Page 31 of Nowhere to Hide

“Now I feel even better asking.”

I took a long pull from my bottle. “Why is that?”

“You won’t be on top of one another.” He turned around to take in the space. “Pretty sure this is bigger than my living room.”

“Shitbox apartment?”

Stone shrugged. “I just need a place to crash.”

“All work and no play is what makes you cranky.” I reached into the fridge. “Want a beer?”

“Yeah. I’m off.”

“I figured. Those clothes actually fit you.”

Stone set a bulging messenger bag on the floor then dipped his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, well I haven’t been in my uniform in five years. I’m lucky it still fits.”

I tossed him a bottle of Heineken. Surprised, he snatched it out of the air. He shook his head as he popped the top. “So you live on this thing full time?”

“For the last ten or so months.”

“Not sure how you do it.”

“Easier than you think.” I walked to the edge of the hangout space and looked out on the harbor. There were a number of boats in the marina but even more anchored in the water. “The water up here is choppy and a helluva lot colder, but less hurricanes to deal with.”

“I guess. I’d be bored in a week.” He stumbled a bit as the boat naturally rocked. He reached out for one of the railings and sat down on the bench seat. “Maybe a month.”

I’d been bored as fuck for months, but he didn’t need to know that. Every time I thought about heading back to Boston, I’d broken out in a cold sweat. Then I’d get drunk for three days and wallow before I dove into research for whatever next island or town I wanted to visit. It kept my mind engaged, but instead of going to all the coastal cities, I ended up staying off shore.

Never even going to do the things I’d researched.

Instead, I stayed on the boat like it was my own self-imposed jail—watching life go by ten or so miles away from me. I ignored texts and emails from everyone checking in on me.

Instead, I’d just rocked and drank, fished and drank.

I raked my fingers through my overlong hair. “I’m not sure this is a good plan, Stone.”

“Don’t back out on me now.”

“Have you talked to Diaz? Does she know about this?”

“Not yet.” He bent down and flipped the messenger bag open. “How about you look at this and then you’ll have a better idea of what you’re getting into.”

I sighed. “Fine.” I cleared off the table, tossing the take-out cartons into the garbage beside the sliding door into the kitchen and living room. I twisted my ball cap around to get it out of the way and when he pulled out a file folder three inches thick, I swore. “I thought you only had a handful of girls.”

“Oh, I have more than that, but I can’t prove all of these. Some probably are just similar attacks, but I’ve pulled over twenty-seven cases spanning seven years.”

I sat down and pulled the thickest file toward me and opened it. A pretty blond was clipped to the thin packet of papers. She looked barely twenty with eyes slightly too big for her face. She was wearing a hoodie and jeans in the shot, but the next one made the beer in my stomach pitch. She was wearing a club dress pushed up her thighs, sitting up with bags of garbage around her in an alley, her neck at an unnatural angle.

I thumbed through the next five, recognizing the names Stone had mentioned before.

The girls were all around twenty, some younger, some a little older—but they all seemed impossibly young in the living shots Stone had used first. As if to maybe remind himself of what they’d been before.

It just made the crime scene photos all the more jarring.

Some were discarded like the first, but others were found in hotel rooms and even one in a drug den of some sort. I dug deeper into his stack and saw similarities to the first six, but there were more inconsistencies. The older ones were more violent. As if the killer had been less controlled.

I pulled out the photo of the crime scene and body of each of the victims and lined them up oldest to newest on the table.