Chapter 7
SEVEN
Jim peered into the scope of his bolt-action rifle. The animal was in sight—a deer, small and stocky with fur glistening from the misty rain that was inborn in the state of Washington. He prepared for the kill.
It was what he’d been taught since he was a child.
The first time his father had sauntered with him into a store and bought a gun, he was only twelve.
All he had to do was exert pressure with a forefinger to take a life, of an animal who breathed, cried, fed, protected its loved ones, and fought to be born into this world only for its life to be cut short.
His finger hovered. His breath grew ragged. The towering western hemlocks and cedars with gnarly roots and ancient bark roughened over time appeared to lean closer. The distant hum of a bubbling stream grew louder. The low light knifing through the thick canopy darkened.
He could do this. It was just one click. One muscle that had to twitch. But he was frozen, trying to straddle the mind and the heart.
A booming sound punched through the air. A strangled mewling sound. The deer dropped, its body disappearing in the underbrush with a thud.
Jim spun round. Behind him, Lisa stood with her rifle still pointing at the deer and smoke curling out of it. “I was going to take that shot!”
Lisa smirked. “You say that every time. Why do you force it if it isn’t your thing?” Her boots swished through the moss-draped ground and decaying leaves.
“It used to be,” he muttered under his breath.
He swung the rifle over his shoulder, feeling the heavier weight of yet another weapon he couldn’t fire.
He followed Lisa to the fallen animal. She quickly reported the kill using an app online as he stared around at the crowded woods.
A familiar terrain with unpredictable dangers.
He felt her gaze on him. “Jim, what is it? This hunting trip was your idea.”
“Yeah, I know.” He kicked at the rocks with his foot. “I just need to dip my toe in the water again. Get used to this feeling.” He grazed the cold rifle that felt like an alien strapped to him. Unlike Lisa, who carried everything on her like an extension, how seamlessly she blended into each role.
And then there was Jim. Never able to fully embrace anything.
“Can you help?” she asked him as she laid the animal on its back. Jim spread its hind legs open and propped them in place. She fished out a knife and too soon the blade was cutting across the sternum in an upward motion.
Blood oozed from its body as an earthy smell filled the air. Steam rose from its cavity. Warm organs meeting a cold morning. “No internal bleeding,” Lisa observed. “The shot was clean. This shouldn’t be that dirty… Are you okay?”
Jim winced. “Yeah.”
“You’re as white as a ghost.”
He gulped. “No… I’m fine.” He could do this. He was the man in this marriage. The husband. He had gone hunting with his father since he was a child. In fact, he had taught Lisa how to hunt.
Then what had gone wrong?
A sudden movement. One of the deer’s legs kicked and its muscles twitched. Jim fell back on his hands, startled, his heart hammering against his ribcage. He should have anticipated that. It was only a reflex—the deer’s body shutting down.
Lisa was immediately all over him, making sure he was all right. He didn’t know what had shaken him more—his wife’s concern or his inadequacy.
The next morning Zoe brushed her teeth vigorously as she stared at her reflection in the mirror.
Another motel with a squeaky bed and the walls reeking of cigarettes. Another window with a view of a throng of trees too thick and leafy for sunlight to penetrate. But it was the same reflection that stared back at her. Her long dark hair, soft features, upturned nose, and eyes filled with chaos.
She could see the million thoughts in her eyes that were busy twisting her brain into all kinds of shapes.
She kept brushing her teeth over and over, until foam trickled out of her mouth and dripped down her chin.
Is that how everyone saw her? Not as a happy woman but a woman whose emotions were always bubbling and frothing and itching to explode.
No—only Aiden saw that. No wonder he stared at her with a curiosity that was less friendly and more clinical. And now she was stuck with him again.
She bent down over the sink to rinse her mouth, wiping away her concerns about working with him. She could deal with Dr. Aiden Wesley. She had dealt with men twice her size at her underground fight club. When she stood upright, there was a girl standing behind her.
Zoe screamed and whirled around, her heart in her knees. The girl was gone.
As Zoe caught her breath, she leaned against the sink. Emily had been an echo buried deep inside her. But now that echo was fighting to make itself heard.
Zoe recoiled from the waves of unease rolling off Lisa. The sheriff stomped across a yard littered with stagnant pools of rainwater toward a colonial-style house with blue-trimmed windows. A house Zoe didn’t expect to see in Pineview Falls.
“She’s pissed,” Aiden whispered from Zoe’s side. She fixed her collar. “Does that bother you?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I have more important things to worry about.”
Lisa knocked on the door and looped her thumbs through her belt. She shifted from foot to foot. Zoe was chewing her lip, bracing herself for the difficult conversation while Aiden stood stoic like a statue. But then she saw his knee bobbing.
A weak smile curled up her lip. He was human after all.
The door opened with a jerk. Annabelle’s husband, Trevor, appeared with a scruffy jaw, flannel shirt, and eyes rimmed with dark circles.
He hadn’t slept in days. It took him exactly one second to look at their faces before his knees gave out.
A scream escaped him like his soul was trying to leave his body.
Aiden and Lisa swooped down to help him while Zoe remained rooted to the spot.
As she watched Annabelle’s husband fall apart and weep on the floor, she recalled her reaction to finding her mother dead in the bathtub.
