She woke to screaming.
Hers.
Kate bolted upright, choking on that distinctive blend of melted rubber, singed hair and crackling skin. It took half a dozen panicked breaths to accept that the ghostly flames, belching smoke and noxious fumes were searing through her mind, and not her lungs. She was not in Afghanistan, hanging upside down in that shattered Humvee. She was in Braxton, in the split-log home she'd inherited from her father.
But she was not in bed.
Somehow, she'd made her way out of her room and into the far corner of the darkened, double car garage, where she was huddled up against the tightly packed row of firewood she'd split and stacked earlier that fall—and she could hear barking.
No, make that full-on howling.
Ruger.
The German Shepherd was inside the house, frantically clawing at the opposite side of the door that led into the kitchen. And, Lord, was Ruger pissed.
"I hear you, buddy! I'm coming!"
Kate dusted the dirt and chips of wood from her Braxton PD sweatpants as she stood. At least, she tried. Her matching gray tee was so drenched with the vestiges of her latest night terror that the smaller splinters of wood remained stuck to the fabric.
She gave up, padding along the icy cement of the garage until she'd skirted around her Durango and crossed the empty, spare slot to reach the door to the kitchen. She could hear Ruger shuffling backward to give her room.
She pushed the door open. A split second later, ninety-plus pounds of sinewy Shepherd launched into her, nearly knocking her back into the garage.
Ruger growled, whined and huffed his continued displeasure, even as his frantic tongue bathed every square inch of her face.
Kate wrapped her arms around his solid warmth, hugging the Shepherd close as she slid down the left door jamb all the way to the wooden floor, burying her face in the comforting fur of his neck. She could feel Ruger's heart pounding in his chest as he continued to whimper and chuff at her.
"I know, buddy; I know. I'm so sorry. I did it again, didn't I?"
She'd abandoned her bed while still sound asleep seven times now since Joe had been arrested. But during the previous six, she'd woken on the floor of her bedroom closet with Ruger's soothing bulk curled protectively around her. This time she'd made it all the way into the garage without him in tow.
She must've shut the door in his face. No wonder he was so stressed.
Just how long had she been out there?
Hell, she didn't even know what time it was. Thanks to Manning's latest lecture, Max's dive watch was sitting on the nightstand beside her bed next to her Glock.
She couldn't blame her latest zombie jaunt on her sessions with the shrink though. She usually woke to the soul-shredding image of Max's severed head hitting the floor of that mud brick hovel and rolling across the dirt to her feet.
This latest foray down nightmare lane was a result of Braxton's most recent crime scene. Of that poor woman's charred and blistered body—and the sickening stench that a solid half hour spent in a steaming shower hadn't been able to purge from her lungs.
Both her and Ruger's nerves finally soothed, Kate clambered to her feet, closing the door that led to the garage and padding across the distressed wooden slats of the kitchen with Ruger stuck to her heels.
The cuckoo clock she and her mother had purchased during a mother-daughter trip to the Harz mountains dutifully provided the time as they passed.
0649.
Given that she'd finally managed to drop off well after one a.m., she could do with another hour or two of shuteye. But why bother? Not only would she not be able to fall asleep after that nightmare, she had a job to do. A case to work.
For now, anyway.
She settled for unlocking the front door and letting Ruger out to do his own morning job. He'd calmed enough to bound off the porch and across the front lawn without her, the hitch to his gait from that hunter's bullet more pronounced than usual as he galloped into the mixed pine and naked hardwood trees that enveloped the house.
Minutes later, the Shepherd was breaching the treeline again, this time to lope back across the lawn, up onto the porch and straight into the living room.
She doubted he'd taken the time to sniff before he'd squatted.
Kate closed the door and cut a path back around through to the kitchen to fill Ruger's stainless-steel food bowl with kibble and refresh his water.
Guilt bit in as she finished. She'd taken to stopping for a pair of Saturday afternoon burgers on her way back to town to celebrate surviving another session with Manning. One for her; the other for her four-legged, stalwart champion.
