult. She made it very clear to us that she was not interested in what we had to say about him and that she didn’t want us speaking negatively about him. We had to make the agreement to not talk about him if we were going to see her at all,” Penny says.

“Did you see him very much? Enough to form any more of an opinion on him?” I ask.

“No,” Marlon says flatly. “We saw him a couple of times toward the beginning of their relationship, but then he stopped coming when she did. We ended up missing holidays with her because they spent them together rather than coming here. Even after we told her that we would welcome him and that everything would go smoothly, she wasn’t willing to have all of us together in the same room. I can only imagine it’s because of the things he said about us. She would want to do what she could to please him.”

“But she never mentioned him mistreating her?” I ask.

“No,” Penny says. “Not hitting her or anything like that. She said he had a temper and that sometimes when they got into arguments he would yell. And that he drank a lot.”

“Do you know why they were breaking up?” I ask.

“She didn’t go into any real details with us. All she told us was that their relationship wasn’t good for her anymore and that she needed to move on and find her life. But it wasn’t a smooth, easy break. It had been dragging on for a long time and was turning into a really nasty situation. Before she moved back in with us, she was considering just staying in the apartment they had shared and kicking him out, but she took him back a few times over the course of a couple of months.

“Then he told her that his name was on the lease and so she couldn’t just tell him that he had to leave, which, honestly, is true,” Marlon says. “That was the biggest motivator for us to tell her to come home. We paid off the remainder of the lease so that her landlord would allow her to break it without any other consequences and brought her home. That way Shane couldn’t get to her, and she wouldn’t be able to be manipulated into letting him come back.”

“Do you have any contact information for Shane Macintosh that you can give me?” I ask.

“Just one second,” Penny says.

She gets up and leaves the porch, coming back a few seconds later with a piece of paper. She hands it to me, and I see a phone number written across it.

“Thank you. One more thing. I believe I mentioned this briefly on the phone last night. Another woman was murdered, and her death has been linked through some evidence to Carrie’s death. We’re not revealing that particular evidence at this time, but I can tell you it’s not DNA or anything that will direct us immediately to the perpetrator. I didn’t want to get your hopes up too much.”

Even as I’m saying this, I can see their bodies deflating. Just hearing that there was some sort of evidentiary link between their daughter’s murder and another woman’s death immediately got them hopeful that something was right there at our fingertips ready to reveal the name of the responsible party. Unfortunately, it’s not going to be that easy for them.

“Who is this other woman?” Marlon asks.

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about. Her name is Melanie Rhodes. She lived in Maryland. Does that name sound at all familiar to you? Can you think of any connection she would have to Carrie?” I ask.

Both shake their heads.

“No,” Penny says. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“Neither do I,” Marlon says. “And I’ve never heard Carrie mention her or knowing anyone in Maryland.”

It was a long shot, but I had to try. I give them a tight smile.

“Thank you. I’m not going to take up any more of your time.” I hand them one of my cards. “If you think of anything else, please don’t hesitate to give me a call. My phone is always on.”

SIX

As soon as I leave the Parker house, I search for a restaurant in the area where I can grab an early lunch. The recommendations bring me to a little pancake house not far away, and I go inside to a booth in the farthest back corner so I won’t be disturbed. Even though I’m not talking to anyone, I always prefer not to have people around me when I’m handling any part of an investigation in public. I don’t want anyone happening to see sensitive information or overhearing conversations that could compromise a case.

The waitress comes by, and I order another glass of water and ask for a few minutes to look over the fairly extensive menu. It’s one of those places that seems simple from the outside but is deceptive. The menu offers several pages of different options covering all types of tastes and appetites. The most comprehensive section is unsurprisingly the breakfast menu. I’ve always been a very big fan of breakfast food, so I don’t even bother to look over any of the other sections of offerings.

By the time the waitress comes back with my water, I’ve settled on pancakes, scrambled eggs, and fruit, and ask for a cup of coffee to go along with it. She smiles at me as she takes my menu, and I wait for her to walk away before taking out the piece of paper Penny Parker gave me so I can dial Shane Macintosh. He doesn’t answer, so I end the call and call back. When he still doesn’t answer, I leave a voicemail identifying myself, giving my phone number, and asking that he call me back at his earliest convenience. It’s the polite and respectable way to ask when what I really want to do is demand he call me back immediately.

This man holds another piece of the puzzle of Carrie’s disappearance. Her parents described their daughter’s relationship with him as something that made them uncomfortable, that there was something about him that made them feel like he wasn’t the right one for her. I want to know what that is and if it might have had anything to do with why Carrie was out in those woods that day.

But as I think about that, the existence of the other victim comes trickling back into my mind. This isn’t just about Carrie Parker being strangled to death and left by the side of a walking trail. This is about the wooden chip found in her pocket that matches the one found two months later in Melanie Rhodes’ pocket after she was shot in the back of the head in her own home.

The more I think about the two cases, the more I realize I’m the wrong place. While I wanted to talk to Penny and Marlon Parker about their daughter face to face, I feel like until I get any word from Shane, I’ve gotten as much information as I can here in Virginia. Both bodies were found in Maryland, so that’s where I should be. I need to see where Carrie was found and start looking more into the recent victim so I can hopefully find the common threads that link them.

After breakfast, I head back home. It’s still early enough in the afternoon that I don’t feel like giving up for the day yet. While I go through the bag I packed making sure I have everything I could need for a few days in Maryland, I call Casey.

“Hey, I just wanted to let you know I’m going to Maryland for my investigation. I’m probably going to be there for a couple of days,” I tell her.

“Damn. That means I can’t have you on tap as my backup in case he shows up tonight with friends.”

“You were going to have me as your backup?” I ask.

“Of course. Who else would I call if I needed to pretend I’d intended on having a friend join us for a big fun group thing all along?” she asks.

“Casey, you seem really unsure about this guy. He might be gorgeous, but is he really worth all this stress?” I ask, adding an extra outfit and another pair of socks to the bag.

“I guess I’m going to find that out tonight,” she says. “If he doesn’t bring friends and we can actually have a good time together bowling, maybe he’s worth keeping on trying for.”

“And if that’s the case, you’re going to have to learn to talk to him,” I tell her. “You need to be able to tell him the things you enjoy and that you want to do together. Plan the next date and make it something you like so that you can see if he is on the same page with you.”

“You are so wise,” she says sarcastically.

“You’re going to appreciate me one day,” I tell her.

“I already do. And I’m only stressed out because I like him so much. It’s weird. I feel…comfortable with him.”

“That’s not weird, Casey. That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” I say.

“But it’s not the way it ever is. The first few dates are supposed to be about feeling a bit awkward and trying to find each other somewhere in there to decide if it’s worth continuing to wade through the discomfort for a while,” Casey says.

“No. No, I don’t think that is really the way it is,” I tell her.

“So maybe it’s a good thing that I already feel comfortable with him?”

“I think that could be a great thing,” I tell her. “Maybe it means he could actually be something.”

“You really are wise, you know.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t had a boyfriend since I was fifteen, and that lasted about eight weeks, so take everything I say with a really big grain of salt,” I tell her. “I’ve got to get going. I have a few hours on the road and want to get there before it gets too late.”

“Drive carefully. Let me know how everything is going,” she says.

“Same to you. I want updates tonight. Let me know if you get a strike.”

“I don’t know if that was commentary on my dating record or meant to be sexual innuendo,” she laughs.

“I’m not sure either. Let it be whichever one you want it to be,” I say.

“…Neither.”

“Fair enough. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.”

I spend a couple of minutes making a quick hotel reservation in Holt, Maryland, the town where Melanie Rhodes was living and one town over from where Carrie Parker’s body was found, then pack everything into the car and head out.

The many hours on the road today have left me feeling stiff and tired by the time I get to the hotel. I’m thankful for mobile check-in and the little luxury of not having to go to the front desk so I can just take my bag and go straight to the room I requested on a high floor, away from the elevator. That will, hopefully, give me the most peace and quiet in the hotel. I step into the room and immediately lock and bolt the door, then take a breath of the clean-smelling, cold air.

Hungry and still experiencing the unpleasant effects of the long drive, I find a binder with local restaurants in the bedside table and order food. While I wait for it, I take a shower, coming out feeling refreshed and more awake. The food arrives just as I’m finishing getting changed into lounge clothes for the evening, and I bring it up to my room to enjoy while I continue my research.

I discover the area on the opposite side of the wooded area where Carrie was found as the park is actually more commercial than it is residential. While there is an apartment complex several blocks away and a neighborhood about a quarter of a mile away, the area right nearby actually features a small grocery store, a convenience store, and another hotel. The file from the original investigation says that the security footage from all of these was thoroughly checked, and none of them caught Carrie at any point, but I need to go a step further than that.

That’s what I have in mind the next morning when I wake up full of energy and ready to tackle my next day of investigation. I only got a couple of messages from Casey last night, both of them selfies at the bowling alley, so I can either assume the date went really well or really poorly. I’m sure I’ll hear much more about it later today.

For now, I’m thinking about the spot where Carrie’s body was found. I get dressed and go downstairs for a quick breakfast before heading to the commercial property next to the wooded area. I’m surprised to see just how close the two are, with only an alleyway behind the businesses and a mostly decorative fence made of logs separating the areas.

I park off to the side of the parking lot so I’m not taking up any of the spaces in front of the businesses and walk across the alley to the log fence. I look to either side but don’t see any kind of parking area or anything else that would invite visitors to make this their entry point into the park. This means they expect everyone to have parked in the main lot on the opposite side and only use this area if they are walking the trails. I have a feeling that means the walking area is not one of the more popular areas of the park.

A small sign attached to one of the logs warning not to use the parking lot for the businesses when using the park tells me not everyone wants to comply. I could just leave my car where it is and show my FBI badge when I get back to prove I have a reason to be there, but I don’t want to be that person. Instead, I decide to go back and talk to the business owners first, then move my car and check out where she was found. That will actually have the added benefit of giving some perspective on how long it takes to move from the parking lot to the walking trail where she was found.

My first stop is the convenience store found on the corner. The man behind the counter smiles at me when I walk in.

“How are you doing?” he asks. “It’s a hot one out there today.”

“It definitely is,” I tell him. I take out my badge and show it to him. “I’m Special Agent Rowan Shade. I’m with the FBI. Can I ask you a few questions?”

“FBI?” he asks. “What’s going on? Is something wrong with my store? I always check ID for tobacco and alcohol. I never sell to minors. I don’t have skill games.”

“No, no. Nothing like that,” I reassure him. “This has nothing to do with your store.”

He lets out an audible sigh of relief.

“You scared me. This store is all I’ve got.”

“You don’t need to worry about it,” I tell him. “I’m here because I’m investigating a case from a couple of months ago. A young woman was found murdered in the woods not too far from here.”

“I remember that,” he says. “Her name was Carrie, right?”

“Right. Carrie Parker. She was strangled and found dead right off of one of the walking trails behind here. I know that the detectives came and asked for surveillance footage, but I wanted to ask you about the day or two before she was found.” I take a picture of Carrie out of my file and show it to him. “This is Carrie. Do you recognize her at all? Have you seen her in here?”

He shakes his head. “No. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her,” he says. “But I see a lot of people. Unless somebody comes in a lot and gets to be a regular, I’m not going to recognize them.”

I nod. “Understandable. How about just anything strange in general. Did anything unusual happen around the time that she was found?”

“What do you mean by unusual?” he asks.

“Anything that caught your attention or seemed off to you. Anyone strange who might have come in or anyone who was acting oddly.”

“I run a convenience store,” he points out. “People behave strangely in here all the time. Drunks. People coming down off their high. I see all kinds of things.”

“Fair enough,” I tell him. “Did you happen to notice anyone who seemed to be particularly on edge? Angry? Anything that stood out?”

“Not that I can remember,” he says. “Nothing that jumped out at me.”

“All right. Thank you.” I give him my card. “If you think of anything or if you talk to anyone else who was working here around that time and they remember anything, give me a call.”

“I will. Need anything to cool you off before you head back out there?” he asks.

I take the suggestion and get a bottle of water and then bow to the childhood instinct in me and grab an ice cream out of the freezer in front of the counter. I eat the ice cream as I look around the area outside. I’m not all that surprised that he said he didn’t recognize Carrie. She wasn’t from the state, much less the surrounding area, so she wouldn’t have been a regular visitor for him. Stores like his are often social hubs so, like he said, he sees a lot of people. Unless someone had a reason to really stand out, he wasn’t going to immediately recall them.

My next stop is the grocery store. I go through the same process as I did with the convenience store manager and get the same kind of response from the cashiers. None of them remember seeing Carrie in the days before her body was found, and nothing particularly interesting happened that stood out to them. It was a lot to shoot for, but I was hoping her killer might have come in and been acting strangely enough for them to remember. But it seems they were either smart enough to stay out of the shops and not be seen, or calm enough that even if they were, they didn’t call any attention to themselves.

Finally, I go to the hotel. The clerk at the front desk is on the phone and typing away at the computer when I walk in. She meets eyes with me and smiles, holding up a finger to indicate she’ll be right with me. I nod and roam around the lobby, pretending to be engrossed with the sparse décor and tourist brochures highlighting stops in the area so that I don’t have to stand awkwardly in front of the desk waiting for her to be finished.

“Can I help you?” she finally asks, and I return the pamphlet for some local caverns to the display and go to the desk.

Taking out my badge, I show it to her. “Hi. I’m Special Agent Rowan Shade. I’m investigating the murder of Carrie Parker.”

“She was the woman who was found in the woods, isn’t she?” the clerk asks.

“Yes,” I tell her. “Is there a manager I could speak to?”

“I’m the manager on duty,” she says, extending her hand. “Kelsey Phillips.”

“Nice to meet you,” I say. “Have you already spoken to detectives about this case?”

“When she was first found, somebody came in to ask if we had surveillance footage,” she says. “We have cameras that cover the front and side entrances of the hotel, but that woman didn't show up on any of them.”

“Did they check your guest log?” I ask. “Carrie wasn't from this area, so I'd like to know if by any chance she was staying at this hotel.”

“They didn’t ask us that.” She hesitates slightly. “You said FBI?”

“Yes,” I tell her. “I can get a warrant for you if I have to, but it would save a lot of time and make this much easier if you were able to check for me right now.”

She thinks for a second, then nods. “Let me see. When did you say it was?”

I give her the date. “If you can check for the couple of days before that as well just to make sure.”

“Sure,” she says. She types a few things into the computer and scrolls around. “You said her name was Carrie Parker?”

“Yes,” I tell her.

She finally nods. “I have her right here. She made a reservation for two nights before she was found and checked out that morning. The system shows she first entered her room at three-thirty that afternoon.”

I’m stunned at the revelation but excited to have a new lead to follow. The more I think about it, though, the more confused I am.

“If she had a reservation here, how did she not show up on the surveillance cameras?” I ask. “They would have had to catch her coming in and leaving.”

“I know the detectives watched them and didn’t see her,” she says.

“Can you show me the footage?” I ask.

“Let me get the security officer. He would be able to show you.”

She makes a call, and a few moments later, a man comes down the hall and meets me in front of the desk.

“Agent Rowan Shade,” I say, extending a hand to shake his.

“Mike Ellington,” he tells me. “Come with me and I’ll show you that footage.”

I follow him down the hallway to the security office. He lets us in and sits down in front of a panel of several monitors that cover the front and side entrances of the hotel as well as the elevators and the back employees-only door.

“What’s the date we’re looking at?” he asks.

I remember Kelsey telling me that Carrie’s reservation started two nights before she was found, so I give Mike the date and lean in slightly so I can watch the monitors carefully.

“Kelsey says that she first entered her room at three-thirty. Can we check the entrances for around then?”

“Absolutely,” he says, typing commands into his computer so that he can bring up footage from that specific point. We look at the front entrance to the hotel first. A few minutes before three-thirty a car drives into the lot, but it disappears around the side of the building. We wait several minutes, but no one comes through the front door.

“She must have used the side entrance,” he says.

Pulling up the footage from the side camera, we watch until I notice a figure in a hooded sweatshirt scurry through the door and out of sight. There was no way to conclusively say that was Carrie. I couldn't see her face, and the hoodie made it difficult to discern how big the person actually was. But because of the timing, I am confident that's her. It's easy to see why the police didn't think they saw her on the surveillance camera. They were not only likely looking for someone who didn't enter the hotel but just moved on the periphery of the footage, but wouldn't immediately recognize her in that outfit.

“How about the next day?” I ask. “Can we look and see if she left at any point?”

Scrolling through the footage gives us nothing for the next day, but the morning of the day she was found, we again see the figure in the hooded sweatshirt rush out of the building, presumably to a car that was parked out of the scope of the camera. Her car was found on the side of the road not far from where she was found, which means she likely left the hotel and drove to meet someone before things went wrong.

I’m curious about the sweatshirt. It was far too hot for her to be wearing something like that, but both times she appeared on the surveillance footage she was wearing it, the hood pulled down as if she were purposely concealing her face. It makes me wonder if she was trying to avoid showing up on the footage for some reason.

I thank Mike and go back to the front desk. Kelsey smiles at me.

“Did you find anything?” she asks.

“Yes, actually. But I need to ask one more favor. Can you check as see if a Shane Macintosh had a reservation here?” I ask.

She checks the computer the way she did for Carrie and shakes her head. “He’s not in the system.”

“All right. Thank you.”

I leave the hotel feeling like I have both more answers and more questions than I had before.

SEVEN

As I'm driving toward the parking area for the park, I call Penny Parker again.

“Hi, Penny,” I say when she answers.

“Rowan,” she says. “It's good to hear from you. Did you find something?”

“Maybe,” I say. “But I'm not sure what it means. Before Carrie’s body was found, how long was she missing?”

“Three days,” she tells me. “Almost three days. She left home as if she was going to work like usual, but she didn't come home. I talked to her manager at work, and he told me that she hadn't come in. That is completely unheard of for Carrie. She had a very strong work ethic and never just skipped work.”

“So she just drove off without letting anybody know that she was leaving or where she was going?” I ask.

“Exactly,” Penny says. “That just wasn't like her. Carrie had always been the kind of child that never made us worry. She let us know everywhere she was going to be and what she was doing, even as a teenager. She didn't miss curfew but a couple of times in her entire life, and when she did, it was only by a couple of minutes, and yet she still called to let us know why she was late. Even as an adult, she checked in with us pretty regularly, and once she moved back in with us, it went right back to calling to let us know where she was and when she was going to be home.

“The police said since she was an adult and there was no indication that any foul play was going on, they would take the report, but the only investigation they would do is a wellness check at her place of residence. Since that was our house, she didn’t even get that. They didn’t even talk to her manager from work until she had been missing for two days. If they had searched for her…”

Her voice trails off, but I can't help but share the same sentiment even though I know it's extremely unlikely that the police would have been able to track her in time. Privacy laws prevent pinging phones or using other types of tracking on adults without a warrant, which could have taken too long to obtain. But they still should have tried.

With the type of person Carrie was, this behavior was out of character and should have been enough of an alarm for law enforcement to take steps immediately. I'm torn between the two sides. The one that understands protocol and privacy, that Carrie was a full-grown adult in her twenties and allowed to do whatever she wanted to do and go wherever she wanted to go without having to tell anyone. But also the side that knows just how critically important every single second is when a person goes missing. Sometimes it can be hard to tell if a person is truly missing or if they have just decided to go off for a while on their own because they need some time.

In some situations, it would be dangerous to immediately track a person who is supposedly missing and give the information to someone who they desperately do not want to find them. The fine line is difficult to discern sometimes, and it can be painful to deal with the consequences when it goes wrong.

“Do you know anything about Holt, Maryland?” I ask, trying to move the conversation past the tense moment.

“That’s where her body was found,” she says.

“It is,” I say. “But does it mean anything to you? Have you ever visited Holt, or do you know if she knew anyone from there?”

“We’d never been, and neither had Carrie, as far as I know. I guess she could have gone during the years when she wasn’t living with us, but I’m sure she never mentioned visiting Maryland for any reason,” she says.

“I just found out that she stayed in a hotel in the town for two nights before she was found. There’s security footage of someone I assume is her entering the hotel and then leaving the day she was found.”

“Someone you assume is her?” she asks. “What does that mean?”

“I found out that she had the reservation and what time she entered her room. The police had already looked at the surveillance footage from the hotel and said they didn't see her going in, but I watched at the time that she would have entered the building in order to go into her room and saw a person going in through the side entrance. She was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, so I wasn't able to see her face, but she's the only person who entered the building at any time around when she checked into her room. Then she's seen again leaving right after checking out online,” I say.

“Why would she be wearing a hooded sweatshirt?” her mother asks.

“No idea,” I say. “But since it's so unusual for the weather and the hood was pulled up so tightly over her face, it’s hard to assume anything but that she was purposely trying to conceal her identity and not show up on the surveillance footage. She might have known that you would be looking for her and was trying to avoid being seen so that you wouldn’t find her until she was ready to go home.”

“She just never got the chance to make it,” she says.

“Again, I don’t know any of this for sure. I don’t know why she was in Holt or why she didn’t want to be seen on the footage, but that is one possible reason,” I say.

“Was Shane with her?” she asks.

“There was no one with her in the footage, and Shane did not have a reservation,” I say.

“Did you speak with him? What did you find out from him?” she asks, her tone getting almost desperate as new information presses down on her and she tries to make sense out of it all.

“I haven’t been able to speak with him,” I tell her. “I called him, but he didn’t answer, so I left a message. I hope he’ll call me back.”

“Please let me know if he does,” she says. “I can’t take this, Rowan.”

“I’m sorry you’re going through this. I am doing everything I can to find answers for you. I’ll keep you as updated as I am able to,” I tell her.

We get off the phone just as I am pulling into the small, paved parking area designated for the park. It’s sectioned off with the same log fences as create the barrier behind the commercial properties on the other end. I park close to the mouth of a wide gravel pathway leading into the park and stop to review the sign meant to guide visitors to the different amenities. I don’t need to visit the playing fields, exercise circuit, or picnic areas. I’m only interested in the walking trails. According to the map, there are four different sections of walking trails, but I use the direction arrows to point me toward the ones to the farthest point, the ones where Carrie was found.

I walk through the park trying to imagine what it would have been like the day that she was murdered. Watching her on that surveillance footage was eerie, seeing her leaving the hotel alive and knowing that within a few hours, a family would find her body sprawled out in the undergrowth by the trail they were walking down.

I had thought it was possible that Carrie might have been murdered elsewhere and dumped in the park, but now that I’ve seen it, I know that isn't the case. The footage from the employee door of the hotel would have shown her walk around the side after leaving the hotel and caught her and her killer going down the alley. At no point was she seen behind the hotel, alone or with anyone. That leaves the only explanation being that she walked into the park on her own. She moved through it with her killer without any of the other people there seeing anything wrong. Then she was killed right there on the walking trail.

It takes a little while to walk all the way through the park and to the walking trails. I use crime scene maps and images to find the exact spot where she was found. There's still a piece of caution tape attached to a tree, and several plastic-wrapped bouquets of flowers have been left at the spot where her body was found as a makeshift memorial to her. I can’t help but wonder how long they will last there. At some point those who care for the park will have to move them. I don’t envy that job. They might just be flowers strangers picked up from the store so they could feel like they were doing something kind, but it feels uncomfortable to think about dismantling a memorial.

From where I’m standing, I can just barely make out the backs of the buildings through the trees. It’s an infuriating distance. Just close enough that Carrie would have been able to see them and know that they were right there, that people were so close she might have even been able to see them. But far enough away that they wouldn’t have heard her as she struggled to breathe.

EIGHT

Without getting much out of my visit to the site where she was found, I decide to put Carrie Parker aside for the moment and concentrate on the more recent victim, Melanie Rhodes. I go back to my hotel room and pull out all the information I have on Melanie. I expect to find much the same as I did when I was going through everything about Carrie. Family who had been interviewed. Parents devastated at the loss of their child. Instead, I find almost nothing.

According to the information about her, Melanie had no family when she died. An only child whose parents died when she was young, she was raised by a grandmother who also passed several years ago. Without any other extended family, the detective had to make a note in the record that there was no one to give a death notification to except her manager at work.

