Page 23 of Into the Veins
His heartbeat pulsed against her ear, and she inhaled a combination of soap and man. “Please tell me your offer for me to stay one more night still stands.”
“You can stay as long as you want.” She just didn’t want to be alone. Not anymore.
Colson set his cheek against the crown of her head, tightening his hold around her ribcage. “In that case, I’m ready to go home.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sometimes the grass was greener on the other side because it was fake.
Rachel Faulkner and Cardin Townsend had taken the good parts of their lives and posted them for the world to see. What would their followers think now? There was a connection there. Something he couldn’t see yet. Something that had made both women a target.
Colson scrolled through Cardin Townsend’s feed for the hundredth—or was it the two-hundredth?—time. Thousands of photos posted with too many exclamation points unfocused in his vision. Pulsing pain in his side demanded attention, but the meds his surgeon had prescribed would only mess with his concentration. The effects of the ketamine had worn off over the past few hours since Blair had brought him back to her home. He wasn’t ready for another trip.
The FBI had taken custody of Cardin Townsend’s SUV from the trailhead parking lot. The preliminary test results confirmed the blood on the pavement had belong to the second victim, but she hadn’t been killed there. Not according to the bureau’s forensics team, which meant in addition to both crime scenes, they were looking for two death scenes. What was the significance of leaving the bodies on those trails? Why go through the added complication of transporting and disposing a body in the middle of nowhere? The maintenance shed the killer had used to breed the ruby-eyed pit vipers and produce the poison used on both victims had been close to the second dump site, but not the first.
First kills were sacred to a budding serial.
This had started with Rachel Faulkner for a reason. There’d been six more vipers in that shed and at least enough nuts from the Strychnos nux-vomica trees for another full dose of strychnine. The bureau had confiscated it all while Blair and Colson had been rushed to the hospital, but his gut was telling him this wasn’t the end.
He was going in circles. They hadn’t learned anything new with the discovery of Cardin Townsend’s body or the video posted of her admission to plagiarism. Just as the first victim had been carefully prepared, Cardin had been laid to rest in plain sight on the trail with six vipers coiling through her clothing for warmth. The killer was sending a message. He just couldn’t decipher the meaning. Yet.
Memorizing the angles carved into the bedroom door, Colson set his head back against the guest bed headboard. The wood protested with his added weight as he attempted to log into Cardin Townsend’s account again. “Two social media influencers, two separate disposal sites and death scenes, twelve vipers, and a partridge in a pear tree.”
A shrill ring cut through the room, and he craned his head to one side as his phone lit up from the nightstand. Blocked. He didn’t have to answer to know who was on the other end of the line. Colson swiped the device from the table and answered in the same move. “Rutherford.”
“You missed our scheduled check in.” Static punctured through the line as though the signal had been bounced through a few towers before reaching him. “We had a deal. You were within arm’s distance of the killer, and you’re not keeping up your end.”
“You must’ve missed the part where she tried to skewer me before sending my partner over a cliff,” he said.
“I don’t care about your partner or anything else except what you promised to deliver, Rutherford.” The old man’s gruffness raised the hairs along his forearms, and a renewed wave of pain washed through Colson’s side. “You have two days. Bring me the bitch who killed my daughter before the police have her in custody, or I’ll make sure you never leave Seattle, dead or alive.”
The call ended.
Shit. This wasn’t about the money anymore. Colson tossed his phone to the end of the bed and closed his eyes. Sunlight coming through the bedroom window warred with the storm ripping through him. He and Blair had barely made it out of those woods alive. Hell, he was lucky he’d walked away with a single stab wound. The sheriff he’d pegged as cold, detached, and insensitive had saved his life. Without her, he doubted the paramedics would’ve found him in time. And without Rachel Faulkner’s father bankrolling his next adventure, he’d be stuck here indefinitely.
But the thought of continuing to lie to Blair, of convincing her he believed in justice rather than revenge, cut deeper than the blade the killer had stabbed through his gut. His fingers drummed against the overly flowery bedspread. Not his style, yet it somehow fit Blair perfectly. When the emptiness had closed in, she’d been there for him.
He needed another lead, a motive that linked both deaths.
