Page 94 of The Girls in the Snow

“Too damned many,” Nikki said.

“Precisely.”

“You ran them in various combinations? Like maybe Madison was so out of it she messed up the order.”

Liam gave her a dirty look. “That’s the first thing I did.”

“Sorry, grumpy.” Nikki’s phone vibrated with Courtney’s number. She turned the speaker phone on. “Please tell me you matched John’s prints.”

“I wish I could.”

Nikki’s adrenaline evaporated. “What?”

“I’m still waiting on DNA, but John’s prints didn’t match any taken from the motel room,” Courtney said. “He wasn’t with Janelle in that motel room.”

“What about Madison’s effects?”

“A partial match on the watch, which will never hold up in court since they lived in the same house.”

Liam looked as defeated as Nikki felt. “Do you have anything good to tell us?”

“Maybe,” Courtney said. “I got the results back on some of the hair I lifted from the girls’ clothes. It’s cat hair. It’s on both of them, but Kaylee had much more, like she’d practically lain in it.”

“Can you tell what kind of cat?”

“Not without more testing.”

Liam drummed his fingers on the table. “I didn’t see a cat at the Bankses’ place.”

“Kaylee didn’t have one either. Or the Hansons, at least not that I saw.” Nikki felt numb. Could she have been that wrong about John? Had she been so caught up in her past that she hadn’t been objective about his involvement in the girls’ murders?

“Too bad we can’t go door-to-door asking for cat hair donations.”

Nikki’s phone vibrated with another call from an unknown number. Normally she’d let it go to voicemail, but she had made calls to a few places that might have blocked numbers. “Court, hang on.” Nikki put her on hold and then accepted the new call. “This is Nikki Hunt.”

“Nikki?”

She sat up straight. “Bailey? What’s wrong?”

“Daddy’s scaring me.” Bailey’s frightened whisper was barely audible. “He says he’s going to hurt Mommy. And she’s crying.”

“Are you somewhere safe?” Nikki was already shrugging her coat on.

“I’m in Madison’s room.”

“Lock the door. We’re on our way.”

Liam grabbed his coat. “What’s going on?”

“John Banks is losing it.”

Nikki hit the brake and slid back down the Bankses’ street. She’d alerted emergency services as soon as she got off the phone with Bailey, and two Washington County Sheriff’s cruisers blocked the driveway, lights flashing.

Sirens squalled a block away, and the ambulance came around the corner.

Nikki bolted from the jeep and raced up the slick sidewalk. “Agent Hunt with the FBI. Where’s Bailey?”

“We haven’t located him.” She recognized the deputy from the crime scene when they’d first found Madison and Kaylee’s bodies. “We have a single white female, beaten pretty badly. No sign of the husband or the boy.”

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