Page 2 of Nowhere Good

“Please, don’t—Dad!” She tried to resist, but Marty yanked her toward the back of the truck. “Marty? Please, stop!”

She screamed so loud it charred her throat, but they were in the middle of nowhere—no one could hear her, and no one cared. It had all been for nothing.

Claire should’ve known she could never leave Fairview, dead or alive.

ONE

Kansas City, Missouri

Ten years later

The homicide department was dead silent, but it wasn’t every day they lost one of their own.

Detective Seth Winslow thumbed the pages of a manila folder as he paced the empty office. He’d left the funeral early; out of everyone, he knew Robert Haylock the least, and he’d volunteered to pick up some slack for his colleagues so they could enjoy the celebration of life.

He closed the file. If there was one thing he knew how to do, it was write up a warrant.

From the seventh floor of the police headquarters, the streets of Kansas City spread beyond the windows, blurred by the raindrops. Gauzy street lights shone through the storm, and a blotted-out moon peeked between the clouds. In the reflection of the window, he saw himself—his own tired blue eyes and short brown hair, a suit and a tie. The fact that he couldn’t stand the way facial hair felt on his jaw didn’t help him look any older than twenty-eight. Still too young and a long way from his hometown of New York. Maybe it was just the afterglow of Haylock’s funeral, but that knowledge felt particularly heavy tonight.

At the end of the day, when all the paperwork was done, his apartment was full of half-empty boxes he didn’t feel like dealing with. Six months here and he hadn’t hit it off with anyone on the force, not even a group of guys to grab a beer with after a rough shift. Not that he’d put in much of an effort. He had no right to complain; moving had been his choice.

And he was solving murders. That was what mattered.

He dropped the warrant on Sanchez’s desk and moved through the dark office, toward the exit. He’d busied himself with as much paperwork as he could—it was time to go.

The conference room door had been left ajar. As he passed, something on the table hooked his eye. A file with crime scene photos spilling out. Lieutenant Delaney must have forgotten to lock up.

Seth glanced over his shoulder—no one was here. He pushed into the room, lit only by the street lights coming through the window. At the table, he inched a picture out of the file.

Night, a young woman’s body spread on asphalt. Her head was lulled to the side, tucked into her shoulder, hiding her face. Long, dark blonde hair mingled with the gore—a hack-job of a cut to her throat. She was fully clothed, wearing a tank top and loose-fitting jeans. But there was something written—no, carved—on her forearm.

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME

“Jesus,” Seth muttered.

The letters were jagged with strips of flesh peeling away. He supposed that would happen if you tried to cleave a sentence into someone’s skin. Without seeing the coroner’s report, he guessed this was done with a very thin blade. A scalpel, a boxcutter. Surgically thin lines without a surgeon’s touch. Curiously, there was an X-ray image from the coroner too. The victim’s neck had been fractured.

The light flicked on, at the same time Seth heard a voice. “We’re calling it the Fairview murder, pending something catchier.”

“Lieutenant, sorry, I just—”

“That’s all right.” Lieutenant Sheila Delaney held up a hand, setting him at ease. She was still in her dress from the funeral, her pale face lined with exhaustion as she joined him, silver hair pin-straight. “Robert wouldn’t want me to drag my heels on finding his replacement. Fairview is a fairly small town and their chief is a personal friend of mine, so they need the backup.” She slid some of the papers aside, revealing more photos. “Her name is Eliza Johnson. She was only twenty-six.”

“I was just looking at this X-ray here,” Seth said. “The killer fractured her neck and slit her throat?”

“The fracture was non-fatal. The cut is what killed her.”

Huh.

One of the autopsy photos caught his attention. A close-up of a stick and poke tattoo on the victim’s ankle, the initials DB with a heart drawn next to them. “Haylock ever figure out who DB is?”

“He did not,” Delaney said. “He believed a drifter killed her. Someone from out of town saw a woman passed out behind a dumpster and abducted her. Wrong place, wrong time.”

“Seems a bit personal for that.”

“Well, she was a known addict, had some solicitation charges under her belt. No DNA was found on the body, though. No signs of sexual assault. Her purse was recovered behind the dumpster. The only solace, if you can call it that, is she had a lot of heroin in her system when she died. She might not have felt much.”

Heroin. It was like hearing the name of a toxic old friend, someone he’d rather not run into and be tempted to shake hands with.