Scott’s voice sounded like it was coming from far away at first. “Charlie?” Her stare stayed glued to the photo in her hand. It was an old shot, but she wouldn’t ever forget that face. Even just yesterday, she’d recognized those eyes, burning through as if they were searing down to her soul. She’d known then. Her mind just hadn’t wanted to admit it, trying to protect her. But the evil had been obvious in those eyes—just as present as it had been ten years back.

A hand reached across and rested on her upper arm, shaking her slightly. “Charlie? What do you mean he tried to kill you?”

She turned to face Scott, frowning at the concern on his face. His brow was furrowed and his mouth set in a thin line. “It was back home. Oklahoma. A town almost the same as Monroe. People looked out for each other.” Charlie matched Scott’s frown as the details raced through her mind. She’d spent the last decade trying to forget any of it had ever happened, but now it seemed like she’d never be able to turn off the barrage. Image after image pounded through her mind.

The dark night, lights in the alley, following the path to the woods behind the diner, calling out. Had she imagined seeing the waitress that had served her in the diner? She’d been leaving as Charlie was heading to her car, and she wanted to slip her an extra tip. She knew Mary had been going through a rough time lately, even if she would never admit it. She stood on her own two feet and would never accept “charity,” as she called it. Charlie respected that and wouldn’t do anything to draw attention to her in public. But she knew what Mary was going through.

She’d been on the call the previous month when Mary had collapsed at home, unable to even make it off the floor by herself. Breast cancer, she’d told Charlie, but had sworn her to secrecy. It hadn’t been long enough since starting chemo for her hair to fall out, but the infection from her compromised immune system had struck anyway.

Mary had been back at work as soon as she could stand, and although she’d refused Charlie’s offer of help, she could at least sit at a table in Mary’s section every night after shift and leave a generous tip. Mary had caught on after a while, and she’d handed it back to Charlie with her receipt and a smile that night. Hence the impromptu parking-lot meeting. The only problem was, somewhere between the door of the diner and her car, when Charlie was digging around in her bag for whatever notes she could grab, Mary had vanished.

It was when she heard the scream that Charlie knew she hadn’t imagined Mary’s appearance. She hurried back to the diner and saw the purse lying on the ground near the Dumpster. She wasn’t imagining that, either. Any more than she’d imagined the blood-curdling scream coming from the woods behind the diner.

Charlie’s legs moved before her brain engaged, pumping with energy she didn’t know she had after working for a full twenty-four-hour shift. Gravel gave way to leaves underfoot as she powered into the forest, small tree branches slapping at her legs as she ran. She had no idea where she was going or what she was running toward, just that she’d heard the scream and she could help. Afterward, she’d spent hours analyzing why the hell she’d done it. What exactly had she thought she could do when she got there? If there had been a gun . . . a shudder went through her. If Daryl Scranton had had a thing for guns, then she’d probably be dead right now.

“You still with me, Charlie?”

Scott. She’d forgotten he was there again. “It’s the serial-killer capital of the USA, you know? Oklahoma. And that’s not even counting McVeigh.” Another shudder. “That was before my time, but guys at my station there still talked about it. How they’d deal if something like that ever happened in our town. Then 9/11 changed the way we all thought about domestic terror forever.”

She shook her head, forcing her focus back to the present. To Scott. She was letting her thoughts run away with her, imagining every terrible thing she’d ever encountered, and then every horror story she’d heard from EMT and paramedic colleagues. She didn’t have any such grand tales. It had just been her, Mary, and Scranton, standing there in the forest on that cold, blustery night, a knife glinting in his hand.

Thank God he didn’t have a gun.

Charlie hadn’t had one, either, had never carried one. But one look at Mary lying on the ground, bleeding heavily from a wound in her chest—maybe more than one—and Charlie hadn’t needed one.

“I ran at him,” she said. Her voice was low, almost a whisper. “He didn’t see me coming. It was dark, and I think he was . . . he was too . . .” she hiccupped and swiped the back of her hand across her itchy cheek. It came away wet. When had that happened? The hand still resting on her arm squeezed gently. “He was too focused on the blood seeping from Mary’s body. He was almost transfixed by it.”

She looked up at Scott. He face was passive, but the tight lines around his eyes told another story. “I rushed at him, tackled him, I suppose you’d call it. It didn’t do much except make him lose his footing, but it was enough. We both went down and when we came back up, I had the knife.”

It had felt cool in her hands, the handle bone white while the blade dripped with red. “He must have tried to grab at it in the struggle, because now his hand was bleeding, too.”