I can’t even find anything in her details about any friends. Like Carrie, the one similarity that I actually see between the two of them, the reason it was noted that Melanie was missing is because she didn’t show up for work, something she never did. She was very dedicated to her career, according to the statement made by her boss, and was generally the first person into the office in the morning and the last person to leave at night.

I call the manager, Paul Mercer, to find out if there’s anything else he can tell me.

“I told the detectives everything I know,” he says. “Melanie was the quietest person I’ve ever known. She rarely talked to anyone, and even when she did, it wasn’t like she shared much about herself. I didn’t even know she didn’t have a family until the detectives got in touch with me to tell me she had been murdered. It makes me feel terrible to think she was alone all the time, especially on holidays and things. If she’d told me, I would have invited her over or called her or something.”

I have my doubts about that. Not because I think Paul Mercer is a bad person or doesn’t have any compassion. He hasn’t said anything offensive, and I haven’t spoken with him long enough to have any kind of feeling about him like that. But it’s human reaction to feel more compassion and believe more in your own capacity to take care of other people when that requirement isn’t actually there. When a person dies, it’s much easier to look at them with empathy and think of all the ways that you would help them if they were still around even though you never felt that compulsion when they were there. It’s easy for him to say now that he would have done all those things for her if he knew that she was alone, but in all the time she worked for him, he never put in the effort to find out if she needed it.

“You never heard her talking about friends or anything?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “She never seemed to go anywhere or do anything. She never requested time off for vacation. She never got phone calls. I never even saw her on her phone. If she wasn’t working at her desk through lunch, she would sit in the same place in the lunch room with a book. The other people on her team would be right there, and it was like she didn’t even see them.”

“Would I be able to come in and talk to her work associates?” I ask. “I would think they spent more time with her than you did on a daily basis so maybe they know more.”

“Sure,” he says.

He gives me the address of the office building where Melanie worked, and I tell him I’ll be there later in the afternoon. I want to do some more looking into Melanie’s personal life and what I can find out about her before I talk to anyone else. Without anything else to go on, I look up any possible social media she might have. It can be amazing the things that people reveal about themselves on these platforms. What people think they know about them can be completely blown out of the water when they are put behind the guard of a computer and a profile. This is often where the secrets lurk, not really secret but treated as though the people can reveal their innermost thoughts and feelings without thousands of people seeing it.

As soon as I find Melanie’s profile, I realize that is actually true for her. She has them set to private, so I’m not able to see anything she has posted other than her profile picture and the generic sunset landscape she used as her cover image. I know I need the information from the social media page, so I contact James and let him know that I’ll need the Bureau to contact the platform and gain access to her profile.

With that feeling like a dead-end, I gather my materials and leave for the office building. The GPS tells me that the building is located in the middle of the small city near the town of Holt, right near the courthouse. As I’m driving toward the office building, I notice a group of people clustered outside the courthouse. I find the nearest parking spot on the side of the street and park, using the nearby kiosk to record my license plate and pay for the spot before making my way toward the group.

The mass of people are obviously protesting something, holding up signs and shouting in response to someone with a megaphone chanting at them from the front of the group. As I get closer to them I notice some of the sayings written across the signs and realize they are protesting for prison reform, something that has come up frequently in recent months.

“They know nothing!” the man at the front of the group shouts. “They are taking advantage of his circumstances to blame Jeremy Rosser. They think because they already have him in their clutches, they know everything about him, they know who he is and can treat him however they want to. I say no!”

“No!” the crowd shouts back to him.

I’ve gotten up to the group now, and I step up beside a young man who isn’t holding a sign but is wearing a T-shirt proclaiming his belief in total prison reform.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Haven’t you heard what’s going on with Jeremy Rosser?” he asks.

“No,” I tell him, shaking my head.

“He’s an inmate at Connor Correctional. He was transferred to solitary confinement because the prison administration believes he knows something about a case and he won’t talk. They say he’s being insubordinate and have locked him up in the hole for it. It’s cruel and unusual punishment. Completely unwarranted,” he says, getting angrier as he speaks. “How could they do that to a human being? I thought we had freedom of speech, which means freedom from speech.”

I want to argue with him, but in this situation, I know it won’t do any good. Regardless of how I feel about the obligation of people to share any and all knowledge they may have about a crime, I agree that a prisoner not sharing information the administration assumes they have is not a good enough excuse to put them into solitary confinement. The use of solitary as a punishment or deterrent is something I already disagree with strongly, and I feel that if it is going to be used, it should be done so sparingly and in short duration. There’s no excuse for it to be inflicted on someone just because the administration doesn’t agree with something that a prisoner is choosing not to talk about. If there’s anything at all.

“How do they know that he knows something about the case?” I ask.

“They won’t say. Just that they have it on good authority that he has information that is integral to the case and would make a difference in the investigation, which has been transferred to the FBI,” he says.

This instantly sparks my attention. “It was transferred to the FBI? What case is this?”

“The murder of Carrie Parker,” he says. “She was found in the woods not far from here.”

“I know,” I tell him, taking out my badge to show him. “I’m the one handling the investigation.”

“Holy shit,” he says. He gestures around himself at the group of people. “All this… this is legal. We have the right to gather and protest peacefully. We aren’t doing anything wrong.”

“I know,” I tell him. “And I don’t care. I’m not a cop. This doesn’t matter to me. You aren’t hurting anyone. As long as you don’t start hurling Molotov cocktails and storming buildings, we don’t have a problem. I want to know more about Jeremy Rosser and why he was put into solitary. You say he was put there because he won’t give up information about Carrie Parker’s murder?”

“They say he is being insubordinate and that he used abusive language with the guards. That he threatened them and that it is a punishable offense to show any sort of aggression toward the guards, physically or verbally. But we know he was just defending himself. Anyone would act the same way if they were being accused of something and threatened with punishment for something they didn’t do. They threw him in the hole just because he says he doesn’t have any of the information they think he does. That isn’t fair. They keep coming up with other reasons why they have him in there, but we know they’re lying. They have him in there because he isn’t talking, and that’s the only reason.”

“You don’t think he actually knows anything about the murder?” I ask.

“He says he doesn’t,” the man says.

“Who is that?” I ask, gesturing to the man at the front of the group still shouting into the megaphone.

“Gavin Bates,” he tells me. “He’s been an activist for prison reform his whole life, since his father went in when he was a kid. He does a lot of work to try to make the conditions better for people behind bars.”

“You know him pretty well?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’ve been doing protests with him for a couple of years.”

I give him one of my cards. “Can you give this to him and have him give me a call if he hears anything new about the case?”

“Sure,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say.

I leave the protest and head over to the office building where Melanie used to work. The front door to the building leads into a lobby with a large, curved reception desk. I walk up to the desk, and the woman behind it looks up at me.

“How can I help you?” she asks.

“I spoke with Paul Mercer earlier,” I tell her. “He’s expecting me.”

“One second please.”

She picks up a phone and hits a button. “Mr. Mercer? There’s a woman here to see you. She says you’re expecting her.” Her eyes slide up to me. “I see. Agent Shade?”

“Yes,” I tell her, showing her my badge.

“Yes,” she says into the phone. “I’ll send her up.”

The receptionist hangs up and gestures to an elevator behind her. “Fourth floor.”

“Thank you,” I say.

I ride the elevator up and walk out onto a generic office floor. A man is already walking toward me.

“Agent Shade,” he says. “I’m Paul Mercer.”

“Good to meet you. Thank you for letting me come.”

“Of course. Come with me, I’ll show you where Melanie’s team works,” he says.

I follow him through the office to a set of glass doors that lead to a larger room broken up into a central work area surrounded by several individual cubicles. I notice someone sitting at the desk in each of the cubicles except for one. A single vase of flowers, slightly wilted, sits in the center of the desk along with a neat assortment of office supplies. A sweater draped across the back of the chair gives some humanity. It could easily be a gift sent for a birthday or a special anniversary, but I know it’s the office’s idea of a memorial for their murdered coworker.

I think about what Paul said to me about welcoming her to his home for holidays and other celebrations if he had known she didn’t have anyone when she was alive and know instantly he is the one who bought the flowers. None of the other coworkers seem to even notice that one of the cubicles is empty.

“Can everybody stop for a second and come out here?” Paul calls out to the workers.

They each stop and look over their shoulders at him, not moving as if they think that if they don’t immediately react to what he’s saying he’ll just forget what he wanted and leave. Instead, he gestures at all of them to come and join us in the central area.

“Feel free to have a seat,” he says to me. “Unless you want to speak to them individually.”

He’s lowered his voice slightly when he says it, almost as if he expects that this is more of an interrogation than it is just me wanting to finding out more about the victim.

“No, this is fine,” I say.

All five of Melanie’s coworkers come out to the table and take the spots I can only assume are the same ones they use when they are doing group projects in this section of the office. They look at me curiously, and I know that Mercer hasn’t mentioned my visit to them. I introduce myself and let them know why I’m here. They don’t seem surprised, but none of them show any emotion when talking about Melanie, either.

The conversation is brief. They confirm essentially what I’ve already heard about her. She had a very quiet, almost withdrawn personality and rarely even spoke with anyone else in the office unless they were working. None of them had ever heard her talk about family, a boyfriend, or even friends outside of the office, and they admitted to knowing very little about her. She wasn’t outgoing enough to join in with their conversations in the lunch room and never showed much interest in anything but work.

“It just seemed like she wasn’t very willing to make much of a connection with us,” one of them says as the conversation is ending. “She was just… here.”

Just one thought goes through my head.

And now she’s not.

NINE

The protest outside of the courthouse hasn’t left my mind, and I immediately make the calls it takes to get me into the prison to talk to Jeremy Russo. The next day, I’m able to get in. He looks confused and on edge when they lead him out of the segregation unit where he’s been kept to the meeting room where we’ll talk.

“Hi, Jeremy, my name is Agent Shade. I’m with the FBI. I’m investigating the murder of Carrie Parker,” I say.

His spine stiffens, and his jaw tightens when he hears that.

“I didn’t have anything to do with that,” he says.

“I know,” I say. “I’m not saying you did. But there is a protest going on outside of the courthouse with a bunch of people who say that the only reason you were put into solitary confinement is because you know something about the murder.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” he says. “I don’t know why they would think that I do, but I’m not trying to hide anything.”

“If you can think of anything, you get in touch with me. The prison will know how.”

It’s obvious I’m not going to get anything out of Jeremy Russo, so I end the conversation and leave the prison. I’m just getting back to the hotel when my phone rings. I don’t recognize the number on the screen.

“Agent Shade,” I answer.

“You’ve been trying to get in touch with me. This is Shane Macintosh,” a voice says through the line.

“Mr. Macintosh, yes,” I say, hurrying to put everything down so I can concentrate on the call. “Thank you for calling me back.”

“No problem. But I’ve already talked to the cops.”

“I know,” I tell him. “I’m not a cop. I’m an FBI agent. I’ve taken on the investigation because of further developments in the case. I’d like to talk to you about Carrie and your relationship with her. Is that something you could do?”

“I guess,” he says.

“Great. I’m actually in Holt right now. I’d prefer to meet you in person, if that works for you,” I say. “Where would be a good place?”

“There’s a coffee shop on Jackson that I’m not far from,” he tells me.

I run a quick search for it on my phone, then go back to the call and confirm the name of the shop and the address. We end the call, and I freshen up quickly before getting back into the car and following the directions to the shop.

Only one table has just a single guy sitting at it when I get to the coffee shop, so I order a coffee and approach.

“Mr. Macintosh?” I ask.

“Call me Shane,” he says. “I guess you’re Agent Shade?”

“Yes,” I say, sliding into the seat across from him.

I don’t feel comfortable enough with him yet to put him on a first-name basis. Instead, I observe his body language, the way he’s presenting himself. He’s slumped slightly in his chair, his hands wrapped around a cup but not bringing it to his lips. He looks slightly disheveled, but I can’t really blame him for that. He’s trying to cope with the loss of someone he spent two years of his life with, and with the added horror and trauma of it being by murder. I would expect him to not look his polished best.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” I say.

“Sure,” he responds. “I want to help any way I can, but I don’t know what else I can tell you that I didn’t already tell the detectives.”

“Just forget about talking to the detectives and start over with me. I’m doing a fresh investigation, so I want to get all the information you have straight from you rather than a report or a file of some kind. All right?”

“Sounds good,” he says.

“Good. I’m going to start with Carrie’s family. I’ve already spoken with them, and they made it pretty clear that you weren’t exactly close,” I say.

“That’s an understatement. They hated me from the very beginning,” Shane tells me.

“Why is that?” I ask.

“They were pissed about the way we met. They didn’t think it was good enough for their little girl,” he says.

“How did you meet?” I ask, realizing I’d never asked Carrie’s parents that question.

“Carrie was part of a prison pen pal program. I was her pen pal,” he tells me. “That was the kind of girl she was. She wanted to do good things for people and make a difference. She certainly made a difference for me.”

“But her parents didn’t like that you were in prison,” I conclude. “That bothered them.”

“You can say that,” he says. “They thought she would be much better off if she was with one of the other volunteers doing all the good stuff rather than with one of the deadbeats they were just trying to be nice to. It was like they could be proud of her for reaching out and trying to be kind to people who had lost their way and made bad choices in their lives, but if one of those people actually became a part of their lives, that was way too much. They couldn’t handle having her that close to someone who wasn’t perfect, the way her first boyfriend was.”

I can hear the hurt in his voice. It still bothers him how Penny and Marlon treated him and the assumptions they made about him right from the beginning because he was in prison when their daughter met him. I can’t say that I really blame either side for how they feel. I don’t have children, so I can’t fully put myself in the position of parents who find out that their daughter is in a serious relationship with someone who served time in prison, but I can imagine it would be unsettling considering the horror stories always told about prisoners and their time behind bars.

At the same time, I also know that there is redemption. People can improve, and just because someone is in prison it doesn’t mean that they are a terrible person and not worth anything. The time I’ve spent in the Bureau has exposed me to many people who have done such horrific things I can’t imagine them ever out in the world interacting with people again. I can’t honestly see anything about them that is worth anything. But then there are those who strayed, took wrong paths, made bad decisions. Some of these bad decisions were truly horrible and damaged the lives of many people around them, but they were able to pull themselves out of the darkness and become something more.

It's not up to me to decide who is who. Even those who sicken me and make my skin crawl are still human. I am constantly reminded that I am still human. I ended up in prison for something I didn’t do, and I encountered many people there who I would never say should just be thrown away. I know how it feels to have that judgment. There are still people within the Bureau who don’t think I should be among them and think of me only as the one who might have killed her sister but got off.

It seems Shane really did care for Carrie very much, and I can see how it would hurt him not to be accepted into her family.

“Can you tell me more about your relationship with Carrie?” I ask.

“Things used to be really good. Like I said, we were pen pals, so we got to know each other really well. And she still fell in love with me. I think by the time she came to see me the first time, we’d been writing to each other for like six months. She definitely made me wait. And that first time when she came, I knew. The second I laid eyes on her, I knew she was something special and we were going to be more than just writing buddies. She was going to be a big part of my life, and I was already looking forward to seeing what that could mean.

“She didn’t tell me then, but in a letter I got a couple weeks later, she told me how much she felt for me when we were sitting there in the visiting room and how much she wanted to see me again. By the time I got out, we were already wrapped up in each other. That’s why it sucked so much that her parents wouldn’t even give me the slightest chance. She was so amazing, and I wanted them to know that’s how I felt about her. I don’t have a family, so I really loved the idea of us being one. But they made sure I knew that wasn’t going to happen.

“Then recently, things started changing with Carrie. She was really depressed and got withdrawn. We had started to have some problems, but I wanted to work them out. I didn’t want to give up on her. But then she decided we needed to break up. She said she wasn’t going anywhere in life and needed a change. Even though she was the one who was determined the relationship needed to end, she was having a really hard time with the breakup. She just kept getting more depressed, and it was really hard to see. I thought maybe we had a chance since we kept kind of finding a way back to each other, but then her parents convinced her to move out of our place and to theirs, and I knew that was it,” he says.

I take out a picture of the wooden chip and put it on the table between us. The detail of the chip being found in the pocket of the victims has been kept out of the press, and I don’t explain what it is. I want to see his reaction. He looks at it, but no emotion crosses his face.

“Does this mean anything to you?” I ask.

His eyebrows knit together for a second, and he shakes his head. “No. I don’t recognize it.”

“All right. That’s all I have for you right now. Thank you for meeting with me. And if you think of anything else, don’t hesitate to call me. My phone is always on.”

TEN

Back at the hotel, I feel like I’m stuck in a cycle of waiting. Carrie’s social media hasn’t been updated except for a sprinkling of pictures in the last couple of years, so there wasn’t anything to go on with that. There’s not really much more I can do until the social media for Melanie is available to look through, so I go back to the Natalia Rodriguez case.

I haven’t had a chance to speak with her family yet, so I call the number that is in her information and get her father, Henry. The conversation is a heartbreaking rehashing of everything I’ve already learned about the girl and her disappearance. He tells me about how beautiful she was, how sweet, how intelligent. He doesn’t go so far as to say she was perfect, but he’s venturing close.

He doesn’t have any extra insights for me, nothing more about Natalia or the day she vanished. Just like their statements from her original disappearance said, they were completely against the possibility that she would have told them that she was going to the beach but had actually snuck off to meet up with a boy, possibly someone working at the resort. Natalia was far too devoted to her boyfriend and would never have done something like that to him or to their relationship.

If her bathing suit hadn’t been found, I would still be questioning if it was a possibility despite their protestations. But the appearance of her suit on the beach makes that less plausible.

I listen as Henry describes the hope he, his wife, and their son held so strongly to when they first discovered Natalia was missing. They thought there was still a chance there was a simple explanation for her not coming back, but as the time passed and there was no sign of her, the hope started to slip. They knew there was no longer the possibility of something simple. She didn't just get turned around or fall in the water and get washed away to be picked up by somebody's boat. Something much bigger happened to her, and they had to accept it while also continuing to scrape together as much hope as they possibly could that their little girl was still alive somewhere. That they would be able to find her and bring her home.

Finding her bathing suit had crushed that hope a little bit. They didn't want to admit it. I could hear it in his voice. They wanted to keep clinging to their absolute determination that she was still out there somewhere just waiting for them to find her. No matter what she was going through, she was alive, and they were going to have her back home.

I knew why they were holding on to that so intently. I can still remember that feeling from when Vivienne first disappeared. I never wanted to think even for a second that something truly horrific could have happened to her. Even as days, weeks, months, and then years passed, I couldn't bring myself to grieve fully for my sister. It felt like a betrayal. If I told myself that she was dead and allowed myself to mourn for her, then I was giving up on her. In a strange, inexplicable way, it felt almost like it was my hope, my belief in her continual survival that was keeping her alive. If I took that from her, then she would have nothing.

“I want you to tell me every detail that your son told you about her walking down to the beach,” I say to Henry. “Everything. I know you told me that she came to you and your wife and said that she wanted to go collect seashells.”

“Yes,” he says. “She loves seashells. She has them from every trip we've taken to the beach, and she likes to bring them home to her friends, too. So she was going to head down to the beach and collect the ones from that trip. She is seventeen years old and very responsible. Neither of us saw any reason why she shouldn't be able to go down there by herself. It was just a short distance from our bungalow and a private stretch of beach. None of the things people worry about when their daughters are alone.

“My son said she asked him if he wanted to go with her and he said no, that he was relaxing on the patio outside the bungalow. But he watched her walk away and noticed she had a little bit of a sunburn. Natalia always gets sunburns. No matter what, at least one time during the trip, she gets burned. She walked away down the path to the beach, and he couldn't see her anymore. He stayed outside for a while and said he didn't hear anything unusual or see her again.”

I have a sudden flash of memory, something that hasn't come to my mind in thirteen years. Up until now all I've been able to remember is Vivienne walking away. I didn't know where she was going or what she was doing, just that she was walking away from me at a distance. But now I remember. She had gotten a nosebleed. Nothing happened; she just was prone to getting bloody noses, and that day, one had suddenly started.

My call with Henry ends, and I immediately call Casey. It sounds like she's somewhere with a lot of people.

“Hey,” she says.

“Where are you?” I ask.

“At the bowling alley,” she tells me.

“Oh,” I say. “I didn't mean to interrupt. Give me a call when you can.”

“Is everything okay?” she asks. “You sound upset.”

“I don't know if upset is the right word, but I just remembered something that I haven't remembered in thirteen years.”

“Thirteen years?” she asks. “Something about your sister?”

“Yes,” I tell her.

“Give me just a second, I need to take this,” I hear her say to somebody. There are scuffling sounds as she moves somewhere else. “What did you remember?”

“The day she disappeared, remember how I've told you that I know I saw her walking away from me? That I didn't know where she was going, but that she was walking away, and she was at a distance from me?” I ask.

“I remember,” she says.

“And that I had blood on my hands when my father found me? They tested that blood, and it was Vivienne’s, but there wasn't a huge amount of it. It wasn't like it was all over me or all over the ground. Just something on my hands.”

“Right,” Casey says. “What about it?”

“She had gotten a nosebleed,” I say. “She used to get them all the time. It was just something about her. Sometimes I thought about it as the one thing that made her not perfect. If she was in air conditioning too long or artificial heat too long, sometimes just being in the ocean and salt water too long, she would end up with these awful nosebleeds that started really suddenly. It wasn't like just a little bit and then got worse. It was just a sudden gush. And that's what happened that day.

“When she was walking away from me, she was going to the first aid center to deal with the nosebleed. I have no idea why I wasn't with her. Maybe she didn't want me to go. Maybe we’d had an argument. Maybe there was something else I was supposed to be doing. I don't know. But that's why there was blood on my hands. When it suddenly started, I tried to help her stop it.”

My heart is racing as I recount this memory to Casey. I feel bad for interrupting her date, but she's the only person I can talk to about this. She's the only person I have in my life who I trust enough to talk to about my sister and what I went through.

“What does this mean?” she asks. “Are you going to tell somebody about it?”

“I don't know,” I say. “I don't know if it would matter. I was already exonerated, and my record cleared. This is just evidence that there was a reasonable explanation for there being blood on my hands. It doesn't explain anything about what could have happened to Vivienne.”

“But now you know where she was going,” Casey points out. “That makes a difference. She was headed toward that first aid center. Did she ever get there? Did the nurse see her?”

“No,” I say. “Everybody working at the resort was interviewed, and the nurse, like everybody else, said she hadn't seen Vivienne that day. And there was a sign-in sheet at the first aid center that everybody put their name down on when they walked in. Vivienne's name wasn't on it. Wherever we were when that nosebleed started, she disappeared between there and the first aid center. Whatever happened to her, it happened after her nose started bleeding and before she made it to the first aid center. No other blood was found anywhere at the resort.

“They could have missed small drops that might have come from her hand covering her nose, but it means there was nowhere that she stopped for any length of time to try to clean herself up. She would have made a mess in a bathroom or the bungalow or anything like that if she’d tried to stop the bleeding herself, and they would have found it.”

“So it probably happened out in the open, somewhere drops of blood could have fallen and then been brushed away or covered up so they weren’t found,” Casey says.

“Like on dirt or sand,” I say.

“It’s something,” Casey says. “This is something.”

“I know,” I tell her. “I just don’t know what. Anyway, I just needed to tell you that. Go back to your date—how is it going? Is it a date? I didn’t get an emergency phone call.”

“Well, you are in another state, so it wouldn’t have really mattered even if I had called you. But yes, it is a date. Just the two of us bowling. And I’m actually having fun. It turns out I’m just as not great at bowling as I remember being, but he doesn’t care. He’s not great, either. So we’re just having fun,” she says.

“That’s great. I’m so glad to hear that,” I tell her.

“Thank you. I’ll call you with a full report later. How is your case going?”

“It’s going,” I say. “I’m waiting for some information to come through that will hopefully be helpful.”

“Good luck.”

ELEVEN

Early the next day, I finally get access to Melanie Rhodes’ social media. I open it hoping to find a list of people she associated with online that would consider her a friend. Often people who are withdrawn and quiet in real life can still find themselves and their people in the virtual world. Maybe this will be where I find the people who knew her and will be able to tell me about her life. Instead, I find emptiness almost as complete as the real world that she didn’t seem to be a part of.

The posts on the profile speak to a deep depression, but without the expectation of response or sympathy. With only a scattering of friends on her list, most of what she posted went completely unnoticed and unacknowledged. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that most of the people she had added to her profile as friends weren’t actually real people at all but the bots that are created to exploit and manipulate.

