Was it a coincidence that Carol had used some of those words? I didn’t think so. I turned to Ezra. “She’s part of this,” I told him.
“Part of what?”
“Carol is in league with The Scent Stalker.”
She glowered at me. “Prove it.”
“Not a denial.” Ezra rested his hand on his holster. “That’s good enough for me.”
“She said there’s something coming tonight,” I told him. “If we can’t stop it, someone’s going to burn.”
“You’ll burn, they’ll burn, everyone will burn,” Carol seethed as Reese put her in handcuffs. “You’ll all burn in hell.”
My stomach lurched as the implication settled in. Carol was in cahoots with the man tormenting me. Had she been in league with him this whole time? Whatever the case was, I couldn’t shake the awful feeling that tonight was the big finale of their plan.
“We have to find her partner,” I told them. “We have to find him and stop him.”
“So...” Broyles scratched his jaw. “Does this mean Jones isn’t the guy?”
“Jones is not the guy,” Ezra confirmed. “How long do you think we have?”
“Light up the sky like the fourth of July,” I told him. “I think as soon as it’s dark, all bets are off. We have about four hours to figure it out.” How many people would suffer if we couldn’t? As far as I was concerned, even one would be too many.
ChapterSeventeen
“No, no, no,” Allison Green whined. “This is over. Finished. We caught the bad guy. The people cheered.”
“Edgar is not the bad guy,” I insisted for the fifth time. “Did he know how his coin ended up in the alley behind the florist?”
“He says it isn’t his coin,” Shawn replied, “but his fingerprints were on it, plain and simple.”
I shot my ex-husband a sour look. “Why are you so determined to pin this on Edgar?”
“I’m not,” he protested. “I’m just following the evidence.”
“Sorry, chief, but I’m with Nora on this,” Ezra interjected.
“Big surprise,” Shawn muttered. He sighed heavily. “Go ahead. Tell me why she’s right.”
Oh God, it was starting to feel like when we were married. He would get bent out of shape when I was right, and he was wrong. We didn’t have time for this absurd banter.
Ezra respectfully said, “We’ve gone through his house, his garage, his car, and his office. We haven’t found a single other piece of evidence linking him to the crimes.”
“Then why did he run?” Allison demanded. “Innocent people don’t run.”
“That’s a myth,” Shawn told her. He was starting to act like a reasonable man. “Lots of innocent people run just like the guilty ones. Sometimes people are just scared.”
“In two days, Edgar was injured in a blast and almost got gassed at an AA meeting. I think we can all understand why he might’ve been scared,” I added.
The mayor huffed. “Fine, but if Edgar isn’t the guy, are we sure Carol was alone in this? Maybe she’s the Scented Stalker.”
Ezra cringed at the name. “Nora said she heard a male voice.”
“Through a mask,” Green shot back, losing her already dissipating cool. “It could’ve been staged just like the rest of the visions.”
I wanted to fault her logic, but her reasoning was sound. “That doesn’t mean she hasn’t already set the trap,” I said. “She set up the memories ahead of time. There’s nothing to say she didn’t set the traps up ahead of time as well.”
The mayor let out a frustrated growl. “I just got the town back on my side.”
