Monica gave a firm nod. The wind on the runway caught her hair, tossing the dark locks and wrecking her smooth style. She ignored the wind and caught his hand, shaking once.
“I’m Deputy Lee Pope, and this here is Deputy Vance Monroe.”
She nodded to the other deputy, then offered her hand.
He caught the slight widening of Vance’s brown eyes. The second deputy was older than the other guy—tall, with ruddy cheeks, dark red hair, and a nose that looked as if it had been broken more than once. Vance seemed to hold Monica’s hand a little bit longer than was really necessary.
“This is my associate.” Her voice rose easily above the wind. “Special Agent Luke Dante.”
He flashed a smile, and when the deputies blinked, he figured maybe he’d used too much teeth.
Reflex. He’d been trying to bite back a pissed-off snarl.
“Sheriff wants us to take you to see the bodies, ma’am.” From Lee. He shifted from his right foot to the left. “You don’t—you don’t really think we got us a serial killer down here in Jasper?”
Luke positioned himself next to Monica. He caught a glimpse of the faint tightness around her mouth.
“I don’t know what you’ve got, deputy.” Monica stared down the guy. “I just know my boss told me to get on a plane.” A little shrug. “So here I am.”
Senior agent.
Hyde had given him a quiet warning before he’d left the office. “Don’t screw up, hotshot. When in doubt, do whatever Davenport tells you.”
They’d trained together. Studied together. Graduated together.
But from the beginning, he’d known Monica was being fast-tracked. Everyone had figured that out pretty much from day one.
The profiler who knew the killers. Whispers about her had floated through every area of Quantico. There wasn’t a test the woman didn’t ace. Wasn’t a drill she didn’t nail.
She’d graduated at the top of her class. Then been swooped up by Special Projects the next day.
He’d worked his cases over the years, busted ass and proven that he knew the victims better than pretty much any-damn-body. Yeah, he’d shown he could crack the cases, and he’d gotten the coveted interview with Hyde.
“True serial killers can be very rare,” Monica said, voice cool and easy, with just a hint of her own southern drawl creeping through the words. “Your Sheriff Davis simply wanted us to come down and give our opinion on these cases.”
“We got a twisted f**k out there.” Deputy Vance shook his head and spat on the ground. “Ma’am, I saw what he done to that Moffett girl.”
He’d seen, too. Thirty knife wounds. All on the face and chest. Pretty girl, at least in the before pictures. After…
Deputy Vance was right. Twisted f**k.
Though Luke doubted Monica would consider that a professional term.
“Her body’s still at the morgue?” Luke asked. From the report he’d been given, he knew the victim had been found two days before, dumped like garbage in an abandoned house.
If the deputies hadn’t raided that place, looking for a drug dealer…
“Yeah, she’s still there.” Lee stepped back. The sun glinted off his badge. “You folks need to get settled at the motel or you wanna—”
“Take us to the body,” Monica ordered just as Luke said—
“The body.”
The deputy yanked out his keys. “Sorry… but you two are gonna have to ride in the back…”
In the back of the squad car. Nice.
Monica climbed in first. Luke sucked in a breath, smelling her, warm woman and a hint of that light perfume she’d always worn, and he tried his level best not to touch the woman as he crowded in beside her.
His thigh brushed hers. Focus. He cleared his throat and managed to say, “The second body—I didn’t see much about that victim in my files.” He leaned toward the gray cage that separated him from the uniforms. The better to get away from Monica’s soft flesh.
The engine kicked to life, and the car shot forward.
Vance, buckled in the passenger seat and with the radio at his mouth, glanced back at him. “That’s cause there wasn’t much left of Sally to see.”
• • •
Morgues sucked. Luke hated ’em, always had.
And the dead—they were everywhere. Hell, he’d joined the Bureau to save lives. Not to sit with the dead.
But Monica, she sauntered around the room, those heels tapping, staring at the dead woman from every angle, her bright eyes narrowed and intense—and not the least bit hesitant as she fired question after question at the ME.
“Time of death?”
“What was the killing wound?”
“Any drugs in her system?”
“These marks on her face… that look like a pattern to you?”
Her white-gloved fingers pointed right above the woman’s left cheek.
The ME, Doctor Charles Cotton, was a balding man with some of the palest skin Luke had ever seen. Cotton eyed her with a worried stare as she circled the table like a vulture coming to pick apart her prey. The two deputies were there, huddled at the back of the room. Lee kept glancing at the floor, and not the body, and old Vance had his lips pressed so tightly together Luke thought the guy might draw blood soon.
Not morgue guys. He didn’t blame ’em, not one bit.
Luke swallowed and tried to ignore the scent of death that shoved up his nostrils.
“So our killer took his time and did all of this…” Monica motioned to the criss-cross of wounds on Patricia “Patty” Moffett’s face and chest, “before he decided to kill her.”
A prick who liked to play.
“That’s what my report says.” Cotton crossed his thick arms over his chest. The guy’s half-eaten pizza sat on a table behind him.
The guy ate in here with the bodies? Jesus.
Monica glanced over at Luke.
Ah, his cue. Luke took a step toward the body. The stiffs really weren’t his specialty, and he hadn’t thought they were Monica’s either.
The killers—those guys were all hers.
But if one thing had been drilled into him in those profile classes at the Academy, it was that even dead victims could talk. You just had to know how to hear them.
He glanced at Patty’s wrists. Saw the purple circles.
Restraints.
Luke stalked to the end of the table and lifted the sheet. The same circles mottled her ankles.
“No drugs.” At least not when the slicing started. You didn’t restrain someone who was out cold. “She was awake and aware while the ass**le carved her up,” he said, fury boiling through him. The woman had been small, petite, and she’d just turned twenty-nine.