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Leigh forced herself back into the moment. No. She wasn’t going to screw this up.
The backs of her legs burned as she picked up the pace. Tendrils of ice threatened to trip her along the shoveled trailhead. Exhaustion clung to already sore muscles from the plane, but she wouldn’t let it slow her down. Not with the future of her career on the line.
The weather report had called for a minimum of four inches overnight, and for once, the meteorologists had been right. The scrape of hollowed plastic against concrete infiltrated her senses and pulled her attention to the rhythmic patterns of the officers assigned snow removal around the scene. Slide, rest. Slide, rest.
She’d always been good at spotting patterns. It was why the bureau had recruited her out of consulting for law enforcement around the country. It was why she didn’t believe the evidence against a man arrested and charged for the death of two young boys here in Lebanon twenty years ago. The suspect’s behavior leading up to the boys’ disappearance hadn’t fit the pattern associated with that of a cold-blooded killer, yet he’d been sentenced to serve life behind bars all the same.
Her heart rate ticked up a notch—the same way it always did when she let her mind drift to the one crime she couldn’t bear to analyze—and Leigh slid one hand into her blazer.
It was still there. The little toy soldier. She didn’t have to look at it to know where the green plastic had faded. Instead, she forced the tip of the infantryman’s rifle into the pad of her thumb to keep her head firmly in the moment. One shot. That was all she had to impress the director of the bureau’s Behavioral Analysis Unit Two, and she wasn’t going to waste it.
The majority of first responders and officers collected at the entrance of the bridge. Another perimeter of tape and a wave of investigators sectioned off access. This wasn’t a case the bureau wanted her to analyze. This was an active crime scene.
“Agen’ Brody, you got my message about the change in venue.” The female voice in a cacophony of orders and camera shutter clicks pierced her ears.
Leigh turned to catch the woman responsible for the lingering stiffness in her knees descending the trail.
A severe ponytail highlighted dark, almond-shaped eyes, flawlessly pruned eyebrows, and sharp, angular cheekbones in an oval face. Standing around five-foot-seven in several inches of heels and pristinely fitted dark slacks and a blazer, the woman accentuated her Os as most of the investigators Leigh imagined hailing from Edinburgh were prone to do. “Director Angelina Livingstone.”
Leigh switched her duffle bag to her opposite hand and extended the other in greeting. “Your work in BAU-2 is legendary. According to the bureau, you’ve been director less than a year and have already helped law enforcement apprehend five serial offenders across the US and UK?” Her fangirl was showing. “You must be very proud, but I have to be honest. I’m not sure why I’m here. Homicides fall to local police jurisdiction. Not the FBI.”
“When the governor of the state personally requests the unit’s insight, I do as I’m told. You specialize in criminology, yes?” Smooth skin warmed in hers as the director shook her hand. Livingstone scanned the scene with intense coffee-brown eyes. Detached or unimpressed?
Leigh would go with unimpressed. It was her job to change the director’s mind. “I collect crime statistics for the Criminal Justice Information Systems division. I predict patterns and criminal behavior and work with my team to come up with deterrents to keep people from killing each other, but you already knew that. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have called my supervisory agent to have me consult on your investigation.”
Livingstone turned back the way she’d come and hiked midway up the road. She called back over her shoulder. “Aye. I’ve done my homework. Then again, I didn’t really have any other choice under the circumstances.” The director kept moving, but Leigh kept pace easily enough thanks to hundreds of treks along this path as a kid. “What I want to know is why a killer who’s used two victims as his own personal pin cushion in the past week wants you on this case.”
Two victims? A rock solidified in her gut. Leigh shook her head. “I don’t understand. You requested for me to be transferred out of CJIS. You had me get on a plane with orders not to tell anyone I worked with where I was going. I was under the impression it was because you needed analysis of your investigation.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that, Agen’ Brody.” Livingstone rolled the R in her last name, full lips thinner than a moment ago. The director didn’t wait for an answer as she ascended the road toward the target scene.
Agents and officers parted until all that consumed Leigh’s attention was blood.
Pressure built behind her ears. She took in the unrecognizable face of the victim. Curled, dark hair, stained red, stood stark against the damp wood she’d been positioned against. Caucasian female, dressed in what remained of a thin jacket and leggings in the middle of one of the coldest winters New Hampshire had ever seen. Gouges cut through a full sleeve of green and black ornamental tattoos along her left arm. The same deep gouges interrupted the symmetry of the victim’s face to the point Leigh wasn’t sure of the victim’s age, but that was nothing compared to the fleshy remnants of where the woman’s lips had once been. Unstained teeth had been left unprotected from the elements. A skeleton fighting for freedom of the flesh.
A decade of consulting for law enforcement hadn’t prepared her for this. Leigh closed her eyes to counter the acid climbing up her throat. She turned from the scene and doubled over.
“Agen’ Brody?” Director Livingstone’s voice warbled and stretched into unfamiliar syllables. “Boucher, let’s get her some water.”
She waved to decline, but a water bottle penetrated the edges of her vision. She curled her fingers around the protesting plastic to gain a fraction of control. In vain. “Thank you.”
“You’ll be fine,” an unfamiliar voice said.
Pride urged her to straighten despite her stomach’s protest.
A wide nose that’d been broken one too many times centered in a worn face. The hard angles of the man’s jaw had been buried under several months’ worth of thick beard growth but didn’t detract from the overall concern he’d laced into his voice. The Lebanon PD patch on his jacket drew her gaze down. “You have to stop seeing them as human. All this right here? Evidence.”
Leigh capped the water. She’d studied homicide investigations from the time she’d been seventeen. She’d memorized investigation protocols from dozens of cases in and around this town and relied on up-to-date homicide rates to do her job. Hundreds of crime scene photos—of victims and blood and other bodily fluids—had burned into her brain. But this… This was different. This wasn’t a file that’d come across her desk.
This was familiar.
“Agen’ Brody, Lieutenant Gabriel Boucher, Lebanon’s Investigative Bureau.” Livingstone cocked her head in Boucher’s direction, apparently immune to dropping temperatures. “He’ll be our local contact. You’ll meet my team when you convince me I didn’t make a mistake in recruiting an agent with a connection to this killer.”
She hadn’t been transferred to the BAU because of the work she’d done for the bureau. She was here because she couldn’t escape her family and this town’s bloody history. “There is no connection. I don’t know anything about what happened to this woman other than the fact she’s missing her mouth and several liters of blood.”
“Michelle Cross.” Boucher handed off a clear plastic evidence bag with the victim’s personal effects. “The medical examiner pulled her wallet from her jacket. Thirty-nine. According to the business card inside, she works for a tech startup. Property records show she’s the owner of the address on her driver’s license. No word on next of kin yet, but we’re still running the background check.”
“I want complete financial and phone records for the victim in the next hour,” Livingstone said. “Does the name sound familiar to you, Agen’ Brody? Maybe someone you knew growing up?”
