From Darkness (Hearts & Arrows Book 3)(23)

“I’ll be here.” Anne gave her a sympathetic smile and ran a hand down Josie’s arm. “Good luck.”

“You too.”



Josie hit no traffic, and the city fell behind her as she drove through rural New Jersey with her windows down and radio blaring, her hair whipping around her face, her mind rolling over and over everything she’d learned.

When she reached the coroner’s office, she hauled herself inside and found Dennis in the waiting room, looking rumpled. He sat low in his chair, his tie was a little loose, his coat hanging on his sloped shoulders. He looked tired, his mocha skin ashen, with dark circles under his eyes.

He looked up at her and raised an eyebrow, shifting to sit up straighter. “I cannot believe I’m about to let you in there.”

“You said that last time.” She sat down in a chair next to him. “How did it go?”

He leaned forward, shaking his head as he looked down at the linoleum between his feet. “It never gets easier, and when they’re so young…”

She laid a hand on his shoulder. “I know.”

Dennis glanced at her. “You ready for this?”

“Can anyone be ready for what I’m about to see?”

“Not a single person in the world,” he said as he stood.

They walked down the long hallway and through a set of double doors to the morgue. Metal walls lined one side of the room, marked by a grid of compartments with handles on each. The only sounds were their footfalls, underlined by the hum from the refrigerated wall and the buzzing from the fluorescent lights. Goosebumps broke out up and down her arms when they came to a stop in front of a metal door, and Dennis laid his hand on the handle.

He gave her an apologetic look before he slid the compartment out.

The musty smell of damp leaves hit her nose, and Josie took a step back when she saw the girl on the slab. Her skin was dark and tight, pulled over her bones and cracking like leather, a shocking contrast to the life in her crimson cheerleading uniform. Her hair, which was once blond and bright, was now dull and yellow, thin and sparse.

Dennis handed her a file. “It seems she was in the water for about thirty-six hours before she washed up. We didn’t have much rain after she was exposed, and the dry conditions combined with the plastic she was wrapped in did this to her. The coroner’s report says she died of asphyxiation, determined by a crushed hyoid bone.”

Josie went numb. “Strangled?”

He nodded. “There was nothing to suggest a garrote was used. She was likely strangled by hand.”

Her hands were cold as it clicked together. “Dennis, Rhodes’s high school girlfriend was killed the same way. Raped and strangled with a broken hyoid.”

Dennis stood still. “We believe Hannah was raped.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered with her eyes on the girl.

Dennis hung his hands on his hips. “I need those files, Josie. Can you bring them to me first thing? It’s circumstantial, but it’s a lead.”

“Absolutely. I’ll even bring them to you tonight.”

“Tomorrow’s fine. You look like you could use some rest.”

Josie couldn’t take her eyes off Hannah. “I have a feeling I won’t sleep much tonight.”

“I know what you mean,” he said as he looked down at the girl’s body.

Josie read through the autopsy file and looked over Hannah, feeling the gravity of it all, shrugging off her anger and focusing on what she could change. She could help find who had killed Hannah Mills.



It was almost eleven by the time Josie trudged up the stairs of her apartment, wanting nothing more than a long, hot bath and a tall, stiff drink. She unlocked the door and opened it, freezing in the doorframe when she saw what waited inside.

Her eyes caught every detail.

A lamp lay on the ground, shining light at wrong angles, casting long, odd shadows against the wall. Josie scanned the room, noting that Anne’s laptop wasn’t on her desk and neither was the case file box.

She pulled her gun and silently made her way through the living room with her heart thumping in her chest. She spotted a small pool of blood on the floor and stared at it for a moment with her mind charging through scenarios (maybe she’d cut her hand, maybe the cat was hurt, maybe, maybe, maybe).

It was then that she heard the shower running and moved toward the bathroom.

The sound was so familiar, it convinced some corner of her brain that the common noise meant everything had to be fine. She walked toward the door, a slit of light from the crack stretching toward her like a pathway, drawing her forward. When she reached the door, she pushed it open with her foot, and her arms fell, her gun clattering to the wet tiled floor.

Anne was lying in the claw-foot tub with one arm draped over the side and her face turned to Josie, her blue eyes sightless and dim and empty. Water spilled over the brim of the bathtub, running down Anne’s auburn hair and to the ground, dripping on the tiles, as the shower endlessly streamed down.

“Annie,” Josie whispered, rushing to her side. She touched Anne’s cold, wet face, desperate and disbelieving. “Annie, wake up,” she begged uselessly, the words like fire in her throat.

She laid her trembling fingers at Anne’s bruised, purple neck but could find no pulse. Anne’s shirt was torn, her bra exposed. Her panties were gone, her leggings shredded and hanging off her ankles.