She’d stared at it that night. Transfixed. She’d had no idea what to do next and so they’d circled each other, her holding the knife out in front like some kind of desperate protection while Mary bled out slowly at their feet. Charlie didn’t need to imagine what a knife like that could do to someone. She’d already seen it firsthand, more times than she wanted to think about, just a few years into her career.

Could she do that to someone else? Slide the knife into their body. How much force would she have to put behind it? Would it be fast or slow? She knew anatomy. If she positioned it just right, she’d miss every rib and hit an artery. He’d drown in his own blood, maybe even before he hit the forest floor. Maybe she should go for his back instead and take out a lung. Her stomach revolted suddenly at the calm choices her mind was making on how to fatally stab someone, and she lurched forward, swallowing heavily to avoid vomiting all over Mary.

Mary.

She really should move closer. Try to protect her while checking how much she was bleeding. Could she risk a look down?

Charlie shuffled two steps to the right, until she had Mary’s body in her line of sight. They started the dance again—Charlie and the man. Mary lay still, her chest rising but more slowly and much more shallowly than Charlie would like.

Watch. Move. Duck. Dodge. Jab. Move.

It could have been five minutes or five hours. To Charlie’s mind, it was all the same, until somewhere out in the darkness she heard “Freeze, police!” and then “Drop the knife!”

She dropped it and fell to her knees.

“They recognized it,” she said to Scott. “The guys from the station. They’d been stopping by for a late-night coffee and seen my car in the parking lot, doors open and bag still on the front seat. Thank God they’d recognized it and come looking for me.”

“She was still alive? Mary?”

Charlie nodded. “Yes. Barely. One of the guys called it in while I managed to slow the bleeding. It was just enough for her to hang on until we got her to the hospital. Mary survived, Scranton was arrested, and no one died that night.”

Scott nodded, his face still grim. “So he was arrested? He’s in jail?”

“Arrested, yes.” Charlie scrubbed at her face. “In jail, no.”

That got Scott’s attention. “Why the hell not?”

She rubbed at her eyes again, suddenly tired. The edges of her vision bobbed and weaved. Damn concussion. Maybe she should go lie down for a bit.

“Why isn’t he in jail, Charlie?”

She flopped back on the couch, suddenly out of any energy to move. “Technicality, complete fuckup . . . call it what you will. Someone fucked up the chain of evidence, DNA test . . . I don’t know. I didn’t want to know. I gave the police my statement, but you see, Mary didn’t die, so . . .”

Scott nodded. “There was only so much they could charge him with.”

“Assault with an attempt to kill. They pled him out to avoid embarrassment.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth. “He was a marine—a local hero. Never mind that he was discharged on suspicion of rape. That was the rumor, anyway.” She shrugged. “Who knows what was really true. I still don’t. He got three years. It took less than three weeks for me to leave town.”

Unlike her, Scott still sat rigidly on the couch, and when those words left her mouth, every muscle in his body tightened. It was nearly imperceptible, but Charlie still saw it. The nerves tying her stomach into knots flew back to life. Was Scott worried she had done something she shouldn’t, that she’d brought her problems with her to Monroe? She took her time looking up to meet his gaze again, but when she did, compassion reflected in his eyes. That, along with an edge of anger. For her or about her? “I’m sorry if I’ve caused you any problems. I should have told you at the beginning, it was just so long ago and I’ve tried to put it out of my memory. I—”

Scott held up a hand and she stopped talking, jerking a little. How she could be exhausted and yet wired at the same time, she didn’t know. The compassion in his eyes flared, replaced with guilt. “Shit, Charlie. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Scott sat back, running his fingers through his hair, a wry smile on his face. “Shane would have my head if I ever upset you, but Sweetheart, I need to know this, at least. Why did you leave town? Was someone threatening you?”

There were those jitters again. They seemed odd, out of place—as if this had all happened to someone else. Maybe the years of wishing that it had, of trying to put it out of her mind, had dissociated her from it. God, if only it could stay that way.

She thought back through the years, trying desperately to look at it all through fresh eyes. Had she missed anything back then? It was probably useless. True, ten years had passed, but if she’d missed the fact that her eccentric patient was a fucking murderer, then she couldn’t trust her judgment on anything.

“Not in exact words,” she said, choosing her own carefully. “But it was clear things were going to be . . . uncomfortable for me if I stayed.” She looked up at Scott, forcing the memories to the surface while trying to stuff down the emotions that came with them. She managed, sort of.

