Page 13 of The Hanging Dolls (Zoe Storm #1)

TWELVE

The next day, Travis Hunter rubbed his chest to ease the pressure blooming behind his ribs. He rummaged through his bag for his medicine. Finding the bottle, he flicked open the lid and popped a pill in his mouth. He turned on the faucet and sprayed cold water on his face over and over again.

He heard the front door open and close, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps.

Ryan stirred in surprise. “Uhm… what are you doing here?”

“I was at the station all night so came to take a nap before I go back. Don’t you have school?”

Ryan avoided his gaze as he took out a root beer from the fridge. “Yeah, but I had a free period so I came home early.”

Travis eyed him. “How’s… how’s school going?”

Ryan paused and sighed. His lips pressed in a tight, hard line. With a jolt, he threw the can in the trash. “I have schoolwork to do.” He tried to shoulder past him, but Travis blocked his way.

“Ryan, what’s been going on with you? We don’t talk anymore,” he said, avoiding his son’s eyes.

For someone who had spent his lifetime interrogating criminals and boring into their eyes until they fessed up their crime, he was shockingly bad at speaking to his own son.

The words that he wanted to form with his tongue always seem to get lodged in his throat.

The air between them swelled with tension before Ryan spoke.

“We never talked. Let’s keep it that way,” he said, his tone curt and dismissive. He pushed past Travis and marched to his room, slamming the door shut behind him.

Travis fell heavily onto one of the chairs around the dining table.

The air in the kitchen was still thick, a witness to his failing relationship with his son.

Ryan was right, they didn’t talk much, but Travis always felt a lot was said in those snippets of strained conversations.

He stared at an old picture hanging on the wall—of him, a newborn Ryan in his arms and his late wife.

Somehow during all those years spent analyzing and breaking down strangers, he had lost track of his own son. The pain in his chest increased, like a sharp object growing bigger. His thoughts flew to Lily. In the periphery of his vision, he saw a young girl with pigtails.

He didn’t look at her. It was the ghost that always followed him.

“Say hi to Aunty Zoe!” Gina shoved the phone in the face of a little boy who was too busy making a Pac-Man with Lego. “Davey! If you don’t say hi, I’m taking that away.”

Davey’s head snapped to the camera with a wide toothless grin that was forced. “Hi, Aunty Zoe!”

“Hello, Davey.” Zoe blew him a kiss. “I heard you’re kicking ass in school.”

He chortled at her use of the word ass and Gina took back the phone. “Zoe! You can’t use such language in front of kids!”

“Aunty said ass ! Aunty said ass !” Davey sang as he danced in the background.

“Thanks, Z. Thanks.” Gina sighed, her hair haywire. “I’m going to be listening to this for days now. Where are you, by the way?”

Zoe was sitting on the bonnet of her car, munching on a sandwich. “I’m on a case in a small town.”

“What kind of case?”

“You don’t want to know,” Zoe replied with her mouth full.

Gina’s lips puckered. “Oh God, it involves kids, doesn’t it? How do you do this, Z?”

Zoe gave a watery smile. “Someone’s gotta do it.”

Zoe and Gina were polar opposites. Gina, harebrained and erratic, had somehow found her groove in motherhood.

But Zoe knew her baby sister lived a sheltered life and was too young to really remember anything.

That ignorance gave her the superpower to infuse lightness into everything.

Unlike Zoe who was only good at painting a bright, sunny varnish.

But Zoe was hellbent on trying to scratch that itch of truth.

There was a gaping hole in her life, her own mother a big question mark, and she had made promises she was too young to make.

She sucked on the straw, drinking more pop when Gina’s face dropped. “What is it, Z?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re drinking pop. Is something upsetting you?”

“It’s just the case.” Zoe shrugged. “And you know my policy. Sugar fixes everything.”

“Sugar fixes everything,” Gina repeated, smiling. “Oh God, I gotta go, catch you later, okay?”

Zoe hung up but continued to stare at Gina’s name on the screen.

She grazed her thumb over it. Guilt reared its ugly head as she thought of the secrets she was keeping from Gina about what really happened with Rachel.

Shreds of clouds chased each other overhead, casting a bleak shadow over town, the mist forming a thin film on her face.

“Yeah… yeah… okay.” There was the sound of gravel crunching as Aiden walked toward her with a bag of taco bell in one hand and his phone in the other. “We’ll look at it when we get back. Thanks, Scott.”

“What happened?” Zoe asked when he disconnected. “Oh! Is that taco bell!”

“Yes…” He stared at her like she had two heads. “It’s just a bean burrito.” Zoe snatched it from him and began ripping into it, silencing those pangs of hunger. “Which was for me.”

“Huh?” she asked with a mouthful.

“Nothing.” An amused smile tugged on his lips—and suddenly, Zoe realized that she had never noticed how handsome his smile was. “Anyway, patrol officers found a toy around thirty feet from the crime scene. They bagged it. It’s back at the station.”

“A toy?” Zoe’s eyebrows shot up. “But Lily didn’t have a toy when she went missing, right?”

The wheels in Aiden’s head began to move at full speed.

“She didn’t. Now, I highly doubt that the killer went to her place and picked up one of her own toys—though you should look into that anyway, just in case.

Most likely, it was his way of trying to make her feel comfortable.

The lack of evidence pointing to a struggle suggests that Lily wasn’t scared of him. ”

After wolfing down the burrito, she continued sucking at the pop even though there were only bubbles left.

“Are you thirsty?” He frowned.

“No. Oh, how rude of me! Would you like some?”

“N-no.” He scratched his ear. “He could be engaging in grooming. The juxtaposition of the kindness followed by violence aligns with psychopathic tendencies?—”

“But you said before he might not be a sadistic psychopath.”

A fleeting grimace. “ Might . Not all sadistic psychopaths will torture and maim. Though, the toy might be an indication of something else.”

“What?”

“Unresolved childhood trauma. The act of giving toys could symbolize a regression to their own childhood, representing a transference of their unmet needs onto the victims.”

“Have there been any instances like this before? In the archives?” Zoe asked.

“I didn’t find anything, but of course not everything is reported. What did you think of Bella?”

Zoe hadn’t given her much thought. “Regular teenager plagued with guilt. By the way, I was thinking about the message he left in the woods.” She pulled up the picture on her phone. “I think we are focusing too much on his tone and we should pay attention to the words he uses too.”

“Okay…” He leaned against the side of the door and crossed his ankles.

“I plucked a flower. Lily is a flower,” she began.

His eyes widened. “Stop me from stealing a star .”

She nodded. “I think we need to find a girl whose name means ‘star’.”

Zoe had known the moment she saw Lily’s body in the woods, the rope hanging ominously above her, and the picture pinned to it. There was a deliberate, almost ceremonial arrangement to the scene. This wasn’t a crime of impulse—it was calculated, ritualistic.

“This just confirms it. There were three nooses—one for each victim,” Aiden said quietly.