Chapter Eight

Ty shifted in the uncomfortable metal chair in the sheriff's office where he was interviewing Ethan Lantrip, aka Skipper. Ty tossed a look behind him knowing Violet was there scrutinizing the entire shebang.

Next to him sat Deputy Grady Dorn, who prided himself on his metaphorical guns as much as his shiny sidepiece. Ty strained to hold in a sneeze, but Dorn's cologne was overpowering. Was the guy speed dating or conducting an interview? Dude.

"Who are you again?" Skipper asked.

"Strange Crimes Unit. FBI."

"What exactly is that?"

"They hunt down sickos who kill people based on their religious beliefs," Deputy Dorn said.

"Well, not—" Ty blew off Dorn's explanation. No time to correct him about the cases the SCU investigated or aid Skipper, who was obviously stalling for time until he requested an attorney. "How long did you date Amy-Rose?"

Skipper tucked a lock of dark hair behind his ear. In person, the weathered look fit the cool fisherman vibe he was putting down. Like Florida Georgia Line pioneering a new cool face to country music. Skipper was all sea captain, down to the captain's hat, wrapped into some kind of retro look. Whatever worked for the guy. Ty wasn't going to knock it.

"I wouldn't say we dated. We hooked up a few months. She liked the boat rockin'."

Please let that be legit and not metaphorical. "When was the last time you saw her?"

He scrunched his nose. "Man, five, six months maybe?"

"We heard you came to her place of employment, caused problems and were asked to leave. What was that about?"

Skipper removed his hat, swiping a thick swatch of hair back, then returned it to his head. "Amy-Rose was a wildcat. Loved everything forbidden. I didn't go in there causing trouble. We'd gotten into an argument because my boat had been taken out the night before. Gas was low and I found an empty hard ale bottle. I knew it was hers. I clean my boat every night to prep for fishing tours, and the ale was her brand with her ruby-red lipstick on the mouth of the bottle. I confronted her, and she didn't want to admit she'd lifted my keys and taken her girls out joyriding. She blew me off, so I questioned one of her gal pals. She got buck with me and I got booted. End of story."

But was it? "Who was the friend?"

"Ahnah Hemmingway."

"What did she have to say? Did you suspect she was in on the joyriding?"

"Ahnah was pretty quiet. I didn't take her for a liar, but she was Amy-Rose's friend, so who knows? That chick lied like her tongue was forked. Either way, I let her know we were done and if she ever took my boat out again, she'd pay."

"You threatened her," Ty said.

Skipper gave Ty a you're-an-idiot look. "Yeah. I did. That's my boat. My baby. My livelihood. I should have turned her in for it. I didn't kill her. I didn't tattoo her and toss her on a lighthouse doorstep. And I didn't do the same to that other one either."

Ty wasn't so sure. "Where were you the night she went missing?"

"I don't know where I was last weekend. Months ago?" He paused. "What night did she go missing?"

"A Saturday night."

"I don't do night tours. Visiting my grandma in Wilmington probably. She's in an assisted living home."

Ty held back his laughter. Yeah. Right.

"Don't look at me like that. My grandma raised me. I owe her, man."

Guess his face hadn't hidden the skepticism. "I'm going to check that. Not only with Grandma but nurses and staff."

"Whatever, man. Check it." He leaned back and pointed at Deputy Dorn. "You can check it too, Grady."

Deputy Dorn shifted in his seat and then stood. "I think we're done here."

Ty wasn't. "You two know each other?"

"School. He was a jackwagon then too," Deputy Dorn said.

Ty watched him swagger from the room. "That true?"

Skipper grinned. "That we went to school together or I'm a jackwagon?"

"I already know one of those answers." He crossed his arms over his chest.

Skipper sighed and tented his hands on the table. "Amy-Rose was cool. Completely crazy but cool. I didn't kill her. I don't know who would, but if she was willing to steal my boat, then she might have done something to someone else to tick them off. Or maybe she was named the wrong name and in the wrong place at the wrong time. I mean, this guy is picking girls with flower names, right? Amy-Rose didn't even go by Rose until she came back from a year of college. Reinvented herself. She was upper-crust, rich girl Amy in school."

Maybe they were all in the wrong place at the wrong time with a flower name. "Did you know Lily Hayes?"

"Nope." His answer came fast—too fast—and his eyes shifted to the floor. Why would he lie about Lily Hayes but not Amy-Rose or Ahnah?

"You sure about that? If I check—and I will—and it comes back you knew her, then I'll have to go through this all over again. Last chance."

