Laura looked down at their feet, at the blood soaked into the carpet. A grisly spill that almost could have been wine, if it wasn’t for the sickly-sweet smell that hung in the air and gave the game away. It covered a wide area, soaked into the fibers, with no gap or outline where the body might have lain. A long knife, then. Deep enough to stab right through. Enough blood to soak everything and spread, far more than a human could stand to lose and survive.

  “This is a good start,” Laura said, nodding as she already began to form a picture in her head of who they were looking for. “But I think we need to head to the second scene and take a look. It’s far away?”

  Gausse shook her head. “Not far at all. Frome can drive us. Let’s head out.”

  ***

  The second apartment block was a little older, a little shabbier around the edges. Maybe this was the less successful of the sisters, at least in their lives so far.

  Gausse led them to an apartment on the first floor, larger and with more rooms than the first crime scene. It was well-kept, and Laura remembered the detail about the roommate in the case notes. This, then, must have been the twin that was found first.

  “Which was struck first?” Laura asked.

  “Ruby, where I met you, was the first to die,” Gausse said. “But Jade, here, was the first to be discovered. There wasn’t long in it. Maybe just enough time for someone to drive over here, make their way inside, and attack. In this case, the window in the bathroom was open—looking at the garbage can out in the alley there, we believe someone would have been able to climb up. They weren’t able to find any prints on the sill except what looked like Jade’s own.”

  Laura nodded, taking this all in. She had a critical eye on everything: the floors, the walls, looking for any small thing that might have been missed so far. Gausse led them to the bathroom, where another pool of blood lay slick over the tiles. Another missing body, another stack of grisly photographs for them to look through.

  Laura tore her eyes away from the slippery pool of the floor to study them. It was strange, looking at these. Jade and Ruby had been identical, enough so that it gave Laura the odd feeling of seeing the same woman die twice. The killer might as well have simply moved the body to a different scene, if it wasn’t for the fact that their clothing was different—although the original color was now so soaked with blood it was hard to distinguish.

  “Any estimate on the number of wounds?” Laura asked.

  “Seventeen.” Gausse shook her head grimly. “This one suffered defensive wounds to her hands, and there was also some scraping to her palms which corresponded with skin fragments lifted from the windowsill. Of course, they still need to undergo testing, but we believe she may have tried to escape out the window. He would have dragged her back, thrown her down, and commenced the knife attack.”

  “This is almost exactly the same,” Nate said, voicing Laura’s own thoughts. “We’re dealing with someone who carried a lot of anger and vented it here on the women. But why them?”

  “It could be a personal vendetta,” Laura said, picking up on what he was saying. “That’s the most obvious option. Both of them being twins means they would have had a lot in common. They grew up together, shared the same family, probably a lot of overlap in their circle of friends. Someone who was angry with one of them could just as easily be angry with both.”

  “Which means we have to determine what reason anyone would have had to dislike them,” Nate said, then corrected himself. “More than dislike—hate. This kind of frenzied attack combined with the premeditated action of tracking them down one by one is not just something that happened in the heat of the moment. There’s the drive over here, the scouting of a way to break in, the climbing through the window. All of that is time in which someone who acted on the spur of the moment with Ruby could calm down—but they continued to attack Jade anyway. I think this has to be triggered by some kind of event, something that happened between the attacker and the twins.”

  “Agreed,” Laura said. “Which means, Captain Gausse, we’d be grateful if you could show us to where we can interview their parents and family. Right now, they’re our best guess for finding some answers. We need to figure out if this is a one-time thing and the killer’s rage is spent, or whether we should be on the lookout for others.”

  Gausse nodded smartly, a look of satisfaction gleaming in her eyes. “I have them waiting for you at the precinct already,” she said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Laura allowed Nate to step into the room ahead of her, hanging back just a little. She hated this part. Talking to the parents of murder victims. It was horrible to see their distress, to understand what they had lost. She had already lost Lacey once, and not even permanently. It was hard to even imagine how much worse death would be, because if she tried, it was like her whole body and mind choked up, frozen and terrified. And they had lost not one daughter, but two, within an hour of each other.

  True to form, a cacophony of questions met them as they stepped into the space, a kind of private waiting area reserved for these more informal talks. It was comfortably furnished and brightly lit, unlike the interview rooms where suspects would be led.

  “Have you heard any leads?”

  “Do you know who did this to our girls?”

  Nate raised both hands in a gesture of surrender as he stepped inside. Gausse took the initial lead, letting Nate and Laura seat themselves on a sofa opposite the family as she spoke. “Please, I know this is incredibly difficult. We have the FBI working the case now. This is Agents Frost and Lavoie, and they’d like to ask you some questions to help with the investigation. Do you feel able to speak with them right now?”

