Shadow barked, startling everyone inside.
Rachel’s voice thinned. “Wait, is that a thumb drive?” She pointed to the screen.
“I think so,” Ava whispered. “We need to get all those items out.
Caleb watched the screen. “It’s too narrow to send anyone down. How’d he get them in place?”
Ava pulled in a breath. Let it go. “There has to be another way in.”
Shadow’s chin tipped up, his gaze pinning a knot-hole high in the plank corner.
“What is that?” Caleb asked. He climbed up on the bench and peered inside. “It looks like one of those old-fashioned camcorders. Another clue from the past.” He looked back at Ava.
Another hint from Wax for her.
They resealed the plank and marked it for trace evidence.
“We need to find the entrance,” Ava told them. “Let’s spread out. But no one goes alone.”
By the time they returned to the clearing, ERT techs moved quietly through the woods. Professional stillness settled over the grove as the ME approached the victim.
When the doctor nodded and went to work, Ava stepped away, and in that small sliver of space she let him see what shewouldn’t give the rest. How much it cost her to be back on the hunt for Wax.
Chapter Thirteen
Hidden in the Dust
“He’s becoming more confident,” Ava said when she came back. “Because he thinks we’ll never catch him.” She glanced down at Shadow. The dog met her gaze like a partner, not a pet. “I want to make him regret that cockiness.”
Caleb smiled at the typical Ava confidence he’d known in the past.
Back before Wax, she was assured. Confident but not arrogant. Her work had caught the eye of her superiors who appeared to be grooming her to take over the lead position at the field office.
And thenithappened.
Ava was working with a senior agent on the first murder when the second one took place. The agent in charge agreed to go along with Ava’s theory about Wax. They’d gone out that night without letting anyone else know their whereabouts. Waxhad murdered the lead agent. Ava was taken and held for days before she managed to escape. But not before she’d been forced to watch Wax claim his third victim.
He'd disappeared after the murder that had almost destroyed Ava. Everyone always believed it was part of some pattern.
But what if it wasn’t? Maybe fear of being caught before his perfect reveal was ready to unroll had sent him fleeing to regroup.
Caleb shared his concerns with Ava.
“It’s possible he’s more confident. But why wait three years?”
There had to be a reason. Everything Wax did was carefully planned. Finding out what the reason was might help them narrow down the search.
Rachel jogged up with a tablet tight in her hands. “We have some real-time data coming in from ERT from the second victim’s scene. A partial print was found on the pawn. Not enough for AFIS, but enough for confirmation if we find a source. ERT’s analyzing the evidence in the old shack now. They’re also working on finding the secondary entrance to retrieve the rest of the items from the shaft.”
A chilling wind sighed through the laurel. Crime scene tape rippled under it.
“We need to get back to the lodge and go over all the evidence coming in. We need answers and we need them now.” Ava looked toward the black sea of pines leading down to the old spur. “He’ll keep moving because he wants me to follow. He thinks I’ll read the script and chase the next act.”
“What if we don’t?” Caleb asked.
A small, tired smile touched her mouth without reaching her eyes. “We’ll follow,” she said. “But not the way he expects.”
“What do you mean?” Caleb asked, arching his brows.
