The ride to the state criminal justice building in Rocky Hill wasn’t a long one, but it was long enough to give Zach plenty of time to think. His mind should have been on the case. Specifically, on the fact their case had just taken a shocking turn when Dr. Kane matched the lipstick and rope on their victim to that used in several thirty-year-old murders.

Not similar to that used. She’d matched the items to the actual items in the old case. They were no longer in a “there are similarities” mode. They had a match.

But that wasn’t what monopolized Zach’s thoughts. No, Zach was caught up in the memory of a cold case investigator he hadn’t seen in years. Shauna O’Rourke.

It had been three or four years since he and Shauna had run into each other, and six years since they’d been together. Since before he’d joined the academy, in fact.

It had been right when he’d left the military and before he’d signed up for the police academy. He’d been freaked out about leaving the military, not at all sure what he was going to do with the rest of his life, and more than a little unsure about his role in Naomi’s and Luke’s lives. He’d been a total dick back then. He was at least man enough to admit that, now. Not that he’d realized it then.

Of course, Shauna had seen it. The sex had been incredible. They burned hot and fast and hard. But when she scratched the surface and realized there wasn’t anything underneath the physical, she’d walked. Her words when she left him echoed in his mind. “Just because you make sure a woman always comes, doesn’t mean you aren’t using her.” He winced at the memory.

The truth was, he’d been thinking about her lately. It wasn’t only the drive out to her stomping grounds that had her red curls and full lips bouncing around his head.

“Still can’t fucking believe this.” Ronan pulled the car into the lot at the Rocky Hill facility. “You think they’ll take the lead?”

“They might.” Zach didn’t much care if the state cold case division took over the lead on the case. He opened his door and got out, finding Ronan leaning on the car, staring at him like he’d lost his mind.

“Fuck that,” Ronan bit out.

Zach shrugged. “No biggie. Let them take it. We’ll work the local leads and use their resources. Their lab has a lot of shit we don’t.” Zach liked the glory of getting to claim you solved a case as much as the next guy, but with a case like this, he wanted to stop this killer and bring Carrie home safely a lot more than he wanted bragging rights.

Ronan muttered about the state taking credit as they walked to the door. Zach got it. They’d taken hit after hit in the press a couple of months back when they’d had a vigilante sniper and several unsolved cases plaguing the city. They were all feeling a little on edge since then.

In the end, they’d caught the sniper and solved the other crimes and gotten the press off their backs. Until now. He’d seen that asshole journalist Ray Lansing at the scene and outside the station that morning. Lansing had gone from writing for a pissant online blog to writing for one of the city’s biggest papers, and most of the department felt it had been at their expense.

Of course, he was also dating Cal Rylan’s sister now, so he thought he had an in with all of them.

So, yeah, Zach understood where Ronan was coming from. He just didn’t feel threatened by working with the state cold case investigators. Of course, the fact Zach was hoping he might run into Shauna might explain the difference in their attitudes.

They were greeted by an older woman who identified herself as Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney, Vivian Cullis, head of the state’s Cold Case Unit. She led them into a large bullpen area and jumped right into getting them up to speed.

“This is our main bullpen where our investigators sit. Every investigator is up-to-speed on every cold case we handle, but I do have a liaison appointed to work directly with you. We’ll have our team here doing leg work and tracking down anything you guys can send our way on the case. If there are any witnesses or people tied to the old cases still around, we’re going to get with them and redo each and every interview, no matter how many times we’ve interviewed them in the past.”

She continued, ignoring the group of detectives standing around one desk in the far corner of the room. It didn’t take any effort for Zach to see Shauna wasn’t among them. He’d have spotted her right away if she was. It had always been that way with her.

When he walked into a bar six years back, intent on getting drunk, he’d found her instead. She was sexy as sin and tough enough to take him on. She hadn’t backed down one bit when he walked her way and stepped a little too close to her with a smile that said exactly what he’d wanted to do to her. Looking back, he couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t shut him down right away. Shauna didn’t take that kind of shit from anyone. Whatever her reasons had been, he was glad she hadn’t.

Cullis waved a hand. “There’s a third room for interrogations, and our prosecutors are all down the hall. I’ll introduce you to John Grigsby. He’s the prosecutor that will handle the case when we close it.”

Zach caught Ronan’s look, but ignored his partner. Cullis turned to the detectives and walked that way. “Detectives Reynolds and Cafferty, meet the team.”

Zach didn’t catch any of the names she scrolled through. He shook hands blindly and knew he’d have to learn the names later. His eyes were on Shauna O’Rourke as she entered the room and came toward the group, lean hips rolling with the kind of confidence only a woman who looked like her could possess. Strawberry blonde hair that could turn fiery in the right light and blue eyes that blazed equally strong, especially when she was angry.

