Whispers in the Night (Blackridge Detectives #2)

Chapter 1

Six months earlier

“Harper, wait—”

Michael's voice cracked through the comm, but Harper was already moving. Three steps into the warehouse. Five. The darkness swallowed her flashlight beam like water.

“I've got movement,” she whispered. “Northwest corner.”

“Negative. Fall back. That’s an order—”

The world exploded.

Fire bloomed orange and red, a flower of destruction that reached for her with hungry fingers. The blast wave hit like a physical thing, lifting her off her feet. She flew backward, slammed into concrete, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hear, couldn’t—

“Michael!”

His name tore from her throat. She scrambled forward on hands and knees, toward the inferno that used to be the northwest corner. Smoke choked her. Heat seared her face.

A hand—she saw a hand in the rubble.

She reached for it, fingers stretching, almost there—

The hand crumbled to ash.

Present day

Harper Sinclair jerked awake with a gasp that sounded too loud in the cabin’s darkness. Her heart hammered against her ribs. Sweat plastered her tank top to her skin, despite the April chill seeping through the windows.

Just a dream. Just the same goddamn dream.

She pressed her palms against her eyes until she saw stars. Three a.m. Same time she woke every night. Her therapist would call that “significant.” Harper called it hell.

The mandatory leave was supposed to help.

Six months away from the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.

Six months to “process the trauma” and “regain her equilibrium.” Six months in this too-quiet cabin in Blackridge, Washington, where the only sounds were wind in the pines and her own thoughts screaming at her in the dark.

It wasn’t working.

Harper threw off the covers and padded to the kitchen, her bare feet silent on the cold hardwood.

She didn’t turn on lights. She knew the layout by now—two months of sleepless nights had mapped every corner.

Coffee. She needed coffee, even if it was the middle of the night. Sleep wasn’t coming back.

As the pot burbled to life, she stared out the window at the forest pressing close around the cabin.

She’d chosen this place specifically for its isolation.

Thirty minutes outside Blackridge proper, at the end of a winding dirt road, surrounded by Douglas firs that blocked out most of the sky. Private. Peaceful.

Lonely as hell.

Her phone buzzed on the counter, making her jump. Who the hell called at three in the morning?

The screen showed a name that made her chest tighten: SAC Ellery.

Her former supervisor. The man who’d signed off on her mandatory leave. The man who’d looked at her with pity and disappointment after Michael’s funeral.

Harper considered letting it go to voicemail. She’d done that with the last dozen calls—from Ellery, from other agents, from her mother. Everyone wanted to check on her. Everyone wanted to make sure she wasn’t drowning.

She was drowning. But she’d be damned if she’d let them watch.

Against her better judgment, she answered. “It’s three a.m., Ellery.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” His voice was tense in a way that sent her instincts prickling. “I need you to listen, Harper. There’s been a murder in Blackridge.”

Her fingers tightened on the phone. “I’m on leave. Call Seattle.”

“It’s ritualistic. Young woman, early twenties, posed in a specific position. Symbols carved into the skin.” He paused, and she heard him take a breath. “It matches the Nevada case.”

The world tilted sideways.

Harper gripped the counter with her free hand. “What?”

“Your unsolved from five years ago. The Henderson case. Same victim type, same positioning, same symbols. I pulled the file the moment I saw the crime scene photos. It’s him, Harper. It has to be.”

The Henderson case. Sarah Henderson, twenty-three, found in a Reno parking garage. Carved like a canvas. Posed like a doll. Harper had worked that case for eight months, tracking a killer who’d vanished like smoke the moment she got close. Three victims total. Then nothing.

Five years of nothing.

“Who caught it?” Harper asked, her voice steadier than she felt.

“Local detective. Silas Kane. Blackridge PD’s lead investigator for major crimes. Does behavioral analysis, profiling—former military, works solo from what I hear. He’s good, but he’s never seen anything like this.”

“Neither have most people.” Harper’s mind was already spinning, pulling up details from five years ago. The specific angle of the victims’ heads. The pattern of cuts. The way the killer arranged their hands. “Send me the file.”

“Harper—”

“Send it.”

“You’re on leave for a reason.”

“And you called me. There’s a serial killer active in my backyard. Send me the goddamn file, Ellery.”

A long pause. Then, “I’m sending a consultant. FBI liaison to assist local PD. It’ll take a day or two to arrange.”

Her jaw clenched. “Fine. In the meantime, I’m going to the scene.”