  The parents, both of them, slowly sank back onto the sofa from where they had sprung up. They were middle-aged, both of them fraying slightly at the edges—gray hairs here, wrinkles there. Their faces were pale, eyes glassy and red-rimmed from a night of shock and grief. She was red-haired like her daughters, still slim and pretty. He was taller, broader, with dark hair and a short beard. They clasped each other’s hands like they were life preservers, knuckles white where they gripped hard.

  “We’re very sorry for your loss,” Laura said in a soft tone, hoping that would help to focus their attention. “At the moment, we’re in the early stages, but we think you might be able to help us shine a light on some possible leads.”

  “Anything you need,” the father said, his jaw clenched tight and his voice hoarse.

  “All right, Mr. Patrickson,” Nate said. “If you could tell us about your daughters, about their relationship with other people. Could you imagine anyone who might be angry with them, or carry a grudge?”

  The man blinked, glancing at his wife and shaking his head. “No,” he said. “No, not our girls. They were… they were liked. Popular. Everyone loved them.”

  “He’s right,” the mother spoke up, her voice dry as though she had cried all the moisture out of it. “They were good girls. It’s not just something parents say. I really mean it. People liked them. They had a lot of friends. Even after leaving school—they made friends quickly.”

  Laura made a mental note, and an internal groan. The more friends they had, the more potential suspects were out there. All of them would have to be interviewed and checked out in case of any potential suspicions. At least they had the local PD to help them out with getting through it all. “Even so,” she said. “Can you think of anyone who wasn’t happy with them? Someone they had a falling out with, maybe—even if it was a while ago?”

  The parents looked at each other, searching one another’s faces for answers. But in turn, they both shook their heads.

  “Ex-boyfriends?” Laura tried.

  “There have been a few.” The mother nodded. “Especially for Ruby. But I don’t think any of them parted on bad terms. Most of them broke up with her, not the other way around. She was always getting her heart broken, poor thing.”

  “She loved too quickly,” the father said, his voice a rumble of regret. “Always jumping in too fast. That was how she was. Ready to trust.”

  Laura nodded. There was potential for that to mean something. If she trusted quickly, maybe she had trusted the wrong person. Gotten herself in too deep with someone who didn’t want to let go. An ex-lover she was convinced away from by her sister, someone whose jealous rage could take hold of him… but Laura was getting ahead of herself. Evidence first, wild theories later.

  “You can’t think of anyone who might have had a reason to want to harm or punish them?” Nate asked, his voice even but firm. “Even if you don’t believe it could have gone as far as this—anyone at all?”

  The Patricksons shook their heads. “We have no idea,” the mother said tearfully. “It’s just come out of the blue. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to harm them at all.”

  “Did either of the girls have any problems?” Laura asked. “I know it’s hard to think about these things at a time like this, but… excessive drinking? Drug use? Gambling? Anything like that in their pasts?”

  “No.” Mrs. Patrickson sniffed. “They were good girls. They even took jobs on split shifts so they could always be there for us if we needed them. Ruby worked the late shift and Jade worked earlier in the day. They would come by with groceries if we needed them—my hip needed surgery last year and they waited on me hand and foot. Can you imagine that?” Her last words were muffled by a tissue, pressed against her face.

  “Did they work in the same place?” Nate asked, noting that down.

  “No,” Mr. Patrickson said, taking over from his wife—she’d resumed crying again too forcefully to talk. “No, they were both working at different places. The last few years, they’d grown up, moved apart. Got different friends from their workplaces. But they always came back to us.”

  “Last question, sir,” Laura said, keeping her tone as respectful as she could, as gentle. “Did you talk to either of them in the last day or days? Did you sense anything off?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean, yes. I saw them both this week. But they didn’t seem bothered by anything. They were… they were normal. Happy. Like they always are.”

  “All right,” Laura said. “Thank you. Please—if you think of something else, don’t hesitate to call us. Any little thing could help.” She took a business card from her pocket and held it out, letting the father take it from her hands.

  It felt so stiff and strange, like she and Nate were conducting this interview separately. Normally, she would have glanced at him now to check if he was done. He would have looked back, and from their eyes both of them would know it was time to leave. But when she looked at him this time, he didn’t return her gaze. He just stood, nodding his thanks to the parents.

  “We’ll leave you in peace, now,” he said. “Captain Gausse?”

  “Yes,” she said, stepping toward the distraught parents. “I’m going to leave you in the capable hands of one of my officers. He’ll escort you back home and make sure you have everything you need for now. Just wait here a short while, and I’ll send him along.”

  With those words, all three of them—Laura, Nate, and Gausse—left the room. Outside in the hall, Frome was waiting for them, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets. He straightened up as soon as they emerged, like he was snapping to attention.

  “I thought you’d want to see this as soon as possible,” he said, holding out an object wrapped in an evidence bag. “The techs have managed to unlock Ruby Patrickson’s phone, eh.”

  “And?” Gausse asked, all business.

  “She’s on a dating app,” Frome reported. “Exchanging messages with a number of men all week.”

  “Let me see?” Laura asked, holding out her hand. Frome opened the evidence bag and slid the phone out right into her palm.