At least Shane was still out on his errand. If there’s one thing she could be grateful for, it was that she didn’t have to go through all of this while he was there. She’d already loaded way too many problems on him, and she’d be damned if she cried in front of him again. The fact she’d done that in front of any of the guys at the firehouse was mortifying, but with Shane, especially so. It didn’t make any logical sense. Shane had made it clear time and time again that she could be herself around him, but that didn’t make it any easier to let go.

He was already treating her with kid gloves after the day before, nearly driving her insane that morning when he’d tried to tell her she wasn’t well enough to push buttons on the microwave, for heaven’s sake. How would he look at her if he knew she’d faced off with a serial killer, alone in a forest?

Charlie held in a snort. If she told him what she’d finally spilled to Scott, she doubted she’d see the outside of her apartment, probably for months. Shane would have her wrapped up in cotton and under his protection before she even noticed he’d moved.

So why did that suddenly not seem like such a bad thing? Hanging out in her apartment, waking up every morning next to Shane . . . that would be a pretty sweet way to start the day. She looked back over at Scott. Better get this finished with. Maybe then he’d give her a lift over to the firehouse and she could check in. She hated being away from there for too long. Her fingers got itchy when she didn’t work.

“He was well known in town, as was his family. Anyone who was anyone never really believed the rumors about him. Well, that’s what they said in public, at least.” She shrugged. “There weren’t any problems, though, not before that day. But I was just me—regular resident, normal person. I had friends, a job, but I wasn’t part of ‘society’.” She air quoted as she spoke and then lowered her hands. The next topic still haunted her when she let it sneak into her dreams. She hoped it wouldn’t start again now.

“There were others, you know. Bodies that were found over the years before that, all with knife wounds. Some girls who just disappeared. Maybe they ran off with boyfriends, maybe something else happened to them. No one knew.”

“And you think Scranton was responsible?”

“Scott, the look in his eyes that night.” Her hands twisted together in her lap and Charlie felt the weight of his hand on her forearm again, offering what comfort he could. She was suddenly cold. Maybe it wouldn’t have been such a bad thing to have Shane there, holding her, wrapping her in his warmth while she forced the words out. She suppressed a shiver. There was no going back now. Just get it finished and move on. Surely Langley, Scranton, whoever, was gone, left town now that law enforcement had figured out who he really was. “He looked exactly like he did up on the mountain ridge last night. Like he was going to kill me. How long until he succeeds?”

Scott drew in a sharp breath. “If there’s one thing I can promise you, it’s that I won’t let him get anywhere near you. None of us will.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, punching at the screen as he dialed. “I’m calling Jesse. I bet he still has some contacts, probably some who’ll do him a favor now that everyone knows how much the FBI screwed him over. Then we’ll work out what we do from there.”

Before he could dial Jesse’s number, the phone rang in his hand. Scott’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and Charlie peeked at his phone screen. Why would Shane be calling Scott? Did he know he was still here, or was there news he wasn’t telling her?

Scott’s voice cut off her galloping thoughts. “Shane? What’s up, Man?” He went silent for a moment, only seconds, before his face went grim. “Where?” he barked into the phone. Silence again. The fluttering in Charlie’s stomach sank, filling it with lead. “I’ll be there in five minutes.” Pause. “Of course I’m bringing her. Sit tight, and get to where there’s people, if you can.”

He hung up the phone and turned to her. Charlie tried to talk. Inside her head her mind was screaming—what the hell was going on?—but her mouth wouldn’t cooperate. Neither, apparently, would her legs or arms.

Scott moved quickly, dialing another number on his phone before barking something into it, then picking up his papers and shoving them back into the folder. He moved over to the coat rack and grabbed her jacket, draping it over her shoulders and practically slipping her arms through it before holding her elbow and helping her stand. Thank God her feet stayed beneath her and she remained upright. Scott stopped moving like a small hurricane and turned to look at her dead-on, locking his gaze with hers. At the look in his eyes, her voice finally came back, croaky but there. “Scott? What happened?”

His gaze never left hers. “Charlie. Shane’s going to be okay.”

What? “Of course I know he’s going to be okay. It’s just a sprained shoulder.”

Scott’s brow furrowed in confusion. “You didn’t know about his apartment? It was nearly burned out yesterday. The best guess is arson. He went there this morning to meet Mason and check things out, but Mason must have left. Scranton attacked Shane.”

That time, her legs gave up the fight.