Chapter 10
Special Agent Tessa Quinn — On the Road to Asheville Earlier That Day
Scout drove like he did everything else—steady, contained, both hands on the wheel. The wipers kept time against the windshield. Pines blurred by on either side of the highway, broken now and then by a flash of pasture or an old barn leaning into weather.
Tessa sat in the passenger seat, the heater humming low. A country station murmured on the radio. Scout reached over and turned it down to almost nothing.
Silence settled in.
The space felt smaller than it should have.
His presence filled the cab the same way it filled a room—quiet, inevitable.
Tessa’s mind wouldn’t let go of the image from Sara’s apartment—the photo she’d bagged from under the pillow.
Sara and Scout at a department cookout. Shoulders touching. Both laughing, her head tipped toward him.
Friendly.
Maybe more.
And the note.
He’ll never see me that way. Maybe that’s for the best. Sometimes I wish he’d look at me and see more than a deputy with potential.
Tessa could still feel the weight of the paper in her hand, Sara’s handwriting tight and slanted like she’d been trying not to feel what she was admitting.
He never said a word, Tessa thought. Or she never told him.
Either way, the longing in that line sat wrong in Tessa’s chest. Not because she begrudged Sara anything—but because she understood too well what it meant to want more from a partner who only saw you as capable.
Scout drove, jaw set, eyes on the road. Protective to the point of feral when Sara’s name came up. It didn’t take a profiler to see he cared about her.
She just couldn’t tell how.
Tessa caught his profile in the passing light—strong nose, day-old scruff, a faint scar along his jaw she hadn’t noticed before. A good face. Solid. The kind you leaned on without planning to.
I can see why she’d fall for you, she thought.
There was a gravity around him—quiet, stubborn loyalty that made people feel anchored. Sara had written herself right up against that gravity and then stepped back before she fell.
The sticky note from the map flickered through Tessa’s mind.
PREGNANT?
Lauren… or Sara?
She forced the question back into its box. Facts first. Feelings later.
Scout’s fingers flexed once on the wheel. He didn’t look over, but she saw his throat move like he’d swallowed words and changed his mind.
He felt her watching.
“What?” he asked, voice rough from too little sleep. “You’re staring holes in the side of my head.”
Tessa blinked and dragged her gaze back to the windshield.
“Just thinking about her apartment,” she said. “About what she left out and what she didn’t.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Yes.” Tessa kept her tone even. “It looked like she was working a cold case. Missing girl. Lauren Pierce.”
Scout’s jaw tightened. “I remember that case. Holbrook had it. He was convinced she was a walk-away. It went cold.”
Tessa glanced at him. “He told me. Everyone got one?”
“Yeah,” Scout said. “Everybody got an old case. Mine’s still sitting in my locker. Between Caitlin’s mess and paperwork, I haven’t even cracked it open.”
A muscle jumped in his cheek.
“I figured Sara hadn’t either,” he admitted. “Didn’t know she’d already started in on hers. Didn’t know it was Pierce.”
Tessa didn’t argue.
She turned her head slightly, looking at him again from the corner of her eye.
He filled the driver’s seat like it had been built for him — broad shoulders, steady hands, a presence that made the cab feel smaller and safer at the same time. It made sense that Sara would be drawn to him.
He sure as hell was protective of her.
But was there more?
Tessa couldn’t tell. It shouldn’t have mattered to her.
It did.
She’d seen partners mistake loyalty for something else and torch good working relationships over it. She’d also seen men hide behind professionalism when they were too scared to want a woman who might outrun them.
She wasn’t about to untangle that now. Not with Sara missing.
“Tell me about the cold case assignments,” she said, steering herself back to solid ground. “Besides Pierce—what else did Burke hand out?”
Scout’s grip eased a fraction.
“He pulled ’em from the old shelves,” he said. “Walked ’em around himself—‘pick one, make it yours.’ Said maybe fresh eyes would see something he and his dad didn’t.” His mouth twisted. “Didn’t think one of ’em would bite back.”
The truck ate up another mile of highway.
