Chapter 2
Ihad the file open on my desk. The papers were no longer crisp after having been touched, turned, and studied countless times over the years.
I read through the report that I could have recited from memory, always searching for something, anything that I might have missed.
Something that could help me finally bring my sister’s killer to justice.
I paused before flipping the current page over, the same as I always did.
I needed to bolster my courage before I could face what I knew, what I dreaded, and craved with the same breath.
Gritting my teeth, I slowly turned the page.
I had to blink several times to hold back the moisture that always cropped up.
That wasn’t my body’s only reaction. Anyone observant enough would notice how tense I was.
How emotional. I had to force my fingers to relax one by one.
I quietly practiced the breathing exercises that my therapist had taught me and felt my heart rate slow from the thundering pace inside my aching chest.
I brought my finger up and touched the corner of the photo.
Mariposa’s smile beamed up at me from the case file I had made from official reports, adding to it over the short time I had been in the FBI.
The moment I gained access to criminal reports, I had printed off my sister’s.
It hadn’t been closed as a cold case yet.
The status of the murder had been a hot case from the very beginning.
Most serial murder cases were like that.
Until the killer was caught, those cases stayed open.
As such, Mariposa’s murder was still an ongoing investigation even though it had been nine years.
Unfortunately, very little had been added in the last few years.
After the night my family’s world became irrevocably torn to shreds, all three of us had spiraled into despair.
My parents, while lost in their own grief, had forgotten they still had a living child.
They spent most of their time hating each other, blaming one another for their loss.
Neither one had sought any professional help to deal with their pain.
Instead, they held it in and consequently, allowed it to destroy not only their marriage, but also our parent-child relationship.
I had thought our house had been tense when Mariposa first disappeared.
It had felt as if the very walls were holding their breath as we waited for answers.
But after we got the answers that we had suspected were coming but dreaded hearing, the house became a silent tomb.
Mom and Dad stopped speaking to each other unless it was to scream accusations.
Mom had fallen into a bottle of wine to cope and rarely came up for air.
Dad had locked himself away in his office, throwing himself into his work as an accountant, numbers becoming the only thing he cared about.
I became numb, only feeling the smallest spark of life inside my soul when I felt pain.
My school work began to suffer almost immediately. I barely passed the tenth grade, and that was only because the year was just about over anyway. Had there been much time left in the semester, there would have been no way I could have moved on to the next grade.
I started eleventh grade the same way I had ended tenth, with minimal effort, if any.
My teachers were sympathetic, but it didn’t take long for their frustration at my lack of caring to settle in.
If it wasn’t for Mrs. Caroline Baker, I probably would have spiraled to the point that I just dropped out.
I still call her every once in a while just to talk.
I shared my accomplishments and goals with her.
I owed everything I was today to that woman.
If she hadn’t taken me aside and forced me to look at my future, I would have ended up on the very path she’d warned me I was headed down.
I fought her at first. I didn’t want to let go of the pain.
I held it to my chest as if it were my child.
I cared for it and nurtured it. I let it drain every spark of life from me.
To me, at that time, letting go of the pain meant letting go of my best friend.
My sister. Mrs. Baker walked me to the counselor’s office and set up standing appointments every single day.
I think they both knew that if I faltered even once, I likely would have ended up in the ground next to Mariposa.
I blinked away the memories of the darkest time in my life and brought my sister’s face back into focus.
I couldn’t help but smile back at her picture.
She was so beautiful. Prettier than I could ever hope to be, though she had told me all the time that I was the prettier sister.
I traced her image with my gaze, taking in her dual-colored eyes.
One was a light blue, the other a pale green that was almost aqua. The same way mine were.
It was her senior year photo. She was wearing a red cap and gown, and her honey blonde hair, which was several shades lighter than my own had been back then, was falling in soft waves around her face.
The slight dent in her chin matched my own as well.
The dimples in her cheeks were all hers, though.
Mine were just creases that appeared when I smiled.
I remembered how I used to poke them to make her laugh when I was a little kid. I had always loved it when she laughed.
A folder dropped on my desk, covering Mariposa’s face, and I had to bite back a curse and a snarl at the disrespect. Without looking up to see who had done it, I quickly moved the new folder away and carefully closed my sister’s case file.
“Did you even hear me just now? Hello?”
I slid the folder back into my satchel and drew in a deep breath before looking up at Monique.
“I’m sorry, I was concentrating on something.
What were you saying?” I gave the other woman a forced smile as she frowned at me, then glanced over to where I had slid my satchel back under my desk.
She shook her head and cleared her throat, likely having figured out what I had been doing.
It was no secret that I was related to a serial killer’s victim.
“Yeah, sorry. Anyway,” she said, waving away the awkwardness. “I thought you’d like to know that a new case just dropped in our laps.” As she spoke, I pulled the folder back in front of me and flipped it open. I started scanning the documents as she continued speaking.
“A new suspected serial killer in a small town in Texas. The victims are young women between the ages of twenty and thirty, with the majority being in their early twenties. Blonde and brown hair. Blue to green eyes. No information on the unsub yet.”
“Five different bodies of young women found over the course of two and a half years,” I muttered, my eyes raking over the information as my chest began to feel heavy with the hard thumps of my heart.
