Page 7 of The Killer She Knew

Jeana pulled the tissue in her hand apart, close to tearing it in half. “If she was, she didn’t want me or Tamra to know. Now I wish I would’ve pushed. Maybe then she wouldn’t have died.”

Guilt settled heavy on the girl’s shoulders. Something that would stick with her for the rest of her life in Leigh’s experience.

“We recovered her keys and wallet with her remains, but there isn’t any sign of her phone.” Ford took a single step deeper into the dorm room, sucking all the air out of it with his size alone. “Did she usually keep in on her?”

“Alice never went anywhere without it.” Jeana sunk back in on herself. The shock was setting in. They wouldn’t get much more out of her.

“We’ll see if we can locate it with GPS. Until then, it would help if you let us know if it and any other of her belongings turn up.” Leigh’s phone vibrated from her slacks pocket. She pulled it free, her lungs seizing as she read the caller ID. Ava. “Excuse me a moment. I have to take this.”

Marshal Ford’s eyebrows rose as he followed her out of the dorm into the narrow corridor. This entire place had been coated in an odor. Something wet, musty, and stale in the air.

She answered. “Ava? Everything okay?”

“When are you coming back? I’m sick of being in this room.” Thunder resonated through Ava’s side of the line. Deep and booming. “I mean, how many more episodes ofThe Officeam I supposed to watch before you come back? Isn’t there a law or something that says this is neglect?”

Funny. Ava usually went out of her way to avoid contact with other humans. Well, humans with Leigh’s face anyway.

Leigh checked her watch. Three hours since she’d left the hotel. The trees jerked side-to-side through the window at the end of the hallway. The storm had picked up. Rain pitted against the glass, the sound pecking at her nerves even this far down the corridor. Damn. The crime scene was at serious risk. Mother Nature was fighting to wash away vital evidence every second the techs left it exposed. Tarps would help, but only for so long. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting to have to go so long without checking in, but I’m almost finished here at the university. Did you get breakfast?”

“The menu here sucks. They don’t have anything I want.” Leigh swallowed back a laugh at the stroppy, hormonal answer. But, at the same time, Leigh couldn’t blame Ava’s hormones for their relationship. She’d been in Ava’s position. Mad at the world. At her new reality. At the unfairness of it all. Rage was what got her to where she needed to be in life, and it wasn’t until Leigh had faced the past that she’d been able to let go. To feel something more. Ava wasn’t alone. But she hadn’t realized it yet. “Can I at least go down to the lobby? I saw vending machines on the way in.”

Yay for junk food. Just what growing bodies needed. “Sure. Give the front desk the room number, and they’ll charge?—”

The line went dead.

“Ava?” Leigh pulled the screen back. She’d been disconnected. Tapping her adopted daughter’s name from her contacts list, she tried to get back through, but the call refused to connect.

The lights overhead cut out.

“That can’t be good.” Ford stared up at the ceiling, almost willing the power to surge back to life with a single look.

Light from the window at the end of the corridor barely reached her. Dorm room doors swung inward as second-year students poked their heads out. Groans and complaints competed with thetick tick tickof the rain pummeling the windows. No power, no Wi-Fi. Leigh headed for the single source of light and caught sight of a traffic light down the block. It was dead. Campus power was out, but the university generator should be kicking on to pick up the slack. Except it wasn’t.

Ford closed in behind her, and her skin warmed at the proximity. What was it about him her body wanted to automatically accept? She’d never allowed people to hover in her personal space. But in just a couple hours, he’d managed to slide through her boundaries. “How are we going to review the surveillance footage from campus security without any power?”

“The school’s generator should be kicking in.” Why wasn’t it? Leigh’s heart rate pulsed at the bottom of her throat. She checked her phone again. The cell towers would each have their own backup generators in case of emergency, but she still wasn’t getting any service. What the hell was happening out there? Another gust of wind ripped through the trees outside the dorms. An oversized branch twisted and broke before their eyes. It slammed into the ground with an impact that could’ve broken the sound wall.

Low murmurs from nearby students swarmed her. Some laced with disbelief. Some with fear.

Leigh backed up a step, reaching for Marshal Ford with the side of her hand against his chest. “Contact the university first-responder staff. We need to get everyone on lockdown and begin to shelter in place.”

This wasn’t just a storm.

This was something far worse.

And it was headed right for them.

Universities had emergency preparedness drills and protocols. But she never thought she’d be stuck in the middle of one during a murder investigation. Seemed Mother Nature herself was trying to aid their killer at this point.

Her thoughts went to Ava. How to get to her, how to assure herself she was safe. Leigh turned toward Ford, who looked as if he’d accidentally swallowed an insect, and shoved through the throng of students staring out the window. Jeana was one of them, her gaze wide and pupils dilated in a combination of fear and grief. “No one is leaving this campus.”

Not even their killer.

FIVE

Durham, New Hampshire

Wednesday, October 9

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