Skipper sat silent. Ty didn't have anything hard enough to keep him on. For now. "You're free to go."

After he exited, Violet entered. "I'm not saying it's him. But he's hiding something, and his first-naming Deputy Dorn felt like a warning. Maybe a threat. I'd like to do some further digging into Grady Dorn too."

"He sure did end his part fast after that, didn't he?"

Violet nodded. "Likely bad blood between them, and he left before Skipper could air his dirty laundry in front of us. But it could be something else. I'll have Selah run a check on Dorn. See how deep their connection is. But it's probably teenage rivalry that neither got over."

Violet was probably right.

"Asa texted," she said. "He's back at the beach house, and Fiona's in Natchez. He wants to walk through everything we've found on the missing women with a flower in their name."

"Can we go by and talk to the boutique manager first? Leslie McDonald. I want to ask her about Ahnah too." Ty stood and slipped into his suit coat.

"Sure. I saw a little shop over there I want to go in."

"What kind of shop?" he asked as they left the interview room.

"The kind where I buy a Kitty Hawk kite for Stella."

Ty nudged her with his shoulder. "Aw. Will it be pink and pretty?" Ty loved giving Vi a hard time, but it was cool seeing her soften up as she became a mom to John's preschool-age daughter.

"She wants to be a sheriff. I saw one with a gun on it. And yes, it was pink. Let it go."

"Let it go...let it go." He sang the Disney song and threw his arm around her only to be shrugged off.

"I hate when you do that."

"I know." But he couldn't help it. He had songs on shuffle in his brain. Music had been his escape as a kid. Not that his father ever physically abused him, but there had been a fear of his father deep down. A voice had warned him Father was an evil man and his teachings false, but Ty wasn't sure where that voice had come from. He'd obeyed blindly, but that didn't mean he never doubted.

"Hey Violet, remember after you made it through the woods, looking all gnarly and rough?"

"I'd almost been murdered, so I get a pass, but yeah."

"Remember what you told me? That God was real. You didn't believe, and then after that night you did."

"Yeah," she said, striding through the bullpen to the front lobby doors.

"You still on that bandwagon?"

Violet paused. "Yes. Are you curious?"

He sighed and opened the door for her. "I'm curious why you believe it, but not enough I want to talk about it with you."

She frowned, pushing open the lobby door. "Except you are talking about it."

"I changed my mind." He got inside the SUV and cranked the engine. He shouldn't have even brought it up. He wasn't sure why he had. Maybe because of that voice warning him the doctrine was false. It wasn't coming from his own thoughts. Or maybe he was losing it. As he pulled out of the parking lot, he thought he saw someone in a car watching him.

Nah. His mind was playing paranoid tricks on him. This killer wasn't stupid enough to sit smack-dab in the sheriff's office parking lot.

Unless the killer was a cop or welcomed by law enforcement.

Ty wadded up his sub sandwich paper and shot it into the trash from his chair in the dining area. According to the news, Jodie had picked up more velocity after becoming a category 5 and making landfall at Elbow Cay, Great Abaco, in the northwestern Bahamas, decimating it. They reported that Jodie was the strongest hurricane in modern records to make landfall in the Bahamas. After crawling westward and west-northwestward toward Grand Bahama Island, it weakened but then picked up again, the eye of the hurricane east of Florida. They weren't out of the woods yet. Anything could happen when it came to unpredictable storms.

Barbados flooded his memory. Being caught in the hurricane and hunkering down. And things that he'd never spoken about before.

Owen perched next to him with AirPods stuck in each ear and maps laid out, his laptop in front of him. Asa, at the head of the table, perused the list of girls gone missing in the past year.

Out of the eight women, only two had been found—Amy-Rose and Lily Hayes. Would he kill all the women and position them at lighthouses? Did he have all the missing women?

Violet sat at the opposite end of the table with her laptop open and a bottle of sparkling water. At least once, he wanted to see her drink something sugary or bad for her, prove she was human. She must have noticed him staring. "What?" she said, dry but sharp.

"Who do you think is doing this? An evolved Fire Ice Killer or someone formerly involved in the Family of Glory?" he asked. "It can't be Garrick." His research late last night proved Garrick still belonged in the Family. His photo was on the Granger Construction and Real Estate website as CFO. He'd seen photos of him and his father at ribbon cuttings, shaking hands with the mayor. They had members at every social and financial level. But the events occurred over a year ago, and they may have simply not updated the website. Could he have left within the past year? Possibly. The earliest missing woman was a little over a year ago.

