Page 128 of Shhh…It’s A Killer Story

And Seraphina...Smiling. Not the polite smile she'd worn around half the town. A softer one. Or maybe I'd imagined it. Memory has a funny way of rewriting scenes you wish you'd handled differently. Then another memory forced its way in.

A white linen dress. A warm box of cookies. Eyes already filled with tears.

"I've survived things you couldn't even imagine surviving."

The words landed all over again. I'd fired back because I was angry. Because Walker had buried another lead. Because Collins had gotten under my fucking skin. Because somewhere inside my own damn head I'd decided she belonged nowhere near him. So, I took it out on her.

"Go bother Deputy Collins."

My grip tightened until the steering wheel groaned beneath my hands. Hell. I owed her an apology. I just wasn't sure she'd ever open the door long enough to hear it.

The evidence board in the secondary office had become a wall of ghosts. Ten red pins. Ten names written in black ink on white cards. Ten women whose lives had been reduced to photographs, dates and circles on a county map. The red thread stretched between them in uneven lines, crisscrossing the board until it resembled veins beneath pale skin.

Derek sat on the edge of my desk, turning a paper cup of cold coffee between his hands. He hadn't taken a drink in twenty minutes. Mason stood by the window, arms folded across his chest, staring out over the station parking lot without really seeing it.

"We're missing something," Mason said.

His voice was quiet. Steady. Like he was stating the weather.

"Or someone," Derek added.

He rubbed the back of his neck before looking toward the board.

"The logistics are too clean, Elias. Vehicles don't just disappear. Bodies don't just fucking disappear. Whoever's moving them knows these mountains better than the county surveyors."

Silence settled over the room again. Nobody argued. Because nobody had a better answer. Eventually Derek pushed himself off the desk.

"We're heading to the state garage."

Mason nodded once.

"Need to compare the tread widths."

"I'll catch up."

Neither of them questioned it. They knew what I was like after a scene. The office emptied with them. The corridor outside became strangely quiet, broken only by the distant ringing of unanswered telephones and the steady hum of the ventilation system.

I stepped closer to the board. My finger followed the red thread connecting the third disappearance to the fifth turnout. Date. Distance. Time. Direction. Again. And again. And again.

Something wasn't adding up.

The ten women...

The 2 victims...

The unidentified man...

On paper they almost formed a corridor through the valley, but not quite. Every time I thought I had the pattern, one scene sat just far enough outside it to break the theory. Someone wanted us looking in the wrong direction. Or they were changing directions on fucking purpose.

Either way...

I was chasing a fucking ghost.

My eyes drifted away from the board. For reasons I couldn't explain, they landed on the road leading toward the north ridge. Toward her cottage. I rubbed a hand across my face.

Fucking focus, Reed.

She was just...