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  The sun felt great as it warmed her skin. She wasn’t looking forward to going back to Cleveland, where it was springtime and a snowy, drizzly, cold mess. It was late March, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still going to snow a few more big storms. Anyone who stored away their winter outerwear could be cursing their preemptive overzealousness the very next day. She leaned back onto her palms behind her, tilted her face toward the blue, cloudless sky, and soaked up some more vitamin D. She had planned to read a book while on vacation, but so far it hadn’t happened. Just detoxing and decompressing in the Florida sun had been therapeutic enough.

  A shadow fell over her, as someone walked past. There were hardly any people on the beach this morning. Venice beach was a lot less crowded than Siesta Key. She’d promised to take Grace later today to hunt for sharks’ teeth. They were plentiful in this area, and vendors even rented out special metal baskets for doing some shallow water hunting of the tiny black treasures.

  “Evans,” someone said, causing her eyes to pop open. It was a voice she knew all too well.

  “Jack!” she exclaimed with surprise and shot to her feet. “What the heck are you doing here?”

  He averted his eyes as Lorena snatched up her semi-sheer peach and lavender cover-up to conceal the tiny black bikini that Grace insisted she buy at a beach shop so that she could get a better tan. She should’ve never taken the advice of her niece. Her cheeks felt like they were growing warm and not just from the sun. Her partner was standing in front of her and by the look on his face was also uncomfortable.

  Squeals of excitement came from the water’s edge as Grace spotted Jack and came barreling toward them. She hugged him around the waist, soaking the front of his t-shirt.

  “Hey, kid!” he returned with enthusiasm. “Havin’ fun?”

  “Oh, yeah. I think I’m gonna be a surfer when I grow up!”

  “Cool. Hang ten and all that,” he replied with a wide smile and flipped his hand to mimic the well-known symbol that surfers used to describe that mantra. “I’ll come to all your events and sabotage your competitions’ boards.”

  “Jack!” her niece screeched with a giggle.

  “What are you doing here?” Lorena asked again. The last time they spoke was over a week ago when he’d been kind enough to drop her and Gracie at the Cleveland Hopkins Airport.

  His gaze met hers, the smile sliding from his face. “Texted with Grace and found out what beach you were at.”

  “Grace, why don’t you show Jack your surfing skills?” she hinted to her niece. Whatever had brought him to Florida to speak with her in person must not be pleasant, or he wouldn’t have traveled so far. They both had cell phones and each other’s numbers on speed dial. This felt ominous. It was an emotion with which Lorena was all too familiar.

  “Craig sent me to talk to you,” he stated and waved to Grace, who was imploring him to watch her.

  “What? Why would Craig want you to come all the way here to talk to me?”

  “FBI business,” he explained and shielded his eyes from the sun since he wasn’t wearing sunglasses. Lorena removed hers.

  “What kind of business?”

  “They want to know if you and I would go to Portland and work a case for them,” he said and glanced down at her. All thoughts of her scantily clad body were forgotten as he explained the situation. “There’s been a string of murders out there. They’ve got a serial killer on their hands and can’t seem to dig anything up on him. It’s been going on for a while. Eleven murders in just that area that they’re sure of.”

  “Why us? They’ve got the best profilers and agents in the country. Why not just pull a few to help out?”

  “They did,” he said and glanced back at Grace again, who crashed in a wave and went under. She stood up and waved a few seconds later. Riding the surf wasn’t exactly like surfing a tube in Hawaii. “They don’t have shit. They need help, and I guess the director has Craig working on it, said he could pull anyone he wanted to help. He’s picking us. He knows I lived there for a while and that you…well, that you’re you. The director knew what we did on the Gingerbread case and…”

  “The whole country knows about that mess,” she said, angry still that Juliette got away.

  “Not everyone feels that way, not people in law enforcement. Most people, especially Craig’s boss, was impressed with your work.”

  Lorena rolled her eyes and snorted. She wasn’t impressed. It ended in a debacle.

