Page 44 of The Girl He Wanted

Above him, the storm continued to rage. It was the perfect weather for what he had in mind; the perfect demonstration of the power of the winds even as he got ready to make his sacrifice to them.

As he drove towards the west of Winterly, he couldn't help but feel a sense of anticipation. The fourth sacrifice was the most important one, and he could feel the power growing within him with each passing moment. Soon, he would be able to complete the pattern, just as Dr. Kostopoulos had laid out. Soon, the Tower of the Winds would be complete.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Paige knew that she couldn’t stop. She'd pushed hard throughout today, and now she'd seen a suspect fall to his death right in front of her. Any other time, that would have been a signal to stop, to rest, to take stock of what was going on.

Paige couldn't rest now, though. There was too much at stake, too many lives that hung in the balance. She couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to this case than they had uncovered.

She was going through Dr. Kostopoulos's study, trying to find anything that might help. Christopher was assisting her with it, working his way through letters and books, reading each one and then setting it aside.

"What exactly are we looking for with all of this?" he asked as he worked.

Paige sighed, rubbing her temples. "Honestly, I don't know. Anything that might give us a clue, I suppose. Something that connects all of this together."

"And what will that look like?"

Paige paused, considering her response. "Anything that might suggest what the killer is planning next if it isn’t Kostopoulos. Or something to prove that it was him. We know that this is about the Tower of the Winds. The patterns, the symbols, the sacrifices ... there has to be some sort of method to their madness, and we need to find it before they strike again."

Christopher nodded, his expression serious as he continued to sift through the documents. "So, assuming that it isn’t Dr. Kostopoulos, you think the killer is going to strike again soon?"

"I think either today or in the next couple of days," Paige said. "Once he hears about the death of Dr. Kostopoulos, that could be a trigger for it, or he could already be planning it. And with the way Kostopoulos was talking up on the roof, I don't like this storm."

"You think that it could prompt the killer to finish his sequence?" Christopher said.

"Exactly." Paige liked that Christopher was willing to go along with her on this, even though she knew that he probably wasn't entirely convinced that Dr. Kostopoulos wasn't the killer. It was good to know that he trusted her like that.

Now, Paige had to live up to that trust.

On impulse, she called up a map of Winterly on her phone, plotting out the locations of the three murders to date. They were spread out around the city, to the north, east, and south.

"The fourth sacrifice is yet to come, and the killer will need to choose the perfect spot for it," Paige said, studying the map. "Somewhere to the west, perhaps? That seems to be the only area left untouched by their twisted pattern, and it fits with the wind that would be next on his list."

Christopher leaned over her shoulder, examining the map as well. "If that's the case, then we need to be ready to intercept them. We'll need to coordinate with the local officers and set up a perimeter to catch them in the act."

"Yes, butwhere?" Paige asked. They couldn't cover the whole of the western part of Winterly in the hope that they would be able to catch the killer. They needed to find a suitably high place that the killer might use for the culmination of his scheme. Even then, they had no way of knowing for sure that the killer was going to strike again tonight.

As the storm howled outside, Paige felt a sense of foreboding settle over her. She couldn't shake the feeling that they were running out of time, that they might be too late to stop the killer from completing their pattern.

"There are a lot of high buildings out that way," Christopher said.

"And the killer has shown that he's prepared to use more than just buildings," Paige pointed out. "There was the balloon, and the water tower."

"What if the killer chooses to use a natural landmark?" Christopher suggested. "Something like a cliff or a hill that's high enough to satisfy their need for a sacrifice but also secluded enough to avoid detection."

Paige nodded, but the thought didn't help. "That only expands the range of possibilities. Unless we can find an exact spot, we'd be wandering around blindly."

Paige went back to Dr. Kostopoulos's work, hoping that it might provide further clues to the location, but as far as she could see, he mostly wrote about symbols and their meanings, not about the necessity of geographical precision. That meant that the killer could potentially pick any high place for his last kill.

No, trying to work out the location wasn't the way that they were going to solve this. They had to think of something else. They had to try to find a way to work out the identity of the killer.

What had their visit to Dr. Kostopoulos's house given them? They'd found a few of his works, heard him talk about how guilty he felt. They'd found the model of the Tower of the Winds with blood on it. At first glance, all of that pointed back at him as the killer.

Paige went through his last book, though, the one with all the notations. Something struck her as she did it. Something she hadn’t noticed before.

"This isn't just in two different colors of ink," she said. "There are two different sets of handwriting here. They’re similar, which is why I didn’t spot it, but there are differences too."

Christopher looked up, intrigued. "What do you mean?"

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