Reading through the comments she’d made and looking at graphics and images she chose to share only makes her existence seem sadder and more painful. They are a reflection of what this woman felt and how she tried every day to get through a life she couldn’t connect with even when she tried. The deeper I get into reading her profile, the more posts I notice that are filled with suicidal thoughts and the desire to not be alive anymore. It’s heart-wrenching to see someone suffering this intensely and without anyone there to support her.

The access to the profile allows me to read through her private messages, and I go into the inbox wondering if there will be anything there. It makes me feel bad that I am surprised to see there are some messages saved in the inbox. I read through them and find fairly generic conversations that seemed to confirm that at least a few of the friends on the page are actually robots. I find a couple of others that I think are coming from real people but have little depth and substance.

Then I discover a series of conversations from different people that seem almost coded, the words suggesting something other than what they are actually saying. I can't follow them completely, but I get to one that tells Melanie she should check something out because it seems like she would be interested. The message doesn't say what it is that she should check out or why she seems interested but asks for her phone number so that she can get more information about it.

The conversation feels like a continuation of one that has already occurred, and I wonder if it comes from a contact she made with a person in real life or if there are online interactions somewhere else that I haven't found. The fact that this conversation asks for her phone number tells me that more is out there, and now I need to request her phone records to find out.

I call James, and he answers on the second ring.

“I was about to call you,” he says. “What's going on? What do you need?”

“I just got in the social media for Melanie Rhodes, and there isn't very much on it. She didn't have a lot of connections, and almost everything that's posted is really sad. A lot of depression and suicidal thoughts. It seems like her online life was just as sad and disconnected as her real life,” I say.

“But somebody still murdered her,” James says.

“I know that,” I tell him. “And that's why I'm calling. I read through the messages on her profile, and there really wasn't much, but one of them was interesting. It said whoever was sending the message thought she might be interested in something and that she should check it out, but it didn't give any indication of what they were talking about. But then they asked for her phone number. I think they continued talking about it over the phone. I'd really like to get the phone records so I can look them over. Maybe there are some text messages or a frequent number that I can call and see what they can tell me. I need you to request those for me.”

“I can do that,” he says. “But I have some information for you now. The toxicology report on Carrie Parker just came in. She had sedatives in her system.”

“Sedatives?” I ask. “She was drugged?”

“Possibly,” he says. “She might have taken them herself. But there was a fairly high quantity. The doctor says they would have taken effect fairly quickly.”

“I found out that she was staying at a hotel right next to the park where she was found,” I say. “I spoke with employees there, and they don't remember her, but I found out when she checked in and saw a figure entering the hotel right around that time. Then the morning that she checked out, I saw the same figure on the footage as well. For some reason, she was in Maryland at a hotel before she was murdered. Now we find out that she had sedatives in her system. If they went into effect quickly, it's highly unlikely that she took them before leaving the hotel.

“She would have had to drive to the place where her car was found and then walk through the park. I did that walk, and it wasn't short. There’s no way that she could have done it if she was under the influence of sedatives. Which tells me that somehow, she got onto that walking trail and then was drugged before she was strangled. Do they have any idea how they were ingested? Did she take pills or was it injected?”

“They believe it was injected,” he tells me.

“So it's possible her killer injected her to subdue her before strangling her,” I say. “That's not very common. But we already know this wasn't a random, spur-of-the-moment type of killing. That chip in her pocket says her killer planned to kill that day. They wanted to find a victim and left that as their calling card. The question is, was it someone she happened to run into while walking through the park? Or did she go to Maryland to meet with somebody who eventually killed her?”

“What do you think about the two different causes of death?” James asks. “Toxicology is still out on Melanie, but being shot in the back of the head in her own home is very different from being drugged and strangled in a public park.”

“It’s unusual for a killer to change their method that drastically. They obviously wanted the murders to be connected because they left the wooden chip in both of their pockets, and yet they had very different approaches to each of the murders. Without any witnesses for either of the murders, there isn’t a lot to go on, but I think it’s very significant that the type of murder and the location varies so much. Killing someone and leaving them in a public area to be found has a very different feeling; it sends a very different message than going into a person’s home and murdering them there.

“Especially considering Melanie did not have any family and seems to have had no real friends to speak of, the fact that this person was inside her home and there was no sign of forced entry has to mean something. The way the people at work talked about her, it seems she was fairly meticulous about things in her life. Her desk was very neat and organized, she always did everything to the absolute letter and went above and beyond with expectations and requirements. She was a stickler for rules and regulations,” I say.

“What does any of that have to do with her being shot in her house?” James asks.

“It's not the fact that she was shot in her house,” I say. “It's the fact that there was no sign of forced entry and no indication that someone snuck in. A person who is that conscientious about things at work is not going to do something like leave their doors unlocked. She wouldn't be careless enough to not lock her doors and therefore fall victim to someone randomly trying doors to see if they can open one.

“Even beyond that, though, this killer is planning these kills. I can't imagine they would just go out looking for a random victim and stumble on someone like Melanie. They would have to know her routine and follow her, then somehow get inside her house without causing any damage to the doors or windows. That’s not something that happens spontaneously. Melanie was chosen for one reason or another.”

“But you said this woman had no one in her life. Even the people at work barely knew her. Who would choose someone like that to murder?” James asks.

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

I hang up, and almost immediately, my phone rings again. I think it might be James realizing he has forgotten something and calling me back, or Casey ready to tell me all about her foray into romantic bowling, but the number that shows up across the screen is unfamiliar.

“Agent Shade,” I answer.

“This is Gavin Bates,” a voice says through the line. “You gave one of my friends your card and told him to ask me to get in touch with you.”

It takes me a second to make the connection with the name, but then I remember he is the leader of the protest outside of the courthouse.

“Yes,” I say. “Thanks for getting back with me.”

“I’m sorry it took a little while. We have a lot of important work we’re doing, and it is taking up all of my time,” he says.

I resist the urge to remind him of the urgency of my own work.

“I understand,” I tell him. “I won’t take up too much more of your time. Of course, you know I was at the protest the other day and heard what was going on with Jeremy Russo.”

“Yes. You went to see him. You spoke with him,” he says.

“I did,” I confirm. “How did you know that?”

“If I’m going to be an activist for the well-being of the incarcerated, I have to stay connected to them. What I do isn’t just lip service, Agent Shade. I am trying to make a difference,” he says. “You want to, too, don’t you? You came to that protest for a reason, and I believe you felt something. You need to join us for our other events. Your presence would be so impactful. You are part of putting people into the prison system, so you are responsible for making sure that they are treated properly when they get there. You have to carry some burden knowing that the people who are sent away because of your investigations encounter the types of horrors and injustices that they do.”

“My responsibility is finding the people who have committed crimes and getting them off the streets so they can’t hurt anyone else,” I tell him. “That’s what I do, and I do it well.”

“But you can’t possibly believe that’s all you are doing. You aren’t just scooping up bad guys and tossing them in a cell like we’re living in a Saturday morning cartoon and you’re some superhero. These are human beings, and it’s up to you to stand up for them. You need to join us and speak out for prison reform. Show that you have the best interests of human beings at heart, not just that you want vengeance,” he says.

“I didn’t go to your protest as an activist,” I say. “I went because I was nearby during an investigation. That investigation happens to coincide with what you were protesting.”

“Frank told me that you are investigating the murder of Carrie Parker,” he tells me, a slightly smug note in his voice like he thought I wouldn’t know that bit of information would find its way to him.

“I am,” I tell him without hesitation. “And he told me that Jeremy Russo was put in the segregation housing unit because the administrators believe he has information about the murder and is refusing to talk. That’s why I went into the prison to speak with him.”

“What did he tell you?” he asks. “What did you find out?”

“This is an active investigation, and I’m not at liberty to discuss details with anyone not involved. But the reason I wanted you to get in touch with me is because I wanted to know what you know. How did you get involved in protesting for Jeremy Russo?”

“Some of my contacts from within the prison told me about it. I’ve been protesting the conditions within that prison for years now, and when they heard that Jeremy had been thrown into the hole for something as simple as not talking when they wanted him to, I knew I had to pick that cause up,” he says.

“Officially he was put there because of his behavior,” I point out. “He was aggressive and combative with the prison staff and spoke threateningly. Not because of the Carrie Parker case and anything he may or may not be discussing with the administration.”

“That’s what they say. They have to. They can’t admit what they are doing because they know how much trouble they would get into. This is what I’m talking about, Agent. They are getting away with treating these prisoners like sub-humans because they are seen as being all-powerful. If we don’t continue to stand up and speak out against it, there’s never going to be a change. The ideal world would be one without prisons, but as long as we have them, we need to fight to make sure that they are humane.”

“The ideal world would be one without criminals to put into prisons,” I say. “But as long as there are people willing to hurt others, there will be institutions in place to make sure that they are held accountable. But I do agree that they should be humane. The definition of that is what hasn’t really been settled. I understand why you would want to defend someone you see as being held essentially in a prison within a prison for something you feel they shouldn’t be punished for, but I need to know why they would think Jeremy has any knowledge of the murder or information about what might have happened.”

“Didn’t he tell you?” Gavin asks.

“I can’t discuss details of our conversation,” I tell him, continuing what I told him earlier, so I don’t give away anything that Jeremy Russo said to me during our conversation. I don’t want him using that to change what he’s planning on saying to me. “I want to know what you know about him. If you really want to help him, making sure I have all the information I need could make the difference you want to make.”

Gavin hesitates for a few seconds like he’s deciding if he can trust me, but his desire to feel like he is doing something positive for the cause wins over.

“Jeremy is known to be good friends with Carrie Parker’s boyfriend.”

TWELVE

“Why didn’t you tell me that you are friends with Jeremy Russo?” I ask Shane when he picks up the phone.

“What are you talking about?” he asks.

“When we met up and were talking about Carrie, why didn’t you mention that a good friend of yours is being held in solitary confinement because the prison believes he knows something about her murder?” I ask.

“I haven’t heard from Jeremy in a little while. I didn’t know what was going on with him,” he says. “I told you that I met Carrie through a prison pen pal program. I figured you would know that that means I still have friends in prison. What is happening to Jeremy?” he asks.

“Is there any reason he would just decide not to mention you?” I ask. “Something that might make him not want to reveal his association with you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shane says.

“I went to talk to him in the prison to find out why people are accusing him of knowing about the murder, and he didn’t mention you at all. Don’t you think if an FBI agent came to the prison to speak to him about a murder investigation he is thought to have information about, he would mention that he is close with the murder victim’s boyfriend?” I ask.

“I don’t know why he wouldn’t say anything about me,” Shane says. “He knows that we broke up a while ago, so maybe that’s it. You would have to ask him.”

“You didn’t tell him not to say anything?”

“Like I said, I haven’t heard from Jeremy in a while. I’m not allowed to visit him because I served time in that facility. And like I told you before, I don’t know anything about Carrie’s death, if that’s what you’re implying,” he says.

“There’s nothing else I should know?” I ask. “Anything that you know that you think might be helpful to me but you haven’t said anything about yet?”

“Like what?”

“Did she mention anything odd to you in the weeks before her death? I know you were going through your breakup, but you said you got back together several times. Did she tell you about anyone new she had met, anything strange that happened to her? Did she get any strange phone calls or messages on her social media? Was she followed by anyone?” I ask.

The questions stream out of me with more intensity than my last conversation with him. Now that I know about Jeremy Russo and his connection with Shane, I feel like there’s something he’s not telling me.

Shane takes an audible breath.

“She told me she was suicidal,” he says.

“Carrie was suicidal?” I ask.

“That’s what she said. I told you she had been going through really intense depression and things were bad for her. Apparently, it was getting worse. Or at the very least she was saying it was. I don’t know. Maybe she was trying to get my attention or get someone’s attention, but she had started to talk about wanting to die,” he says.

“But you said the two of you broke up because she said she wanted something more out of life or that she needed a new life, something like that,” I say. “Didn’t it strike you as strange that she would say that but then say she wanted to kill herself?”

“It did,” he admits. “And it’s why I kept such close contact with her even when she said she didn’t want me to anymore, that our relationship was over. I was really worried about her. But then after she moved to her parents’ house, things started to get better. She didn’t seem as depressed, and when I talked to her a couple of times, she was talking about future plans rather than dying. She said she had met some people to talk to, and I figured that meant maybe she had some new friends or a support group or something that was helping her through her depression.”

“Did that make you hopeful again that you might end up back together?” I ask.

“I was still hopeful,” he says. “But, and I know this is going to sound awful, when she was sounding happier, it made me less optimistic about our relationship. Like she was so depressed when we were breaking up and it seemed to affect her so negatively, but then we were still broken up and she was feeling better and talking about a future that didn’t include me. It made me feel like she had gotten over the hump of the shock of our relationship ending and was now just feeling fine on her own. That makes me sound like a terrible person to say.”

“No, it doesn’t. It makes sense. You said you didn’t actually know who these new people in her life were, right?” I ask.

“Yeah. She didn’t call them by name or really explain how she met them or anything.”

“I looked at her social media and didn’t see much on it.”

“Yeah, she wasn’t one to use social media very much. She did when she was younger, I guess, but then she just grew out of it and didn’t really use it anymore. At least not that I know of. I guess she could have started using it more after we broke up to meet more people,” he says.

“It doesn’t look like it. How about traveling plans?” I ask. “Did she mention any plans to travel in the days before her death?”

“Not that I can remember,” he says. “She was working and was never the type of person to take time off unless it was with a ton of notice. We hadn’t planned any kind of travel, and she didn’t mention anything to me.”

“I just want you to know I’m going to be requesting her phone records, so I’ll have access to any text conversations between the two of you,” I say.

“That’s fine,” he says. “I’m sure I’ve said things to her I’m not going to be proud of, but there’s nothing horrible in there. And nothing about any plans. I loved Carrie. I wanted to help her. I wanted to make her happy.”

“All right,” I say. “If you think of anything else, call me.”

“I will.”

I get off the phone feeling like something is starting to shift in the conversation. Finding out that both victims were suicidal has to mean something. I just still need to find the link between the two so I can find the person responsible for taking their lives when they had no choice.

I put in the request for Carrie’s phone records and go back to digging into the murders and their circumstances, wanting to find something other than the chip that would make the two link together. I have Carrie traveling to Maryland for reasons I don’t know just to end up dead in a park, while Melanie didn’t even leave her own home before her death. She also had the drugs in her system and was strangled, a very personal, up-close method of murder that stands in stark contrast to shooting someone in the back of the head.

It doesn’t feel like the same person committed both murders. Even though both of the victims had the wooden chips in their pockets and were found in Maryland, everything else about the deaths and the circumstances surrounding them seems completely different. I have nothing else to build on that theory, and all I can do is continue to go through the details of the deaths over and over, trying to find anything else that might give me an idea of who created the chips and why both of these depressed, downtrodden women, though in totally different places in their lives, would fall victim to them.

I don’t have anything new to go on until I’m awakened after midnight by a call from James.

“Rowan, there’s been another murder.”

THIRTEEN

Less than half an hour later, I’m back on the road to Virginia.

Anton Mullins was found dead in his car parked on the side of the river several hours before. It wasn’t until the coroner was examining the body and discovered the wooden chip in his pocket that any connection to the other murders was made.

“I’m going to be back in town in about four hours,” I tell James from the car. “Where can I meet you? Will you be at headquarters?”

“You go home and get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning,” he says.

“No. You’re not going to tell me that there was a third murder in the case I’m investigating and expect me to just go home and sleep on it. This officially makes it a serial killing. I want to know everything you do. Take a nap, and I’ll call you when I’m getting to town,” I tell him.

“I thought I was the one in charge,” he says.

“I’ll call you,” I tell him.

I end the call and turn the volume up on the music pumping through my car, using it to keep me awake as I drive deeper into the night. My mind is reeling at the additional murder. Like I’d said to James, this death brings the body count to three, which is the official threshold for considering deaths a serial killing. I was afraid that was going to happen, but when I took on the case, I was praying it wouldn’t come quickly. There had been months between the first two victims, and I was hopeful the killer would have the same amount of downtime.

But now there’s been another death, and I still haven’t unraveled who could be responsible. My instincts keep pulling me, but the evidence isn’t there, the logic isn’t there. I have to keep pushing.

I finally get to town in the very early hours of the morning and call James to let him know I’m back. I’m feeling awake and alert, but he sounds like he took me up on the suggestion of having a nap before I came in and I woke him with my call.

“I’ll meet you at that twenty-four-hour diner in twenty minutes,” he tells me. “I have a feeling I’m going to need a stack of pancakes and some bacon to get me through this day.”

“I’ll be there,” I tell him.

James is already at the diner sitting in one of the worn red and white booths when I walk in. The sun hasn’t started rising yet outside, and the intensely bright light of the inside of the diner is unsettling when I step in. I take a second to get accustomed to it before walking over to James. He has a file sitting beside him and is already working his way through a mug of coffee.

As soon as I sit down, a waitress comes over to the table and offers me my own mug. I accept it, knowing this alert feeling is only going to carry me so far after getting barely any sleep and then driving through the night.

“Are you wanting to order some food?” she asks. “Breakfast is served all day, and the late-night menu goes for another half an hour if you’re more in the mood for a burger or something fried.”

“I’ll just take a double stack of pancakes, two fried eggs over easy, a side of bacon, and two biscuits with gravy,” James says. “And keep the coffee coming.”

“I’ll take the same,” I tell her, knowing I’m not going to get through all of that, but not wanting to expend the energy or the brain power to think through the menu and choose something else.

“Coming right up,” she says, collecting the menus from the table and topping off James’s coffee before heading toward the kitchen.

“All right, Anton Mullins. Go,” I say.

“Thirty-five years old. Retail manager and freelance sportswriter. He was found by some teenagers going out by the river to hook up. His car was sitting by the side of the water, and they saw him through the window. He looked like he was asleep, and the guy thought it would be funny to scare him, so he went up to the window and pounded on it. He ran away, but when he looked back, he realized the man inside the car hadn’t moved at all. He went back to the window and noticed the blood coming out of his mouth. That’s when they freaked out and called the police,” James says.

“I would say that was a pretty good move on their part,” I say. “You said he was shot in the heart. How did they not notice all the blood in the car and on his shirt?”

“Yes. It looked like close range and a small bullet. No exit wound, very little external bleeding. Someone knew exactly what they were doing and had just the right equipment to make sure it got done. But just like the other victims, there was no sign of struggle or Anton fighting back. He was a big man, over six feet tall and about two hundred pounds. It would seem that he would fight back against someone standing right on him with a gun pointed at his heart,” James says.

“This is the third murder linked by one of those wooden chips, yet it’s completely different than the other two. The first two victims were women, and this victim is a man. He’s older than the first victim and younger than the second. He doesn’t share a career path with either of them. He was shot like Melanie Rhodes, but she was shot in the back of the head, and he was shot in the heart. She was also found in her house and he was shot, or at least found, in his car. But in all three situations, there aren’t any signs of self-defense. Either this is a killer or killers who are extremely stealthy and able to get the best of their victims before the victims can even react, or there’s something else going on,” I say.

“Killer or killers?” James asks. “What do you mean by that?”

“It's just that these three crimes don't seem to be the actions of one person. They are so different, and most serial killers have a method, a thread that goes through all of their victims. There have been a couple of situations where they've used different causes of death, but it's so rare and these are so drastically different it just feels like more than one person is doing this. Think about the message that is sent by each of these kills. I know there isn't always a hidden agenda or some sort of deeper meaning, but you can often make guesses about the killer’s state of mind, their relationship with their victims, what they were thinking, and other details based on how the person was killed and how the body was treated.

“Carrie Parker was called in a public place, out in the open. No one heard her screaming or saw her running. And she was killed with manual strangulation. Somebody put their hands around her neck and squeezed until she was dead. That is an extremely personal type of death. Just having to look into the person's face and the amount of time it takes for them to die. Think about it. On average, it takes around eight minutes for somebody to die by strangulation. That's eight minutes of a person exerting extreme force around the throat of another human being with their own hands.

“Then think about the feeling that comes from Melanie Rhodes’ death. While Carrie was outside with people fairly nearby, Melanie was inside, in her own home. What does that say to you? To me it says that Carrie was familiar with the person who killed her; I would go so far as to say comfortable with them. She was willing to go out into the woods with them and then allowed them in close enough proximity without screaming for them to drug her. And Melanie was comfortable enough with the person to let them into her home.

“So both women had a level of comfort and familiarity with their killer. However, Carrie’s death was extremely personal and intimate, while Melanie was shot in the back of the head, something far closer to an execution or a gang hit than something that you would expect from someone with some kind of personal relationship with the victim.

“Then we get to Anton. He was found in a different state than the other two, though the first victim also lived in Virginia. He was found almost in a combination of the locations of the first two victims. Out by a river, similar to the park Carrie was found in, but also in his vehicle, similar to being found in her home like Melanie. He was shot in the heart at close range, which is another pretty personal cause of death. Shooting directly into the heart is sometimes just a matter of good aim, but it can also be a pretty significant message.

“These are three murders that are very different, and yet in those differences, there are some similarities. But I don’t think those similarities are enough to say conclusively that they were caused by the same person. I think it’s something to consider that we have more than one killer operating together, using these chips as a way to show the link in the kills. Or maybe even do exactly what it has done so far and make it look like just one killer is responsible,” I say.

“So what’s next?” James asks.

“I want to talk to his friends and family and get an idea of the kind of person he was, what he was going through in life. The first two victims are very different people, but I'm starting to trace some similarities between their personalities and what they've been going through in their lives leading up to their deaths. I want to see if there's anything that might connect them in that way to Anton. It still isn't clear what it means, but if I can make that connection, maybe I can find the path that it leads to,” I say.

“What are these connections?” James asks. “What are you talking about?”

“Looking deeper into both of the women and the months leading up to their murders, I found that both of them had been suffering from a pretty severe depression. Carrie Parker's ex-boyfriend told me that she was very seriously depressed and had expressed some suicidal thoughts to him over the last couple of months, but that she was doing better just before she died. Her parents also said that she was doing much better but never expressed that she was depressed or suicidal. I have a feeling they didn't want to actually put voice to those things.

“Melanie Rhodes lived an extremely isolated life. She didn't have friends or family; even the people she worked with didn't know anything about her. But when I was able to look at her social media, I saw a lot of posts and shares that I would describe as expressing major depression. There are a few that don't come right out and talk about wanting to die, but express no longer wanting to be alive or not seeing any purpose in being on the earth anymore.

“If I can talk to Anton Mullins’s closest circle, maybe they can tell me whether he was having the same types of feelings or not. Depression is common, especially these days. And even though these two women seemed to be experiencing a much deeper and more severe form of depression than the average person, it's possible it doesn't have anything to do with the murders. But it's something to look into,” I tell him.

The waitress brings our food, and we spend the rest of our meal chatting and eating through long stretches of silence. The adrenaline has started to leave me by the time we walk out of the diner, and I decide it would be better for me to go home and get a couple of hours of rest before I get in touch with the victim’s family. It's possible they are still in the process of notifying the extended family and friends, and I want to be as respectful of their grief as possible. Nothing is going to make this easy, and even if I waited all day and didn’t talk to them until the next, it still wouldn’t be a comfortable conversation. This case has gotten more urgent, and I want to keep it moving as much as I can so I don’t lose any momentum. Every second counts, especially now that we know the killer or killers doesn’t have a long cooling-off period between kills.

I go home and take a long, hot shower before crawling into bed and falling asleep as the sun is rising. Despite not being able to get any real sleep the night before, I’m still up only a couple of hours later ready to keep going. My first call is to the detective who responded first to the discovery of his body. Hilary Beecher describes the scene to me and tells me that the crime scene investigators are still working to collect evidence. She’s already been informed that this case is part of a larger one being handled by the FBI and is glad to have her department be of any assistance.

“Thank you so much for that,” I tell her.

With two of the victims in Maryland and one in Virginia, handling the entire process myself will be much more difficult. Having the support of the police department that first responded to this death means I can depend on them to do some of the investigation, including collecting crucial evidence, so I can focus on the more intensive aspects such as interviewing the family.

“Anton’s mother and sister are coming into the department in a few hours. I was planning on interviewing them to get their statements, but you can take that over,” she says.

