“We will,” he murmured. “Together.”

  Chapter 8

  Zac was exhausted by mid-morning on Monday. Probably because he’d worked all weekend, and then was up and in his office before six a.m. Or maybe it was the stress that was bothering him. It was one thing to break up squabbles between neighbors, or investigate petty crimes. It was another to hunt down a potential serial killer. The knowledge that he was responsible for preventing another murder weighed on him with staggering force.

  Unfortunately, he not only had two murders waiting to be solved, but the daily tasks of running the sheriff ’s office were rapidly piling up. He was going to be buried beneath the paperwork if he didn’t try to stay on top of it.

  He was plowing his way through the quarterly budget report when the door to his office was pushed open.

  Jerking up his head, Zac intended to vent his frustration on the poor fool who was unlucky enough to interrupt his concentration only to have the words die on his lips at the sight of Rachel.

  “Am I interrupting?” she asked.

  “Come in.”

  He dropped his pen, the budget forgotten as he watched his ex-wife stroll into the office. She was wearing a fitted black jacket and matching slacks with a crisp white shirt that was unbuttoned to offer a hint of her firm breasts. The tailored clothing emphasized her tall, slender frame, just as having her dark hair framing her face emphasized the elegant lines of her features.

  She halted in front of the desk, gazing down at him. “You look tired.”

  Zac grimaced. The heated awareness that was curling through the pit of his stomach at the sight of her was effectively extinguished. Obviously, she didn’t have the same reaction when she looked at him.

  A painful but much needed reminder that she was in Pike to work, not to rehash their complicated past.

  “I’ve slept better,” he muttered.

  She wrinkled her nose in sympathy. “Me too.”

  He nodded. After they’d watched the videotape, Rachel had driven to Madison to deliver the evidence to her office. He’d stayed busy enough that he shouldn’t have missed her absence. Hell, he shouldn’t have missed her even if he hadn’t been busy.

  But he had.

  “Did you just get back into town?” he asked.

  “Yep.” She glanced toward the old-fashioned clock on the wall above his head. “I had a meeting with my staff before heading back. Did you already notify Lynne about her mother?”

  “I did.” He grimaced. “I had to get a sample of her DNA.”

  “How is she?”

  Zac had driven out to Kir and Lynne’s new home outside town to share what he suspected and to get the sample for a DNA test. It’d been one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do.

  “Stunned, and not sure if she wants the body to belong to her mom or not,” he said. Lynne had sat as still as a statue for what had felt like an eternity trying to process what he’d told her. “On one hand, if it is Staci Gale, she’ll have the comfort of knowing her mother didn’t willingly abandon her and ignore her existence for the past twenty-eight years. On the other hand . . .” His jaw tightened as the memory of the violent assault with the crowbar seared through his mind. “She was brutally murdered.”

  “Understandable.” Rachel heaved a small sigh. “Have you talked to Dr. Gale?”

  Zac settled back in his leather chair. His shoulders ached from leaning over his desk. He’d discovered over the past months that it was easier to do a full day of physical labor than hunch over a stack of paperwork for an hour.

  “I just got off the phone with him,” he told Rachel. “He’s preparing to return to Pike from Florida, but he won’t be here until tomorrow.”

  Impatience flashed in her eyes. Zac sympathized. Any delay right now might be the difference between life and death. Literally.

  “Did he tell you anything?” she demanded.

  Zac reached for the paper that was covered in his scribbled notes. Dr. Gale had been as shocked as his daughter when Zac had called to tell him they suspected his wife’s body had been discovered. Thankfully, he’d been able to answer a few basic questions.

  “Dr. Gale claimed the last time he spoke to his wife was in the autumn of 1994,” he read off the paper.

  “He didn’t have an exact date?”

  Rachel perched on the corner of the desk. It was something she’d used to do when they shared a small apartment near the college. He would be finishing his homework and she would be chatting about her day or trying to lure him into taking a walk. At the time he’d been annoyed by the interruption. Now he looked back with regret. How many tiny gestures of affection had he ignored? How often had he resented instead of cherished their time together?

