Chapter 6 #2
“Melissa was the best,” Trevor said, leading them to a back office. “Always on time, always cheerful. Customers loved her. I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Harper said gently. “We need to ask you some questions about her routine here. Anyone who paid unusual attention to her? Any customers who made her uncomfortable?”
Trevor shook his head. “Not that she mentioned. But we get a lot of regulars. Melissa knew most of them by name, knew their orders. She was good with people.”
“What about this woman?” Silas showed him Amy Thorne’s photo. “Was she a customer here?”
“Oh yeah. Amy. She came in every morning around seven-thirty. Always got a cappuccino and a blueberry muffin. She and Melissa knew each other. I’d see them chatting sometimes when Amy came in.”
Silas and Harper exchanged glances. “They knew each other?”
“Not well, I don’t think. Just casual conversation. The way you know people who come into your work regularly.” Trevor frowned. “Wait, is Amy...?”
“She was killed two nights ago,” Silas said. “Same person who killed Melissa.”
Trevor’s face crumbled. He sat down heavily, covering his face with his hands. “Jesus Christ. Two of them. He killed two of them.”
Harper crouched beside him, her voice gentle. “Trevor, this is important. Were there any customers who were here when both Melissa and Amy were here? Anyone who paid attention to both of them?”
“I don’t...I can’t think. There are so many people.” Trevor looked up, tears streaming down his face. “We have security cameras. Would that help?”
“Very much,” Silas said.
They spent the afternoon reviewing coffee shop footage, looking for the same hoodie-wearing man from the gym.
They found him. Of course they found him.
Sitting in a corner booth with a laptop, positioned where he could watch the counter.
Where he could watch Melissa work. Where he could watch Amy come in for her morning cappuccino.
He was careful. Never looked directly at the camera. Kept his face angled away, hidden behind his laptop screen or coffee cup. But his attention was always on the women. Watching. Learning. Planning.
“He’s been doing this for months,” Harper said, her voice tight. “Building dossiers on them. Learning everything about their lives. Where they go, what they do, who they talk to. And then when he’s ready, he takes them.”
“We need to figure out where he lives. Where he’s holding them before he kills them.
” Silas rubbed his temples. A headache was building behind his eyes, the kind that came from too much screen time and too little sleep.
“Dr. Reynolds said they were alive for thirty minutes or more during the cutting. That means he has somewhere private. Somewhere soundproof.”
“Warehouse, storage unit, isolated house.” Harper was making notes. “Somewhere in the area. He’s killing them at night and dumping the bodies within hours. He can’t be traveling far.”
“Let’s get a team canvassing for rental properties, storage facilities, anything that matches.” Silas checked his watch. Four-thirty p.m. “Captain wants us at the six p.m. briefing. We should head back to the station, compile what we have.”
They drove back in silence, both lost in their own thoughts. Silas kept seeing the footage of hoodie man, watching Melissa and Amy with that patient, predatory focus. He’d been right there. In public. Surrounded by people. And no one had noticed.
That was the terrifying thing about monsters—they looked just like everyone else.
At the station, they spent an hour preparing for the briefing.
Holloway would want progress, and they had some—the connection between victims, the security footage, the expanded search for missing women.
But they didn’t have a name. Didn’t have a face.
Didn’t have anything concrete enough to stop the next killing.
And according to the pattern, the next killing would be tonight.
“We need to set up surveillance,” Harper said, staring at the case board. “At gyms, at coffee shops. Anywhere that matches his hunting pattern. If he’s going to take another victim tonight, maybe we can catch him in the act.”
“That’s a lot of ground to cover with limited resources,” Silas said. But she was right. It was their best shot. “I’ll talk to Holloway about mobilizing patrol units.”
The briefing was tense. Holloway listened to their findings with a deepening frown, the other detectives and officers taking notes, everyone understanding the gravity of the situation.
“So we’re looking at potentially a dozen or more victims over the past five years?” Holloway said. “And he’s accelerating now, one victim per night?”
“That’s our assessment, yes, sir,” Silas confirmed.
“Jesus.” Holloway stood, pacing. “All right. I’m authorizing overtime. Every available officer on surveillance duty tonight. Kane, work with Agent Sinclair to identify the highest probability locations. We’ll set up teams at each one. If this bastard shows his face, we take him down.”