“That’s perfect,” I tell her. “I was actually planning on reaching out to them. I’ll get on the road and should be there in about two hours.”

“Sounds good. I’ll let them know. See you soon, Agent Shade.”

“See you soon, Detective,” I say.

FOURTEEN

I really don’t want to get back in my car and do any more driving, but I know I have to. Talking to people close to victims over the phone is never a good substitute for actually speaking face to face. The personal element is an important part of putting the loved ones at ease but also acknowledging them on a deeper level that helps create a connection. That connection encourages the loved ones to cooperate and give more information about the victim, greatly aiding in the investigation.

Anton’s murder is shocking and, from the little bit of information I’ve been able to get about him, very out of the blue. His file doesn’t indicate any kind of serious criminal past, just brushes with the law about simple traffic violations like many people have, or anything else that would seem to point to him being at higher risk of any kind of violence. Talking to the people closest to him might be a way to find out about any kind of conflict or enemies he might have been dealing with leading up to his death.

The wooden chip in his pocket tells me this goes beyond the personal. It links him to the other two murders, which means his death wasn’t just about him. But that doesn’t mean his family hadn’t heard him mention someone or something wrong in his life during his last weeks.

I get to the police department before Anton’s family, so I have the opportunity to look over the information already gathered by the responding officers and Detective Beecher. I settle into a conference room with a cup of coffee and the papers spread in front of me so I can get as up to date as possible while I wait for Anton’s mother and sister to arrive.

The crime scene photos show the lack of blood caused by the small but extremely damaging bullet that ripped through his body and concentrated its destruction inside rather than causing a lot of external bleeding. He looks like he was just sitting in his car looking out over the river when his killer reached through an open window and shot him directly in the chest. It’s possible if they moved stealthily and fast enough, he wouldn’t have seen the assailant in time. Since his eyes were closed, it’s also possible Anton had dozed off before he was killed and had no opportunity to notice what was about to happen to him.

“Agent Shade?”

I look up and see the detective standing at the door. Two women are behind her, and I quickly put away the papers. I don’t want them to catch a glimpse of the crime scene images and be even further traumatized. I stand up and take a few steps closer.

“Hello,” I say.

“This is Margaret and Sharon Mullins, Anton’s mother and sister.” She looks at them and gestures at me. “This is Agent Rowan Shade from the FBI. She’s heading up this case.”

“Thank you for coming in,” I say. “Please come sit down.”

Both women have red eyes and look like they got ready hurriedly. Margaret clutches a tissue in one hand, and Sharon walks with her fingertips in the center of her mother’s back like she’s worried the older woman is going to fall over before she gets to a chair. When both women are seated, I sit down with them.

“Do either of you need anything?” I ask. “Coffee or anything?”

They both shake their heads, but Detective Beecher leans slightly farther into the room.

“I’ll bring some water just in case,” she says.

She closes the door behind her as she leaves, and I turn back to the women.

“Like the detective said, I’m Special Agent Rowan Shade. You can call me Rowan. I’m with the FBI, and we are handling Anton’s case. I really appreciate this chance to get to know him and understand his life better through you,” I say.

“Why is the FBI getting involved in Anton’s case?” Margaret asks. “Don’t you handle terrorism and drug trafficking and things like that? Anton wasn’t involved in any of that.”

“The FBI deals with a lot of things,” I tell her. “I can assure you, neither of those things have come up as of now. The reason his case was referred to me is that we believe he was the victim of a serial killer.” I decide not to mention to possibility of there being multiple murderers.

She gasps, her hand coming up to cover her mouth as she leans back away from me like she’s trying to get away from what I just said.

“Why do you think that?” Sharon asks.

She puts her arm protectively around Margaret’s shoulders as she makes firm eye contact with me. She’s communicating that she is trying to be as strong as she possibly can for her mother, but I can still see the agony in the edges of her gaze.

“There are details of the case that are being kept confidential at this time so I can’t discuss the specifics,” I tell them.

“Excuse me?” Margaret asks, sounding angry as her hand lowers from her mouth and her eyes narrow at me. “My son was just murdered and you’re telling me that there are things you know about it but you’re not going to tell us? That’s absurd.”

“Mom,” Sharon says. “Calm down.”

“I’m not going to calm down,” Margaret says. “This is my son, and he was taken away from me. I deserve to know why, and if she knows something about it, then I should know, too.”

“That’s not how it works,” Sharon says. “Sometimes they have to keep things secret from everybody because it’s part of the investigation. They want to make sure that certain pieces of information are held back so that they can see if people know about them.”

“It’s standard investigative practice,” I tell her. “Not all murder cases necessitate it, but when they are more complicated such as this one, it’s an important part of finding out what people really know and which statements contain more valuable information than others. Not discussing certain details and keeping them out of the media is also a part of keeping the perpetrator from knowing what we know and possibly altering their behavior to manipulate those details.”

Detective Beecher comes back with the water and looks at one of the empty seats at the table as if asking permission to come and join us. I nod a quick acknowledgement, and she sits down. Margaret immediately turns on her.

“Do you know what she’s keeping from us? She said there are things she won’t tell me even though she knows them. She won’t tell me why she thinks Anton was killed by a serial killer. And I’m sure there’s more that she’s hiding,” she says.

“She isn’t hiding anything,” Detective Beecher says. “She’s preserving the integrity of the investigation. I assure you, nothing being done is meant to hurt you or make this experience any more difficult for you. Agent Shade and the entire team are working as hard as we can to finding answers. We want to know who did this to your son and will take whatever measures needed to make sure that happens.”

“Mom, just listen to them,” Sharon says. “They're doing their jobs. We have to let them. If we're going to find out what happened to Anton, we have to trust that they're doing what they're supposed to do and help them in any way we can.”

“That's exactly right,” I say. “I need your help. I didn't have the privilege of knowing Anton, so there are things I need you to tell me about him. Understanding who he is and what was going on in his life leading up to his murder could help put me on the right path toward finding who is responsible for this.”

Margaret looks at me through weepy, tired eyes. She lets out a long breath.

“What do you want to know?” she asks.

“Just tell me about him. What was he like?” I ask.

“He was always happy,” she says. “He was the kindest man you could ever meet.”

Sharon lets out a soft, bittersweet laugh. “I always used to say he was like a big teddy bear. He always wanted to help everybody around him and make sure they were happy and comfortable. He was nice to everybody. That whole thing that people say about people never meeting a stranger, that was Anton. As soon as he was near somebody, that person was a friend. That's why this doesn't make any sense.”

I’m surprised by their description. Carrie Parker’s parents had emphasized that she was doing much better and seemed optimistic, but there was definitely the suggestion of things being challenging in her life. Melanie Rhodes was described by everyone as quiet and withdrawn, and her social media made her intense struggle with depression clear. But then Anton Mullins’s family is here gushing about how happy and full of life he was. There’s not even the slightest hint that he might have been going through something or that he could have gone through a battle with depression and recently come out of it. This sets him apart considerably, and I feel the need to clarify.

“Did Anton ever talk to either one of you about experiencing any kind of depression?” I ask.

This time they both look at me like I have struck them.

“Absolutely not,” Margaret says.

“We told you, he was the happiest person in the world. He was always laughing and joking. He didn't have anything to be depressed about,” Sharon says.

“Sometimes people use exuberant displays of humor or happiness to cover up how much pain they are actually in,” I say. “Did anything happen in his life or was he going through anything that might have caused him to do that?”

“How dare you?” Margaret asks. “How could you talk about him like that?”

“I don't mean to upset you,” I say. “And I'm not saying anything offensive about Anton. I'm just making sure that I fully understand who he was and what he might have been going through.”

“That's not him,” she says. “It was never him. Anton was happy and loved life.”

“All right,” I say. “Did he live alone?”

“Yes,” Sharon says. “He was never married or anything.”

“Okay,” I say. “I'd like access to his house.”

“Why would you want that?” Margaret asks.

“I'd like to search it to see if I can find anything that might be useful to the investigation. Because he was not killed there, I don't have automatic access to it. I would need permission of the person handling his estate,” I explain.

“Well, that's me,” Margaret says, “and I’m not going to give you permission. I don't want you digging around in his personal belongings trying to find something to fit in with your agenda.”

“I can request a warrant,” I say.

She stands up sharply and moves toward the door. “Then do that.”

The women leave without another word, and I sit back in my chair, letting out a heavy breath. I wasn't expecting them to get as angry and offended as they were by me asking about his mental health. I understand that perceptions of mental health and the people who struggle with challenges in that area vary wildly, but I didn't see that kind of reaction coming. If Anton did have a personal fight with depression, I can completely understand why he would keep it hidden.

FIFTEEN

I check my phone as I'm leaving the police department and see that I have finally received Melanie’s phone records. I go home and print them out so I can go through them and find any patterns that might exist in the numbers that she received calls from or called in the weeks leading up to her murder. I manage to find a couple that have several back-and-forth connections every week for at least a month prior to her death. Now that I have the numbers, it's a matter of finding out who those numbers belong to and why they were contacting Melanie so much.

I run the first number through a program that pulls up the name registered to the phone. Immediately it comes up saying it's a landline, which means the calls were made from an online program that cannot be linked to an individual. The next number indicates that it belongs to a burner phone, which also can't be traced or linked to anybody. Calls to both of those numbers go unanswered.

The next three numbers are the same, coming from burner phones and either not being answered when I call or giving a message that the phone has been disconnected. Those numbers are a complete dead end, which is discouraging. But there is another one that has fewer contacts but still shows up multiple times. I search it and it comes up with the name Lakeside Counseling and Recovery. I call the number, and a woman answers.

“This is Connie Stevens,” she says.

“Hi,” I say. “Is this Lakeside Counseling and Recovery?”

“Yes, it is,” she says. “How can I help you?”

“My name is Special Agent Rowan Shade. I'm with the FBI. I'm currently investigating a case, and your phone number showed up in the phone records for the victim. I'd like to speak to you about her,” I say.

The woman lets out a sigh. “Is this about Melanie Rhodes?”

“Yes,” I say. “It is.”

“I heard about her death,” she says. “It's devastating. I was her therapist. So you can understand I won't be able to share any details with you. Patient privilege still remains after death, and that confidentiality is in place. I won’t be able to tell you what we talked about or anything like that.”

“I understand,” I tell her. “I wouldn't ask you to breach your ethics. But in this particular case, I believe that the mental health and state of mind of the victims is an important piece of the puzzle. I read through Melanie’s social media, and it looked like the posts that she made and the pictures and things that she shared were expressing a deep state of depression. Can you at least tell me if you would agree with that?”

“Yes,” she says. “That would be a fair assessment of her state of mind when she made those posts.”

“You don't need to make any sort of comment or give me additional details of what she said to you or her diagnosis or anything,” I say. “What I'm looking into could involve people who experienced suicidal thoughts and were recovering from those feelings. Would there have been any sort of circumstances in place that would make you think that would apply to her?”

The doctor hesitates, and I know I've ventured a bit too close to information that's kept confidential even after a patient's death. Doctor patient privilege doesn't end with the life of the patient and, generally speaking, only those people who that patient has specifically named prior to their death can receive any type of details about what they discussed or their treatment. It's up to Dr. Stevens to decide what warrants protection by the privilege and what can be ethically shared in this investigation. I don’t want her to do anything that would make her feel like she was going against her ethics and oaths as a doctor, but I am also hoping for something that can help push me in the right direction.

“I believe in a very cooperative form of therapy,” she says. “I don't just talk to my patients and expect that to solve everything. We work together to find ways to help with what they are going through and find solutions that can be incorporated into their daily life. For some people, therapy is an ongoing practice that simply supports them through their daily life and gives them a safe space to talk through things, get advice, and manage ongoing problems. For others, therapy is like treatment for any other illness. It is intended to be an acute way to address the issue and support better health moving forward. Finding these types of solutions that the patient can't use independently aids in that goal.

“Melanie and I had talked about that belief just like I talked about with any other patient. In the last month, she'd been describing to me how she was finding great comfort in an online support group. I encouraged this and thought it sounded like a very good way for her to continue to seek out the type of support she would need when going through difficult moments. She never told me what the name of the support group was, though I wish she had so that I could refer other patients to it.”

It is a very carefully worded response, but it offers me a new lead.

“Thank you,” I say. “You've been very helpful. I appreciate it.”

“I had so much hope for Melanie,” she says. “I do for all my patients, but I was really hopeful for her. Please find who did this to her.”

“I am doing my best,” I tell her and end the call.

I know just searching for an online support group for depression is going to be a frivolous pursuit. There are countless groups like that online, and there's no way to effectively narrow it down to find the one that Melanie was a part of. Doctor Stevens specifically said she hadn't mentioned the name of the group, so my only hope is that there is more information on her phone. I go back to the records and start looking through the text messages exchanged in the weeks before her death.

Like the messages on her social media, most of them are vague and generic. I still have the feeling that they have meaning beyond what the words specifically state, but I can't decipher them. I'm looking for something blatant, something that will tell me exactly what I'm looking for. Or at least give me something to go on. I've read through most of the messages when I think I've found something useful.

When did you enter the arena?

So long ago I can't remember.

You said you haven’t had any real fights.

No. But I’ve been training. I’m just afraid.

I’m glad you found us. Talking there, you might just find the help you need.

The messages are obviously using jargon meant to invoke fighters, but then in the last message the unnamed person speaking with Melanie referenced talking. This might be something about the support group. It isn’t unusual for groups of people going through the same types of difficulties to bond to each other through use of codes and words given special meaning for just that group. By using these words and phrases, they show that they are in the situation together and that each of the parties can be trusted. It’s a way to further solidarity and ensure trust and security from one person to the other. I have a strong feeling that is what is happening here.

Opening my computer, I start scouring the Internet for any kind of support group that talks about fighting in an arena. After an hour, nothing has come up, and I’m getting frustrated. Then it occurs to me that this might not be a conventional support group and that there might be more to the fighter jargon than just that. The messages referenced an arena. Gladiators.

A few more minutes of searching using different combinations of terms and adding the doctor’s name finally brings up what I’ve been looking for. But it’s far from what I was hoping to find. The Gladiator Forum isn’t for those just fighting depression and leaning on each other to help pull them through. The people using the forum are all suicidal.

I feel my heart getting heavier as I read through the posts from people living every day with thoughts of suicide. The conversations on the forum are all about people expressing their desire to die, talking about different methods, and helping each other decide when is going to be the best time to go through with it. I want to reach through the screen and scoop them all up. To tell them that they can get through what they are dealing with. Just that thought makes me feel entitled and arrogant. I am no one to tell someone else that what they are going through isn’t hard or that they need to just be strong. At the same time, I can’t help but want to tell them that they can weather the storm, that there’s more to life and there’s help, real help, that will get them through these feelings.

As I read through the names scrolling by on the pages and pages of conversation, my chest tightens. I notice some of them fall off and wonder if they just stopped being a part of the forum or if they finally went through with their plan. In some instances, there are long strings of goodbye messages that make me feel sick to my stomach. I know that feeling too well.

The sick feeling disappears and is replaced by a feeling of hope when I suddenly discover a post by Melanie. It doesn’t have her full name, just her first, but the picture is the same image of a wilted flower that was used on her social media, and some of the things that she says sound exactly like what was posted there. I’m confident I’ve found her. This is the so-called support group she told Dr. Stevens she was finding such comfort in. Not a depression group. A group for suicidal people guiding each other.

I read further and find a conversation she was actively involved in. Everyone participating talked about the fear they were feeling and how nervous they were about actually going through with the plans they’d made. They talked about it being so frustrating because they no longer wanted to be on the planet, they woke up every morning wishing they weren’t, and they had gone to great lengths to plan every detail of how they were going to end their own lives, and yet they weren’t able to bring themselves to actually do it. Melanie agreed many times, sharing again that she had never actually been in a “fight,” which I learned was their way of referencing a suicide attempt, but that she’d been ‘training,” or planning what she wanted to do and putting steps in place to get ready for it.

All of this is extremely disturbing to me, but I keep digging, feeling strongly that I’m on to something. This is important. I just need to find out why. But no matter how much I search, I can’t find either of the other victims on the forum. I read through pages of member profiles. I search conversations and zero in on times right before each of the murders. I still can’t find either Carrie Parker or Anton Mullins mentioned or participating in the forum.

It doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t there. Melanie chose to use her name like some of the other users did, but there are many others who chose handles and profile pictures that kept them fully anonymous. Any of those could be Carrier Parker or Anton Mullins. I need to get access to both of their computers to see if I can find any participation in the forum. It could be just the link that I’ve been searching for.

I make the call to James to put in the request and get a sudden flash of thought. The wooden chip.

SIXTEEN

I've been so invested in the angle I've chosen, I haven't put much thought into the wooden chips that have been found in the pocket of each of the victims. These are the only real, tangible connection that exists between these victims, and they have to mean something. The chips themselves are being held in evidence, but I have photographs of them. They each have an image printed on one side. I take out the pictures and examine the images.

The images all look exactly alike: an old man holding a hammer with what looks like a canoe in the background. I have no idea what it could mean. Scanning the image into my computer, I run a search for it to see if anything will pop up. Nothing does, which tells me this is an original piece of art created by the killer, so it’s not going to show up online anywhere. My only hope is to find something similar or to search for different attributes of the image to find what they could mean.

As I run different searches describing the image, I think back to the forum. I add the world “Gladiator” to the search, and the result is like a punch to the center of the chest.

“Charon,” I tell James over the phone.

“What?” he asks.

“The chips found in the pockets of all three victims. The drawing on it is a symbol for Charon. They aren’t chips. They are supposed to be coins,” I tell him.

“I'm still not following you,” he says. “Who is Charon?”

“Well, how much do you remember about Greek mythology in school?” I ask.

“Not a huge amount,” he says. “History was never one of my favorite subjects.”

“All right,” I say. “I'll try to make this as simple as possible. In Greek mythology, there was a thing called the River Styx. It's where the dead were ferried into the afterlife after they had received the proper rites of burial. One of these rites was to put a coin on or in the mouth of the dead. That acted as payment for Charon, the son of Nyx and Erebus. He was responsible for actually ferrying the dead over the river. Later it was changed a bit and became kind of a symbol of death in general. But an image of an old man with a hammer was one of the depictions of Charon. Are you with me so far?”

“I think so,” he says.

“Good. I got information about Melanie that led me to a forum online for suicidal people. The entire forum is people talking about not wanting to be alive anymore, how they plan on committing suicide, and seeing if there are other people who want to go into pacts to die at the same time so they don't feel so alone. This forum is referred to as the Gladiator Forum because they see themselves as fighting every day. This is where Charon comes in. Remember, the Greek and Roman mythology was very similar, so the deity Charon existed in Roman beliefs as well. During the days of gladiator fights, there was a servant referred to by that title at the fights. He would dress up like the depiction of Charon and be present at each of the fights.

“When the fight was over, if there was a gladiator who had been severely wounded but wasn’t yet dead, Charon would determine whether he was wounded enough that he wouldn’t be able to survive, and then it was their job to ferry them into death—they literally finished them off.”

“Holy shit,” James says.

“That’s about my reaction,” I say. “These wooden coins were put there as an homage. Someone sees themselves as something somewhere between these two versions of Charon and is taking it upon themselves to usher people into death.”

“But who is it?” he asks. “Does that change what you think about there being more than one killer?”

“No,” I tell him. “I still think that there might be more than one person doing the actual killing. The methods are just too different. But I think there’s someone leading them. There is one person at the head telling them what to do.”

“If you’re right, this is seriously messed up,” James says. “You need to figure out who the hell is doing this and stop them before they prey on anyone else.”

“I will.”

It’s not an empty statement. I’m even more driven now to unravel what is happening to these people and why.

As soon as I’m off the phone with James, I call Penny Parker again.

“Rowan,” she says. “Did you find something?”

I know this is something I’m going to hear from her every time we talk. It’s a natural reaction. She’s probably feeling helpless right now, and all she can do is wait for me to give her any kind of information that might tell her what happened to her daughter. She’s going to have that little burst of hope every time she sees my name on her phone. I don’t blame her. I still get that feeling, the darkest and most painful form of hope, every time I’m called in to look at remains or personal belongings that have been found. One day. One day they may be Vivienne.

“I might have,” I tell her. “But I'm not positive what it means yet. I need to ask you another couple of questions about Carrie. You told me she was doing so much better and feeling more optimistic,” I say.

“She was,” Penny says. “She finally seemed like she was taking control of her life and looking ahead to something positive.”

“So you would agree that she had been suffering from depression prior to her death?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says with a hitch in her voice. “It got really bad for a while.”

“I spoke with Shane, and he told me the same thing. He said she was going through a really rough time and that he was worried about her. But then in her last few weeks, she was seeming much better. Did you ever hear her talk about being in a support group? Did she reach out to anybody?” I ask.

“Not that I know of,” Penny says. “She never talked to me about getting any kind of help or joining any type of group. I think I would have noticed if she was going somewhere to go to meetings.”

“She might have been a part of an online group,” I tell her. “Does the word gladiator mean anything to you? Did you hear her mention gladiators or fighting, anything like that?”

“No,” she says, sounding bewildered. “What is this all about?”

“It's just something I'm looking into,” I tell her. “I can't give you the details right now. But please talk to your husband and ask him if he heard Carrie mention gladiators or anything like that in those last few weeks. It's extremely important.”

“I'll ask him,” she says.

“Thank you,” I say.

I'm surprised to see James' name on my phone when it rings just a few minutes after getting off the call with Penny. I pick it up as I'm continuing to scroll through the forum looking for anything else that I can possibly connect with any of the three victims.

“I just spoke with Carrie Parker's mother,” I say by way of answering. “She hasn't heard of anything about the Gladiator Forum, and I don't think that she knew just how serious Carrie’s depression was. But I'm still looking to find whatever link I possibly can.”

“That's great,” he tells me. “But I'm not calling about that case.”

“Oh,” I say. “What are you calling about?”

“You need to get in here as soon as you can,” he says. “There was just a huge development in the Natalia Rodriguez case.”

“Natalia Rodriguez?” I asked. “What happened?”

“They found her,” he says.

I'm already on my feet and running to put on my shoes and get out the door. I need to get to headquarters and hear every single detail about what happened to Natalia. My heart is thudding in my chest, and my blood rushes in my ears, sounding like waves, making me sweat and my mouth feel numb.

I get to headquarters and go to James' office. He looks almost startled when he sees me coming like he doesn't really want to talk to me about this because he knows just how much of an impact it's going to make. At the same time, his eyes are dark and hard. He has taken in the details of the case and made himself cold against them so he doesn't have to feel what they really mean.

“Where did they find her?” I demand as I walk into the office.

“Rowan, I need you to sit down. This is only going to make the case more complicated, and the details are pretty horrifying. I need you to sit and calm down before I tell you anything else,” James says.

“I don't think telling somebody to calm down when they're about to give them horrifying details makes a lot of sense,” I say.

“I just need you to sit down and take a few breaths,” he says. “I need you to be able to listen to this and take it all in.”

I sit down across from him and take the breaths he told me to take. They do very little to make me feel any different, but it's enough to convince him that I’m ready to hear the rest of what he has to tell me.

“Natalia Rodriguez was murdered,” he tells me. “Her body was found by fishermen near the same beach where her bathing suit was found.”

“By fishermen?” I ask. “She was in the water?”

“Yes,” he says. “But it's not that simple.” He reaches into a folder and pulls out a picture that he slides across the desk toward me. “This is what they pulled up in their net.”

At first when I look at the picture, I don't know exactly what I'm looking at. I was expecting to see a body, bloated and damaged from the time spent in the water. Instead, I'm seeing what looks almost like an enormous block of ice with something inside. It takes a few seconds for it to click that the object inside is the body of Natalia Rodriguez.

“What the hell is this?” I ask. “What did they do to her?”

James hands me another picture, a close-up that more clearly shows Natalia’s body.

“She is encased in acrylic,” he tells me. “An enormous block of plastic essentially. But it's what's going on with her body that is more disturbing. Here.”

He gives me another picture. I lay all three out and look at them carefully. The third one shows her legs, and my breath catches in my throat. Thick rope or wire has been used to stitch her legs together and force her feet to splay outward. Her body has been twisted and shaped so that she looks like the quintessential image of a mermaid swimming toward the surface. She's wearing a skimpy two-piece bathing suit that stands in stark contrast to the modest one-piece found spread out on the beach.

