Face of Death

He found a dead branch nearby, the twigs and leaves still barely hanging on, a recent break. Perfect for sweeping away the marks from a crime scene. He hefted it and began to sweep away some of his own footsteps around the body, careful to walk backward, following her trail.

He stiffened as the gentle swish-swish of the branch was interrupted by another sound. He froze, stilling his whole body to listen again, pressing a button to deaden the light from his cell. What was that? A bird call?

No—there it was again: a human voice, and no mistaking it.

He listened intently, turning his head to catch the right direction of the wind, tuning his senses as much as he could. He peered ahead, as if seeing the source of the sound might make it clearer. There were voices, all right. Two men. Moving closer, maybe. Slowly, but surely.

“This is it, here.” One of the men.

Something from the other, too quiet to hear.

“Oh, rest your grumbling. Any critter worth its pelt knows we’re here already. They hear our steps. Bit of talking won’t make a difference. When we’re in the stand, I’ll be quiet.”

He squinted, analyzing the words. Hunters, most likely. Setting themselves up in tree stands to wait for the woods to adjust to their presence, for small and defenseless things to forget they were there. A long waiting game.

He couldn’t outwait them.

He had to get out, and do it now.

His tracks were still intact, the blood trail leading right from his car to the body. But there was no doing anything about it. He had to go, before they heard a cracked twig or a swish of the makeshift broom and saw him. Or even worse, shot at him, thinking him to be some kind of beast. It was time to leave, and there was nothing else he could do.

He fled back to his car in quick, careful steps, minding where he stood, never close enough to the blood trail to risk stepping in it and leaving imprints behind. He strayed to the side to discard the branch away from the path she had left, hoping it would avoid notice. One fallen branch among all the other fallen branches. None of this was finished—but it would have to be, or else he would have to stop now, before he was done with the rest.

His work was far from done. There were three more who had to die—and he wasn’t going to stop until they were all bled out on the ground, and the pattern was complete.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Zoe emptied her first coffee of the day and threw the Styrofoam cup into the trash can. It bounced against the back edge with a satisfying finality, dropping out of sight to rest alongside many of its brothers and sisters.

“The coffee here is dreadful,” Shelley remarked, staring miserably into her own cup.

Zoe could not help but agree.

She rubbed at her eyes, willing them to open wider. Early morning starts were always rough after late night finishes, but she had grown used to them over the years. The routine was simple: pump your body full of enough caffeine to get you moving, and your brain will follow.

Still, watching the security camera footage they had pulled from everywhere within a five-mile radius of the gas station—which amounted to very few files, given its location—was a challenge of even her early bird mentality. Her eyes either picked up all kinds of numbers that were irrelevant and distracting, or wanted to droop shut at the sheer boredom of seeing nothing for minutes on end.

She darted her vision between the timestamp at the bottom of the screen and the main view incessantly, watching time creep on closer to the murder. No vehicles had yet entered or left the field of view of the truck stop. It was a more populated place than the gas station, even at night, but the trucks in the parking lot had mostly settled in for a sleep. Nothing moved.

A blue car flashed by, on the small portion of road that was visible to the side of the parking lot. It moved fast, and even with her finger on the pause button, Zoe only managed to hit it once it was gone.

She tracked back, frame by frame, until it was contained within the small section of the screen that held the road. She checked the timestamp. It was perfectly within the window. The driver would have had time to get to the gas station, commit the murder, and be gone in line with the timeframe they had narrowed it down to.

She played it forward again, watching the time flash by. Minutes turned into hours. Nothing else traveled the lane that she could see on the camera.

She went back, returned to the precise moment when the car could be fully seen. Zoe squinted, peering so closely that her nose almost bumped the screen, trying to take down the license plate. Was that an O or a D? She flicked back and forth between the frames, trying to make it out.

“I have got something,” she said, pulling Shelley’s attention. “There was a car caught on the security camera on the approach to the gas station. It works for the timing, and no other vehicles appear to pass by for at least an hour. I have the plate. I just need to run it through the database.”