  Laura opened up the app, which was positioned centrally on the home screen for easy access, and started looking through Ruby’s message history. As she did, she felt a familiar pain spike into the center of her forehead, sharp and strong. She tried desperately to figure out if it had been triggered by one of the messages in particular, or—

  She was walking along a street. She was inside him—inside the man. She knew she was. She could see things in her peripheral vision—his hand as it brought a cup of takeout coffee to his lips. Definitely a man’s hand.

  She was seeing things from his point of view. He walked at a good pace, a deliberate pace. He walked to a nook in the side of the road, the doorway of a store that was closed. He stood there and sipped his coffee, watching people going by.

  Laura started to feel impatient. What was this? Just a vision of nothing? One of the men that Ruby had been talking to on the app, going about his day? Why was she being shown this?

  It didn’t make any sense. They never came with any sense. She was trapped here, unable to leave until the vision was over, just standing and watching people walk by for no reason…

  The man stiffened, his eyes jerking up and latching onto one passerby in particular. Another man. A young one. He was in his twenties, no more. He had an easy smile as he talked to someone on the cell phone pressed to his ear, the other hand stuffed into the pocket of his jeans. He was blond-haired, tanned, dressed casually in a loose jacket over a tee. He had a look on his face while he spoke, like he was flirting with whoever was on the line.

  The man who was carrying Laura’s vision stepped forward, throwing his coffee cup into a nearby garbage can and setting off after the young blond man. He kept him in his sights, letting him get far enough ahead that there were others between them but not far enough to lose him. He watched his every move, paused when he paused, looked away whenever he turned to look over his shoulder.

  He was following him.

  A growing fear rose inside Laura as she watched. This was not just any daytime stroll. She was following that man—and she could feel how wrong it was, how carefully her host was avoiding being caught. This was something he was doing for a reason. He was stalking him.

  The way that a killer might stalk his intended victim, in order to get him on his own.

  Laura surfaced with her eyes still on the list of messages, and only paused a moment before continuing to scroll through them. She was no longer really reading them. She was thinking about what she had seen, about what it meant.

  And what she was afraid of was that it meant there was going to be another murder.

  “We’d better start contacting everyone they knew,” she said, looking up at Gausse. “Including the men on this list. One of them has to know something.”

  One of them, she hoped, would be the man in her vision—and even though all she had to go on right now was a hand, it would have to be a start.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “We should start going through everything we can find on social media.”

  Laura looked up at Nate’s words, only to find he wasn’t even looking at her. He was moving the mouse to wake up a computer they’d been assigned, out in the bullpen. Not exactly as nice as having their own office, but it would have to do. Gausse had led them to a pair of adjacent desks and told them to make themselves at home.

  Laura’s jaw tensed slightly, hearing the formality in Nate’s voice. He was talking to her the same way that he would talk to any other member of the investigation. Like she was no one. Around them, she noticed a few of the other cops watching them curiously. They were no doubt interested in the FBI agents who had turned up in their midst. Laura wished they wouldn’t look, wouldn’t see how stiff Nate was with her.

  “Right,” she agreed, because the investigation needed to continue. “We can use the list of names that Gausse’s team has already whipped up. Start looking for people with known records, anyone behaving suspiciously. Messages in their accounts that flag up any arguments or grudges.”

  Nate was already sitting, adjusting the keyboard to the right position for his long arms. “I’ll take social media and dating apps. You go through the records.”

  Laura sat down silently, doing as she was told. There didn’t seem much point in arguing with him, or even voicing her agreement. He had decided who was doing what so that they didn’t have to talk about it any further.

  Laura blinked a few times to try and clear her bleary eyes, looking at the computer screen and clicking around to bring up the national database where she would find any necessary records. It was useful, having a whole team of detectives working around you. They’d already combed social media for the names, and Gausse now had them out there working their way through interviews. There were far too many for Nate and Laura to handle themselves, but until one of them found something that was worth looking into or the coroner’s report came back with something interesting, they didn’t have a lot to do. This kind of admin could have been handed off to another detective as well, but Laura preferred sitting here to being out there.

  Out there, there was more chance that someone would touch her, whether by accident or deliberately. That would mean the possibility of more visions. Laura wanted to save those for the important moments—the moments that might affect the outcome of the case. If she had too many unnecessary encounters, the headache would build into a migraine until she couldn’t handle it anymore. And then the case would go unsolved for another day while she recovered, and it would be one more day of sitting next to her partner and feeling like she was a stranger. And thinking about two little girls who needed her help back home, who were waiting for her to return.

  Laura typed the first name into the database and waited a moment for the results to load up. There was no match. She deleted her query and concentrated on the next name on the list, waiting for a hit.

  This time there was one, but it was for a man who was now deceased, as of several years ago. She doubted it was the same one that the twins had been in contact with. Even if it was, it was irrelevant. He couldn’t have been the one to kill them now.