“They made her into a freaking mermaid,” I growl.

“It looks like they did that and then encased her so she would look like a display in one of those old traveling freakshows. Remember the Fiji mermaid?” he asks.

“That was a monkey sewn to a fish,” I tell him. “That’s horrific enough, but this is a human being. A seventeen-year-old girl they’ve stitched together to make her look like a mythical creature. Why would anyone do this?”

“I don’t know,” he says.

I look more closely at the image that shows a closeup of her body. The acrylic is thicker in some places than others, but clear enough for me to see her body well. This image shows a close-up of her side, revealing her ribs and the skin along the side of her torso. Something makes my heart speed up a little.

“Did you see this?” I ask, pointing to the image.

“What is it?” he asks.

“This,” I say, indicating the lines across her ribs and waist. “These aren’t fresh injuries. These are scars.”

SEVENTEEN

“Scars?” James asks. “Maybe they're injuries from her abductor. She has been missing for a few months. Right now, the medical examiner doesn't really know how long she's been dead. They have to get her out of the acrylic block before they're going to be able to do a postmortem examination on her, but they'll be able to examine those injuries. It's possible they are torture from when she was being held captive.”

“That's possible,” I say. “But I don't think that's what that is. It looks like there are scars of varying ages, some of them older than the three months. They are fully healed and getting softer. I think those are from long before she was abducted from that resort.”

“What are you saying? That her parents abused her?” James asks.

“No,” I say. “I think she did it to herself. Keep in mind the bathing suit. She was seventeen years old and in fantastic shape. Why would she have a one-piece bathing suit other than when she's swimming in a competition? It was so she could cover up her scars. People who don't want anyone noticing their cutting behavior often choose areas of their body that aren't seen regularly. They avoid their arms and legs because they can be seen when wearing normal clothes. Most of the time, no one would be able to see her ribs or her waist, so she chose there.”

“But her parents talked about how amazing she was. How exceptional she was at everything and how happy she was,” James protests.

“I know,” I say. “But parents like to think that. And she probably was exceptional at everything she did. That doesn't mean she wasn't depressed and overwhelmed. There could have been things going on in her life that no one knew about and that she never talked about. Or she could have been put under so much pressure by parents who expected that level of success and achievement that she felt like she couldn't handle it.”

“That sounds like your other case,” he says.

“It does,” I agree. “But I can't ignore it. I don't know what it might mean for Natalia. Maybe she was planning on running away or killing herself and somebody got to her first. I want to know about the bathing suit she's wearing. Who does it belong to? And why did whoever indulged in morbid arts and crafts to create a mermaid out of her remove her own bathing suit and put it on display rather than just getting rid of it? If they just wanted to be noticed, why didn't they wait until she was found?”

“Maybe they wanted the anticipation,” James suggests. “If they put the bathing suit out on the sand, then it brings the case back into our minds and gets us thinking about her. That way when she was found, it would be even more dramatic.”

“I think the bathing suit means something,” I say. “More than just them wanting to be noticed. More than just wanting to add some theatrics. I think the suit itself has meaning. When she's out of that block, we have to find out who that suit belongs to. I don't think it was just bought to put her in. I think there's going to be a link between that suit and another missing girl. We just have to figure out which girl.”

“I'll keep you updated on when they're able to get her out and do her autopsy,” he tells me.

“Thank you,” I say.

I take the new information with me and go back home to do some research. I delve into cases of other missing girls who were last seen at beaches or pools to try to make any connection I can with the bathing suit. I go back to the ones I've pulled out that reminded me of Vivienne to see if any of the pictures show that particular suit. The problem is it's very difficult to see all the details on the suit with the way her body is contorted and being encased within the acrylic. I will have to wait until she's out and the suit has been removed from her body to be able to see all of the specifics about it.

I keep going back to the scars on her body. I understand James' first inclination to be that these were injuries that were caused by whoever took her, but I can't bring myself to believe that. They look too healed, too layered on top of one another to be something that simple. If she was being tortured, there would be signs of it on other areas of her body, but from what I can see, there are no cuts, bruises, or other wounds other than where her legs are sewn together and what looks like an abrasion on her ankle from where she was restrained. Even her wrists look clean. It wouldn't make sense to focus all of an attack on one small section of her torso. But if she inflicted them on herself, it would.

With those injuries and the bathing suit in my mind, I go back to some of the forums I’ve visited when researching the missing girls, most recently Natalia. Many of the people on these forums are the friends and family members of people who are missing, there are others who are just fascinated by the cases. They lurk through the forums, lapping up the details of the missing people and their stories, some of them relishing being armchair detectives trying to solve the mysteries.

Natalia’s case seems to have inspired these people especially. I haven’t checked the forums since I was first doing research after her bathing suit was found, and now I see that the thread on her has completely exploded with comments. I skim through people sharing wild claims and stories they’ve come up with or are sharing from other dubious sources they think make them gospel.

This is the risk of this kind of open forum. Everybody has the opportunity to say anything they want. It means valuable information often trickles its way through and ends up with the people who need to hear it, but it can also mean that damaging rumors and lies can spread quickly and mislead people. There have even been instances of cases that were compromised because some of these unfounded statements were focused on as fact.

But I choose to take the risk. I approach the forums cautiously and never put so much stock in what I find that I am convinced as soon as I read it. Everything has to be thoroughly investigated and judged to determine if it is actually of value.

Dotted with these occasional outlandish stories, most of the comments are people expressing their worry about her and their curiosity about what happened to her. They are intrigued by the strange display of the bathing suit as well, inspiring many theories and more people coming up with their own explanations they think make sense. I’ve read through several pages when one brief segment of exchanges stops me.

Do you think she finally did it?

Did what?

I think she did. I know someone who knew her online and they said she talked about it all the time but no one would really admit it.

Seriously? She seemed so happy.

Exactly. Seemed. She had to make it look that way for her family.

I can’t believe they haven’t even mentioned it as a possibility on the news. Even before the bathing suit was found. I mean, obviously now that’s not what it looks like, but before…

They probably know something we don’t. That’s how police do things.

I heard the FBI is looking into her case. Do you think that’s actually true?

I heard she was a part of some sort of forum for people wanting to unalive themselves. It gives me the creeps just thinking about something like that existing.

Gives you the creeps? Dismissive much?

I’m sure that’s not what she meant. I think a lot of people would be shocked to find out someone with everything going for her in her life like Natalia would want to end it all.

Anybody a part of that forum? I’d be interested to see what she said.

My breath is coming faster and harder as I navigate away from that page and go back to the Gladiator Forum. If Natalia really was struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts leading up to her death, she did an exceptional job covering it up with everyone around her. And so did her family. That tells me it’s very unlikely she used her own name and picture on her profile if she really was a part of this forum. I don’t know how much I can trust the information from the missing person’s forum, and it’s possible there are other forums like this one that she might have been a part of, but I have to follow the feeling in my gut, and my instincts that tell me I’m on the right track.

I search for anything I can find about her, and it doesn’t take long for me to find exactly what I’m looking for. They don’t refer to her as Natalia, which is why I might not have found it the last time I was going through the posts. Instead, they call her Mermaid Girl, a name that now makes my stomach turn. It must have been her profile name and described her love of the water, but now all I can think about is the gruesome image of her legs crudely stitched together and the shape of her body forced into the vignette within the acrylic.

The beginning of the thread is from a few weeks ago, before her bathing suit was found.

Mermaid Girl, are you around? I’d love to talk.

Has anyone heard from her? I haven’t seen her on here in a while.

Did she pick a day? I didn’t see one.

Does anyone know if she chose her fight?

Was she helped? I didn’t know if they had reached out to her.

She never said she was scared. I don’t know if they would have helped her if she was okay with the thought of doing the fight alone.

She might have been scared and just didn’t want to admit it.

I wish I knew where she was.

I realize as I’m reading the posts that none of them would have any idea who Natalia really was. I find her profile and confirm that she never mentions her real name or location, and the only pictures she put up were of things like clouds or the ocean. The images, while beautiful, are deeply saddening to me. Something about her posting these pictures of things she loved makes her suffering and apparent desire to end her life even more heartbreaking and poignant.

These people sound like they truly cared about her and none of them know that she was murdered. I wonder how they would react to that news.

Feeling like my breath has been taken away from me, I know the only thing I can do now is talk to Natalia’s family. I dread the conversation. They are mourning the death of their beautiful daughter. Now I have to ask them questions no parent ever wants to hear and tell them she might have been going through something they would never have wanted to think about. At the same time… I have to wonder if the statements they’ve made are completely truthful or if they’ve been doing just as good a job of hiding things as Natalia did.

EIGHTEEN

Henry, Natalia’s father, answers after two rings, telling me he has my number saved in his phone.

“Agent Shade,” he says.

“Rowan,” I tell him. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. We’re still trying to process it. I think we all knew this is what was coming, but there’s nothing that can really prepare you for hearing someone tell you that your child is dead,” he says.

“I know,” I tell him. “I can’t tell you I have any idea what you are feeling because I’ve never had children. But I’ve lost people very close to me, and I understand the pain. I’m very sorry you are going through this.”

“We were still trying to hold out hope that somehow she would be found and we’d be able to bring her home. But I guess…” He takes a shuddering breath. “I guess we are.”

“Yes,” I tell him, “you are. At least now you know where she is and don’t have to worry any longer.”

“They told us they won’t release her body immediately, but when they do, we’ve decided to have her cremated. That way we can really bring her home and she will never have to be away from us again,” he says.

“That’s a nice thought,” I tell him. “I’m calling to tell you how sorry I am, but there has also been a development, and I need to ask you some questions. Are you in a position where you can talk right now? If you can’t, I can call back at another time, but it really would be best if I could speak to you as urgently as possible. Every minute is important.”

“I can talk,” he says. “If it has anything to do with finding who did this to my little girl, I am willing to do it.”

“Unfortunately, these are not going to be easy questions. They are going to be difficult for you to hear, and you might not want to think about them, but I need you to be fully and completely honest with me.”

“All right,” he says.

“First I need to ask you if there is anything you need to tell me, anything that you might not have mentioned to me when we first talked about your daughter,” I ask.

“I don’t think so,” he says. “I told you everything.”

I decide there’s no point in sugar-coating any of this. I need to get right to the point.

“Henry, did Natalia suffer from depression?” I ask.

There's a long pause on the other end of the line. Finally, Henry sighs.

“Yes,” he admits. “She did for a few years. It started when she was a young teenager, but we thought that was just something that happens with girls. Her brother went through a little bit of a down season but nothing as serious as hers, and we just figured it was a matter of her being a girl and him being a boy. As much as people don't want to admit, they are different, especially when it comes to emotions.”

Now is not the time for me to argue with him, so I just continue on with the conversation. I need to get as much information out of him as I possibly can, and I'm starting to suspect he has a lot more in common with Anton’s family than perhaps Carrie’s. It isn't lost on me that these two cases are now emerging, but I don't know what to think about it. I don't necessarily believe I happened to stumble on two cases that have the same killer, but I feel like it is significant that I'm finding a pattern of severe depression and suicidal tendencies in both victims.

“What did you do about her depression?” I asked.

“She talked to a counselor. It seemed to help. But it had gotten worse over the year before her death.”

“Did something happen?” I ask. “Something that might have caused the depression to get worse?”

“Nothing that I know of,” he says.

“Were you close enough that she would have told you?” I ask. “I don't mean that as an offensive question. I simply mean that sometimes teenagers aren't willing to open up to their parents, especially girls opening up to their fathers. I know that you said she had a serious boyfriend. But would she have been comfortable talking to you about sexual assault or domestic violence?”

“Did you hear something?” he asks. “Did he do something to her?”

“That's not what I'm saying,” I tell him. “I have not heard anything about her boyfriend or their relationship. I'm trying to understand some information I have recently gotten about Natalia and why you didn't choose to disclose it to me when we last spoke.”

“What kind of information?” he asks.

“I need to be the one asking the questions,” I tell him. “Just answer me as honestly as you can. Did Natalia ever express any type of suicidal thoughts or tendencies?”

He swallows audibly. “Yes. About a year ago she went through a really dark period and talked about not wanting to be alive anymore. And then it happened again just a few months before she died. But she was part of a support group. She talked about how she had people who understood her and would listen when she talked to them. I thought that was good. I couldn't understand why she was feeling that way or what I was supposed to do about it, so knowing that she had somewhere to go and somebody to talk to made me feel more at ease.”

“Henry, did you consider at any point after Natalia disappeared that she might have killed herself?” I ask.

I'm starting to feel angry and strangely protective of this girl I never knew. I don't think her parents meant to ignore her, but he sounds almost dismissive, like he would rather ignore what was going on, thinking that somebody else would fix it than to step up and be a part of it himself.

“Yes,” he finally admits. “When it first happened, I thought that might have been an answer. But only for a little while.”

“You specifically told Investigators that suicide wasn't an option,” I tell him. “Why would you say that if you had any reason to believe it was a possibility?”

“I didn't want to think it was true,” he says. “And she had talked so much about being afraid to actually do it, I convinced myself it wasn't true, that it wasn't an option. She wouldn't have told us that she was going to go get seashells and then suddenly kill herself. And if she had, we would have been able to find her. That’s the thing: We couldn't find her. She wouldn't have just disappeared.”

“Why didn't you mention this? How could you have covered this up when you were talking to investigators or when you were talking to me?” I ask. “This is critical information.”

“Because no parent wants to believe that their child is suffering with so much pain that they would rather not be alive,” he tells me tearfully. “No parent who loves their child so much can cope with the idea that they can't find enough in the life that that parent built for them that they are willing to keep going. No parent wants to believe that they can't love their child into feeling like going on, that they can't do something to save them. That's an excruciating concept.”

“I understand that,” I say. “And I'm sorry you ever had to feel that way. But every second is important in an investigation of something like this, and if you thought that she might have killed herself…”

“She was happy,” he cuts me off. “Leading up to the trip, she was happy. She was more optimistic than she had been in a long time. She was always good at convincing everybody around her that she felt great, and she never stopped performing at her absolute peak. I don't think anybody else around her in her life even knew that she was depressed. And as we got closer to the trip and she seemed genuinely excited about it and like things were good again, it made me hopeful. It made her mother feel like everything was going to be okay. We didn't think it was a possibility when we left home.”

I can understand what he's feeling, but I also know that when people have made the decision to end their lives, they often seem happier and more at peace to the people around them who have been watching them suffer. This can be encouraging and make it seem like they are getting better, when in reality they only feel that way because they know time is running short and soon they will be, in their perception, out of suffering. This immediately makes me think of Carrie and of Melanie. While Melanie was still struggling in an obvious way, her therapist said she was finding comfort in the support group. There was a note of optimism in that.

“Henry, I appreciate you telling me this now. I’ll be back in touch with you, and I need you to not try to hide anything else. You need to not be embarrassed about the details of what she was going through because they could make a difference in what happened to her,” I say. “You aren’t protecting her by covering up her suffering. Allow her memory to be real. She didn’t kill herself. We know that now. But don’t pretend she was something she wasn’t. Or that she wasn’t who she really was. She deserves to be remembered for her courage and her strength, for her, not for who you wanted her to be.”

I’ve been off the phone and back to reading through the forum, trying to figure out the strange connections happening for half an hour when it rings again. I pick it up without even looking at the screen, too invested in what I’m reading.

“Agent Shade,” I say.

“Hi, this is Sharon Mullins,” a familiar voice says through the line.

I’m shocked to hear the name and stop reading over the forum thread still up on my computer.

“Hi, Sharon,” I say. “How are you?”

“I’ve been better,” she says. “I never thought I would be cleaning out my little brother’s house after he was murdered.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

“It’s something that has to be done,” she says. “It’s also why I’m calling you. I know you said you wanted to come in here and look through his things. My mother wasn’t going to allow that. I’m sorry, by the way, for the way she spoke to you.” She takes a breath. “For the way both of us spoke with you. You have to understand, hearing that he might have… Hearing what you thought about him was really difficult for both of us.”

“I do understand that,” I tell her. “It’s not something anyone wants to hear about their loved one. I’m sorry to have upset you, but I hope you can also understand why I had to ask about it.”

“Yes,” Sharon says. “I do understand. Again, that’s why I’m calling. I found something I think you might be interested in seeing. Could you come here?”

“Absolutely,” I tell her. “I’m back home now, but I can be there in a couple of hours if that won’t be too late for you.”

“Not at all. I’m doing this myself, and it’s going to take a while. I’ll text you the address,” she says.

I pack a small bag in case I can’t bear the thought of another drive and get back in my car. The GPS brings me to a small, older but well-kept house sitting on a square lot surrounded by chain link fencing. A car is parked on a slightly overgrown, well-used gravel driveway, and the door is standing open, several large trash bags already out on the front stoop and sidewalk.

Parking in front of the house on the street, I walk through the front gate and up the sidewalk to the stoop. I can hear a TV playing loudly inside and wonder if the neighbors are bothered by what’s happening. I can’t tell if this is the type of neighborhood where people would even know each other well enough that the people living just yards away would be aware that the murdered man they likely saw on the news was their neighbor.

I step carefully through the bags piled up and knock on the door. There’s no response, and I lean in.

“Sharon?” I call. “It’s Rowan Shade.”

There’s still no response, and I cautiously walk inside. I’m aware of my gun on my hip, though I’m not touching it, and my senses are sharp as I take in everything around me. I walk through a cozy living room, still calling for Sharon, and then turn down a small hallway that leads out of the dining area toward the side of the house. Sharon suddenly pops out of a room at the end of the hallway and jumps when she sees me.

NINETEEN

“I’m sorry I startled you,” I say. “I knocked and called out for you, but you didn’t respond, so I came in.”

“No, it’s all right,” she says, pressing her hand to the center of her chest. “I just didn’t hear you over the TV. I put it up loud so I could hear it through the whole house. It makes it feel less empty. Almost like I’m not alone here.”

I can hear the hurt and sadness in her voice and see tears threatening in the corners of her eyes. She looks as though she has been crying plenty of them throughout the day already and those waiting in her gaze wouldn’t take much to fall.

“I understand that,” I tell her. “This can’t be easy. I can’t believe you’re taking it all on by yourself.”

“There’s no one else to do it,” she says. “It’s just Mom and me, and I could never expect her to go to her murdered son’s house and clear it out. No parent should ever have to do that.”

“No, they shouldn’t,” I agree.

“Anyway, thank you for coming. I have been going through all of Anton’s things, and I remembered what you said about wanting to look for anything that might point to what was going on in his life before he was killed. I didn’t think I would find anything, but when I went into his bedroom…” Her voice trails off for a second while she seems to think about what she had found. “I found something I think might be useful to you.”

She turns and goes back into the room she’d come out of. She didn’t say anything, so I follow her. The bedroom is in a state of deconstruction, drawers open, the bed stripped, bags and boxes sitting around waiting to be filled with belongings. If I didn’t know what was going on, I would think the person living here was moving. But the stark reality of it hangs over me as I look at the personal items scattered around the room.

There’s something painful about seeing mundane items that belonged to a person recently murdered. The big things—pictures of them, recordings of their voice, their car—are all significant emotional reminders, but there can be even more impact when you see the simple things that were a part of their daily lives. Their socks balled up on the floor. Their deodorant sitting on the dressing table. A pair of reading glasses on the nightstand. These are the things that remind you that this was truly a person who one moment was living their lives and the next was gone.

Sharon picks a piece of paper up off the bed and turns to me, staring down at it, the tears now sliding slowly down her cheeks.

“I found this in one of his drawers. When I first came in here, there were a bunch of pieces of paper balled up in the trash can. I didn’t look at them. I just threw them away. But I think they might have been other versions of this,” she says.

She holds the paper out to me. I take it from her and look down at it. Jagged handwriting in black ink covers the yellow legal pad paper. Some areas are scratched out while others have notes written up the side of the margin. It’s definitely a draft Anton was working his way through, but when I read it, I realize he chose this to be the last version. Whether it was because he didn’t want to go through the thoughts again or he just decided it was fine the way it was, he had purposely chosen to settle on this version and put it in his drawer to be found.

This is Anton’s suicide note.

It contains a lot of what would be expected in this kind of note, saying his goodbyes to the people he loved and telling them he knew this was going to come as a shock, but he wanted them to understand it was the right thing. It was the only thing he could do. The note doesn’t give any kind of clear explanation for what caused the depression and hopelessness so extensive he wanted his life to end, but makes it clear that he’d thought about it for a long time and knew this was the only option.

But it’s the end of the note that really catches my attention.

“Please know I chose to do it this way. There is no blame. There is no fault. I chose this.”

“He couldn’t have killed himself,” Sharon says, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

“No,” I tell her. “He couldn’t have. There was no gun found in the car, and there is the significant link to other victims. He was murdered.”

“Then what did he mean he chose to do it that way?” she asks. “I don’t understand.”

“I wish I had a better answer for you about this right now,” I tell her. “But I don’t have all the pieces yet. I’m getting close, and I promise I’m going to get them for you. Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention. I know it wasn’t easy for you, but it has made a big difference. Can I bring it with me?”

“Sure,” she says, nodding. “I don’t ever want to see it again.”

I fold the note and hold it in my palm so she doesn’t have to focus on it.

“I know it’s frustrating to you and to your mother that I’m not giving you all of the details that I have, but I appreciate you trying to understand that it’s what’s best for this investigation,” I say.

“I do,” she says. “And I want to say I’m sorry again for the way we reacted when you asked if Anton was suffering from depression. I never would have thought for a second he was experiencing any of that. I never would have believed he could have been going through anything this serious. He never said anything to me about it. I never saw him even seem sad.” The tears start to flow more rapidly now. “I wish he had. I wish there was something I could have done to help him. He said in the note that there was no blame, but that’s not true. If he felt like he could talk to me, maybe I could have done something that would have stopped him.”

“You can’t do that to yourself,” I say. “No one has any idea what was going on in his head and what pushed him to this. We can only know what he said, and he chose not to share what he was going through with you. That’s not your fault, and you are not to blame.”

She nods, and I make my way to the door.

“If I find anything else, I’ll call you,” she says.

“I appreciate it. And if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call as well.”

I walk back down the sidewalk with something pricking at the back of my mind. I can’t place it, but something that she said is sticking with me. I think about the note and what it said and didn’t say as I drive to the closest hotel. I can’t face another two hours of driving right now.

Anton’s note is the absolute confirmation I needed to know that I’m on the right track. Each of the three Charon victims was suicidal and was murdered. I just have to find out who took it upon themselves to usher these people out of life.

At the hotel I get into a blisteringly hot shower and stand under the water for a long time. That’s one of the things I particularly love about hotels. The hot water doesn’t run out. I can take as long a shower as I want to take or sit in a bath and keep refilling it with hot water as many times as I want and it will never get cold.

I want the water to clear my head, to point me to what I need to know. I have so many pieces, but there’s one missing, something that will show me who is responsible for these deaths. I haven't been able to find the connections between Carrie, Anton, and the Gladiator Forum. I couldn't locate either one of them on it, though they could have been hiding behind coded handles and pictures that didn't show their faces. But there hasn't been any reaction to them going missing if they were active members. I need to know more about both of them and the people they had contact with.

It's getting late into the evening, but when I get out of the shower, I message James to let him know I need Anton Mullins’s phone records. Then I call Penny Parker again.

“I'm sorry to call so late,” I tell her.

“It's fine,” she says. “You can call anytime. What can we do for you?”

“I know that Carrie met Shane through a prison pen pal program. Have you ever read any of those letters?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “We never saw any of them. But I think she might have kept them. Carrie was a very sentimental person. If she thought there was something special about her connection to him, even early on in their letter writing, she would have kept all the letters.”

“Have you gone through her belongings yet?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “We haven't gone through anything. Not yet. It's been too difficult to even go into her room.”

“I'm so sorry to have to ask you this,” I say. “But could you please go through her room and see if you can find those letters? I really need to read them. They might have something in them that could help me better understand her state of mind or the people she was in contact with. Even though those letters were written a couple of years before her death, she might have already known her killer.”

“We can do that,” Penny tells me. “I'll let you know if we find them.”