Tessa let the road noise and the wipers fill the space between them. She tucked Sara’s photo and the note back into the mental file where she kept things that mattered but didn’t belong on paper yet.
She could pick at the edges of Sara and Scout later—if there was a later.
Right now, the only thing that mattered was the young woman on the stainless table in Asheville.
And the deputy who might still be alive if they moved fast enough to pull her out of someone else’s story.
She sat up a little straighter.
“Alright,” she said. “Tell me everything you remember about the night she went missing. Every call. Every stop. Every look.”
Scout drew in a slow breath and started talking.
The mountains rolled by, gray and waiting.
Ahead, the lab lights burned against the afternoon sky.
Special Agent Tessa Quinn — Asheville Regional Forensics Lab Later That Day
Burke’s truck was already in the lot when Tessa and Scout pulled in, its blue-and-gold shield dull in the gray light.
Tessa climbed out and shut her door, the sound too loud in the empty row. “Burke’s here.”
Scout nodded once. “He beat us.”
Burke stepped away from his tailgate as they approached, coat collar up, face set hard. He didn’t waste time.
“Quinn.” His eyes cut to Scout. “You good?”
Scout didn’t answer. His gaze stayed on Tessa. “What’d you find at her place?”
Tessa reached into her coat and pulled out the evidence sleeve. She held it out.
Burke took it, eyes dropping to the label.
PIERCE, LAUREN — Missing Person
His face didn’t change—but something in his jaw locked.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I remember this one. Three years back. Young woman went missing out of Jackson Valley University. No goodbye. No body. Just… gone.”
Scout leaned in enough to see the name. His brow furrowed like the memory was trying to come back in pieces.
“Lauren Pierce,” he said. “Cold case.”
Tessa nodded. “Sara pulled it in October. Worked it off and on. Notes, maps, names—faculty connections.”
Scout swallowed. “She never told me that.”
“She wasn’t supposed to,” Burke said, voice low. “I gave each deputy a cold case this fall. Told ’em to work one when they had downtime. Quiet.”
Tessa met Burke’s eyes. “This one didn’t stay quiet.”
Burke’s stare went flat. “No.”
Scout looked between them, something hard settling in his face. “So she was digging… and now she’s gone.”
Tessa nodded once. “And somebody staged a message to make sure we looked in the right direction.”
The cold in the lot felt sharper.
Burke turned toward the lab doors like the decision had already been made. “Alright.”
Scout’s voice came out rough. “Let’s go talk to Cade.”
They moved in together—three sets of boots on concrete, one old name between them, and the sickening sense that whatever Sara touched back in October had finally reached back.
Inside, the air was too clean—sterile in a way that clung to everything. The building hummed with hard-edged efficiency: white walls, metal doors, the faint sting of disinfectant no ventilation ever quite erased.
Dr. Evelyn Cade, the county medical examiner, waited just inside the lab doors, parka half unzipped, Army medic dog tags glinting against her throat.
Her hair was pulled back in a practical knot streaked with gray—the look of a woman who’d seen worse mornings and didn’t waste time pretending otherwise.
A coffee stain marked her sleeve like a badge of survival.
“Well, look at that,” she said, lips quirking. “The mountain cavalry rides again. Thought maybe you three forgot how to read a phone.”
Burke smirked, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Morning to you too, Cade.”
“Don’t sweet-talk me,” she shot back. “You’re not bringing muffins, and I haven’t had a day off since dial-up internet.”
Scout huffed a low laugh. Tessa’s mouth twitched. Cade was rough around the edges, but no one doubted her competence. She’d seen more bodies than anyone in the county and had the scars—inside and out—to prove it.
Cade turned, leading the way with the rolling gait of someone who’d spent half her life in boots.
“Come on,” she said, pushing through the double doors. “Let’s ruin your lunch.”
The autopsy bay was bright, sterile, and too cold. The skeletal remains from Miller’s Ridge lay arranged neatly on a stainless table, each bone tagged and aligned with careful precision. An empty body bag sat folded on a gurney nearby, dark and waiting.
