CHAPTER SEVEN
Kol
THE WORDS BLURRED AS I STARED AT THE COMPUTER screen, the fluorescent lights in my office only making it worse. It was too early in the day for that, but burning eyes and hazy vision were the consequences of barely managing a few hours of sleep.
“You don’t even know me.”
Nova’s words echoed in my head as an image of her face played on repeat. The way those gray eyes filled with pain, gratitude, and hope. She was so damn strong. And she deserved a hell of a lot more than just a tiny apartment over a garage. But I’d still make it the best it could be.
I snatched up the eye drops in my desk drawer, depositing more than a few in each eye. It helped a little. At least enough that I could see my phone screen clearly. I pulled up the group chat with my brothers and scowled at the name.
Every time someone changed it, Mav changed it back to his group moniker of choice: 50 Shades of Slay.
We all dealt with what our father had done differently. It marked us all in different ways. And Mav’s tool of choice was laughing in the face of trauma. But I knew that humor hid his scars, both physical and mental.
Me:
Anyone up for helping me with the apartment this week? Close to the finish line and would love to get it done.
I wasn’t quite ready to share who would be inhabiting the space.
Wylder:
You jammed on this project. I can help after six.
Wylder worked a mix of days and nights at the Boot, wanting to have his finger on the pulse of how his staff was handling things.
Maverick:
What’s my payment?
Me:
Pizza and me not telling Uncle Waylon that you’re the one who broke his Bigfoot grandfather clock in high school after coming home drunk and trying to fight it.
Maverick:
Hey, it looked like a bear.
Dex:
A bear in the house?
Maverick:
It could happen. Those cute fuckers are resourceful.
Wylder:
Let us not forget that Mav lost the fight to that inanimate object.
I couldn’t help the snicker that left my lips.
Me:
Remember? He started bequeathing us all his prized possessions.
Dex:
I’m still holding on to the hope of getting his prized Derek Jeter rookie card.
Maverick:
None of you are getting shit for making fun of my trauma. I still have a scar from where Bigfoot’s fist hit my jaw.
Wylder:
What do you tell people it’s from?
It wasn’t the only scar Mav carried, and we all knew he never told the truth about where they came from.
Maverick:
A fight with a grizzly, where I saved a kid from being attacked. Obvi. Gets me laid a lot.
Me:
TMI. Are you guys coming to help or not?
Dex:
You had me at pizza.
Maverick:
Throw in garlic knots, and I’m in.
Me:
So high-maintenance.
Maverick:
I know my worth.
I waited for a moment, hoping Orion would jump in on his own, but he’d been quieter lately. Especially after everything that had happened with Nova and Brae. Having a monster in our midst yet again had reminded him too much of our past. Of our monster. The one he’d killed to save us all.
Me:
Orion? You in?
Maverick:
He’s too busy brooding. Planning booby traps should anyone dare to approach his house. Scowling at puppies.
Mav’s way of dealing, through and through. Needling Orion into a response.
Orion:
I’m working.
He was always working. Orion had turned his talent for mapmaking into a true art, creating pieces that often went for over six figures.
But he used his skills for our brother venture for free.
He was the one who mapped out the locations we searched for missing persons, and over time, he’d become skilled at geographical profiling as well.
Dex:
Take a break so you don’t get carpal tunnel.
Wylder:
You know if you hit the two-week mark, one of us is coming over for proof of life.
We all waited for a moment.
Nothing.
Maverick:
Okay, change of plans. Family dinner at Orion’s. Invite Little Badass and Supernova.
Dex:
Don’t call my fiancée Little Badass.
Maverick:
What? I didn’t say HOT Little Badass like I wanted to.
Dex:
Mav, I will empty your bank accounts, post photos of you dressed up as a fairy for Sky’s birthday all over your social media, and change your ringtone to “Baby One More Time.”
Maverick:
Those fairy wings make my biceps look huge. I’m down with it. And I love a little Britney Spears.
I shook my head.
Me:
Stop trying to use my kid to get laid.
Orion:
If you all shut up, I’ll come for an hour.
Victory was ours. It just worried me how hard it had been to make it happen.
Sliding my phone into the dock on my desk, I got back to work. Clicking on the file that read Travis Moore, I took in all the subfiles: Confirmed Victims. Suspected Victims. Evidence Results. Photographs. Maps.
