Shauna sat on a barstool at her family’s pub waiting for her father or mother to come through from the back kitchen. They weren’t open yet, but they would have heard the bell when she let herself in the front door with her key and would come out to see which of their children had come to visit.

Her brothers spent a great deal more time at the pub than she did, running it alongside her parents. Shauna’s visits were just that, visits. She’d waited tables and worked behind the bar as a teenager, but when she left the police academy, she went down to working the occasional shift here and there. Since earning her detective’s shield, those shifts had dwindled to none. Any time off at this point was spent sleeping in preparation for the times when a case became hot and she went back to stretches of long hours, day-after-day.

Of course, this case wasn’t only hot in the sense that it normally was for a cold case detective. Typically, she might find a lead on a case that opened things up and sent her chasing someone for days at a time, but the case itself was still cold. The crime was long over.

This case was different. Their killer wasn’t going to stop killing. Not unless they stopped him. So, she’d come by the pub to let her parents know she was still alive and to take a small breather before getting out there. They had a lot of threads out there they were pulling but each one seemed to come up empty. What they needed was a thread that led to another thread, and another. They needed something they could stitch together into answers.

“Hey my girl, what brings you in?” her father asked as he came out of the kitchen. “Doug Calhoun was by last night, said you were working a case with the New Haven guys. Didn’t think we’d see you for weeks.”

Shauna couldn’t help but wince. If it took them weeks to catch this killer... well, she didn’t want to think what he might do in that time.

“That bad?” her father asked. He came around to her side of the bar rather than heading for the bartender side and pulled her up into a bear hug.

He gave true meaning to the words, great big bear of a man and had the black Irish looks that could bring many women to throw themselves at him, even when he’d been in his fifties. Things had slowed a bit for him once he hit his early sixties, but not much. He still had to patiently tell women his wife was in the back and she’d come after him with a kitchen knife if he so much as looked at another woman.

She couldn’t tell him much about the case since it was active, but she could give him generalities. “We can’t figure out the tie between the cold case and the current killings.”

“You’re sure there is one?” he moved behind the bar and poured a root beer into a chilled mug, her standard drink when she was at the pub and on-duty.

Shauna took a sip before answering. “I am. There’s no way this person doesn’t have some connection to the old killer. Or, maybe even is the same guy.”

They hadn’t ruled that out yet, since Sawyer didn’t have the rope and lipstick. It was entirely possible Sawyer had only raped Adrienne, but hadn’t been responsible for her death. They hadn’t excluded the possibility that their killer was the same one in action thirty years before, only he was somehow acting with reduced physical capacity, leading to the change in his methods.

“Want to talk through any of it?” Her dad knew she could sometimes figure out ways to talk through a case without giving him too many details, and the act of running through it would often help her come up with answers.

“Not this time.” She’d already run through so many theories with Zach and Ronan, her head was spinning. What she needed for the few minutes she could spend here was to let her mind shut down.

Her mother came from the kitchen, a large platter with a burger and fries piled on it. Shauna had gotten her mother’s fair hair and blue eyes, with pale Irish skin that freckled and burned but never tanned.

“Oh, ma, thank you,” Shauna said, not realizing how hungry she was until that moment. She might have groaned at the sight of the food.

Her mother gave her a hug, then set the platter down and looked at Shauna. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s the case, Alva, but she doesn’t want to talk about it.”

Her mother gave her father a roll of her eyes and shook her head. “No, it’s not. It’s a man. Tell me, Shauna.” Her mother sat next to her on a bar stool and her father stilled. He didn’t like hearing about Shauna and men.

She couldn't blame him. Her marriage and the ensuing divorce had been a nightmare. If it weren’t for her father and brothers, and a few of their friends who were cops in her ex-husband’s precinct, she would likely never have known peace from the man she’d married.

“It’s nothing, Ma, really,” Shauna said, dipping a few fries in ketchup before putting them in her mouth.

Her mother did nothing more than lift a brow and watch her. Her father slipped back into the kitchen.

“He’s gone. Talk.” Her mother said this with humor, but Shauna knew she wouldn’t relent until Shauna did, so she shrugged, taking a bite of her burger and using the excuse of a full mouth to delay her answer.

“I’m working with a cop I used to date.” As she said the words, thoughts of her “dating” Zach ran through her mind and she was pretty sure she blushed. Their dating had consisted of a lot more inside dates in a bedroom than true dates. And the sex had been hotter than hell.

She frowned. Hotter than hell was putting it mildly. The man knew what he was doing in bed. She squirmed. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have with her mother.

“That good, huh?” her mother quipped, and Shauna choked on a fry.

It took several minutes and half her mug of root beer to get her coughing under control. If she thought her mother might forget what they were talking about in that time, she was wrong.

“So, do you think you’ll date him again when the case is over?”

“No! God no, ma.”

“Language, Shauna.”

Shauna didn’t want to admit that the thought had occurred to her more than once that maybe Zach had changed. That maybe he wasn’t the guy she’d dated. When they dated, he wanted nothing to do with commitment or a relationship. In fact, he wanted nothing to do with being an adult at all.

The Zach she’d come to know this time around was different. He’d grown up. That much she could see.

“What was so wrong with him when you dated? I can see you like him.”

“He wasn’t at all interested in a relationship.” Shauna almost laughed. Her husband had been too interested in her, wanting to control her completely, wanting her almost too much. No, there was no almost about it. He had wanted her too much.

Zach, well, he had wanted the sex they’d had back then. She wondered now what he wanted. He had said he wanted more with her but would take friendship if that’s what he could get.

How much more did he want and was it something she could give him, she wondered.

“You can’t hide from love forever, Shauna,” her mother said softly. “I know things didn’t go right last time.”

Shauna gave a harsh laugh.

“I know, I know,” her mother said. “That’s putting it mildly. But don’t let Pat control you this way. If you let him keep you from finding real love, you let him win in the end, no matter that we succeeded in chasing him off.”

Even the mention of Pat Donovan made Shauna want to cringe. How she’d ever fallen for the man, she would never know. But her mother was right. She had been hiding from a relationship because she didn’t trust herself.

“He’s not Irish,” she said now to her mother. She didn’t really plan to debate the merits of dating Zach Reynolds with her mother, but hoped to get her ma off on a different track.

Her father came back into the room carrying a large box that she would guess contained food for her to bring back to the station with her. He grunted a dismissal of what she’d just said. “After what you went through with that Donovan fellow, we’ll make allowances.”

Shauna grinned. She knew just how to get to her dad. “His last name is Reynolds, pop. I’m pretty sure his family traces back to England.”

Her dad put a hand over his heart. “Don’t say it, girl, I can’t handle that much.”

Her mother laughed. “There were Reynolds families in Ireland. Maybe he’s got a bit of Irish blood in him.”

Shauna rolled her eyes and stood. She’d managed to eat her burger and most of the fries. “I have to get back.”

Her father pushed the box down the bar toward her. “Sandwiches and chips. I’d have made them burgers and fries, but they wouldn’t last the drive. These’ll keep.”

Shauna hugged her parents goodbye with promises to touch base by phone when she could throughout the investigation. She just prayed this investigation would be over soon. She didn’t know if she could stand to see the body of another slain girl.