“You didn’t answer my first question.”

  He shifted his attention back to her. No, he hadn’t. Didn’t want to now. “There was a leak.”

  She lowered her cup to the counter and waited for him to go on.

  “The test results got out. Your name. Most everything we know at this point.”

  She drew in a deep breath. “I see. The cat’s out of the bag then.” A vague shrug lifted her shoulders. “Should make for a hell of a following on tomorrow’s blog.”

  “That would be the silver lining,” he agreed, recognizing her ploy. She was attempting to see the bright side.

  Going that route was better than falling apart and if anyone had a right, she did.

  “I should get to it then. I don’t want to keep my fans waiting.” She said this with a self-deprecating laugh as she reached for her coffee once more.

  “There’s one other thing,” he said, waylaying her departure.

  She turned back to him and waited for whatever was coming. The stiffening of her posture signaled that she’d braced for more bad news. He didn’t blame her.

  “As a result of the leak,” he began, “the timeline for everything else had to be adjusted.”

  “I suppose the FBI is going to make an official announcement today.”

  “Yes.” He nodded. He hadn’t even taken into account the idea that she’d likely woken up contemplating she had another twenty-four hours before the world started to look at her in this new light.

  The weight of this new burden was unquestionably heavier than he could conceive.

  “As you can imagine there will be escalating activity as the news spreads, making security an even bigger concern. Another surveillance detail has been added to your home. Chief Deputy Wilson has someone watching your mother’s home as well.”

  “I’m grateful.” The two words were stiff, totally un-Lara-like.

  “Under the circumstances, they’ve also decided to move up the exhumation. We don’t want to risk any tampering or vandalism at this stage.”

  She lifted her chin and took a breath. “When?”

  “Today at two o’clock. We don’t have to be there—”

  “I want to be there,” she said before he could finish. “Whatever’s in that damned box, I want to see it.”

  Briarville Cemetery, 3:45 p.m.

  Lara had shed her sweatpants and tee and dressed for the occasion. She’d anticipated there would be reporters with camera lenses capable of zooming in close. If she was going to appear on the front page of gossip rags, she might as well look halfway decent.

  Before coming to watch the exhumation, she’d spent three hours going through emails. Many were from her followers. Plenty had come from new sources. Fans of the Butcher. Fans of serial killers, period. Retired cops and private investigators who had worked on one case or the other suspected as being related to the Butcher.

  When did you know?

  Have you met him?

  And her all-time favorite: Have you ever felt the urge to kill?

  She’d deleted a large number and responded to the more reasonable ones, suggesting they tune into her blog tomorrow for more information. As she’d said to Nate, the upside in all this was gaining new followers.

  Last night, early this morning actually, she had felt more exhausted and guiltier than she’d ever felt in her life. After going through her mother’s home like a hurricane hellbent on upheaval, she’d realized her pursuit of truth was futile. Her mother was dead. Lara would never know exactly what happened or what her mother knew or didn’t know. Given Mary Franklin wasn’t here to defend herself, Lara refused to change her opinion of the woman no matter what she found. Her mother had been a good person. Kind, loving, infinitely patient. Whatever else she did in her life, she had carried out the role of mother as well as anyone could hope to.

  Lara would not allow this ugly shadow to darken her opinion or her feelings.

  A few yards away the hydraulic lift growled with the work of raising the vault that held her father’s casket. She thought of how she and her mother had brought flowers to his grave every single Father’s Day until Lara went off to college. She imagined her mother had brought them until this year. Lara tried to remember if she’d mentioned anything about the cemetery but couldn’t.

  Her mother had never waxed on about the man she married. She’d talked about how handsome and charming he was and how grief stricken she’d been when he died. But really, she’d never said much else beyond the superficial. How could she? She’d barely known him before he was gone.

  In Lara’s memory her mother had spoken of him frequently but what she’d actually done was bring up the term “father” often. She hadn’t really gone into specific details, but only mentioned father in the context of the moment. Like when a father-daughter dance happened at school, her mother had said Lara’s father was a good dancer. Lara wondered if she’d only brought him up on occasions like that one to ensure her daughter didn’t feel as if she never had a father. Above all else her mother had loved her and worked especially hard to ensure Lara never wanted for anything.

  Mary Franklin could not have known who he really was.

  She simply couldn’t have.

  How could that stupid bird statue have been made two years after he was gone from her mother’s life?

  Lara never had any reason to believe her mother was withholding information or hiding anything. The very idea was ludicrous.

  Her mother wasn’t that kind of person.

  Yet, here Lara stood in a cemetery digging up her dead daddy thirty-odd years after his death.

  Nate stood next to her. She glanced up at him. His face was set in stone. They’d become friends by chance. She’d called for information and been passed along to him. The phone calls and emails had grown into a steady stream of contact. Who knew their first face-to-face meeting would be like this?

