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“Thatta girl. Keep it handy, but I’m coming at you in about a minute. Don’t shoot me.”
When he came around the last bend in the creek, he ended the call with Jessica and shone his flashlight on her standing beside a crumpled form at the water’s edge, herweapon in her hand at her side. His gut twisted in knots. He’d been so focused on getting to Jessica, he hadn’t let the news of another body sink in—until now.
His stride ate up the final feet between them, and he pulled her against his chest with one arm. Her body trembled against him. “God, I’m glad you’re okay.”
“I am—” she sniffled and pointed her gun at the body “—but she’s not.”
“Have you touched the body? Done any kind of observation?”
“Just checked her pulse to make sure she didn’t have any life left to save. Sh-she was still warm. I didn’t want to touch anything else.” She wriggled from his grasp and tapped her phone. “I’m calling it in.”
He didn’t want to touch anything, either, but he crouched beside the young woman, her eyes staring, her black hair spread out in a fan behind her head, and ran his light around her face and neck. The redness around her throat indicated another strangling. Small scratches marred her skin, and he directed his light to her hand resting across her chest. One broken fingernail and a few drops of blood indicated this poor girl had fought to breathe, fought to remove the object around her neck, strangling the life out of her.
Finished with her call to 911, Jessica nudged him in the back with her toe. “Careful.”
He rose beside her. “Strangled, probably with a tie or scarf. Most likely not a rope or wire.”
“Just like Morgan—” Jessica rubbed her upper arms “—and Tiffany, butnotlike the other Creekside victims.”
“Well, we know where Avery Plank is, so it’s definitely not him.” Finn stepped away from the body, pullingJessica with him. “What were you doing out here? How’d you find this body?”
“What wereyoudoing out here?”
“I followed you.” He shrugged, not ashamed of his actions. “After you got that text at dinner, you seemed off. I figured you were up to something and if you didn’t want to tell me, it was probably something you knew you shouldn’t be doing.”
“What are you, the hall monitor?” She narrowed her eyes, but he didn’t flinch.
“You’re welcome. I may have saved your life.”
“It’s not my life that needed saving.”
“Are you going to tell me what happened or make me find out when you talk to the police because Iknowyou’re not lying to them.” He crossed his arms and puffed out his chest, even though he really wanted her back in his embrace. For all her tough talk, her eyes looked glassy in the darkness, and that scream still echoed in his brain.
“I got a text from someone who told me to meet him at Morgan’s memorial site if I wanted to find out what happened to Tiffany.”
Anger fizzed in his veins, and he wanted to berate her for her carelessness—but that wasn’t the way to get Jessica Eller to talk. “Unknown number, I presume.”
“You presume correctly, and we can further presume that any tracing of the number is going to come back to a burner phone, but I’m still going to run a trace.”
“Okay.” He curled his fingers into his biceps. “Morgan’s memorial site. I was there. You weren’t. What happened from there?”
“I stopped there for a few minutes waiting, and then Ibegan to hear noises in the woods—human noises. Footsteps.”
“Someone out there just stomping around after committing a murder.”
“No stealthy creeping. He definitely wanted me to hear him…and follow him.” She rubbed her hands together in front of her, as if trying to get warm even though she still wore the jacket from dinner.
“Follow him?”
“His footsteps were quite clear. Every time I stopped to listen, he’d respond by leading me on with his footsteps. Once I started along the path, it became clear that he was leading me to Tiffany’s crime scene.” She covered her mouth with her hand.
“You got to…that location and then what happened?”
Her eyes widened as she reached out and grabbed his arm. “He laughed.”
“Laughed? What kind of laugh?” Finn clenched his jaw. What kind of evil laughed after committing a murder? Avery Plank for one, and there were many others.
“A horrible, high-pitched laugh.” Jessica covered her ears as if she could still hear it. She probably could.