Page 125 of Girl Between

So far six mass graves had been discovered.

At first glance, they’d seemed innocuous burial grounds fordiscarded slaughterhouse byproducts. But upon closer inspection, human remains were discovered among the animals, just like under the floorboards of the slaughterhouse and barn.

By all estimates, the city of bones they’d uncovered would be the largest human burial discovery in a century.

Dana wanted this to be it. She wanted the discoveries to end here. But she knew better. That sixth sense of hers drawn to the darkness told her this was just the beginning. And Dana feared it wouldn’t end until they caught Monroe. Which she had little hopes of until they discovered what was driving his compulsion to kill.

The floorboards creaked, making Dana jump. She knew it was likely one of the many agents or officers, but this place had her on edge. She kept expecting Monroe to pounce from some dark corner.

Turning, Dana tented a hand over her eyes against the glare of the afternoon sun shining through the gaps in the rafters. Her tension eased when George emerged from the shadows, navigating cobwebs and dust motes as he ambled toward her.

He joined her, leaning against the opposite side of the open loft window. Dana noted the twitching muscles in his rigid jaw. He seemed off today.

She knew the case was weighing on him, but it was more than that. From the very beginning she and George had found an unspoken ease. They’d always been on the same page. It was what made him so easy to work with. But now he seemed miles away. She didn’t like this new distance or the tension it brought.

He couldn’t still be upset she’d pushed him to question Landry. She’d been right about him. She’d been right about Monroe, too. He fit the profile to a T. What they’d uncovered here proved it beyond a doubt. So what was the problem? Dana was about to ask, but George spoke first.

“I suppose this is where you say, ‘I told you so,’” he muttered bitterly.

“If you think I’m gloating over a discovery of death you don’t know me at all. What I want, is to find Levi Monroe and stop these senseless killings.”

“Don’t you think that’s what I want, too?”

“Is it? Because you’ve been dragging your feet this whole time.”

An anger she’d never seen in George crackled across his face. “This isn’t the FBI, Dr. Gray. Some of us have to follow procedure. It’s called police work.”

“I know all about procedure,” she remarked. “You’re the one not following it.”

“Excuse me?”

“The fact of the matter is we could’ve been here sooner if you’d questioned Landry when I first told you my suspicions. So, if you’re looking to blame someone, find a mirror.”

“If you think I don’t know that, then you don’t knowmeat all,” George seethed, throwing her words back at her. He gestured wildly to the mass graves below them. “These are my people, from my city. They’re my responsibility. I know I failed them. I don’t need you reminding me. In fact, I don’t see a reason for you to be here at all.”

Dana’s cheeks flushed with her rising fury. “You’re the one who begged me to take this case! Now that I’m right, you don’tneedme?”

George was quick with his reply, but whatever sharp words he had were drowned out by the piercing peal of another whistle. A moment later, George’s radio crackled to life. “All units respond to the farmhouse. We’ve got a body.”

109

Dana thought she knew evil.But nothing could prepare her for what she saw when she entered the farmhouse attic.

Her stomach churned as she moved through the space, her senses struck by the overwhelming stench of rotting flesh.

Inside the small room, the walls were adorned with grim memorabilia, articles of a macabre collection that spoke of Monroe's dark obsessions with death and dismemberment.

Evidence was strewn across the room. Crude medical instruments, dark stains marring the wooden floors beneath a metal gurney, cryptic notes scattered about. All of it hinting at the twisted logic behind Monroe's actions.

Dana's gaze fixed on a series of photographs pinned to a corkboard—the haunting visages of past victims, their eyes perpetually wide with fear, their bodies in varying stages of dissection.

How long has Monroe been doing this?

Then Dana saw her.

The body. Though it wasn’t a body at all.

Desiccated by time and temperature, what had once been a living, breathing human was now a mummified corpse. Dana suddenly found it hard to breathe as she stared at the Venetian death maskadhered to the brittle skull. Peering into the sunken eye sockets of the dead woman in the attic, she wondered who this poor woman was.