Page 110 of Girl Between (Dana Gray FBI Mystery Thriller #5)

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 mask adhered to the brittle skull.

Peering into the sunken eye sockets of the dead woman in the attic, she wondered who this poor woman was.

Monroe’s first victim? Or something more twisted?

Like the Casquette Girl victims, this corpse wore a simple white, linen dress—or at least it had been white before the fibers fused with the rotting flesh and fluids of decay.

The lace around the collar and sleeves was still well preserved, the pristine white material a stark contrast to the dark leathery skin that encapsulated what was left of the woman’s withered body.

A few wisps of blonde hair still clung to the corpse’s scalp. But the strangest part of all was the jewelry. The body had been laden with necklaces. Hundreds of them.

LaSalle gave a low whistle as she took stock of the jewelry. “Guess no one told her you can’t take it with you in the end.”

A sickening feeling settled in Dana’s stomach as she stared at the layers of mismatched jewelry. She knew what they were. She’d known the moment she saw the familiar silver locket with the green stone in the middle. “The jewelry’s not hers,” Dana breathed.

LaSalle gave her a strange look. “How do you know that?”

Detective George stepped closer, his gaze moving from the corpse to Dana. “Because they’re trophies.”

Dana swallowed the bile rising in her throat as she watched George reach a gloved hand out to touch the same silver locket she couldn’t stop staring at. “This locket belongs to Elizabeth Barton.”

“The Harvest Girl?” LaSalle asked. “You’re sure?”

George nodded.

“Jesus,” LaSalle muttered. “This guy’s a real piece of work.”

The stuffy attic air was laden with the unspeakable horrors Monroe must’ve performed there. Dana could feel the pull of evil emanating from the place. It was as though the line between life and death was perilously thinner in the cramped room.

It was a sensation she’d felt before. One that seemed to seep into the very fibers and molecules it touched. It existed in places where the dead outweighed the living—cemeteries, battlefields, warzones, sites of mass casualties, and now, the Monroe farmhouse .

The farmhouse had been cleared with the initial sweep of the property, but the hidden room inside the attic hadn’t been discovered at first. Like a page straight out of Edgar Allen Poe, the entrance had been bricked over, hiding the body beyond.

It was one of the additional K9 units that made the find, drawn by the scent of decay.

That same scent was now invading Dana’s lungs as she watched the crime scene photographer snapping photo after photo of the mummified corpse in front of her.

“Bag and tag everything,” George ordered, prompting the stunned agents and officers into action. “We find out who this victim is; we find Monroe.”