Springfield, Illinois

Durango drove up to the apartment complex and slammed his car into park, rushing toward the yellow police tape that was hanging all around the outside of Kyle’s building. He didn’t give a fuck about what that detective was doing back at his place. He needed to see for himself, needed to see if the bullshit he was feeding him was really true.

A uniformed cop grabbed him just as he slipped passed the first set of tape, yanking him up against the wall and jerking his arms behind his back in preparation for the cuffs.

“You not see the yellow tape, asshole?” the guy hissed in his ear.

“That’s my partner’s place you people are tearing all to hell!”

“Too bad for you.”

“Hey!” someone called from the top of the stairs.

Durango felt the cop turn away, and he took the second of distraction to slam his foot into the cop’s kneecap. The cop cried out, crumpling to his knees. Durango ran for the stairs, rushing up to Kyle’s apartment.

“Hey,” the same voice said, grabbing his arm before he could just rush inside. But Durango was done fighting, the sight of the crime scene investigators moving around her living room enough to make it all real.

It was too much like the morning he returned home after the call about Sarah.

The air left his lungs and he fell to his knees, not sure he could do this again. Not with Kyle.

Fuck, Kyle!

“Mr. Masters.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Masters.”

It was a long few minutes before he could regain his feet. He saw her wave away someone behind him—probably the cop he’d kicked—keeping him shielded from what was happening until he was ready to deal with it. He had to keep telling himself this wasn’t Sarah, this wasn’t five years ago, this wasn’t the Harrison Strangler.

He finally pulled himself to his feet, carefully avoiding the view inside Kyle’s apartment.

“What happened?”

The cop held out her tiny hand. “I’m .”

Durango hesitated, frustration burning on the tip of his tongue with unkind words. “Durango Masters,” he said grudgingly, accepting her offer of a handshake.

“I understand you used to be on the job.”

“I was. And I’m sure you know why my career ended.”

“I’ve heard rumors. Detective Fedor had the opinion that this case might follow the same modus operandi as the crime you were accused of. But I’m not as convinced.”

“She was strangled.”

It was a statement, not a question. Durango had suspected as much the moment that other detective told him that it was Kyle’s death they were investigating.

“She was.” She gestured for him to move up on the landing and stand with her outside a neighbor’s door. She pulled out her notebook and began reading to him. “A call came into nine-one-one just after seven this morning, an anonymous male caller reporting a dead body in this apartment. Patrol officers arrived ten minutes later and broke the door open after receiving no response to their knocks. They found Ms. Peters in the bedroom.”

She looked up at Durango as though to gauge his readiness for the next part. He worked hard to keep his expression neutral.

“She was lying across the bed,” she continued, “her hands resting on her chest, her legs crossed at the ankles. She was dressed in a black t-shirt and a pair of white men’s boxers. And there was a green t-shirt wrapped around her neck.”

Durango nodded, the image she was describing too vivid in his mind’s eye.

The shirt around Sarah’s neck had been white.

“Time of death has been tentatively set at somewhere between midnight and four in the morning.”

“Were there signs of a break-in?”

“No. We believe she knew her killer and let him, or her, into the apartment.”

Durango nodded again as he ran his hands over his head. He had the worst fucking headache of his life! He couldn’t think straight, couldn’t think of all the things he needed to know.

“Her parents—”

“An officer has been dispatched to inform them.”

“I should go and be with them.”

“That would probably be a good idea.” She touched his arm lightly to keep him from leaving. “Fedor is convinced you did this, and he has friends in high places, that’s how he was able to get a warrant so quickly. He’s going to come after you hard.”

“I’ve been there before.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t do it. I was out drinking all night last night. There’s a girl at my condo right now who can testify to that.”

“What was your relationship like with Ms. Peters?”

“It was good,” Durango said too quickly, his thoughts playing over the argument they’d had before she left the office last night. “We were friends as well as coworkers.”

“She was a part owner in your business?”

“Her father provided most of the capital we used to open our doors. But we’ve more than paid him back, and the business has been self-sufficient for more than eighteen months.” He dragged his hands over his head again. “Kyle’s title was officially vice-president of operations. But I considered her my equal partner.”

The detective tilted her head. “She wasn’t your partner?”