“The bodies were carefully arranged to appear as if the women were partially covering themselves from prying eyes.” I forced myself to keep reading as Monique hummed in confirmation.
“The first one was a little over two years ago,” she said while pointing out the timeline on the report in front of me. “The second and third were spread out over several months to a nearly a year. The last two, though, picked up speed. Six months, then two months later.”
“He’s escalating,” I said, my throat feeling tight.
It wasn’t an exact match, but it was damn close.
Mariposa’s killer had the same type of victim.
He didn’t pose them the way these women were.
Instead, he had dressed them in white gowns, leaving them to look like angels.
That was where he’d earned the name The Angel Killer.
The wounds, though, were eerily similar.
Enough that I felt my vision grow dark around the edges.
I had to force myself to take calming breaths.
“He used a blunt, round object similar to a pole to beat them. Their wrists show ligature marks indicating they were not only tied, but that they were also hung from them. Maybe from a hook of some kind.” I nodded my head numbly as Monique continued relaying the information she’d obviously already memorized.
I looked up at where she was leaning against my desk and tapped the folder in front of me. “Why did you bring this to me?”
She glanced back down where my satchel sat on the floor, then back to me.
“I just know that if it were someone I cared about who was murdered by an unsub in a case with more similarities than could be coincidental than this one,” she tapped the folder much the way I had, “I’d want someone to tell me about it. ”
She closed the folder before picking it up and tucking it under her arm. I stopped her before she could walk away. “You read my sister’s case?”
Monique rolled her eyes. “Girl, my whole job, and yours, is to investigate serial killers. Wouldn’t you have done the same if you knew I was connected to one?”
I stiffened in my chair, hating the way her words had made it sound. But she had a point. I gave a jerky nod of my head. “Do you know if anyone else has?” I asked through my throat that felt as if it had a tight band around it, threatening to cut off my air supply.
“Parker, I promise you, whatever is in your head, nobody thinks. We don’t feel sorry for you.
We sympathize with you. There’s a difference.
Anyway, I thought you’d like to know because I’m about to drop this case on Supervisory Special Agent Walker’s desk.
I imagine that he will be forming a small team to head to Texas very soon. ”
With those words ringing in my ears, she turned and walked away.
I wouldn’t say that Monique and I were friends.
Still, we had a good working relationship in the six months I had been assigned to my department after graduating to Special Agent.
With what she had just done for me, I was beginning to wonder if our lack of closeness might be due to my tendency to keep people at arm’s length without even realizing it.
Pushing the thought away for later, I turned to my laptop and opened up a search browser.
Typing in the information I remembered from the file, it didn’t take long to find news articles.
There were plenty to choose from. Serial killers were always headliners.
Murder was generally considered sensational news, but throw the words serial killer in the mix, and the news outlets knew they would get all the internet traffic their servers could handle.
The murders, according to the news reports, happened in and around the small town of Selene, Texas.
The name had a small spark of recognition igniting in the back of my mind, but after wracking my brain, I shook my head.
It was probably nothing. Ignoring the niggling feeling, I read the rest of the article, then opened another.
It was almost a copy and paste of the first article, so I opened the third.
There was nothing useful that I hadn’t already read in the case file. With a disappointed huff, I was about to click out of the browser when I paused. My cursor hovered over the X in the corner as I sat frozen.
There was a picture of what was likely a popular location in the town, accompanying the article that discussed how the deaths had affected the local citizens. In the photo, there were a few people, but one had caught my eye.
The man was gorgeous. Judging by the people around him in the photo, he looked to be about six foot five, and even from the distance the photo was taken, he looked big. Not big as in hefty—big as in the man was fucking ripped.
He was in the background of the picture, standing in front of what looked like a diner, with one of his muscular arms draped over the shoulder of an older woman with gray hair.
The poor woman only came up to his armpit.
My body felt uncomfortably warm as I thought about how that was probably the same place my own head would reach.
The photo was just a little too grainy to make out specific features, but the overall effect was enough to make me fan my cheeks. The man left quite an impression, even without details.
I started to press down on the trackpad to exit, but paused again before I could click it. Instead, I dragged my finger over to the top of the screen and clicked on the drop-down menu. “It’s for research,” I whispered to myself as I pressed down on the trackpad until it clicked.
I glanced around the open office my colleagues and I shared as I stood up and walked as casually as I could.
I snatched the sheet off the printer, then paused.
Grabbing a few pieces of blank paper sitting to the side of the machine, I covered the printout, then walked back over to my desk.
I was so self-conscious while looking around to make sure no one was watching me be a creeper that I almost fell onto the floor.
My butt only hit the edge of the seat as I tried to sit down, causing the chair to slide back.
I let out an embarrassing squeak that would have been more suitable belonging to a drowning squirrel.
I caught the edge of the desk with my hand and cleared my throat.
With all the dignity I could muster, I scooted back until I was sitting properly.
Glancing around, I gave a small nod and smile to one of my colleagues, pretending I hadn’t made a fool of myself.
Looking down, I studied the printout I was still gripping.
The paper was a bit crumpled, but the picture was fine.
I carefully folded it, then slipped it into my satchel next to the case file.
I eyed the computer monitor with information I’d searched about the serial killer. Glancing towards my supervisor’s office, I decided to do whatever I could to be on the team headed to Selene, Texas.