“I don’t understand what my previous career has to do with your case.”
And then it hits her. This wasn’t a drowning.
Ames pauses, then begins to speak. Darcy’s world tears in half.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Darcy has overcome a lot during her adult life, losing Tyler, surviving the stabbing, and forever battling anxiety, addiction, and a tendency to distrust people’s intentions. Yet she’s raised two children on her own, and despite not being the most present mother while she fought her inner demons, Jennifer and Hunter are good kids.
What’s happening can’t be possible: a series of rapes in Smith Town, a man stalking Amy and painting the Full Moon Killer’s signature on her house, and now a woman murdered two blocks from her front door. These occurrences are linked, but she can’t think straight.
By now Ames is at the school, meeting with Jennifer and Hunter. They learned about Michael Rivers and lived their own nightmares imagining what happened to their mother, but they’ve maintained a safe distance from the violence. Until now. Crouching beside the front door, she holds the phone on her lap and scrolls through her contacts until she locates Eric Hensel. She pictures her former partner—blonde hair trimmed short, trim for his late-forties, designer suit and shoes, round bifocals which he often wears on top of his head.
The call goes through after a short pause. Hensel answers as though he’d been expecting her.
“I was about to call you,” Hensel says, short of breath as if he just ran inside.
“How can this happen again, Eric?”
“Slow down. Are you and the kids safe?”
“We’re fine, but Amy Yang…”
“I know. For your information, Genoa Cove PD called an hour ago asking about you. A detective named Ames.”
“I just met him.”
“Yeah, he seems like a barrel of laughs. He asked a lot of questions about you and what your involvement was in the Rivers case, though I’m certain he knows exactly who you are. He also asked why you left the FBI and what you’re doing in his village. I blew him off regarding your retirement. Not his business, and I hardly think it’s relevant to his case. Just a second, Darcy.” Eric presses the phone against his body and talks to someone. “Sorry about that. I’m training one of the new recruits. Give me a second to get to a quiet location.”
Darcy hears Hensel walking, then a door closes. He’s gone where others can’t overhear his conversation, and this worries her. He shouldn’t have anything to hide.
“Okay,” he says. “Now I can speak.”
“I don’t understand why Ames thinks I know something. This can’t have anything to do with the Rivers case. The bastard is in jail.”
A pause.
“Ames didn’t tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“The woman they found last night was twenty-two.”
“Teens and early twenties, that’s the age group Rivers targeted. But that’s hardly unique to serial killers.”
“Darcy, someone stabbed the woman repeatedly and burned a face into her neck.”
The news rocks Darcy on her heels. It’s a long time before she can stand without her legs buckling.
“You think Rivers is working with somebody on the outside?”
“The thought occurred to me. I’ll make a few calls, check if anyone took an unhealthy interest in the Full Moon Killer in the last year. In the interim, stay calm, but watch your back, Darcy.”
When she arrives at the cove, the police have cleared the crime scene and departed. Their footprints are everywhere, spreading across the sand as if a small army converged on the cove. Somewhere within the chaos, the killer left his footprints.
The former investigator inside Darcy awakens from dormancy. She walks the shoreline, picturing the cove in the moonlight—silver and blue, the dunes casting humpbacked shadows toward the water. The Full Moon Killer killed his victims and left his disgusting tag burned on their flesh before dumping their bodies elsewhere. This killer must have done the same, and that would be obvious to the ME and crime scene technicians.
He couldn’t have murdered the woman this close to the neighborhood. Two houses sit on the other side of the dunes. Someone would have heard the girl scream.
The ocean sloshes against the shore, the sky gunmetal gray and threatening more rain. She turns from the sea and looks back toward the dunes. This is the only path to the cove unless one arrives by boat. The killer visited her neighborhood.
He located Amy, and now he’s found Darcy.
A moment after Darcy punches the alarm code onto the keypad at the house, her phone rings. It’s an unrecognized number, the area code the same as hers. She considers the call for a moment. It might be the police checking on her. Except it isn’t.
The woman with the disingenuous, flowery voice identifies herself as Gail Shipley, lead reporter with the Genoa Standard.
“Ms. Gellar, or is it Agent Gellar?”
“How did you get this number?”
“What are your thoughts on the murder, Agent Gellar?”
“I don’t know any details about the murder. Maybe you should contact Detective Ames at the Genoa Cove Police Department. He’s handling the case.”
“The markings on her neck are identical to the branding Michael Rivers put on his victims. Agent Gellar, is the Full Moon Killer back?”
The question dangles in the air unanswered.
“However you got this information, a phone call will confirm Michael Rivers remains locked in a cell outside Buffalo. If you print otherwise, you’ll start a panic.”
“When you came on board for the Rivers case, how long did it take before you caught him?”
Darcy pulls the iced tea pitcher from the refrigerator and slams the door.
“Why ask? It sounds like you learned plenty about me already.”
“It was a year, correct?” Shipley frames the question as if it took a decade to find Michael Rivers. “Why was he so difficult to find?”
Darcy draws in a labored breath, fighting the urge to scream into the phone.
“Ask me another irrelevant question and I’m hanging up.”
“It’s not irrelevant. You tracked him down, so the Genoa Cove Police Department should consider your input invaluable.”
“I don’t work for the FBI anymore, Mrs. Shipley, and Michael Rivers is only a threat to his fellow prisoners,” Darcy says with cool detachment. Inside, she wants to explode. “Like I said, direct your questions about the investigation to Detective—”
“Given the similarities between the Full Moon Killer murders and the latest killing, do you think it’s more likely we have a copycat on our hands, or do you believe Michael Rivers had an apprentice you never caught?”
“I’m not in a position to answer that question. I’m hanging up now.”
After Darcy ends the call, her left hand is curled into a white-knuckle fist, her legs tensed to the brink of cramping. She tosses the phone across the table and glares at her angry reflection. When the phone immediately rings again, she jolts and spills the iced tea. Cursing, she wipes the mess before it dribbles over the edge.
“Hello,” she snaps, expecting Shipley called her back.
“Darcy?”
She wipes the sweat off her brow and sighs.
“Sorry, Bronson. I thought you were someone else.”
“Are you and the kids okay? I heard what happened. Terrifying somebody died so close to the neighborhood. Have you heard anything?”
“The police stopped by.”
“Wait,” Bronson says, alarm and confusion in his voice. “Why did they come to your house? The cove is clear on the other side of the neighborhood.”