She didn’t spare him a glance.

“Detectives,” Cullis said, with a nod to Shauna. “This is Detective Shauna O’Rourke. She’ll be your main point of contact.”

Jackpot. So, the thought was more appropriate for a teenager than a seasoned detective, but whatever. He was embracing the pig in him for a little while today.

Shauna’s handshake with each of them was perfunctory as Ronan introduced himself. Zach couldn’t help it. He opened with, “Good to see you again, Detective.”

She ignored his comment and he ignored the raised brow from Ronan. His partner didn’t know his history with Shauna, but he hadn’t been about to pretend he didn’t know her.

She was apparently fine with doing just that. “Is your medical examiner absolutely positive it’s the same lipstick and rope?”

He was reminded of the passion she had for her cases, for justice. He was also reminded he wasn’t the asshole he used to be. Time to shut down the meathead side of him and get back to work on the case. They had a teenaged girl to bring home.

Zach nodded, back in the game, and stepped up beside Shauna as she began pulling files from a box and setting them out on a table. “As far as the rope goes, yes. Not only the same type, but she believes the rope was cut from the exact same length of rope that was used on the last victim thirty years before.”

Shauna froze for a split second at that news and he understood. He’d felt the same way when he heard. It was a hell of a thing to have the exact same rope show up at crime scenes with a thirty-year gap between them. A hell of a thing.

He continued his report. “Dr. Kane noticed that the polymers used in the fibers of the rope aren’t currently used in today’s market, so she compared them to the case file. She has copies of the old case file with the images of the length of rope found on the last victim.”

“Michelle Hanley?” Shauna asked. Michelle Hanley was the last and final known victim of the Marsh Killer.

“Yes,” Zach answered before continuing, all business now. “The cuts to the rope were jagged and uneven. She said it looked like someone had taken a dull knife and sawed back and forth on the rope rather than making a clean cut. The rope from the Edwards crime scene shared the same features.”

“And the lipstick?” Shauna asked.

“Pigment and type is an exact match, whatever that means. And it’s got some ingredients that were banned from use in cosmetics fifteen years ago.”

“Do you have pictures of the crime scene?” Shauna asked. She was practically bouncing on her toes and he understood. He knew she wasn’t happy to have another dead body, but having a lead on a thirty-year-old case had to get the blood pumping.

Zach held out a folder. Shauna took it and tossed it to one of the other investigators—a young man with hair and eyes so dark they were almost black. Another man, older and balding, pushed a dry-erase board in front of the group and Shauna lifted files from the table. As Zach and Ronan watched, the detectives silently and efficiently filled the board with names, dates, and photos.

Zach leaned closer when it was over and heard Ronan whistle beside him. “Holy—” Zach swallowed the curse. In his precinct cursing wasn’t allowed and fines from his Captain over the years had drilled the rule into him.

The crime scenes were different from their scene, but there was an eerie similarity there, as well. It almost looked as though their killer had transformed from a killer showing evidence of remorse and care for his victims to one of anger. One who wanted to shame the victims now. Could it really be the same person? Had something happened to their killer over the years to transform his MO?

Shauna didn’t mess around. She took a marker from the ledge on the murder board and began a column on the left side of the board. “All right, guys, let’s look for differences.”

One of the other state investigators looked at the photos of the victims’ necks. “This is different.” He pointed to a spot where the ligature marks from the ropes stopped on Adrienne’s neck. In its place was a unique twisting bruise.

“The ME thinks something was slipped into the rope to give our killer leverage in twisting it. Something like a stick or bar,” Ronan offered.

“That wasn’t on any of our victims.” Shauna wrote stick/bar leverage on the board.

“There was no evidence of sexual assault with our vics thirty years ago,” one of the cold case guys offered.

“Our ME took swabs of Adrienne’s mouth and vaginal cavity. She saw evidence of recent sexual activity but no evidence it was forced.” Ronan offered this quietly and the rest of the group was silent as Shauna wrote sexual activity.

“Lack of posing with this recent victim.” Zach pointed to the victims from the cold case files. Each was posed lying on her back, hands clasped over her heart. “And the lipstick is clownlike on ours, as if the killer wanted to make the victim appear ugly or foolish in death. There’s a lack of care, lack of remorse. In fact, I’d say there’s almost glee evident in the death whereas, before, there was guilt or even regret.”

Shauna nodded and wrote no posing and clown mouth in two separate entries on the board. If it wasn’t so serious, the way she worded it would have made him laugh. It was exactly what he’d have written. She then added remorse as another entry.

Shauna looked at the list and tilted her head. “Weaker.”

“What?” Ronan asked.

