you put this idea in her head?” he asked.
Cissy tugged at his arm. “Alicia can’t make me believe something if I don’t think it’s true. I’m the one who raised the subject with her, not the other way around.”
Gabe turned to his niece, his brow furrowing. “Why? You heard everything Mariah and Jake told us about Logan. You know about the scrapbook—”
“Nobody’s ever tracked down the other guy,” Cissy pointed out. Alicia knew she was referring to a second man the police were looking for in connection to Victor Logan’s death. Cissy had filled her in on everything the Cooper family knew about Logan and the events of the previous month, when Logan had taken Cissy’s Uncle Jake and his wife Mariah captive.
“Jake’s certain the other guy wouldn’t have been more than a teenager when your mother was murdered,” Gabe said, gently stroking his niece’s arm. “I know it doesn’t feel like closure. We never got to face Victor Logan and make him admit what he did, but grasping at straws—”
“They may not be straws,” Alicia interjected.
Gabe’s head snapped toward her. “What is your deal? You’re so desperate for a thesis topic that you’d mess with a young girl’s mind about her mother’s murder?”
“Damn it!” Cissy pulled away from her uncle. “I’m not a baby and Alicia’s not messing with my head. Do you have any idea how insulting you’re being right now?”
Gabe’s expression fell, and he raked his hand through his dark hair, turning away. “I’m sorry.”
Alicia crossed to Cissy’s side, offering a united front. “Cissy had questions about her mother’s murder before she ever stepped foot in my lab. When she found out I was doing my doctoral thesis on a series of unsolved serial murders in the Gulf states, she asked my opinion about her mother’s case.”
The hard muscles of Gabe’s jaws tensed. “My brother and I have both spent the last twelve years looking into every lead that emerged, most of which fell apart. We know a viable suspect when we see one. Victor Logan had the means to do it and the opportunity. And based on his issues with women, we’re confident we have a good idea what motivated him—”
“Why you?” Alicia interrupted, struck by something he’d said a moment earlier. “I mean, I get why Cissy’s father would have devoted his life to finding an answer, but why you?”
Gabe glanced at his niece before answering. “I’m the one who found her body.”
Alicia glanced at Cissy, whose expression was solemn and tinged with sympathy as she gazed up at her uncle. If she found the answer as incomplete as Alicia did, she gave no sign of it.
“I see,” she said, although she didn’t really. Finding the body might have given Gabe a bigger stake in learning what happened to Cissy’s mother, but not enough to spend twelve years following leads long after the case had grown stone-cold.
“I appreciate that you have a paper to write. And I get that having Cissy here is like a case study practically falling into your lap. But all the authorities who’ve ever looked into Brenda’s murder are convinced that Victor Logan is the guy.”
“He’s one of them,” Alicia agreed.
Gabe’s brow furrowed. “One of them?”
“I’ve managed to get my hands on the bulk of the police reports dealing with Victor Logan’s actions from this past April as well as your sister-in-law’s statements about his actions four years ago, when he killed her son’s father.” She felt a ripple of guilt at the look of dismay in Gabe’s eyes, as if he saw her actions as intrusive and presumptuous.
Maybe he was right. Maybe it wasn’t her place. But if her theory was correct, then the nightmare wasn’t over.
More women were going to die.
“Uncle Gabe, please listen to her.” Cissy put her hand on her uncle’s arm. “I didn’t want to believe it, either. I was hoping Alicia would tell me I was imagining things.”
Gabe’s eyes narrowed as he looked from Cissy to Alicia. “I take it you didn’t?”
“Why don’t we sit?” Alicia motioned toward the sofa.
Gabe frowned but sat. Cissy dropped onto the sofa next to him, leaving Alicia to take the ottoman again. She cleared her throat and leaned forward to pick up the folder Gabe had set down just before Cissy arrived.
“Cissy’s been taking criminology courses since last year,” Alicia began, straightening the contents of the file to give her twitchy hands something to do. “One of her courses was Basic Criminal Profiling.”
“I profiled Mom’s murderer as one of my assignments,” Cissy added quietly. “Got an A.”
“I’m sure you probably know that profiling is more an art than a science,” Alicia continued, trying not to react to the raw intensity of Gabe’s gaze, part of her wondering what it would feel like to experience that sort of no-holds-barred focus under more intimate circumstances.
“Understatement,” he murmured.
She slanted a look at him. “Legwork solves more cases. I don’t dispute that.”
“The evidence against Logan was damning,” he said simply. “Why keep asking a question that’s already been answered?”
“Because the one person we can prove Victor killed was a man. A man against whom he had a personal grudge. I read the statements your brother and sister-in-law gave last month after their ordeal with Logan. He used a gun to subdue them, and even then, he wasn’t very good at using it. He’s not the person who shot the game warden—that was the other man.”
“Uncle Gabe, nothing fits, don’t you see?” Cissy turned to Gabe, her expression animated. Alicia watched her warily, aware that the younger woman’s personal stakes in the case put her at risk of getting too wrapped up in the outcome of Alicia’s project. She had to be careful with Cissy, not let her get any more involved than she was already.
Gabe pressed his lips together in consternation. He looked across at Alicia. “How did you get all this material?”
Alicia looked down at her hands, a little embarrassed. “I used to date one of the local cops. He still does favors for me now and then. He talked his bosses into letting me look into some cold cases that might be connected to the other murders.”
“And you sweet-talked them into letting you request records from other law enforcement agencies, right?”
Alicia almost laughed aloud. Sweet talk wasn’t one of her strong suits. Bulldozer was a better description. “Something like that. I used Cissy’s profile, tweaked it with my own observations and put out feelers to other departments to see if they had any cases that fit the profile.”
“What did you find?”
Alicia couldn’t tell if he was interested or just humoring his niece. Either way, it might be her only chance to convince him to listen. She dug through the file for the timeline she’d worked out, speaking as she searched. “I found fifteen murders that I think are connected.”
“That
