Page 42 of The Lost Bones
You’re welcome, Mackenzie.
I will always protect you, Mackenzie.
Nick pressed a hot cup against his forehead.
“Didn’t you sleep last night? You’ve been yawning all day.”
“I didn’t.” He cracked his neck. “I kept hearing footsteps.”
“Footsteps?” She frowned.
“Yeah, like someone was walking around in my house. But I checked and there was no one. It was a weird dream.”
Nick clearly didn’t think much of it, but an alarm was ringing in Mackenzie’s head.
“I can hear you thinking,” he said dryly.
“It’s just…” She chewed her lip. “You don’t have weird dreams. Do you think someone was actually in your house?”
“Like I said, I checked and nada.”
But she wasn’t convinced. That pecking feeling was back. Suddenly she remembered how a year ago, she hadn’t felt safe in her own house. As though someone had been lurking in the shadows, watching her. And now there was someone killing women in her name…
“Mack.” When he held her shoulders, she jolted out of her spiraling thoughts. “I know you’re on edge. We all are because of this case. But you’re being paranoid. Everything’s fine.”
She pushed those thoughts away as he searched her eyes. Maybe he was right. Moreover, being a woman, her antenna was more active than his.
“We have three victims.” She changed the topic and capped her marker. “The forensic evidence connecting them is muskrat fur.”
“We were able to trace the specific jacket, but that shop shut down, so we don’t know who bought it.” He crossed offmuskrat furon the whiteboard with a red marker.
“We know from her Google searches that Sophie had started looking into Aria’s disappearance. And then she arrived in Lakemore… But from what I dug up on the internet, Aria had no connection to Lakemore. So why did Sophie come here?”
There was an inches-thick stack of news clippings about Aria Fields’ disappearance on the desk. Mackenzie had spent last night highlighting anything and everything important. But the case had generated no promising leads.
Nick folded his lips over his teeth, contemplating. “There are a lot of details that are never publicized. There could be some information that Sophie was privy to from the detectives on the case during the investigation.”
Mackenzie made a note on the board.Request case files and check for a link with Lakemore.
“Now the messages for you.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and tilted his neck. “The note in Sophie’s pocket had no fingerprints or anything of significance. And the message left on the wall in Courtney’s blood, nothing there either.”
“That’s what baffles me.” She bit her lip. “We have two bodies and one abduction site, but there isn’t enough physical evidence, or any witnesses.”
“To be fair, Sophie went missing a long time ago.”
“But she was killed recently. Do you think Turner is right? That we could be looking at two killers?”
Nick shook his head. “Yeah, and our killer took her body from some freezer? That’s a lucky shot.”
Something didn’t sit right with Mackenzie. In a way, the link between the victims was undeniable. A glaringly clear string of motivation behind the brutal targeting. But consistency was lacking. The methods didn’t align. The time between abduction and killing wasn’t the same. Then there was Sophie—the only victim with no history with Mackenzie. It was almost like tasting an ingredient in a dish that didn’t belong there, whose taste had seeped into the entirety. She just needed to figure out that one aspect. That one truth that once revealed would slot everything into a neat picture as opposed to the mess it was right now.
“If we add this wristband evidence to our affidavit to get the rental company to open its books for us, we have a better shot, don’t you think?” Mackenzie pondered. “That company is associated with two victims now. Can’t rule that out as a coincidence.”
“I agree.” Nick crossed his arms. “And we have uniform picking up Tag. If we can get something out of him, that will help.”
“Clint wasn’t able to spot the car anywhere else?” Mackenzie asked.
He shook his head. “Not even on the cams on the freeway. He checked an hour-long window from when we saw it on the CCTV at the school.”
