“What if Liz didn’t get her out of the house?” Zach turned and walked out of the bathroom, knowing Ronan would follow him.

He went to the bullpen, unlocking his desk and grabbing his service weapon. Seeing him, Ronan did the same then proceeded through the steps of readying himself the same way Zach was.

Zach took out the backup revolver he kept in his ankle holster and checked that, before slipping it into its space and grabbing his raid jacket he wore instead of his suit coat when they were raiding a suspect’s home. He put on his utility belt, checking for flashlight, cuffs, and ammunition before putting on his coat and zipping it up. A large NHPD embossed on the back identified him as an officer.

“Hey Reynolds!”

Zach turned to see Cal coming toward him. He tipped his chin up in acknowledgement.

Cal answered the signaled question. “The captain just released your suspect.”

“Are you shitting me?” Zach yelled. His partner and Cal had the wherewithal not to warn him about his language.

“Sorry, Zach. I heard he was getting calls from some people in pretty high places. They aren’t happy with you holding a teenaged girl who, up until a couple of hours ago, was a witness we were worried about keeping safe.” Cal looked like he truly was sorry.

“We’ve got more than that,” Zach gritted out, even though it wasn’t Cal he needed to convince. “The timing of the uncle’s admission to the hospital and the fact Liz Gordon is knee deep in the current investigation speaks volumes. Not to mention, we’ve got a missing cop. What does he think? That Shauna just walked off the job to grab a fucking ice cream sundae?”

“We headed back to the house?” Ronan asked when they’d made it into the elevator.

“Going to stop and talk to Jonathan Sawyer. I want to know if there’s anything about that house he can tell us. Liz made it seem like there’d been something between them. Maybe he’s been there. Maybe he knows some of the secrets that family has clearly been keeping.”

They were quiet as Ronan drove them out to the Sawyer house. Zach couldn’t have carried on a conversation if he tried. Tension had taken over his body. It thrummed in his veins and set his lungs burning with every breath.

When they got close, Zach called in to have the station house let the officers watching Sawyer know they were coming. He tapped on the window of the car out front and showed the officer his badge.

“The family inside?” he asked.

The older man nodded. “All day.”

Zach nodded and he and Ronan walked up the front walk. The Sawyer house was more modern than the Gordon home. Both were large estates with extensive grounds.

The look Mr. Sawyer gave them when he answered the door was to be expected. Still, it took effort to suppress the urge to remind the man that his son had raped those girls. Regardless of whether he was involved in the murders or not, the guy was guilty of a crime those girls—

Zach had almost had the thought that the girls would have to live with what Sawyer had done to them forever, but that wasn’t true. They were gone and there was nothing they could do to bring them back. Except for Hillary, they wouldn’t be living with anything.

“Our lawyer isn’t here.” The statement was delivered with the kind of haughty tone that said the detectives should know better than to show up without any notice.

“You’ve got one shot right now to convince us to put in a good word for your kid. To ask for some kind of leniency for the heinous crimes your son committed against those young women.” Zach raised a hand to stop the objection Mr. Sawyer had opened his mouth to make. “Save it. Your son’s still going to go to prison. You’re kidding yourself if you think you can avoid that. But we can do our best to make it easier for him. I’m not going to debate this with you. I’ll give you five minutes to think about it. Call your lawyer. Get his advice. Or don’t. I don’t care. In five minutes, I walk away.”

“What do you want?” With the single question, Zach knew he had him. It was a good thing the guy had caved so quickly. If he made Zach wait the five minutes, he’d wasn’t sure how he’d have done it.

“We need to talk to Jonathan about Liz Gordon.” He didn’t say more. Didn’t say they thought she had been responsible for killing the girls.

Jonathan’s father looked over his shoulder to where his wife stood. Zach held his breath until he saw her nod, barely perceptible, but there.

A few minutes later, they were sitting down across from Jonathan Sawyer. He’d been taken down a few notches by the past few days, but there was still that look in his eye like he thought maybe, just maybe, what he had done wasn’t so bad, really.

