“Thankfully, I don’t have to introduce Ewan to my parents,” Olivia said.
“So, I’m guessing your talk when he returned the car didn’t go well?”
“No, it went fine. I just… I don’t know how I could ever be with him now.”
“You can’t see yourself forgiving him? I mean, I get it. It’s hard. I wear proof on my skin of Eamon’s violence. It took a lot for me to forgive him… but it was easy after the Darling case. The way he saved my life when I stepped on that IED—I’ll never forget what that explosion did to him. There was no hope for me after I saw that level of sacrifice. I knew I would love him forever.”
“It’s not that I can’t forgive him… wait, back up.” Olivia twisted in her seat as if looking at her partner would change the words she’d heard. “You stepped on an IED? People don’t survive that.”
“If Eamon had been human, he wouldn’t have. He knocked me off the pressure plate and shielded me from the blast. It blew his back to pieces.”
“But he was shirtless at the lake. He’s fine.”
“He told me he cut his wrist in front of you to demonstrate his healing. Imagine that, but stretched across a torso missing every inch of skin and muscle.”
“No thanks.” Olivia shook as if trying to shed that image. “I knew something happened on that case that you weren’t sharing. I just hadn’t expected something quite so fatal.”
“I wanted to be honest with you. I really did… at least I can be now… if you’d like that?”
“I think so.” Olivia returned her gaze to Erik’s house. “As long as you don’t lie to me again.”
“I won’t tell you what isn’t mine to share.”
“But you don’t have to lie.”
“I don’t have to lie,” Bel repeated. “So, Ewan?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I can forgive him.” Olivia shrugged. “I wouldn’t know how to tell me his secrets either, but forgiving him and letting him back into my life are two different things. Do I really want to be with someone who hides life-altering information? Do I want the burden of trying to rationalize him to my parents or bears for kids?”
“Kids…” Bel trailed off. That dreaded topic wouldn’t leave her alone. “I don’t think I have to worry about those.”
Her trilling phone saved her from having to explain that comment.
“Emerson,” Agent Jameson Barry said when she answered on the second ring. “My team followed up on the embalming fluid from the mermaids, and I have updates for you.”
“Oh, awesome. I’m putting you on speaker.” Bel clicked the button and placed her cell on the center console.
“Don’t get too excited. It’s a lot of dead ends,” Barry said. “We tried to question Blaubart, but he refused to speak. Without hope of parole, he has no incentive to help us. My team also found a black market listing on the dark web for what we think is this fluid, but the sales weren’t conducted electronically. The listing’s wording is predominantly code, but what we could translate suggested that sales were either made in person or through drop-off locations. There’s no digital trail linking the sellers or the buyers. Personally, I’d bet money that our Mermaid Killer bought his supply directly from Blaubart, but professionally, I have no proof.”
“Both the Matchstick Girl and the Mermaid Killer operated for at least a decade,” Bel said. “What are the chances that two serial killers lived in the same town for that long, completely unaware of each other? One froze girls, and one drowned them. One watched them die, and the other tattooed them. Do we really think they were strangers?”
“I doubt they were friends,” Barry said, “but oblivious to each other? That’s a hard pill to swallow.”
“And if the Mermaid killer knew Jax Frost, he knew Charles Blaubart too,” Olivia said. “But we already looked into Frost’s known associates. We found nothing.”
“You wouldn’t,” Barry said. “They would’ve kept their distance from one another.”
“Hey… Prince & Sons did the signs for both the funeral home and the aquarium.” Olivia’s eyes lit up. “What do you want to bet they installed the signs at the news station too?”
“Where Jax Frost worked.” Bel smiled at her partner. “Barry, I’m going to hang up and call the station because if Prince & Sons did their signs, that’s our connection.”
“Installing signsat the funeral home, aquarium, and news station might be a connection between our killer, Frost, and Blaubart, or it could simply mean that we have one reputable sign business in the immediate area,” Griffin said after the detectives delivered their morning briefing. “Trust me, I want this to be significant, but we need something concrete before I can even think of asking the judge to sign off on a warrant.”
“That’s what’s driving us nuts.” Olivia collapsed onto the office couch. “We have all these theories, all these coincidences, but nothing technically illegal. Nothing that’s considered evidence. The aquarium deletes its footage after a few years. There are no fingerprints, no witnesses, no DNA, no physical, or trace evidence. He’s going to get away with this.”
“Let’s not spiral yet,” Griffin said. “A case of this magnitude cannot become a cold case. Not on my watch. Our killer made a mistake. They always do. Some mistakes are just harder to find.”
“This one is exceptionally hard,” Bel said as a deputy knocked on the office door.