  Zac cleared the sudden lump from his throat, focusing on his conversation with Dr. Gale. “Sometime after Lynne’s second birthday was as close an estimate as he could give me.”

  Rachel’s brows drew together. “And it never bothered him that she’d just disappeared?”

  That had been his first question. It seemed impossible to believe that a woman could vanish into thin air and no one be concerned about what happened to her.

  “He told me that he assumed she’d run off with her lover.”

  “What lover?”

  “It was more a suspicion than any tangible proof,” Zac said. “Dr. Gale confessed that the marriage had been in trouble for some time and that he’d feared it was inevitable that she would walk away.”

  Rachel’s expression remained skeptical. Understandable. He didn’t doubt that she would have scoured the world if he ever disappeared. No matter how rocky their relationship.

  “Did she leave a note?”

  “Yes.” He glanced back down at the paper. “When Dr. Gale came home from work he discovered that Lynne had been taken to a neighbor and Staci had left a message saying that she was spending the weekend out of town with a friend.”

  “She didn’t name the friend?”

  “No name. When she didn’t come home, he assumed she’d been with a lover and decided to abandon her life and family in Pike.”

  “That’s a pretty big leap,” Rachel muttered.

  “I’m going out on a limb and guessing that he was relieved she’d walked away. It meant the end of a difficult situation without him having to take responsibility for the split.”

  Rachel grimaced. “Surely he expected her to request a divorce?”

  Zac shrugged. “He had a small daughter to raise plus he was busy with his vet practice. I think he tried to put her out of his mind.”

  “True.” She shook her head. “I remember my mom complaining to the other neighbors that Lynne was left alone way too often. I think she pretty much raised herself.”

  “She had that in common with Kir,” Zac added. After Kir’s dad had been shot, Rudolf had lost himself in an alcoholic haze.

  “What about Staci’s parents?” Rachel asked. “Surely they were concerned?”

  “According to Dr. Gale, Staci’s mother died a few hours after she gave birth to Staci. Just a year or so later her father remarried and had a new family. I don’t think Staci and her father were ever very close. Once she supposedly left town, the older man probably didn’t give her a second thought.”

  Rachel made a sound of disgust. “I would find it unbelievable if I didn’t have endless Jane Doe files stacked on my desk. It’s amazing how many people go to their graves without a name.”

  “I’ll finish questioning Dr. Gale when he gets here.” He leaned back and glanced up at Rachel. “Did you get anything on the camcorder?”

  Rachel pushed off the desk and reached into the leather satchel she wore crossed over her body.

  “Here’s a list of the makes and models that used that particular size of video,” she said, placing a stack of papers on his desk. “There were no stores in Pike that sold camcorders, but there were two in Grange. Both closed down years ago, unfortunately. I have my staff digging into their old records. There’s a small chance we might be able to put a name to who purchased the camera that was used during Staci’s murder.” She didn’t sound overly hopeful. Not many small businesses kept a list of every customer who bought an item from their store. Their only hope would be a credit card receipt. “Leslie’s still studying the video. She’ll keep me updated if she finds anything that might help.”

  Zac narrowed his eyes. Her voice was distracted, as if she was thinking about something besides camcorders and murderous videos.

  “Is something wrong?” His lips twisted. “Beyond the obvious?”

  “You said that Staci disappeared after Lynne’s second birthday?”

  Zac frowned, not sure where she was going with the question. “Yes.”

  She once again reached into her satchel and pulled out a file. Flipping it open, she studied the top paper.

  “And that they were having marital difficulties?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  She stiffened at his soft words, but she kept her attention locked on the file. “We could be discussing Paige, not Staci Gale.”

  Zac blinked, swiftly reviewing what he knew about Paige. She had a young daughter, probably around two, a difficult marriage, and she looked like Staci.

