Latent Danger (On the Line #2)(18)

Her brows quirked but she leveled him with those eyes. “I’d have handled that questioning the same way you did. This isn’t on you.”

“Cool. Great. Thanks.” He was being an ass. He knew it. But he couldn’t risk her catching onto the effect she had on him.

Pushing her away before she realized he was in way over his head as far as she was concerned was a good plan. A solid plan. Because right now his feelings were all over the damned map with her. And she’d told him flat out she wasn’t interested in even mentioning their past, much less repeating it.

“You’re an ass.”

“I am.” He couldn’t argue with her. She was one hundred percent right.

Her face softened in a way he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen with her. Shauna was tough. She always kept a protective air wrapped around her. She didn’t let emotion show easily. But right at the moment, she looked for all the world like she might be the one to close the gap between them.

Only it didn’t look like she would close the gap to haul him against her and kiss him. No, she looked more like she was ready to start giving out hugs. And damned, if that didn’t sound almost as good.

He took another step back and crossed his arms.

She didn’t move any closer. “This wasn’t your fault, Zach. If you had gone in and started asking him where he was the night she died, we would have ended up with the same story. He was smart enough to lock in an alibi no matter how you presented what we had. We have to work the case, just like always. We’ll get him.”

The words hung heavily between them

“We need to get his classmates in here and question them.” Zach dropped his arms, letting the anger drain from him.

Shauna nodded. “You know, the alibi might help us. The kids claim they left Adrienne on Sawyer’s couch. Let’s see if we can get a warrant to search his house and the clubhouse.” They hadn’t been able to convince the assistant DA to seek more than the warrant for the DNA based on the Facebook post, but Shauna was right. Placing Sawyer with Adrienne in the clubhouse right before her death might be enough. The alibi Sawyer had given them might turn against him.

Zach nodded. “That’s good thinking.”

“Let’s get to work,” she said as she brushed past Zach and left the room.

Her message was clear. She was finished coddling him. There wasn’t time for him to piss and moan in the bathroom. They had work to do.

Zach followed Shauna down the hall.

They had teams out looking for Carrie and there were volunteers combing the areas she might have been in and the area where Adrienne’s body had been found, but it wasn’t enough. If they could get Sawyer to admit to killing Adrienne, they might be able to get him to lead them to Carrie. If Carrie was still alive, her time could easily be running out.





Chapter Eleven





Shauna opened the door to her small condo, tossing her keys on the entrance table. She opened the closet, pressed her hand to the handle of the small safe inside, and locked her service revolver and badge inside. She had other weapons, ones that weren’t secured since she didn’t have children in the house. These were located in several places around the house. But her service weapon and badge were always secured.

She wouldn’t leave them in the lockbox long this evening. A look at her watch told her it was nearly six o’clock. They hadn’t gotten a whole lot more accomplished, but they hadn’t wanted to stop, either. Not while there was even a slim chance Carrie might still be out there. She was home only for a quick shower and power nap, and to grab clothes so she could change at the station for the next few days.

They had spent much of the rest of the day trying to track any student who could poke holes in the story Sawyer and his friends had given them. So far, they’d turned up nothing. The press, on the other hand, had made the connection to the Marsh Killings.

Ray Lansing’s headline that morning had screamed Marsh Killer Returned, Teen Girls Targeted!

So, they would keep interviewing. This was the part of an investigation that sucked. It was dry work, looking into backgrounds of every employee at the school, especially the new ones. Looking at students and parents, board members. Anyone who might have come into contact with both girls. The list was too damned long.

And they still had no idea how this could tie into the crimes from thirty years ago. Her teammates at the cold case division were scouring through reports, talking to people that had been interviewed years before. There were few witnesses to the girls’ disappearances back then. One girl had gone out for a jog and hadn’t come home. The other was walking home from school and hadn’t made it. Another was hanging out at a party with friends in the woods and wandered away from the group. No one had been able to offer any insight into what might have happened, other than the fact that there were never signs of a struggle found. No location that they could point to and say, “the girl was taken here.”

Shauna focused her thoughts on the thirty-year gap. Obviously, Sawyer wasn’t their original killer. “The father? An uncle or grandfather?” Shauna said aloud as she turned the water on in her shower. She liked it hotter than most and found ideas often came to her as she stood under the spray.

“Could someone in Sawyer’s family have been involved in the original killings?”