Page 71 of Whispers in the Night

“About ten minutes. He followed her from the café section to fiction.”

“Send me his image,” Harper said. “I want to run it against our database.”

The photo came through seconds later. Sanchez ran it through facial recognition while Harper studied the man’s features. Something about him felt wrong, but she couldn’t pinpoint what.

“Got a hit,” Sanchez said. “David Mitchell, thirty-six, works in IT for a local firm. No criminal record. Lives in the Riverside Apartments—same complex as victim Amy Thorne.”

Harper’s pulse quickened. “Same building?”

“Same complex, different building. He’s in Building C, she was in Building A.”

“That’s still significant. Get a team to follow him discreetly when he leaves. I want to know where he goes, what he does.”

They watched for another twenty minutes as David Mitchell continued his browsing, occasionally glancing at the young woman. Finally, she checked out and left. Mitchell waited exactly two minutes, then left as well.

“Team Eight, subject is mobile,” Morris radioed. “Headed east on foot. Stay with him but keep your distance.”

Harper switched feeds to follow the mobile unit’s body cam. They tracked Mitchell for six blocks. He stopped at a sandwich shop, ordered lunch, sat down to eat while scrolling through his phone. Completely normal behavior.

After lunch, he returned to an office building downtown. The mobile unit confirmed he went back to work.

“Another dead end,” Harper muttered.

“Or just a guy who noticed a pretty woman and looked,” Silas said. “We can’t arrest people for having eyes.”

By three p.m., Harper needed a break from the screens. The constant vigilance was exhausting, and they hadn’t seen anything genuinely suspicious yet. Just normal people living normal lives.

“I’m going to walk the perimeter,” she told Holloway. “Check in with some of the ground teams in person.”

“Take Kane with you,” Holloway said without looking up from his own monitors.

Harper and Silas drove to Summit Fitness first. The undercover officers—a male-female pair posing as a couple working out together—reported nothing unusual. Steady stream of members, mostly regulars, no one who set off alarm bells.

Next was The Daily Grind. The officer posing as a remote worker had been there since opening at six a.m. and would stay until close at ten p.m. He’d catalogued forty-seven customers so far, cross-referenced them against the database, found no matches to persons of interest.

“This is like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Harper said as they drove toward the farmers market. “Except we don’t even know if the needle is in the haystack or in a completely different haystack.”

“Mixed metaphor aside, you’re right. But what else can we do?” Silas navigated through downtown traffic. “We can’t just sit around waiting for him to kill again.”

“I know. I just wish we had more to go on.” Harper scanned the farmers market crowd, cataloguing faces out of habit.

A Blackridge PD patrol car was parked near the market entrance. The officer was leaning against his vehicle, keepingwatch on the crowd—part of Holloway’s directive to increase visible police presence.

“Let’s check in,” Silas said, heading toward the patrol car.

The officer straightened as they approached. Harper catalogued his features automatically: mid-thirties, brown hair, average build, clean-shaven. Nothing remarkable.

“Detective Kane. Agent Sinclair.”

“Officer Sutton,” Silas acknowledged. “How’s it looking out here?”

“Quiet so far. Lot of families, regular vendors. Nothing that raises flags.” Sutton gestured to the market. “People seem a bit on edge though. The press coverage has everyone spooked.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Harper said. “Awareness keeps people safer.”

“True. I’ve had at least a dozen people ask me if they should be worried walking alone.” Sutton shook his head. “Told them to stay in groups, trust their instincts, all the usual.”

“We appreciate you putting in the extra hours,” Silas said.