  “The student becomes the master,” he quoted the note left in Jude’s mouth. “So does that mean the killer is hunting women like Staci?”

  Rachel closed the file and returned it to her satchel. “Without knowing if Jude had more victims, and if they fit a certain pattern . . . wait.”

  “What?”

  “Kim Slade,” she breathed.

  It took a second to recall the woman who’d been murdered at Devil’s Lake. Which was kind of crazy, considering she was the reason Rachel was even standing in his office.

  “We can’t be sure she was one of Jude’s victims,” he pointed out, determined not to jump to conclusions.

  “She was young, dark-haired, and she’d just had an argument with her boyfriend.”

  “That part fits with the other two victims, but the murder didn’t happen in Pike.”

  “No,” she said slowly and they exchanged a worried glance.

  Tracking a killer was hard, but tracking a killer who moved around the country would be next to impossible.

  “I’ll call my contacts and warn them to keep an extra eye on the campsites,” Rachel added.

  There was a tap on the door before it was pushed open, interrupting their private conversation. Zac glanced around, his brows lifting at the unexpected sight of his friend who entered the office carrying several thick files. The last time he’d seen him, he’d been comforting a shocked Lynne as she struggled to accept her mother’s death.

  “Kir.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Of course.”

  * * *

  Rachel turned to study the golden-haired man with brilliant blue eyes and stark features. Kir had been ahead of her in school, but they’d both been avid athletes. They’d spent a lot of hours together practicing free throws in the gym or running around the track after school.

  “Kir. I’m so sorry.” She moved forward to give him an impulsive hug before she stepped back. “How’s Lynne?”

  “Struggling, but she’s strong,” he said. “She’s already back at work.”

  “I don’t blame her,” Rachel assured him. After her divorce she’d thrown herself into her job. It was the only way to bear the loss. “There’s nothing worse than sitting around and brooding on whatever is bothering you.”

  “It’s good to see you back in Pike, Rachel,” Kir said.

  “It’s just temporary.”

  Kir winked in her direction. “That’s what I said. But here I am. Happily settled and never intending to leave again.”

  Rachel stiffened, but before she could insist that she would never move back to Pike, Zac pushed himself to his feet.

  “Is there a reason you’re carrying around a stack of files?”

  Kir moved to set the manila folders on the desk. “These belonged to my dad,” he said, referring to the old sheriff. “He left his official reports here at the station, but he had hundreds of documents that were off the record, stuffed into his home office.”

  Rachel stepped toward the desk, eyeing the impressive stack. “What sort of documents?”

  “Everything from his opinion on parking along Main Street to a photo that recently helped solve an old murder,” Kir said. “I couldn’t sleep last night so I spent the hours pulling out the files that might interest you. Most of them deal with the deaths he thought were suspicious but he didn’t have enough evidence to pursue, or missing people who weren’t formally reported missing.”

  Rachel reached for the top file, her eyes widening as she caught sight of the name neatly typed on the label.

  “Staci Gale?”

  “Yep, Lynne doesn’t know that it was in there.” Kir heaved a sigh. “There isn’t much in the notes to help you, but my dad did make a few calls to try and track her down after she left town. He didn’t suspect Dr. Gale of anything nefarious, but he was curious where she went. I suppose he wanted to ease his mind that nothing bad had happened to her. It’s a shame he didn’t dig deeper. Maybe . . .”

  Rachel reached out to give his arm a squeeze as his words trailed away. Clearly, he was still mourning the loss of his father. Plus there was the additional concern for his wife. Poor Lynne had to be going through a toxic mixture of emotions. Disbelief. Grief. Horror. Hopefully she would eventually get to a sense of closure that she knew exactly what had happened to her mother.

  “Thanks, Kir. Rudolf inspired me to go into law enforcement. It doesn’t surprise me that he’s still helping Pike solve cases.”

  “Nothing would make him happier.” With a distracted smile, Kir dropped a kiss on top of Rachel’s head. “I’m going to check on Lynne. Don’t leave town without stopping by.”

