CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“THE VICTIM IS a woman,” Dr. Sofia Lopez said as she pointed toward the skull with a gloved hand. She bit her lower lip. “But, um, you both already know that, right?”
Right.
“Men tend to have heavier skulls,” Dr. Lopez added. “Thicker ones. They’re also generally bigger than female skulls.” Her gloved finger moved toward the eye socket. “And you can see the sex here, too. Women have an, um, the ridge here is sharper than for a man.”
“Any idea how old she was?” Bowen asked. He was right beside Macey, and his arm brushed against her.
“Oh, yeah, that was something else easy to see. It’s all in the teeth, you know.” Dr. Lopez flashed them a vague smile. “All of the teeth have erupted. Usually teeth finish erupting by around a person’s twenty-first birthday. This skull—I mean, this victim—she had a lot of dental work. She even still has her bar in place.” She indicated the bar that was attached just behind the bottom teeth.
Macey stared at the skull. The nails had been removed, and now gaping holes were left in the skull. It wasn’t white and gleaming, but brown. Almost stained? “Did he paint the skull?”
“Yeah, I think so, I chipped off some samples and I sent them in for testing,” the ME replied. Her face turned considering. “I think he did it to give the appearance of it being an old skull.”
“How did she die?” Bowen asked.
Dr. Lopez lifted the skull. “See this hole here?” She tapped it with her finger. “This didn’t come from a nail. Her skull was cracked.”
“Blow to the head,” Macey concluded.
The ME nodded. “That would have done it. That would have killed our vic.”
Macey glanced at Bowen. “Peter kept saying it was an accident.”
“What? You think the vic fell and hit her head?” His lips twisted. “Don’t buy it. He kept the skull. He was covering up his crime. He killed her.”
“And he might have killed more, right?” the doctor blurted.
Macey and Bowen both glanced back at her.
She swallowed. “I, um, I went ahead and got to work on Captain Henry Harwell. And I noticed something really interesting. Something you’ve got to see.” She put the skull back down on the exam table and hurried toward the line of storage lockers.
They weren’t in McKinley’s lab, but instead were in another space just down the hallway. When Macey had walked in, she’d seen the uniformed police officer standing in the hallway. He’d demanded to review their ID before allowing them inside.
Dr. Lopez opened the locker and pulled out the slab. She unzipped the body bag, and Macey saw Henry Harwell’s still face.
“I had him transferred in,” Dr. Lopez said. “Now look at this.” She turned his head sideways and Macey realized that the ME had shaved the hair around his wound.
“It’s exactly the same size,” Dr. Lopez said. “His wound matches the wound in the skull you gave me! Both are the exact same diameter. Both caused the exact same kind of damage, and I believe,” she added, eyes gleaming, “they were made with the exact same type of weapon.”
“A hammer,” Macey said.
The doctor nodded. “Damn straight.” She rolled back her shoulders. “So maybe you do have your killer. Your Peter Carter killed this mystery woman and Captain Harwell. He could have killed them all!” Dr. Lopez added, as her voice hitched. “Maybe Harwell was his intended target all along, but he killed the others to throw you off his scent. He wanted you to think the murders were for another reason, when all along he was just working his way up to Harwell—”
“No.” Macey’s quiet voice cut through the other woman’s tumble of words.
The ME blinked.
Macey eased out a slow breath. “I know you followed Haddox’s crimes, Dr. Lopez.”
“I studied them extensively,” she said, her eyelids flickering. “I knew about Haddox, and I’ve studied other big serials, too. There’s so much to learn from them—”
“You don’t hunt down some of the most infamous serial killers in the US because you want their deaths to be cover for you.” No, there was much more at play. Macey shared a quick look with Bowen.
He cleared his throat. “These serial killers were hidden, well hidden. They were predators at their core. It would have been very hard to catch them unaware, and Peter Carter...to go and kill them just so that he could work his way up to Henry Harwell? That would have created unnecessary risk for him.”
The ME’s gaze dropped to Harwell’s body.
And Macey’s phone rang. The shrill cry caused Dr. Lopez to jump.
“Excuse me,” Macey murmured. She backed away as she saw that Tucker’s number appeared on the screen of her phone. She exited the lab space and nodded toward the uniformed officer who still stood guard. Macey put the phone to her ear. “Tucker? Is there news?”
“Jonah Loxley is missing.”
Those were the last words she’d expected. “What?”
“There are some things...shit, there’s some stuff you need to know, okay? Listen, where are you and Bowen right now?”
