The look Brian gave him told Sean exactly how seriously his brother was taking that request. He grabbed a pen from the table and tossed it at him. Brian snatched it out of the air without missing a beat, and Sean turned back to his laptop before the exchange could drag on any longer.
While Brian and Rafe began adding yesterday’s findings to the whiteboards, Sean flexed his fingers over the keyboard and reentered the case parameters into the now-functioning N-DEx system. If they were lucky, the search might finally produce something useful. Thoughts of Grace would have to wait. Right now, every ounce of his focus belonged to finding the man responsible for the murders before another woman paid the price.
After the detective bureau’s morning briefing with the lieutenant, Brad Lynch joined the rest of the task force in the conference room. The stale heat of too many bodies in a closed space mixed with the scratch of dry-erase markers across the whiteboards as the men tossed out theories, challenged assumptions, and circled back through the same frustrating dead ends.
Sean sat at the table with his laptop open, half listening as ideas bounced around the room while he monitored the N-DEx search. No one liked how little they had to work with. Criminals were getting smarter every year. Between crime dramas on television and endless websites packed with information, the average idiot could learn enough about investigations to avoid making obvious mistakes.
And so far, their killer had been careful.
As the discussion began losing steam, Sean’s computer chimed. The sharp electronic alert cut through the room, and every head turned his way. His pulse kicked up as he leaned toward the screen.
Finally.
He scanned the results, then sent the printer humming before the others could crowd too close. As the pages slid out, he snatched them up and skimmed the details, his stomach knotting tighter with every line.
“We got a hit—a good match too.” He looked around the table. “Last year in Philadelphia. Three female victims over three months—July through September. All blondes in their twenties. Taken after partying somewhere. Found at least twenty-four hours later in public locations.”
The similarities were enough to raise the hair on the back of his neck. Then his gaze dropped to the final details. Looking back up, he met the others’ stunned expressions. “And all had pennies left on their foreheads and ‘sinner’ carved into their torsos.”
A stunned silence followed.
Brad’s gaze shifted from one man to the next, as if searching for the answer to a question he hadn't asked yet. “I don’t remember hearing anything about that, and it’s not like Pennsylvania’s on the other side of the country. Didn’t it make the news?”
Sean scanned the report again. “I don’t know, but there’s an FBI case file open on it. No viable suspects, though. I’ll call the lead agent up there and see if I can get my hands on the file and whatever info he’s got. Or she’s got,” he amended, glancing at the bottom of the printout. “Says here it’s Special Agent Karen Winslow out of the local office there. Why don’t one of you call Philly PD and try to find out what they have on it? Just in case there are any discrepancies.”
Montoya was already pulling out his phone. “I’ll do it. I’ve got a few contacts up there.”
“Sounds good.” Brad braced both hands against the conference table, his expression grim. “The rest of us will keep digging into the victims’ pasts. See if we can figure out why he chose them.” He paused, his jaw working as he thought through the implications. “You know, we might also have another problem on our hands. Is he killing three, then moving on? Is he done here? Or are we wasting time until he kills another one?”
The questions hung over the room.
There was no good answer.
Sean shook his head in a silent response. Part of him wanted to believe the killer had already moved on, that no more women in North Carolina were in danger. But if that were true, it meant another city was about to become a hunting ground.
And if Brad was wrong—if the pattern had shifted, or if the killer had decided to linger—they were racing a clock they couldn’t see.
Either way, somewhere out there, a predator was still free. And unless they moved fast, someone else would pay for it.
Sheriff Griffin stepped into the conference room, his expression carved from exhaustion, and asked for an update. After they filled him in on the Pennsylvania connection, he crossed his arms and leaned against the wall beside the door, his brow furrowed as he processed what it could mean.
“All right. Let’s keep this quiet for now. I want everyone at this morning’s press conference at eleven, unless something urgent comes up. We’ll give the sharks the same info we gave them yesterday, just spin it differently so it sounds new. I asked the medical examiner to attend, but he won’t release much info either. As you know, the press has already found out the first two victims’ names somehow. I spoke to Daphne Jones’s father in Chicago around six last night after the local PD broke the news to the family, so we can also release her name. Everyone, meet in my office at ten to eleven, and we’ll walk out together.”
Before anyone could respond, the sheriff pushed off the wall and disappeared back into his office. The man looked like he’d gotten even less sleep than Sean had, and that was saying something. The strain of the investigation was wearing on all of them, but Matt carried the added pressure of keeping city officials, the media, and a nervous public from losing confidence in the department.
Sean shifted his attention to Brad. “Where do you hold your press conferences?”
“In the lobby on bad days. But the weather’s nice today, so it’ll probably be on the front steps of the station. Anyway, we have two hours until then, so let’s get to work.”
The room broke apart in a flurry of movement.
Rafe and Brian headed out to re-interview a few of the victims’ families and friends, hoping a second round of questioning might shake loose something they’d missed the first time. Lynch returned to his desk in the detective bureau to work through the latest batch of hotline messages, while Sean remained at the conference table.
The Philadelphia report still sat in front of him, the details burned into his mind. If the connection was real—and every instinct told him it was—they’d just gone from hunting a local killer to chasing a predator with a multi-state footprint.
He picked up one of the conference room phones and dialed the number listed for the FBI agent who’d handled the Philadelphia case.
The line rang twice before a woman answered. “Special Agent Winslow.”