  She was immensely grateful for his presence. Lara considered herself damned strong and basically able to weather about any storm that came her way. But this was tough. She felt as if her life had been a staged play. That her very existence was no longer what she’d believed. It was as if she were this whole other person and the person she was yesterday morning when she woke up was now gone forever.

  Possibly she was being a bit dramatic, but her emotions were far too raw for objectivity.

  How did she go on from here?

  It wasn’t a question of whether she did. Lara Franklin wasn’t a quitter and she’d never given up on anything in her life. It was simply the how she moved forward that eluded her at the moment.

  To prove the I-will-go-on words to herself, she used her cell to snap a couple of pics of the exhumation process for tomorrow’s segment. She would be a fool to pass up the opportunity.

  Her best option at this point was to put aside the fact that this was supposedly her father’s grave—casket and vault—or even that this was her life. It was in her best interest as well as her mom’s, to focus on the process and, in turn, what each step revealed.

  Despite her best efforts, her mother’s voice whispered through her mind. Since Lara had no siblings, her mother had played with her almost every day of her early childhood. Tea parties, dress up. Her mom had never shied away from going the distance.

  Was the possibility that Lara’s father was actually still alive the reason she’d never remarried? Never had the sort of relationship she had deserved? Spent every moment Lara was out of her sight terrified something would happen to her? Lara had often considered that her mother was exceedingly overprotective.

  Her life choices had no doubt impacted Lara’s own choices. She’d been more than happy to immerse herself in her career. Her long-distance friendship with Nate had accounted for the better part of her social life. And she’d been satisfied. Never felt a need for more.

  Was that because “more” had never been a part of her normal?

  “We should move on to the Medical Examiner’s office now.”

  Nate’s voice pulled her from the troubling thoughts. She turned to him and nodded. “Beat the crowd.”

  The reporters and whoever else waited outside the perimeter local law enforcement had created around the cemetery would likely follow the official vehicle to its destination. Though it was impossible from where they stood to determine exactly how many people waited, Lara imagined there were plenty.

  Nate stayed at her side as they walked to his rental car. Being chauffeured around was certainly a change. She was the one who knew the area, she should be driving.

  The uniforms at the entrance closest to their location held back the crowd gathered so that they could exit the cemetery. Lara kept her gaze straight ahead. She didn’t want to look at their faces. Didn’t want to make herself an easy target for their prying cameras.

  Questions were hurled at her, the shouted voices muffled by the glass between her and them.

  All these years she had been the one digging and asking the questions. Now she was on the other side of that scenario.

  Something else that would impact going forward.

  She swallowed back the emotions burgeoning in her throat.

  Not a good feeling at all.

  Medical Examiner’s Office

  Gass Boulevard, 4:30 p.m.

  Lara waited on the side of the lobby farthest from the entrance. Nashville Metro uniforms kept the crowd in the parking lot at bay. A few steps away from where she stood, Nate ended his cell phone conversation then moved toward her.

  No doubt the call was about the exhumation. She didn’t bother attempting to guess. She was too mentally and physically exhausted. Instead, she waited for him to fill her in on the details.

  “Dr. Wilson said she’ll be ready in about five minutes.”

  Lara nodded. Reminded herself to breathe. “Good. I’d like to get this over with.”

  For a moment, Nate watched her as if he needed to analyze what he wanted to say before speaking. “As difficult as it is to consider right now,” he finally said, “when this is done, you need to take a break and refuel. You had, what? A cup of yogurt this morning and you ignored lunch.”

  “I know.” Though food was the farthest thing from her mind, she understood the need to keep her head on straight. Staying fueled and hydrated were necessary elements for making that happen.

  “How long do they think the full examination will take?” She had meant to ask before but she’d forgotten. There would likely be hardly more than bones to analyze.

  “A few days. They’ve pushed this case to the front of the line.”

  Good thing, otherwise she could be waiting for weeks or months. The Butcher was a high-profile case with far too many victims to wait a day longer than necessary to have answers.

  Answers she desperately wanted as well.

  Terry appeared through the doors marked “Employees Only.”

  Lara couldn’t help holding her breath.

  “You ready to do this?” he asked Lara.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  She and Nate followed Terry into the corridor beyond those same doors and to the waiting elevator car. Lara closed her eyes as the car bumped into motion. For a woman who had spent her adult life searching for complex puzzles to piece together, she suddenly wished for the uncomplicated and the mundane.

  When the doors opened, Lara and the others emerged to the smell of chilled flesh. Her nose wrinkled. She’d never liked the smell of morgues. No matter the chemicals used to attempt to dispel or cover the odor, it proved impossible.

  Terry led them to a room where Rayna waited. She wore an apron, gloves and a face shield.

  She smiled at Lara and gestured to the table on the right of the door. “The protective gear you need is there.”

  Terry and another male, presumably Rayna’s assistant, were garbed in the same and waited next to the dark brown casket where it sat atop a bier.

  When she and Nate had donned the necessary protective gear, they approached the others. Lara’s pulse rate sped up as did her heart.