“We’re at the ME’s building with Dr. Lopez.”
“Get to the police station. I’m on my way there now.”
“Tucker, what happened?”
“Jonah walked out of the museum and vanished. All I found was his busted cell phone.”
Her heart lurched in her chest. “You think he was taken by our perp?”
She heard voices in the background.
“I’ve got an APB out for him now,” Tucker said. “I’ll tell you more at the station, okay? Meet me there in twenty minutes.”
He hung up.
She heard the lab door open. Her gaze swung to find Bowen standing in the doorway. She could see the concern in his gaze. “I—I need to talk with you.” Dr. Lopez was peeking over his shoulder. Macey cleared her throat. “Dr. Lopez, please update us right away when you learn new information.” But the ME couldn’t possibly stay there all night. “Did you get your room in town settled?”
“I did. I’m heading there now.” Wearily, the doctor rubbed at the back of her neck. “I just need to crash for a while, and then I’ll be back at it. Count on me calling you the minute I have news.” She eased around Bowen, then nodded to both him and Macey. “Thank you for bringing me onto this case. Thank you for trusting me with the job.”
Macey’s hand flew out and touched the other woman’s shoulder. “No, thank you for helping us. I know that you and Dr. McKinley are friends—”
“He’s been a mentor to me,” the ME replied, and for a moment, tears gleamed in her eyes. “He’s...he’s going to be okay, right?”
“Yes.” She was certain of this. He would recover. “He spoke highly of you, Dr. Lopez. He said he trusted you to get this job done.”
Her shoulders straightened. “I will get it done.”
A few moments later, the cop escorted Dr. Lopez out of the lab and toward the waiting elevator. Macey and Bowen were left in the hallway. She walked over the tiled floor, her gaze drawn helplessly to the spot that had been marked by McKinley’s blood. Someone had done a very good job of cleaning the scene.
As soon as the elevator doors closed and Dr. Lopez was gone with her cop, Macey turned toward Bowen. “Jonah Loxley is missing.”
He shook his head, even as surprise had his eyes flaring.
“That was Tucker on the phone. He said Jonah left the museum and vanished. The only thing he found at the scene was Jonah’s cell phone.”
“Fuck.”
“Tucker wants us at the police station, right now.”
“He thinks the perp took Jonah?”
“He didn’t say, but what else could he think? This killer went after a cop, he went after the ME and now he’s taken an FBI agent.” He’d been taunting Bowen all along, and she’d feared he’d be the one attacked by the killer. Her hands were clammy. “He took one of our own.” The fact that Jonah was missing—that proved that Peter Carter couldn’t be the perp they were after. Had he killed his girlfriend? Yes, she believed he had.
But the man they were after...
He was still hunting.
He wasn’t in some hospital bed, under police guard.
He was somewhere in Gatlinburg, and he had new prey.
* * *
MACEY FELT AS if she were running on empty. She and Bowen rushed into the police station, and they found Tucker waiting on them. He gave a jerking motion of his hand and they filed into the conference room. As soon as the door closed behind them...
“Samantha Dark is on her way to Gatlinburg,” he announced flatly. “She’s going to be joining us for this investigation, but she’s actually been working on the case all along.” His gaze swept between them. “Samantha found...glitches, I guess you could say, in the FBI’s personnel files.”
“Glitches?” Bowen repeated as his brows shot up. “What kind of glitches?”
Tucker crossed his arms over his chest. “It was your file that was the red flag. Someone accessed it illegally. Dug into the reports on your talks with the FBI shrink, revealed the case history you had with Arnold Shaw—”
“In other words, someone ripped into my life.”
Bowen inclined his head. “Not just someone... The hack has been traced back to Jonah Loxley.”
Macey took a quick step back, shocked to her core. “What?” But then, before he could respond, Macey shook her head in denial. “There’s a mistake here. He wouldn’t do that—”
“No mistake. She thought he might be the patsy for someone else—that was her first suspicion, so Samantha pulled in a whole team of cyber analysts. They traced the hacks back to Jonah Loxley’s home. And these hacks? They’ve been going on for months. Ever since Samantha created her team.”
She could hear a dull ringing in her ears. But I trusted him. He was my friend.
She’d trusted him, the same way she’d trusted Daniel Haddox.
“Jonah hacked into the files of everyone on Samantha’s team,” Tucker said grimly. “And by the guy’s own confession to me, he’s been developing a program that will help him to track and identify serial killers, to find them when they’re hiding.”
