“I didn’t mean to remind you of her. I’m sorry.”

“I know you didn’t mean to. It’s just that she’s one of the few people who know me inside and out. When you started to ask…I realized how few people I let inside.” She sniffed through the words, avoiding those prying and sympathetic eyes.

She wanted to unload on him. She wanted to tell him how scared she was for her friend. And for herself. She wanted to tell him how alone she’d felt after her mother’s death and Suzanne’s disappearance. And why she was afraid to let other people close: It simply hurt too much when they left.

What man could handle her fucked-up life?

Somehow he appeared, crouching next to her chair, one hand on her shoulder in comfort and the other brushing the hair out of her eyes. The soothing touch started the tears anew, but this time her eyes stayed with his, watching him through the wetness blurring her vision. Genuine compassion stared back from those steel-gray eyes. Those eyes that had captivated her fancy at their first meeting.

Her tears weren’t scaring him.

She didn’t want him to be the solid rock she ached for in her life. It would rip her to shreds when he left. But right now she needed someone to hold her.

She took the risk and leaned in to him, burying her wet eyes in his shoulder. His arms moved around her and held tight. She felt his lips brush her temple. Calming warmth swept through her, quieting her fears and cracking the hard wall around her heart.

Mason Callahan had three dead men, one missing woman, and no obvious answers. The common denominator was Dave DeCosta, and from that center the threads spread out in 360 degrees. He needed to narrow it down. He didn’t like wasting time on useless threads of information, but the flip side was that he didn’t know a thread was useless until it’d been meticulously investigated. Like the fact that Suzanne had given birth. No one knew anything about a baby. Where was he to start with that one? Had the baby even survived? There weren’t any anonymous babies or baby remains that’d been found in the last decade.

He ventured out of his office into the light snowfall and stared at the hazy sky. Several more inches were predicted in the next twenty-four hours. With a big cup of black coffee in his hand, he walked the parking lot, plowing snow paths that crossed and circled around the vehicles. He liked to think outdoors. The crisp air cleared his head after hours of sitting in the office with its fluorescent lights. He kicked at a chunk of dirty ice that’d fallen off a vehicle. It tumbled through fresh snow, making a dark path. Mason glanced up and spotted Ray watching him from the same window where they’d watched Dr. Campbell and Harper.

Ray would shake his head, stomp around the office, tell every coworker that Mason was psychotic to be out in the cold, and then come join him. They’d put in a lot of miles in the parking lot over the years. It was surprising what progress they could make as they froze their noses. Mason would hypothesize, question, and brainstorm out loud while Ray took notes in his damned book and bounced theories back at him.

Hurry up, Ray.

Mason sipped his cooling coffee and concentrated. He knew the person who’d left a card for Dr. Campbell, shot a video of Dr. Campbell and Harper, and downloaded the grisly video of Richard Buck was his man. His killer.

But who was he?

Had DeCosta done the old murders in Mount Junction? Or did their current on-the-loose serial killer do them back then? DeCosta had never breathed a word about dead girls in Mount Junction. And that was a man who’d liked to talk.

DeCosta had dumped his victims in forested areas; he didn’t hide them. Forest rangers or backpackers had easily spotted his girls. Each one had been found within a few weeks of disappearing, bodies tortured and legs broken.

The Mount Junction girls’ deaths had been disguised as accidents, and had stayed hidden for months. The car driven into the river. A missing skier who’d turned up when summer sun melted the snow pack. A lone hiker who’d fallen in a ravine. All eventually had turned up, their remains harshly affected by weather or animals. And the femurs—that could be found—had been broken.

The recent three murders all had the same broken femurs. But they were all men.

Damn it. Mason wanted to hit something. There were too many similarities and differences between the cases, and he couldn’t keep them straight. Where was Ray with his notebook?

Two killers. One living and one who’d been dead for the past eighteen months. Which man killed which victims?

Who would be the next victim?

Ray slammed the back door and trudged toward Mason with a sour expression on his face. He made a big show of pulling on his hat and turning up the collar of his coat. “This weather is a freak of nature. We’ve never had this kind of nonstop snowfall and freeze in town.”

“Must be that global warming thing.”

Ray shot him an incredulous look before realizing that Mason was joking. He snorted and whipped out his book and pencil. “Start talking.”

They talked and paced for an hour. The snow and cold forgotten.

“Frank Stevenson has been in both places. He’s from the Mount Junction area and moved here after graduation. That puts him in both places at the right time.” Ray made bullet points under Stevenson’s name as he talked.

“There’s no direct DeCosta connection,” Mason countered.

“Maybe he’s just a fan.”

Mason spit out a choked laugh. Frank Stevenson was an ass. He’d proved it the night he attacked Dr. Campbell and then proceeded to mouth off in a jail cell for five hours. The police had wanted to kick him out just to shut him up.