Casey calls me soon after I get off the phone with Penny, and though she sounds excited when I first answer, it’s obvious my tone of voice concerns her.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“Just work,” I tell her. “What’s up? You sound excited.”

“It’s nothing important. Why do you sound so stressed?”

“This case is just so twisted,” I tell her. “There’s something seriously messed-up going on, and even though I’m right there, right about to figure it out, I can’t seem to find that last bit. All of these victims were so vulnerable, and somebody took advantage of that. Rather than helping them, they killed them. They murdered these people who were in such a hard place in their lives, who could have been saved if someone had just reached out a hand and pulled them up.”

“I know this is getting to you,” Casey says, “but you can do this. You can still help them. You’re going to be the one who finds out exactly what happened to them and makes sure that the person who betrayed them is held accountable.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Yes, you do,” she says. “You’d be fine. You were fine before we met. You’re the most independent person I’ve ever known and have always been able to take care of yourself.”

“You just make it easier,” I say.

“And more fun,” she says.

I let out a soft burst of laughter. “That, too.”

TWENTY

Anton’s phone company doesn’t drag their feet when it comes to getting me his records, and the next morning I’m going through them trying to find anything that links him to the other victims. With their records in front of me, I use a highlighter to indicate the phone numbers that are the same for each of them. Two numbers called all three of the victims, while three more called some combination of them. Each of these numbers is one of the burner phones I found when I was first going through Melanie's records. There's no way to track those.

They're designed to be purchased in a store, no need to register them or get any sort of contract. Service comes in the form of purchasing a card that counts for a certain number of minutes or a month of service. The result is a phone that is like a ghost. It can't be seen when it doesn't want to be, and the person behind it may never be known. Even though it's frustrating to have these burner phones as the connection between the victims, making it so that I can't tell who actually called them, it does give me a form of connection. The same people, presumably having to do with the Gladiator Forum, contacted each of them not long before their deaths.

His texts sound very similar to Melanie’s, but one exchange in particular stands out to me.

I’ve seen you talking about being afraid to fight.

I am. I know it’s what I want, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

Are you sure it’s what you want?

Yes.

Because sometimes being afraid means you aren’t really sure it’s the right thing for you. Are you absolutely positive this is what you want for yourself?

Yes, I’m sure. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.

Then I think I know what you need. I can introduce you to someone who can help you. They have worked with a lot of people who want to fight, who know that’s their destiny, but haven’t been able to do it. Is that something you’d be interested in?

Yes. I need the help.

I’ll send them to you.

The conversation ends there, telling me that whatever this person meant by help, they weren’t going to discuss it through text messages. I would guess they know enough about records like these to know that even a deleted message isn’t going forever. If they want to conceal what they are really doing, they have to do it through a different channel.

And that has to be through the Gladiator Forum.

I go back to the forum and start searching through the posts from around the same time as the text messages. I stumble on a link within a thread that brings me to a hidden other thread. This one is filled with people talking about needing help or asking if people they knew had gotten help. There are responses to some that say they will be “added to the training group” or offering to introduce them to the one that will help them.

That’s when I realize I’ve missed something critical. Right now, I’m just lurking through the forum. I’m reading the threads that are showing up to me, but I’m not getting the full experience. I’m not a member of the Gladiator Forum, but at least Melanie and Anton were—which means they had access to other features, and if I don’t miss my guess, one of those is a message inbox.

I call James to ask him to get access to Melanie’s and Anton’s profiles on the forum so I can check the private messages they've received. I've been a part of several forums that have this structure, and there's always an inbox that at least allows you to get notifications from the forum itself. If there was some sort of hidden thread or another forum where the victims were directed, that notification would likely go to their member inbox rather than to e-mail or anything else. If I can gain access to those inboxes, I can find out exactly where they were sent to get help.

Waiting to hear back about getting access to the profiles is torment, but when I do the next day, my stomach drops.

“They don’t register users,” James tells me.

“What?” I ask, shocked by the response and disheartened at feeling that valuable information slipping away from me.

“To register as a user, you don’t have to use a phone number or email address. You don’t have to put down your real name. You just choose a username and upload a profile picture, which doesn't even have to be you. Add a password and that's it. They don't have any way of tracking which profile belongs to which person,” James says.

“Do they have any idea that what they're doing is potentially illegal?” I ask. “They're encouraging people to kill themselves.”

“Which has been proven in court to be protected by free speech,” he tells me. “There have been high profile cases where people have directly told another person how to kill themselves and that they should, and it was considered their expression of free speech, so it couldn't be prosecuted.”

“That's asinine,” I say. “If a person is drowning and another person doesn't try to help them, they can be prosecuted. If they watch somebody be beaten or stabbed and don't intervene or try to help in some way, they can be prosecuted. Not doing anything to stop a death from happening is not just morally reprehensible, it's against the law.”

“But these people aren't standing in front of them getting ready to kill themselves. They're just talking about it, according to the people who run the forum,” James tells me. “They say this is nothing different than people who do role-playing and pretend to attack each other. They're just talking. Even the ones who offer recommendations for methods comment there are just talking.”

“So there's no way I can get into Melanie’s or Anton’s profiles and see what was in their messages?”

“No,” he tells me. “Even the people who run the forum don't know whose profile is whose. They wouldn't be able to find that information for you. They can assume that Melanie’s is hers according to what you've said about it, but they don't know for ,sure so they are not going to violate the privacy of users by potentially giving us access to somebody else’s. Unless we get a court order.”

“Get it,” I say. “Get the court order. If it is a profile that belongs to somebody else and I was somehow wrong, which I know I wasn't, then we apologize. But we have to be able to look at her private messages. There could be critical information in there.

“The same people calling them with burner phones is not a coincidence. They were contacted by the same people for the same purpose. And I believe that they were called and texted in order to build trust, but the actual information about what happened to them is going to be found on this forum. This is where they got what they called their help. And I need to see it.”

“It could take a while to get the order,” he tells me. “What are you going to do while you wait for it?”

“I’m going to go undercover,” I tell him. “If I can’t get access to their profiles and find out what was going on, I’m going to make my own and find out what happens when you are really in their midst.”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” he asks.

I don’t trust him to the same level that I trust Casey, and he doesn’t know everything I’ve gone through, but he knows enough of the darkness in my life that he would worry about me venturing so close to something this difficult. But I can’t think about my own pain right now. I can’t think about my own comfort. I have to get to the bottom of this before there’s another victim.

Off the phone with James, I go back to the front page of the forum and find the link to join. It pops up with a simple form that looks just like what James described the owners of the forum talking about. Rather than the expected long list of personal information that most registration forms would ask for, this one only asks for a username, a profile picture, and a password. There’s just one more question I should have expected but somehow didn’t. It makes the breath catch in my chest.

Why do you want to join the Gladiator Forum?

It’s a simple, straightforward question that makes perfect sense to be there. I would assume they don’t want people who just crave the misery and sensationalism of people suffering joining up so that they can troll through the threads. They only want people here who will, in their minds, benefit from the community. I sit staring at the question for a while, wondering exactly what I should say. I feel a tug in my stomach, trying to drag me away from the page. I don’t want to do this. I remember this too well. But I have no choice.

I take a breath.

Old feelings still linger in the very furthest recesses of my mind. They don’t have power over me anymore, but they’re there, a constant reminder. I remember exactly what it feels like to not want to be alive anymore. I know how hard it is to struggle against every single breath because you know it’s filling your body with the oxygen it needs to continue to survive, and all you want is for it to stop. I know intimately the very distinct sensation of not wanting to exist, wishing I could just close my eyes and never open them again because everything pressing in around me was too much to bear. It felt easier to think of no longer being on this earth than it did to contemplate trudging through a single more day.

Once I climbed out of those thoughts, I tried hard to hide them. I pushed them down as far as I could so I wouldn't have to face them anymore. It was painful to remember what that was like, to think about wishing away even a second of my life. They rushed back to me early in my career with the Bureau, the first time I faced down somebody who was trying to shoot me. I crouched there, having just had a bullet rush past me, and realized I had escaped it. I’d saved my own life. It meant something in that moment, and I shoved the memory of those feelings even further away as if not acknowledging them would stop them from affecting me anymore.

Now isn’t the time to hide from my past. Even if it hurts, now is the time to use it.

I have to create a profile that is believable. It has to fit in with the rest of the users and make them feel at ease with me so that I can carefully extract the information from them that I need. That starts with simply giving them the reason that I want to be a part of the forum. I reach deep into the depths of me where those feelings beyond the thoughts themselves exist. Taking a breath, I type in the answer that I would have said all those years ago.

My sister and father are gone. I don’t know what happened to them. I’m all alone and everyone is against me. I can’t keep living like this.

TWENTY-ONE

I drive back home, and when I get there, I go back to the forum and try to sign in. It accepts me, and I feel a moment of hopefulness. The forum looks much the same as it did when I was just browsing through it, only I now have a profile to fill out, an inbox where I can receive notifications if I turn on that capability, and access to several threads that weren’t visible when I wasn’t a member.

I immediately go to work building my profile. I don’t make it purely and authentically about myself. I’m not willing to share that much and allow anyone, even people who will never know who I am, that close to me and what I’ve gone through. Instead, I use my own experiences as a frame and build a character over it, someone I can use to appeal to the people on the forum and hopefully lure out someone who can lead me to the Charon.

The next couple of hours are spent building the profile and developing a backstory. I keep a notebook beside me with notes about this person I’m creating so that if people ask questions I’m able to answer consistently. It’s too difficult to carry on something like this without preparation and not accidentally trip over yourself. A detail that changes, a personality trait that doesn’t stay the same, something that doesn’t quite make sense. All of it can quickly cause distrust, and that is exactly what I don’t want or need in this situation.

I need everyone on this forum to trust me. I need them to see me as one of their own, a likeminded person going through the same kinds of things that they are, so they are able to speak openly and reach out to me with their own thoughts. That is what will make them sympathize with me and want to offer me some kind of help – which I hope will include someone wanting to lead me the way that someone led Anton and Melanie. And even though I can’t find Carrie on this forum and have no real proof that she was a part of it, she ended up with the Charon coin in her pocket the same as the others. Someone decided she was the perfect candidate to be ushered beyond life.

When I’ve finished creating the profile itself and the character I’ll be portraying as I’m undercover, I start browsing through the threads looking to find one to hop into. I respond to a few comments with innocuous answers meant just to show that I am a part of the community and to get my name and profile picture into the minds of the people using the forum. Then I start adding in a bit more about my own “plans,” remembering to use the jargon as much as possible. It has to sound natural, not like I’m shoving it into conversation to give myself legitimacy. It’s a fine line to walk, and I have to be cautious with every interaction I make.

I stay on the forum for several hours before going to bed. When I wake up the next morning, I have responses to some of the comments I’ve made, and I feel like I’m getting somewhere. The rest of the day is the same, digging through to find threads I can make myself a part of, adding comments and then putting myself out there. Finally, the next morning, I feel like I’ve been present enough and settled into the community to a deep enough degree that I can take my participation to another level. With thoughts of the victims hanging in my mind, including Natalia who didn’t have the Charon coin as far as I know but suffered the same way, I start a thread of my own.

“Today I Failed: I thought today was going to be my fight, but I can’t do it. I got too scared at the last minute and stopped. I am so angry at myself. If I had just done it, it would all be over right now. How could I be so weak? I’m really shaken right now and don’t know what to do next. I’ve been training for so long and was so looking forward to it. Anyone have any advice?”

It only takes a few minutes for the responses to start coming in. At first, it's just the expected condolences and reassurances. People are sharing their experiences with me and telling me they are proud of me just for trying. They know how I feel. They know what it's like to be in my position.

Keep thinking.

Keep training.

Keep looking forward.

The encouragement is unsettling, and at the same time strangely comforting. I can understand why people going through these difficult moments would seek out this type of love. There's no judgment. There's no screaming or shaming. It's just people gathering around to offer a boost when someone needs it. The circumstances behind needing that boost are what dampens the feeling. I keep reading the messages as they pour in until finally I get the one I was waiting for.

Maybe you just need some help.

Do you think she's ready for help?

I do. Listen to her. She's ready.

Do you want help?

I answer as quickly as I can type.

Yes. Please, I need help. I can't keep going like this. The only thing that made each day bearable was knowing that today was coming and now this has happened. I need to do this as soon as possible. Who can help me?

Drumming my fingertips on the table anxiously, I wait for the answers to come. They take a while, and I wonder if the people who had been asking me about needing help were communicating with each other now. Finally, a response pops up.

Do you have social media?

My heart jumps a little. That’s the first way they communicated with Melanie. I feel like I’m making progress.

No. I deleted it a long time ago. There isn’t anybody there I want to talk to.

Phone number so I can text you?

I have a burner phone that I use for work. It obviously isn’t connected to my name and there would be no way for them to find me through it. I tell myself as soon as this is over I’ll destroy the phone and get a new one. I’m very aware I’m posting my number on a forum for an unknown number of people to see, but I will risk endless calls and texts until I get the information I need.

With my number posted, I rush to dig the burner phone out from the drawer where I keep it when I’m not on a case that needs me to make calls that can’t be traced or to give a number to someone I don’t want to be able to track me personally. It’s turned off, so I power it up, feeling like every step of the process is taking too long. It turns on, but I don’t have any messages waiting for me. I set the phone down on the table beside my computer and wait for it to give some sort of notification.

Finally, it beeps, and I open a text that asks me to tell them again what I was planning and how much I want the help they might have to offer me. I feel my chest tighten again. This is getting intense, and I don’t know how much more I can tolerate the heaviness coming down on me. But I have to keep going. I can’t give up on this. Not on them.

I type out the best answer I can give them, channeling everything I felt in those dark days after Vivienne disappeared and I was withering under accusations about things I know in the depths of my soul I didn’t do. The depths of my soul, but not my mind. I can’t remember all of that day. I don’t know where I was when I watched her walk toward the first aid center after getting the nosebleed. I don’t remember going up to the cliff or why I was kneeling there with my bloodied hands when my father found me.

There’s so much about that day that I don’t know, and right after it happened, there was so much torment, I didn’t know how to keep breathing. I tried to tell myself to be strong for her and that I couldn’t just give up when she might need me so much. But it was too hard. I was too young to be handling all of that, and the pressure was dissolving me away.

I take all of those feelings and add them to the details I’ve crafted for this character and tell them about my pain. I emphasize the struggles and hopelessness, the knowledge that there’s nothing left in the world for me. It’s hard to write the words, but they are what these people need to see. Whoever they are, they are judging my worthiness of whatever kind of help gets occasionally doled out to the people of the Gladiator Forum.

With my response done, I wait several minutes before there’s a response.

You sound like you truly want help.

I do. So much.

Do you want help enough for this to be out of your hands?

My heart jumps a little.

Out of my hands?

Sometimes the best way to take control of a situation is actually to give that control over to someone else. Would you be willing to do that?

I don’t understand.

I think you do.

I feel like I’ve reached a fragile place in the conversation. I don’t want to make them feel like I’m not the right kind of person to offer the help to, but I also don’t know the right words to say. I don’t want to give too much away.

I’m willing to do anything. I can give the control to someone else.

I feel like it’s a safe response. I’m giving them what they want without having to offer too much information.

It’s good to hear someone so confident. We’ve tried to offer help to many people and it often takes much more time for them to make the choice. I’ll ask you one more time just to be absolutely confident. Are you one hundred percent sure this is what you want? You aren’t scared to do it because you’ve changed your mind?

I quickly respond.

I’m sure. I am absolutely sure. I have been thinking about this for a long time and I know it’s what I want. I can’t stand to wait any longer. I just wasn’t brave enough to do it on my own. I am willing to do anything. If there is a way, I need to know.

I add the last part after thinking about Anton and remembering him specifying that he had chosen to “do it this way.” Thinking of him makes the back of my neck tingle again. I still can’t place exactly what it is, but something about that note is standing out to me.

The phone goes quiet, and my stomach starts to churn. I don’t know if I said something wrong that pushed them away or if I said exactly the right thing. As I’m waiting, my other phone rings. I go over to it and see that it’s Penny Parker.

“Hi, Penny,” I say.

“Hi, Rowan. I searched Carrie’s room and I finally found the letters,” she says.

I perk up. “You found them? Did you read them?”

She takes a breath that holds so much emotion it makes my heart ache.

“Yes. I read them.”

I can tell by the sound of her voice that something in those letters really got to her. I don’t want to ask her to recount it to me, not wanting to exacerbate the trauma.

“I need you to take the ones you think I should read and take a picture of them or scan them into your computer and send them to me. My email address is on the business card I gave you.”

“All right,” she says.

I hang up and look back at the burner phone, waiting for it to chime again.

TWENTY-TWO

The email from Penny comes into my inbox a couple of minutes later. I open it and find she has sent me images of only two letters. I know they communicated with each other for a long time, and I assume that would be a fair number of letters exchanged between them, but that doesn’t mean Carrie kept them all. Or Penny only read a few of them and these were the ones that stood out to her.

I open the first letter and read through it. The beginning is a generic letter just catching her up on his mundane routine and asking her how she was doing. It almost has the feeling of a form letter, something so basic and straightforward I wouldn’t be surprised if just about every letter he wrote to her began the same way. It isn’t until I’m most of the way through the letter that I find why Penny sent it to me.

“Babe, I’m remembering what you said in your last letter about feeling so comfortable with me like you’ve known me all your life. That you feel like you could tell me anything and you can’t wait to find out everything about me because you want to know me better than you’ve ever known anyone. Is that really true? Do you really want to know me? Because I feel the same way about you. I feel like I could tell you anything. But I’m afraid if you really knew me, if I told you everything about me, you would never want to talk to me again. I want to tell you, but I don’t want to lose you. So, your choice. Do you want to know my deep, dark secret?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a little red bubble show up on the tab for the Gladiator Forum. I click on the tab and see it is a new notification in my mailbox. Filled with eager anticipation, I open the inbox and see a link. The caption reads “You've been accepted.” Generally, I am a big proponent of not clicking on random links, but this time I’m going to have to take the risk. If this is some sort of mega virus that destroys my computer, at least I have everything I could ever need fully backed up, and I'll just have to get another one.

I click on the link, and a new forum opens up. My heart stops in my chest when I see the Charon symbol at the top of the page and read the description beneath.

“Where aspiring killers find their willing victims”

This is much more than just a killer preying on suicidal people. I’m looking at a forum filled with people who fantasize about murdering other people.

I have a notification in my inbox and open it.

Here’s the help we promised you. These people will usher you into the next chapter. When and how are up to you. You won’t be surprised. You get to connect with the person first and can trust that they are being supervised. They will not do anything you don’t want them to do. Look around and see if any of them suit you and we’ll help make the connection and plans when you are ready. Congratulations on your upcoming victory.

I feel sick to my stomach, shaking as I pick up my phone to call James.

“It is multiple people,” I tell him. “I thought it couldn’t be one killer, and it’s not. It’s several. They have different methods of killing because that’s what the victim chose.”

“Wait… what?” he asks, sounding horrified at what I just told him. “What are you saying?”

“I created that profile I was telling you I was going to make, and I've been posting in the Gladiator Forum. Some members contacted me and said they thought I seemed like I needed help. I'd been saying how scared I was to actually go through with it, about how angry and frustrated I was that I hadn't. They said they knew of a way I could get help, but I would have to be willing to put the control of it in somebody else's hands. I agreed with it and said I would do anything, that I was willing to do whatever it takes to get this over with and they asked me for my phone number.”

“You gave them your phone number?” James asks.

“Just the burner phone that I use sometimes when I'm on cases. I'm going to destroy it after this case and not have anything to do with it again. But I gave them that number, and they texted me and asked me to tell them about what I had been going through and if I was really sure that this was what I wanted. That I really did want to end my life. It was like they were testing me. They were trying to see if I had what it took or I was valuable enough. Something. This was definitely a screening process. I have the feeling that not many people are selected for this particular type of help,” I say.

“What did they say?” he asks.

“After I went through all of that, they sent me a message on the Gladiator Forum that said I had been accepted and gave me a link. I just followed that link, and it is to another forum. This one isn't for people who want to kill themselves. It's for people who want to kill other people. Serial killer fetishists and people who fantasize about taking other people's lives in various different ways. This thing is full of people talking about how they want so much to commit a murder but don't want to get caught so they can't choose a victim. Or they have always fantasized about killing somebody but struggle with the moral issue of taking the life of somebody who wants to continue living,” I say.

“So killing somebody who already wants to kill themselves makes it okay,” James says.

“Exactly,” I tell him. “These people told me that I could choose when it happens and how it happens. I would even have a personal connection with the one who ushers me into my next chapter, as they put it.”

“So let me get this straight: You would be able to choose your killer and tell them how to kill you?” he asks.

“That's what it sounds like,” I say. “That's why the methods of death were so different. Not just because they were different killers, but they because they were different victims. Each of those three victims decided how and where they wanted to die. They made the choices, so they were still in control, but they gave the actual control of ultimately taking their lives to another person.

“Carrie probably didn't want to be anywhere her parents would have found her. She wanted to be outside in somewhere beautiful, but she also wanted to make sure that somebody would eventually find her. It also explains why she was drugged. She wouldn't want to feel anything and might have been nervous. I would guess that they gave her the drugs ahead of time. She probably had them with her and administered them to herself before she even met up with her killer.

“Then Melanie. She was most comfortable at home. Always. She would much rather be in her own space where she was familiar with everything and didn't feel so exposed to other people. She also wouldn't want to look into the eyes of her killer because it was just another stranger, just another person who she couldn't fully trust. Instead, she chose to be shot in the back of the head. A very quick method of death.

“And for Anton, he also wanted a death that was fast and hopefully painless. But I think he chose being shot in the heart for the message of it. He was in so much pain, and this was his way of hitting back at that pain. He was demonstrating what he was going through by having that bullet put right into his heart. He chose to be in his car overlooking the river because it was so beautiful. He loved it there, and he just wanted to be looking at something that gave him peace. I would not be surprised if the toxicology comes back that he was also drugged. His eyes were closed, so I would think that he spent some time looking at the river, then took a sedative to go to sleep and then was shot.

“What’s the update with Natalia Rodriguez?” I ask.

“Apparently, it's pretty painstaking getting her out of the acrylic and getting the residue off of her body so that it could be properly examined. Why?” he asks.

“Because I found out that she was suffering from depression and was on the Gladiator Forum as well,” I say. “She was under the handle Mermaid Girl.”

“You think she was killed by these people, too?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “I don't. Which is why I was asking about her. I’m sure when they examine her body they won't find one of the wooden coins with her, which is their calling card. The killer leaves that as a symbolic way of sending their victim into the next world. But I can't shake the feeling that the link with Natalia Rodriguez means something. I don't think that she would have chosen what happened to her. But it's something we need to keep in mind.”

“We have to find out who these people are and who's running this forum,” he says. “The suicide forum might be protected by free speech, but what amounts to a singles column for murder isn’t. These people are responsible for at least three deaths, and I can’t believe Carrie was the first one they ever did this to.”

“Definitely not. I’m going to keep searching. I’ll keep you updated.”

I hang up and remember the email from Penny with the letters inside. Switching back to that tab, I open the second letter. It’s enough to make my blood run cold.

“Thank you so much for your amazing words in your last letter. I’ve never met anyone like you. I truly believe you were specially designed just for me and that you were sent to me to make my life so much better. I also truly believe when you said that I can tell you anything and you will still want to be with me. I have felt like I could trust you from the beginning and now I know it’s really true. I don’t talk about this secret, but I want to share it with you.

I have always wondered what it would be like to kill someone.”

My instincts confirmed, I have to take a deep breath to steady myself. I want to find Shane and tear him apart for what he did to Carrie. There isn’t a question in any fiber of my being now that he is responsible for her death. It’s why she wasn’t part of the Gladiator Forum. She didn’t need to be. She had her connection to Charon right beside her.

The intimacy of the strangling makes sense now. Drugged, she wouldn’t be able to fight back and would succumb more quickly. He got exactly what he wanted from her rather than being the man who was supposed to love her and help her through her struggle.

I don’t have enough proof right now to have him arrested. Just a letter stating his desire to kill someone else and the existence of the forum aren’t conclusive. So far there’s nothing that links him to the forum. If I can talk to him, I might be able to get him to slip and say something that gives me more information about his involvement and the identity of the others who took the lives of the other victims.

