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"Or he knewwe'd come looking." Morgan leaned against the car, the cool metalgrounding her. Simon was always a step ahead, a specter dancing just out ofreach. The question was why. Why the women? Why the locations? What was thepattern?
"Let's goover it again," Derik said, though the suggestion carried the weight ofdefeat. They both knew they were retracing steps already taken, hoping to findsomething previously unseen.
"Again,"Morgan agreed, pushing off from the car. And with that single word, theyplunged back into the hunt, two shadows chasing a ghost through the heart of asleeping city.
***
Morgan's fingers tappedagainst the keyboard, her dark eyes scanning the screen as if it were alifeline. They had parked in an alleyway where the dim glow of a singlestreetlight barely reached through the fogged car windows. Desperation was atangible entity in the air between them, feeding on the silence that envelopedthe interior of their nondescript sedan.
"Anything?"Derik's voice cut through her focus, his question laced with the same urgencythat had been gnawing at him since they'd started this case.
"Stilllooking," she muttered, more to herself than to Derik. Her mind raced,retracing every step Simon Cartwright could have taken. The hunches andintuition that had once made her one of the best were being put to the test.She felt the weight of the ink-stained skin beneath her clothes – each tattoo astory, a scar from her past life, a life before the bars closed in on her for acrime she didn't commit.
Morgan siftedthrough forum posts, articles, and academic papers, anything that might hold ashred of insight into Simon's whereabouts. Derik watched her, eyes reflectingthe dashboard's ambient light, the green in them dulled by fatigue. He knewbetter than to interrupt when she was like this – engrossed, determined,unstoppable.
And then she sawit – a paper authored by Simon, obscure and mostly overlooked in the academiccommunity but glaringly significant to her. "Derik," she breathed outsharply, snapping him to attention. "I've found something."
"Tell meit's not another dead end." His voice held a mixture of hope andweariness.
"No, it's...It's a pattern. Look." Morgan angled the laptop towards him. On the screenwas an abstract about urban legends and their geographic patterns through thecity – locations that now seemed eerily familiar. "He's been mapping them,the legends tied to specific places. And our victims..." She trailed off,knowing Derik would make the connection.
"Have beenfound at these sites," Derik finished, leaning in closer, green eyesnarrowing as he assimilated the revelation. "It's not random. It neverwas."
"Exactly."Morgan's voice was a mix of triumph and dread. Triumph because they had a lead,and dread because they were delving into a mind obsessed with the macabre, amind that used the city's own myths against its victims.
The pieces beganto fit together, forming a tapestry of motives and madness that had eluded themuntil now. Morgan's tattoos seemed to pulse with a renewed purpose as sheleaned back in her seat, the hunt rekindled within her. Simon Cartwright'sacademic pursuits were no longer just a man's work; they were breadcrumbsleading them down a path few would dare tread.
"Let's chasesome ghosts," she said, her voice steady despite the chill that crept upher spine. With that, the engine roared to life, and they slipped away from thealley, armed with newfound knowledge and a resolve that only the truth could forge.
Morgan thumbedthrough the digital pages of Simon Cartwright's paper, her gaze sharp andsearching. The laptop screen cast a pallid glow across her face. Derik watchedin silence from the passenger seat, knowing better than to interrupt when shewas this deep in thought.
"Gotyou," Morgan muttered under her breath as the significance of Simon'sacademic work clicked into place. Her dark hair fell like a curtain around herface, obscuring the tattoos that traced her skin with stories of a lifeinterrupted by betrayal. Each location tied to their victims matched a point onSimon's map—a patterned network of urban legends that now served as gravesitesfor four women who'd scorned the occult. The park, the factory, the monument,the memorial—all chosen with deliberate care, each one an echo of the city'sdarker narratives.
"Simon's notjust obsessed with these myths," Morgan realized aloud, "he'sreenacting them." It was more than a pattern; it was a ritualistic homage,and each victim played a role in his twisted homage to the supernatural lore hestudied.
Derik leaned overthe center console, peering at the highlighted sections of text on the screen."He's selecting his victims based on their disbelief in what hevenerates," he said, piecing together the implications alongside Morgan.
"Exactly.And it's no coincidence that Rachel King disappeared from her bookstore—anepicenter for knowledge and stories." Morgan's eyes gleamed with thereflection of the screen, her mind racing ahead. She could almost feel thedesperation of their unseen adversary, a man driven by the need to validate hisbelief through acts of unspeakable violence.
"Hismotivations are rooted in vindication," she concluded, her voice steadybut laced with contempt. "Each death is a message. He's trying to provethe power of these legends, make believers out of skeptics."
"By becominga legend himself," Derik added grimly.
"Then let’snot give him the satisfaction of becoming a myth," Morgan said as sheslammed the laptop shut. She had always been relentless, a force to be reckonedwith, and now she channeled every ounce of that tenacity into the hunt forSimon Cartwright. With each woman's murder, the stakes climbed higher, andMorgan felt the weight of their silenced voices urging her on. They would notbe reduced to footnotes in Cartwright's perverse narrative—not if she couldhelp it.
With thecorrelations laid bare before them, light shed on the darkness of Simon'sdesigns, Morgan knew they were closer to grasping the elusive threads of hispsyche. Understanding his methods gave them an edge, and in the world ofpredators and prey, knowledge was power. Simon's academic pursuits weren't justtheories and folklore; they were the blueprint to his madness.
"Let's putan end to this story," Morgan declared, her voice resolute as she startedthe engine. They drove off into the night, the cityscape stretching beforethem—a labyrinth of history and horror where fact and fiction blurred, and akiller waited to write his next chapter.
Morgan continuedto search, scanning the stream of data cascading down her screen. Each locationconnected to Simon Cartwright's research on urban legends had become a crimescene, and now, their pattern was as clear to her as the ink etched into herskin—a roadmap to his twisted logic.
"Gotsomething," she murmured, her voice low but infused with renewed vigor.The last victim's proximity to the enigmatic landmarks in Simon's papers wasn'tcoincidental—it was by design. Empowered by this revelation, she redoubled herefforts, piecing together the puzzle with the methodical precision that hadmade her an agent respected and feared in equal measure.
"Derik,cross-reference the dates of the murders with local events tied to thesemyths," Morgan instructed, her gaze not leaving the screen. She felt theadrenaline surge through her veins like a current, the familiar burn of abreakthrough igniting her senses. Every setback, every hour spent chasingshadows in the city's underbelly, had led to this.
"Doing itnow," Derik replied, fingers flying over his own laptop. They worked intandem, a synchronicity born out of necessity and mutual determination. Morgancould almost sense the net closing around Simon, the once elusive professor whohad turned the city into his macabre playground.
The newfoundunderstanding of Simon's academic obsession with urban legends propelled Morgancloser to the truth behind his actions. His pattern was no longer random; itwas a deliberate walk through a sinister gallery of his making. Each site, eachvictim, was a breadcrumb left behind, a taunt for anyone clever enough tofollow.
