Blake rubbed a heavy hand through his hair and gripped the back of his neck.
Two new divers appeared on the water’s surface, towing another woman dressed in white. The veil from her hair sank slowly in the water behind them.
The bodies kept coming, just as the first diver had said, delivered by the hands of men and women who’d undoubtedly retrieved many others from similar fates, but never, he guessed, had anyone there seen anything like this. The rescuers’ faces were as white as the victims. They bumbled onto shore stricken, ill and rattled.
Blake watched with disbelieving eyes as the women were lined up and examined in the warm autumn sun. It was a juxtaposition that turned his stomach. Six women. Six. How had he missed two victims? He’d dedicated himself to knowing this case. He knew the victims. Had met with their families. Internalized their devastating losses. How could he have missed not one but two victims?
West’s men met each diver as they finished their duty and led them aside. They’d need to give an account of what they’d seen down there.
Blake walked the space between five occupied sheets, studying the disfigured faces and patchy hair. Years underwater had all but removed their identities. Aside from their families, and the animal who did this, Blake was probably the only one who’d recognize them. “Marcia Gold,” he told the men working on the first body. “Angela Olmstead,” he said to the next. “Jessica Snow. Monica Knisely.”
He stopped beside the fifth body where a woman wearing an ID badge from the medical examiner’s office tucked wads of loose hair into an evidence bag. “What happened to her?” he asked. The body was grotesquely misshapen, portions missing. Her gown was nearly torn to shreds by age and the lake’s ecosystem.
The M.E. labeled the bag and set it into her case. “This one’s been down there a while. Longer than the others. Maybe by as much as a year.”
“A year.” The words warbled off Blake’s tongue. “Are you sure?”
She offered a patient smile. “It’ll take longer to identify her, if we can. There’s a lot of damage here, but we’ll know more soon, and we’ll get the facts to you the moment we have them.” The woman stretched onto her feet and patted his shoulder.
A hush rolled over the crowd behind them, on the heels of splashing water. The sixth body had made it to the surface.
Blake hung his head as he turned to see what new atrocity awaited. Would it be another woman murdered years ago? Someone else who he had no clue existed? Would this have been Marissa’s fate if she weren’t so fierce and determined?
“Blake.” Marissa’s voice sounded nearby, closer than he’d expected, but he couldn’t force his eyes from the lake.
The final two divers rushed forward with a woman who couldn’t have been underwater more than a few weeks. She was blonde and blue-eyed like the others, petite and dressed in a long-sleeved wedding gown.
Blake’s chest tightened. The weight of too many sleepless nights and five years of self-loathing pressed the air from his lungs. Anger boiled in his gut. He could’ve stopped this five years ago and he didn’t. Now someone else was dead. Another life taken. Because of him.
West strode into view, cell phone pressed to his ear. “I need the missing persons report on Annie Linz. Twenty-something jogger. Went missing near the county line early this month.” He knelt beside the young woman and turned her face carefully toward him, then fell back on his haunches. He cast a look over one shoulder and dipped his chin at Blake.
The ground tilted beneath Blake. Nash had killed again and he’d had no idea. Everything he’d thought he knew about this case had gone out the window the moment he’d arrived home at the summons of a madman, which he realized was exactly what had happened. Nash could’ve killed anywhere, but he’d come back to Blake’s hometown. It probably also wasn’t a fluke that Marissa got away. Nash wanted to be hunted. He’d probably let her win that fight, and he’d used her to send the message right to Blake’s ear.
“Blake.” Marissa’s voice was closer now, and more desperate. She fell against him with hands over her eyes. The impact sent him back a step. She buried herself against his side. “I was wrong. I can’t be here. Please, take me away.”
His chest ached as he pulled himself away from all those women he couldn’t save and focused on the one he still could. In fact, he was slowly coming to realize that he’d do anything to protect Marissa from anyone who tried to hurt her again, and that truth had nothing to do with his job. “Okay. Let’s go.”
* * *
MARISSA FOLLOWED BLAKE through the crowd and away from the ghastly scene. She sucked lungfuls of air, desperate not to be sick. Whatever she’d expected to come out of the lake, that wasn’t it. “I’d hoped they’d found some small piece of evidence,” she said, choking back her fear. “I wanted the coroner vans to be a precaution, not a necessity. Did you see the last woman? She looked like me.” She covered her mouth again to stop the rambling.
“They all did at one point,” Blake said. He watched for her response. “Nash has a type, and you’re it.”
She did her best not to overreact. Was there an overreaction to what he’d just said? Blake probably thought so, and she didn’t want to be labeled as baggage. He could exile her to the hotel room where she’d have no idea what was going on or if she was in danger again. She wasn’t sure if that scenario was worse than playing witness to the things she’d seen today, but both were scary. Given