Durango sighed. “It was complicated. The contract we had says that she’s to earn a percentage of the profits the firm makes over the course of the next fifteen years and that she has a thirty-five percent say in any decisions that affect the running of the business. It also guarantees her a job for life.”

“But she wasn’t a partner?”

“No, not really. But she did most of the public relations work, most the of advertising. The business wouldn’t exist if not for her.”

Detective Hyde nodded. “What happens to her contract now? Does her father step into her place, or someone else?”

“No. It all reverts to me.”

There was a spark in her eye that Durango knew. She thought she’d just heard a motive.

“I wouldn’t kill her over thirty-five percent. Christ! I took in more than three million last year because of the firm. Why would I quibble with her over a measly million?”

“Every little bit counts, you know? Especially when someone’s in debt because of a long, drawn out trial.”

Durango clenched his fists at his side, turning away from her as he fought back his frustration. “Look at my financials! You’ll see that I have no debts left over from the trial or anything else. My mother left me a trust fund that was pretty much depleted by the trail, but it paid all my legal bills. And I lived on fucking ramen for a year when we first opened the firm to put my earnings back into the business.”

He shook his head, this whole thing feeling too familiar. He didn’t want to go down this road again.

“All right,” she said softly. “Is there anything else I need to know? I don’t want there to be any surprises down the road.”

“Nothing. Kyle and I were good, we were friends. I have no reason to want her dead.”

“Okay.”

He gestured toward the apartment. “Can I go in? I want to see her . . . the bedroom.”

Detective Hyde hesitated, but then she shrugged. “It looks like they’re about done. I don’t think it’ll hurt anything.”

He didn’t wait for her to escort him. He charged across the narrow landing and stepped over the threshold, a knife turning in his back as Kyle’s familiar belongings struck a chord inside of him. He’d been to this apartment a dozen times over, sitting in the small living room going over the books, making dinner while they talked about the way they managed operations. He teased her multiple times over the last year for still living here, telling her she should take her cut of the profits and go buy herself a nice house somewhere. But she always insisted that this place was more suited to her personality. She’d spent years decorating it. She didn’t want to have to start over somewhere else.

Cops stopped and stared as he made his way slowly into the apartment. The kitchen was immediately in front of the main door. He turned right and walked into the teeny living room. His expert eyes moving over the familiar objects, looking for anything that might be out of place. It seemed perfectly kept, the way Kyle kept her home. But there were several framed photographs on a shelf that had been laid face down. None of the cops seemed to have noticed, but Durango did. And he knew what was in those photos.

They were pictures of him and Kyle. One was on the day they opened their doors at Mastiff Security. One was of them with Kyle’s father in the lobby of their new office building—they’d only moved into their current building seven months ago, having worked out of a much smaller space in another building downtown—and the last was the two of them at a charity gala a few months ago. Kyle was proud of those pictures, the driving force behind having them taken. She was the one who was big on making memories and documenting everything.

Why would she lay them down that way? Or was it her at all? Was it the killer? If so, why?

The rest of the living room looked as it had the last time Durango was there except for the fingerprint powder that was on everything.

He hesitated before going down the narrow hall that led to the bedroom. He knew her body wasn’t there anymore, but knowing she died there made him sick to his stomach. He chewed on the inside of his cheek, running his hands over the top of his head one more time before he pushed himself forward.

Like the rest of the apartment, there didn’t seem to be anything missing or out of place. The quilt was on the floor and the sheets were mussed on the bed, but that could have happened from a restless night’s sleep. But he knew that wasn’t the truth.

He moved into the room, his stomach in his shoes. He ached all over, his head pounding. He’d never felt quite this close to what it must be like to be on death’s door. He felt as though the weight of the world was on his shoulders, as though he was trying to run underwater. He’d never been in this room, but he’d been in other rooms like it. Too many. There were similarities between this room and those others, similarities that he’d been hoping he wouldn’t see.

The way the shade on the lamp was tilted upward.

The way the pictures on the walls had all been taken down and stacked against the wall.

The way the mirrors were covered with blankets, jackets, whatever he could find.

Durango turned and rushed from the room, barely making it to the kitchen before losing the last of the booze from last night in the sink.

He knew it would never end. He’d known he would come back. But he stupidly thought he could out run it. He thought if he left Chicago, he would leave that nightmare behind him. He should have known better.

This was the Harrison Strangler. He was back.