Page 135 of Paranoid

And, oh, another dead body, too, whose eyes had been taped over until the kids had come and tried to save her. Xander Vale’s prints were all over the wad of blue tape left at the scene, but he’d tried to rescue Annessa Cooper rather than kill her.

The two crimes had to be connected, the killer the same, but while Violet Sperry’s body had been left in a pool of her own blood from the fall that had broken her neck and cracked her skull, ribs, pelvis, both of her ulnae and radii, as well as her right fibula, Annessa Cooper had been carried and dragged from the spot where the attack had taken place near the doors of the school to the bell tower of the old chapel and hung from the long-forgotten ropes.

Why?

Why one and not the other?

Violet’s death had been fairly quick after a struggle. It could be the killer had planned to take her somewhere else, to display her as he had Annessa, to not murder her quickly, but let her suffer until she was found, but the fight had turned violent and deadly.

Annessa had been at the school to meet her lover, it seemed, according to the texts in her phone. The conversation had been with Nate Moretti, a classmate who had known both women, though he seemed to have no connection to Violet Sperry other than having gone to school with her way back when.

She bit her lip and thought, hearing some commotion in the hallway and a deputy swear about having to go and deal with traffic as someone had hit an elk. “Highway thirty, about six miles out of town, the animal died at the scene, the driver is okay, rescue on its way, traffic backing up. Shit.” It sounded like Claire Donahue had taken the call. “I hate this part of the job,” she was saying as her footsteps pounded a quick beat down the hallway. “Azure, are you coming with me? For the love of Mother Mary, I don’t know why that damned herd doesn’t stay down in Gearhart where it belongs!”

“I’m in,” Trace Azure said, his voice a deep baritone and sounding faintly amused at his partner’s frustration. “Let’s roll.”

Donahue muttered loud enough for anyone within fifteen feet to hear, “Effin’ elk.”

“So where do you think you are? Effin’ New York City? Deal with it, Donahue,” Azure said, making a point. Chinook was a large county, primarily rural, with a few small towns in its boundaries, Edgewater being included. Their voices faded and the backdrop of ringing phones, low conversations, and shuffling footsteps returned to its usual dull cacophony.

Kayleigh tried to get back into work, still going over the reports, hoping for something, any damned thing she might have missed on her first quick scans.

Cade had called and reported Moretti was MIA.

Great.

Kayleigh’s first thought had been the wronged husband might have sought out his vengeance on his wife’s younger lover, but it turned out Clint Cooper, too, had an iron-clad alibi. He hadn’t even been in the state. And, once more, no fortune-hungry kids were waiting for her to die. Annessa Cooper’s stepchildren by Clint’s first and second marriages wouldn’t get a dime until Clint himself kicked off.

She drummed her fingers on her desk, then caught herself and stopped, only to pick up a pencil and twirl it nervously. She was antsy because of too little sleep and too many unanswered questions. Where the hell was Moretti? Had he been scared off last night? Was he in hiding, in fear for his life after what he’d seen, the attack at the school? But why then not call 911 or try to break up the assault himself?

So what was the connection?

And why the staging? Why leave her alive? Had the killer been scared off? Had he been confronted by Nate Moretti?

She came back to the same thought over and over again: the victims graduated together from Edgewater High twenty years earlier and they both had been at the abandoned fish-packing plant when Luke Hollander had died. They’d both been witnesses on Rachel Gaston Ryder’s behalf.

But that seemed far-fetched.

Who would care after all these years?

Nate Moretti? Reportedly Luke Hollander’s best friend? Why would he suddenly go homicidally berserk? Because of the articles in the paper? She snorted at that thought. Because of the twentieth anniversary of the homicide or was it because of his upcoming high school reunion? She almost smiled. A lot of people hated reunions and didn’t want to be reminded of high school, but killing classmates seemed a little on the extreme side.

She wondered about Harper. Poor kid. No teenager should have to witness the horrifying death of another at such a young age. Well, never, of course, but death happened, often at the hands of another person. Seeing the girl at the scene, so young and broken, beyond upset, clinging to Cade, had gotten to Kayleigh. Watching the interplay between father and daughter had only confirmed to Kayleigh that her decision had been right, that breaking it off with Cade before it had ever really gotten started had proved to be the only path to have taken.

But it was still hard. Painful.

Observing him comforting his daughter had torn at Kayleigh’s heart, had caused her to want Cade Ryder even more than she had before. Why?

Because you’re an effin’ cretin when it comes to Cade Ryder.

She tossed her pencil onto her desk in disgust and watched it slowly roll to the floor, then picked it up and stuffed it back into the mug of writing utensils she kept near her monitor.

She needed to do something. Get out of the office. Away from the desk. Clear her mind. Get a fresh perspective. She was tired from lack of sleep the night before and nothing was happening here. Her phone buzzed and she saw it was Travis McVey. For a second, in her mind’s eye, she saw his bare chest and ropey arm muscles, remembered how it felt to have him turn her easily in the bed and run his hand down her spine and over her rump. She felt a little shiver of desire

deep inside but quickly shut it down. “Not now,” she said and let the call go to voice mail. Then added a silent: Not ever.

CHAPTER 31

At 4:47, Cade was done waiting.