Her pretty mouth went down in a frowning pout. “Well, of course they’ve been practicing. What else do they have to do? How do they live? I mean it, Stef. They don’t have jobs. I seriously doubt that protesting pays. So how do they maintain that cabin of theirs?” Stef grinned. He couldn’t help it. He knew something no one else knew, and he wasn’t going to tell. If Nell and Henry wanted to write crazy erotic romance that mirrored some of the things that happened in town, more power to them. The only reason he knew was he’d been the one to find them a lawyer to set up their LLC. Bliss was lawyer free. It was written into the town’s charter. Stef had very quietly helped the pair out, and now he would be silent as the grave. “I guess they’re just lucky. Maybe Henry had some family money.” What they had was a pseudonym and an e-publisher. They had made more money off their crazy polyamorous romances than Stef would have believed possible. He knew that because he’d also let them use his accountant. Henry and Nell had asked him to show some discretion, and after reading their latest, he’d decided it was best for the peace of the town if he honored their request. It would make Max and Rye crazy that their adventures had been fictionalized. But it was hard, because he so wanted everyone to know just how filthy Nell’s mind was. Nate had once described her as a Disney princess and Henry as an asexual college professor.
Jen shook her head. She settled against him again. “Maybe.” He let his hands wander on her deliciously curved backside, and his brain moved on to more amorous thoughts than the snowman-building contest. He squeezed her ass. God, he couldn’t wait to fuck her there.
There was a loud knock on the door. Stef spun his head around.
Couldn’t he get a fucking moment’s privacy in this town?
“Stef? Seriously, take a goddamn break! We gotta move,” Max yelled from the other side of the door. Stef knew it was Max. Only Max could make Stef want to punch him with the sheer sound of his voice.
“Go away!” Stef yelled back.
“Can’t, Stef.” Now Callie’s voice split through his skull.
“We should start charging,” Jen said.
“I might start killing.” Stef’s little family was making him crazy.
He squeezed her ass one last time and kissed her lips sweetly before she slid off him. He was reaching for his jeans as he looked at the door. “This better be good.”
“It’s bad,” Callie said.
“We’re supposed to take you to the clinic,” Max chimed in.
Stef did up the fly of his jeans and felt his curiosity rise. “Why?”
“Because the Doc is doing an autopsy, and Nate thought you should see it,” Max shouted through the door.
“Get dressed,” Stef barked at Jen. His every nerve was awake, alive, and afraid.
Twenty minutes later, Stef stared down at the body of one Cindy Pope, aged twenty-one. There was no way he could mistake the resemblance between the dead girl and his Jennifer. They were both brunettes, roughly the same age and build. If a person just glanced at the two, they might think they were the same woman.
“I wondered why there was a backpack in our trash bin.” Marie shook her very sensible head. “Teeny had gone out to take the paid bags out, and she found a very nice pack. And still full of her things.
Such a shame.”
“Well, it wasn’t aliens.” A no-nonsense voice spoke up. Stef turned to see a slender, petite female of maybe sixty years pursing her lips. She wore comfortable working clothes, and her long, steel-colored hair was in a braid that went halfway down her back. She stood beside Mel, her arms crossed over her chest. “They use lasers.”
“Yep.” Mel simply nodded his agreement and stared down at the woman like she was a font of knowledge.
Dear god, Mel was in love. Heaven help everyone.
“So, no laser, Doc?” Stef would leave the actual professional opinion to the man in the green scrubs. As far as he could tell, Caleb Burke might be just as certifiable as Mel, but at least he’d gone to medical school.
“Nah,” Caleb replied. “It was a knife.”
No shit. Stef felt his stomach turn. The girl was just a kid. She was lying on a slab in a clinic in a town she hadn’t been born in. A sick feeling came over him, panic threatening. He’d known this wasn’t over. How the hell had they caught up with her? “Same as Renard?” Caleb’s face was a grim mask as he looked back at Stef. “I believe so, though I didn’t see that body personally. From the way it was described to me, I have to think it’s a possibility. There’s no hesitation here. It’s clean. Mel and his friend, Cassidy Meyer, found her in the river out by 285.”
Mel let his hand drift to the small woman’s shoulder. “We were out on the alien highway. Our group was securing the recon platform.
Cassidy here was making sure the telescope was working. That’s when she saw the poor girl. We knew it wasn’t an alien thing right away. They would never kill a fertile, young female. They would probe her.”
The woman named Cassidy, who Stef deeply feared Mel had probably met on the Internet, nodded her agreement. “She’s a prime specimen for their fertility experimentations.” Nice. He’d found someone as crazy as he was.
Dr. Burke turned on the couple, his hand out as though seeking to ward off further paranoia. “Rachel is fine. I promise.” Cassidy waved her hand. “I know that, Doc. I don’t worry about it. I gave birth to two alien babies, and they’re just fine. Sweetest boys you ever saw. They both went into the Navy. Did their country and their mama proud. One of them has some weird ideas, but he’s a good man. They like beets, though. Couldn’t get enough of them when they were boys. We should tell Rachel to stock up.”
“Cassidy raised some fine kids. You wouldn’t ever know they’re half alien,” Mel said with a proud smile.
“I think that’s all we need, Mel,” Nate said, walking into the small room that currently served as the Bliss County Morgue. He was a familiar, welcome figure of authority. “And you, too, Marie. I appreciate everything. Logan can take the rest of your statements.
Y’all go on. Enjoy the festival.”
In a few seconds the room cleared, and Stef was left with Caleb and Nate.
“Is this what I think it is?” Stef couldn’t help the tight, almost violent way the question came out of his mouth.
Nate sighed. “I don’t know. I have to think we should consider the fact that what happened to Jennifer in Dallas is connected to this. We haven’t had a murder in Bliss County since…well, we’ve had several, but they were mostly self-defense. This is very different.” Caleb pointed to the body, his finger gesturing to the line of her throat. It was split neatly, the skin blue from the cold of the river and the fact that she’d left life behind hours before. “It’s a professional job. Neat, surgical. He didn’t do more than he had to do here, but look at her stomach.”
Burke pulled back the drab blue sheet that covered the girl. Her body was a map of blue and purple bruises.
“He beat her.” Stef couldn’t imagine it.
“He tortured her,” Caleb corrected. “There’s a systematic pattern to the bruising that tells me he was very controlled when he did this.
There’s nothing that hints at someone who was out of control. He didn’t touch her face. He went for soft parts of the body. He knew what he was doing.”
Nate was staring down at her wrists. “She was tied up.” Stef flinched at the chaffing on her wrists. She’d been tied too tightly. Caleb turned the wrist over. The underside was perfectly smooth.