He also had a good rapport with Lacey Campbell, but it was different. They were connected beyond a social level. He’d met her briefly a decade ago after she’d nearly become a victim of the Co-Ed Slayer in her college years. Their paths crossed again last winter when she’d identified the remains of the Slayer’s last victim and then was targeted by a copycat killer.

Mason followed the path Lacey had made into the forest. Away from the bright lights of the crime scene, it was peaceful. He spotted her leaning against a fir, brushing at her eyes as she tucked a cell phone in her purse.

“You okay?” he asked.

She started, gripping at her purse, then visibly relaxed as she made out his face. “Yes. I’m just getting a breath of fresh air.”

Mason nodded. “Not your usual type of scene.”

Lacey forced a smile. “True. I probably shouldn’t have come. I do better in the sterile environment of the medical examiner’s office.”

“How is Jack?”

“Good. He’s in Japan for work. I was just trying to reach him.” Her smile faltered.

“No luck?” His heart ached a bit for the young dentist. She was petite and fragile in appearance, but he knew she had a spine of steel. He’d seen her cry as she held the hand of a parent of a dead child, and he’d seen her focused and training at the gun range, struggling to calm the demons a serial killer had left in her soul.

She’d twice lived through a nightmare. The type that would put most people in a mental ward the first time.

“No,” she said.

“What are your thoughts on girls this age? What would drive a teen to do this?”

Lacey blinked at his question, her eyes wide in the dim light.

“You’re the youngest female here,” Mason expanded. “And you’ve worked with kids this age, right? In gymnastics lessons? I’m picking your brain for some insight. I’ve got a son about this age, but girls think differently.”

“It’s been a few years since I’ve read Seventeen magazine. But I think kids today have the same pressures. Their looks, their friends, being with the right crowd, saying and doing the cool things, wearing the right clothes.”

Mason nodded. “But there’s more in their lives now. Instant communication. Instant worldwide knowledge. Pictures from around the world show up on their phones to share with their friends. The need to know about everything first.”

Lacey drew in a sharp breath. “Do you think someone took pictures? Someone had to have walked away from here. Christ! Do you think there’re already pictures circulating of this scene? Do you have someone monitoring social media? Looking for anything macabre?”

Mason knew that once a picture was on the Internet, it would never completely disappear. The source could be taken down, but shares could spread uncontrollably.

“We thought of that. We’ve got people on it.”

She exhaled. “What a mess.”

“It could get really ugly. We used to just worry about photographers selling pictures to the media. Now, everyone can be their own media site. Although we definitely would trace where it started.”

“I hope no one did that here. Those poor girls. Their families… How horrible to know images of your dead daughter were floating around the Internet.”

“I’d kill someone if they posted pictures with my kid,” Mason stated. And he would. He didn’t see much of his son, Jake, because he lived with his mom and stepdad. But Mason did everything he could to keep in close contact with the teen. Some days the hardest thing he did was get that kid to have a conversation with him on the phone. It’d be easy to let him drift away. Mason fought to keep that communication open.

Mason looked back at the white circle in the ferns. Lacey followed his gaze.

“Some parents are about to have the worst day of their lives.”

The TV droned in the background as Trinity poured her bowl of cereal. Her upset stomach from the day before was gone, and she’d woken up starving. She sniffed at her cup of coffee and felt her stomach spin a bit. Okay. Maybe she wasn’t totally better. She set it aside. Coffee wasn’t really her thing anyway.

Maybe she’d try again tomorrow before school. Today was Sunday, and she didn’t need caffeine. In fact, once she finished her cereal, she was headed back to bed. She caught the high-school bus at 7 A.M. each weekday, so she rarely passed up a chance for extra sleep.

Her homework load was insane. Trinity took every advanced class she could, wanting that cheap college credit. Money was tight. It’d always been tight. She was a master at stretching out the life of drugstore makeup and punching up the look of her own clothes. In fact, she had a sweatshirt from Goodwill to alter. She’d spotted the almost-new Hollister hoodie on the men’s rack yesterday. It was big and needed to be taken in just a bit. If she got it done today, she could wear it tomorrow. Happier, she plunged her spoon back in her cereal.

The phrase “Forest Park” caught her attention, and she focused on the TV. Black body bags on stretchers were being wheeled out of a trailhead and into waiting ambulances.

Her vision tunneled and sweat started under her arms.

Doors slammed on the back of an ambulance and it drove off. Its lights weren’t flashing and its siren was off; it wasn’t in a hurry.

Trinity couldn’t breathe.

The camera swung back to the trailhead. More stretchers. More bags of death.

“… the five teenage girls haven’t been identified and the sixth in the hospital may not make it,” said the broadcaster over the images.