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Special Agent Fallon Baxter

“Luminol?” Jack says it low as he pulls me close by the waist as if we were a real couple right here in the depths of his old high school gym and I don’t protest. In fact, my heart gives a few unnatural thumps being so close to him and my skin drinks down the warmth from his body. “What do we need luminol for? I don’t have any on me,” he teases.

His dimples dig in for a moment as he inches his face close to mine, and for a split second, I think he’s going to kiss me. Terrifyingly enough, I’m not sure I’ll stop him.

“It’s just a hunch.” I glance back at the dance floor and spot Vanessa speaking to a couple of women as they watch the others rock the night away. A leopard may not change his spots, but neither does a wallflower. “I’ve got some with me,” I pant, suddenly thankful I drove. “Come on. We need to hurry.”

The air outside is perfumed with the surrounding pines, a welcome reprieve compared to what amounts to the cologne counter at the mall.

I quickly fill Jack in on everything Carrie told me and he grabs a hold of my hand a few feet from my truck and stops cold.

“Wait a minute.” He glances out at the woods as he tries to process it all. “That’s right. Nessa and Derek were together for a time. I didn’t think it was serious, though.”

“Apparently, it was,” I say, clicking my key fob as my truck chirps to life. “It sounds as if the so-called Queens took particular pleasure in tormenting her, too.” I open my trunk and begin riffling for the little black bag I’m looking for.

“So maybe Derek did this because he’s angry things never worked out with Nessa.”

I turn around abruptly to look at him. “Are you awake? Try maybe Nessa did it because they ruined the future she was trying to build with the bad boy of her dreams.” I shake my head. “I’m trying to think like a melodramatic teenage girl.” I reach blinding back into my trunk and come up triumphantly with what I’m looking for. “Ah—and here it is.”

“Here’s what?” Jack inches in to try to get a look at it.

“It’s the kit Hale gave me when I showed up at the field office that first day.”

“What kit?”

“You know, the kit,” I say as I start to dig through it. “At first, I thought it was more of a gag gift. But anyway, it was part of the welcome package right after he issued me my laptop and phone.”

“I didn’t get a kit,” he says, mostly amused. “What’s in it?”

“This, for starters,” I say, holding up a small aerosol can. “Luminol.”

“And what are you going to do with that?”

“See if I can’t scratch an itch.” I glance past him to make sure there’s not a soul around. “The other day when we were here, the paint she was mixing, she said it was red for the flowers. But I thought it looked brown. In fact, I thought it looked a lot like dried blood.”

Jack closes his eyes. “Okay. I thought it looked closer to brown, too. And so, what’s happening here? You think she took the blood of her victims in an effort to turn it into a work of art?”

“She did say we had no idea how much blood, sweat, and tears went into this. And that gave me the shivers.” I close the trunk and speed in the direction of that mural. “After I gave her my sister’s card, Nessa mentioned that her mother had other properties nearby that she needed help with, too.”

“That means she has a place to hold Brittney hostage if she’s still alive.”

“Exactly that,” I pant as we come close to running. “Something we haven’t discovered yet with Derek. She has a motive, and according to Carrie, she’s got a backbone of steel that has people thinking twice about messing with her now.”

“All right,” he says as he takes me by the hand and flies us to the outdoor hall just outside the English building. “There it is,” he says as we slow down to a stop.

I shake the can in my hand. Luminol is a common chemical used in forensics that reacts with the iron content in blood. Once it hits hemoglobin, the protein in blood that carries oxygen, it lights up with a blue glow. The process is swift, but the area needs to be dark. And as dark as it is out here, it’s still not dark enough.

Jack takes off his jacket as if reading my mind. “Pick a poppy,” he says, nodding to the clustered flowers painted onto the wall. “And you’re right. They look far too dark for my liking. You’d think as an art teacher she’d want to emulate the look a little more realistically.”

“I think she’s bringing reality into this, all right. Reality—and if we’re right, revenge.”

I lead us to the cluster of poppies as the two of us lean close to the wall. Jack quickly encapsulates us with his jacket and pins it to the mural, enshrining us in darkness, and I spray the area down.

Like magic, each one of those poppies glows a violent shade of blue.