It went on and on. We had nine confirmed victims, all of them deceased—except for Nova.
My back molars ground together at the reminder of how close she’d come to not making it. “Let me go.” Her voice was the barest whisper in my memory.
Because Travis had become obsessed with keeping one of his victims alive.
He wanted the high of knowing she was still out there, right under everyone’s noses.
And he’d used that life to mess with Brae, leaving a bloody locket on her door, recording Nova screaming.
It had been a study in different kinds of torture.
I shoved that down and clicked on the Suspected Victims file. I had dossiers on about a dozen possibles—ones I had found while working in my official capacity here at the Forest Service and others my brothers were helping me gather on our less-than-official mission with the Hourglass Network.
The work I did for both was fairly similar; it was just that the Hourglass Network had far fewer rules and paperwork.
While Dex was more than happy to walk the morally gray line of hacking into any databases we might need, I never crossed that line.
I had access to countless law enforcement registries, but I never used them for any unofficial means.
I could ignore how Dex happened upon certain information, but that was as far as I was willing to go.
That didn’t mean I didn’t contribute. I brought a law enforcement eye to the cases, along with my tracking abilities. And when it came to this particular case, I also knew what avenues had already been explored so we didn’t have to cover them twice.
Of the nine confirmed victims, seven had been buried across Travis’s property or nearby, nestled in the national forest outside of Starlight Grove.
He’d lived in one of the handful of properties grandfathered into having land rights, and the fact that there were only about five cabins within a hundred-mile radius had given him the privacy he needed to create a house of horrors.
But we’d found one farther away—a solo camper, backpacking through an area we thought might’ve crossed with Travis’s hunting grounds.
My brothers and I had combined our skills, using geographic profiling, victim profiling, computer history, and my on-the-ground tracking to find a burial site.
It had been so off the beaten path that I was sure Travis had thought no one would find it.
So he’d left more than a little DNA behind.
And that victim told me we could have more.
A knock sounded on my open office door, and I swiveled to take in my boss.
Sherri Goodwin was a take-no-shit leader who cut right to the heart of things.
And it didn’t hurt that she had the kind of intelligence that brought about more case closures than any other officer in the Forest Service’s history.
“Morning,” she said, greeting me while cupping a mug in her hands and looking just a little tired.
One corner of my mouth pulled up. “Still on the herbal tea kick?”
Sherri scowled at me, her brown eyes narrowing. Her features hinted at her Karuk ancestry, one of the tribes indigenous to our Northern California area. “Don’t remind me. I’m trying to convince myself that this is black coffee with all the caffeine in the world.”
I chuckled, leaning back in my chair. “Don’t look in my cup. It might tempt you.”
Her scowl only deepened. “Why’d I make Russ this stupid promise?”
“Because you love him, and he cares about you living a long, healthy life?” I supplied.
“Love and marriage. Stupid,” she grumbled.
I shook my head. “As soon as you wake up a little, you’ll remember all the reasons that isn’t true.”
Sherri’s expression softened a little. “We have made some pretty damn cute kids.”
“You have.”
She took a sip of her tea. “Catch me up to where you are.”
I nodded, slipping into official mode. “I’m still working through the list of possible victims. While we were able to narrow the scope to those within the five-county radius Travis could’ve potentially had case access to, we also have to expand the victim profile.”
Travis Moore, a sergeant in the Juniper County Sheriff’s Department, had gotten a kick out of inserting himself into every missing person’s case he’d perpetrated.
But the problem was that he didn’t have an exact victim profile.
While he’d certainly favored women in their twenties with dark hair, he’d also skewed outside that.
He’d taken men, women with other hair colors, and a diverse range of races, ages, and backgrounds.
Sherri nodded slowly. “I want you to take Pete on to help you work through everything.”
It was my turn to scowl. “I work alone.”
“Yeah, yeah. You are loner, hear you roar,” Sherri muttered.
I’d worked my way up the ranks as a Forest Service investigator and had proven myself, case after case. “You think I can’t handle this?”
She shook her head instantly. “You know that’s not it. I’m getting pressure from higher up. They want this one put to bed.”
I got that. The media coverage of Travis’s crimes had spread far and wide, from local and national news to prime-time specials and podcasts. And I’d even heard there was a movie in production—everyone making the most out of others’ misery.