Keeping Jonathan Michael Sawyer and his parents waiting had been fun, but it also meant Zach had to keep his own temper under control. He’d been pacing in the observation room next to the interview room as they waited for a warrant to come through. With the timing of the Facebook post, the presence of GHB in her system, and the fact he’d claimed in the Facebook group that they had sex the day she died, they should be able to get a warrant for the kid’s DNA. Zach couldn’t wait to spring that on the parents.

Zach watched as the lawyer they’d brought with them stood, clearly getting ready to pull his clients. He didn’t blame him. If he’d been the lawyer, he’d want to walk, too. Zach stepped out into the hallway just as Shauna came down the hall, paper in hand. He grinned, but wiped it from his face as he turned to the interrogation room in time to catch the lawyer and his clients.

“We’re not finished.”

“On the contrary, officer, we’re not going to begin. My clients came down here as a courtesy and you’ve kept them waiting almost an hour. We’re leaving.”

“Sure,” Zach said, showing his teeth now, but not in anything that could be termed a smile, “as soon as we get a DNA sample.” He tossed the paper toward the lawyer and crossed to a chair at the table. He didn’t bother to encourage them to join him. No way that lawyer was going to waltz them out of here after he looked at that warrant.

“What is he talking about?” Mr. Sawyer barked more than spoke to the lawyer, and the lawyer raised a hand to halt his questions while he scanned the paper. With a nod, he directed the Sawyers back to the table. The parents and lawyer murmured a few words, while Zach set about laying a photo of Carrie and Adrienne side by side on the table in front of Jonathan Michael Sawyer, whom he now knew to be Jonathan Michael Sawyer, the third.

The boy looked at the girls and paled. Zach laid out the third photo. This one showed Adrienne on the medical examiner’s table. It showed only her shoulders on up, the lipstick and rope removed, but there was no mistaking the fact she was very much dead. Of course, Sawyer knew she was dead, but he seemed to turn green now.

Zach waited until the boy’s mother looked over. “Oh, my Lord.” She fell into the seat next to her son as her lawyer and Mr. Sawyer lit into Zach.

“I’ll have your badge for this shit, detective.” Mr. Sawyer’s face was red, in stark contrast to the pale white sheen of his wife.

Zach ignored him and focused on the younger Sawyer. Tapping the photo, he spoke quietly. “When I run your DNA against the semen we found in her mouth and vaginal cavity, is it going to be a match?”

The look on the boy’s face told Zach the answer to that.

It was going to be a match. Or at least the boy was reasonably sure it would. Either way, it didn’t bode well.

“Of course, it’s not going to,” his mother all but pled. “Jonathan, tell him it’s not going to match.”

“He can’t,” Zach said, not looking at her. He kept his eyes locked on the kid. “Because he knows it will.”

The lawyer wasn’t dumb. He stepped right in. “Jonathan, don’t say anything. Officer, get your technician in here to take a sample. We’re not going to answer any more questions today.”

Zach leaned back in his seat, hands behind his head with his chair tilting back to two legs as the door opened. He hadn’t needed to call for a technician to collect the sample. They’d had one ready and waiting behind the glass.

He spoke as the technician set about her job, pulling swabs out and labeling the time and date. “Well, now, I gotta tell you. If we were only looking at Adrienne’s murder I might let you walk on out of here while I ran that sample, but here’s the thing. Carrie Athill is still out there. We’ve got a missing young woman and we have every reason to think her disappearance might be linked to you, too.”

He let the feet of his chair slam back onto the floor with a thud, as he pulled the screenshots of the private Facebook group out of the folder he’d sat in front of him.

He tapped the photo Sawyer had loaded to the Facebook group. The one that showed he’d had sex with Adrienne the day she died. “You were stupid, Sawyer, bragging about what you’d done to Adrienne. I’m going to do everything in my power to bring Carrie home to her parents in one piece. And that means holding you here until you’ve told me a bit more about these.”

Zach’s blood was boiling as he watched the indignation bloom on Sawyer’s face. Zach had long ago learned to control his rage during questioning, though. Sure, the squad might taunt him when he spent twenty minutes in the bathroom after this, growling and counting under his breath to calm that rage, but he wasn’t going to let it out in this room. Letting your anger get the better of you in the interrogation room or with a witness could cost the case.

