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For several seconds, Turner watched her stare at Carter. “It’s not him. I mean the passcode thing is compelling but it’s not him.”

Molly turned her head just enough so that Josie could see her grin up at her dad. Carter pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Josie’s conviction wavered. She recalled how patient and sweet he had been with both of his girls each time she’d seen him with them. Was she wrong? No one who observed him with his children would ever believe he was a cold, savage killer. Then again, he’d learned how to craft and maintain the perfect façade from the best. He’d had his entire life to observe how it was done.

Turner was right that between the two brothers, Dean seemed the most obvious suspect. He had a history of angry outbursts. He’d admitted to becoming so agitated that he’d scared his wife enough for her to call his brother to intervene. His alibis were far easier to poke holes in than Carter’s. It wasn’t implausible that he could have started killing as young as eighteen but there was something so guileless about him. She didn’t think he possessed the type of cunning required to get away with as much as the Last Kiss Killer had for the past fifteen years—now or then.

“It’s Carter,” she hissed.

“My point stands.”

The service dragged on. Molly seemed just as restless as Josie. She twisted out of Carter’s arms and he let her, tucking her between him and Dean. Not even a minute later, she stood up on the bench and turned around to look at the crowd. Her eyes were saucer wide as she took in all the people in the pews and then Turner, whose height made him noticeable in every room he walked into. Her gaze lingered on Josie for a beat. Josie forced a smile even though all she could think about was rushing up the aisle and getting Molly and her sister away from the monster masquerading as a loving father.

The blind trust they had in him made Josie physically ill.

Molly waved. It was a small movement, barely a twitch of her tiny hand. Josie did the same, mirroring her. Then Carter whispered something in her ear and swirled his index finger as he pointed to the seat, indicating she should sit down. Josie was grateful he didn’t look over his shoulder even though he had no reason to be wary of them. He’d masterfully cultivated a good rapport with Denton PD, putting himself squarely on the same team as them. Josie hadn’t felt his pain as viscerally as she had Dean’s but she had been taken by the good-guy persona he had crafted so artfully.

“What are we doing here, Quinn?” Turner said. “We can’t arrest anyone. It’s a funeral, for godssake.”

Through gritted teeth, she said, “We need to get him away from the girls.”

Turner laughed quietly. “Even if we bring Dean in—and sure, okay, let’s say Carter, too—they’ll be back with the kids in a matter of hours. The only thing we can do is talk to them. Unless you get some kind of big, dramatic confession, there is nothing we can do about either of them being around those girls, and if you don’t get some big dramatic confession, you’ve tipped your hand and potentially put those kids in more danger. It’s a hell of a gamble, Quinn.”

A gamble. Something flitted around in the back of Josie’s mind, but she was too focused on the scene in front of her to chase it. She didn’t bother responding to him. The sight of Carter sitting in the front row of the funeral of one of his victims made her skin crawl. Not to mention his proximity to Dean, who obviously loved and idolized his brother. Worse was watching him with his children now that the mask of patient, loving dad had been removed. The same hands that held little Molly against his chest had strangled the life out of eight women—one of them his own mother. The cognitive dissonance was giving her whiplash.

When she didn’t say anything more, Turner whispered, “Fine. I kind of see your point about bringing them in immediately after this funeral. They’ll be off-balance and emotionally unprepared. Maybe we bring them both in, put them in separate rooms, and we can work on both of them at the same time.”

Molly crawled across Carter’s lap, reaching for Piper, but her sister said something and pointed to their dad. Carter looped an arm around Molly’s waist and pulled her close, whispering in her ear. She turned toward him, first hugging his neck and then playing with his tie.

Pastor Deegan droned on. The congregants prayed and wept. If anyone noticed the squirmy three-year-old, they didn’t show it. She began to chatter as she smushed Carter’s face in her tiny hands, though Josie couldn’t make out her words from the back of the church. Dean glanced over at them. He said something, either to Carter or Molly, Josie couldn’t tell, and then turned his attention back to the service.

Turner’s voice, though still quiet, took on an edge of excitement. “That’s it! We can do dueling interrogations. Whoever gets a confession wins. Let’s bet on it. Fifty bucks. No, a hundred.”

Bet on it.

A gamble.

“Come on, Quinn,” Turner needled. “I won’t even tell the Chief. It will stay between us.”

Carter looked at his wife. She glared at him. Slowly, he took Molly’s hands from his cheeks. He spoke to her.

Pastor Deegan said, “Let us be silent and make our own prayers.”

As the congregants bowed their heads silently, Josie thought she heard a snatch of Carter’s words to Molly. Something about Mommy being mad.

Turner waited for the silent prayer to be over before nudging her with an elbow. “What do you say? Fifty bucks or a hundred?”

The thing flitting around in the back of her mind batted its way through the morass of thoughts she had yet to untangle. The Chief would be furious if he knew they’d placed wagers on getting confessions out of suspects. Just like Erin West would have been furious if she’d ever found out that Carter had wiped out their savings by gambling. If he had gambled away that much money when they were married, it stood to reason he had had problems before that. Fifteen years ago, online betting had been illegal in Pennsylvania, which meant he’d have to go to casinos to blow through whatever money he had.

“Turner,” Josie said. “Remember how you said I had to have something besides the passcode?”

“Yeah.”

“You know how there are golf courses near every one of the victim’s homes? Well, there are also casinos.” In all the times she’d studied the map of the Last Kiss Killer’s victims, she hadn’t picked up on the commonality. “Carter had a gambling problem when he was younger.”

“Huh. Well, I’m capping the wager at a hundred bucks.”

Which meant that Turner was now confident that if they carried out dueling interrogations, her chances of getting a confession from Carter were very high. Except that Josie wasn’t all that confident about her plan to bring Carter in for questioning and confront him with all of her theories which, admittedly, weren’t well-supported. Racing to the church had been impulsive but she’d been overcome with the need to lay eyes on Molly and Piper, to find an opportunity to get them away from their dad, even for a short time.

What she should have done was try to gather something—anything—to refute Carter’s alibis so she could use it against him when they brought him in for interrogation. Questioned Erin. Gone to the firehouse and interviewed the coworkers who had been there the day of Kirstie’s murder. Asked Macy Russell for security footage from in and around the building. Josie would bet a week’s pay Carter was on video leaving the firehouse through a back door and returning before she and Gretchen arrived. He wouldn’t have worried about those cameras because there would never be any reason for anyone to check them.