Bowen swore. “Hiding...just like the Doctor. Like the Pyro.”
“They could have been test runs,” Tucker said.
Macey could only stare at them both, in shock. “You’re not serious.” Hacking into computer files at the Bureau was one thing, but what they seemed to be suggesting... “This is bullshit! He’s one of us! He’s missing now—”
“He’s missing.” Tucker nodded. “He went missing right after I threw my suspicions at him. Less than five minutes later, the guy went AWOL. That timing, it’s a little too convenient for me.”
It might be convenient, but that didn’t mean Jonah was a killer. “He is one of us,” she snapped. “I’ve been friends with him for a long time. He busted his ass to get on this team. He wanted to prove—” But she broke off because she realized her words weren’t going to help Jonah.
They’d only be another nail in his coffin.
But Bowen knew exactly what she’d planned to say. “He wanted to prove that he was a good profiler, right? That he could find the killers better than the rest of us. Us being the ones who’d originally been picked for Samantha’s team.”
Macey swallowed. “We need to find him. That’s our priority. We find him. We make sure he’s safe, then we can get answers to our questions.”
“You were the closest one to him, Macey.” Tucker began to pace. “You didn’t see any red flags? Anything that might make you think—”
“Think what?” she snapped back. “That he’s some kind of killer? No, no, I didn’t think that. I’ve never thought that.” She still couldn’t. They were just talking about suspicions, not facts. Not yet. “He wants to help people, same as we do.”
“He hacked into our files, Macey. He did that. The evidence is conclusive.”
“And we can question him about that, after we find him.” She shook her head. “Look, let’s focus here. We need security footage. I saw cameras all around the oddities museum. Let’s tap into them and see what happened.”
“Already working on that,” Tucker assured her. “But Jonah’s phone was found on the side of the building. The sides and the back—there are no cameras there.”
Her nails were biting into her palms.
A knock sounded at the door. “Come in,” Tucker called.
Officer Tanner O’Neil—with dark circles beneath his eyes and stubble grazing his cheeks—appeared in the doorway. “I—I heard about the skull you found today.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I think I may know who your mystery woman is.”
They all surged toward him.
He licked his lips. “I saw Henry with her once. The guy acted like he was wild for her, but said she wanted to keep things secret.”
“What’s her name?” Bowen demanded.
“Susannah. Susannah Kaiser. She looked like she was in her early twenties. Blond hair. Pretty smile.” He swallowed. “She left town...or, I thought she did...back before summer started. Henry didn’t talk about her after that. Said she hadn’t chosen him and that was all there was to it.”
Maybe she had, though. Maybe she’d chosen him and Peter Carter hadn’t been able to live with that choice.
“We need every bit of intel we can get on Susannah,” Bowen said. His body was tight with tension. “Her family, her friends. Anyone who was close to her—we need to know who those people are.”
Tanner nodded. “I can get that for you.” But he hesitated. “I heard the cops talking... Was Henry killed because of her? Did that guy at the museum kill him?”
“We need to talk with Susannah’s family,” Bowen said again. “The more information we learn about her, the more we’ll understand her killer.”
Tanner nodded and hurried away.
“We need to take a step back here,” Macey said, striving to keep her voice flat. “Look, I get that the hacks at the FBI look bad—they are bad. But we can’t overlook the possibility that the perp we’re after here has taken Jonah. I mean, doesn’t Jonah fit this guy’s MO perfectly? What if he knows Jonah broke the rules at the FBI? You said Jonah disappeared after you confronted him, right?”
Tucker nodded.
“Maybe our perp thinks Jonah did something wrong. He loves guilt so much.” She rocked forward onto the balls of her feet. “Are we sure there wasn’t any surveillance equipment at the museum? If this guy was after Peter Carter, if he knew what Peter Carter had done, then it only stands to reason that he was watching him, too.”
Bowen moved closer. “If he was watching Carter, then the surveillance equipment could still have been operating. He could have heard your accusations against Jonah. Maybe he thought the guy was guilty—or hell, maybe he just thought Jonah would make for a good fall guy.”
“Crime scene techs are still searching the museum,” Tucker said. “If they find anything...”
Then they’d know the killer had been watching.
“The techs swept Henry’s office,” Tucker added. “They didn’t find anything. And we don’t have any report of equipment being found at Haddox’s place, either. Could be that the guy removed the devices after his kills.”
Because the guy was very good at covering his ass. “He isn’t just going to let Jonah go. If our perp took him, it’s just another game,” Macey said. “He will kill him.”
