Page 29 of Forever Dark
Her pulse had picked up without her permission.
The lines were another message, this time in numbers rather than letters, placed behind the cabinet as if someone wanted them missed unless the scene was examined properly.A secret to be found by the worthy, perhaps.
Selena turned back to them.“Roman numerals.”
Connor frowned.“So, a number?”
She met his eyes.
“For the number two.”
The room went silent again.
Below them the abandoned church held its breath.Wind pressed faintly against the shutters.Somewhere in the woodwork a soft knock sounded and stopped.
Connor’s face shifted as the meaning found him.“What does the number two mean?”
Selena looked once more at the phrase on the wall, at the hidden blood mark, at the place Brenda Colter had been arranged like an offering.
Then she said, “It means this isn’t our first victim.”
CHAPTER SIX
Selena kept her rental car two lengths behind Connor’s sheriff’s SUV as the road unwound through the county.
Dust spit now and then from his tires.Sunlight flashed off the rear window when the trees thinned.On either side of the road, fields ran out in dull winter color, bordered by fences that leaned with age and weather.A pair of crows lifted from a ditch as the two vehicles passed, black wings beating low over scrub and briar.
Her hands stayed steady on the wheel.Steady hands suggested calm, and calm was not what she felt.
The church had gotten to her.Worse than that, she had let Connor see it.She had stood there in that dead place with its boarded windows and peeling paint and said too much.Not much by any normal standard.Still more than she had meant to give him.
Selena slowed her breathing.
She knew how to keep distance.Washington had taught her that in ways Harlan County never could.Being part of a city, the anonymity of it.She loved that.The ability to disappear.In Harlan, if everyone didn’t quite know everyone, the reality wasn’t far from that.The distance Washington had taught her was useful.A wall built from work and time zones and cases big enough to drown out the small private things.Yet one morning back in these hills, and the old place was already finding cracks in her.
A church.
A road.
Connor’s voice in a dark stairwell.
That was all it took.
Her phone buzzed in the cup holder.Meg Calloway.
Selena tapped the steering wheel control to answer through the car speaker.“Raven.”
Meg’s voice came through crisp and level as always.“How’s the investigation going?”
Selena glanced at Connor’s SUV up ahead.“Potentially more complicated than the initial report suggested.”
“I see.How so?”
“There’s something about this killer.The religious iconography of it.”
Selena took the next bend carefully.“I found what looks like a Roman numeral for the number two hidden behind a piece of furniture in the loft.Written in dried blood.If I’m right, Brenda Colter may not be the first victim.This could be the start of a serial pattern.”
Meg was silent for a moment.