  Rachel watched him go, noticing the casual grace. Although he was clearly worried about his wife, there was a relaxed ease about him that hadn’t been there when he was young.

  “Marriage suits him,” she murmured.

  “It does,” Zac agreed. “I’ve never seen him happier.”

  She nodded toward the files. “Do you want to take half and I’ll do the other half?”

  Zac shook his head. “I’ll look through them later tonight. Right now I want to talk to Curly Senior.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot.” Rachel reached into her satchel to pull out the report she’d printed off before leaving her office in Madison. “I have the preliminary background check on the Curly duo.”

  Zac grabbed his jacket off a hook on the wall along with a matching ballcap. “You can share it on the drive.”

  They walked out of the building using a side entrance that led to the attached parking lot. Noticing the long shed that had been constructed at the back, Rachel was reminded that Jude’s body wasn’t the only surprise left at the cemetery.

  “Have you discovered anything about Jude’s vehicle?”

  Zac shook his head as they climbed into his truck and he started the engine. “I had Ed Hoyer come over and take a look at it,” he said, referring to his cousin who’d been a mechanic since he’d left high school. “From looking at the engine he was convinced the thing hadn’t been used in years. Probably not since Jude had supposedly been buried.”

  Rachel grimaced. “It’s like both Jude and his truck materialized from a time warp. But we know they didn’t. So they had to be somewhere.”

  “Agreed.” Zac pulled onto Main Street. “It’s possible the truck was stored in one of the garages at the funeral parlor. Another question for Curly Senior.”

  It was a reasonable hypothesis, but it didn’t explain where Jude had been hiding.

  With a frustrated shake of her head, Rachel reached into her handy-dandy satchel and pulled out the file on the Boltons. Flipping it open, she read from the abbreviated notes she’d written down.

  “Both have a record,” she told Zac as he zipped through the streets. “Senior was arrested for a DUI in 1991 and arrested again for domestic violence in 2001. Those charges were dropped. He was also sued by a neighbor for criminal trespassing and destruction of property. He was ordered to pay five hundred dollars in damages.”

  Zac made a sound of disgust. “Domestic violence against his wife?”

  “No. His son. He supposedly threw Curly Junior out an upstairs window,” she corrected. “His wife divorced him and moved to Grange. She died of an overdose when Junior was seventeen and he came to Pike to stay with his father.”

  “An overdose.” Zac narrowed his eyes. “Convenient.”

  Rachel nodded in agreement. It’d been her first thought as well. The easiest way to make the death look like an accident was with an overdose. “Something to check out.”

  Zac turned to head to the outskirts of town. “You said they both had records.”

  “Yep.” Rachel returned to her notes. “Junior was arrested for disorderly conduct. He was trying to break down the door to his girlfriend’s house.”

  “Violent.”

  “He also was charged with carrying an illegal handgun.”

  “I think we should have a chat with Junior.” Zac’s jaw tightened as he stepped harder on the gas. “But first, Senior.”

  Chapter 9

  Zac pounded on the door of trailer number sixteen. Just like last time, there was no answer. Was Curly really gone? Or was he hiding inside? Zac felt a stab of annoyance. It would take hours to get a search warrant. Even assuming the judge would sign it. He glanced toward Rachel, who was standing at the front of the trailer to make sure no one managed to sneak out a window. Her hand was beneath her jacket where he assumed she had a weapon. She shrugged as she met his impatient frown, then with a smooth motion, she whirled toward the side as a small postal vehicle pulled to the curb and a man stepped out.

  “Are you looking for Curly?” the stranger asked.

  Zac’s hand went to his side, hovering over the handle of his weapon as he took a quick survey of the approaching stranger. He was young, perhaps in his mid to late twenties with gray eyes and short, black hair. His features were smooth, and vaguely familiar. At the moment, he was wearing a blue jacket with matching pants. The official postal uniform.