Page 27 of Just Hide

As her vision faded, her last thought was that her mother had been right. She should have listened to her.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Another murder. The horrific reality of it chilled Cami as she climbed into the car next to Connor, ready to speed to the scene.

"Now?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied, his voice hard. "She was on the way home from a gym session, I understand. The killer got her just outside her front door."

"In broad daylight?"

"Seems so. She was seen, collapsed outside the door, by a passerby, who called in the crime. A man walking his dog."

Cami steeled herself for what she would see, knowing that she would be arriving at an active murder scene in just a few short minutes, especially given that Connor had his lights and siren on and was speeding through the streets.

What would she find there? Were there going to be any clues to discover?

The thought of another dead woman, and the killer still out there somewhere, made her stomach twist in dread.

But in the meantime, she could, at least, look up the information she'd taken from the workplace they'd just visited. Gatherings had stored the facial recognition software, and Cami had downloaded as much of it as she could, and now she could see if Sammi Jackson was anywhere on it.

As Connor drove, Cami checked, plugging the USB into her laptop, balanced on her knees for the seesaw ride, and stabbing at keys while the car sped and veered.

"I'm not getting anything recent on her from this venue," Cami said. "Based on what I’ve downloaded and what I’ve been able to see of Sammi’s check-ins on her social media, it doesn't look like she was there in the past ninety days. That's all I had time to copy."

"We're going to rule it out in that case," Connor decided. "We need to look for other sources. We need to pursue new theories. We can't go too far back in the past. Not with three recent murders."

This confirmed to her that the venue itself could not be the common factor.

But perhaps the software still was,Cami thought. That software truly was excellent. What she'd seen of it so far was impressive. The coding was top notch, and looking at its stats, she saw that the ability to pinpoint faces boasted one of the highest percentage rates she'd yet seen. She was sure that Sammi’s face would be stored on their main database, thanks to those Ts and Cs that demanded it.

And then, to her dismay, it was time for her to tear herself away from this because they'd arrived at the scene.

Now, there was a recent murder to look at and, perhaps, clues to be gained.

Cop cars lined the quiet suburban street, lights flashing, and Cami heard urgent voices shouting as she climbed out. There was already a number of onlookers crowding around, including a man, holding a dog on a leash. The man was in his sixties, with graying hair and a shocked expression on an otherwise round and pleasant face. The dog, a German shepherd, sat obediently next to him, its nose and ears twitching as it took in the sights and sounds of the panicked scene.

Cami climbed out, taking a deep breath, drawing on all her courage and doing her best to lock the memories and worries away. It was difficult because the old memories of her sister’s disappearance and the recent trauma surrounding Ethan flared up like flames, hot and destructive inside her.

Pushing back the thoughts, she doused the flames, using all her self-control to do it.

"I … I just glanced to the side, and there she was!" the dog walker was telling the cop next to him as well as a few onlookers who were listening, with concerned expressions, to this account of the body being discovered.

"At first, I thought she'd collapsed, but when I got closer, I saw all the blood," he added, causing one of the women nearby to shake her head, a sickened expression on her face.

"Sir, we need to speak to you in private and get an official statement from you. If you could come this way?" the police officer said, a hand on his shoulder.

At that moment, the knot of people that were along the garden path moved aside, and Cami drew in a harsh breath as she saw the corpse. There was a lot of blood. It stained darkly over the bricks, spilled onto the grass, and pooled in the victim's long, dark hair. Cami didn't want to get any closer, and in any case, she didn't think she'd be able to because the coroner, wearing his gloves and mask, was already on the scene, with a stretcher standing nearby.

But that small glimpse had given her something else. Something that had immediately struck her as a strange detail and one that was out of place in this otherwise tidy yard.

"Connor, do you see what I saw?" she asked, finding to her surprise that curiosity was overcoming her unease.

"What did you see?" he asked.

"The hedge. It's got a sort of step cut in it, a couple of yards away from the front door, on the right-hand side. And there are some hedge clippings on the ground there."

She pointed. Connor looked that way.

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