“You can’t keep running, Remi.” His voice penetrated through the slight ringing in her ears and notched her blood pressure higher. His heavy footsteps closed in on her from behind and forced her hand to tighten around the doorknob. “We’re the ones who made this mess. We’re the ones who let the New Castle Killer slip away. Don’t you think we owe it to his victims to see this through? That we share just as much of the responsibility to keep his sickness from spreading?”
The empty space she let her mind retreat into when the past caught up threatened to swallow her whole. Her pulse ticked at the base of her throat as images of the crime scenes surfaced.
“Del Howe had photos of me taped all over the inside of his closet, Dylan. That, in and of itself, gives me motive for wanting to confront him from the captain’s point of view. Sergeant Nguyen as much as accused me of somehow finding out I was being stalked and killing the man myself while I was in that conference room, and you’re telling me Del Howe is the killer that ended my career. The only way I was able to leave that room not in cuffs was to give him an alibi at the time of Del Howe’s death.”
She turned toward him, her hand slipping from the doorknob. “And you admitted to being at that cabin two days before the victim was found dead by those hikers. If forensics turns up any evidence that you were there, Gresham PD will arrest you. You know as well as I do we won’t be allowed anywhere near this case as long as we’re considered suspects.”
Dylan crossed the small office, and her body instantly heated. “Who said anything about working this case officially?”
Her breath hitched. He wanted to continue his unofficial investigation of Del Howe. “You’re asking your chief deputy to turn a blind eye?”
“I’m asking you to trust me like you did in Delaware, Sheriff.” His voice dropped into dangerous territory, eliciting a vibration deep in her belly. In the six months Dylan Cove had worked in her division, not once had he asked her for a favor or used their past against her. He’d respected her need to leave the nightmares behind and let her move on with her life. Until now. “Let me do this. Let me prove Del Howe was the New Castle Killer. Let me give his victims’ families the answers they’ve been waiting for and keep another killer from getting away with murder. Please.”
Her heart jerked in her chest. He’d made a mistake on the New Castle Killer case. This was his attempt to make up for it. Remi directed her gaze out the cutout window of the office door and located Captain Paulson exiting the conference room with the same crime scene photos he’d slid across the table toward her a few minutes before. She recognized Paulson for the man he was: proud, self-serving, controlling. Even if she cleared her and Dylan as suspects, he wouldn’t let two US marshals near his investigation unless forced, but arrogance had no place in a case like this. If the killer who’d caught up to Del Howe was willing to bleed a victim to death for revenge, there was no telling how far he’d go the next time. “We’re going to need some help.”
THE OREGON DISTRICT office of the United States Marshals Service buzzed with printers and ringing phones from the other side of the conference room glass, but Dylan only had attention for the men and women positioned around the table. He pressed his elbows into the reflective oak surface.
“You’re all here because I need your help.” Remi distributed manila file folders to each participant. Files that contained her old notes and crime scene photos of the Delaware scenes and the background information tied to all three of the New Castle Killer’s victims. Tony Rasmussen, Brett Smith and Tad Marrow. “A body was recently discovered in a cabin a quarter mile outside of Gresham’s city limits. The victim had been bound to a chair with rope, presumably sedated and cut more than a hundred times over every inch of his body until he bled out.
“Deputy Cove and I believe it has something to do with a case we worked together back in Delaware of a serial killer who murdered three victims in the same manner. We never caught the New Castle Killer nor were we able to identify him before we were taken off the investigation.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time a serial has crossed state lines.” Deputy US Marshal Finnick Reed opened the file folder and skimmed through the crime scene reports. Of the five marshals that worked out of this office, Reed had acquired more experience with serials than anyone on the team after the most notorious killer in Chicago—The Carver—had followed Reed’s witness to Oregon. Only now, the psychopath was under six feet of dirt and Reed and his witness were on their way to matrimony.
“You’re right. There’s just one problem with that assumption.” Remi pressed the remote in her hand and brought the projector connected to her laptop to life. A large image of Del Howe, after he’d been killed, took up most of the wall at the head of the conference room, a photo she’d taken with her own phone. “We believe the victim discovered by hikers this morning was the New Castle Killer.”
A low whistle broke through the silence. Deputy Jonah Watson hiked himself closer to the edge of the table and waded through the stack of photos from the scene. The former FBI hazardous devices technician studied the file in front of him, trained to take the smallest piece of evidence and compile a theory on how it got there. But this case was bigger than any of them. Hell, it was bigger