Steadying my voice, I call Shane Macintosh.

“Hello?” he answers.

I grit my teeth against the rage that fills me just hearing his voice. I remind myself I need him to think there’s nothing wrong and that I just need his help with this investigation.

“Hey, Shane, this is Rowan Shade.”

“Hey, Agent,” he says. “How is everything going? Did you find something?”

My hand clenches hard enough for my fingernails to bite into my palm.

“I might have, but I’m not sure what it could mean. Would you be able to get together again so I can show you a few things? I know Carrie trusted you so much, and you probably knew her better than anyone else. If there’s anybody who can help me make sense of all this, I’m thinking it’s you,” I say.

“I can do that,” Shane says. “Like I told you, I might not know much, but I want to do anything I can to find out who did this to Carrie. Deep in my heart I still believed we were going to end up back together some day. I feel like losing her was losing my future.”

There’s a hint of sadness in his voice that I can’t help but feel is genuine. It’s a sickening dichotomy I won’t feel sympathy for. He made his choice.

TWENTY-THREE

I should probably sleep, but I can’t make my brain slow down. The pieces are all falling into place now, and I’m finally getting close. I’m up late into the night compiling evidence and piecing things together. Bent over my dining table, I’m taking notes about the crime scene photos and what they reveal when I hear something in the back of my house. I pause, listening. It comes again, sounding like something hitting one of the back windows. I go to the back of the house to examine them. Maybe an animal is scratching at them or the wind has caused one of the ornamental bushes along the back to hit the glass.

I’m looking at the last of the windows when the loud sound of shattering glass from the side of the house makes me run toward it. An instant later I’m grappling with a hooded figure dressed all in black. I know it’s Shane Macintosh. I don’t know how he found out where I live, but as soon as he got the call from me, he must have gotten suspicious and come here.

I try to fight him off, but the way we're positioned in the hallway, he has the upper hand, and in one swift movement he slams me back against the wall. My head rocks against the frame of the door, and the back of my skull feels like it explodes. I try to keep my eyes open, but the darkness closes in, and I collapse to the floor.

I have no idea how long I've been unconscious when awareness creeps back into my mind and I start to wake up. I'm sitting on a chair with my hands tied behind my back and my head hanging down. I lift my head up and see Shane pacing back and forth in front of me.

“Look who's awake,” he says.

“Why did you bring me here?” I ask.

My voice sounds dry and crackly, telling me it's likely been a couple of hours since he took me from my house. The fogginess in my brain and vaguely sick feeling in my stomach tell me he probably drugged me after I passed out from my head being slammed into the wall and doorframe. That would have made it easier for him to get me out of the house.

“Because I told him to,” a voice says.

As soon as I hear it, the last piece clicks into place. I know now why the note from Anton stuck with me. Gavin Bates walks into view and looks at me with a sneer on his lips.

“You got in my way, Agent Shade. I told you that you should have joined up. You should have been a part of this. Instead, you had to keep poking and prodding. You had to keep shoving yourself in where you didn't belong. You see, we weren't doing anything wrong. There are people who have a natural, primitive impulse to hunt and kill others. It's part of who they are. It doesn't make them bad people and doesn't mean that they're dangerous to everybody around them.

“It simply means that they still have the strong instinct to protect themselves and those they love; they want to eliminate competition, some sort of impulse. It doesn't really matter why. What matters is they struggle with this intense compulsion and have no way of getting away from it. And then there are those who want to end their lives. They've gone through something traumatic, or they simply don't have anything left that they feel like is worth getting up every morning for. That isn't for anyone else to judge or determine if it's a good enough reason or not. They want to die, but often they are too afraid to go through with killing themselves.

“That's where I come in.” He opens his hands out like a preacher addressing his flock. “I take these two people who are in pain and in need, and I bring them together. The ones who can't stand living anymore have the opportunity to end their lives on their own terms without having to do it themselves, and the ones who have the impulse to kill are able to fulfill that impulse without taking an unwilling life. They each get what they want. There is no blame. There is no crime. If we could simply work together to find more ways like this that people can fulfill what they need without resorting to true crime, the prisons would not be as overrun as they are. People would not be kept in inhumane conditions simply for following their instincts.”

“You're arguing that prisons are inhumane, but you promote murder,” I say.

“It isn't murder,” Gavin says. “Not with victims who want to die. There are many places where euthanasia is legal. Assisted suicide, as they call it. Does that make the doctors murderers? No. It means that they have compassion and understand that these people can't continue living without it becoming torture. I argue that is inhumanity.”

“There is a major difference between assisted suicide with carefully controlled drugs and allowing a person to go out and strangle or shoot someone,” I say. “And there are plenty of people who do argue that the people who provide the medications for those assisted suicides are murderers. I guarantee you they wouldn't share your view of the kind and compassionate killer.”

“I agree with you. I think many people still have a far way to go before they can fully understand the nuances of something like this. But that’s why we have to keep working toward it. It’s why we can’t give up. We have to keep pushing and showing that this will work. It’s a beautiful thing when you open your eyes enough to see it.”

“Think of Carrie,” Shane says.

“Carrie, the woman you said you loved and who you shared your life with and then strangled to death?” I ask. “Are you going to try to convince me that by doing that you are some sort of higher being?”

“Not a higher being,” he says. “I’m human just like anyone else. But my understanding is more advanced. That’s why I was able to do it. You’re right. I did love her. I still do. She was who I thought I was going to spend my life with, but she was going through something that made it so that she didn’t want to be alive anymore. She no longer wanted to wake up in the morning. She didn't want to keep struggling and trying to get through every day. It was horrible to see her that way.”

“So you find a way to get her help,” I say. “You help her find a doctor. You don't agree to kill her.”

“Carrie was an adult,” he says. “She had the opportunity to make the decision that she wanted to make. We talked about going to doctors. We talked about medication and therapy. She said that none of them were going to help her. They would just make it so that she kept facing everything. To her, if they lifted her up at all, it just meant that when the inevitable crash came back, she would be falling even further and hitting even harder. She didn't want to be smashed down anymore. Those were her words. How do you talk to somebody who's saying those things and tell them they don't know what they want? That they don't have the right to make a decision about what they do?”

“Because somebody in that position is not thinking clearly,” I say.

“I disagree,” Gavin says. “I think that there are plenty of times when people have simply decided that they are done. And they should have the right to do that. And if they don't feel that they are prepared to take matters into their own hands, then there should be people out there who are willing to help them.”

“Like I did for Carrie,” Shane says. “She knew it was going to be me, so she wasn't afraid. She was comforted and relaxed. We decided together to go out of state so that we could spend a little time together away from everything and there would be no chance for her parents to find her body. We walked through the park and enjoyed the beautiful day. Then she took the drugs when she was ready. I didn't inflict them on her. I didn't force anything on her. If she had changed her mind right then and said she didn't want to do it anymore, then we wouldn't have done it. It's really that simple. She took the drugs because she was ready. They kept her calm and made the process faster and painless. It was an act of love.”

“Carrie wasn’t a part of the forum,” I say. “How did you know about Charon?”

Bates lets out a bit of a laugh. “It’s a brilliant symbol, isn’t it? Exactly who we are and what we do. I found her through Jeremy Russo.”

“Jeremy?”

“He and I have been friends for a long time. I already told you that,” Shane says. “I talked to him about how Carrie was doing and the things that she was saying. He already knew about Gavin and his beliefs.”

“Not that he would have mentioned that to you. We're very protective of what we do. I'm sure you can understand that,” Gavin says.

“Protective of what you do because you're murdering people,” I say. “You're running an organized crime syndicate that slaughters people when they are at their most vulnerable for the amusement of sick people who should be getting help themselves.”

“That’s not what we’re doing. We’re helping to heal people. Those people are not sick just because they have those compulsions. Everyone has compulsions. Everyone has impulses and desires that might not seem right to those around them. They have the capacity to hurt others. That isn’t right. But if there is a way to fulfill that compulsion with someone who is willing, there is no longer blame,” Gavin says. “There’s no longer any negative morality. An act becomes criminal because it hurts or takes something away from someone else.

“If that person wanted that to happen, then how is it criminal? If someone who has no food snatches money out of a person’s hand to buy some, it is theft. If that person hands money to someone collecting for those in need, it is making a donation to charity. It’s the same concept. In every one of our acts, the person who is ushered out of life wants it to happen. They would have found a way for it to happen. The person helping them is showing them compassion and giving them the help that they need because they can’t do it on their own.

“But the person who does this is also helped. If they can’t continue to control their impulses, they may eventually hurt someone who is not willing. Giving them this opportunity is a chance to protect them from that and protect innocent, unwilling people from becoming their targets. You see, Agent, this stops people from becoming criminals while offering them the chance to do good for others.

“Shane did so well with Carrie, and I knew he had another desire that was more difficult to fulfill in keeping with my beliefs, but you offered the perfect opportunity. I needed to get you here so I could talk to you, and he has always wanted to kidnap someone. It doesn’t have the same effect when the person knows that it’s going to happen or when. It has to be spontaneous. That made you the ideal target. And I think he did an exceptional job.

“Now unfortunately, sometimes things don’t work out the way they are supposed to, and we can’t always follow our beliefs exactly. Sometimes we have to sacrifice for the good of the cause, and that’s what we’re going to have to do with you. You have gotten in the way and are threatening what I’ve worked hard to build. There are too many people who have entrusted me with their private thoughts and most intimate secrets. I’ve created bonds between people that can’t be threatened. I’m going to have to eliminate you to protect those.”

I’ve been talking as much as I can to give myself time to work my wrists out of the rope. Now they are free, and I take my chance.

TWENTY-FOUR

I leap up from my chair, shoving my palm up toward Shane’s nose. He doesn’t see it coming, and I make contact hard, feeling it crunch under my strike. As he stumbles backward, I spin to throw a punch at Gavin, who has already run forward to tackle me. The punch lands on the top of his head, and I don’t get out of the way fast enough to not get hit.

We both tumble to the floor, and I scramble to get some space, but Gavin clasps at my foot. I try to kick him off of me and scoot back, but he jumps at me and swipes his fist. It connects with my thigh, and I kick hard at his chest. A wheeze of breath comes out of him, and I back up to the wall, trying desperately to gain some kind of orientation of where I am and if there are any weapons I can grab.

It’s a small room, like an office but mostly bare. A mildewed desk sits against one wall, a dry erase calendar above it that looks like it was never properly cleaned. Smudges of marker leave the memories of years of markings on it. No pens or other office equipment seem to be nearby, dashing my hope for something sharp I could use.

Beyond Shane, who is now on one knee, shaking his head and holding one hand against a bloody nose, is a door.

If I can make it to the door and out, I might have a chance.

Gavin coughs as he stands, and I push myself against the wall to help get up myself. My arms and legs feel sore from being motionless for so long. My wrists burn from where the rope was tied, and as I get to my feet, the world tilts on me, the effects of the drugs they injected into me not fully having worn off.

I thrust a kick at Gavin, and it catches his chest, knocking him back and into the table. Not wasting any time, I use the separation to go for the door. It only takes a few steps to get across the room. I’m almost there, my hand reaching out for the knob, when I hear Gavin shout.

“Shane!”

My fingers wrap around the knob, but before I can grip it and turn, my whole body is thrown against the wall. The radiating pain from being kidnapped echoes louder in my skull, and I wonder if I’m bleeding.

It’s close quarters against the wall, and I struggle to get some shots in, but Shane is laying into my stomach with closed fists. He has a size advantage over me, and I throw my forehead at his cheek, smashing him with a headbutt that sends gobs of his blood from the broken nose everywhere, including a spot of it landing on my eyelid.

He stumbles a step backward, grunting, before swinging a straight right at me. I duck and he hits the drywall, plowing through it and getting his arm stuck. I slam my elbow into his jaw and throw a punch to the gut that bends him over. Scrambling around him, I go for the door again, but Gavin is there to cut me off.

His face is a mask of anger and frustration. He must have never had to deal with someone who didn’t want to die before. It’s an expression of someone who is so used to having things go their way that they never even comprehended how they would react if it didn’t. He had no plan for me fighting back. Not like this. It shows in the slight panic in his eyes.

Gavin reaches his arms out, almost like he’s trying to hug me, and I plow into him, shoving my knee hard into his stomach. I was aiming lower, but he crouched in anticipation of me running into him. The grip of his arms around me is loose because of the shot to his stomach, and I fight my way out of it, grabbing his head in a front facelock and letting my weight go, dropping down hard and bringing him with me, headfirst into the floor.

His skull splats on the floor, and I try to roll away, but Shane is already there and stomps hard on my back. I try to get up, but he grabs me as I get to my knees and throws me hard at the wall. I slam into it and feel the drywall breaking.

My head is throbbing in pain, and I can hear a ringing in my ears that I know is caused from the repeated shots to my skull. It’s almost enough to make me curl up in pain, but I have to fight through it. I am fighting for my life in a small room with two men who want to kill me. There’s no time for pain.

Suddenly, Shane is pressed against me, one hand on my throat and the other grabbing at my arm. He pushes me down onto the desk as his fingers tighten over my neck. Carrie flashes through my mind in that moment, and a swell of anger burns in my belly. He killed her just like this and made her think it was her idea.

My free arm swings for his face, but not in a punch. I let my fingers curl and swipe at his eyes. My middle finger scrapes across one eyelid as he shuts it just in time, but my forefinger catches on his nostril and yanks. The clearly broken nose is a soft spot, and his grip loosens at the pain.

I roll off the desk and to the floor, coming up hard with an uppercut that misses and lands just to the side of his groin. It’s still enough to make him turn away from me in pain. I use that to shove him against the wall and bring my knee up hard against his head when he bends down to cover himself. His head rocks with the strike, and I slam my elbow into the back of his neck as he goes down, dazed.

Turning to the door again, I get one step before Gavin grasps my leg and trips me. I thought he was out cold, but as he staggers to his feet, I see he has regained at least some consciousness, and the fear that I had detected was gone, replaced by an intense rage.

Gavin lunges at me, and I am too late to dodge it. He grabs me by my shoulders and shoves me backward, making me fall to the ground and smacking the back of my head again. The world spins, and I clench my eyes shut against the pain for only a second, but it’s long enough for Gavin to leap on top of me. I can smell his breath bearing down on me as he reaches for my arms and sits on my stomach.

The crushing weight of his body on my ribs is coupled with his hands holding down my arms at the elbows, raised high enough above my head to not be of any use. I struggle to kick up at him, but he wiggles down a little to sit more on my hips and stomach as Shane returns.

“Take her arms,” Gavin commands.

Shane kneels down and presses his knees into my elbows, pinning them down while holding down my biceps with his hands.

“You have a lot of fight in you,” Gavin says, then slams a fist into my stomach. “You’re lucky we are honorable enough not to shoot you where you are.”

Shane’s blood drips down on my forehead as Gavin slams another fist into my stomach. The wind is gone from my lungs, and I feel like I might throw up. The pain is overwhelming, and the more I struggle, the more I wear myself out. I only have so much energy left.

“I want her,” Shane says. “I want to hunt her.”

Gavin pauses, wiping sweat from his brow and clearly trying to get a good deep breath in. He looks down at me and then back to Shane and nods.

“Just one more,” Gavin says. “She needs to know the rules.”

A mighty punch lands on my jaw, and I feel the lights going back out. I fight against it, but the world goes gray, and I feel my body go limp. When the pressure releases off my arms and stomach, I don’t have it in me to fight back as they lift me and carry me to the door I had tried so desperately to escape to. I thought it might be a way out.

As the door opens and with my limited vison taking in what I see, my heart sinks.

TWENTY-FIVE

It’s a warehouse. A cavernous, cluttered with junk warehouse.

I’m dropped onto the ground like a sack of potatoes, and a groan comes from my chest on instinct. Everything hurts. Everything is sore. My head feels like something has been jammed into the back of my skull. It radiates pain throughout my body, and I feel like I can’t move.

“Do you want me here?” I hear Gavin ask.

“No,” Shane responds. “Go wait for me outside. I want this to be just me and her. Like Predator.”

“There are things here she could use as weapons, Shane,” Gavin says cautiously, and I know that our fight took a lot more out of him than he expected.

“So can I,” Shane said. “But I want to finish her with my hands.”

“That’s fine,” Gavin says after a moment’s pause. “But she can’t get away. You know that. You have to finish her.”

“Look at her,” Shane says, nudging my prone body with his foot. “She’s going to be easy. I can’t do it with her like this. I’ve always wanted to hunt someone, and this is perfect. You stay outside, and if, for some damn reason, she gets past me, you can finish her.”

“But she won’t,” Gavin intones, both sounding like a question and a command at once.

“Of course not,” Shane says and sniffs hard. He sounds defensive, but the way his breath is labored and the sniffing sounds he’s making gives a good indication that his cockiness is based on the idea that I have nothing left. That what I’ve done to him is the extent of the damage he could take.

“Are you still with us, Agent Shade?” Gavin growls. Suddenly, pain and pressure spike from my back as he kneels down and presses his knee into my spine. Fingers grasp in my hair and yank me back so I am arched on the ground, my head up just a foot or so above it. “Please tell me you are awake now.”

I moan, which seems to be enough of a response for Shane, who laughs.

“She’s awake now,” he says.

“This is how it’s going to go, Agent Shade,” Gavin continues. “I am going to walk out of this building, and then Shane is going to go into the office. How long he decides to stay there is up to him.”

“Five minutes, give or take,” Shane says, excitement creeping into his voice.

“However long he is in there, you have to find a place to hide. You can try to escape, but there is only one way out of here, and I will be waiting there for you. This isn’t a chance for you to survive, Agent. This is a chance for you to decide how painfully you die. The faster Shane finds you, the more painful it will be. If you give him a good hunt, Shane will take pity on you, won’t you, Shane?”

“I’ll make it as painless as I can,” he says, but there’s a note in his voice that says no matter how painless that is, it will still be plenty painful as revenge for what has been done to him.

“See? That’s fair,” Gavin says. “You get to decide how you die. Just like our clients. Make it easy or make it hard—either way, it’s up to you. You can choose to just lie here and wait. I don’t know what Shane would do to you then, but I imagine his disappointment will manifest in some really painful ways.”

“I have a lot of ways I have thought about killing someone. I never thought I’d get to use some of them.”

“But if you hide well, and you give him a good chase, then he will make it easy for you. Do you understand?”

A gurgle of breath and sound escapes my lips, and Gavin seems to take that as a response.

“Good,” Gavin continues. “I am going to get off of you now. Don’t move until Gavin goes into the room. Otherwise, you get too much of a head start. And that wouldn’t be fair, would it?”

He lets go of my head, and it falls hard onto the ground, my neck not capable of holding it up. My eyebrow smacks against the cement floor, and I can feel the swelling begin almost immediately.

The pressure on my back releases, and as I lie on the cold ground, trying desperately to get enough breath in my aching chest, I hear them step aside. They are murmuring to each other in low tones as I begin to stir, despite the pain. Once or twice, I hear them chuckle.

It’s funny to them. My suffering. It’s funny. All the moral arguments they made fly right out the window with that. No matter how grounded in their twisted logic they may be, they are going to take pleasure in my death, beyond just the act of killing me. In the mental torture of how I will die. Running scared and hiding, hoping that it won’t be too painful.

I have to summon every bit of strength I have and fight. It’s my only way. I have to survive.

Turning my head slightly, I try to see where I am in relation to what seems like a cavernous building. By the looks of the office, I would have thought we were in some tight, cramped office space somewhere, but it looks like that was just a foreman’s office or something. The building is huge and filled with junk. Desks are piled one on top of another in various places, half-walls from cubicles are everywhere, some put together, some stacked together, some just lying on the floor. Lamps and uncomfortable-looking couches are on their sides or standing in random places. It’s as if this place became a storage spot for a dozen or so businesses that closed down and didn’t sell off their stuff.

My eyes trace the walls, hoping to find a way out. Windows or another door, anything.

There are windows, giant ones, in fact, but they are high, high up in the building. A catwalk crosses from one end to the other, but it stops well short of the windows, which must only still be there because it’s too hard to launch rocks that high. I’m surprised no one shot them out.

A giant bay door is deep behind a bunch of other stuff, and I make a note to go to it. Even if I can’t get it open, usually there’s an emergency exit near those. I have to find a way to get out of here. Even if it means finding a way to scale up to that catwalk and see if there’s anything I can swing to the window with like some urban Tarzan.

A door closes in the distance, and I realize the voices have long stopped speaking. The sound of a chain being moved around and pressed against the metal door ends with a distinct thump. Footsteps make their way back toward me slowly. He’s taking his time. He wants me to get up. To run in fear of him. To hide and wait for death.

“I can see you moving,” he says, his voice even and low, almost conversational. Like he isn’t currently bleeding from the face and talking to a woman he is about to try to murder. “You don’t have a lot of time. I would get up and start running if I were you. Lots of fun places to hide around here.”

The door of the office opens, and I hear it shut and latch. From behind it, his muffled voice calls out.

“Five minutes!”

For the last few minutes, I have lain here, summoning all my strength, willing my head to stop being dizzy and screaming in pain and for my legs and arms to get their shit together. Now it’s time to use it all, and I shuffle to my feet. For a moment, I think I am going to go down again, but I am able to stabilize and shake off the wooziness.

The first few steps are wobbly and tremendously painful. It feels like all my bones are on fire. But I keep moving. Keep pushing forward and heading straight for the bay door.

I’m not sure how long I have left before Shane will start coming after me, but I’m not going to look back. Cubicles create a maze-like structure the farther I go, and I keep having to strain to look above them to see if I am still heading toward the bay door. It is seemingly endless, and every time I think I’ve made it, I find more junk in my way, more cubicle walls still standing, and yet nothing I could use as a weapon. The lamps are too unwieldly, rolling chairs don’t make for great weapons, and every desk seems to be empty of anything I could throw or use to stab with.

Finally, I reach what I think might be the end, since the bay doors look incredibly close behind one last cubicle maze when a sound makes me freeze. In the distance behind me, a heavy door shuts.

Shane is coming.

Scurrying around the last of the cubicle walls as quietly as I can, I stop and stare in despair at what’s before me. My heart thuds in my chest, and my mind races through a bevy of curses. The bay door is cemented down, and the exit door that I correctly guessed would be nearby is entombed in a massive pile of what looks like heavy metal beams. Not only do they completely cover the exit, but they are stacked several rows deep, meaning even if I could lift them, I’d be in for a lot of lifting before I could even get close to the door.

I have to find another way.

I scan the walls and look for anything I can find. Any method of escape. They fall on a staircase leading up to the catwalk.

If I go up the stairs, I will be visible. Shane will see me going there and will know where to find me. But if I don’t go up the stairs, I don’t know how I will get away. It looks like there might be an exit to the roof up there. That might be my only way out, especially if there is a fire escape on one side of the building, which there should be. I just have to make it there without getting killed first.

Sounds of stuff being moved around in the depths of the cubical wall maze forces me to make a decision.

I have to fight first.

I have to fight and make him incapacitated somehow before I go up the stairs. I’m too easy of a target otherwise. If I can knock him out or something, I might be able to make my escape.

“I’m going to find you, Agent Shade,” Shane’s voice taunts from an all-too-close distance. “How does it feel? How does it feel knowing you are living your last minutes? Do you feel in control?”

The bastard. I have more hatred in my heart for him right now than I have felt in a long time. Now not only do I think I have to fight in order to survive…. I want to.

Sneaking down the wall, I try to find another entrance through the junk that won’t make noise. I need to keep moving until I find something I can use to defend myself with. Something he won’t see coming. He expects me to hide and maybe fist-fight him when he finds me. If I can have anything in my back pocket, anything at all, I might be able to get the upper hand.

I’m scooting through a large pile of what looks like mangled elementary school chairs when I see something that looks promising. While all the chairs are mangled, the metal pieces all seem firmly attached. Even if I could get one off, it would take some doing and probably blow my cover. But discarded off to the side of the pile is another smaller pile… this one of cleaning instruments.

A wooden broom, a good two inches thick, sits on the top of the pile. The bristles are all but gone, and the metal wiring that held them together is hanging off, but the wood seems sturdy and strong. If I can snap it in half, I can use it as a club. And if it breaks sharply, possibly as something to stab with.

