Page 18 of Tactical Revival

My blood runs cold, every single nerve in my body firing at once. I draw my weapon, then reach into my pocket with my free hand and call Lance. It’s all I can do to keep my movements steady.

“What is it?”

“Get the key and come out the back gate. Now. Keep Emigh inside with the deputy.”

He doesn’t ask questions. Doesn’t demand clarification. “On it.” The call ends, and I shove the phone back into my pocket as I study the tree line. Is the person who left this watching me now? Admiring the fact that they got my attention?

“I’m going to find you,” I call out to whoever left the card. “This will not end well for you.”

“You good?” Lance calls out from the other side of the gate.

“Yeah. Don’t open it yet.” I turn back toward the gate, scanning the sides, top, and bottom for any kind of trap, then call out, “Okay, you’re good.”

Lance unlocks the gate and opens it slowly. His gaze lands on the playing card. “What is that?”

“It’s the calling card of a serial killer I put away. He was my last case before I moved out here. Every card we found was one more than the last. He used them to count his victims.”

But why leave it here? Is he trying to get my attention? Freak me out? Or is this just the way it starts?

“Do you think this is him?” Lance questions.

“I don’t know. He’s serving multiple life sentences, and I haven’t heard anything about an escape.” I make a mental note to call my former partner Alaric as soon as we leave.

“It’s possible it’s a copycat.”

“The calling card was never made public,” I tell him. “The only people who knew about it—aside from him—were me, my partner, and the DA.”

“He could have told someone.”

Somehow, the idea that there’s a second killer on the loose is even more sickening than the idea that Gil Morah got out. The former high school band instructor managed to fly under the radar for months, but now that I’ve caught him once, I know every move he would make.

If it’s him, I have every confidence that I’ll find him quickly.

However, if this is a new killer, someone who’s only using the calling card and going after—“Blondes.” I look at Lance. “Morah went after blondes.”

“Emigh is blonde.”

“So is Kleo.”

“Kleo? The doctor said she was hypoglycemic.”

“But what if she’s not? What if he drugged her somehow.”

“You said the guy is a killer, though. So far, no one is dead.”

I look at the card, noting the number two printed in bright red ink. “So far,” I say. “But if this is Morah or someone like him, it won’t stay that way for long.”

With Emigh agreeing to stay with her parents, and Deputy Wallace putting patrols on their house, I finally feel at ease enough to leave and head back to the B&B. Where I’ve been sitting in the parking lot for the last ten minutes, going over every note I wrote down about Kleo Finch’s disappearance and the attempted break-in at Emigh Pillar’s house.

Though the more I look at the photos I took of the window, the more I don’t think it was an attempted break-in at all. They are too meticulous. Scratches made with the sharp edge of something without bothering to pry at the actual window.

I think whoever did it was trying to set the alarm off to get my attention.

My gut is telling me that whoever is doing this is toying with me. Trying to get me hyper focused on them so I’ll miss something.

But what?

Is it possible Kleo wasn’t number one, and I’ve yet to find whoever he went after first? Elijah is looking into missing women who match the description of those he used to target.

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