Into the Fading Twilight (Starlight Grove, #2) (101)

“It’s quite a give and take,” Marly whispered. “We just have to be still enough to see the signs.”

My chest ached, but it was the beautiful kind. If this gorgeous creature had found a way to trust again, maybe I could, too.





CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE


Kol




IGROUND MY BACK TEETH TOGETHER, STRUGGLING FOR composure. I knew the only tell was a slight fluttering in my cheek or the divot formed by the strain in my jaw. We all had our coping mechanisms. I was pretty sure mine would end in me needing half a dozen root canals before I retired.

But I needed to bite down or I’d lose it completely. Because the woman who lay sprawled in the middle of the campsite she’d disappeared from had so much life left to live. Instead, she was here. Far too pale for any chance at that life, her body riddled with too many stab wounds to count and bruises ringing her neck.

Heidi Ingram.

There was no question it was her. You could barely make out the color of her eyes now that they had clouded over, but there was no denying the dark-brown hair. The slope of her nose.

“Identity confirmation,” Livie said, looking up from the tablet, where she’d just scanned in a print from the dead woman’s finger.

“Fucking hell,” Roger swore, dragging a hand through his disheveled hair. “How long?”

That second question was directed at the medical examiner, a man in his late forties, who had been with the county for years. Dr. Dominguez looked up from where the temperature gauge was still getting a reading from Heidi’s body. “I won’t know for sure until I’ve done my complete exam.”

He was always thorough. The best we had.

“Ballpark it if you can, Doc,” Roger pressed.

Dominguez frowned.

“Jesus,” Pete muttered next to me. “We’re just looking for something so we get on this asshole’s trail. We’re not asking you to testify.”

Pete just had to be a prick about it.

Dominguez ignored the asshole next to me and looked at Roger. “I think a safe window would be sometime between midnight and four this morning. She hasn’t been dead that long.”

Somehow, that made it worse, when you knew you were close yet way too fucking late.

Quiet reigned over us. Because we all felt that weight of the near miss.

Roger laced his hands behind his head, straining. “Okay, we’ve got a window. Livie, anything?”

The forensic tech had obviously been called in while off-duty. She wore civilian clothes instead of her usual uniform, and her mouth was pressed into a hard line. “We need to print the body. I’ll work the scene, but so far—wait.” She moved, crouching low. “Dr. Dominguez, can you roll her, just a bit?”

“Crime scene photos are done?” the ME asked.

“Yes,” she assured him.

Dr. Dominguez lifted Heidi’s body ever so slightly. There was something beneath her, and Livie’s sharp eyes had spotted it. A piece of paper.

Livie quickly took a couple of photos before picking up the paper with gloved hands. We all moved in around her, trying to see. The page was smudged with dirt and smeared with blood in places, but none of that meant we couldn’t read the message.

IT’S NOT OVER. IT’LL NEVER BE OVER.

Every part of me ran cold. The letters were less controlled now. More chaotic. Angry slashes of black against the dirty white paper. Another sign of escalation, like all the rest.

Livie moved, taking another photo and then placing the sheet into an evidence bag.

Pete’s eye lit up, almost like a kid at Christmas. “This is it. We’ve got another serial.”

“We’ve got one fuckin’ case,” Roger snarled. “And stop acting like you just won the lotto. A woman’s dead.”

Pete’s mouth snapped shut, but anger swept across his expression. He glared at Roger before stomping off to talk to a deputy.

Roger watched him go, shaking his head. “What the hell is wrong with him?”

I didn’t look at Pete. He was the last person I wanted to see at the moment. “He’s never experienced real loss or even the threat of it.”

A look of confusion overtook Roger’s face.

“When you don’t know what loss truly feels like or how it invades every part of your life, it’s not real. It’s like a TV show or a movie. For him, it’s exciting.”

“Well, he’s a world-class prick.”

I scrubbed a hand over my face. “I don’t disagree there. And at some point, karma’s gonna kick his ass. It has to.”

“I’ll just be holding my breath until then,” Roger muttered.

We both watched as Dr. Dominguez and his assistant prepped Heidi Ingram for transport. The weight of that hung heavy in the air for both of us. Especially the fact that Roger would have to go to the family after this and tell them that their only daughter would never be coming home.

“Fuck,” he swore.

I clapped a hand on his shoulder, squeezing before I released. “Want to run it through?”

“Yes.”

The single word was clipped and angry, but I knew the anger wasn’t directed at me.

“Most likely scenario is we’ve got a copycat, someone obsessed with the original case. I think we need to talk to Reese Gatlin again.” That reporter had always seemed like a supreme asshole. Only time would tell if he was an asshole with darker tendencies.