Kimberly Van Meter - To Catch a Killer

She walked to the table where her notes were strewn and studied the case files of each victim with a slow and methodical style, going over every detail as if they weren’t already etched into her memory. A soft, distressed sound escaped her lips. So young. The nightmare started with Jason Garvin, son of an architectural drafting professor at Washington University. At that point they had no idea there’d be more. It had seemed a random abduction by a stranger—a crime of opportunity. But then, not long after, Drake Nobles, the son of California senator Peter Nobles was taken and found, mere days later, with the same ligature marks as the previous victim. Kara had known then with an uncomfortable certainty that they had a serial killer on the loose. Unfortunately, that was also the point when the case had been catapulted into the public eye and she’d been tapped as the official spokesperson for the CARD Team. Kara hated the spotlight, preferring to work in the shadows, quietly and efficiently getting things done, but Director Colfax had wanted her front and center for reasons that chafed.

And now the most recent victim, Hannah Linney, the daughter of an assistant district attorney in San Francisco, had disappeared last week when she was last seen walking home from school with her nanny. The nanny’s body had been discovered in an alley by the school and all trace of Hannah was gone. Kara flipped through the crime scene photos. Hannah had been a fighter. There was evidence that she’d scratched and clawed her assailant, although no DNA was found under her nails. They’d been scraped clean postmortem. Whoever had taken these children knew enough to leave nothing behind other than what they wanted found.

Aside from the first case, the other two were snatched in California. There was nothing to tie them together. At least nothing she could see. But she was sure there was something. The Babysitter fancied himself clever. Her lip curled. She hated that term, which had been coined by the media. Now she was using it, as well. Her stomach growled and she tossed back a few stale almonds left over from last night. It’s no wonder she couldn’t keep any weight on, she thought, recalling Matthew’s comment about her figure. This kind of work would kill anyone’s appetite.

A knock at the door drew her attention and she instinctively knew it was Matthew, but she approached the door with caution just the same.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me.”

Her stomach tensed as anxiety twisted her nerves but she’d die before she’d let Matthew know just how much he put her on edge.

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