I fought her at first. I didn’twantto let go of the pain. I held it to my chest as if it were my child. I cared for it and nurtured it. I let it drain every spark of life from me. To me, at that time, letting go of the pain meant letting go of my best friend. My sister. Mrs. Baker walked me to the counselor’s office and set up standing appointments every single day. I think they both knew that if I faltered even once, I likely would have ended up in the ground next to Mariposa.
I blinked away the memories of the darkest time in my life and brought my sister’s face back into focus. I couldn’t help but smile back at her picture. She was so beautiful. Prettier than I could ever hope to be, though she had told me all the time that I was the prettier sister. I traced her image with my gaze, taking in her dual-colored eyes. One was a light blue, the other a pale green that was almost aqua. The same way mine were.
It was her senior year photo. She was wearing a red cap and gown, and her honey blonde hair, which was several shades lighter than my own had been back then, was falling in soft waves around her face. The slight dent in her chin matched my own as well. The dimples in her cheeks were all hers, though. Mine were just creases that appeared when I smiled. I remembered how I used to poke them to make her laugh when I was a little kid. I had always loved it when she laughed.
A folder dropped on my desk, covering Mariposa’s face, and I had to bite back a curse and a snarl at the disrespect. Without looking up to see who had done it, I quickly moved the new folder away and carefully closed my sister’s case file.
“Did you even hear me just now? Hello?”
I slid the folder back into my satchel and drew in a deep breath before looking up at Monique. “I’m sorry, I was concentrating on something. What were you saying?” I gave the other woman a forced smile as she frowned at me, then glanced over to where I had slid my satchel back under my desk. She shook her head and cleared her throat, likely having figured out what I had been doing. It was no secret that I was related to a serial killer’s victim.
“Yeah, sorry. Anyway,” she said, waving away the awkwardness. “I thought you’d like to know that a new case just dropped in our laps.” As she spoke, I pulled the folder back in front of me and flipped it open. I started scanning the documents as she continued speaking.
“A new suspected serial killer in a small town in Texas. The victims are young women between the ages of twenty and thirty, with the majority being in their early twenties. Blonde and brown hair. Blue to green eyes. No information on the unsub yet.”
“Five different bodies of young women found over the course of two and a half years,” I muttered, my eyes raking over the information as my chest began to feel heavy with the hard thumps of my heart. “The bodies were carefully arranged to appear as if the women were partially covering themselves from prying eyes.” I forced myself to keep reading as Monique hummed in confirmation.
“The first one was a little over two years ago,” she said while pointing out the timeline on the report in front of me. “The second and third were spread out over several months to anearly a year. The last two, though, picked up speed. Six months, then two months later.”
“He’s escalating,” I said, my throat feeling tight.
It wasn’t an exact match, but it was damn close. Mariposa’s killer had the same type of victim. He didn’t pose them the way these women were. Instead, he had dressed them in white gowns, leaving them to look like angels. That was where he’d earned the name The Angel Killer. The wounds, though, were eerily similar. Enough that I felt my vision grow dark around the edges. I had to force myself to take calming breaths.
“He used a blunt, round object similar to a pole to beat them. Their wrists show ligature marks indicating they were not only tied, but that they were also hung from them. Maybe from a hook of some kind.” I nodded my head numbly as Monique continued relaying the information she’d obviously already memorized.
I looked up at where she was leaning against my desk and tapped the folder in front of me. “Why did you bring this to me?”
She glanced back down where my satchel sat on the floor, then back to me. “I just know that if it were someone I cared about who was murdered by an unsub in a case with more similarities than could be coincidental than this one,” she tapped the folder much the way I had, “I’d want someone to tell me about it.”
She closed the folder before picking it up and tucking it under her arm. I stopped her before she could walk away. “You read my sister’s case?”
Monique rolled her eyes. “Girl, my whole job, and yours, is to investigate serial killers. Wouldn’t you have done the same if you knew I was connected to one?”
I stiffened in my chair, hating the way her words had made it sound. But she had a point. I gave a jerky nod of my head. “Do you know if anyone else has?” I asked through my throat that feltas if it had a tight band around it, threatening to cut off my air supply.
“Parker, I promise you, whatever is in your head, nobody thinks. We don’t feel sorry for you. Wesympathizewith you. There’s a difference. Anyway, I thought you’d like to know because I’m about to drop this case on Supervisory Special Agent Walker’s desk. I imagine that he will be forming a small team to head to Texas very soon.”
With those words ringing in my ears, she turned and walked away. I wouldn’t say that Monique and I were friends. Still, we had a good working relationship in the six months I had been assigned to my department after graduating to Special Agent. With what she had just done for me, I was beginning to wonder if our lack of closeness might be due to my tendency to keep people at arm’s length without even realizing it.
Pushing the thought away for later, I turned to my laptop and opened up a search browser. Typing in the information I remembered from the file, it didn’t take long to find news articles. There were plenty to choose from. Serial killers were always headliners. Murder was generally considered sensational news, but throw the wordsserial killerin the mix, and the news outlets knew they would get all the internet traffic their servers could handle.
The murders, according to the news reports, happened in and around the small town of Selene, Texas. The name had a small spark of recognition igniting in the back of my mind, but after wracking my brain, I shook my head. It was probably nothing. Ignoring the niggling feeling, I read the rest of the article, then opened another. It was almost a copy and paste of the first article, so I opened the third.
There was nothing useful that I hadn’t already read in the case file. With a disappointed huff, I was about to click out ofthe browser when I paused. My cursor hovered over the X in the corner as I sat frozen.
There was a picture of what was likely a popular location in the town, accompanying the article that discussed how the deaths had affected the local citizens. In the photo, there were a few people, but one had caught my eye.
The man was gorgeous. Judging by the people around him in the photo, he looked to be about six foot five, and even from the distance the photo was taken, he looked big. Not big as in hefty—big as in the man was fucking ripped.
He was in the background of the picture, standing in front of what looked like a diner, with one of his muscular arms draped over the shoulder of an older woman with gray hair. The poor woman only came up to his armpit. My body felt uncomfortably warm as I thought about how that was probably the same place my own head would reach.
The photo was just a little too grainy to make out specific features, but the overall effect was enough to make me fan my cheeks. The man left quite an impression, even without details.
I started to press down on the trackpad to exit, but paused again before I could click it. Instead, I dragged my finger over to the top of the screen and clicked on the drop-down menu. “It’s for research,” I whispered to myself as I pressed down on the trackpad until it clicked.
I glanced around the open office my colleagues and I shared as I stood up and walked as casually as I could. I snatched the sheet off the printer, then paused. Grabbing a few pieces of blank paper sitting to the side of the machine, I covered the printout, then walked back over to my desk. I was so self-conscious while looking around to make sure no one was watching me be a creeper that I almost fell onto the floor.
My butt only hit the edge of the seat as I tried to sit down, causing the chair to slide back. I let out an embarrassing squeakthat would have been more suitable belonging to a drowning squirrel. I caught the edge of the desk with my hand and cleared my throat. With all the dignity I could muster, I scooted back until I was sitting properly.
