Jenkins shook his head once, like he couldn’t accept it. “No sign of crossing. Whoever took her used the creek to erase the trail.”
Tessa didn’t argue. She’d seen it before. Water wasn’t just a boundary—it was a weapon.
She tapped the second circle.
“Location Two: Miller’s Ridge. Skeletal remains staged in the open. Sara’s badge placed with them. Medical examiner confirmed—those bones are not hers.”
A silence settled over the table, heavy and sick.
Tessa let it sit there long enough for it to hurt.
“This was planned,” she said. “It’s a message. And he wanted you to see it. Sara isn’t the first—and they’re not done.”
Burke’s voice came low. “SBI finished up there?”
“They did,” Tessa said. “Grid search, metal detectors, forensics sweep. Nothing else left behind. Whoever staged that scene did it clean and walked away.”
A muscle jumped in Scout’s cheek.
“So we’ve got nothing,” he said.
“We have intent. Timing. Escalation. And Sara missing.”
Ruger let out a soft whine under the table, restless and uneasy.
Tessa looked toward Burke.
“And we have a town full of people who don’t believe this kind of thing happens here,” she added. “Until it does.”
Burke didn’t answer, but his eyes tightened. He knew what she meant.
They’d had onlookers up on Miller’s Ridge already. People with phones. People with questions. People who’d talk.
It was only a matter of time.
Tessa turned back to the board and wrote in block letters:
IDENTITY FIRST — THEN MESSAGE
The marker squeaked. The sound felt too loud.
“No identification leaves this room until we have it confirmed,” Tessa said. “No name. No speculation. No details.”
“But we’re not going to pretend we can keep the lid on forever. Sheriff—when this breaks, you get ahead of it. You control the story, or it controls you.”
Burke’s throat worked once. He nodded.
“Understood.”
Tessa faced the table again.
“Now we reconstruct Sara’s last ninety days. Her routines, her arrests, her cases, her contacts. If she made an enemy, we find them. If she got close to something, we find out what it was.”
She started assigning, fast and clean.
“Scout—phone and text records. Personal and department. Yousit with one of my analysts and you go through it line by line. Calls, voicemails, app activity, deleted threads. You know her habits. You’ll spot what doesn’t fit.”
Scout nodded once. His focus never wavered from the empty chair.