"Why not? If he travels often, he has time. Maybe they did a real estate development in Virginia, and he went silent because it was finished," Violet offered. "But anyone could have hinted at being the Fire Ice Killer. Like Asa said, the note didn't offer specifics that weren't public knowledge."

"Let's work on what we do know," Asa said. "Four women went missing from Blue Harbor within the past year, even though Amy-Rose lived in Roanoke. Lily Hayes five months ago, and Amy-Rose six months ago. Susan Mayer went missing eight months ago. And Ahnah was reported missing last week."

Ty nodded.

"Dahlia Anderson went missing a year ago last week, and she's never been found. Why not kill these women? Why kill the ones who had been taken more recently?"

"Did too much work to let them go," Owen offered. "He'd want to keep and savor it."

Asa tipped his head to the right in thought. "Maybe. But we also have Ivy Leech, who went missing three months ago from Hatteras. She'd have the least tattoos. Why not kill her? And Iris Benington—the nurse from Nags Head—went missing ten months ago."

Violet tapped her ink pen and went deathly still. "Amy-Rose and Lily Hayes are the only ones we know of at this point with a connection to Ahnah Hemmingway, who directly connects with Tiberius."

"This isn't the Kevin Bacon game, Violet," Ty said, but she was right.

"No, but it's a game to him. He's having fun with this. Bringing you here. Those were the words he used. Keeping you here. Making you suffer. Those are God-complex buzz words. He's sovereign over you."

"Let me tell you right now. No one is sovereign over me. This UNSUB isn't controlling me. He's delusional if he thinks so. I'm going to find him. Then we'll see who's ranting about suffering." Unfortunately, time was thin with an impending hurricane.

Asa grabbed his empty coffee cup. "I'm leaning toward cult ties. You mentioned serious rules about premarital sex, but they called it deflowering—"

Owen cringed. "I hate that term so much."

"Me too!" Selah's voice registered from Asa's laptop. "Ew."

Violet tapped a manicured nail on the table. "No signs of sexual assault in the autopsy reports, but I wonder if they're consensually sleeping with him prior to the abduction. If he's testing them in some form to see if they'll...you know...give up the bloom."

"Ew, Violet," Selah screeched. "Like, that's so nasty."

"Grow up, Selah," she said calmly and quietly. "We have to think like killers, and it's never not nasty. Now, back to what I was saying. If it's a test and they flunk, then maybe tattooing the flowers is his way of purifying them of—"

"Do not say that word," Owen said.

Violet sighed. "Can we be adults here and talk about this? This is his twisted tale, and we have no choice but to climb inside for the ride. If you're not willing to hear or use the terminology, then you can't be objective in discovering who he is at heart."

Violet was right. The terminology didn't affect Ty adversely, but he'd grown up with that exact word. Deflowering. "He's choosing flowers. Vi is on to something. He sees sex outside of marriage as a sin, one that someone can be purified from. But he's having sex too, so why is he not sinning?"

"He's a god in this scenario and a god gets to do what a god wants to do. He's the tester. The purifier," Violet said. "He's supreme and doesn't have to adhere to their rules."

"This guy is one of the absolute worst we've dealt with as far as his ideas and twisted religious beliefs," Owen said.

Ty agreed. He was pretty sick in the head. "Why has he only killed two women? Not that I'm complaining."

"One kill won't bring us. It takes two to four kills for us to catch his scent. He has a plan. That's undeniable. We need to figure it out before it goes another step." Violet closed her laptop. "I'm going to call the assisted living center in Wilmington and talk to the grandma of Ethan Lantrip, aka Skipper."

"I've been going through the missing women's social media accounts," Selah said. "I'm trying to see if I can connect them other than through flower names. Friends of friends, preferably a man who is friends with all of them. It's a good place to start. So far two of them were at the same Morgan Wallen concert in Charlotte. Nothing else connects other than they all work jobs that require name tags. I think that's interesting. Easy to spot and notice. Retail and food industry leads the charge, except for Dahlia Anderson, who went missing a year ago. She worked for a travel agency in Nags Head."

Asa perked up. "Shopping and eating, easy. But travel agency? You go in there with an intent, same as a hospital, unless he saw Iris Benington wearing her badge on a break, eating at restaurant or café. If he's noticing name tags, we need to see a client list from the travel agency going back fifteen to eighteen months. Not only her clients, but all clients."

"I'll call now," Selah said. "Going to mute myself."

