Page 49 of The Butterfly Killer

"Where are we going?" Burns unwrapped his food and started eating. He was too hungry to wait a second longer. He didn't even care if he was getting crumbs all over himself.

"I may have found something."

Burns took another bite, waiting for Mercer to tell him what it was. The silence that came after made him look over at his partner. Mercer looked back at him, again, not saying anything.

Burns swallowed, but he couldn't taste anything. Mercer not telling him meant he was afraid the car was bugged.

Mercer drove to an empty park. They exited, leaving behind their phones. They took their food though Burns didn't know if he'd be able to stomach eating.

The table Mercer chose for them to sit at was under a willow tree. The long limbs draped around them, shielding them evenmore from the outside. Burns wished he had his phone to take a picture or video of it. In the small town where he was from, there wasn't much nature to look at and especially not big looming trees like this. If it wasn't a storefront, it was open fields for farming. There was no in-between beside the small personal trees that got barely bigger than a bush.

He'd been so caught up in the tree he was startled when Mercer started talking.

"I was looking into the pre-existing cases, trying to find connections to other cold cases," Mercer said as he unwrapped his sandwich with surgical delicacy. "I noticed that whenever there was a murder, there also happened to be a raid on this suspected cartel family. The Hernandez."

Burns's brows furrowed. "The Butterfly Killer has connections to the cartel?"

Mercer took a bite. He chewed and swallowed. "Not only that, I suspect someone on the force is getting paid off. Each time one of these raids is supposed to happen, the Hernandez get a tip about it."

Burn looked at his sandwich with disgust. "What does that mean for Marcus?"

They might not even be looking for the copycat. Marcus might have been picked up by the cartel. If so, he might be long gone.

Mercer, whose appetite didn't seem at all effected, took another bite and swallowed before he answered. "He's definitely gotten himself into something bigger than a serial killer."

"You mean a serial killer who is protected by the cartel."

Mercer smiled. "Precisely."

A shiver went down Burns's back as he watched Mercer finish his food.

14

Marcus couldn't pin-pointthe moment when the dynamic between him and Roman changed. It had happened gradually, sometimes at a snail's pace, sometimes in the blink of an eye. The day's in which he was forced to stay here at the cabin were spent sleeping, eating, and reading.

He would sleep when he was tired in the bed and when he was awake, he took residence in the large comfy chair that almost swallowed him in the cushions. He'd gone through five novels, one each day, so he knew he'd been here a total of a week. At least. He didn't know the exact number of days since he'd been out when Roman had brought him here.

But it was long enough that someone must have realized he was missing. He wondered if anyone knew of the rapist/murderer at the end of the block and if anyone in the FBI knew the copycat killer was the one who'd kidnapped him.

All of that was up in the air. The only thing he could be sure about was that Roman was true to his word. Marcus wasn't going to die. Not until Roman got what he wanted.

It was still unclear what that was and while Marcus wanted to know, he was oddly content in waiting for the big news. The daysin the cabin didn't seem to be waning. It felt like the snow would never stop falling and that the days spent here would only grow.

And he was going insane.

He slammed the book he'd been reading,The Lost Voyager,closed and threw it onto the shelf beside the chair. He tossed the blanket off him and onto the bed as he made his way to his feet.

As much as he wanted to complain to Roman, his broken leg was healing better than before. It wasn't crooked and while it still caused him some discomfort, the pills Roman gave him each night helped.

He still struggled to move around the cabin and he wasn't going to ask Roman for help. Not for anything. He didn't even care he was starting to smell like shit. Roman would just have to deal with it.

He made his way to the kitchen to make himself something to eat. There wasn't much, but there were the essentials at least. Rice was his go-to meal because it was the easiest thing to prepare when he could really only use one hand. He had to use the other one to stabilize himself.

He eye-balled half a cup of rice and poured it into the one small pot. He rinsed the rice with a leisure pace. He thought of the stack of papers surely getting higher each day on at his desk. He snorted as he thought about how the other cops on the force had to actually do their job. He also thought about Blevins and how he was probably going mad without his punching bag. Without Marcus there, who was he going to pick on all the time?

After the fourth rinse which was probably unnecessary, he also eye-balled the water and placed the pot on the two-burner hot plate.

He rummaged under the cabinet to find the small collection of spices. He'd been mixing a variety together each time he made his rice because that was all the flavor he was going to get. He plucked a few at random he thought would go together.

---