Page 171 of Shhh…It’s A Killer Story

They didn't hesitate. They didn't speak. Every movement was rehearsed, economical, practiced to the point that they barely looked human. One grabbed her arms before she could scream. Another drove a syringe into the side of her neck with frightening precision. By the time the needle came free, her knees were already buckling.

The other two worked with terrifying efficiency. A hood. Zip ties. The side door slid open. She disappeared inside.

Twenty-eight seconds.

The van pulled away, nothing else happened. Cars drove past less than a minute later. Life continued.

Like she'd never existed.

The next video started before I could process the first.

Another woman, another street still Blackridge. The streets I patrolled, the roads I knew better than my own damn house. One after another the recordings played across the monitor.

Elm Street. The old train crossing. Behind Miller's Pharmacy. Outside St. Matthew's Church. The grocery store parking lot. The abandoned feed warehouse. Places I'd stood, places I'd investigated, places I'd sworn I'd keep safe. Each woman disappeared exactly the same way. Different faces and clothes but same white van, men, syringe and same impossible precision.

By the sixth video I realized something that made my stomach knot. These weren't security recordings someone had managed to recover. These were originals.

Somebody had accessed the municipal surveillance system before every single file vanished from evidence. Somebody hadn't merely copied them. They'd preserved them.

Like they knew we'd never find them, like they intended for someone...to watch them later. The final recording faded to black.

Nobody spoke.

The evidence room felt impossibly still. I could hear the fluorescent lights humming overhead. I could hear Derek breathing behind me. Mason slowly removed his glasses, rubbing both hands over his face before looking back at the monitor.

"Holy fucking shit."

His voice barely carried across the room. Derek hadn't moved. His hand gripped the edge of the table so hard I thought the cheap plywood might split beneath his fingers.

"They were here," he whispered.

"They were all here."

I couldn't answer. My chest felt too tight. My mind kept replaying the intersections. The streets. The sidewalks. How many times had I driven right through those places? How many times had I unknowingly crossed the same asphalt where these women had taken their last free breath?

I dragged the timeline backward. Frame by frame. Something nagged at me. Something I'd almost missed. On the last recording just before the van doors slid shut one of the masked men stopped.

Not for long. Barely a second. He turned. Slowly. Deliberately. He looked directly into the camera. Not toward it.

Into it.

As though he already knew someone would eventually be sitting exactly where I was now. Watching. Waiting. My skin went cold. The video ended. The monitor turned black. Then suddenly letters began appearing across the screen one at a time. No handwriting or smudged ink, just clean white text against a black background.

NOW YOU KNOW WHERE THEY WENT.

Silence settled over the room, then another line appeared, slower this time. As if whoever wrote it wanted me to read every single letter.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

I stared at the words until they blurred together. The mouse groaned beneath my grip. Plastic cracked. I hadn't even realized how hard I was squeezing. This wasn't a taunt. Taunts were emotional. This felt...professional.

Clinical.

The killer hadn't erased the evidence, he'd stolen it, protected it, archived it and then...he'd handed it to me.

Not Walker.

Not the FBI.