Sawyer gaped as he looked from Zach to his lawyer and back to Zach. “You can’t do that. That’s a private Facebook group. I have an expectation of privacy there. You can’t look at that without a warrant.”

“Big words. You been studying your legal rights?” Zach asked.

“I know my rights.” Now Sawyer covered his chest with crossed arms and dug in.

“Well, you’d be right if—” Zach made a show of shaking his head like he was sorry to have to be the one to tell Sawyer the bad news “—if one of your buddies in the group hadn’t given us access to his account. I guess he didn’t expect we’d be able to match your DNA to the semen in Adrienne.”

Mrs. Sawyer made a choking sound, but the lawyer spoke up. “You don’t have a match yet, officer. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.”

“Oh, hey,” Zach pulled out one more sheet. The report showing Adrienne had been drugged. “Did I forget to mention this?” He put the paper on the table. “GHB. Needed a little help to get Adrienne to—” out of respect for Mrs. Sawyer, Zach didn’t fill in the blank “—well, you know.”

“You know what GHB is, right, Mrs. Sawyer? The date rape drug?” Zach looked to Mrs. Sawyer for a split second, but then looked back to her son, shoving the Facebook posts back to him and pointing to the Can’t Be Fucked code under Adrienne’s image. “We know you couldn’t get the job done without it, Sawyer.”

Zach hated talking about Adrienne in such crass terms. He almost flinched at his own words. But it had to be done. He needed to crack Sawyer and get him to tell them where Carrie was.

Zach stood. “Well, listen. I’ll give you guys a few minutes to talk this over. Sawyer here can tell you what we’re going to find when we run those oral and vaginal swabs. He can tell you what he did to Adrienne while she was under the influence of the drug he slipped to her.”

Mrs. Sawyer winced, but Zach continued. He couldn’t afford much pity for her or anyone in that room at the moment. His only concern was getting to Carrie while she was still alive. He turned his eyes to the lawyer now. “I don’t need to tell you things will go a lot better if he cooperates and leads us to Carrie. If Carrie goes home safely...”

He let the thought hang. No one in that room right now needed to be told what was on the line. Zach walked out and joined Ronan and Shauna in the observation room. The whole scene was being recorded, but the lawyer was smart. He coached them on covering their mouths as they spoke in low tones.

There was no missing the argument, though. Whatever they were talking about, Sawyer’s dad looked like he was lighting into the boy. His mother just looked stunned.

“They’re going to walk,” Shauna said, shock lacing her voice.

“No,” Zach said, but there was surprise in it, not any true measure of denial. He knew she was right, but that didn’t make it any easier to believe.

When he’d walked out of the interrogation room, he’d thought the boy’s parents and lawyers would talk some sense into him. That they’d get him to do the right thing if for no other reason than to save his ass. Even if they didn’t care if Carrie got home or not, they had to know this would go much better on him if she was saved.

They watched in silence as the lawyer motioned for Zach to come back in. He clenched his teeth as he reentered the room.

“I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to hold my client as you’d hoped, detective.”

Normally, Zach might throw back a retort, letting the guy know he planned to hold the guy the seventy-two hours he was allowed. Something in the lawyer’s smug look told him to hold his tongue.

The lawyer slid over a piece of paper. “These are two classmates who will swear they were with Sawyer when he sent the post about Adrienne to the Facebook group. They all went out to eat after that and the boys will be able to testify they saw Adrienne sleeping in the clubhouse when they left. Alive and well.”

Zach shrugged. “So Sawyer came back after and killed her.”

The lawyer shook his head before Zach even finished his statement. “The boys dropped Sawyer off at ten and watched him go into his house. His parents will testify he was home the rest of the night with them.”

Zach nodded and left the room without a word. He’d blown it. He’d shown their whole hand in that interview room and now Sawyer had made up an alibi to cover everything.

He didn’t wait to see what Shauna and Ronan had to say. He went down the hall, headed for the john. He knew his partner would be on top of things. Ronan would get Cal or Jarrod or someone else watching the boy to see if Sawyer led them to Carrie. Ronan would push to get the DNA tests as quickly as possible. Zach could rely on Ronan and Shauna while he blew off steam for a few minutes.

