Page 12 of Haunted

“You fucking bitch.” Blood dripped down his chin onto my shirt as he squeezed my neck harder before standing over me. “You’ll pay for this. Mark my words. You. Will. Pay.”

With a parting kick to my ribs, he took off into the night, leaving me there on the ground, shaking and crying.

Bang!

I jolted out of the dream as someone pounded on my window.

“You can’t sleep here,” a deep voice boomed. “Move it or I’ll have this piece of shit towed.”

Scrambling to the front seat, I cracked the driver’s side window enough to see outside. A beam of light pierced the darkness, blinding me briefly before I heard his quick inhale.

“It’s you.”

3CROSSROADS

Keaton

Our killer had been on the loose a whole lot longer than local authorities initially thought. When Nelson began to search the database for cold cases within a hundred-mile radius where the victims were missing their left ring finger, the hits started coming in fast and furious. It would take days, maybe weeks, to weed through them all but so far, seven more women had been added to our victim board in the forty-eight hours since we’d been pulled into the investigation Koen had dubbed “the Truck Stop Slayer.” Seven women whose lives were snuffed out in a brutal fashion.

“You ready to get out of here yet?” Noah rounded the corner from the bathroom.

The rest of the team had taken off twenty minutes before to grab dinner from Chip’s deli a block down the street from the office. I couldn’t seem to get out of my head long enough to join them, which was why Noah had stayed behind. He knew I needed time and space to work through the implications that there was someone out there followingin my father’s murderous footsteps, he simply refused to let me do it alone.

“Yeah.” I blew out a harsh breath and shut the lid to my laptop.

“Good, because I have a hankering for one of Chip’s double-decker BLT explosions.”

“Go on without me. I’m gonna head home, watch a bit of mindless TV, then hit the hay.”

“No can do. I was given strict instructions to drag your grumpy ass along.”

“By who?”

He leaned a hip against the edge of my desk and cocked a brow.

“Lanie,” I concluded.

“Yup, and there’s no way I’m risking her wrath, best friend or not. She’s like the Hulk on steroids when you piss her off.”

His description was spot on. Lanie was a Rottweiler in a French bulldog body. She may only be five five and a buck thirty soaking wet, but I’d seen her take down men almost double her size without breaking a sweat.

“You’re a chickenshit.”

I stood, snatching my jacket from the back of my chair, then followed him out the front door.

“I value my life. There’s a difference.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Noah.”

A busy day of sorting through case files meant less time for my thoughts to drift off to the elusive Henley Graves. Now though, my mind was overloaded with the only two images of the brunette beauty I’d been able to uncover during my search. Her senior picture from Lansdowne High School in Baltimore and of course her driver’s license photo, which was sitting on my kitchen counter.

Two days ago, I took Sammy up on her offer to enlist Nelson to do a deep dive into her background. Using FBI resources for personal reasons was frowned upon in most offices, however, once I explained the entire situation to Duncan and Waverly, they were more than happy to lend their support.

What we’d uncovered was both tragic and mysterious. She was an orphan, having lost her mom five years earlier. There was no father listed on her birth certificate and other than her maternal grandparents—who didn’t appear to be in the picture—she was all alone in the world. Within weeks of the funeral, she moved several states away to attend Marshall University. Her tuition, room, and board were covered by multiple high-dollar merit-based scholarships, which explained how someone with virtually nothing could afford to go to such an expensive institution. That’s when things got a little hazy. Her grades were good, like top-notch exemplary, yet according to the school’s formal records, she was expelled six weeks before for plagiarism. Red flags started flying all over the place. Something strange was going on.

“Did you get any answers from the professor?” Noah’s question brought me out of my musing, just in time to walk through the door of the deli.

I’d set up a meeting with one of her professors, not only to get a feel for the type of person she was, but also to see if she had any friends in the area she may have stayed with after the expulsion. The girl lost everything with one accusation and from what I’d learned, she had been on track to have an incredible career as a social worker.

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