Page 76 of Watch Me

“Yeah.”

I closed my eyes briefly and took a deep breath. If this was our serial killer, at least the person wasn’t Reagan. “Text me the address.” I hung up the phone and turned to face the table. “I gotta go.”

“Is everything okay?” Dadasked.

“Yeah, duty calls.”

“Can you drop us off at home?” Reaganasked.

I didn’t want Reagan and Maddison to leave unless they wanted to. Everyone was having a good time. “If you want, or you two can stay.”

“How will we get home?” Reaganquestioned.

“Actually, yeah, let’s get you safe behind a locked door,” I replied. My dad, brother, or even Rhys could drive them back to my place, but I would feel better knowing they were home andsafe.

“So, it’s the same guy?” Dadasked.

“Shawn said it’s the same MO, so it appears to be.”

We didn’t waste any time saying our goodbyes. I apologized to everyone, even Reagan and Maddison, and the only thing my woman said to me was,“Just catch this guy.”

“Working on it, Buttercup,”I’dreplied.

I’d called Evan, and he met us at my condo. I felt bad asking him to work on Thanksgiving, but like me, he was the guy on call.

Before leaving, I made sure the girls were safe inside. I didn’t want to take a chance that this was some sort of decoy again, and I checked to make sure there were no plaques and no one inside before Ileft.

At the address Shawn had sent me, the blue and red lights lit up the dark night. I parked and walked to the door where I saw Shawn waiting for me. “What do we have?”

“First responding officer briefed me. We have a twenty-two-year-old female.”

“Stabbed?”

“Multiple times.”

“Shit,” I hissed as I slipped the shoe protectorson.

“Wooden plaque?”

“Yep.”

“Fuck,” I groaned as I entered the small one-bedroom house. Shawn had said it was the same MO, but it was still horrible that another young woman had lost her life because we couldn’t solve the cases fastenough.

Just like the other murders, the vic was laying on a blood-soaked couch. “I called Shay,” Shawn stated. “Vic is Fiona Jones, and she was a student at Lakeshore U.”

“Of course she was.”

“I already sent a patrol cop to take her laptop to Will.”

“Good. Listen up,” I yelled. “We need to catch this asshole once and for all. I want everything combed over five fucking times, and every piece of lint tested. There has to be—”

“Sergeant,” Roberta, with the crime scene unit, interrupted. “We have a strand of hair. It looks like the vic might have fought back.”

“Put a rush on both. I want to know tonight.”

“You got it.”

Everyone continued working as I stared down at Fiona’s bloody body. She wasn’t naked like the other victims, but given that she had multiple stab wounds and the fucking wood plaque, we were dealing with the same guy. Possibly a guy with red hair. And if Fiona did fight back and we got DNA, this could be the break we were lookingfor.