"I can't get a read on the locations," Owen said. "I've triangulated the lighthouses and where the victims lived and worked, and it's scattered. It's almost like he knows geographic pattern theory and is scrambling the system. There's no pattern emerging. He's literally all over the map, which makes no sense when he's calculated and orderly." Owen massaged his eyes with the heels of his hands.

"Take a break," Asa said. "Go with Ty to the neighboring tattoo parlors and circulate the work. Every artist's work has a signature or stamp. Maybe someone will recognize it."

Violet's eyes widened as she suddenly focused on her laptop screen.

"What?" Ty asked. "You don't think Owen and I can investigate without supervision?" Ty was known to go rogue at times—like Fiona. And Owen was always down to get sideways if necessary. They weren't line crossers, but none of them minded blurred lines except Asa.

"Not without wisecracks and complaints."

"Found you when you went AWOL."

"John found me."

"We found you."

She smirked, a sparkle in her eyes—which was new of late.

Owen slid on his tailored gray suit coat over a turquoise shirt and silver-and-turquoise tie. Ty gave him a hard time for dressing for church instead of the job. One could see their reflection in his dress shoes. All he was missing was a pocket square. His midnight eyes met Ty's. "We got this."

"Yeah, we do."

Owen's confidence happened to be genuine. Ty's bravado was nothing short of false. Truth be told, this killer was under his skin and already doing exactly what he wanted—making Ty suffer.

Owen snagged the keys from the counter. "I'll drive."

"'Cause you specialize in geography?" Ty asked on the way downstairs to the ground level.

"No. Your driving makes me carsick. You're all over the place."

Ty snorted. "Whatever. I'm practicing for the job I actually want. NASCAR driver."

Owen brayed like a donkey and unlocked the SUV's doors with the fob. "Keep the day job. And I say that as your friend." Owen entered the first address into the navigation system. "There are three tattoo parlors—do they still call them parlors?—in Blue Harbor."

"I don't know. I've heard studio. Or shop. Does it matter?" Owen and his random need for useless knowledge. Ty should download some knowledge that wasn't useless. "O, I gotta tell you something. You asked if I was keeping anything from you, and I lied."

"High time you come clean. I knew you were withholding information."

Said like a justice seeker to a criminal. "I have a son."

"What?" Owen did a double take. "I knew you been keeping something under your hat. Wasn't expecting it to be a kid."

"I didn't know until I went to Bexley's for the initial interview. He's seventeen and doesn't know about me. A son, Owen."

Owen blew out a heavy breath. "Wow." He beamed as he came to the stop sign. "So your mama does have a grandchild you didn't know about. Remember that time she asked you about any kids? I remember because it made Asa laugh when he really needed one."

Ty scoffed. "Shut up. For real though." He told him everything he knew about Josiah, including his recent behavior. "I don't think he was drunk, but I smelled beer on his breath when he got home. I had to stand there and say nothing."

"Who else knows this?"

"Violet. Because, well, she's Violet. I don't want Asa to recuse me. I have to stick this out. Even with the stupid hurricane looming. I need you to know because... I'm gonna do whatever it takes to find this guy."

Owen's cheeks twitched. "I hear you. I feel you." Reaching over, he clasped his shoulder. "Whatever it takes." He tapped his chest with his fist, and Ty nodded. Owen would have his back no matter what. "What does Bexley say about his new behavior?"

"Teenage junk, but I don't know. Something feels off. He's overly angry, and I think it has to do with not knowing his father and feelings of abandonment. I sound like Violet."

"You sound like you have a dad's gut. If you think it's more than teenage hormones, it probably is. Go with your gut. What do you think he'll do when he finds out?"

"I don't know. Bexley thinks he'll try to find my family or if they discover him, they'll track him down, which is true. But I've been in that house and talked with him and haven't said a word. Me? I'd be fit to be tied and unleash some serious rage. Compounded with his already simmering anger...who knows what he'll do? I don't even know how to tell him."

"You'll know when the time is right. The words will come. They always do."

Ty hoped so, but Josiah was a ticking time bomb. Every day Ty was in his life not telling him he was his father was another day he could blow. The GPS signaled to turn right in two hundred fifty feet. "You think they'll recognize the artistry and style of these tattoos?" Ty asked.

"I guess we'll see."

Ty hoped for a break, a lead that would get him ahead of this killer. But he was so advanced and prepared that it had Ty in a state of perpetual dread and anxiety. He wanted Ty. What was his next move toward the end game?