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“Thanks.” He dropped a thick manila envelope on the table and slid into the spot Rose had vacated.
“Is this about the lurker at Veronica’s place?” Connelly asked.
Ash scowled. “What lurker?”
“I found evidence of someone hanging out under her bedroom window last night. There was a handprint in the condensation on the glass. I called the non-emergency number and reported it to your department this morning.”
Ash’s scowl deepened. “Why am I now just hearing about it?”
So the deputy hadn’t taken him seriously. He’d wondered. Had the man even filed a report? Probably not.
“Who did you speak to?” Ash demanded.
He thought back to the conversation and shook his head. “I didn’t catch his name.”
Ash growled softly. “I’ll find out and handle it. Next time something like that happens, call 9-1-1 so there’s a record that my dumb-ass deputies can’t sweep under the rug.”
“Okay,” Connelly said, his gaze flicking between Ash and the envelope. “So if you’re not here about that, what’s this about?”
“I was hoping you’d tell me.”
Apprehension curdled the coffee in his stomach as he reached for the envelope. He’d seen crime scene photos before and, having been trained by the Air Force to treat the worst kinds of wounds under the worst kinds of conditions, he wasn’t usually squeamish.
But this...
This was different.
Because this was a scene directly from his twisted imagination. A woman, her body mangled and broken, lay in a pool of blood. Her face was a mask of terror, her eyes wide and staring. The next few photos were just as graphic. Bile rose into his throat, and his hand shook.
“What the hell is this?”
“That...” Ash leaned forward, his eyes intent. “Is your victim.”
Connelly looked up. “I didn’t do this.”
“No, but you wrote it,” Ash said grimly and pulled out a copy of The Shadows Within. Connelly recognized it as the one he’d signed for Rose a few months back, but now it was tabbed with sticky notes and marked up with highlighter.
“Chapter Three. The first death.” Ash opened the book and slid it toward him.
He didn’t have to read it. He knew the scene. Remembered agonizing over each word as he worked late into the night to meet his deadline. It was that first inkling in the book of something’s not right here, a reader’s first shiver of fear. It was one of the last scenes he’d written before sending it to his editor because he’d felt like he needed to know the rest of the story before he could do it justice. He’d wanted it to be quietly gruesome. He’d wanted his main characters—and his readers—to be unsure whether the death was a freak accident or something more sinister.
The whole book played with fear. The Shadow Stalker—his fictional version, not the legendary one that supposedly hunted in the mountains around town—fed off fear and attacked people struggling with phobias. His first victim, Caroline Harris, was acrophobic, afraid of heights, and died from a fall off a cliff because she thought someone was chasing her.
Connelly looked at the crime scene photos. The similarities were eerie. The twisted limbs, the shattered bones, the blood-soaked ground. The fear etched into the victim’s face. Even the color of the victim’s hair and her red coat. Like she was cosplaying as the book character.
But this was real.
This was someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someone’s loved one. Some sick fuck had taken his words and brought them to life in the most horrifying way possible.
He looked back up at Ash and found he had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Did the fall kill her?”
“No. She was shot. We believe she was dead before she went over the cliff. There were also signs of sexual assault.”
“That’s not like my book.”
“So I discovered when Rose gave me her copy to read this morning.” He tapped the open book. “But the killer left your book behind with this scene highlighted. He wanted us to make the connection.”
“Jesus. What the fuck?” Connelly dragged his hands through his hair and stared down at the highlighted passage. “What was her name?”