After the briefing, Silas and Harper worked with Morris and the other officers to coordinate surveillance positions. By seven p.m., they had teams at six locations—three gyms, three coffee shops. All places where young women matching the victim profile might be found.
“Where do you want us?” Harper asked.
Silas had been thinking about that. The killer knew Harper. Had written her a note. If he was out there tonight, he might be looking for her as much as his next victim.
“We’ll take Summit Fitness,” Silas decided. “The location with the most overlap. He watched both victims there. Maybe he’ll come back, see if there are any new prospects.”
They grabbed dinner from a drive-through—burgers that tasted like cardboard but provided necessary fuel—and headed to Summit Fitness. Silas parked in the lot with a clear view of the entrance, positioned so they could see people coming and going without being obvious.
And then they waited.
Surveillance was ninety-five percent boredom and five percent terror.
Silas had done enough of it in the Army to know that.
Hours of sitting, watching, waiting for something to happen.
He’d once spent forty-eight hours in a sniper position overlooking a Taliban compound, barely moving, barely breathing, waiting for his target to appear.
This was different. Less life-or-death, but somehow more personal.
Because somewhere out there was a killer who’d murdered at least eight women.
Who’d carved symbols into their skin while they were alive and screaming.
Who’d left a note specifically for the woman sitting next to him in the dark car.
Eight p.m. came and went. Nine p.m. The gym started to empty out as the evening crowd finished their workouts and headed home. Silas studied each person who left, looking for anyone who matched hoodie man’s build, his posture, his movements.
Nothing. Just regular people living regular lives, unaware that a predator might be hunting among them.
“Tell me about Afghanistan,” Harper said quietly, breaking the silence.
Silas glanced at her. She was watching the gym entrance, but her posture suggested she was really paying attention to him. “Why?”
“Because we’ve been sitting here for two hours and I’m going to lose my mind if we don’t talk about something.” She finally looked at him. “And because you mentioned your team. The ones you lost. I want to understand.”
Silas’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“There’s not much to tell. We were clearing a compound.
I was on point. Missed a suicide vest. Boom.
Three dead, two critically injured, three permanently disabled.
End of story.” He’d already told her this before.
He didn’t know why she wanted him to repeat it.
“That’s the facts. I want to know how you felt about it.”
“How do you think I felt?” The words came out harsher than he intended. He took a deep breath, keeping his stare fixed on the gym. “Guilty. Responsible. Like I’d failed the men who depended on me to keep them alive.”
“Same as I felt about Michael,” Harper said softly.
“Yeah. Same as that.” Silas stared out the windshield, seeing not Summit Fitness but a compound in Afghanistan. Hearing not traffic sounds but explosions. Screaming. The terrible silence after. “I was supposed to protect them. That was my job. And I failed.”
“What were their names?”
The question caught him off guard. “What?”
“Your team. The ones who died. What were their names?”
No one had ever asked him that. Not his CO, not the Army therapists, not the cops he’d worked with since. They wanted to know about his trauma, his PTSD, his adjustment to civilian life. But no one had asked about the men themselves.
“Corporal James Williams,” Silas said quietly.
“Specialist Tyler Johnson. Private First Class David Brown.” The names came easily, carved into his memory like the symbols were carved into the killer’s victims. “Williams had a kid on the way. Johnson was supposed to go to college after his deployment. Brown wanted to be a cop, actually. That’s partly why I became one—felt like I owed it to him to do the thing he never got to do. ”
“What about the others? The ones who survived?”
“Sergeant Mike Harrison—lost both legs, medical discharge. Specialist Andrew Kim—traumatic brain injury, still in therapy. Corporal Luis Martinez—severe burns, multiple surgeries.” Silas’s voice was flat, reciting facts because that was easier than feeling.
“They all reached out after I got stateside. I never responded. Couldn’t face them. Couldn’t see what I’d done to them.”
“That must be lonely,” Harper said. “Carrying all that guilt alone.”
“Safer that way. Can’t hurt anyone else if you don’t let anyone close.”
“Is that why you work alone? Why you didn’t want me on this case?”