Page 104 of Good Boys Don’t Bite

“Jesus Christ.”

“You asked.”

“You're such an asshole.”

“You love me.”

Ronan stared at him. Then shook his head.

“You cannot say shit like that outside police headquarters.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm trying not to die of stress before thirty.”

Elliot smiled. Ronan caught his shoulder and steered him toward the car.

“Home.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don't.”

Elliot laughed. For several minutes, everything felt manageable again. Then his phone vibrated. Claire. He opened the message. A screenshot from local news. His smile vanished.

BREAKING: POLICE CONFIRM HARPER DEATH IS HOMICIDE

Beneath the headline sat a photograph of Lucas. Elliot stopped walking. Ronan noticed.

“What?”

Elliot turned the screen. Ronan read. Neither spoke. The article had been posted forty-seven seconds earlier. Bellweather Police confirmed

Saturday

that

twenty-two-year-old Bellweather University student Lucas Harper died as the result of homicidal violence. Officials declined to release the specific cause of death. Investigators are now formally examining potential connections between Harper's killing and the October homicide of Mason Kerr. Two murders. Not one murder and one disappearance. Two. Bellweather had its serial killer now. Whether police wanted to use the phrase or not. Ronan swore quietly. Elliot looked toward the gray sky. A flock of birds moved above the courthouse roofs, shifting together before disappearing behind the police station. He felt something unexpected. Not fear. Not satisfaction. Pressure. Everything had changed. One dead college student could be explained as personal. Two created pattern. Patterns created attention. Attention created mistakes.

Elliot looked at his reflection in the dark window of his car. Ronan stood beside him. The police station behind them. For the first time since Mason Kerr had died, Elliot understood that the problem was no longer whether anyone would notice something was happening. Everyone had noticed. Now they would start asking the right questions. And somewhere, eventually, one of those questions might lead to him.

Chapter Ten — Ask Ronan

RONAN

SATURDAY · 3:41 P.M.

Ronan knew something had changed when Detective Vance stopped asking about Elliot. It happened so subtly he almost missed it. She had been speaking to him for less than ten minutes in a small conference room at Bellweather Police headquarters, the same building Elliot had walked out of only a few hours earlier. The room smelled faintly of burnt coffee and whatever industrial cleaner somebody used on the tile floors. A narrow window overlooked the employee parking lot. Gray afternoon light pressed against the glass, flat and colorless beneath a sky that had threatened rain since noon without actually delivering any. Vance sat across from him. No uniform. No dramatic file spread across the table. Just a notebook, a pen, and a paper cup she had not touched once.

Ronan disliked her immediately. Not because she was rude. She wasn't. That would've been easier. She had the calm, patient energy of someone who could sit in silence longer than whoever happened to be across from her. Ronan knew people like that. Architecture critiques had taught him the value of shutting the fuck up and letting someone else fill the empty space. He wasn't going to fill anything.

“Let's go back,” Vance said.

Ronan leaned against the chair.

“To?”

“Your relationship with Dylan Price.”