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But we couldn’t stay in bed forever, so we got ready for the day and promised to have another night just like the last. I didn’t forget about Harry—neither had Jace—and that made things slightly messier, at least until I could have a genuine conversation with him. Still, Jason’s kiss had me sprung, and I was growing more and more resistant about letting anything come between us. We weren’t twenty-something-year-old kids figuring shit out anymore. I had my shit figured out; I knew who I wanted, and I wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of me and him, not like the last time.
That’s why tonight I planned on asking Jace to make this solid. I needed to know that his heart was as in it as mine. I had to be assured that we weren’t running headfirst into the same brick wall that took us out all those years ago. The idea of that made my stomach twist into knots.
I focused instead on Sheriff Mosley, who was now sitting across from me inside her office, the thick brick painted a sloppy white, thick globs of paint having dripped down and dried. It was windowless, and the walls were bare of any portraits or prints. I’d seen cozier prison cells than the sheriff’s office, ironic considering where we were. She reached into a filing cabinet next to her scratched-up wooden desk, a freshly placed engagement ring catching the sterile white office lights that buzzed directly above us.
“There was a robbery yesterday,” she said, pulling a manilla folder out from the cabinet. She opened it and laid the contents flat on her desk. They were photos of a necklace laying in a field of red-stained grass, the sunlight playing with flecks of blood as if it were the same gold that the necklace had been made from. “They took this.”
I looked up at her, confusion slipping over shock. “The necklace? Wasn’t it being held here as evidence? How’d they even get in?”
“Through a bathroom window. The bathroom is directly adjacent to the evidence locker. A masked man rushed in and held Hernandez up with a gun, forced him to open the locker. He grabbed the necklace and ran, but not before knocking Hernandez out cold.”
“Was there no backup? Who else was here?”
The sheriff shook her head. “It happened around three thirty in the morning. I’m not rolling around here in unlimited resources and manpower. The night shift isn’t as well staffed right now.”
I winced. Not great, considering there was a serial killer on the loose. I leaned in for a closer look at the photos. Clearly, the necklace was important. Whoever left it behind didn’t want it being looked at. It didn’t strike me as an expensive piece; the gold was cheap and the links were already beginning to show signs of discoloration. It must have a sentimental kind of value, leading me to look at the letters inscribed on the small heart: “J & D.”
“We do have video of the thief leaving.”
That made me jerk my head up, my eyes locking on the sheriff’s. “Way to bury the lede.”
She shrugged and turned her computer screen around so that we could both watch. It was security footage from the outside of the police department, showing a largely abandoned parking lot, except for a family of coyotes that ran from one end of the lot to the tree-covered opposite end. The sheriff pointed at a car, an old red Honda with a dented bumper, as it drove onto the screen from the corner and pressed Pause when it was perfectly in the center of the frame.
A Bigfoot-looking man sat hunched in the driver’s seat with a hat pulled low on his head and a mask covering the bottom half of his face.
“Whoa, look there—is that a shadow or a person in the passenger side?”
The sheriff leaned in. She grabbed her glasses and sat them on the edge of her nose, her sharp brown eyes magnified under the lenses.
“I can’t tell,” she said, slowing inching the video forward frame by frame. It appeared to just be a shadow caused by a tree. I watched the video again, shocked at the brazenness of this man. This wasn’t the kind of behavior I expected from a serial killer who’d remained under the radar for quite some time. He wanted that necklace, but why?
“They broke into the police department, a practical fortress, just to steal a necklace?” I shook my head. “Did you pull any prints off it? DNA? Was the locket ever opened?”
“It was being processed tomorrow.”
My jaw dropped a couple of inches toward the desk. “Tomorrow? Are you fucking joking me? The department’s had this in evidence for nearly a month now!”
The door behind me opened and an officer stepped in, his grip tight on a rolled-up piece of paper. “Sheriff, sorry, but you told us to interrupt if we—”
