Allison Brennan: The Hunt

They’d mark off the area in grids and search for anything that might possibly lead back to the killer. But if it was the same bastard, they’d find nothing. He was so damn perfect in his every crime that even their one surviving witness could tell them little. Defeat weighed heavily in Nick’s heart, but he would not give up.

Sometimes, he hated his job.

He turned when he heard an SUV roll into the clearing, rocks and muddy clumps of leaves shooting out from the backs of all four tires. Sun reflected off the windshield and Nick shielded his eyes to watch Quinn approach.

The SUV jerked to a stop behind Nick’s dark green police-issue truck. The driver’s door opened and Quincy Peterson jumped out, slamming the door behind him and striding toward Nick. Quinn hadn’t changed much since Nick had last seen him, still looked more like a damn cover model than a fifteen-year veteran of the FBI. Nick stood and absently brushed the dirt off his jeans.

“Rebecca Douglas?” Quinn nodded toward the covered body. His face was blank, but his dark eyes revealed the same anger and sadness that Nick felt.

“Yep. We’ll need a positive ID, but-” There was no doubt it was the missing woman. He glanced at Quinn and raised an eyebrow at the bandage over his left eye. “Bar fight?” he asked, half joking.

Quinn reached up and touched the bandage as if he’d forgotten it was there. “The last few days have been eventful,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it later.” He glanced around. “When are you processing the scene?”

“I wanted you to check it out first, but I have my men waiting up on the main highway.”

Nick didn’t know why the Fed made him feel so inferior. Maybe it had something to do with Quinn’s quiet confidence, his knack for seeing through bullshit, always getting to the heart of the matter. Or maybe it was because Nick had puked his guts out at his first murder scene and Quincy Peterson hadn’t.

Or maybe it was because the woman Nick loved was in love with Quinn.

Despite all that, there was no one Nick trusted more than Special Agent Quincy Peterson.

Quinn bent down, pulled on latex gloves, and lifted the tarp. His square jaw clenched and a vein twitched in his neck at the sight.

Rebecca had been beautiful. Now, her long blonde hair was tangled, matted, and caked in mud. The happy face reproduced on thousands of flyers was gone. She was swollen, bruised, grotesque in death. The recent rains had cleaned some of the dirt from her naked body, leaving her pale and blue.

Her neck had been cut, slashed deep with a sharp knife, though there was very little blood to see. Most of it had been washed into the ground by the storm, along with any trace evidence. Her body showed signs of abuse. Torture. Bruises of all shapes and hues of purple covered her skin. Her breasts had been clamped into some sort of vise. The strange marks wouldn’t have indicated that to most eyes, but both Nick and Quinn had read the coroner’s reports for each of the six other women murdered in these woods, and had grown familiar with this killer’s M.O.

Quinn removed the tarp to study the victim’s legs and feet, much as Nick had done when he first arrived on scene. Her left leg was crooked, broken. Her feet were covered in raw blisters and deep cuts. From running.

She was thin, so pale, empty. Clinically, her gaunt skin told the cops that she’d bled out, her life drained from her. She’d died quickly; nobody could survive long with their carotid artery sliced open. Small consolation for the previous week of terror she’d lived through.

Quinn covered the body. “Coroner been called?”

Nick nodded. “He’ll be out by noon. He was in the middle of an autopsy on that hiker we found up on the north ridge the other day.”

“So who found the body?”

“Three boys-the McClain brothers and Ryan Parker. The Parkers have a spread three, four miles west of here. The boys took a couple horses for the day, were going to shoot their.22s at rabbits and whatnot.” He shrugged and added, “It’s Saturday.”

“Where are they now?”

“A deputy took them home. Told them to sit tight at the Parkers’ until I came by.”

Quinn nodded, surveying the scene that Nick had marked with yellow and black crime scene tape. Observing the clearing, the old path, the trees.

“It looks like she came up through that brush over there,” Nick gestured. “I checked it out, but didn’t go down the trail yet.”

“If you can call it a trail,” Quinn said, frowning at the overgrowth. “I’ll take a quick look while you call in your team. How many people do you have?”

“I have a dozen of my own men right now, more later, and a crime scene specialist. I’ll need volunteers if we’re going to do this right.”

“Agreed. The more eyes the better, but no hotshots. We can’t have someone going off half-cocked.”

Quinn put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “I know you were hoping the bastard dropped dead after Ellen and Elaine Croft were found. I’m sorry I couldn’t come out personally then. But Agent Thorne is good. She would have found something.”

Nick agreed, but he still felt so damn helpless. The Butcher was the only bastard who had ever gotten away with murder under his watch. “It’s been three frickin’ years! Three years since he killed. And we had nothing then-no clues, no leads, no suspects.”

“And there are other girls missing.” Quinn didn’t need to remind him. The missing girls haunted Nick in his sleep.

“It’s been slow, but we’re gathering evidence,” Quinn continued. “We have casings, bullets, a partial from Elaine Croft’s locket. We’ll get him.” Quinn turned and Nick watched him walk down the path. He sounded so confident. Why couldn’t Nick feel the same?

He glanced down at the outline of Rebecca Douglas. At least she would have a proper burial. Closure for her family. But not for him.

He thought of Miranda.

He started toward his truck. He’d already put in the call for all available law enforcement to head to this location. Then he heard the unique but familiar sound of a Jeep bouncing over the rough trail. He didn’t need to see the vehicle to know who approached.

“Damn.”

The red Jeep jerked to a stop behind Peterson’s rental. Almost before the truck halted, Miranda Moore jumped out, the mud no match for her heavy boots and confident stride. Deputy Booker approached her, and she glared at him without stopping as she pulled a red down-filled vest over her black flannel shirt. In any other situation, Nick would have grinned at the way Booker backed off.

Then she focused her sharp blue eyes on him.

His heart quickened and his stomach lurched. If only he’d had more time to prepare for her inevitable arrival. If he’d been warned she was on her way, he could have steeled himself for the confrontation.

“Miranda,” he said as she approached, “I-”

“Damn you, Nick!” She poked a finger at his chest. “Damn you!” Nothing intimidated Miranda. Though she was tall for a woman-at least five-foot-nine-he had six inches and a hundred pounds on her. You’d think he’d intimidate her, that any man would frighten her after what she’d gone through, but he guessed he shouldn’t be surprised. She was a survivor. She didn’t expose her fear.

“Miranda, I was going to call you. I didn’t know for certain it was Rebecca. I didn’t want you to have to go through it again.”

Her darkening eyes told him she didn’t believe him. “Screw that. Screw you ! You promised you’d call.” She brushed past him and strode over to the tarp, staring at the covered body. Her fists clenched, her shoulders reverberated in tension.

Nick wanted to stop her, to protect her from seeing another dead girl. Most of all, he wanted to protect her from herself.