Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
When she raised her head, she saw that he was standing in a ray of muted light streaming in from the small window. His head was raised toward the pane of glass, and he appeared pensive. For a moment he looked like a painting, something unreal. A sight you might come upon in some enchanted forest where an evil spell had been cast. Josie wondered if the drug he’d given her was still working in her system. Or maybe she was in shock. Maybe both. He turned his head, the mask moving as though he was smiling.
“I’ll need a bathroom,” she finally said, her voice slightly slurred, misery lacing her tone.
He turned then and was quiet for a moment as he stared at her. “You really are a m-mess, aren’t you?” He sighed loudly. “I’ll get you a bucket.”
A bucket?
“I’m-I’m hungry too.” She needed food to soak up whatever was still coursing through her veins. She needed to be able to think straight if she was going to get out of this nightmare.
He kept staring at her, tilting his head slightly. She had the notion he was smiling under the mask. “Yeah, I b-bet. It hurts to be hungry, doesn’t it? I know about that, Josie. S-someday I’m going to have to tell you about m-my upbringing.” He shook his head. “Not a story for the faint of heart. N-not at all.”
She stared at him. She didn’t know what to say.
“I’ll b-be back.” He moved toward the door. That walk, shoulders rounded, slightly stooped, as though he was trying to make himself smaller, less noticeable. Or at least, that’s how she’d always thought of it when she’d seen him at her apartment building. Timid. Graceless. It was him all right. She searched her memory for his name. Marshall. That was it. She didn’t recall his last name, though. And she had no earthly idea why he was doing this. Did he feel rejected? That must be it. He’d seen her bring men home and felt personally dismissed by her? And she supposed she had acted dismissively toward him. She’d always been nice to him, though…never unkind. Never.
He walked out of the small room, and she heard the lock sliding into place on the other side of the door. She leaned her head back again, gently this time, and drew her knees to her chest. She wanted to crawl inside herself and hide. Hide from the way she felt—filthy, defiled, terrified, alone. She wept silently, tears streaking down her face as she screamed wordlessly inside her own mind.
Why? Why? Why?
Chapter Four
Zach breathed in the peppermint oil smeared under his nose, stepping up to the body that lay supine on the table in Cathlyn Harvey’s examination room. He’d planned to be there by eight, but she’d called his cell at six a.m. and told him she had something for him. He’d called Jimmy, taken a three-minute shower, and been out the door five minutes after getting the call.
The door opened and a disheveled Jimmy walked in, looking as tired as Zach felt.
“Right on time,” Cathlyn said. “Nice to see you, James.”
“Dr. Harvey.”
She shot him a look. “Meeting like this?” She inclined her head toward the dead body on the gurney between them. “Call me Cathlyn.”
He gave her a crooked smile. “Can’t argue with that.”
“What’d you find?” Zach asked, anxious to know anything that could give them a direction to move toward today.
Cathlyn cleared her throat, using her gloved hand to point to the girl’s thigh, or what had once been her thigh and was now bone only partially covered by decayed flesh. “Words, carved so deep a few letters went through to the femur. Here,” she said, and they bent closer, looking at what she was showing them. Zach saw scratches on the white bone but couldn’t make out any words. “I used a magnifying glass and shot a couple of pictures.” She reached over to the table behind them and picked up a stack of photos, handing them to Zach.
He peered down at the magnification of the scratches. A few of the letters were so slight as to be unreadable, as if the blade had pressed harder in some spots than in others. He read the partial words, filling in the rest from memory, and his blood ran cold. “Casus belli?”
“Latin,” Cathlyn said. “It means—”
“Where the blame lies,” Zach murmured, shock rolling through him.
Jimmy furrowed his brow, glancing between them. “Where have I heard that before?”
“The Josie Stratton case we were talking about last night,” Zach said.
Jimmy looked mildly shocked. “You don’t say. But wait, that suspect was caught. Case closed.”
“I remembered the phrase immediately from that case and looked it up this morning,” Cathlyn said. “The information about the words carved into her skin was printed in the paper, leaked by someone.”