“Yeah,” Zach said, “she’s right. The need for something to provide leverage for the strangling makes me thing this perp’s weaker somehow now. If they were in their thirties or forties, or even older, thirty years ago, they could be facing weakening from either old age or a disease that’s causing muscle loss.”

Ronan and some of the others nodded.

“But why the change in the lipstick and posing?” the balding guy put in.

The dark-haired detective nodded. “Hutch is right.” Ah, the balding guy is Hutch, no wait, the captain had said Hutchison, so Hutch must be a nickname. Zach made a mental note. He should have paid attention during the intros. The dark-haired guy kept talking. “Something’s distinctly different and age doesn’t really account for that. The look of the girl is wrong, too. Our guy liked blondes.”

“The lipstick,” Shauna said almost under her breath, as though going through each difference. “Maybe he’s got a tremor in his hands. It’s possible he can’t apply the lipstick the same way.” Shauna kept her eyes on the board. Zach couldn’t help but wonder if Shauna was the least bit thrown by his presence.

He was sure as hell thrown by hers. He wanted to call time out and talk to her. Find out how she’d been and what was new in her world. He knew through the grapevine she’d been married and divorced since they’d been together. He’d heard the ex was a real piece of work, but she hadn’t put up with it. She’d left him quickly and moved on.

She didn’t seem the least bit interested in him. She shook her head. “But that doesn’t account for the lack of posing. Even with a tremor, you could place hands across a chest and arrange a body, I’d think.” She looked like she was seeing the scene play out in her head. Like she was putting herself in the footsteps of the killer.

A dangerous move. A person could lose themselves doing that too much. But Shauna was committed to her work. It wasn’t a job for her. It was a passion. A calling.

“Something’s changed him.” Hutch’s expression was speculative and Zach wondered how many years he had under his belt. The cold case team had to be relentless to do this job. Relentless, patient, and willing to take a lot of disappointment. Cold cases were as tough as they came, where witnesses moved away or forgot things, evidence was often long gone, lost or deteriorated. It was a hard job.

“A stint in prison, a stay in a mental institution—” one of the other investigators offered, listing things that could pull a killer off the streets for a time.

“A long one,” Ronan said receiving head nods and murmurs in response.

Shauna’s face showed the depth of her thoughts as she scanned the photos before them again and again. She was damned good at her job. “Maybe an injury? Something that’s kept him confined, too weak to act?”

“And after thirty years of that, he’s up and around?” Hutch asked.

Shauna pulled a face and nodded. The theory was far-fetched, but it demonstrated that they needed to be thinking outside the box for this one. Whatever was going on, Zach had a feeling they were only at the start of it.

“An apprentice? Something kept our guy out of commission, but now he’s groomed an apprentice?” One of the others offered. “Killing vicariously.”

All eyes looked to Hutch and Shauna who now stood side-by-side for their opinion. Zach felt both a mixture of pride that the team clearly respected her opinion as much as that of Hutch, an investigator of some experience—and jealousy that the two looked like they might work together like a well-oiled machine. They each nodded thoughtfully in the way partners who didn’t need words any longer might communicate.

Zach didn’t even know if Hutch and Shauna were partners. Even if they were, being jealous of that fact was ridiculous.

“Has your medical examiner begun the autopsy yet?” Shauna asked, turning to look at Zach with those blue eyes.

“She was starting it as we were leaving.”

“Can you call and make sure she’s going to look for date rape drugs?” Shauna asked.

Zach nodded and pulled his phone from his pocket to text Dr. Kane’s assistant so he could get the message to her. He knew what Shauna was thinking. If their suspect was weakened in some way physically, it would make sense he’d needed a way to control Adrienne.

Cullis broke up the speculation. “Hutchinson, Cantor, Ross, and Manigault, you guys start pouring through records. Cover prisons, hospitals, look into any accidents on record at the time of the last killing thirty years ago that might have taken our guy out of commission. Check mental institutions.” The list brought a collective groan from the investigators. “Jameson and Wasser, you two comb through the physical evidence and then get it over to the lab for any updated testing they can provide. The last time this case was reviewed was over ten years back. See what’s changed. Maybe they’ve got new technology that can give us a leg up.”

The two nodded then grabbed two boxes off a nearby table and moved down the row of desks to the other side of the room to begin.

“O’Rourke, you’re assigned to the New Haven precinct to work directly with Cafferty and Reynolds for now.” Zach tried to read anything in Shauna’s expression as she nodded in response to the instruction, but she was completely unreadable. Nothing but a professional façade.

Shit, it had been years since they’d been together. Why the hell did he think she’d feel anything for him?

Maybe because he still felt something for her?

“All right, guys. Get to it. This killer has too much practice under his belt for my liking. It’s time to run him to ground and get him off the streets.”