style="font-size:15px;"> He’d been to this spot hundreds of times before, but in the sudden stillness, he saw it as she might. The feeling of intense calm that came from being the only people there, then the slow realization that nature was moving all around. The murky waters, lapping against tall grasses. The curious expression of a wading egret, the distant lump indicating an alligator underneath.
“It’s pretty quiet,” Ella said.
He could almost hear her thoughts, calculating details about the killer. He’d picked an isolated spot where there wouldn’t likely be tourists. The body had been found in the morning, so the killer must have dumped Theresa before dusk, when the alligators would’ve been feeding. A smart killer. Patient.
Logan felt the blood drain from his face as he realized what else it probably told Ella. The killer knew specific details about the marsh. “He’s a local, isn’t he?”
Ella turned, and her deep brown eyes seemed to bore holes through him. “He’s not a typical tourist passing through for a week or two. He could be a local, either here or in one of the neighboring towns. At the very least, he’s been holed up here for a few months, getting familiar with the town and trolling for victims.”
A string of curses burst from deep within, a sour, sick feeling that he might actually know the person who had burned and then murdered his sister’s friend.
The sick feeling persisted when his cell phone trilled and the display read Chief Patterson. He hadn’t even finished “Hello” before the chief was yelling loudly enough that there was no question Ella could hear every word.
“Why am I hearing about you bringing the FBI to Oakville for your ridiculous serial killer theory? How often do you need to hear orders before you follow them, Logan? We’re investigating Theresa’s murder. We are not inventing more victims and we are definitely not scaring the whole town by turning an isolated crime into a huge spree!”
“Chief—”
“I’m going to tell you this one last time, Logan, and you’d better listen. There’s only so far that nepotism can protect your job. You drop this serial killer angle right now. Send this profiler home and get back to the station.”
“Chief, listen—”
The sudden dial tone cut him off. As he tucked his phone back inside his pocket, he prayed he’d made the right decision in bringing Ella here, prayed that one crazy theory wasn’t going to bring down the career he’d fought so hard for.
“Why isn’t she on a plane?” Chief Patterson folded his arms on his desk, glaring with an intensity he seemed to save just for Logan.
Chief Patterson was his father’s age. He’d headed up the Oakville PD for twenty years and his dislike of anyone with the last name Greer came from way before Logan’s time. Part of it had to do with the Greers’ long history of prominent positions in Oakville. And part of it had to do with the chief courting his mother before his father won her away.
Logan looked through the glass door of the chief’s office to where Ella sat perched on a chair along the wall, attracting attention from far too many members of their all-male police force. Logan scowled. She was here to consult on his case.
“Logan,” Chief Patterson snapped, making his head whip back around. “What part of my orders was unclear to you?”
“Listen, Chief, Agent Cortez agrees this crime looks serial.”
The chief’s scowl deepened, intensifying the lines that raked across his forehead and bracketed his mouth. “I don’t care what she thinks. I don’t buy into that profiling hokum. And I am not going to scare away all our tourism revenue with some ridiculous theory. If you keep pursuing this angle, I’m taking you off the case. I’ll assign it to someone else.”
But Logan knew that none of the other detectives in their small police force would want to touch the case, not after he’d had his hands on it. Just like none of them wanted to risk the chief’s ire by partnering with a cop named Greer. The uniforms joked that the position of his partner was like a revolving door. Right now, he was the only member of the force without a partner—which was true for most of his tenure as a detective.
But it didn’t matter if there was another detective who’d take this case; Logan wasn’t handing it over to anyone.
The chief didn’t give him a chance to say that, merely held up a hand. “There’s nothing your father can do about it. I won’t be cowed by political pressure. This is my office. I’m your boss and you’d better get used to it.”
Logan clamped down hard on his instant response. Not once had he ever used his family’s name—or his father’s position as mayor of Oakville—to get ahead in his job. If anything, they had held him back.
He fought to keep his voice level. “And this is my case. I can’t ignore a potential lead because it might hurt tourism.”
“Trying to invent a serial killer is not a lead,” the chief barked. “If you find another body, then it might become a lead, but we don’t have any active missing-persons cases, much less any other victims. So, you’re not spending resources chasing this. Send the profiler home. Get back to work figuring out who had it in for Theresa Crowley.”
The chief leaned back in his chair and opened the file in front of him, which meant Logan was being dismissed.
He didn’t move. The problem with the chief’s plan was that no one had it in for Theresa, or at least no one in the state of Florida. Theresa had spent her entire trip with his sister and their family, so she hadn’t had time to meet anyone unsavory. And it was unlikely she’d run into someone she knew on her drive to the airport.
Every investigative instinct in his body was clamoring that Theresa’s killer hadn’t known her personally, and that if he wasn’t stopped, he was going to strike again. To solve the case, he needed Ella. And he owed it to his sister to make sure Theresa’s killer was caught.
The chief looked up from his file, raising his eyebrows as he glanced pointedly from Logan to the door.
Instead, Logan took a deep breath and did something he’d sworn he would never do. Something that might well be career suicide.
“Fine. But if you insist I stop working with Agent Cortez and another body does turn up, I’m going to the paper to tell them we had a profiler here and you sent her home.” He didn’t need to add that because of his last name, the story was guaranteed front-page coverage.
A deep red flush spread across the chief’s cheeks all the way to his ears, and when he spoke, his voice was an octave too high. “Fine, Logan. You want to play it this way? Then if you’re wrong and no other body turns up, but you’re too busy chasing an imaginary serial murderer to catch the real killer, I’ll be the one talking to the press. And it’ll be to tell them why you’ve handed in your badge.”
* * *
WHAT WAS SHE THINKING?
Ella stared up at Logan as he held the car door for her to get out and follow him into his parents’ house for dinner. When he’d initially told her he had dinner plans with his family, she’d expected to be eating at the hotel’s
