She disconnected the call, the entire floor shaking beneath her as though a high-magnitude earthquake had rolled through Sevierville. Or maybe the possibility of a familiar killer had her senses on the edge of an unknown precipice. She didn’t know. Didn’t care. The FBI had been hunting Samantha’s murderer for seven years with no leads, no evidence, no crime scene left behind. Nothing. Until now. Couldn’t be a coincidence. She fought to control her breathing, an acidic bite on her tongue, but gravity had drained the blood from her upper body too fast.
“Ana?” Her name on his lips, that seductive combination of a growl and concern, pushed at the barriers she’d set between her and the rest of the world. “Tell me what happened.”
“Have you seen this charm before? Could it be Olivia’s or one of her friends’?” Swiping her tongue across her dry lips, she angled her phone toward him, the screen bright with the photo JC had sent.
“No. The only piece of jewelry Olivia has is a beaded necklace she made herself.” He shook his head. “I don’t let her or the kids’ friends go that deep into the woods. Not after Owen cut open his head on that fireplace.”
“Agents Cantrell and Duran found this bracelet charm near the crime scene on your property after the coroner pulled an entire set of remains from that same fireplace. The girl who went missing when we were... Samantha Perry.” No. Now wasn’t the time to fall back into the past, no matter how much she wanted to sink into the familiar cage of his body around hers. There were too many similarities between then and now, but she couldn’t afford to let the past dictate the present. “She had one exactly like it. She and her best friend had a matching set. Only Samantha’s wasn’t recovered with her body. They found her bracelet, but the charm had been torn off.”
He took the phone from her, his calluses catching on the side of her hand, but where her body had instantly warmed at their brief contact mere minutes ago, the hollowness inside only tore through her now. “Justice scales?”
“It’s the zodiac sign for Libras. Both girls shared the same birthday. They were friendship charms.” What were the chances another charm like that would surface now, right when Ana had come back to Sevierville? “My partner and I theorized Samantha’s killer kept it as a trophy, but we couldn’t prove it. Harold Wood disappeared off the FBI’s radar. He quit his job at the school, wasn’t seen by any of his neighbors or his family in the area. No one has been able to find him for seven years.”
“But now the charm’s surfaced, and someone burned a body on my property.” He handed her back the phone, but the numbness spreading through her was all consuming as he stumbled backward. Color drained from his face, his wet hair leaving pools of dampness across his shoulders. “You think the man who killed Samantha Perry has something to do with Owen’s kidnapping?” He ran his hands through his hair, fisting the dark strands. “What about the victim they found? Was it... Could it be—”
“No.” She rushed toward him, her hands gripped around his muscled arms to keep him upright. Infierno. His skin was hot. She battled against the possibility of his six-year-old boy being held by a vicious killer, but she couldn’t discount anything at this point. That charm had been discovered on Benning’s property, mere feet from a fireplace that contained human remains. The chances that specific piece of jewelry had turned up in not one but two of her investigations were slim, but the idea Owen Reeves had been taken by the same monster who’d killed Samantha Perry... Nausea churned in her gut. She sought his gaze and put every ounce of confidence she had left into her voice. “It wasn’t your son, Benning. Agent Cantrell said the remains belong to an adult. Owen is still out there. He still needs our help.”
“Someone took the skull and stuffed another body in there?” Mountainous shoulders rose and fell in rapid succession as he leveled bright blue eyes with hers. “You said you needed an ID on the victim they found right away. You already have an idea of who the victim is.”
She nodded. After all these years, how could he still read her so easily? How could one look from him make her forget why she’d left in the first place? She swallowed hard against the urge to lean a bit closer, to confirm the unsettling pressure inside was nothing more than biology in a stress-induced situation and had nothing to do with the man standing in front of her. Ana forced her fingers to unwrap from around his arms, the heat sliding past her defenses too familiar, too comforting. Too tempting. “You said your nanny should’ve been there with the kids when you got back home. The killer might’ve gotten to her first and taken advantage of the fireplace to get rid of her body. Or... Samantha’s best friend owned the same charm bracelet. She would be an adult now, but if it doesn’t belong to Samantha, then, given the fact her best friend is the one who led us to him as a suspect, there’s a possibility he resurfaced here in Sevierville for another victim. For Claire. Either way, there’s a chance whoever took your son has the skull, too.”
The rush of his exhale swept across her neck and collarbones. “You make it sound like this guy is a serial killer.”
“Somebody drywalled that skull into one of Britland’s construction projects, used your kids as leverage because you found it, and is now trying to tie up loose ends by destroying the evidence.” In her experience, that didn’t sound like the plan of a serial killer. Not with the seven-year cooling-off period and differences in MO