* * *
HE WAS SURROUNDED by darkness. And his head fucking hurt.
Jonah twisted his body. His hands were bound behind his back. He was trapped, fucking tied up like an animal. His knees rapped into metal and he felt the rope bite into his ankles.
He was...moving. He could feel it. A steady roll beneath him and the crunch of gravel?
I’m in the trunk. In the fucking trunk.
He’d been at the museum, pissed and scared because he’d realized his hacks had been found at the FBI. That was the only explanation for Tucker being in his face all of a sudden. Samantha Dark must have found out what he’d done, and she’d sent her bulldog agent to interrogate him. Everything he’d wanted had been exploding in his face. Then—
Then I don’t remember. But my head fucking hurts.
The car stopped moving. He heard a door slam. Were those footsteps, walking on the gravel? He tensed and then he heard the groan of the trunk as it opened.
Light didn’t pour in. It was too dark outside for light but he strained anyway, trying to see the face of the bastard who’d taken him.
“I admired your work, Agent Loxley.”
He blinked, surprise shoving through him.
“It’s such a pity...that I’m going to have to kill you now.”
* * *
DAWN HAD FINALLY COME. They’d searched for hours, they’d scoured security footage from every business near the museum, but they hadn’t found Jonah.
He’d vanished.
Macey stretched slowly as she stood in the conference room at the police station. She’d pulled an all-nighter and she wanted to crash but...how could she just go and sleep when Jonah was out there? With every hour that had passed, the tension and the fear she’d felt had deepened.
They all knew the drill in their business. The more time that passed, the greater the likelihood that they wouldn’t find their victim. Not alive.
“You need to rest.” Bowen’s voice. He’d just entered the room behind her. She turned at his approach, her eyes sweeping over him. He looked tired, too, the faint lines around his mouth deeper, his gaze weary. He’d been out with the search teams, running through the town.
But they were in the Smokies...too much ground to cover. Too many places for a person to vanish.
“The perp stopped calling you,” she said.
Bowen’s lips thinned. “Yeah, no more fucking taunts.”
“But why? Why stop? He was pulling you in constantly, and now you’ve got nothing but radio silence.”
He moved toward their board—their victims were on that tactical board. Daniel Haddox. God, it was still hard for her to think of him as a victim. When she saw his face, she just remembered what a cold, sadistic bastard he’d been.
“I wanted him dead,” Macey whispered as she stared at Daniel. “I wanted that for so long.” And she’d gotten what she wanted. Time for her confession. “I went to Jonah. I knew he was working on a program to predict the behavior and identify the location of serials. I wanted Daniel Haddox to be his test dummy. I gave him every bit of information I had on Daniel. Everything I knew...” She turned to look at Bowen. “And he turned up nothing.”
Bowen’s face was hard. “Macey...”
“He turned up nothing because Daniel had vanished so completely. I even began to wonder if he was dead. There weren’t any victims who fit his profiles. I mean, I know that Daniel liked to hide the bodies, so Jonah and I were focused on the missing. On people who’d had recent surgeries or any genetic abnormalities—the things that used to make prey stick out for Daniel. But we weren’t turning up any hits. We couldn’t find missing individuals to fit our profile. We knew Daniel wouldn’t have turned away from medicine. He had to be practicing off the grid, so we figured he’d gone to a rural area or maybe...maybe he’d fled the country.” That had been her suspicion. “If he’d gone to Mexico and set up shop, we weren’t ever going to find him and we wouldn’t be able to find his victims, either.”
“But he hadn’t gone to Mexico.”
“No.” Her lips pressed together, and then she said, “And Jonah’s program—it didn’t predict where he was. We only found Daniel because Dr. Lopez recognized the wounds on Gale’s body. Dr. Lopez is the one who notified the FBI. She put the wheels into motion for us.” She reached out and curled her hand around his arm. “Do you see what I’m saying? The whole program that makes Jonah a suspect...it doesn’t work. That’s why he didn’t go to Samantha with it sooner. He wasn’t able to find the serials.”
But a serial had found him.
“The hacking, Mace,” Bowen murmured, his voice gruff. “It went back to his personal computer. Not his work computer, but the laptop he kept at home. The guy was prying into all of our files.”
“That doesn’t make him a killer. We need to look at him as a victim.”
“Right now, I think we’re looking at him as both.”
But they weren’t finding him. “He’s in these mountains, somewhere,” she added. “And we know the perp we’re after doesn’t keep his prey alive for long.”
