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it would alter her entire life from here on out, but it was no reason to throw in the towel and give up on everything. But what scared her the most was the notion of discovering—even after her father was no longer around—that he may not have been the only problem after all.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Chloe had pored over the information in the case files the moment she received them. She did not realize it then, but she was diving into the case in the same way an alcoholic turned to the bottle. She was trying to drown out the reality of what she and Danielle had done. She felt that if she could bury it all beneath enough passion for her work, she might just be able to obliterate it completely after a while.

      They were headed to the rather small town of Pine Point, Virginia. About ten miles outside of Winchester, it boasted a population of just under ten thousand and was made up of predominately wealthy families, making it a case that seemed to line up with just about every case Chloe and Rhodes had been assigned to. The difference here, though, was that the victims were both male. From what Chloe could tell from the reports, there was nothing special or unique about the killings. It appeared that in both cases, the men had been beaten to death rather brutally, with no apparent links between the two.

      “Getting tired of these high-end neighborhoods yet?” Rhodes asked from behind the wheel. Chloe, looking over the case files on her tablet, looked away from the content and out the window. Somehow, they had already arrived. The distance between DC and Pine Point was only about an hour and a half, and it had gone by quickly.

      “I’m getting there,” Chloe admitted. “You have to admit, though…the familiarity of it is pretty nice, right?”

      “Yeah, I suppose. The files for this one, though…makes me think this one is going to turn into nothing more than some whacked out muscle-bound dick taking his aggressions out on those he feels are either beneath him, or a threat to him.”

      This had also crossed Chloe’s mind, but she wasn’t too sure. Someone killing for those reasons would likely be perfectly fine with placing a bullet between someone’s eyes or slicing through a throat. A brutal beating on two separate occasions seemed to speak to something a little darker.

      There was more to dissect, but her brain was in a fog of sorts. There were a few questions she wanted to ask Rhodes—questions to help her probe into what Johnson and others in the bureau were truly thinking about what she had helped her sister do. She couldn’t help but wonder if they knew more than they were telling but didn’t have enough evidence to actually confront her. After all, it was the fact that Johnson had been fully prepared to send Rhodes out on this case alone that had Chloe more paranoid than anything else.

      “Can I ask you something, Rhodes?” she asked.

      “Of course.”

      “Have you heard anything about an internal investigation into my actions regarding my sister?”

      She tried to read Rhodes’s reaction but her partner had a poker face. After a few moments, she shook her head. “I don’t think so. I know there were questions about your father and his abduction of your sister, but I haven’t heard anything about an internal investigation into your actions.” She hesitated for a moment and then shrugged. “If you’re worried about Johnson not immediately pairing you with me for this case, I wouldn’t read too much into it. I’d imagine he was just taking your mental well-being into consideration.”

      “Maybe.”

      “Now…let me ask you something,” Rhodes said. “And please don’t take this the wrong way. This is just between the two of us, but I need to know. Is there anything I need to know about? Is there anything you’re afraid they might be looking into?”

      “No,” Chloe said. She feared she’d answered too quickly, with a bit too much bite to her tone.

      “I had to ask,” Rhodes said. “Working together in this capacity and all. I can’t claim to understand what you’re going through, so I won’t patronize you. But I just need to know you’re good to go. In hindsight, I should have maybe asked before you signed on to help with this case, but you know how it goes.”

      “I’m good.”

      This was mostly true, but now Chloe could not help but wonder if Rhodes’s prying had ulterior motives. Had Johnson spoken with Rhodes before they left DC, asking her to try to pry information out of her? It wasn’t like Rhodes to ask deep, personal questions. She typically remained above the surface, not going too deep. For her to pry so blatantly seemed a little out of character for her.

      “Good,” Rhodes said. “And I hope you know that if you do ever need to talk it out or process through it or whatever, I’m a decent listener.”

      “Thanks,” Chloe said, though the comment made her even more suspicious.

      The two women fell silent as the GPS on Rhodes’s phone told them to turn in half a mile. And beyond that turn was their destination, the crime scene of the second victim.

***

      There were two local cops waiting for them, as had been arranged with a phone call before leaving bureau headquarters. Their car was parked on the side of the road, a few feet away from a curb where two streets intersected. One of the cops, a very tall red-headed woman, smiled and pointed to the space directly behind their car. Rhodes pulled into the designated place and said: “This one already seems bossy.”

      Chloe and Rhodes stepped out of the car and joined the two cops on the sidewalk. The tall woman greeted them first, her smile wide and strikingly beautiful. The second cop was an African American man who looked to be forty or so. He had the look of someone who knew full well he worked in the shadow of his partner. When he shook Chloe’s and Rhodes’s hands, introducing himself as Officer Benson, he did so with a lackluster smile.

      The tall redhead was named Anderson, and she spoke with a slight southern drawl. “Good to meet you,” she said, the you coming out with a dragged out a on the end, the typical southern ya. It made Chloe wonder if she was the type who used the word y’all.

      “So,” Anderson said, “it’s a pretty simple story. A guy named Viktor Bjurman was found on this curb last night. Two teenagers on bikes discovered him. The blood was still pouring out of him. He was pronounced dead right away when the ambulance got here. The latest report from this morning tells us that there are multiple causes: blunt force trauma to the head, a broken rib, which was shoved upwards and pierced his heart, nearly completely crushed chest and breastbone, or a collapsed lung. Take your pick.”

      “Any clear idea on the weapon of choice?” Chloe asked.

      “Everyone is assuming it was a bat,” Anderson said. “The coroner has all but agreed with this, but says if it was a bat, it was an aluminum one. Bjurman was struck with such force that a wooden bat would have left splinters.”

      “Is there any connection to Bjurman and the first victim?” Rhodes asked.

      “None that we can find,” Benson said. “Victim one—a guy by the name of Steven Fielding—was found in his home. His wife discovered him sprawled out on the living room floor.”

      “At first, it looked like a botched burglary,” Anderson said. “Someone broke in, beat the hell out of the guy who just happened to be home, and took some stuff. But as of right now, the wife can’t come up with a single thing that appears to be missing. So it looks like if it was a break-in, it was only to kill Fielding.”

      “The files indicate that the first murder wasn’t as brutal as this second one, right?” Chloe asked.

      “Depends on your definition of brutal,” Anderson said. “He was struck in the head and face with something hard—something that may or may not have also been an aluminum bat. Fielding’s nose was crushed to oblivion. Grossest damned thing I’ve ever seen.”

      “But on the other hand,” Benson said, “Bjurman’s face appeared to have never been struck, though there was a single blow to the top of the head that left a slight indentation.”

      Chloe walked a few steps forward,