Cade pulled on a fresh pair of gloves and lifted her clipboard. When she spoke again, the easy sarcasm was gone.
“Dental records confirmed it this morning,” she said. “The remains belong to Lauren Pierce.”
The chill in the room had nothing to do with the morgue.
For a second, nobody breathed.
Tessa’s fingers found the dent in her badge, worrying it like a rosary. She stared at the tagged bones—femur, radius, the careful white arc of a skull—and silently promised Sara she wouldn’t let go.
Scout stood rigid beside her, hands fisted at his sides, eyes fixed on the table, his silence louder than words.
Burke turned to the window and braced one hand against the cold glass, breath fogging a faint circle as he stared out at the gray mountains.
Even Cade said nothing.
Somewhere, the lab’s clock ticked on—but for them, the world had stopped.
Finally, Cade exhaled and set the clipboard down with a soft clack.
“No obvious cause of death on bone,” she said. “No fractures, no blade marks, no bullet grooves. But she wasn’t out there long enough for the elements to do this on their own.”
She tapped one of the tags with a gloved finger.
“Minimal weathering. No scavenger scoring. You don’t get remains this clean sitting under open sky on Miller’s Ridge.”
Tessa’s brows drew in. “Stored?”
Cade nodded once. “Stored. Cool, dry environment. Temperature-controlled—or at least stable. Somewhere the bugs couldn’t touch her, and the animals couldn’t drag her off.”
She paused, eyes sharpening.
“He kept her,” Cade said. “For a while.”
A fresh layer of cold slid over Tessa’s skin.
“Then he brought her up there and staged her like a display. Badge beside her. Like an exclamation point on the end of a sentence.”
Tessa didn’t look away. “This wasn’t disposal,” she said quietly.
Cade’s gaze flicked up, finding hers.
“No,” Cade agreed. “It was communication.”
Scout’s voice came out rough, clipped. “It’s the first week of deer season.”
Both women turned toward him.
He swallowed hard, eyes still on the table. “Stevens told half the bar the night before he went that he was heading up there at first light. Catch My Draft was packed. Everybody heard him.”
Tessa’s gaze sharpened—not on Scout, but on the implication.
If Stevens said it out loud… someone else heard it too.
Cade’s mouth went tight. “Miller’s Ridge in deer season,” she said. “That’s a stage. Not a dump site.”
Her voice didn’t soften.
“You’ve seen what happens when a story shows up looking finished,” she said. “Neat. Tidy. Like it wrapped itself up.”
She looked straight at Tessa.
“When someone decides the ending for you.”
Tessa went very still.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I have.”
Tessa’s voice dropped. “You didn’t just find Lauren,” she said.
Cade’s eyes held steady on hers.
“He let you.”
Silence hit like a weight.
Burke finally spoke, voice low and raw. “Sara was working this case.”
The truth of it filled the room—the woman Sara had fought for was here now, laid out in labeled fragments.
And whoever took Lauren—whoever kept her—now had Sara.
Cade’s eyes softened, just a fraction. “Then you know your window,” she said. “Whoever he is, he plans. He stores. He stages.”
She stripped off one glove, the snap loud in the quiet.
“He’s not done until he decides he’s done.”
Tessa’s gaze stayed fixed on the table.
Then we find whoever did this, she thought. And we find Sara before he writes her last chapter.
Scout swallowed hard. When he finally spoke, his voice was little more than a scrape. “God help her.”
Burke stepped forward and set a hand on Scout’s shoulder—leaving it there a moment longer than usual, a wordless anchor between men who didn’t have language for fear.
Tessa drew in one slow breath, then another, forcing her mind back into motion.
“Alright,” she said quietly. “We know who she is. Now we find out who kept her—and where he’s keeping Sara.”
She looked at Burke, then Scout—steady, decisive.
“Pull every connection between Lauren Pierce and Sara’s notes,” she said. “Faculty. Staff. Campus access. Start with Raines, Keller, and Sinclair—today.”
The room didn’t get any warmer.
But at least it started to move again.