Bowen shook his head. “No, he doesn’t.”
“He was calling you,” Macey said again. “Each time. But something changed. Something made him stop. What? What was it?”
He glanced down at his watch. “Peter Carter should be awake now. The guy hasn’t asked for any lawyer yet—”
Mostly because he’d been unconscious and in surgery.
“—so this is our chance. We can go to that hospital and grill the bastard.”
Right. She nodded abruptly. Her hand slid away from his arm, but his hand flew up, and his fingers curled under her chin.
“This is going to get even worse before it gets better.”
They both knew that.
“I will have your back. I will stand with you no matter what comes our way. You can always count on me.”
Her chest seemed to burn. “And you can count on me.” Didn’t he see that? With them, the trust cut both ways. She trusted him more than she’d ever trusted anyone.
She turned for the door and she’d only taken a few steps when her gaze met the golden stare of Samantha Dark. Macey stopped short.
“Agents,” Samantha said, but her voice was weary. “We need to talk.” She shut the conference room door behind her. “Clear the air a bit.”
“Jonah—” Macey began.
Samantha held up one hand. “There is no doubt that he accessed confidential FBI files. And that he’s been accessing them for some time.” Samantha’s eyes were lined with dark shadows. “I spent two hours at his home last night. He’d been keeping journals on all of the agents in my unit. He was profiling you all.”
Shock pushed through Macey.
“I don’t think he took well to not making the original cut for the team,” Samantha continued with a tired shake of her head. “So it seemed he wanted to find out just why you all were deemed to be better agents than he was.” She rubbed a hand over the back of her neck. “I hate to say this—God, I hate it—but everything I turn up on Jonah seems to indicate that he fits the profile for the perp that we’re after in Gatlinburg. Even the way this killer has been competing with the FBI, the way he’s so zealously hunted down serials...it’s like he was trying to show us he was better.”
“That he should have made the fucking team,” Bowen said grimly.
Samantha inclined her head. “Yes. Damn it, yes.” She began to pace. “I have a crack team of computer analysts going through his files now, and that infamous program of his? Turns out he was trying to use it to locate Patrick Remus.”
Bowen rolled back his shoulders. “We need to talk with Patrick’s girlfriend again. Find out just what Patrick may have been doing for the last two years. No way he quit cold turkey.”
“Lydia Chasing didn’t know who he was!” Macey fired back. “She’s not going to have any clue about what he did.”
Samantha seemed to consider this. “Let me take a run at her.”
Macey’s head tilted toward her and her eyes widened in surprise.
“I’ve got a bit of experience,” Samantha continued as her lips twisted into a humorless smile, “with being too close to a lover who turned out to be a killer. I can understand exactly what she’s going through.”
Because Samantha’s ex-lover had turned out to be one of the worst killers out there.
“As for you two... I hear that Peter Carter is out of surgery and that he’s conscious—for the moment.” She looked pointedly at them. “Find out what you can from him. Push hard on the dead vic, I think her name is—”
“Susannah Kaiser,” Bowen supplied. “We already tried to dig, but it seems her family is gone. Her mom passed away when Susannah was a teen. Her dad died a few months back. She has a brother, but the guy cut out when he was seventeen. No one seems to know where he is.”
“Then he doesn’t even know his sister is dead.” Sadness flashed in Samantha’s eyes. “I’ll make sure the FBI is using all resources to locate him.” Then her gaze dipped between Macey and Bowen. “Is there anything else I need to be aware of regarding this case?”
“When do I officially get my gun back?” Bowen demanded.
“Consider yourself cleared,” Samantha told him. “The shooting was justified, we’re in the middle of a clusterfuck, and I want you in the field. If there is any pushback from brass, I’ll handle them.” Her eyes gleamed. “I’m pretty good at getting Executive Assistant Director Bass to see things my way these days.”
Bowen’s head inclined toward her. “Thank you.”
“Before you two go, don’t you think you need to update me on your...personal situation?”
Macey tensed.
“There’s nothing you—” Bowen began.
“We’re lovers,” Macey said as she stepped forward. “I’m the one who went to Bowen. I’m the one who pushed for the relationship.”
But it wasn’t a relationship, not really. It had just started...
As a way to stop the pain.
Only, being with Bowen had become so much more. A lifeline.
At Macey’s blurted words, Samantha merely raised one perfectly arched brow.
“Did you know?” Macey asked, taken aback.
