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“No. I kind of backed up, out of the room, but I couldn’t stop staring at her. She looked so small and frail. I just can’t believe this happened.” Tears leaked from Trinity’s eyes. “It’s my fault. I pestered her for years to give this interview. She didn’t want to do it. Didn’t want to go public. I forced the issue and now she’s dead. She’s dead, and her sons don’t have a mother anymore and her grandchildren don’t have their grandma. They’re so young. Oh God.”

Drake put the bed rail down and climbed into the bed with Trinity just as Josie strode across the room, wanting to do the same. There was only room for one of them to join her sister in the tiny bed. As it was, Drake barely fit. He was just as tall as Turner, but his workout regimen had made him bigger. Josie settled for standing next to the bed and holding Trinity’s hand.

“It wasn’t your fault, Trin,” she said.

Noah joined Josie, pressing his hand against her lower back, the warmth of it soothing her rising anxiety. “She’s right. The only person at fault is the person who did this. Killers kill.”

Trinity sniffled, looking up at them from where Drake had tucked her against his side. “But he wouldn’t have come after her if I hadn’t interviewed her.”

“She agreed to the interview,” Josie said. “You didn’t coerce her.”

Drake planted a kiss on top of Trinity’s head. “Sylvia West refused your requests for years. She knew how to say no. It was her choice to talk to you on camera now.”

“Did she mention why she changed her mind?” asked Turner.

“All she said was that it had taken a long time to be able to talk about it. She didn’t want to hide anymore. She said she had been praying about it and decided to move forward. That was one of the things I wanted to ask her to elaborate on when we spoke today, especially since she always believed he would come back to finish the job.”

Clearly, Sylvia had been right. The Last Kiss Killer had been keeping tabs on her.

Josie thought about Sylvia’s lipstick-smeared face. Why had the Last Kiss Killer felt the need to come after her thirteen years after his failed attack on her? She had already gone to the police when the initial attack happened, and nothing she had said or shared had led to his arrest. What could she possibly say in the interview with Trinity that would put him so on edge? Unless she had meant to reveal something she’d kept from the police during her private meeting with Trinity? Or had the killer just been angry with her for bringing so much renewed attention to the case? He hadn’t killed in years. Had gotten away with multiple murders for over a decade. Maybe he was angry with the publicity she’d stirred up.

Or maybe he was just some sicko who didn’t like to leave things unfinished and wanted to put an exclamation point on her murder by doing it when she was so firmly in the public eye again.

“God,” Trinity said, burrowing deeper into Drake’s embrace. “Her sons were so opposed to her doing the interview. They were afraid for her.”

“Did they tell you that?” asked Turner.

“No, she did, but I overheard them talking the day of the interview. Dean told her she could still back out. Carter agreed. She said that if the Last Kiss Killer was still around, he wouldn’t dare try to come after her while she was in the public eye.”

Except that all he needed to do was catch Sylvia in a private moment while she was alone. There had been buzz around the city for days that the Last Kiss Killer’s only known survivor had lived in Denton for over a decade and had chosen to give an interview to Trinity, who had gotten her start here. But it wasn’t as though there had ever been crowds gathered outside Sylvia’s house. The restaurant where she gave the interview, sure, but her home had still been a sanctuary.

Until a savage killer desecrated it.

Nine

A dull headache throbbed behind Josie’s eyes. It had been two days since the fire. She had been off all day on Monday while Gretchen, Turner, and Noah rotated on and off shift, checking out what was left of Sylvia West’s house, interviewing neighbors, gathering home security footage from everyone nearby, and preparing multiple warrants. Nothing useful had turned up. Despite the day off, Josie felt tired and irritable. Turner wasn’t helping. He leaned forward, long fingers stabbing at the buttons that controlled the radio. The regular radio, not their police radio. They’d left the stationhouse ten minutes ago for the city morgue and he hadn’t yet found a song that he deemed suitable to play for longer than three seconds.

When he passed right over a Fleetwood Mac song, Josie had had enough. “Turner,” she snapped. “Do I change the radio station seventy-three times in a matter of minutes when we’re in your car?”

He punched at the tune button. A stream of static burst from the car’s speakers. The pounding in Josie’s head got worse. “You’ve only been in my car once,” he muttered, still jabbing at the button, his head bent toward the console as the numbers of radio stations flashed past.

“Not the point,” she said.

He continued to cycle through radio stations in his typical manic fashion, ignoring her.

“Why aren’t you on your phone?”

It was a question she never thought she’d ask him. Since he joined their team, his endless scrolling had been one of his most annoying habits—and the man had a lot of annoying habits. Last month, when she’d found out what exactly he was scrolling through and why, she hadn’t been able to look at it quite the same way. He spent hours in the dictionary app on his phone, searching for long or obscure words to use in the game he played with his sixteen-year-old daughter, Cassidy. They sent each other words daily, sometimes more. The rule was that they had to use the word they received in a sentence without looking it up first. There was a point system that Josie still didn’t understand.

“Turner,” she said when he rejected three perfectly good songs.

“We traded words over breakfast,” he said. “The game is a little different now that Cass is living with me.”

A month ago, at the time of their abduction, Cassidy and her mother had been living apart from Turner. Since the rescue, Cassidy had moved in with him which was where Josie thought she’d wanted to be all along. The girl worshipped her father. Josie had to admit that despite his personal and professional flaws, Turner was a good dad.

“How is it?” she asked. “Having Cassidy live with you?”

He turned the volume of the radio all the way down and turned in his seat so he could stare at her. “Are we talking now?”