Maggie’s shoes tapped on the linoleum, the hospital hallway too narrow for comfort, full of bustling doctors and nurses, the feeble sick, the tight-lipped bereaved. Astringent stung her nose. But her father was alive—alive.
The doctor had called her back soon after Reid left. They’d injected her dad with an anti-clotting agent, and all the scans showed no blockage. If he’d had a stroke, they could find no sign of it.
But every time he’d had a stroke in the past, they had been able to see the issue. Maybe instead, he had suffered a bout of hypoglycemia that had reverted when they’d given him the IV. Or it was something else entirely—a medical time bomb that remained, hidden in his body. Not knowing felt worse than knowing, but the doctors were keeping him overnight to be sure he was okay. Despite the fact that they couldn’t prove it, a stroke remained the most likely explanation.
Just accept it was a stroke, Maggie. It’s the simplest answer. No reason to overthink it. But Maggie’s brain, aka the Ruler of Rumination, refused to let it go.
She was probably in denial—she’d didn’t want it to be a stroke. Though she knew memory loss wasn’t a linear thing, it sure felt like every stroke removed another series of memories, every clot another year, another name. Each one erased another piece of her dad. And she wasn’t ready to lose him.
Maggie moved aside, hugging the wall to allow a wheelchair to pass. The elderly woman seated in it was smiling, talking to the man pushing her along, probably her son. A freckled child followed at the man’s heels, tiny-looking in an oversized sweatshirt, pink and purple flowers spilling from the top of the basket he clutched against his chest.
The boy smiled at Maggie as they crossed paths—familiar in his happiness. Grandma would be coming home soon; in his world, things were fine, that little punk. But what was the alternative, that everyone should feel as unsettled as she did?
Maggie forced a smile in return and waved. The child waved back. But even that twisted her stomach into a gnarled, thorny mass and made gooseflesh explode along her spine. Hypervigilance brought on by yet another ambulance ride? The lack of sleep? Concern that this child, too, wanted to murder her pets? Joke’s on him—I’m fresh out. She swallowed hard against the bile rising in her gorge. Then the family was gone, the gooseflesh settled, and she was once more alone with her thoughts.
Maggie hustled for the elevator. The bing rang hollowly in her aching chest. She was supposed to meet her friends in the cafeteria, but the air was too thin; she just needed a moment. Just one. To breathe. Then she’d tell them the good news over a tray of French fries or an irresponsibly large bowl of tapioca pudding. Sammy was probably smashing his Jell-O the way he had when they were children, turning it into rainbow-colored cottage cheese. Disgusting but weirdly endearing, mostly because it used to make Aiden smile.
And now her brother was gone too. Dead like all those other kids.
Great, Maggie, way to remember all the shitty things at once. Maybe you should consider that time you peed your pants in front of your whole second-grade class. Or how that fourth-grade bitch Lauren Keller stole your favorite mechanical pencil.
The parking lot was flush with the voiceless sound only white noise can manage—the droning of tires from the adjacent roadway, the night air hissing through bud-laden branches. But Maggie’s guts refused to settle. Her chest remained tight. Her eyes burned.
Her friends needed to go home to their families—their children. She’d borrowed Imani’s phone charger, hoping her own mother would have called back by now, but nada. Tristan had called a bunch of times, but Reid was the only one who could help him on the case. She didn’t even have her car. And it was unlikely he was calling to impart some critical piece of information about their killer. Tristan just wanted to screw with her.
Maggie sighed into the night, the lights from the ER glaring—too intense. If she wanted to be useful to anyone, she needed to get some rest. Should she ask Sammy to take her by her dad’s, pick up her car? Should she ask for a cot in her father’s room? He might freak out if he woke up in a strange place, but at least she’d be there with him.
The ringing cell pulled her out of her reverie. Mom? Finally. She glanced down at the screen—not her mother. But at least it was someone who cared about her dad.
Maggie tapped the button to answer. “Hey, Reid. Dad’s sleeping now, but it looks like he’s going to be okay. They’re going to move him to his own room in a few minutes.”