An image she would never forget. How brave she was to shed no tears, to sit on the floor in absolute silence, staring at Rachel’s body before spurring into action to clean up the crime scene.
“I’m sorry…” Trevor slowly got to his feet, leaning against the door and wiping his nose. “Shit. I… oh God.” A baby’s cry came from inside the house. “Come inside. Damn it. It’s Markus…” Zoe followed him inside with Aiden and Lisa.
Zoe instantly sensed a woman’s touch in the house—from the plush rugs and matching throw pillows to the wall-mounted coat hook and decorative organizer bins. And she noticed her glaring absence. Dirty diapers overflowing in the bin, tissue boxes strewn around, and moldy takeout boxes.
“I’m sorry. I have to feed him.” Trevor picked up a crying baby from the crib and handed him to Lisa. “Hold him for a second.”
Lisa held the baby like a football, blinking at him. A sadness crossed her face.
“We have questions, Mr. Stevens,” Zoe said as Trevor quickly moved around the kitchen with jerky, unsure movements. “When was the last time you spoke to your wife?”
“I don’t know. When did I make the call? Three days ago? Yeah, yeah. I called her end of the day and she said she was running late.” He rubbed his temples. “And then she didn’t come back.”
“What was her behavior like in the last few days? Was she stressed or distracted?” Aiden prodded.
The baby’s cries grated against Zoe’s ears. “May I take him?”
“Sure.”
Zoe took the baby from Lisa and held him close to her chest, feeling his drool and fat tears staining her shirt. From the corner of her eye, she saw Lisa’s unsure but eager hand reach out before curling back into her pocket.
His eyes darted as he chased a memory. “She was stressed about work. More than usual.”
“Did she talk to you about it? Mention anyone in particular from work?” Aiden asked.
He shrugged. “Not really. She was working on some big project for the company. It was a high-pressure situation. But that was it. She didn’t mention anything. To be honest, we didn’t talk much about work.”
Rain pattered on the window, rivulets racing down the glass. The view of the cars in the parking lot was distorted. Clarity and boundaries dissolving and colors bleeding away.
Claustrophobic and incessant. The damned rainy weather of Washington.
Aiden’s shoulder brushed against hers, sending a jolt of energy through her body.
“How did you know where to find her?” Trevor asked. “You found her in the woods?”
A whisper of breath caught inside Zoe’s throat as she thought of the envelope that had found its way to her desk. “We’re not able to share much at the moment,” she said softly. “Did Annabelle have other friends? Anyone she was close to?”
“No, she was too busy working.”
“And what did she do?” Aiden asked.
“She was a data scientist for Harrington Group.” He took the crying baby from Zoe and balanced him in the crook of his elbow to feed him the bottle. “Shit. Where’s his burp cloth?”
Zoe exchanged a helpless look with Aiden, who seemed more at ease than her. She wandered around the house while Lisa pressed Trevor for more details. The fridge had a series of photographs stuck to it—Annabelle and Trevor at different wonders of the world from Petra to the Colosseum.
There were only six photographs. They never visited the last one—the Taj Mahal.
She walked through the rest of the house, seemingly looking for the baby’s burp cloth but actually focused on finding a clue and a connection.
What was it about this victim that the killer sent Zoe a riddle?
It didn’t make any sense. Her mind stretched in all directions as she trailed the hallways with yellow walls, reaching a doorway with markings on it. A child growing up.
The master bedroom was a mess, like it had been turned upside down. Zoe didn’t know where to start as she waded through the crumpled bedsheets on the floor. Her eyes fixed on a wall with pictures of all kinds of birds.
“She was into birds.” A voice said. “She learned it from my grandpa.”
Zoe reeled back at the young boy standing next to her.
She wouldn’t have expected a calm voice to come out of such a small boy.
He was the mirror image of Annabelle. His brown hair was silky.
A slightly crooked nose with a bulbous tip and too thin lips crowning a long chin.
There was a sharp awareness in his teary eyes—a rarity, and another inheritance from his mother.
“One time Mom told me she saw the marbled murrelet but she was too late to take the camera out. It was our thing. Watching birds.”
“I’m Zoe.”
“Kevin.”
“How old are you, Kevin?”
“Twelve.” His mouth twisted. “My dad says she’s lost. Did you find her?”
Zoe didn’t know what to say. She could see the boy was holding back tears—his lips quivered and his eyes fluttered. Zoe wanted to say something reassuring him but she was silent for too long. His face turned red and he scampered away.
As they left the house, Zoe felt like a rock was sitting on her chest. A small family now decimated. She couldn’t get Kevin’s haunted eyes out of her mind. “Aiden, what do you think?”
He adjusted his thick glasses. “Well, I was thinking about why Annabelle. It’s a small town.
Everyone knows each other. They’re lifers.
Rooted. Small-town cycles, same faces, same routines.
but she wasn’t part of that. She was more ambitious and educated than the average resident here, I would say. ”
“Someone was jealous?”
“The current portfolio points to a stranger. Someone who exists on the fringes of society decides to exert some control and even get attention by targeting a high-achieving woman. But with just one data point, I won’t draw any conclusions.
” He shrugged, his eyes boring into hers.
“All I know for certain is that a killer who sends riddles to the FBI doesn’t just stop at one body. ”