Zach would like nothing more than to rid the boy of that belief, but now wasn’t the time. In fact, there wasn’t time for anything right now. No time to work his way into the questions or set the boy at ease. No time to dance around.

“Sawyer, I need you to tell me if you’ve ever been in Liz’s house.” Zach took a leap and dove right in, making an assumption next. “When the two of you had sex, was it always in your clubhouse or did you go to her house sometimes?”

Sawyer looked a little stunned, but Zach waved it off. “We’ve talked to Liz. We know you didn’t drug her, we know the sex was consensual, that’s not what this is about.”

“Jonathan, just answer his questions honestly right now.” His mother’s tone said she was finished trying to hide what her son had done.

“I went to her place once, but it creeped me the hell out.” Sawyer squirmed. “Place is like a haunted house or something.”

“When you were there, what rooms did you spend time in?” Zach asked.

“Only the basement. It’s where Liz hangs out. I don’t even think she goes upstairs to sleep most of the time now.”

Zach had checked the basement. It was bare except for a few pieces of furniture and a giant unused fireplace. His mind flew to the giant furnace and for one split second, he had the horrifying thought that maybe she’d killed Shauna and put her in the furnace.

He got his imagination under control. The furnace hadn’t been on and they would have smelled burning flesh if she’d done that. There was no mistaking that scent.

He tried not to think about the fact that Liz would be walking into that house again any minute now. That if she could get to Shauna, if she hadn’t already killed her, she would now.

“Can you think of any place on the property where Liz could hide someone?” Zach ignored the gasp from Mrs. Sawyer.

“She said there were old tunnels inside the house once, but I don’t know how to get in there.”

“Did she say anything else about them? Any detail? Maybe accessing them through the outside?”

Sawyer shook his head. “She wanted to show me them, but I told her no. We only hooked up one time and then she latched onto me like she thought we’d date after that or something. The girl is fucking crazy just like the rest of her family.”

“What do you mean?” Ronan asked.

“The whole family is nuts. They locked that uncle away for years.”

Mrs. Sawyer came forward. “The girl’s uncle was in a mental institution for a long time. Sad, really. I knew him growing up. He was always ... awkward I guess you would say, but he was nice. He would talk to me in our garden. He was sweet. Then they took him away and when he came back,” she shivered, “it was horrible.”

“I thought he died in the mental institution,” Zach said. He’d assumed if they performed a lobotomy the family would have kept him in the hospital.

“No, they brought him home. It was only for a short time before he died, but it was awful. He would moan and scream sometimes. I saw him the day they sent him back to the hospital. They took him out in a wheelchair and it looked like they hadn’t fed him or bathed him in...” her voice died out and she shivered again like the memory was invading her body physically. “He died a few weeks later at the hospital. I think it was a stroke.”

Zach looked to Mrs. Sawyer. “Do you know anything about the tunnels in the house? How we might get in there? We have a missing police officer, Mrs. Sawyer.”

Her eyes darkened and she looked truly sympathetic. “I’m sorry, I don’t know. The house is old, that’s all I know. I never spent time there. If I saw Herschel, it was out in the gardens in the back. At the time, they were quite lavish. I would walk in them sometimes and he’d come out and talk to me.”

It was then that Zach realized Mrs. Sawyer looked a lot like the first victims, the ones he suspected Herschel Kenworth had killed thirty years before. She was quite petite and blonde and still beautiful, despite her age.

There wasn’t time to think about that. They needed to get back to the house to search it. They left with only the briefest of thank yous and decided to cut through the side hedges onto the Gordon property, without worrying about their car for the time being.

Zach skidded to a halt when they hit the driveway. The police vehicles and crime scene units had all gone.

“Shit!”

Ronan didn’t ask why Zach was upset. They both knew what this meant. The scene had been released and Liz was likely back inside, probably with her lawyer. They’d both hoped to get into the house before that had happened.

“Exigent circumstances,” Ronan said.

“When the house has just been searched top to bottom by a team of officers and crime scene techs?” Zach asked. Despite the fact he knew the argument wouldn’t hold against the attorney he was willing to bet would be standing guard inside, he walked up the front steps.

He’d figure out a way inside the house. He had to.