Chapter 36

THIRTY-SIX

Gulf Shores, Alabama

Monday, September 23

6:17 p.m.

Detective Moore's call never came.

No returned messages. No response to the voicemails Leigh had left. Two of them. Gulf Shores PD dispatch had recorded the detective leaving the Beachside Resort Hotel two hours ago but wouldn't disclose the name of Samuel Thornton's sister. Calls to the hotel front desk hadn't resulted in anything either.

Leigh walked past the news van parked at the curb and crested the twenty stairs at the front of the Portman vacation house. The driver was asleep behind the wheel, a hat over his head. Manny, Detective Moore had called him. Recognition centered him as the cameraman usually following behind the blonde news anchor who seemed to creep up at the slightest upset. Did the news industry have a term for ambulance chaser?

There were no officers positioned to hold scene security. No one with a clipboard asking her to prove she deserved to be here. Apart from the crime scene seal on the front door, it felt as if the world had righted itself. She was here to visit her friend while on medical leave. The past two days had simply been a nightmare that'd gotten the best of her.

Unpocketing her father's old foldable pocketknife, Leigh moved to slice through the seal. Except it'd already been opened. She tested the door. It swung inward without her twisting the knob. Hinges protested as she crossed the threshold. "Detective Moore?"

Seconds ticked off without a response.

Gravity seemed to intensify its hold on her, rooting her to the spot. The detective never would've left a crime scene unsealed. Which meant something else was going on here.

A creak shifted from overhead. From the second story of the house.

"Agent Brody, FBI. Is someone here?" Leigh found herself reaching for her hip. Though she hadn't worn a sidearm since going on medical leave, and she certainly wasn't wearing one now, it was a habit she retreated to when her nervous system warned her to get the hell out and never come back. "This is an active crime scene. You're trespassing, and I can guarantee at least three years in jail for cutting through that seal."

Never mind she'd already cut through the one on the back door.

She took a hesitant step forward. Every cell in her body locked on figuring out if the house had moved on its own or if she was talking to an intruder. The floorboards protested as she moved down the hall toward the living room and kitchen. Shards of glass crunched under her shoes, reflecting back a hundred tiny Leighs in their surfaces. The medicine cabinet she'd dropped hadn't been cleaned up by the crime scene unit. Then again, they'd been busy the past few days. Bodies seemed to be turning up all over Gulf Shores.

Leigh flipped on the light inside the hallway bath then wrenched the shower curtain out of the way.

Empty.

Yellow pup tents had been removed from the scene. All the evidence of what'd happened in this house catalogued and stored back at the station. It was a necessary step to finding the truth, but what had really happened here would be kept between those involved and these walls. Well, and the tile Elyse hated with every fiber of her being. Leigh pushed into the main room, kitchen on one side, living room on the other. And waited.

For something different about this scene to register. For time to rewind itself, back to when Elyse had still been her friend and not a suspect in a murder investigation. For that same friend to walk down the stairs and tell her it was all a misunderstanding. But the longer Leigh waited, the deeper reality set in. This wasn't a nightmare.

She and Detective Moore had arranged to meet in this house. So where the hell was she?

And then Leigh saw it.

Right there. Where a pool of blood had waited for investigators Saturday morning. A pen. Muted by the low light struggling through the windows. But even from more than five feet away, she recognized that pen. Picked out the bite marks on the end. The detective had been here. Recently. "Moore?"

A second creak pierced into her senses, and she shot her head up. One of the bedrooms. She scanned the kitchen, satisfied nothing had been moved or touched in the days since she'd last stepped foot in the house, and moved back to the entryway. To the stairs. Angling her attention up the winding structure, Leigh clutched the pocketknife with too much force. The base of the shaft pricked at her palm. "Is someone up there?"

Wasn't that always what co-eds in horror movies asked before going upstairs and serving themselves up to a killer who could cut through them like butter with a chainsaw? Damn. She had to be smarter than that.

Pressure built between her shoulder blades. She wasn't alone. That much was clear, but maybe not in the way she thought. The driver of the van out front came to mind. The lookout.

Leigh parted the miniature blinds covering the front door to put Manny the Cameraman in her sights. She hadn't seen any signs of his blonde reporter friend. Caroline. There was a chance the toothy pixie stick who mesmerized locals with that thick, sugary accent had risked her career—and possible arrest—to get a lead in the story by breaking into the scene. From what Leigh understood, it wouldn't have been the first time.

Only the news van wasn't parked at the curb anymore. Running at the first sign of trouble? Cameramen were smarter than she'd estimated.

