Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81150 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81150 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Since I can’t deny his claims, I keep my mouth shut.
My silence bothers the marshal more than Grayson and Macy. His jaw ticks as his hand on the table balls into a fist. “Are you so set for revenge you don’t care who you take down to get it? Hasn’t she been through enough?”
He pushes over a photograph similar to the scene I arrived at after my wife rang me sobbing and scared. Except this woman’s hair is more snow white than golden, and tiny freckles adorn her nose, making her appear more youthful than she is.
“Who is this?”
“Henley’s mother,” Grayson answers against Marshal Levalley’s wish for him to remain quiet. “She was the Night Killer’s fourteenth victim.”
As I scrub my hand over my head, I recall the horrifying scene I faced almost six years ago. I had just started my shift when Caroline called. Since I was feeling guilty about the way I left, I slipped out of a meeting to take her call.
Through a barrage of painful groans, she told me she loved me before making me promise I’d take care of Lucy.
I begged her to tell me what was happening, but the line went dead.
Reports state the killer slit her throat after disconnecting our call. I found her tied to a dining room chair in the living room, beaten, bruised, and unresponsive. Lucy was crying in her bouncer at her side. Her golden hair looked red since it was coated in blood. She wasn’t injured. Caroline’s killer smeared blood over her when he moved her from her crib to the bouncer.
He didn’t kill children or the agents responsible for the death of his “one true love.” He took what he believes we took from him. He stole the loves of our lives.
And he’s gotten away with it since no one knows who he is. He’s evaded capture for years because despite his victims being the wives and husbands of federal agents, our cases aren’t linked. Nothing connects us… except…
“What is it?” Macy asks when my inner monologue freezes me.
I lift and lock my eyes with her remorseful pair. “Why did Henley leave witness protection? If she knows who killed her mother, she’d want him dead as much as the rest of us, so why would she skip her detail? Also…” I pause to ease the anger roaring through me. “Why hasn’t a suspect been arrested?” Macy isn’t as good at schooling her features as Grayson is. “You still don’t know who he is.” I stand from my chair so fast it smacks into the frosted glass wall behind me. “You said she could identify him!”
“She can,” Grayson defends. His voice drops a decibel before he murmurs, “We just need her to go under again one more time.”
“Go under? What the fuck do you mean go under? She isn’t an agent.”
“Henley wasn’t meant to be home the night her mother was killed,” Macy explains. “She was at a sleepover with a friend, but when they got caught by a local unit for underage drinking and he recognized her last name, he did her father a favor.” She breathes out heavily. “His patrol car pulling into the driveway startled the perp. He pushed past Henley as she snuck in via the basement. Her backside shattered the glass pane opening as she fell, and a wayward shard wedged into the killer’s wrist. When he dug it out, she spotted his tattoo. It was a symbol with text written in Latin.”
“Allegedly,” Marshal Levalley says again. “None of this is official.”
Grayson is back up in his face quicker than I can snap my fingers. “Because your unit was too incompetent to write it up.”
It takes me a few moments to respond, but when I do, it is shouted and aggressive. “Why the fuck wasn’t any of this written up? It is an identifiable feature of a man we have nothing on, yet you left it off official reports!”
“Because we didn’t know of its existence until we gained access to Agent Moses’s personal files.”
“Agent Moses?” I check. “The rogue agent who was killed by a fellow agent?”
Macy swallows but remains quiet, leaving the talking to Grayson. “Yes. He was the lead agent on Mrs. Elsher’s investigation and Henley’s handler.”
“Handler? Once again, why are you treating her like an informant instead of a witness?”
I sling my eyes to Macy when she jumps back into the conversation. “Henley tried to move on from her loss when her father committed suicide on the second anniversary of her mother’s death. She went to college in Florida and started dating.”
“Beau?” I’m shocked I can speak. My throat is tight with anger, and my hands are balled so firmly, my clipped nails are digging into my palm.
Grayson nods. “One morning when she woke up groggy and confused in his bed, she witnessed an exchange between Beau and a man she described as being approximately six three, with dark hair, tanned skin, and an emblem in a foreign language on his left wrist,” Grayson adds. “She was adamant it was the same man who barged past her the night her mother was killed”