Upon leaving Nash's farm, she'd considered Ruger's drooping disappointment for all of two seconds and driven right past the drive-thru.
There was just no way she'd have been able to consume meat last night. Any kind.
Ruger had taken one whiff of her uniform as she'd peeled it off to dump it inside the quarantine barrel in the garage and had seemed to understand.
Kate assuaged the remaining pangs of her conscience this morning, as she had last night—with an extra slice of cheddar from the oversized tub in the fridge.
With Ruger's belly reasonably content, she filled the coffee pot and set it to brew, then padded down the hall to turn on the shower.
Twenty minutes later, she was clean, dressed in a fresh deputy uniform and seated in her spot at the kitchen table with a steaming cup of coffee in hand.
She opened her laptop and checked her department email. She already knew from the text Lou had sent last night that Nester and his boys hadn't found anything else out of place at the crime scene. Nor had any new forensic reports been added to the electronic case file during the night by Tonga or one of the department's dwindling deputies.
It didn't matter.
She'd made up her mind during the drive home last night. And, this time, her decision was final. Waking up cowering beside her woodpile only confirmed the wisdom behind it. As soon as she ID'd this woman, she'd be quitting. Unlike Seth, she wouldn't be offering to work out her two weeks' notice, either. Not unless Lou agreed to let her handle traffic patrol and the department's pissant calls.
And only those calls.
Manning and all his platitudes rattled in, but they didn't matter, much less help. There was just too much riding on this case. Too much she could screw up. Too much she could miss. And probably would, if she stayed on.
Just like with Grant, Burke and Joe.
Drake might be new to law enforcement, but Owen wasn't. They'd managed to steal Owen from Conway's much larger police department two years ago. Though he was almost a decade younger, the deputy was nearly as experienced as Seth. Nor was Owen burdened with the baggage that both she and Seth were lugging around.
Owen would do just fine.
Yes, she'd promised to phone the shrink, and she still planned on doing so.
After. When it was too late to talk her out of it.
Her mood and stress level lighter than it had been in weeks, Kate stood and headed deeper into the kitchen to refill her coffee mug and pop a blueberry muffin from the fridge into the microwave. Within minutes, she'd reclaimed her seat at the table and was clicking out of the department's Jane Doe case file and entering the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.
The only parameters they had to go on at the moment were female, possibly well-endowed, with a copious amount of black hair. The strands she'd collected had been bone straight. But since the color and lack of curl could be the result of chemical processing and/or a simple flat-iron, she widened her hair search to all colors, styles and types.
The cuckoo clock chirped out nine o'clock as she exited NamUS with her list of potential matches. Unfortunately, her gut was leaning against all of them.
Most were too old. Not in age, but in how long the missing persons entry had been sitting in the system. Plus, according to Lou, their Jane Doe had been wearing diamond earrings. None of the potential matches mentioned diamonds, let alone the rarer pink ones.
Given the estimated range of value that had popped up during her internet research on the gems, the odds were next to nil that the killer had forced their Jane to don those diamonds before he'd set her on fire—meaning those earrings belonged to Jane.
And just how long would the bastard have let his victim hang on to something she'd have most likely valued?
Not long at all.
No, their Jane had been missing for a day—two to three tops—before she'd been killed. Which meant there was an excellent chance she wasn't in the system yet.
Regardless, Kate copied the file of potential NamUS matches into an email for Seth, so that he could make the calls, then added a brief note to the senior deputy and hit send.
Ruger stirred from his napping spot at her feet as she stood. She headed to the kitchen to swap out her coffee cup for a stainless-steel travel mug, topping off the latter with the remainder of the pot for her coming trip. The Shepherd's mood drooped along with his bushy tail as she returned to the table to gather up her remaining notes and turn off her laptop. By the time she'd slid her Glock into her shoulder holster and grabbed her Braxton PD jacket, he'd accepted that she was leaving the house.
But he still wasn't happy about it.
She checked his dog door and made sure it was unlatched, then leaned down to ruffle his ears. "Sorry, buddy. I've got an autopsy. If we're lucky, I'll be back earlier tonight than yesterday." Quite possibly, for good.