“Harper, you’re not authorized—”

“I’m not under FBI jurisdiction right now, remember? I’m just a civilian who’s very interested in a local crime.” She was already moving toward the bedroom, phone tucked between shoulder and ear. She wasn’t going to allow herself to be sidelined. Not on this. “Where’s the scene?”

Ellery sighed. He knew her well enough to know when he’d lost. But then, he never should have called her in the first place if he didn’t want her involved.

“Old paper mill on the east side. It’s still active—crime scene tape should be obvious.

But Harper? Don’t make me regret this. And for God’s sake, don’t piss off the locals. ”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Harper lied.

***

The paper mill loomed against the pre-dawn sky like something out of a nightmare, all rusted metal and broken windows.

Crime scene tape fluttered in the wind, cordoning off a section of the loading dock.

Two patrol cars sat in the gravel lot, light bars dark.

Someone had set up portable work lights that cast harsh shadows across the scene.

Harper parked her rental SUV at the edge of the lot and climbed out. The air smelled like pine and old paper and something else—something copper-sweet that made her stomach clench. Blood. Even from here, she could smell it.

She’d thrown on jeans and an FBI windbreaker—technically against protocol since she wasn’t active, but it might buy her thirty seconds before someone kicked her out. Every second counted.

A uniformed officer spotted her as she approached. Young, maybe mid-twenties, with the eager look of someone who still thought police work was glamorous.

“Ma’am, this is a crime scene. You need to—”

Harper flashed her FBI credentials quickly, counting on him not to look too closely. “Special Agent Harper Sinclair. Who’s the lead?”

“Detective Kane, but—”

“Where?”

The officer hesitated, then pointed toward the loading dock. “Inside, but you really should—”

Harper was already moving.

The loading dock’s overhead door was rolled up, revealing a cavernous space filled with old equipment and shadows. The work lights created an island of brightness in the center, and that’s where Harper saw them.

Three people clustered around something on the concrete floor. Two crime scene techs in white Tyvek suits, photographing and documenting. And a man in dark jeans and a black jacket, crouched beside what Harper’s mind clinically identified as a body.

He looked up as her footsteps echoed in the space.

Even in the harsh light, Harper could see he was striking.

Late thirties, maybe, with dark hair that fell across his forehead and the kind of sharp features that belonged in a cologne ad.

But it was his eyes that stopped her—pale blue, cold, and currently drilling into her with undisguised hostility.

“Crime scene’s closed,” he said, voice flat. Not a suggestion. A command.

Harper kept walking. “Special Agent Harper Sinclair, FBI. I need to see the body.”

He stood in one fluid movement, putting himself between her and the victim. Tall. He was tall, maybe six-two, with the compact build of someone who knew how to handle themselves. “You need to turn around and leave. This is my scene.”

“It’s connected to one of my cases.” Harper craned her neck, trying to see past him. She caught a glimpse of pale skin, dark hair, an arm positioned at an unnatural angle. “Move.”

“No.” He stepped closer, using his height to intimidate. It might have worked on someone else. “I don’t care what kind of badge you’re waving. This is Blackridge, not FBI jurisdiction. You want access, you go through proper channels.”

Harper met his glare without flinching. “While you’re protecting your turf, a serial killer is active in your town. Let me see the body, Detective...”

“Kane. Silas Kane.” His jaw tightened. “And I’m aware of what I’m dealing with, Agent Sinclair. What I don’t need is the FBI barging in and contaminating my scene.”

Your scene. God, she hated territorial cops.

Harper made a split-second decision. She sidestepped him, quick enough that he didn’t react in time, and got her first clear look at the victim.

Her breath caught.

The young woman lay on her back, arms positioned above her head in a specific angle—sixty degrees, if Harper remembered correctly.

Her head was tilted to the left, chin up, exposing the throat.

And carved into her torso, carefully precise, were symbols that Harper had seen in her nightmares for five years.

Circles within triangles. Lines that intersected at exact points. A language that only the killer understood.

“Jesus Christ,” she whispered.

A hand clamped onto her arm, yanking her backward. Silas Kane’s face was fury personified. “I said out.”

“Those symbols—”

“Are part of an active investigation. Get. Out.”

“Sarah Henderson, Reno, five years ago,” Harper said quickly, letting him drag her toward the exit. “Jessica Paul, six weeks later. Pamela Gibson, three months after that. Same symbols, same positioning, same victim type. Young, brunette, petite. Then he stopped. Until now.”

Silas stopped pulling her, his hand still locked around her arm. “How do you know that?”