“Hey, Doctor!”
Tristan? She pulled the cell from her ear and checked the number—definitely Reid’s. “You guys are together?” But they wouldn’t be physically together unless it was an emergency. I should have called him back earlier. “What happened?”
“What would cause someone’s pituitary to stop functioning?” Reid said.
What a weird question. She leaned a shoulder against the brick building. “Maybe radiation? Chemo?”
“What would happen if someone got those treatments as a child?” She opened her mouth to respond, but Reid was already talking again: “I mean, could they remain the same stature forever?”
She frowned. “I suppose it’s possible.” Alex had been diagnosed with cancer when they were in middle school. All of them believed that the treatments had rendered her a pixie for life, and she hadn’t even needed the longer-term chemo that others required. A mastectomy had taken care of most of it. “Any time you mess with the areas of the brain that control growth, you run the risk of shorter stature. But it would have to be extreme for the pituitary to stop working completely. And they’d probably have other symptoms too. Weakness, fatigue—”
“He’s taking meds for it. Probably staves off the worst of the physical symptoms. That might even be why the father keeps putting this boy into foster care. Maybe he can’t manage the medical bills on his own.”
He? Who was he? “Sorry, I’m still catching up here,” Maggie said. Unless her brain was just malfunctioning. That was certainly possible.
“We think our killer is the father of a boy who went missing from the James house,” Reid said. “That the killer realized his son was being abused and kidnapped him, then went back to kill the James family. But that child looks very similar to the witness I met outside Ezra’s house. We found some meds for an underactive pituitary in his room.”
His room. “So you have the killer and the boy in custody?” Thank goodness. “I can help with the interviews, but you’ll have to pick me up.”
“Well, we don’t have them in custody… not yet.”
Her heart sank. “But you have a picture of the killer? Something you can use to warn the public?”
“Not exactly. This foster kid we’re chasing doesn’t have known parents.” The silence stretched, but in it, she heard the heady timbre of distress. Bad news?
“What is it, Reid?” Just spit it out.
“We found this child’s current foster family dead twenty minutes ago.” Reid’s voice was tight; she wondered if he’d yanked the knot from his tie yet. “He killed them before he killed Ezra’s parents, which doesn’t bode well for his timeline. To kill the family where your child is staying… it’d be linked to the boy as soon as someone discovered the bodies. With Colin’s family, he snatched his kid the year before so no one would connect it.”
And now… Time’s up. She made her way along the side of the building, beyond the harsh lights of the emergency room. Think, Maggie. Put that training to use. This killer had been leaving them blatant clues. But where was he trying to lead them?
“And he left us another message,” Reid went on. Of course he did. “Looks like he wrote it in the mother’s lipstick.”
“This ends now,” Tristan cut in. “Poor, poor baby. In shouty capitals.”
Maggie stared into the hazy darkness behind the building, all the deeper with the lights at her back. Secrets hidden so close to the surface. If she was the suspect, punishing bullies, killing those who hurt her child and anyone who reminded her of them… where would she want it to end? Her head was swimming—useless. “He attacked someone nearly every day this week,” she said. “He’s moving so quickly.”
“Right. And there are only two people that he’s left alive outside of his own kid.” A horn blared in the cell’s background; tires squealed. “We’re on our way to Phoebe’s now. I think Ezra is part of his endgame. That he’ll try to take him. There has to be a reason he involved Ezra to begin with. Maybe his child is becoming resistant now that he’s a teenager, and our killer wants a new partner in crime.”
Wait, what? If his child was that important, if he had started killing for him, if he was murdering these families to avenge what was done to his son… why would he replace him with Ezra? That didn’t make sense—no way.
Her phone buzzed against her cheek. A text message. “I sent you a pic of the kid,” Tristan said. “That shot’s from nine years ago, but if you believe Richie, he still looks the same.”
