Page 84 of What We May Be

Abel shook his head. “Only after hours.”

“Fuck!” He left the others in the locker room and stepped into the hall, making a three-sixty rotation, his eyes searching for anything they might have missed. Nothing. Fucking nothing. The killer had been right under their noses, and they’d missed them completely.

What if Charlie had been in that locker room? Would Rachel have found her body instead of a vase of roses? His breathing grew ragged, and he spun for the wall, bracing his forearms and leaning his forehead against the cool plaster.

A small, warm hand smoothed across his back. “Breathe, Trevor.” Maggie spoke softly at his side. “Nothing’s going to happen to Charlie. We’ll find her.”

He opened his eyes and held her steady gaze, letting Maggie’s calm confidence settle his panicked mind. Letting Abel’s issuing of orders calm him more.

To Maggie: “Have CSU run the vase and note for prints.”

To Diego, who had followed the commotion downstairs: “Coordinate with Jaylen to cross-check the lists Charlie made against anyone who’s worked here, past or present, who had keys.”

“Someone needs to check on Rachel,” Trevor said. “She was pretty unsteady.”

“Unsteady?” Diego said. “She seemed fine upstairs just now. She said she had an early dinner with her sister at the hospital.”

“Fuck, she’s a surgical nurse, isn’t she?” Trevor asked Maggie, who nodded.

“Trevor, you can’t think—” Abel started, but Trevor didn’t hear the rest of what he said, his mind already connecting the dots.

Rachel knew what Craig did to Charlie in high school. She’d dated Trevor. She had the means to get her hands on Diprivan and she had keys to the station. And by virtue of her job, she knew everything going on in Hanover.

The person who’d told them about the roses downstairs.

Because she’d put them there.

Abel must have reached the same conclusion. “Put out an APB on Rachel Hawkins,” he told Diego.

The detective hesitated, no doubt reluctant to consider his colleague a murderer or to incur his wife’s ire for putting out an APB on her best friend.

“Do it,” Maggie seconded.

As Diego hustled up the stairs and Maggie hustled to the lab to grab a tech, Trevor turned to Abel. “It all fits, except Rachel doesn’t know about Alice.” Abel lowered his chin, noticeably deflating, and goose bumps rose on Trevor’s skin. “Abel, she doesn’t know, does she?”

The chief glanced up, guilt swirling in his dark eyes. “I told her.”

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