But first—she needed to get the hospital in Conway. According to the email Tonga had sent her late last night, he'd be making the first cut at ten on the dot. She wanted to get inside that sterile room well before then. She needed to get re-acclimated to the ghastly sight and the lingering smell that went with their victim's body before Owen and Lou joined her, and Tonga came in to open the poor woman up.
Kate grabbed her travel mug. But as she reached for her Braxton PD jacket, she spotted the barely healed band of red at her left wrist.
Lou had already noticed it—and deduced the cause behind the excoriated skin and older, permanent scars encircling her wrist. Her hours with the department might be numbered, but she didn't need anyone else figuring it out.
Like it or not, the shrink had won another round.
Sighing her defeat, she made a detour to the hall bath and dug an old ace bandage out of the linen closet. She wrapped the lengthy bandage around her wrist, deliberately layering the elastic fabric far enough above the reddened skin so it appeared as though she'd suffered a sprain—and, nope, she didn't feel guilty over the subterfuge.
What lay beneath was no one's damned business but her own.
Kate headed back to the kitchen to grab her jacket and her travel mug.
It took sixteen minutes to reach the hospital, leaving her nearly twice as many for her personal mission. She bailed out of her Durango and was heading for the glass doors when she spotted the sheriff's sedan turning into the lot.
So much for snagging quality time alone with their victim.
She pivoted until her boots were pointed deeper into the lot and met up with Lou as he was locking up his sedan.
"Mornin', Kato."
She returned his muted nod as they turned together toward her original destination. "You're early, boss."
And he was not in a good mood. Was it her imagination or had the crevices in Lou's craggy features deepened overnight? His generous thatch of gray was mussed too, as if he'd been raking his fingers through the strands during the drive here.
She knew what was eating at her—but him? "What's wrong?"
Please, Lord, don't let there be another burnt body out there.
"We're havin' shit for luck this week, is all. Owen and the boys were wrappin' up the scene after I left. It was dark and they was headed up that hill in Weaver's yard when that blasted mutt of his got loose and tore down from the deck to see what all the fuss was about. The lab knocked Owen on his ass and sent him tumblin' all the way down to the field. He broke both bones in his lower right leg. He'll be out for today, then hobblin' 'round with a cast and crutches for the next six to eight weeks."
Holy shit.
They were out another deputy.
Kate stopped short as the implications for the department—and herself—socked in. She was aware of the hospital entrance's glass doors swishing open as Lou reached them, but she couldn't seem to move, much less accompany him through.
The sheriff stopped. Turned back. "Kato?"
She managed to meet that dark, frazzled stare.
"You okay?"
Hell, no. But that didn't matter, did it? Not anymore. With Owen all but out of commission—and Drake now pulling triple duty while Lou tried to hold the rest of the department together as he searched for both Bob Feathers' and Seth's replacements, there was no one left to track down the monster who'd torched the woman in Nash's field.
No one but her.
Christ.
She straightened her spine and dragged the surrounding chilly air in deep. There was nothing else she could do. Tonga was due to make that first cut in half an hour. She needed to get in there and get acclimated even more now than she had a minute ago.
Like it or not, this case was hers—until it was solved.
She corralled her self-doubts and shoved them down deep, then nodded to Lou as she stepped briskly past him and through the doors. "I'm fine."
As for Lou, he was still looking seriously haggard as they moved deeper into the regional hospital's antiseptic maze, toward the bowels where they kept the morgue. But while Owen's shitty break and the frantic morning Lou had to have spent rearranging the shifts and duties within the department would explain those deepening crevices, she still had no idea why Lou had shown up so early for the autopsy.
What else had gone wrong?
Kate was about to ask when they turned into the corridor that led to the autopsy suite Tonga tended to use when the need arose. Nash Weaver was seated in one of the two chairs along the wall opposite the door. His sandy head slightly bent, the man appeared to be praying over the leather-bound Bible in his hand—and from those reddened eyes and damp cheeks, he'd been crying.
She could feel Lou's stress ratcheting up as he spotted the same evidence.