Rachel Faulkner had lied about her divorce and conned thousands of followers out of conference registrations. Cardin Townsend had stolen song lyrics and passed them off as her own. The killer posted those videos for a reason. She’d wanted their secrets exposed, wanted their followers to know the real version of the influencers they worshipped. Both victims followed each other through social media, but there’d been no record of private messages, emails, or text messages to show for it. Of course, without Cardin Townsend’s phone, he and Blair were working off theories. The FBI had scoured that mountain. The phone had either been turned off or the GPS disabled. “Then how did they arrange to have dinner together, and what were they arguing about?”
Colson threw back the bedspread and hauled himself to his feet, one hand clamped against his side. He collected his phone from the end of the bed and pulled up the video of Rachel Faulkner and Cardin Townsend fighting outside of Sharde. The argument between both victims cut short with the background of high winds and other voices, but he managed to catch bits and pieces. Cardin swung one arm out wide as she spoke. Told…confidence. You ruined…everything.
“What did you tell Rachel Faulkner in confidence?” He fast-forwarded through the video until the first victim gave a response. She knows. Colson paused the video. Cardin Townsend was a known vocal artist who’d auditioned for at least one singing TV series and had recently released two singles straight to streaming services. While music hadn’t been her main source of income compared to the multi-level marketing essential oil game, thousands of fans had downloaded and listened to the releases. “She knows. Well, I’ll be damned.”
Colson swiped the video from the screen and logged into the government’s public access to court electronic records. PACER. Entering Cardin Townsend’s name, he limped toward the door and stepped out into the hallway. Silence pulled his attention from the phone. Blair’s bedroom door stood open, and a quick confirmation her bed hadn’t been disturbed since they’d gone into the station yesterday squeezed the knot of anxiety in his gut. They’d driven back from the hospital in silence early this morning, neither of them able to manage more than a few words at a time. The headache at the base of his skull testified of the misery of infrequent drug use. Blair would be suffering the same symptoms.
He moved down the hallway, the main living space to his right, the kitchen and dining room to his left. All three of them empty. A cursory glance out the front window revealed her patrol car in the driveway. Had she left on foot? He caught sight of a single heavy door he’d passed in the hallway and twisted the knob. The rubber barrier insulating the garage from the house sighed as he opened the door.
Soft music threaded through the steady pulse behind his ears, leading him into the minimalist space. Warmth brushed against his face, neck, and arms from the portable space heater positioned in one corner. Newspaper laid flat across a brightly-colored, paint-stained table. Yellow, magnificent blues, and reds—each wearing differently according to the age of the splatter. A combination of paint thinner and acrylic filled his lungs. Sunlight pierced through small, rectangular windows equidistant across the top of the garage door and highlighted the sculpting wheel a few feet away. A collection of pure white porcelain bowls weighed down the newspaper, and there on the other side of the table with her back turned toward him was the sheriff who’d put herself between him and a killer.
Seated on a barstool matching the same stain as the two in her kitchen, Blair pulled her shoulder blades together as though trying to counter her slumped posture. A paintbrush fit perfectly in her right hand, smears of black contouring around her bandaged wrists. The sight of her bare legs stretching out from the bottom hem of her oversized T-shirt, toes perfectly poised on the barstool, knotted the tendril of desire coiling through him tighter. Long, red hair slid free from behind her shoulders, a waterfall of fire hiding her face from him. Devastatingly tantalizing, at ease, and intense in her element. All in the same moment. “Do you come here often?”
She whipped around, that forest green gaze locking on his, as black paint from her brush splattered against his face.
Colson closed one eye as a glob dripped from his right eyebrow and landed on the top of his cheek. Swiping at the mess, he studied the acrylic paint contorting to his fingerprints.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” A smile cracked a split second before a laugh burst from her chest. Blair pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, but she couldn’t seem to contain herself. She set her brush and the bowl she’d been painting onto the table before sliding off the stool. Rounding the end, she closed the distance between them, her oversized shirt barely skimming mid-thigh. She collected an equally stained towel from one of the shelves and handed it to him. Bruises marred freckled skin under her eye and arced higher up her temple, and he wanted nothing more than to sweep them away. “I thought you were sleeping. To be fair, you shouldn’t sneak up on people. Especially the ones registered to carry weapons.”