Page 11 of Whispers in the Night

“Whatever you need to say, you can say in front of Agent Sinclair. She’s part of this team now.”

Silas’s jaw clenched. “With all due respect—”

“Sit down, Kane.”

It wasn’t a request. Holloway’s voice had gone from friendly to commanding in an instant, and Harper saw Silas’s shoulders tense. But he sat, choosing a chair as far from Harper as possible.

This was going to be fun.

Holloway pulled up crime scene photos on the laptop, projecting them onto the wall screen. Harper forced herself to look at the images dispassionately, professionally. Young woman. Dark hair. Petite build. Symbols carved with precision. Arms positioned above her head at a sixty-degree angle.

“Victim’s been identified,” Holloway said. “Melissa Wagoner, twenty-four, worked as a barista at The Daily Grind downtown.Last seen leaving work at nine p.m. two nights ago. Found at the paper mill at two-forty this morning.”

Harper pulled out her notebook. “Cause of death?”

“Preliminary assessment is exsanguination from the cuts,” Silas said without looking at her. “ME will confirm later today.”

“Time of death?”

“Between ten p.m. and midnight. Rigor mortis and liver temp suggest she was killed shortly after abduction.”

“So he works fast.” Harper made notes. “That’s consistent with the Nevada victims. He doesn’t keep them alive long. The torture is brief, focused. He’s not trying to prolong suffering. He’s trying to create something.”

“Create what?” Holloway asked.

“I don’t know yet. The symbols have meaning to him, but I’ve never been able to crack the code.” Harper looked at the projected images, studying the carefully carved lines. “In Nevada, I consulted with symbology experts, occult specialists, even anthropologists. No one recognized the pattern. It’s either something he created himself, or it’s from a source so obscure that experts haven’t identified it.”

“Or it’s meaningless,” Silas said. “Just something he does to throw us off.”

Harper looked at him directly for the first time since he’d entered the room and tried to keep the hostility out of her voice. “It’s not meaningless. Everything about this killer is deliberate. The positioning, the symbols, the victim selection. He’s trying to communicate something.”

“With who?”

“Maybe with himself. Maybe with us. Maybe with God.” Harper shrugged. “I don’t know yet. But it matters to him, which means it should matter to us.”

Silas’s expression suggested he disagreed, but he didn’t argue. Good. Holloway clicked to the next image—a close-up of the symbols.

“Agent Sinclair, you mentioned victim selection. What’s the pattern?”

“Young women, early to mid-twenties. Petite build, dark hair, similar facial features. In Nevada, all three victims could have been sisters based on appearance alone.” Harper hesitated. “Has anyone compared Melissa Wagoner’s appearance to the Nevada victims?”

Holloway pulled up another photo—this one a driver’s license image of Melissa Wagoner smiling at the camera. Alive. Happy. Unaware that her life would end on a concrete floor with symbols carved into her skin.

Harper’s breath caught.

She could have been looking at Sarah Henderson. Same heart-shaped face. Same dark eyes. Same petite frame.

“Jesus,” she whispered.

“What?” Silas leaned forward despite himself.

“The similarity is stronger than the Nevada cases. Sarah, Jessica, and Pamela all looked similar, but this...” Harper gestured at the screen. “This is almost exact. He’s refining his victim selection. Getting more specific about what he wants.”

“Which is what?” Holloway asked.

Harper didn’t want to say it. Didn’t want to put the thought out into the world. But this was her job—to see the patterns, to understand the psychology, to give voice to the darkness.

“He’s killing the same woman over and over,” she said quietly. “Someone he lost. Someone he loved or wanted to love. Someone who’s either dead or inaccessible to him. He’s trying to recreate her, to possess her, to control her in death the way he couldn’t in life.”