Seconds to Live (Scarlet Falls #3)(52)

“Do you need a ride?” she asked.

“No. I called Grant a few minutes ago. There he is.” He pushed off the vehicle.

Stella turned her head to see an oversize pickup truck parked on the road just beyond the cluster of emergency vehicles.

“Please call me later.”

“I will.”

With a regretful glance, he turned and walked away.

“Detective Dane!”

Stella turned to face a dozen reporters. The afternoon heat wilted her, but she sucked it up and braced for the media onslaught.

Six microphones were in her face in seconds.

“Is this case related to the woman who was found on Monday?”

Damn. Stella was too tired to think of a noncommittal response. She leveled the press with a serious look. “I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”

“Two women were found dead in the same week. Does Scarlet Falls have a serial killer on the loose?”

The chief was going to have a fit.

“Speculation at this point is pointless and irresponsible.” Unable to summon a drop of politeness, she shot the offender a glare. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go earn my salary.”

Stella broke away. The forensics team was still crawling over the crime scene, but they’d be occupied for the rest of the afternoon.

She went back to Brody, grateful for his experience as they reviewed the scene with the forensic team. Typically a death warranted more than a few off-color remarks. But the gallows humor they used to cope with the horrors of their jobs was absent, and the team worked with an uncharacteristic gravity as they laid out a grid and began collecting evidence.

“This is not your average dead body, boys and girls,” Frank said in a low voice as he slipped paper bags over Dena’s mangled hands. “I know you always do your best work, but let’s take extra care with dotting i’s and crossing t’s. I have a bad feeling about this one.”

The same creepy-crawling sensation drifted over Stella’s skin.

This wasn’t just a dead body. It was a message.





Chapter Twenty-One


Mac paced his cabin. When had it seemed so small and isolated? Never. Before this week, he’d craved solitude like a drug. Now, the silence around him sounded dead. He pivoted, took three strides, and crossed the living room again.

No matter what he did, he couldn’t get Stella out of his head. The defeated look in her eyes at the crime scene was permanently etched in his brain. He viewed Dena Miller’s death as a personal failure, and he knew that Stella did, too. But unlike him, Stella couldn’t escape the sight. She’d spend the afternoon studying the body and the scene. Even from a distance, the sight of Dena Miller posed on that bench had brought back images of Cheryl that left him shaken. Close up, the sight must’ve been horrifying, and Stella would see it for the rest of her life.

Enough.

Mac strode for the front door. Grabbing his sunglasses and helmet from the counter, he retrieved his bike from the shed. The throaty rumble of the engine drowned out the quiet. He navigated the rutted lane that led to the main road. As soon as his tires hit blacktop, he opened up the throttle. The wind whipped at his clothes, and the vibrations under his body hummed in his bones, mirroring the fury coursing through his veins.

A prickly sensation drew his gaze to the mirror. He wasn’t surprised to see a black SUV hovering ten car lengths behind him.

He was being followed.

Son-of-a . . . He was not in the mood for this. Or maybe he was.

He turned off onto a narrow road that snaked through the woods to the Scarlet River. Two wooden tables occupied a picnic area near the water. A trail opened off the clearing. Mac parked his bike in plain sight and jogged twenty feet down the trail. Then he looped around through the underbrush and picked a spot at the bend in the road, right where a driver would see his parked Harley.

Mac waited behind the fat trunk of an oak tree.

The SUV came around the bend and slowed to a crawl, as if the driver was deciding whether or not to follow. If he was smart, he’d turn around.

The vehicle stopped exactly where Mac predicted. Only one figure was visible through the windshield. The man got out. As soon as he closed the vehicle door, Mac launched himself at his midsection and tackled him. They rolled in the damp earth. The man was thin and wiry and squirmed out from under Mac. Jumping to his feet with the speed of youth, the man whipped out a switchblade.

“Oh, you want to play with knives?” Mac pulled his father’s KA-BAR from its sheath on his ankle. The KA-BAR was more than a knife. It was a jungle survival tool that could chop wood, slash through foliage, and still maintain an edge sharp enough to slice ripe tomatoes. That flimsy, folding blade was a butter knife in comparison.

Mac lifted his gaze from the weapon to the man’s face and got his first good look at him. The man was just a kid.

He was beyond thin, nearly gaunt. The sallowness of his skin and the hollows in his cheeks marked a lifetime of poor nutrition. Silver hoops pierced his ears, nose, and one eyebrow. Shaggy jet-black hair hung in points across his forehead like a Japanese anime character. From behind the thick fringe, insolence shone from stubborn dark eyes. His gaze dropped to the KA-BAR. He licked his lips and shifted his weight, uncertainty crossing his face.

“Drop the knife. I don’t want to kill you.”