Page 18 of Just Hide

Her plan would work. It would have to be fast and precise, but she knew she could do it. She had done it before, and she would do it again.

She had the tools, and the knowledge of the house and the woman, that she needed. Now, too, she had the experience. She'd wielded that sharp knife before, and she hadn't hesitated. Only pride and triumph had filled her. There had been no regret, no distaste. And no fear. She was far beyond fear.

"I don't fear what I'm going to do. But you will feel it," she whispered, power flooding through her as she stood. "You'll feel fear. You need to. Because what you have, what you are, is only an illusion. It's nothing more than a fantasy, a veneer. I'm going to rip it away from you because someone must."

But then, disappointment.

The family from next door came outside. They were looking at something, discussing something, even as her target pulled up in her driveway.

She was ready for this and could adapt. Swiftly and invisibly, she melted away, taking a side road back to where she’d left her car.

It wasn't going to happen tonight but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all because she was so well prepared.

Tomorrow morning was the alternative time she had in mind, and she couldn't wait for the endless hours between now and then to pass. She’d be there, with some disguise, some props to help her remain invisible until the time was right.

Then she'd be back, and next time, she'd have the knife in her hands, ready to use.

She was an eagle, and she was ready to soar.

CHAPTER TEN

It had sounded so easy, but it wasn't. Cami felt desperate as she tried yet another direction that would fit her theory. With no other leads to follow, she'd been trying to figure out, for hours now, which hunting ground this killer had used, with the facial recognition software in place.

How had he hunted? In which set of data had he found his victims? Nightclubs? Dating sites?

The problem was that she was finding it slow, tedious work to access the records of these places, and the ones that were in the public domain weren’t yielding any results.

She’d managed to access a couple of venues she’d thought were likely but hadn’t found either of them there. She guessed the software was too new. And to find both these women, the killer must have had access to a pool of data that contained both faces.

It felt as if this killer was laughing at her from far ahead. The thought was making her angry and even more determined to find out who he was.

The more she thought about it and looked for alternative ideas, the more it seemed to circle back to the same basic truth. He had to have had access to many people in one place or from one source. It was just that she couldn't find the source.

Sighing, her fingers flying over the keyboard, glancing at the phones which Connor had brought along so that she could refer to them, Cami tried yet another idea.

"Function venues in the area. Big ones, who want to keep out unwanted guests and who have the money to invest in software to help them." She muttered the words and then she turned to both the phones to analyze the check-ins yet again and see if both women had attended such a venue in the past few months. This was so time consuming. It seemed like it had been dark outside for hours.

Her attention was distracted by Connor, speaking on the phone. She’d been so focused on her research that she hadn’t registered it had rung a minute ago.

"That's interesting," he was saying, "and helpful, for sure. Thank you."

Cami looked up. Right now, any helpful information was a win. "What was that?" she asked curiously.

Connor rubbed his shoulders, easing stiffness from them.

"That was the pathologist. He's completed the second postmortem, and he has some findings," he said.

"What findings?" Cami asked, feeling encouraged. Hopefully, this could guide them.

"He's had a look at the knife wounds made in both victims' necks and bodies. It seems that in both cases, the first wound was a stab wound to the chest. That was the killing blow and then the other cuts and slashes were made when the victims were already dead.”

“What can that first blow tell us?” Cami asked.

“He says it was accurate and made with a very sharp blade, which would not require a huge amount of force and was not made from a downward angle."

"What does that mean?" Cami asked, frowning as she considered the logistics.

"Well, motive wise, it proves to us that the killer was doing more than necessary. This wasn't just a kill. It was almost as if there was a need to destroy or disfigure the bodies afterward. But not the faces. Those were left untouched," Connor remembered.

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