“Let’s just say that I knew this could be coming.” Her gaze slid to Bowen, then back to Macey. “FBI brass won’t approve of you two continuing to be partners in the field, so we’ll be dealing with that firestorm after we close this case.”
“Do you truly think Jonah is the killer?” Macey didn’t want to be wrong about a friend again. No, damn it, not again.
“I think that’s a possibility that can’t be ignored. He’s either involved or he’s a victim. Either way, he’s one of us, and we will be bringing him in.”
* * *
A SHORT TIME LATER, Samantha Dark paused just outside the interrogation room. She squared her shoulders. She tucked her hair behind her ears. She eased out a slow breath.
Lydia Chasing was in that room. Samantha had gotten an officer to bring the other woman back to the station. Lydia was grieving, hurting for the lover who’d been brutally taken from her.
She was also a woman trying to come to grips with the fact that she’d never known that lover at all, not really. I understand. Believe me, I do. Samantha reached for the doorknob, and then she walked briskly inside, her high heels clicking on the floor.
At her approach, Lydia glanced up. She wore no makeup. Her nose was red, her eyes were bloodshot and her lips were trembling. “Who are you?” Lydia’s voice was weak and rasping, probably because she’d broken it with too much crying.
“My name is Samantha Dark, and I’m with the FBI.”
Lydia’s gaze fell. “Patrick wasn’t a killer.” Her scratchy voice was almost painful to hear. “He...he was a good man. He loved me.” And her hand fell to her stomach.
Oh, sweet hell. That one gesture pierced right through Samantha. The way the woman cradled her stomach. “Are you pregnant?” Slowly, Samantha sat down in the chair across from Lydia.
A tear leaked down Lydia’s cheek. “The other agents...they had my blood checked. They said they thought I might have been drugged while Patrick was taken. They don’t have the results yet on the drugs. I—I hope I’m okay.”
“Did you tell the nurse who took the blood sample about the baby?” Because she was convinced now.
Lydia shook her head. “Patrick...he wasn’t a monster.”
Samantha’s gut was in knots. “As a precaution, I’m going to call the local hospital. I want you to go in and have a full evaluation, okay?” She started to rise.
Lydia’s hand flew out and curled around her wrist. “He wasn’t a monster.”
She knew that Lydia desperately wanted her to agree, but Samantha couldn’t speak because she’d seen the victims left in Patrick’s brutal wake. A lie wouldn’t come to her lips.
“He didn’t start all those fires.” But now doubt had crept into Lydia’s words.
Samantha swallowed. “How long were you with Patrick?”
“Over a year,” she whispered in her broken voice. “And I would have known. I would have known if...” But she didn’t finish that sentence.
It didn’t matter. Samantha knew what the woman had been about to say. I would have known if he was a killer. “I didn’t know.”
Lydia trembled.
“I didn’t know that the man I’d given my trust to, the man I’d shared my bed with...I didn’t know he was a murderer.”
Lydia’s trembles grew worse.
“I didn’t know until he came for me.”
More tears slid down Lydia’s cheeks. “Patrick never hurt me.”
“Did he hurt anyone else?” She kept her voice as soft as possible. “Think about it, Lydia. Was there ever anyone who may have...” God, how to say this delicately? “Were there any unexplained fires during your time with Patrick?”
Lydia’s eyes squeezed closed and a low, keening sound emerged from her.
“I have to ask, I’m sorry. But Patrick Remus had a schedule, of sorts. He took a victim every six months. You said you were with him for over a year. I want you to think about that time. Think about it really hard. Was there ever a suspicious fire in the area where you lived? Ever anything that—”
A sob broke from Lydia.
Samantha wanted to reach out and comfort her. She wanted to pull her close and tell the other woman she wasn’t alone—
“My stepmom.” Lydia was rocking her body back and forth now, still cradling her belly. “There was a fire at her house. Thought it was just... God! God! She was always so mean to me. Never letting me see my dad, and I told Patrick, I told him...” She nearly choked as she said, “That I wished she was out of the way.” Her tears came harder.
“Did she die in the fire?” Samantha asked her.
Lydia nodded. “I didn’t mean it...when I told him... I was just mad... I didn’t mean it...”
And Samantha knew that Patrick had been up to his old tricks.
She rose.
“Will the baby be like him?” Lydia asked her.
Samantha’s heart seemed to freeze in her chest.
“I don’t... Will the baby be like him?” she asked again. “Is she gonna be...wrong?”
Samantha went to her then, and she wrapped her arms around Lydia. Samantha held the other woman as Lydia cried.