I pick it up and carry it with me, navigating my way deeper into the abyss and into darker and darker territory. I no longer hear Shane, and I hope it means I’ve gotten far enough away from him that he can’t hear me, but I am cautious anyway.

I need to break the wooden broom handle, but the snapping sound will likely carry. I need to find a way to divert attention. Maybe if I throw something? On one of the heaps of junk nearby, I see an empty soda can. The aluminum will make a lot of noise, so I take it with me.

Finding myself on a far wall, I try to orient myself again. The staircase is just ahead, and I can see an easier way to it by running along this wall and then darting back in the way I came into that area in the first place. The plan formulates in my mind quickly, and I don’t second-guess it. I toss the can as far as I can in the opposite direction and try to run quietly the other way.

The can makes the expected amount of noise, and I suddenly hear Shane. He was much closer than I thought he was, and he begins moving toward the sound of the can. Things begin falling or being thrown where he is, and I take advantage of the sound to place the broom against the wall and kick it hard in the center, where it is weakest. It snaps, but the sounds of Shane making his way through the junk doesn’t stop. He might not have heard it, or if he did, he thought it was noise he was making.

I don’t have time to waste. I make my way to the stairs and begin climbing. It’s only about ten feet up when I can see Shane in the distance, mostly in shadow, as he ducks and looks under various desks and tables. The metal grating of the stairs is terrifying in how loud it might be, but all I can hope is that by the time he notices me, I’ll be too far up to stop.

Then it squeaks.

I freeze, staring in the direction of the mostly Shane-shaped shadow. It freezes too. Then, when there is movement, it’s slow, like he’s looking around to see what made the noise. If I don’t move for a minute, he might not see me. Hoping the shadows cover me enough, I crouch low and try not to move. The broken, jagged piece of broom is tucked in my pants, and I wrap one hand around it, not wanting it to fall.

“I see you,” Shane says from where he stands, making my breath hitch and whole body tingle in anticipation and fear. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He could be bluffing. He could think that I am hiding somewhere else and I will make noise if he pretends he can see me. If I stay still, I can see him coming. It’s my best chance.

“You don’t think it will work, do you?” Shane asks, as his shadow grows closer. Still, it’s moving so slowly I can’t tell if he can actually see me or if he’s scanning the room still. “You can’t get away. You were supposed to hide. Not run from me. Now that I’ve found you, the game is over. You should just… give… up!”

Suddenly, the shadow takes off running, and a flash of light gleans on his face. For the briefest of moments, I can see his face. His eyes are staring right into mine.

I take off up the steps, no longer caring if they make noise. He’s almost at the bottom of them as I reach the top, and scurry onto the catwalk. It runs the distance of the room but has several adjoining grates where other catwalks meet together. On one wall is the door to the roof. On another is the giant windows. In the center is what looks like a man-made structure, some kind of block that connects all the catwalks together and probably was used at one time to house stuff that was needed for roof maintenance.

By the time I make it to the structure, I can hear Shane clearing the top of the stairs. He probably didn’t see me duck behind the wall, but even if he didn’t, it won’t take long for him to figure out where I am. His heavy boots make his footsteps audible as he slows down now that he’s up high. I sidle up to the corner of the wall and try to take deep breaths. I’ve probably only got one shot at this.

The wooden handle in my hand is smooth but weighty. I will have to use a lot of force, but if I can stick him, it will do damage. I don’t want to kill him, but I also can’t have him following me, either. It leaves me with few choices.

He’s getting closer now and picking up speed. That might make it harder, and I’m going to have to really aim it well. I hold the wood in both hands like a spear and wait. He’s going to round the corner. That’s my chance. It’s all or nothing.

As soon as I detect movement around the corner, I thrust, pushing through the resistance I meet at first. Momentum carries him into me, and we both tumble backward. I grip on to the metal grating to keep myself from rolling off and watch as Shane rolls to his back and screams in a high-pitched wail. The wooden handle is sticking through his left leg completely. It looks like it just missed a major artery, but it is for sure going to make him bleed out eventually.

He’s flailing and scooting back aimlessly as he screams and stares at his leg. I stand and begin making my way toward him, but he doesn’t even seem to notice.

“You know,” I say, “you’ll bleed out faster if you keep screaming and freaking out.”

His wails are echoing around the building so it sounds like a hundred men are crying out in pain. I wonder how many people’s lives were taken by these manipulating ghouls. If they ever screamed like he is now.

“Maybe I can help you,” I say. “But first, you need to give up control.”

Rearing back, I swing my foot hard into his jaw. It’s a precise shot, and the way his head rocks to the side, I know it did its job. His body thumps backward as he falls unconscious. It won’t be a long time before he’s awake again, but it will be enough. Enough for me to get to the roof, anyway.

TWENTY-SIX

The roof door is surprisingly unlocked. I was expecting to have to break through it somehow, but it opens easily, and I step out onto the cement roof, grateful for a breath of fresh air. The stale stench of the warehouse was overwhelming, but it eventually faded into just being reality. Being on the roof makes me feel like I can breathe again.

The center of the roof has the door to the catwalk, and I’m a little unsure which direction is the entrance. I try to recall where the office was, knowing the door was on that side, so I can avoid it. But I am still recovering from the fight I had there, and I can’t really remember. I just have to pick a side and edge toward it to see where I am.

One of the sides should have a fire escape, I tell myself. It only makes sense. Once I find that, I can make my way down and disappear somewhere into the night. By the time the morning comes, they will have to have given up, and I will find civilization and call for backup. Then it will just be a matter of sending a team after them and shutting them down. If I can just survive until then, I can get them both behind bars where they belong.

I hesitantly peer over the side of the roof and find nothing but a sheer wall and the parking lot below. It’s much too far down to jump. That would most certainly end in death or at the very least being paralyzed. With nothing down there to break my fall, I can’t take the risk. I go to another side of the roof and look down, and again, see nothing much but overgrown grass over hard ground. A few bushes are still standing next to the building, but they are thorny and empty and small. Not enough to break a fall.

I’m about to turn and head to another side of the roof when I hear something metallic behind me. My whole body locks up. There’s no way Shane made it out here already. But that wasn’t a coincidental sound.

Slowly, I turn and find myself staring at Gavin, who is standing on the roof, leaning over and holding a lever I hadn’t seen previously. He pulls it, and I hear the mechanics of something heavy and metal crunching. Then, it stops, and I hear it break away and fall to the ground outside.

“Whoops,” Gavin says, grinning and staring at me. “Looks like that way won’t work anymore. Ladder just fell apart. I wonder how.”

From inside his pockets, he tosses several screws, which bounce across the roof.

“Shane is going to die if he doesn’t get help,” I say. “Let me go and you can get him and yourself out of here. Maybe you can escape.”

Gavin shrugs. “Or,” he says, “I could kill you here, then kill Shane for screwing things up and stage it as a scene for investigators to find. That sounds much more palatable. Then I can continue to do my work.”

“Your work is murdering people.”

“My work is helping people,” he says viciously. “You, you are the only person I’m not going to help. Because you are the sacrifice that needs to be made.”

“I thought you interfering was against the rules,” I say. “No one said anything about what would happen if I beat Shane.”

“Because you didn’t,” he says. “You didn’t beat him. You subdued him for now. But even if he dies, I will finish his battle for him. Like I am.”

“That’s not fair,” I say, trying to play into his logic. “I didn’t choose that. You gave me the impression I could survive if I beat him.”

“If it were only that simple, Agent Shade,” he says, pulling one last thing from his pocket.

“A gun?” I ask. “Really? You’re going to shoot me?”

He shrugs.

“It’s the most humane way I can think of,” he says. “Not that you really deserve it, but I suppose it’s your reward for escaping him this long. Long enough for me to get involved.”

“No,” I say. “That’s not what I choose either. Isn’t that your whole thing? That the victim gets to choose how they die?”

“You would prefer another way?” he asks. “Please, tell me.”

He’s so smug. Maybe I can use it.

“I want to die in combat. Like a gladiator.”

His face drops, but then, slowly, curls into a smile. The sudden shift from intense anger to smug self-assurance is jarring.

“You are smart,” he says. “You know just what to say, don’t you? You think that because you held your own for a minute against Shane and me in that office that you could beat me if I don’t have this gun. Don’t you?”

“I know I can,” I say defiantly.

The muscles in his jaw twitch, and I know I am on to something. He cherishes his control. He lives on the idea that he is above everyone else. Being challenged directly is a bruise to his ego. He’s either going to shoot me right now or he’s going to give me a chance. I wait for his decision with my body rattling and my heart pounding in my chest but trying to remain as sure as ever. If he smells weakness, it won’t work.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll put the gun down. Come and fight me.”

Cautiously, he bends down to put the gun on the ledge of the roof. Once it’s down, I take a step toward him, and he feigns standing, then suddenly reaches for the gun again. I take off toward him, kicking hard at his hand just as he swings the barrel around toward me.

I make contact with his fingers before he can reach for the trigger. The gun slips from his hand and tumbles to the ledge. A shot rings out, firing just above my head, and then it disappears, falling over the edge of the roof to the ground below.

“You bitch!” he shouts, a sudden rage taking over him. He swings hard and makes contact with my ribs. I bend toward the pain, and he uses that to grab my hair and yank me to the ground.

He’s on top of me immediately, and I flash back to the office when he did the same thing. Only now, he isn’t punching my stomach; he is reaching for my throat. Both hands wrap around me, squeezing the breath from me as I claw at his face. I get no luck like I did with Shane, and I switch tactics. Raising my knee hard, I hit him low and feel his grip loosen momentarily. I buck up toward him, surprising him by not trying to get away, and throw my right elbow into his face.

A satisfying crunching sound fills the air as I make contact with his lips and nose. He rolls away, pawing at his face as I cough and try to get breath back into my lungs. The blood is pouring out of him just like it was on Shane, and he is incensed. Jumping to his feet, he charges me, and I dodge at the last second, kicking at his knee. I miss but make contact with the back of his leg, which is enough to trip him over.

This time, I jump on top of him while he is down on his back. Slamming my fists into his face and neck, I pepper him so fast and hard he can’t block the shots or mount a comeback. It’s a secret of fighting that cage fighters and boxers all know. Don’t stop swinging. Don’t let them think. Once you smell a knockout, just keep swinging.

One particular shot hits his shoulder, and I hear something crack. In a scream of pain and rage, he flails with his other arm, and it’s enough to get a break in my swings.

Suddenly, I am pitched to the side as he wraps his arm around my waist and jerks us both over. We roll a few times before we end up on our sides. He lands a punch to my swollen eyebrow, and I recoil. He goes to stand again, and I sweep my leg out at him, tripping him.

“Fuck!” he shouts as he falls backward, and I realize what is going on just as he disappears out of sight.

I scramble to the edge of the roof and look down, expecting to see him splatted against the parking lot. Instead, he is hanging on with one hand, his other trying and failing to get back to the ledge. I must have dislocated it or something, and he can’t put the weight on it he needs.

“Do you give up?” I shout at him. “If you do, I’ll pull you back up. Just give me your other hand.”

“No!” he shouts. “I won’t.”

“You will die if you fall, Gavin,” I say. “You won’t survive that. Just give me your hand. I’ll help you up, and you can go to prison.”

“No,” he says, his eyes finding mine. The smug look returns to his face as he stares at me. “I choose this as my way. I am in control. I am in control!”

“Gavin, no!”

I reach out to grab him, but it’s too late. His body is already falling through the air, several stories to the ground below. When he lands, I can hear the crack of his skull all the way from the roof. And the expression on his face never changes.

I collapse there on the roof for a moment, the exhaustion and pain making me want to just lie there for a while. But I know I can’t. Shane is still alive, but he won’t be if he bleeds out. And I need help too. My injuries are intense, and I will only have the adrenaline to ignore them for so long. I have to force myself to my feet.

Staggering back to the catwalk, I make my way to Shane. I half-expect him to be playing possum and attack me as I reach him, but as I draw near, I see he is still out cold. Gently, I rifle through his pockets and find a cell phone in one of them. Blood is dripping through his pants, through the grate and down to the floor below, making a Pollack-style painting on a fallen white cubicle wall. I stare at it as I put the phone to my ear.

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“My name is Agent Rowan Shade,” I say. “And I need you to trace this number and find me. Bring everybody.”

I set the phone down beside me and brace myself against the railing of the catwalk. The operator calls for me a few times, but I don’t respond. I feel like the world is winking out again, and I fight to stay conscious. It seems like forever before I hear the sirens, and when the shouts from below indicate they breached the door, I call down to them. As their heavy boots clang up the metal stairs and I know it’s over, I relax, and slip into unconsciousness to the sound of a radio crackling.

“We have one outside, white male, forties it looks like. Deceased.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Waking up at a hospital is not among my list of favorite things, but today I'm grateful. Before I even open my eyes, I can hear the beep of the machines attached to me and feel the cold on my face. I smell the astringent cleaning products and that indistinct but there scent of gauze wrapping my injuries. Someone is holding my hand, and when I open my eyes, I'm not surprised to see Casey.

“Hey,” I say.

Her head snaps up, and she looks at me with widened eyes.

“You're awake,” she says. “I've been waiting for you to open your eyes since I got here three hours ago. Are you okay?”

“I'm lying in a hospital bed wrapped up with gauze and attached to a couple of different machines, so I think the fairly obvious answer to whether I'm okay is no. But I'm alive. And I'm going to be okay,” I tell her.

“Good,” she says. “Then I can say this. Don't you dare ever do that to me again. Do you know how much you scared me? I didn't even know where you were or what was going on, and then I got a call from the hospital because I'm your emergency contact person. Do you know how strange it sounds to have to duck out of a date by saying you have to leave because your best friend is in the emergency room? That sounds like it's made-up. I had to bring him here with me to prove it.”

“He's here?” I ask, lifting my head a little to look around the room.

“Not here in the room,” she says. “I wasn't going to do that. I didn't know what kind of condition you were in or what you were going to look like when I came in here. He's in the waiting room. Fortunately, he's the type of person that carries around books with him. Honest to God books. Not like an electronic thing, but a book with pages and ink.”

“Imagine that,” I say. “I'm sorry I scared you. If it gives you any consolation, I didn’t exactly enjoy this, either. If there was a way I could have let you know that I got abducted, I definitely would have. You being able to call the police and get them to me would have saved me a lot of hassle.”

“Maybe I’ll just attach an AirPod to the bottom of your foot,” she says.

She’s being sarcastic and joking with me, but I can see the tears welling up in her eyes and hear the difficult blend of stress and relief in her voice. She squeezes my hand again.

“I don’t know if that would fit well in my shoes, and we can’t always rely on the right device being in close enough proximity to ping off me,” I point out.

“That’s true,” she says. She gives a big shrug. “Oh, well. I guess you’re just going to have to not get into any kind of dangerous situations ever again.”

“There you go,” I say. “I’ll work on that.”

She laughs and brushes a wayward tear from her cheek. “I’m going to go tell Grant that you’re awake and doing all right so he can head on home and get some rest. Unless…” She shakes her head. “No, never mind.”

“Unless what?” I ask.

“No, it’s a terrible idea. I’m just going to go tell him and be right back.”

“Were you going to suggest he should come in here so I can meet him?” I ask.

Casey looks at me sheepishly. “Maybe.”

“You know what?” I say. “Go for it. He might as well see what’s really in for if he’s going to be hanging around more. He could meet me looking put-together and playing pickleball or some nonsense, or he could see the worst. We’ll go with the worst; that way, there’s no downfall if something like this happens again.”

“I thought we agreed it wasn’t going to,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me.

“That’s right,” I say. “I’m going to make sure I’m never in another dangerous situation again.”

“Damn right. If you’re really sure, if you really don’t mind, I’ll go get Grant.”

A few seconds after she leaves, a nurse appears at the door.

“Good to see you awake,” she says. “We gave you a little bit of a sedative to help you rest after getting you here, and it seems like you really needed it. How are you feeling? How is your pain level?”

“It’s not bad,” I say.

“Do you want a dose of medication to take the edge off?” she asks.

“That might be a good idea.”

Even as I’m talking to her, the pain in the injuries I sustained in the factory is increasing, and I find myself gritting my teeth slightly to help cope with it while I wait for her to put the medication into my IV. It only takes a few seconds for the effect to take hold, and I relax as the relief washes over me.

“Thank you,” I say.

“No problem. Nutrition should be in here pretty soon to see what you might like to eat. If you need anything else, just press the call button. All you need to be thinking about right now is getting plenty of rest. You went through a lot,” she says.

I’m tempted to ask what she really knows about what I went through, but I stop myself. She adjusts my blanket and smiles, then walks out of the room, pulling the door most of the way closed behind her. It opens a few moments later, and I see Casey, but I’m surprised when I look behind her.

“That’s not Grant,” I tell her.

“Good to see your observation skills weren’t damaged,” James says, walking around Casey to come into the room.

“He was coming in right as I was getting Grant,” Casey explains. “I thought it might be more important for you to talk to him right now than it would be for you to meet Grant. We’ll get together another time after you’re out of here. We’ll have dinner and a game night or something. You can wear less gauze. It will be fine. We’re going to go grab something to eat. I’ll be back later.”

“Okay,” I tell her. “Thank you for sitting here with me.”

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” she says.

She leans down for a ginger hug, careful not to tug on any of the wires or tubes attached to me or press on any of the bandaged areas. She leaves, and James comes up to the side of the bed.

“Glad to see you got through that,” he says.

“So am I,” I tell him.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were planning on meeting up with Macintosh?” he says.

“Because it was part of my investigation, and I was going to tell you about it after it happened. I didn’t have enough to nail him yet. Besides, even if I had told you, it wouldn’t have made a difference. He came into my house and abducted me,” I say.

“I know. I just wish I could have stopped it.”

“I took care of myself,” I tell him. “Obviously. What’s going on with him now?”

“He’s here, too. Secured with a twenty-four-hour guard. You got his leg good. They had to do surgery, and he’s going to have to go through serious rehabilitation to be able to use that leg fully again. He’s going to have to do it in prison, though, because there’s already a long list of charges being held up against him,” he says. “First responders found the body of Gavin Bates on the ground outside the building.”

“I know,” I tell him. “He fell over the edge. I tried to help him, but he let go rather than letting me try to pull him up. He’s behind all of this.”

“I know. I have a feeling as soon as we start really interrogating Macintosh, he’s going to sing like a bird,” James says.

He looks on edge, something more than just seeing me here in the hospital bed and knowing what I went through.

“What is it, James?” I ask.

“Nothing. We’ll talk about it when you get out of here,” he says. “You need to get your rest.”

“Don’t give me that. I can tell there’s something bothering you, and I’m not going to stop thinking about it until you tell me what it is. I’m going to be stuck in this bed for a little while not doing anything, so you might as well tell me.”

“I don’t want to upset you,” he says. “I don’t want to…”—he gestures at the machines—“mess up any of this. We’ll talk when you get out.”

“We’ll talk now,” I say. “It’s not going to mess anything up, and if it does, I’m already in the hospital hooked up to things. They’ll fix it. Tell me what’s going on.”

He pulls a chair up beside the bed and takes out his phone. He scrolls through a few screens before looking back at me.

“They got Natalia Rodriguez out of the block and were able to remove the resin from her to do her autopsy. When they opened her mouth, they found a fishing wire down her throat. They pulled it up, and there was a hook with a card on it.”

He turns the phone toward me, and my chest clenches painfully.

Vivienne says hello.

LAST CHANCE!

A final reminder that if you want to stay up to date on all releases in this series, with these authors, or with any of our new deals, you can do so by joining our newsletters below.

In addition, you will immediately gain access to our entire Right House VIP Library which currently includes Shades of Innocence, a full length prequel novel to Shades of Deceit!

Or visit us online at

righthouse.com/email

(Easy to unsubscribe. No spam. Ever.)

WHAT’D YOU THINK?

Nothing is more annoying than someone asking for a review, but unfortunately, they “matter” or something. As a small publishing house run by a few authors who want to give our readers the best books possible, they matter a lot.

Therefore, if you happened to have a good experience during this read, then we would be exceptionally grateful if you would consider taking a moment to leave behind a quick five-star review. Honestly, it can be super short (or super long, if that's your thing), but even just a star rating without any words can do wonders for a small publishing house like us.

If you were bothered by something, whether it be a typo, mistake, or something else, we'd love to hear about it and will do our best to fix it right away! You can email us at support@righthouse.com.

Without you all, we wouldn't be able to do this. And we'd have to... *shudder*...get real jobs. (No, thank you!)

Therefore, if leaving a review is something you'd be willing to do, that'd be incredible. But even if you don't, we just want you to know how thankful we are that you even gave our work a chance and made it this far. Seriously, you are the best!

To make things easier, please use the links below, which will immediately take you to the review pages. Feel free to use them (or skip them) at your leisure.

US Review Link

UK Review Link

ALSO BY DAVID ARCHER

Up to date books can be found at:

www.righthouse.com/david-archer

ROGUE THRILLERS

Gates of Hell (Book 1)

Hell’s Fury (Book 2)

PETER BLACK THRILLERS

Burden of the Assassin (Book 1)

The Man Without A Face (Book 2)

Unpunished Deeds (Book 3)

Hunter Killer (Book 4)

Silent Shadows (Book 5)

The Last Run (Book 6)

Dark Corners (Book 7)

Ghost Operative (Book 8)

ALEX MASON THRILLERS

Origins (Prequel - Free)

Odin (Book 1)

Ice Cold Spy (Book 2)

Mason's Law (Book 3)

Assets and Liabilities (Book 4)

Russian Roulette (Book 5)

Executive Order (Book 6)

Dead Man Talking (Book 7)

All The King's Men (Book 8)

Flashpoint (Book 9)

Brotherhood of the Goat (Book 10)

Dead Hot (Book 11)

Blood on Megiddo (Book 12)

Son of Hell (Book 13)

NOAH WOLF THRILLERS

Way of the Wolf (Prequel - Free)

Code Name Camelot (Book 1)

Lone Wolf (Book 2)

In Sheep's Clothing (Book 3)

Hit for Hire (Book 4)

The Wolf's Bite (Book 5)

Black Sheep (Book 6)

Balance of Power (Book 7)

Time to Hunt (Book 8)

Red Square (Book 9)

Highest Order (Book 10)

Edge of Anarchy (Book 11)

Unknown Evil (Book 12)

Black Harvest (Book 13)

World Order (Book 14)

Caged Animal (Book 15)

Deep Allegiance (Book 16)

Pack Leader (Book 17)

High Treason (Book 18)

A Wolf Among Men (Book 19)

Rogue Intelligence (Book 20)

Alpha (Book 21)

Rogue Wolf (Book 22)

Shadows of Allegiance (Book 23)

In the Grip of Darkness (Book 24)

SAM PRICHARD MYSTERIES

Fallback (Prequel - Free)

The Grave Man (Book 1)

Death Sung Softly (Book 2)

Love and War (Book 3)

Framed (Book 4)

The Kill List (Book 5)

Drifter: Part One (Book 6)

Drifter: Part Two (Book 7)

Drifter: Part Three (Book 8)

The Last Song (Book 9)

Ghost (Book 10)

Hidden Agenda (Book 11)

SAM AND INDIE MYSTERIES

Aces and Eights (Book 1)

Fact or Fiction (Book 2)

Close to Home (Book 3)

Brave New World (Book 4)

Innocent Conspiracy (Book 5)

Unfinished Business (Book 6)

Live Bait (Book 7)

Alter Ego (Book 8)

More Than It Seems (Book 9)

Moving On (Book 10)

Worst Nightmare (Book 11)

Chasing Ghosts (Book 12)

Serial Superstition (Book 13)

CHANCE REDDICK THRILLERS

Innocent Injustice (Book 1)

Angel of Justice (Book 2)

High Stakes Hunting (Book 3)

Personal Asset (Book 4)

CASSIE MCGRAW MYSTERIES

What Lies Beneath (Book 1)

Can't Fight Fate (Book 2)

One Last Game (Book 3)

Never Really Gone (Book 4)

ABOUT US

Right House is an independent publisher created by authors for readers. We specialize in Action, Thriller, Mystery, and Crime novels.

If you enjoyed this novel, then there is a good chance you will like what else we have to offer! Please stay up to date by using any of the links below.

Join our mailing lists to stay up to date -->

righthouse.com/email

Visit our website --> righthouse.com

Contact us --> contact@righthouse.com