Chapter 5

AIDEN

"Well, helloooo stranger," a familiar voice mocked from behind me, right before I felt Victoria's arms lock around my shoulders. I let out a chuckle as I spun away from my desk and turned to give her a proper hug.

"Welcome back! Work definitely hasn't been the same without you," I snickered, glad to have my partner back where she belonged. Not that we hadn't texted and video-chatted while Victoria had been house-sitting for her cousin the last week so she could go on her honeymoon.

She beamed, her smile growing even bigger than I imagined it could.

"Thank you, thank you. I had a great time, and I can't believe it's already been a week, and I have to be back here looking at your ugly mug." Victoria let out a laugh, and I rolled my eyes.

"Gee, thanks, Vic. I definitely feel the love."

I bit my lip and asked her the burning question, which I'd stopped myself from blurting out every time we talked. As I went to open my mouth, I thought better of it once again and snapped my mouth closed.

There was no reason to dredge it up. However, I couldn't help but still feel the sting of rejection that I'd felt the morning after the wedding, when I woke up alone and realized Nate had left without goodbye.

Screw him.

Except I did, and while it was insanely intense, it was also so fucking good. Sure, he kind of scared me a little, and I didn't usually go after the bad boy type but he couldn't have been all bad. At least, that was what I kept telling myself.

It took all my willpower not to ask her about Nate. Besides, she might not even know who he was if he'd been from the groom's side or just a friend of one of them.

"Sooo… when are you going to tell me about the mystery man you snuck away with?" She plopped down in her chair next to me and leaned forward with her chin resting on her hands.

I let out a groan. Really, I should have known better. Victoria was a great detective, and she could sniff out bullshit a mile away. Why I thought I could lie to her, I'd never know.

"Not much to tell. We went back to the room. He left the next morning. And that's that."

The skeptical look she threw me spoke volumes, even among her silence. We knew each other long enough, and well enough, that we didn't always need words to communicate. And I hated that this was one of those times.

I didn't want to talk about Nate or how he made me feel. Mostly because I didn't know how he made me feel. It had been like there'd been two sides of him that night.

"Yeah, I don't buy that for a second." She looked at me, one eyebrow raised, and waited for me to spill the details. "Did you already know him or meet him at the wedding?"

The fact we had been at a family event for her cousin made me slightly uncomfortable. The only saving grace was she didn't seem to know who Nate was, so I doubted they were related.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

"I met him at the wedding," I confessed with a resigned sigh. This woman had a way of getting me to spill all my secrets. Very frustrating. "Seriously, there's not much more to tell. We met, we slept together, he left, then I met up with you for breakfast before you drove out to the ‘burbs for your week of fancy living."

Chief Vasquez's voice boomed from his office, startling me back to reality."Cooper! Coleman!"

"Yes, Chief?" Victoria asked as she sprinted into his office. I let out a chuckle. Seemed she was eager to get back to solving murders after a week of tedium at her cousin's house.

I slowly walked into the room and hooked my thumbs in my belt loops as I leaned against the door. "What do you have for us?"

Chief Alex Vasquez tossed a file folder onto the desk and gave a sneer.

"There's another one. Seems to line up with the other two you guys caught last month." He let out a huff, and my eyes went wide, seeking out Victoria to see her response. For the most part, we'd been able to keep the similarities of the other two victims out of the media's frenzy. The last thing we needed was panic. But three murders, all with the same MO? That was going to be harder to keep under wraps.

We potentially had a fucking serial killer on our hands. Of course, we couldn't confirm anything yet, not until we saw the new victim, but from the way Chief was acting, he was pretty sure it was our guy.

"Fucking hell," Victoria said as she leafed through the file.

"Travers and Nash caught it a few hours ago. They just handed me this," he said, indicating the file with the preliminary notes and a few pictures that had been printed.

I let out a low whistle. From the bruising around the guy's neck, the clean cut across the throat and his sides, plus with the staging of the scene, he looked like he could be linked to our other two cases.

"I need the two of you to get your asses down to the crime scene and see what you can find. Not that I think they missed anything, but you'll be looking for different things—for similarities to the other scenes and victims." He gave us a stern look that clearly said Don't fuck this up.

"Unfortunately, the vic is already in the morgue, so you can't see him at the scene to examine him, but I told the medical examiner not to touch him until after you are able to stop by and take a look."

"On it, Chief," I said with a nod and ushered a grinning Victoria from the office.

I'd never dealt with a serial killer before, and while some detectives waited their entire careers to catch a serial killer case, I'd always dreaded the possibility.

"Do you have to look so giddy?" I muttered as I grabbed what I needed from my desk before we set out to the crime scene.

Victoria grinned wider and shrugged. "It's just good to be back."

I let out a long-suffering sigh.

Fucking serial killers.