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Stella climbed to the top of the embankment and watched the freight train rumble away, heading east. The train wasn’t moving fast, just slow enough to allow someone to leap on board without killing themselves. But as it left the bridge, the locomotive picked up speed. The tracks rattled until they eventually sank into silence.

She slipped her gun back into her holster.

Hagen had paced away, his phone to his ear. He returned after a minute. “Police’ll talk to the freight company. They’ll stop the train a couple of miles east of here. He’s not going anywhere.”

She wished that were true.

“A lot of places to leap off a train within a couple of miles.”

“Maybe. But not many that are safe, and there’s not much we can do for now unless you feel like chasing a train.”

Hagen’s nostrils flared. He definitely looked like he wanted to drive after the locomotive.

She shook her head. “Forget it. This isn’t The French Connection . Let the cops run him down. If he stays on the train, the police will pick him up down the line. Let’s check the Toyota.”

She scrambled down the bank toward the truck. Whoever the driver was, Stella hated the motherfucker. She regretted not opening fire when he fled. If he’d still been armed, she could’ve defended her decision. But she hadn’t seen a weapon, and he hadn’t tried to shoot once he’d left his vehicle.

Stella peered through the window, careful not to touch anything. There was no sign of the gun. She almost gagged as she spotted some vile-looking brown sludge in a capped plastic water bottle sitting in the cup holder. A paintbrush was shoved into the substance. She made a mental note to deal with that and the backpack lying on the passenger seat—or maybe have Hagen handle that stuff.

The back seat contained some food wrappers, two empty tequila bottles, and something yellow that stuck out from under the passenger seat. She slipped on a pair of gloves before reaching inside to pull out a pair of battered license plates.

“Pennsylvania.”

Her stomach twisted. So the killer had come all the way from Pennsylvania to bait them like this. A friend of Maureen King’s, perhaps. The guy who’d tied the knots for her, maybe.

“It’s a Toyota Tacoma. I think I know where this is going.” Still holding his phone, Hagen peered over her shoulder. His face was grim. “Just a sec, Mac. I need you to run some plates for me.”

As he read the numbers, something thumped from the bed of the vehicle.

Stella eyed Hagen. From the look on his face, she hadn’t imagined the noise. They turned.

The thump came again.

Pulling their weapons, they sidestepped to the back of the vehicle and looked inside the empty bed.

It thumped again.

“Inside the toolbox,” Hagen said as he strode toward the driver’s door, which still stood wide open. “Mac, call me when you’ve got something.” He hung up.

Hagen pulled out the keys and tossed them to Stella.

She caught them one-handed and opened the tailgate, then shoved a smaller key from the ring into a slot and opened up the large toolbox.

Delafayette lay curled and bound inside the small space. Blood darkened his matted hair and cast black streaks across his temple. Stella tugged on the knots that held his wrists.

“Hagen, call an ambulance. Now!”

He was already ahead of her. After describing the location to the emergency services, Hagen strode around to Stella’s side.

She busied herself with the rope. “Look at these.” She shot him a quick glance.

The rope was wrapped expertly around Delafayette’s wrist, and the knots were tight, too tight to untie.

At the sight of the binding, Stella found herself back on that evening in the woods not so long ago. A body swinging upside down from the trees. Blood spread across the snow like a splash of ink on an empty page.

“Here.” Hagen held out a penknife, the blade open.

She took it. “I got to get myself one of these.”

Stella sawed at the rope, staying away from the knot, which might provide some useful evidence.

The rope gave way, and Delafayette groaned.

Stella placed a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t try to move, Fett. An ambulance is on its way.”

Sirens sounded in the distance.

Fett tried to move despite her instructions. He moaned. “My left pocket.”

“What’s in it?”

“Check. Now, before I change my mind.”

She really didn’t want to dig in his pocket, but she did, glad for the gloves. She felt a cloth with something inside it and wound her fingers around it.”

“That’s it. Get ’er out.”

Stella did. It was a dirty bandanna wrapped around…a scalpel. She tilted her head like an angry mother about to scold her toddler.

“You saved my life. Plus, the carrot cake was fantastic.” Fett wiped some coagulating blood from an eyelid. “I just found that, so you know. I had nothing to do with nothing about that dead kid.”

Stella believed him and showed Hagen the weapon just as his phone rang.

He rolled his eyes as he took the call and stepped away. “Really? You’re sure?” His voice was quiet, but the surprise in it caught Stella’s ear. “Thanks, Mac. Ask Anja to call him and take a statement, will you? Then tell her to contact Sheriff Deacon. See if she can get a lead on who stole the truck. And ask if he can track down any young men listed in Claymore Township by the name of Trevor. I’ll tell Stella.”

With her hand back on Delafayette’s shoulder, the other holding a key piece of evidence from Patrick Marrion’s crime scene, Stella waited for Hagen to hang up and return. “Sheriff Deacon? From Claymore Township? Does that mean what I think it means?”

“That’s David Broad’s truck.”

Stella blinked. “Broad’s truck that went missing right after we stopped Maureen.”

“Guess someone, possibly named Trevor, must’ve stolen it and lit out of Dodge. Probably a good thing, considering how rarely he’s sober.”

Stella took a deep breath, almost wishing Hagen hadn’t made the joke. Of course Maureen’s accomplice had stolen the truck and left town. If only she’d made the connection back when Broad had brought up his missing truck, but there was no connection to make. Only now, with the truck in front of her and the killer in the wind, could she see the link from Pennsylvania to Nashville.

