I take a drag of my cigarette and watch about ten students stroll out of the woods with their hands up like they got caught stealing. Two of them seem awfully familiar to me, and I narrow my eyes to try to decipher whose spawn I’m looking at.
Blond, curly hair, chiseled face, Adonis-looking sculpture of a man with the brains of a pigeon that just flew into a car. And then we’ve got Mr. I’m-Not-Scared hiding his poor judgment behind his messy brown hair while pretending not to give a fuck about getting caught.
Amateurs.
“Anybody else?” I bark.
More students appear from behind trees, and I flick my fingers at my men to throw a blanket over the body before they get a closer look. Don’t need to traumatize more people with a butchered corpse than necessary, especially when they’re still young and … malleable.
“We just wanted to see what happened,” one of them mutters.
More students approach from the streets, blocked only by our perimeter tape and two officers guarding the line. I don’t want any of them sniffing around here, but news travels fast on that campus, and I want to nip any rumors in the bud.
“A murder,” I reply.
Some of them suck in a breath.
“And if you’re smart, you’ll go back to your apartments and stay there, because the killer could be one of your own.”
They all look at each other like I’m pointing fingers, but I know damn well the perp is on these grounds. I just have to smoke them out of their den.
It’s a shame the body had to be found by a student who was just going on her daily walk through the rough terrain for sport. The poor girl looked shaken and completely out of it by the time we found her after she’d called us.
Suddenly, the dean of Spine Ridge, Felix Rivera, barges through the crowd and shoves aside one of my men to gain access to the crime scene.
“What are you doing, Rivera?”
“I want to know what the hell is going on here,” he growls, but when his eyes find the bloodied blanket in the middle of the open grass, he swallows. “A body?”
“Now you see what your lack of rules have brought about,” I say.
He shakes his head. “This is outside Spine Ridge U grounds. This has nothing to do with—”
“It haseverythingto do with your school.” I pull up a piece of paper showing the still I took of the camera hanging in the hallway of my building where our mysterious friend broke in to snoop through my files. “See this pin?” I point at an emblem on the bag. “Spine. Ridge. University.”
He snatches the paper from my hand to take an up-close look, and his face darkens in a way I’ve never seen before. Like he’s finally willing to face reality … and prepare an assault on justice itself just to protect his students.
“What the fuck does this have to do with that body?” he growls.
“Our little killer here stole some evidence from my office that pertained to other murders around town.” I snatch the paper back. “There is an actual serial killer on the loose, Rivera. They are leaving bodies, clues, and obvious signatures. Theywantto be found. And they are on these grounds, laughing at our incompetence when we find their heinous crimes like it’s some kind of trophy to keep in their warped mind.” I lean in to whisper into his ear. “They’re probably here right now, looking right at us, wondering when we’ll figure out the truth … and catch them in the act.”
My eyes dart to a drop-dead gorgeous woman with dark eyes, her black-and-green hair swiveling from side to side as she weaves her way through the crowd of students until she gets to the front of the crime scene tape and finds herself staring straight into the maws of hell, completely fearless.
We meet again.
I shove a bunch of papers in Rivera’s hands. “Sign this.”
He flips from the first page to the last. “What the—Forced police presence? On school grounds?”
I march past him, ignoring his complaints as I make my way to the girl in question, determined to find out if she might know more. There’s a reason she came barging to the front, just like there’s a reason I found her covered in blood in these sameblighted forests. Maybe she’s the key to unlocking the truth behind these killings.
The moment our gazes lock, it’s as if everyone around us has disappeared as I step toward the crime tape. She stays put and stares me down as I tower over her while I tilt my head to inspect her reaction.
“Hospital girl …”
“Cop boy …” she rebukes.
“Atreus.”