"I got it, boss. I'll talk to him; see why he's here." Though knowing Nash as she had in school, she had her suspicions. He'd always been a sensitive soul.
The lines bracketing Lou's mouth eased a bit.
Kate pressed her fingers into his forearm. "If Tonga's ready, please tell him to go ahead and get started. I'll be right in."
A swift nod from the sheriff, and she and Nash were as alone as they'd been the night he'd hosted their senior class party out behind his barn while his folks had been visiting the grandparents. Everyone, including Liz and their mutual best friend Dan, had been at the bonfire they'd all created, well on their way to getting toasted. She and Nash had taken a walk down the farm's lengthy drive instead. Nash had been hurting pretty badly over his recent breakup with his girlfriend of three years. She'd been royally pissed with her father and the truth her dad had finally dumped on her regarding the depth of his feelings and doubts about her aspirations to enlist in the Army and follow him into the Military Police.
She'd listened while Nash had vented, and he'd done the same.
Not only had she and Nash never revisited the conversation they'd shared, they hadn't even been alone again in the thirteen years that had followed.
Until now.
Kate slipped into the padded vinyl chair beside Nash's and patiently waited for him to complete his prayers.
It took a few minutes, but his lips finally ceased moving. Nash opened his eyes, but he didn't turn his head. He kept his stare nailed to the autopsy suite door instead.
The why was a no brainer.
Nash was seated on her right. If he shifted that light blue stare, even a bit, he'd be forced to confront what was left of her face. Old classmate and newly ordained pastor or not, it wasn't a sight anyone wanted to focus on first thing in the morning, if ever.
So, she continued to wait.
He finally sighed. "Someone needed to be here for her while Dr. Tonga cut her open. To speak for her. To pray."
"It's not your fault, Nash. None of it."
His lips moved again, this time settling into a darkened twist. "Feels like it."
Yeah, as many homicides as she'd worked, she knew that feeling. It was as familiar to her as that worn leather in Nash's hands was to him.
But she didn't share the personal assessment. There was no point.
He dropped his attention to the Bible, smoothed his fingers over the faded gold letters on the cover. "How do you do this, Kate? And stay sane?"
Yikes. Sensitive soul or not, Nash had also always possessed a way of cutting right to the torturous crux of things.
But while he might've asked, he didn't really want the answer to that either. No one did. Least of all, her.
She offered up her own, silent shrug.
To her surprise, Nash turned his head and looked squarely at her face for a long moment, then found her eyes. "I'm sorry I never called or stopped by after you got back. Dan used to email me, you know. When he was over there."
She tensed. Smothered the urge to snatch that leather book from Nash's hands and anchor it within her own—desperately. "No, I didn't know. Dan and I lost touch after we all graduated." Despite the fact that Dan had joined the Army too. Because of her.
One more thing to feel guilty about.
Nash nodded. "He kept track of you. Your career. Your life. He...cared about you. Right up to the end."
"I know." At least, she'd known about the caring.
And that was the most important part, right?
"Dan believed in you, Kate. I know you told me that night, years ago, that your dad didn't. That you swore he never really had. But Dan—he did believe in you. I do, too. I've just been lousy at showing it. But I'll do better." Nash fell silent. His gaze drifted down to the book in his hands, then crept back up on another sigh. "You'll find him, won't you? The beast that did this? Before he has a chance to do it to someone else?"
Oh, man. Having an old friend who'd stayed in contact with Dan offer up that dicey confession was one thing. Having the man of the cloth Nash had become look at her as though she was almost a savior herself was quite another.
And disconcerting, to say the least.
There was only one response she could offer in return to both—even though it was the one response a cop shouldn't.
The hell with her endless string of night terrors and tenuous sanity.
"I'll find him." Somehow.
Nash offered her a sad smile. "Thank you."
She stood. She was about to follow Lou across the corridor and into the autopsy suite when something else Nash had said trickled back through her brain. Someone needed to be here for her while Dr. Tonga cut her open.
While?
Kate reached into her right trouser pocket to retrieve Max's watch so she could check the time, then tucked it home.