She was furious they’d missed this, though. “We assumed Sheriff King participated in a crime he didn’t commit. Maureen did have help. But not from him. And that help has followed us down here.”

Hagen lowered his chin. His face showed all the regret and disappointment and anger tightening her chest. “Whoever it was must’ve read everything about us in Broad’s reports and brought their killings to our turf. We screwed up.”

No. They hadn’t screwed up. Not entirely. “We stopped Maureen King. She would’ve killed again.” A vision of the rope around the tree in the woods flashed into Stella’s head. Her defiance shrank. “But, no…we screwed up badly.”

Delafayette groaned again. Hagen drew nearer and bent over, examining the wound on his head.

“That looks nasty. Let’s hope there’s no skull fracture.”

Sirens going, an ambulance sped under the bridge, followed by two patrol cars. Stella waved them down.

As the paramedics eased Delafayette out of the toolbox and onto a stretcher, Hagen told one set of officers to remain with the vehicle. The other two were both young and fresh-faced, the kind of newly minted officers who were excited to be called to the scene of an emergency but relieved they didn’t actually have much to do when they got there.

With Delafayette taken care of, Stella turned to Hagen. “Why would Maureen King’s accomplice come after us? Why kill us when we’re the people most likely to understand what he’s doing? He hasn’t just been killing. He’s been trying to lead us around. You went to the alley with Ander because of a tip-off and were shot at. The truck was there too.”

Hagen stared at her. “He’s targeting us. He wants revenge.”

“Because we stopped his run in Claymore Township? Because Maureen died in front of us?” Stella lowered her hand. “Or maybe he thinks the law enforcement officers who stopped him in Pennsylvania would make better sacrificial victims than a psychiatric patient and a couple of small-town cops?”

Being shot on the job was a risk she was prepared to take.

But being hung upside down and bled to death by a lunatic with a hankering for an apocalypse was a step too far.

They were going to catch this monster, and they were going to throw away the key.

Hagen snapped his fingers at the younger officers. “You two can stop standing around like a couple of saltshakers. Get back in your car and follow us.”

They drove to the parking garage outside the abandoned warehouse, where the chase had begun. Hagen stopped next to Patrick Marrion’s Ridgeline. One of the officers approached the bed, and Stella told him not to touch it. She and Hagen had already screwed up enough.

“Forensics is going to be all over that thing. Any news on the train?”

The officer stepped away and spoke into his radio. His shoulder squawked back. He shook his head. “Nothing yet.”

“Dammit. Right, you wait here and keep an eye on that truck until forensics get here.” Stella waved at the officer’s colleague. “You come with us.”

The officer followed as Stella and Hagen headed toward the stairwell. Stella bounded up to the first floor and stopped. The dirt on the steps to the second floor was undisturbed, but the door to the landing hung on one hinge, and mud was smeared across the tiles.

Stella drifted her hand to her gun.

“Looks like Maureen’s accomplice had an accomplice of his own,” Hagen whispered.

“Makes sense, considering Maureen wasn’t available.”

“Right. Until he killed him. You still think it was Otto Walker?”

Stella nodded and relaxed a little. Her arm drifted back to her side. What Hagen said made sense. Otto Walker had helped kill Patrick Marrion. Then the killer tried to cover his tracks, or perhaps, Walker got cold feet and tried to back out. Whatever the cause, the killer—possibly named Trevor—turned Walker into his next victim.

And now he was in the wind. Whoever he was.

She stepped into the corridor. The rooms in front were empty of everything except dust, smashed tiles, and bits of broken timber. A steel door stood at the end, sealed with a padlock.

“Officer, you got a bolt cutter in your car?”

The officer nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” He doubled back down the stairs. The handrail squeaked as he pulled himself around the landing, and his boots thumped on the steps.

Stella approached the door. It must’ve stood there for a while, the final permanent barrier to have survived the dereliction of the old building. The last tenants might’ve used this part of the building as a storeroom or an archive. Only the lock itself was new.

The officer’s footsteps thumped up the steps. The handrail squeaked. He ran down the passage, a set of bolt cutters two feet long upright in his hands. His cheeks were red, and despite the cold, a bead of sweat ran down his temple. He must’ve run all the way there and all the way back. Good man.

“How long you been in law enforcement, Officer…?”

“Edwards. Six months, ma’am.”

Six months. A few more months on the job, and he’d know enough to take his time.

“Give it your best shot, Officer Edwards.” Hagen gestured to the lock.

Officer Edwards applied the jaws of the bolt cutter and squeezed the handles.

Nothing happened.

He changed his grip and squeezed harder. A report as loud as a gunshot echoed down the corridor. The broken lock landed on the floor, just missing his boot.

Hagen pushed past him through the door, and Stella followed.

At first glance, Stella saw a single mattress that had seen better days with a sleeping bag next to it, a gas cooker in a corner, and a long piece of thick rope hanging from a metal bar in the ceiling…with one hell of a strange but familiar mess beneath it. The lingering, metallic smell of blood took her back to the woods, to Sheriff King’s shed, to every crime scene she’d ever attended.

And on the walls was that writing again.

That cursed cuneiform.

Hagen examined the long piece of rope that hung ominously from the ceiling before crouching to inspect the nasty brown stain. “Check out the floor here.”

At a glance, it looked like dried mud or paint.

But she knew it was blood.

They’d found the place where Patrick Marrion had been strung up and drained of life.

Outside the door, Officer Edwards’s radio squawked. He confirmed receipt of the message and stepped through the doorway.

“They’ve stopped the train.”

“And?”

“No one on it, ma’am.”