Adrenaline surged in Leo’s bloodstream. The nicotine from his cigarette pulsed through his veins. He was unstoppable.

Old Cesare often shoved the woman’s success in his face. For a man who seemed to believe women were best kept barefoot and pregnant, he had a bit of an obsession with the success of Victoria Peres. He took pride in the woman’s achievements as if they were his own, but in the same breath tore her down, claiming she was a misfit and a disgrace.

Considering the identity of her mother, he understood Cesare’s point.

He’d decided it was time for Victoria Peres to learn about her mother and had put the wheels in motion yesterday. Her present bone investigation had been entangled, her home security compromised. What would discovering the truth about her roots do to her psyche?

Two people knew the truth about Victoria’s mother: himself and Cesare. Cesare believed only he held the knowledge. But the man shouldn’t keep written records. The man had a lot to learn about living a secret life. He’d been sloppy. His hiding places weak. Cesare had managed to fool his congregation for years, but Leo had easily discovered the truth. If you’re going to hide an alternative life, don’t leave dead women in your shed.

He blew a lungful of smoke into the air. The ceiling of the tiny bedroom grew fainter through the gray-blue haze. He set his cigarette in the ashtray and tucked his hands under his head as he rested on the bed. Last night had gone as planned. He’d hoped the fire would have burned more of the home, but he’d made his point. She wasn’t safe.

The first time he’d found a body in the shed, he’d nearly wet himself. She’d had long dark hair. The feature was a fetish of Cesare’s, and he decided to adopt it as one of his own. He’d been snooping, noticing the man often made trips to the shed at all times of the night. His father kept the door padlocked, but he had watched to see where Cesare kept the key. One early morning, he’d decided to look for himself.

She’d been dead for a while. He could smell the rot.

Why had Cesare been visiting a dead body?

The handcuffs were carelessly cast aside. The mattress foul. The room showed signs of occupancy. A water bucket, a waste bucket. Some empty cracker boxes. More handcuffs and rope attached to various metal rings in the walls and floors. The room had been strengthened. From the outside, it looked like a shed about to collapse. Inside the walls were closer than they should be. A sign of thick space between the inner and outer wall, no doubt filled with an insulating material. He’d tapped on a wall. They’d been dense two-by-eights. A room meant to imprison.

The next day he’d returned, and the woman had vanished. A few days of wandering in the woods behind Cesare’s home had revealed a plot of freshly turned dirt. Nearby were other sunken depressions in the ground. He’d read that an amateur grave will first be a raised area of dirt, but then sink where the torso collapses as it rots, leaving the concavity. He’d counted five possible sites.

Cesare wasn’t the holy man he presented to his flock.

He’d kept his knowledge to himself, watching as the old man preached to the dwindling congregation. Now the group was small, mostly older men like Cesare whose wives had abandoned them to their faith, unable to live the oppressive role their husbands laid out for them.

Leo wondered if Cesare had always been so bitter toward women, or if it’d grown after his own wife left. Had he intensified his hatred because of what his wife had done to him?

He’d snooped thoroughly through the shed and discovered a locked fire box of photos. The key hadn’t been hard to find. Cesare kept his keys in the same drawer he’d used all his life. His confidence in keeping his secrets safe was laughable.

The pictures were of women. Some dead, some still alive. All with long dark hair and white dresses. But the photos that struck him the most were of the circle. The women laid out as if they were daisy petals. Their white dresses echoing the flower. Some pictures showed them flush with life. But others showed their cheeks and eyes starting to sink as they lay lifeless in their circle day after day.

How many days in a row had Cesare returned to photograph the women?

He pictured Victoria Peres in the circle. Her life’s essence destroyed.

Not yet.

First he wanted to emotionally rip her to shreds.

The bones were done. Victoria stretched the kinks out of her back, shuddering at the series of loud cracks. Everything was inventoried. Samples were removed for testing. Full records written and photographed. Frustratingly, she hadn’t found an earth-shattering lead to use as a tool to hunt down the women’s identities. From an anthropologist’s perspective, these were a bunch of nondescript women. Sadly missing their skulls.

She closed her eyes for a long moment.

It was a process she’d done since her first anatomy class: imagining her own bones without their flesh. She could see her skull. Its forehead high, its eye sockets slightly angular, and the zygomatic arches high and well defined. Cool and bare. Lifeless.

“Need some sleep?”

Victoria smiled as she opened her eyes. Seth’s voice. It was low and rumbly and sexy. It’d taken her all of one second to get used to hearing it again. That first night in Forest Park, the sound of his voice rang in her ears like hearing a beloved song from long ago. At first the sound was a small, stunning surprise, and then came the realization that she knew every melody and lyric.

She turned. He’d changed out of scrubs and lab coat into a faded pair of jeans. His hair was slightly messy, and she knew instantly he’d been running a hand through it in mild frustration. But his eyes looked happy and relaxed. Hmmm.