  “Here we go,” Rayna announced.

  The assistant turned the sealing key at the foot of the casket. With some effort, he raised the lid.

  Lara was thankful for the cloth face mask she wore which diminished to some degree the odor that escaped. A sheen of sweat leached over her skin.

  Rayna glanced up from the open casket. “Give me a moment.”

  Her nerves jangling, Lara waited. She watched as Rayna reached inside. Seemingly endless minutes later, she turned back to Lara and Nate.

  “Agent Decker, I think we have a problem.”

  Lara took a step nearer the open casket. Her gaze lit on the remains. The bones were a brownish black. Not whitish as she had expected.

  Burned.

  She had seen this before in photographs. “He was burned.”

  As her words reverberated in the cold, clinical room, Lara was vaguely aware that Rayna had been explaining her initial deductions to Nate but none of it had filtered past Lara’s fixation on what her own eyes saw.

  The person buried in this casket had been burned. Her mother had never mentioned anything about her father having burned to death.

  There could have been an explosion…it wasn’t impossible.

  “Lara.”

  She looked over at the other woman and Rayna continued. “We’ll need to perform the full examination before we can give an official report but, based on what I’m seeing, this is not a he. These are the remains of a woman.”

  “Check the dog tags,” Nate urged.

  Rayna picked up the curiously clean military identification tags.

  “Patrick A. Franklin.”

  Lara stared at the darkened skull.

  But it wasn’t him.

  Chapter Seven

  Miller’s Bend Road, 8:00 p.m.

  Lara had plowed through more than a thousand emails. She’d only skimmed the messages. The FBI would do the heavy lifting. Analyzing each email, following the IP address to determine where it originated.

  Once she’d completed that task, she started pacing. Nate had spent a good deal of the time since leaving the medical examiner’s office in phone conversations with various colleagues. How had the body of a woman ended up in her father’s casket? With his dog tags no less? Why had her mother insisted the casket not be opened before or during his funeral?

  It was possible, of course, that her mother had feared her husband’s body was in no condition to view. There was no reason to believe she was anything other than completely innocent of whatever treachery had been involved in this—whatever the hell it was.

  Except for the bird.

  That damned statue that had stood on the mantel in her mother’s living room for as long as Lara could remember. The one and only gift from the man her mother had married. A gift delivered at least two years after his death considering its manufactured date.

  Maybe he’d mailed it to her from somewhere overseas and the package was lost in the mail for all that time.

  Lara stalled and closed her eyes. She was reaching. Desperate to find some answer that cleared her mother of any knowledge or participation in this…thing.

  A cover up. A trick. A lie.

  “That was Prater.”

  Lara opened her eyes. Ben Prater was the agent in charge of the investigation—her investigation. Nate hadn’t said but she could image the team calling it the case of the “Butcher’s Daughter.” Banishing the thought, she realized she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear about any new development. She was still processing the fact that her father’s remains were apparently missing.

  Of course, they were missing. He was still alive.

  And killing people. Apparently.

  For the first time since Nate showed up at her door yesterday, Lara realized this idea that she was the biological daughter of a killer was actually true.

  Not just any killer, mind you, but the Butcher. This possibility made her the first and possibly only link to the infamous serial killer. She was their first true break in this decades old case.

  The lives of future victims depended on her.

  The quaking started deep inside her. Again, the question echoed in her brain. Had the genes she inherited from a serial murderer prompted her obsession with murder?

  Oh, God.

  Keep it together. “Did he have an update?” she heard herself ask though the voice sounded nothing like her own.

  “He had a request.”

  She nodded slowly. “Okay. What sort of request?”

  “With your permission,” he said, his expression signaling his discomfort with what he had to say next, “they would like to have a forensic team go through your mother’s home. The gift from your father would need to be taken to the lab for follow up. We hope to determine its origin and possibly other details.”

  “Whatever they need to do.” No one wanted this over more than her. She thought of that damned bird and all the times she had stared up at it as a kid.

  How could her mother have kept this terrible secret from her all those years? This lie.

  No. No. There had to be an explanation. Her mother wouldn’t have done that.

  There had to be someone her mother talked to about her feelings, her life…

  “Brenda May,” Lara said as the name knocked around in her head. Her mother’s one steady, longtime friend. Surely, she would remember something from those days. If—Lara amended—her mother had shared such personal details.

  Nate stared at her expectantly.

  “Sorry. I was just thinking about anyone who might have known my mother back then. Someone she might have spoken to. Brenda May was my mother’s friend. I wouldn’t call them best friends, but Brenda would have been the closest thing to a best friend she had.” Lara strode to the sofa table and picked up her phone. “I hope she’s home. She and some of her friends travel a lot. They call themselves the ‘Traveling Sisters.” Mother even joined the group on a trip once or twice.”

  Lara glanced at the clock when the phone on the other end of the call started to ring. It wasn’t that late.