Dread tightened her guts, a band of pressure strangling her organs. “This thing with Ezra doesn’t feel right to me, Reid. I know you care about him, so you’re being extra cautious, but…” The night breathed with her, heavy and damp. “If the killer is this boy’s father, if he’s killing as a father, then why not pay special attention to the dad in each house? He doesn’t seem to identify with the parents at all.”
“You said yourself that identification is not an exact science.”
Yes, she had said that, hadn’t she? And if this was all about revenge, he didn’t have to identify with any of them. He might hate the boys in life because Colin had hurt his son, but in death, those boys might remind him of his own child, prompting the bath mat ritual. But…
Maggie raised her fingers to her temple, the phone pressed against the other side—her head was throbbing. “Ezra is with the police, Reid. He’s safe. And this suspect has never before walked into a situation where he might not make it out.” Except with her father.
“That was before. We know who his kid is now, what he looks like.”
“Exactly.” That’s what was bothering her. “That kid’s face will be all over the news in an hour. He won’t leave his own child behind—not this boy that he kills for. And we know what Ezra looks like too. If he takes Ezra, he doubles the chance that he’ll get caught. It’s harder to wrangle two kids out of town than one, harder to keep two of them hidden, especially since we know they’re together. He’d be setting himself up for failure. And this killer does not set himself up for failure.”
“You’re right; it’d be trickier for him. But this endgame thing—”
“I think you care about Ezra”—the pet murderer—“and you’re being protective. That’s not necessarily bad, but I’m not sure it’ll help us find the killer.” So what would? This entire situation was crazy. Logic went out the window when someone managed to enter a locked psychiatric ward, steal a vial of a patient’s blood, and vanish like a ghost without a single witness.
“She’s got you pegged, brother!” Tristan’s voice sang out. Her phone buzzed again—she’d forgotten that he’d sent her something. She pulled the cell from her ear and hit the button for speakerphone.
“I’ve dealt with plenty of these guys, Maggie—”
“Doctor,” Tristan corrected him.
Maggie ignored the latter. “I know you have, but not like this guy. He doesn’t take chances. He knows Ezra is guarded; he can’t kidnap him without getting shot between the eyes. And if all this was about his first child, he won’t leave him now. He clearly believes that his son needs a warrior—a man to protect him from the bullies of the world. He can’t die while his child still needs him, and this is doubly true if his son is sick.” She tapped the button to open her text messages.
“Then what’s his big plan here? How does this end?”
“He’s always gone after the vulnerable,” Maggie said. “The most vulnerable.” The ones who couldn’t fight back. The ones who slept. She hit Tristan’s text, and a face filled the screen.
Her breath caught. Familiar—so familiar.
This boy… He had been riding his bike near the coffee shop. Waved to Ezra. And… outside the retirement village the night her father was attacked. She’d been panicked about her dad, and he’d been on the sidewalk—jumped back when she’d squealed into the parking space. He’d been around all week.
“It’s not his father,” she said. “Not anyone’s father.”
“What?”
“The killer. If he had cancer as a child, if his pituitary shut down entirely, he never would have grown.” Reid’s words echoed in her head: Unless some kid was lifting weights every night and has always been on a steady diet of steroids, he wouldn’t have the strength required.
But he did have the strength. Reid had been joking, but that’s exactly what the killer had done. No wonder he wore those oversized sweatshirts. He had to hide the bulk of muscle that would be ridiculous—and impossible—on a child.
He’d been that poor baby for far too long. He was ready to… grow up.
“Everything you just told me, that he’s smaller than he should be, that he looks young… He might be twenty-five and still look the same. Exceedingly rare, but everything about this is rare.” And killing the bullies, the families who allowed it, even the way he murdered them in their sleep, with slashing wounds delivered in a crouch or kneeling… Every single thing was explained if this killer looked like a child.
But with that realization came another, one far more horrifying. The retirement village wasn’t the last place she’d seen this boy. She’d seen him last… with flowers.
“He’s not going to get Ezra.” Her words came out strangled.
“Maggie, he—”
“The killer is here.”