Haunted (A Bishop/SCU Novel Book 15) Read Online Free Page B

we hadn’t come this far south.”
    “Not bad,” Miranda said.
    “Yeah, but the only conclusion I can draw from that is that he’s a psychopath, and we already knew that. Partner or no partner, he’s the one killing. He’s too controlled to be on a spree, too deliberate. The victims seem more of opportunity than anything else, not stalked or watched beforehand, just grabbed because they were there and they were vulnerable. Not surrogates for somebody he needs to strike out at, at least if you consider that the only thing they have in common is race and rough age: two blondes, a brunette, and a redhead, all white and all in their early twenties. If that’s his type, it’s a broad one.”
    “Which tells us?”
    Hollis brooded a moment. “It’s not about a type. The victims don’t matter to him except in how they suffer. He must have some kind of goal. A plan. An ultimate destination. I just have absolutely no idea what any of those things are.”
    “Hey, Agent Bishop?”
    They all three looked around in surprise, all realizing in the moment that it was Miranda the ranger was addressing, and two of them at least thinking that there was, really, only one Agent Bishop—and he was on the other side of the country at the moment.
    “Something?” Miranda asked the ranger.
    “Beats the hell out of me.” He handed over a small plastic bag. “One of the crime scene people pulled it out of a girl’s mouth.”
    “Which girl?” Hollis asked.
    “Uh—the brunette. Jill Crandall.”
    “Right question,” Miranda murmured, frowning. “And probably another piece of the puzzle.”
    Something in the other woman’s voice made Hollis frown. “What is it?” she asked, never one to hesitate asking a question.
    “It’s a silver cross. A pendant for a necklace.”
    “Hers?” DeMarco asked.
    Without having to refer to a file or her tablet, Miranda shook her head. “According to family and friends, Jill Crandall never wore jewelry except for gold studs in her earlobes. And she was an atheist, so unlikely to even have a cross in her possession.”
    “Then,” Hollis said, “this is for us?”
    “A message of some kind. I doubt she put it in her own mouth.”
    “What message?” Hollis frowned again. “She was a good girl and I still did this to her?”
    “Or she wasn’t a good girl,” DeMarco said slowly. “In his mind, at least. Especially if he knew she was an atheist.”
    Hollis was still frowning. “I dunno. It doesn’t feel like . . . an insult or punishment to me. More like . . . consecration.”
    “He did that to her to make her sacred?”
    “He did that to her . . . and she became sacred.”
    —
     
    TRINITY HADN’T EXPECTED to find anything either surprising or suspicious at the church.
    She found both.
    The first surprise was that the double doors of the church—Trinity Church—were standing wide open. And from inside, even in the afternoon light, a glow was evident.
    Trinity got out of the Jeep slowly. She adjusted her jacket so that the gun on her hip was clear and unsnapped the holster for good measure. She was about to call Braden but found he had already left the Jeep and was at her side, his gaze on the church.
    His calm gaze.
    It reassured her somewhat; Braden, she had discovered, was very alert to trouble or danger, and very protective of her.
    Still . . . those doors shouldn’t have been open, and there shouldn’t be any light coming from inside.
    She walked steadily up one of the paths that led to the entrance to the church. Other than the stained wooden doors with their leaded glass inserts, the entrance was plain. The wide porch was shallow, only three steps leading up to it, with simple corbels rather than posts supporting the slight overhang of the roof.
    It had been built in a simpler time, her father had told Trinity. White clapboard and a brick foundation, the only ornamentation the stained-glass windows along each side depicting, of course, scenes from the