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“I was interviewing an elderly woman who’d claimed that she saw a man and woman struggling by an unfamiliar vehicle in the street in front of her house,” Vera explained. There were things she still didn’t want to tell Bent, but with Eric here she might have no other choice. “The woman couldn’t say what the couple looked like, other than that they were White. She didn’t recognize the make of the vehicle. It was too dark, and she’d been frightened. A patrol unit had come to her home and found nothing amiss, but the lady demanded to speak with a detective, and I landed the call. As I was leaving the interview, I heard a sound ... like a crash at the house next door. It was an old neighborhood with those small post–World War Two houses right on top of each other.”

“Like in Huntsville’s medical district,” Bent suggested.

“Yeah.” Vera nodded. “So I listened for a moment, then I started for my car again, and”—she shrugged—“I just got this feeling that I should knock on the door. I can’t explain it. Maybe it was something the woman said that stuck in my head. I have no idea.”

“It’s calledcop’s intuition,” Eric reminded her, “and yours was very highly developed early in your career.”

“Anyway,” she continued, “I knocked on the door. No answer. Knocked again and again. Every time I knocked and there was nothing but silence, my skin tingled, heart rate climbed. I couldn’t stop. Then Iheard another sound. Not a crash, not a scream, but something muffled. I walked slowly around the house, knocking on walls and windows until I heard it again, louder this time—a muffled cry.”

“That,” Eric said, “is when she kicked in the back door.” He grinned at her. “She always leaves that part out. But she burst into that house and found Anderson, naked and bleeding. She saved the woman’s life.”

“But then the Messenger was pretty pissed,” Vera admitted. “He started sending me messages.”

“Ironically,” Eric put in, “Vera fit the profile of his preferred victim. Smart, blond, attractive. The game was on. He intended to have her.” His gaze locked with Vera’s. “That’s how she and I met. I was on the task force.”

“So,” Bent suggested, “you used her as bait to reel in the Messenger.”

Eric’s jaw tightened.

Vera sent Bent a look.

“She volunteered,” Eric countered. “If you know Vera, you know once those messages started coming, she wasn’t backing down.”

“In the end, we trapped him and he confessed,” she said, moving on.

Even now, all these years later, she wondered if they really had trapped him or if he’d set the trap. The fact was, in those final days of the investigation, the whole task force had been so focused on her and the messages she was receiving that Gloria Anderson was taken a second time right under their noses. No one had seen that one coming. It was bad enough the woman had gone through that hell once, but to live it twice was the worst kind of nightmare. Particularly considering the second time around was for one sick, sadistic purpose—to send Vera a message. Her insides twisted at the memory.

And that final message was delivered right to Vera’s doorstep. Carved into the flesh on the back of Gloria, his final victim:I’m going to enjoy killing you.The upside was that, like Nolan Baker, Gloria was alive. As Vera looked back, it was obvious that it was the Messenger who had set the trap. Maybe, after all these years, he’d finally decided to make good on that promise.

She shook off the thought. Not going there until she had no other choice.

“Which brings us to where we are now,” Bent said. “Palmer Solomon is in prison—has been for more than twelve years. There’s been no other activity matching his MO until now.”

“Which can only mean,” Eric admitted, “that we have a copycat who has access to information that was never released to the public.” He turned his hands up. “Since there was no trial, there were things that simply never came up publicly.”

“Or,” Vera argued, “he has a surrogate doing this for him. We need to know if he got close to anyone who was recently released. The other option is the one no one wants to consider—that there was someone else involved before he was caught and that protégé has decided on a comeback now.”

Eric acknowledged her points with a nod. “Which is why I’m here. The more eyes we have on this case, the better. We do not want a repeat of what happened before.”

Vera cringed inside. Like the part she had not told Bent. That she hadn’t told Eve or Luna. It just wasn’t the kind of thing you shared.

“So you’ll follow up on any close associates he may have had in prison?” she asked, skirting the subject he’d brought up.

“Absolutely,” Eric confirmed, looking a little confused. “We’re already looking for ways he may have reached out to someone beyond those prison walls, which, as you are aware, is the most logical scenario.”

For those involved with the original case, it’s the cleanest for sure,she opted not to say. Not to mention it happened all the time.

“I’m sure you’re ready to settle in,” Bent said to Eric. “We can reconvene in the morning at eight and go from there.”

“Excellent.” Eric stood, reached a hand across Bent’s desk. “I look forward to working with you, Sheriff Benton.”

Bent gave his hand a shake. “We’ll take all the backup we can get.”

Vera pushed herself to her feet, picked up her bag, and hung it over her shoulder.

“Vera, are you free for dinner this evening?” Eric asked.

She produced a smile. “I am. I was about to ask you the same thing.” It would be rude not to. Plus, there were things they needed to talk about. “Are you staying at the Hampton Inn?”