Or an hour.

The slam of the bathroom door against the wall gave a satisfying crash. The captain would be on his ass over that, but damn, their prime suspect was about to walk out the door. Zach had miscalculated. He’d put every piece of their case on the table at once instead of locking Sawyer into a statement and then tearing it apart with the evidence they had. Trapping him in lies. He’d thought as soon as Sawyer’s parents saw what he was up against, as soon as they came to realize their kid’s dick had been in that girl the day she died, they’d press the kid to come clean.

He should have known better. He’d been to the school, heard about the family and the way they coddled their son, the way they threw their status and money around. He should have known they wouldn’t do right by Adrienne. But wouldn’t they want to convince him to reveal where Carrie was to try to shave time off his sentence or avoid facing more serious charges?

Apparently not. Jaw clenched, teeth grinding, Zach focused on his breathing. Shit. He’d just blown that interrogation.

The door opened behind him and Zach turned to see Shauna sauntering into the men’s room. She settled one hip on a sink and looked around.

Her wrinkled nose said it all, but she confirmed her assessment in case he missed it. “This place is a dump. The women’s room at least has a fresh coat of paint.”

Zach was blasted with the insane—completely, utterly insane—urge to thread his fingers through her hair and haul her to him. To let the scent of her, the feel of her body against his, soothe his anger. Kissing Shauna, having her soft curves pressed chest-to-chest, thigh-to-thigh against him would go a damned long way toward alleviating the agitation tearing through him.

He stepped backward. Distance wasn’t just his best friend right now, it’d become a necessity. His response to this woman wasn’t right. He needed to get control and get it fast.

He blew out a huffed breath and ran a hand through his hair before dropping his hand. It was too damned close to what he’d hoped to do with her only a moment before. “Something I can help you with, Shauna?”

Her brows quirked but she leveled him with those eyes. “I’d have handled that questioning the same way you did. This isn’t on you.”

“Cool. Great. Thanks.” He was being an ass. He knew it. But he couldn’t risk her catching onto the effect she had on him.

Pushing her away before she realized he was in way over his head as far as she was concerned was a good plan. A solid plan. Because right now his feelings were all over the damned map with her. And she’d told him flat out she wasn’t interested in even mentioning their past, much less repeating it.

“You’re an ass.”

“I am.” He couldn’t argue with her. She was one hundred percent right.

Her face softened in a way he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen with her. Shauna was tough. She always kept a protective air wrapped around her. She didn’t let emotion show easily. But right at the moment, she looked for all the world like she might be the one to close the gap between them.

Only it didn’t look like she would close the gap to haul him against her and kiss him. No, she looked more like she was ready to start giving out hugs. And damned, if that didn’t sound almost as good.

He took another step back and crossed his arms.

She didn’t move any closer. “This wasn’t your fault, Zach. If you had gone in and started asking him where he was the night she died, we would have ended up with the same story. He was smart enough to lock in an alibi no matter how you presented what we had. We have to work the case, just like always. We’ll get him.”

The words hung heavily between them

“We need to get his classmates in here and question them.” Zach dropped his arms, letting the anger drain from him.

Shauna nodded. “You know, the alibi might help us. The kids claim they left Adrienne on Sawyer’s couch. Let’s see if we can get a warrant to search his house and the clubhouse.” They hadn’t been able to convince the assistant DA to seek more than the warrant for the DNA based on the Facebook post, but Shauna was right. Placing Sawyer with Adrienne in the clubhouse right before her death might be enough. The alibi Sawyer had given them might turn against him.

Zach nodded. “That’s good thinking.”

“Let’s get to work,” she said as she brushed past Zach and left the room.

Her message was clear. She was finished coddling him. There wasn’t time for him to piss and moan in the bathroom. They had work to do.

Zach followed Shauna down the hall.

They had teams out looking for Carrie and there were volunteers combing the areas she might have been in and the area where Adrienne’s body had been found, but it wasn’t enough. If they could get Sawyer to admit to killing Adrienne, they might be able to get him to lead them to Carrie. If Carrie was still alive, her time could easily be running out.