Across the Vanishing Sky (Starlight Grove, #1)(116)

A flash of something. Color, maybe? Purple?

I moved toward it and then stopped dead. A purple tank soiled and caked with blood. Shorts you could barely see the stitching on. And a body. Head slumped forward. Limbs unnaturally askew. Hair covering the woman’s face.

I did the only thing I could. I screamed.





48





DEX





The scream split the trees, igniting a fear in my veins. My lungs burned as I leapt over a fallen log and raced toward the sound: the eerie voice that seemed just a bit drugged. The piercing cry.

I skidded to a halt just as Brae came into view and hauled her against me to shield her from whatever threatened her. And then I saw it. The body. Unmoving. Limp.

Kol broke through the trees, gun at his side. The weapon was pointed toward the ground but still ready to do whatever needed to be done at a moment’s notice.

He caught sight of me and Brae…and then the body. He lifted the gun, sweeping the surrounding trees as he moved toward the fallen form.

Brae still screamed, that strange voice coming through in the pockets where she sucked in air. It was Brae’s name. Over and over. Desperate and begging.

Kol bent, pulling back the hair, and then stilled. “It’s a fucking dummy. It’s fake.”

Fury lit through me, burning everything in its wake. But still, I kept hold of Brae. I rocked her back and forth. “It’s not her. It’s not Nova.”

The screaming stopped, hitched into a garbled sob. “Not her?”

Brae’s voice was completely raw, ravaged, and pained.

“It’s not her. It’s fake.” But it looked so damn real. Not like a regular mannequin but an actual lifelike human replica of some sort.

Brae’s name was still being chanted over and over. “Find that fucking speaker,” I barked out.

Kol pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket and donned them, moving the mannequin and tugging something from beside it: a portable speaker connected to some sort of recorder. He pressed a button, and the sound cut off.

Nothing but wind in the trees now. No birdcalls or other animal sounds. Brae had likely startled them with her screaming.

I held her to me and kept rocking her back and forth. She trembled against me, her legs finally giving way. I caught her and lowered us to the forest floor, cradling her so she wouldn’t see the grisly mannequin. It didn’t matter that it was fake. It was too close to the real thing.

“It’s her clothes. Her voice,” Brae croaked.

I stiffened, my muscles turning to cement as she continued. “Her shorts, her shirt. Nova. That was Nova saying my name.”

My gaze lifted to find Kol’s. What in the actual hell was happening?





Brae sat huddled on the couch, staring at nothing, Yeti curled next to her. The blankness on her face scared the hell out of me as I watched her from outside. I didn’t want her to hear the conversation I was about to have.

“Did you get the photos?” I asked into my phone, pacing across the back deck barefoot.

The sound of Anson tapping his keyboard came over the line. “I’m looking at them now.”

“They think it’s Nova’s actual clothes. Her voice. It’ll take a week or two for DNA testing to come back on the blood on the shirt.”

It wasn’t an amount of blood that necessarily meant death, but it could if the wound hadn’t been treated. And there was no way to know when the voice had been recorded. Yesterday? A year ago? And what the hell was the point?

“Whoever this is, they get off on emotional torture,” Anson surmised.

“Tell me something I don’t fucking know,” I clipped.

Anson shifted, making the chair he was sitting in squeak. “Are you holding it together?”

“No.” There was no point in bullshitting him. He’d know.

Anson was quiet for a long moment, likely thinking over his approach. “All you can do is hold on. And make sure you’re holding on to each other.”

“I have to keep her safe.” The words were guttural and came from my deepest parts—the ones I hid from everyone but Brae.

“I know. I understand that fear. It’s gonna bring up a hell of a lot of stuff for you.”

“I’m not here for a shrink session. I’m here for insights. Anything that will help us catch this fucker,” I ground out.

Anson sighed. “All right. This is someone who likely enjoys various forms of torture. It’s not just about the victim but all those in the victim’s orbit. They likely relive the kill or violence when they get a reaction from a victim’s loved one.”

Dread pooled low, like oil spilling out and sliding through the ocean. “Is Nova dead?”

Anson went quiet again. “Likely. And if she’s not, I don’t want to think what she’s been through.”

More dread, a sick feeling.

“This isn’t the unsub’s first offense. If you’re not finding any like crimes in the area, then they’ve been working up to this.”

And they had to be close enough to watch us. They must have known what we were doing today, which meant they’d heard through the grapevine of people who sat at those tables at the Boot two days ago. The only problem was that each person at those tables could’ve told a dozen others, and those dozen…a dozen more. Gossip and small towns were like wildfire and a desert-dry forest.