  “Hey, wait a minute. I can’t just run off to work a case in Portland. I’ve got Grace. I have responsibilities. You and I have our own caseload.”

  “Captain’s clearing our cases and handing them off to other people while we’re gone. Besides, we weren’t working anything that pressing right now anyway. The captain’s behind the decision. I think he wants the bragging rights if we solve it.”

  “If the FBI’s best can’t solve it, what the heck do they think we’re gonna do with it?”

  “I think they’re hoping for a miracle,” Jack said and looked at her again.

  “We’re not miracle workers, Jack. We’re just detectives,” Lorena complained.

  “Well, one of us is just a detective. I’m still not sure what you are, but it’s not just a detective like me. They all know about Gingerbread.”

  “She got away. That wasn’t exactly something to go around bragging about.”

  “That part wasn’t our fault,” he reminded her.

  Lorena sighed heavily. The Gingerbread case kept her up at night, even more than the usual with big cases. “I know. I know we got a bad judge on that one. But I still feel responsible.”

  “Comes with the job,” he acquiesced.

  She dug her toes into the soft sand, noticed that Jack was wearing running shoes, socks and jeans and realized that he was probably sweating in the hot Florida sun.

  “Wanna’ come back to our house with us and we can talk some more there?”

  “Sure,” he agreed with a smile.

  She and Grace packed their belongings and went to their rental car. Lorena led the way to her sister’s home, a yellow-tinted stucco, Spanish-style two-story that faced an inlet on one side and had a gated driveway. People had told her many times that she should rent the place out when they weren’t using it, which was most of the time, but she never had the heart to do it. Holding on to the last remnants of her dead sister was already so hard to do, the memories fading as time went by. She just didn’t want strangers staying in her sister and brother-in-law’s home.

  “Come on, Jack!” Grace called as soon as Lorena parked the car. “I want to show you the alligator that lives in the lake. Mr. Jacobs, our neighbor, he says he’s gonna make a pair of boots out of him one of these days.”

  “Grace,” Lorena started. “Let Jack come inside. You can show him another time…”

  “No way,” Jack complied with a grin. “I gotta see this.”

  He winked at Lorena and followed obediently after Grace. Lorena just shook her head and smiled. He was so patient with her niece, with all of his own nieces and nephews, who also liked dragging him around and monopolizing his attention. She went inside and dropped their beach bag by the stairs leading to the second floor. She never changed anything in the house, in either of her sister’s homes. All of their same decorations, paint choices, furniture, and even the dishes were what her sister had chosen. Lorena was never much of a decorator, never had time to pick out bedding to match the walls or a leaded glass vase for flowers. Her old apartment was a simple, efficient, one-bedroom walk up, and whatever the colors the walls were painted was from the landlord’s tastes. Her sister, however, had impeccable decorating style. The Florida home was done in soothing ocean-inspired palettes of soft mint green, white, and pale blue accents.

  She ran upstairs and quickly yanked on a pair of worn-in, faded jeans, a white t-shirt and one of her sister’s gray zip-up hoodies with the embroidered letters ‘Siesta Key’ across the back. It felt warm against the chill of the air-conditi
oning. It felt comforting because it belonged once to Cara as if her sister was enveloping her in a gentle hug. She liked giving Lorena those, hugs. Lorena wasn’t much of a touchy-feely person, but now she wished that her sister was still here to embrace her once more. She swallowed hard and went back downstairs just as Jack and Grace were walking in through the back, patio doors.

  “Wow,” Jack blurted. “She wasn’t lying. There is a big old dinosaur in that lake.”

  “I know,” Lorena said with a grimace. “I wish someone would just get animal control out here to get rid of it. He’s lived in there for years.”

  “Eating the neighborhood dogs, no doubt,” he joked.

  Grace laughed and joined in, “Or the neighbors!”

  “Right?” Jack teased.

