Page 32 of Only One More Lie

“I’m sure. It smells sweet—like corn syrup and food coloring. You want to smell?” Ranger held out the bagged hand toward them.

“No, thanks.” Mariella scrunched her nose again. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“We should let Gibson know,” Andi agreed. “At least that way it can be on record if anything comes of this. But I think this is a sick, elaborate joke—nothing more. But we can probably wait until morning. It’s not an emergency.”

Duke knew the truth: None of them were willing to face any other reality.

Because that reality would mean the killer was here at the Borealis Reindeer Camp and was sending them an ominous message.

That wasn’t something any of them were prepared to deal with right now.

CHAPTER 14

The rest of the team had slowly trickled to their bedrooms to turn in for the night.

But Andi and Duke remained in the living room. They sat on the couch in front of the fire with a red-and-black-plaid blanket covering their legs.

With the craziness of today it would be nice to have a few minutes to decompress alone.

“I have a bad feeling about this deep dive.” Andi stared at the dancing flames, mesmerized by them. “I don’t know if it’s because of how gruesome the crimes were or what, but there’s something about this investigation I don’t like.”

“The murders were gruesome. The fact we know this guy will be striking again in four days doesn’t do much for my peace of mind.”

“Same here. This is like searching for a needle in a haystack. I usually like to be more optimistic, but I guess I’m feeling overwhelmed.”

Andi’s therapist had talked to her about those kinds of feelings.

She’d been going to therapy after the deep dive they’d done on Celeste, Duke’s former fiancée. At one point, Andi had beencaptured, and a mad scientist-like doctor had been about to do brain surgery on her.

Andi had been tethered to the operating table and, only moments before having her skull cracked open—while she was fully awake—Duke and the gang had saved her.

For the longest time, Andi had thought the event hadn’t affected her. She tried to stay busy and not think about the horror of the moment.

But her psyche had different ideas.

One of the effects of Andi’s recent trauma was anxiety. She’d never had to deal with it before in her life.

But now she did.

She often woke up in the middle of the night in a panic, covered in a cold sweat with her heart racing.

Through her therapy sessions, Andi had realized she had a lot of issues to work through. The realizations had been humbling and eye-opening, but necessary.

The anxiety that had hit her felt debilitating. Yet she didn’t want others to know that or to think she was weak. One of her mentors in law school had always told her that leaders didn’t show weakness.

For some reason, she was having trouble letting Duke see the severity of her trauma.

She sucked in a slow breath. Instead of sharing her thoughts, she decided to focus on the case. There would be time to talk about her anxiety issues later. Right now, they had less than four days to get this figured out.

The top of her head began to ache again.

She pressed her eyes closed, trying to quell her panic.

She couldn’t have an anxiety attack. Not now.

Please, not now . . .

Duke sensed Andi had something on her mind and waited for her to share.

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