Page 86 of Shattered Silence Duet

“Why does Santa Claus have such a big sack? He only comes once a year.” That gets the biggest laugh out of her yet, and Atlas smirks at me.

Max pipes up from the front. “How do you circumcise a hillbilly? Kick his sister in the jaw.” She keeps laughing as she clings to Atlas.

“Atlas is still in the lead,” I tell them.

“Hey, Angel?” Jasper says. She looks over at him as he pretends to push a pencil into his head, then pulls it out the other side. It’s like a magic trick for infants. When she just stares at him, he does it again, pretending to push it through his pouting lower lip, making her laugh.

“Hmm, I still think it’s Atlas,” I say. He smiles proudly as he kisses her temple and holds her close.

I smirk as an idea comes to me. I’m not sure if she’s ticklish orwhere, but I bet I can win if I find out. I lean over the seat and stroke her face with my fingers. I don’t want her to see it coming. Her feet are on the seat with her knees bent. I trail my fingers over her bare knees, then, as I reach behind them, I dig in and tickle her. She squeals so loud it makes me burst out laughing.

“All right,” Max chuckles from the front as he pulls into our driveway. “What did you do to get that winning laugh out of her?”

I smirk at her. She shakes her head, widening her eyes, and places her finger over my lips to keep me quiet. I smile and kiss her finger, making her blush.

“Ahh, that’s my secret,” I tell him as we all move to get out.

Atlas carries her in while she clings to his chest. My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and see it’s the chief.

“Chief,” I answer, hanging back while the others move to the house.

“Rossi. We got another body. Same MO. A seventeen-year-old girl named Rachel.”

“Shit. That’s less than a week. We’ve never seen it escalate that fast before.”

“Yeah, he’s accelerating his timeline. I’ll send you the report.”

“All right, I’ll talk to my team.”

“Rossi?”

“Yeah?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets moved up on the FBI’s list. Don’t be shocked to see agents in town soon.”

“Shit, yeah, okay, thanks for the heads up.”

“Bye.”

Shit. This is bad. Not only is there another dead girl, but if the FBI took over this case from local law enforcement, it’s likely they wouldn’t let us keep working on it. They don’t play nice with private investigators. And as good as it would be if they can solve it, we know the case better than anyone. Not only that, but we’ve been working on it for months and it would all be for nothing if we have to stop now.

I just have to hope we can solve it before they get here, or they decide that our undercover status is useful enough that they will actually work with us for once.

Either way, the killer had changed his timeline, and we need to figure out why.

Chapter 54

Tucker

Ican’t help but think I’m losing my mind around this girl. I’m falling for her, hard. I know I barely know her, never get to spend alone time with her, and she barely knows me, but I feel it regardless. There is just something so magnetic about her. Not only that, but seeing how she responds to my whole family has me extremely hopeful that she could be the one.

I can’t believe what happened in the library. I saw red when I witnessed Brad pushing her into the stacks with his hand up her skirt. If I hadn’t held Gideon up in the hall, he would have got there in time to walk her to the library and it wouldn’t have happened at all. It’s my fault she was alone with him.

To make matters worse, another girl is dead. What are we missing here? We haven’t seen Jeff return to the house all week, so he must be staying somewhere else. Why was he escalating? If it even was Jeff, I’m still not sure that it fits, we are still missing a few important pieces.

And what do all of these murders have to do with Mina? The time of death for Rachel places her murder somewhere between eleven thirty last night and three thirty this morning. It means it could have been Brad, it could have been anyone. I know Brad doesn’t fit the out-of-town murders, but I’m not willing to rulehim out after today’s incident. He clearly has some weird obsession with Mina. We could be dealing with more than one person. It could be a team.

I sigh as I watch my students playing dodgeball. Mina wouldn’t be back today for class and I was glad for it. I didn’t want her around these kids. Even if they weren’t killers, who knows how many moreBrad’sthere are in this school? If I could, I’d keep her at our home, wrapped in bubble wrap all day long.