Clay had come up behind us, and his lips thinned to a hard line. “Just like us or a little different?”
“Just like you.” Colby peeked up at him. “I worried something had happened, that he was coming to tell me Rue was hurt.” She sniffed. “I tried to call, but my cell wouldn’t work, and the landline was down.”
Yet another country living necessity—the nearly extinct residential landline phone.
“He must have hoped if he couldn’t get through the wards, she would let him in.” Asa had shifted back while I had my hands full. “He isolated her to incite panic, to scare her into cooperating.”
Smart as Colby was, she was still a kid. She might have done just that if he preyed on her emotions.
“Let’s get back to the house.” I kissed the top of her head. “I don’t like us being out in the open.”
Clay and Asa cleared the house to ensure no one had sneaked in while we were away. I raised the wards again, for all the good it would do us, and Clay got the power back on. Colby stuck to me like glue, and it didn’t bother me one bit. Neither did Asa’s presence at my back, watching over us both.
Once we got things as close to normal as we could manage, I parked Colby at her rig and encouraged her to plug in so we could discuss the Kellies’ report on the cave without upsetting her further. Clay and Asa laid out our usual setup on the kitchen table, but I kept my chair pulled back far enough I could see Colby in the next room.
More importantly, she could see me.
Not many kids would be happy for a former black witch to play guardian angel, but she wasn’t most kids.
“Our copycat was definitely keeping the girls in the cave.” Clay read the first page. “That smell? It wasn’t a bathroom. That’s not how Olsen used it, anyway. That room was chockful of canned goods and bottled water. A bit of a prepper’s paradise.” He wiped a hand over his mouth. “There was an anteroom between two shelves we missed because it wasn’t lit. The killer installed a barred security door to lock the girls in there.”
That far out in the woods, and that deep in the ground, no one would have heard their screams.
“No fingerprints on the mural, despite the tape,” Asa added, “but those are easily wiped with magic.”
“The generator was dead when they arrived.” I rubbed my jaw. “It had a twenty-four-hour fuel tank.”
“What bothers me isn’t that timeline,” Asa said, “but the one here.”
“We know the killer was in Samford—” Clay checked his watch, “—nine hours ago now.”
“There have been multiple incidents, minor ones, since you left.” Asa tapped a finger on the table. “All of them easily explained away.”
A shiver of dread rippled down my spine. “Are you saying we’ve got a pair of copycats?”
“That’s a big leap,” Clay warned. “The evidence doesn’t support your theory.”
“One killer at the trailer, selecting victims,” Asa suggested. “The other in the cave, keeping them alive.”
“You think one killer stayed in North Carolina after I arrived,” I murmured, “and the other came here.”
From the first night, the second killer had been nosing around the property, testing its defenses.
Yes.
That felt right.
“It’s a compelling argument,” Clay allowed. “For now, let’s track the killer we know.”
That was the whole problem. We didn’t know him. Potentially either of them. Not yet.
An idea tickled the back of my mind. “Do we have the recordings of the first two crime scenes?”
“The Kellies sent them over with the third you requested,” Asa confirmed. “I’ll email you both a link.”
“Here we go,” I murmured, clicked, and then swore. “The same person filmed this.”
The style was the same, and style wasn’t a word I ever heard used in reference to crime scene footage.