  “Grace, why don’t you go up and change?” Lorena suggested pointedly, to which her niece nodded with understanding. Once she was gone, Lorena offered Jack some sweet tea, and they sat at the kitchen’s long island. “I don’t want to drop everything and run to Portland. It’s not a good time for something like that. Grace has school.”

  “Bob talked to her teachers for you,” Jack replied, surprising Lorena that her former partner would go out of his way like that. “He’s got an in at the school.”

  She smiled. Of course, he did. He was a cop, and everyone knew it. His boys went to the same private school as Gracie and were good friends of hers. Sometimes they were too close with their bad influences like violent video games and zombie movies, and she suspected swear words, although they were also sweet and very protective of Grace.

  Jack continued his explanation, “They’ve agreed to let her continue her studies through correspondence. That way she can go with us.”

  “Go with us? That’s very disruptive, Jack. I don’t think that’s a good idea. Why don’t I just take a look at the case file and give my opinion? It’s not like it’s going to do any good.”

  “Someone thinks it would. I’ve got a lot of connections in Portland, informants, friends on the force and such. They want our boots on the ground, not working it from Cleveland.”

  “Right,” she was forced to agree.

  “It should only take a few weeks,” he explained.

  Lorena shot him a look and a raised eyebrow, “It could also take months. You know that. Cases don’t always come together that easily.”

  He nodded grimly. “We don’t have to stay that long.”

  “This is crazy.”

  He nodded again and withdrew airline tickets from his pocket. “We’re booked for the four o’clock this afternoon out of Tampa.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll head back to Ohio today with you then and pack. Sounds like we don’t have much of a choice.”

  “We don’t,” Jack confirmed. “Cap wants us there. And, Evans, these tickets are for Portland, not Cleveland. The captain had me and Bob go to your house and pack for you and Grace. Your stuff’s being sent Fed-Ex to Portland.”

  “What?” she asked with offense. The idea of her partners rummaging her underwear drawer was embarrassing.

  “This case is urgent,” he explained. “We took Bob’s wife to help. It wasn’t like us big, dumb lugs woulda’ figured it out.”

  She mentally exhaled a sigh of relief.

  “Can I help pack anything here?” he asked.

  Lorena’s head was spinning. There was so much to think about. “Um, sure. This is kinda’ hectic, Foster. I mean, we were on the beach a half hour ago, and now we need to be ready to leave in a few hours?”

  “I know. Just take a breath. Point me in the right direction. I’m good at taking orders. I was married, remember?”

  He teased, but the pain of that situation, one he’d never fully disclosed, could not be completely concealed. Lorena nodded, gave instructions, and went upstairs to get Gracie moving. It was going to be a long day.

  Chapter Two

  Jack

  He was glad that he knew the city so well or he would’ve been lost with the heavy traffic and blinding rain that was coming down in sideways sheets that always reminded him of the sheer curtains in the living room of his mother’s home when the summer wind would catch them through the open windows.

  Grace was dead asleep in the back seat, and Lorena looked like she wished she was asleep as she rode shotgun in their FBI provided loaner vehicle, a black SUV with darkly tinted windows. Real inconspicuous. He and Lorena got a chuckle out of it. It also smelled like stale cigarette smoke and fast food grease. He’d have to remember to get an air freshener in the morning.

  He pulled into the underground parking garage to the four-story building where their corporate apartment was located. Jack hoped he could live up to his suggestion that it would only take them a few weeks to figure this out. Either that, or he hoped they’d get sent back home for total incompetence. Fat chance with Lorena on the case. Knowing her as he did now, she’d probably solve it by the close of breakfast tomorrow.

  Jack signed them in through security as Lorena roused Grace from her slumber. Their assigned parking spot was number sixteen, and he helped by carrying one of Grace’s bags. Lorena pulled her own suitcase beside her and slung her backpack over her shoulder. She wasn’t supposed to be working on vacation, but he knew she’d have that pack with her. When he gave her a questioning look back at her sister’s house, she had lied badly about not working in Florida. He was starting to figure out her tells. Her right eye twitched, just slightly. For him, he just had his one overnight bag and his messenger bag for work.