Based on the creases in Nash's gray trousers and the otherwise crisp white shirt he'd donned, the man had been here for a significant amount of time already, bent in prayer. But according to Max's watch—and Tonga's email—the autopsy wasn't scheduled to commence for another ten minutes. The email that had been addressed solely to her and not everyone in the department, as was the ME's wont.
"Excuse me, Nash."
"Of course."
She crossed the hall and pushed through the door to the autopsy suite. Tonga and Lou were on the other side. But there was no body. The only items on the stainless-steel table between the two men were photos that smelled faintly as though they were fresh from the printer. What she couldn't smell were traces of grilled meat and sulfur.
At all.
From the visible tint of red staining Lou's face and even tinging Tonga's darker skin, she knew why. Tonga had lied about the time and the autopsy suite location.
And Lou had been in on it.
The autopsy was already finished.
She didn't know if she should be grateful or pissed.
Given the apprehension that was pinched in to both those male blushes, she opted for grateful. Like the men, she ignored the reason behind it all—namely her trauma-riddled brain—and stepped up to the table on Lou's right.
There were a dozen photos in all, splayed out in a line. Next to the close-ups of various areas of the blackened outer body, and shots of the inner lungs and heart, lay a copy of Tonga's preliminary report.
It, too, was already complete.
She glanced past the photos and report to take in Tonga's weary form. Not only was he not wearing his usual scrubs, the man had re-donned the same blue plaid shirt and jeans he'd worn to the crime scene yesterday. Tonga had been here all night, conducting Geraldine Oakley's autopsy, and then the one for their Jane Doe.
For her.
"Thank you."
The ME's answering nod was as soft as her whisper had been. The knot at the front of his throat worked as he cleared it. "We don't have much more than we did yesterday, Deputy, but we do have cause of death. Despite the extensive charring, I was able to count at least thirteen wounds—possibly from a hunting knife—to the woman's neck, torso and inner thighs." The ME tapped an ebony finger over the close-up of the heart. "This wound is the one that killed her. It severed the left anterior descending artery, causing her to bleed out. I also found evidence that she was penetrated vaginally prior to death...and she was beaten. Given the depths of the contusions, severely so."
Well, shit.
"Was the woman dead before she was set on fire?"
Relief flooded though Kate with the ME's second, gentler nod of the briefing.
That was something.
Given the screams that still haunted her dreams of Sergeant Gault and Corporal Babin in that overturned and shattered Humvee, possibly everything.
But those stab wounds. They were telling.
At least thirteen separate wounds to the woman's neck, torso and inner thighs? Deep enough that the charring hadn't been able to obscure them?
That suggested extreme, personal hatred.
"What about the stone?"
Tonga's frown caused the lines bracketing his mouth to deepen. "I did find flecks of soil within the woman's vaginal canal, and the flecks are consistent with the soil in Weaver's field. But since we don't know where she was killed—" The ME shrugged.
"The flecks may also be consistent with soil at the primary scene."
Tonga nodded. "That said, there were no other stones found between the crease of the legs or within any of the body's cavities. Nor were there traces of vaginal epithelial cells or secretions on the scorched piece of quartz you recovered."
Thank God. That would've added an element to this case that she just didn't need. Hell, that none of them did. Namely, a seriously twisted sexual component to the crime—and the increased likelihood of a pending repeat.
Kate released the breath she'd been holding.
Lou did the same beside her. The sheriff reached out to scoop the photos together, only to stop and pull his hand back as his phone pinged.
A split second later, her phone pinged as well, followed by Tonga's.
She retrieved her iPhone from its slot on her utility belt. A quick check of her texts revealed who'd contacted them all and why. Seth had tracked down the owner of the diamond in that earring and had already called and spoken with her.
...Mrs. Shah bought them as a wedding gift for her daughter. Aisha Kharoti's been missing for over a day. Mom's headed to the station now to give DNA—
No, she wasn't. Not right now, anyway.
Unless Kate was mistaken, Mrs. Shah was at the Conway Regional Medical Center, on the other side of the door to this autopsy suite—and she was shouting at Nash.