She let the blinds fall back into place and turned her gaze upward. All too aware of the dangers of walking into an ambush. She'd done it before and had barely made it out alive. Then again, she could say the same for the man who'd tried to kill her on that last case. Either way, she wasn't looking to relive the experience. "Whoever the hell you are, you better have a good reason for coming into a crime scene and messing up my friend's house."

No response to that either? She must be having an off day.

Or did this have something to do with Samuel Thornton's sister? Detective Moore had commented about the sister staying at one of the hotels here in Gulf Shores. Could she have had something to do with Elyse's disappearance? Leigh wished she'd asked the detective for the sister's name back at the Fuentes house. At least then they might start getting answers to unravel this complicated thread. "All right. It's your funeral."

She climbed the first steps. The skin around the sutures under her button-down stretched. A constant reminder she wasn't at 100 percent. At the top of the stairs, she listened. For something—anything—to tell her what she was about to walk into. She shouldered into the bedroom door on the left and searched for movement. Nothing under the bed or in the closet either. "I should tell you, I've never lost a game of hide and seek, and the longer you hide, the more annoyed I get."

Leigh forced herself down the hallway. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and she pulled up short. She had one of three choices from this exact point. Ava's room on her left, the hall bathroom over one shoulder, or the main bedroom on her right. Her training wanted her to clear every room in succession, but that might only give the intruder time to escape. But the thought of Caroline—if that was who'd crossed the crime scene seal—trying to crawl out a second-story window in those heels was appealing. "You've got three seconds to show your face before I march your ass in front of the news van outside in cuffs. We call it a perp walk. They look fun, and I've never gotten to do one before, so please give me the chance."

She took a single step back and nudged open the bathroom door. No signs of a disturbance. Everything in its place. Even a few touches of Ava's makeup on the counter. The shower was empty too. No chainsaws. No killers in masks or aliens waiting to eat her alive. Okay. She'd maybe watched a few too many horror films after she'd been released from the hospital.

"One." Leigh reached for the girl's bedroom door and twisted the handle. The door fell open without a single whine. The wood caught on the layer of clothing strewn across the floor. If an intruder had come in during the middle of the night, rest assured they'd have tripped and given themselves away in an instant. She checked the closet. No monsters hiding in there either. "Two."

Extracting herself from Ava's room, she honed her focus on the main bedroom. And raised the blade shoulder height. Ready as she could be for whatever waited on the other side. "Three."

Leigh targeted the space beside the doorknob and slammed her heel against the wood. The door swung back and hit the wall behind it as she rushed inside.

To find Detective Moore face down and immobile on the floor.

Blood pooled around the detective's body from either side of her hips.

"Henrietta." Leigh rushed in, collapsing at the officer's side. She tested Detective Moore's pulse with her free hand. Weak, but there. Reaching for her phone, she dialed 911.

She pinched the phone between her shoulder and chin as she rolled the detective onto her back. Unconscious. Blood leaked from Detective Moore's lower belly, and Leigh shrugged out of her blazer to apply pressure to the wound. The line beeped three times. Then disconnected. Taking one hand off the detective, she glanced at the screen. No service? What the hell? "Come on, Henrietta. Talk to me."

Leigh moved the phone to the floor and hit the speaker function with blood-coated hands. The blazer was already soaking through. Detective Moore was bleeding out right in front of her eyes. She hit redial with a bloody hand. The call failed again. "Come on!"

She grabbed for Moore's jaw and angled it to the right to prevent the detective from choking on her own tongue. Her pulse was in the rafters, trying to make up for the lack of a heartbeat in Detective Moore. "Stay with me. Stay with me. I'm going to get you out of here."

The floor creaked from behind.

And Leigh realized her mistake.

She twisted to confront the source. Catching movement in her peripheral vision. Too late.

Pain exploded at the back of her head.

Leigh fell forward. The sutures holding her surgical wounds screamed as she landed beside Detective Moore. Her pocketknife skidded across the floorboards. Slow footsteps thundered into her awareness before a set of running shoes took the stage.

A hand pierced her vision, collecting Leigh's phone. "Sorry about that, Leigh, but I can't have you bringing more police to my front door. Not until I'm ready."

That voice. She knew that voice.

Leigh leveraged her elbow into the floor, trying to get a better look at her attacker. Her brain resisted the orders.

The phone hit the floor. Her attacker's foot came down hard enough to shatter the screen, and with it, any hope of getting Detective Moore an ambulance. "There. That should buy us some time together."

The haze thickened. Leigh's vision darkened. Until the world went black.