  They rode the elevator to the fourth floor and let themselves into their suite. It was roomy, standard, efficient, without a lot of embellishment or flair. It wasn’t anything like her home in Florida which was nothing short of a Mediterranean mansion. For their connecting flight to Chicago, Grace had regaled him of their vacation adventures and all the fun things they’d done. Then they’d had to kill time in O’Hare and ate a late dinner at a Chili’s restaurant. She’d chatted almost the whole time, which made him miss his sisters just the tiniest bit. Grace was excited to be going with them, but Lorena was quiet. She was also angry that her back was against the wall in this situation and that she’d not really been left with much of a choice. Then Grace had zonked out on the eight p.m. to Portland, which was the only flight available. Lorena hadn’t slept, though. They’d talked a little about the case. They didn’t have everything on it yet and were waiting to look at the files. But she had started forming opinions on their killer.

  Their apartment was complete with a stocked kitchen and bar, two bedroom suites with their own bathrooms, and a spacious living room that looked out over the city, not that Jack wanted that kind of view. Looking out over the ocean or a farm field or some woods was better than city lights in his opinion.

  Lorena helped Grace unpack her luggage just enough to find pajamas and do whatever else they needed to do on their side of the apartment. Jack dropped his bag on his bed and went back to the living area. There were boxes stacked in the middle of the room and on the rectangular dining room table. He was glad her belongings and their investigative supplies made it to their apartment. There were also boxes on the table labeled ‘FBI’ that he knew Craig had transferred over from the local office. Their friend from Cleveland was already in town and staying with a colleague. He called Jack last week to discuss the new case. And it took that long to convince his captain to get on board with the idea of sending them to Portland to work the case with Craig. Jack wasn’t thrilled at first, either. He didn’t have great memories of Portland and wasn’t eager to return. He’d left for a reason.

  A while later, Lorena entered wearing sweatpants, a clean hoodie, and bare feet. Her hair was still damp, so she must’ve grabbed a shower. Jack was ready to turn in for the night. He felt a little jet lagged and had been going full speed since his dawn flight out of Cleveland. A glance at the clock on the wall revealed that it was eleven thirty. He was exhausted, but his partner looked raring to go.

  “So what’ve we got?” she ask
ed and stood next to him.

  Jack sighed. She was in work mode. “Eleven bodies so far, seven locally found. First one was found almost four years ago. The latest, last month.”

  She sat down and flipped open a folder from the top of the stack in the box. Jack walked over to the kitchen and set the coffee pot to brew a strong batch. It was bound to be an even longer night.

  He spoke to her from the kitchen island as he took out mugs and creamer. “I guess they didn’t realize they had a serial until number eight.”

  “What took so long?”

  Jack said, “Some of the bodies were found in other states.”

  “Oh,” she replied. “That makes more sense. Harder to track and string together. How far away from here?”

  “Nevada, Utah, California, up near the border to Canada in Washington state, and the rest here.”

  “All of the bodies found out in the woods?” she asked almost rhetorically as she started flipping through the victims’ crime scene photos.

  “Yep, all of them. Well, the latest one was closer to town, not far from here in a more open area. The others were found in more remote areas outside of the city.”

  “But all by the water,” she observed.

  She was quiet for a few minutes as the coffee percolated into the glass carafe. Jack poured them both a mug and added about a pound of sugar to hers.

  “This is messed up,” she observed as Jack approached the table. She was sitting on the edge of her chair with one leg tucked under herself.

  “They always are,” Jack agreed.

  She took the mug of steaming coffee from him and said, “Thanks. We need a whiteboard.”

  “I’ve got some supplies but not that,” he informed her.

  Jack took items out of the FedEx box labeled ‘work materials’ and some packages of supplies out of his messenger bag. Lorena took the small box of tacks and a stack of crime scene photos.

  “Hey, we’ve got Grace here, Evans,” he reminded her before she hung up a picture of a dead body.