Kindle Notes & Highlights
Search in Forest Park. Missing man. Meet time 1500.
Nick Walker, called out on a lifesaving mission.
A BUNCH OF TEENAGERS
Alexis exchanged a look with Nick. She knew they were thinking the same thing. Not a single bright color.
His black dreads ended in white and black beads shaped like skulls. He was smoking a cigarette, and his fingernails were outlined in dirt.
The problem with looking, Alexis thought, was that you might find someone.
Then her eyes found a shadow that wasn’t quite natural. The curve of a back. Lying motionless in the ferns.
In SAR you not only learned skills, you also saved lives. Except not today.
Portland SAR might be looking for Bobby, Alexis realized, her stomach doing another tidal heave, but what she had found wasn’t Bobby at all.
Just one of the thousands of species at risk of going extinct, thanks mostly to human beings ruining the world.
A ligature mark.
Not with bare hands, the way Jack the Ripper was said to have killed his victims, but instead with something narrow slipped around her neck. The Boston Strangler had often used his victim’s own stockings, but this girl was dressed in jeans and a hoodie, not a dress.
Two of the nails were broken past the quick. The girl had tried to save herself. Tried and failed.
“I don’t think she’s been dead long. Not more than an hour or two. Rigor mortis would have set in.”
Maybe not quite human, but still alive. She had never seen a dead body before.
“We found her, but not Bobby.”
What was the point of doing anything at all if in the end you were just dead?
Dead Girl Found in Park.
It still seemed wrong to call herself a victim when there was a real one lying dead in the woods. But Alexis decided not to argue and changed
His hands held the power of life and death. Of breath and stillness. Of thought and nothingness.
Today he had taken another life.
He had to have her.
Death could come in so many forms.
And, most fascinating of all, you might be murdered.
And now Ruby had found a real murder victim. Had actually touched her. She had sat inside a patrol car and talked to a homicide detective. She had never felt more alive.
“In case you guys haven’t noticed, I’m not normal!”
If anything, it gave her a place where she finally fit.
Had been since she stopped taking her medication.
She resisted the urge to lean into her, to be comforted, to be a little girl again, crawling into her mother’s lap.
Maybe they were vampires. Or zombies, judging by their slow shambling.
Like magpies, they collected shiny, eye-catching things.
POD meant probability of detection.
“So the dead girl’s name was Miranda Wyatt, and she lived in the West Hills.”
organized serial killers will target people who willingly go with strangers, like prostitutes.
“A lot of serial killers are sociopaths. They’re born without empathy. They don’t understand that other people have feelings, too. It’s like they’re born broken. Most of the time they try to fit in, but if you’ve got something they want, you’re about as important to them as the paper wrapper a hamburger comes in.”
Photo after photo of Miranda looking wasted, hanging out with people who looked sketch, in places that looked trashed, with broken furniture and tagged walls.
Her name was Ruby McClure. Ruby. What a perfect name.
Nick Walker. Key witness in a murder investigation.
She had given him a present, without even meaning to. A wonderful surprise. Her death had showed him the gift of life. A gift which was within his power to give. Or to take away.
It was the guy they had seen running along the trail the day they found the dead girl.
Sure, it could have been any of them who had spotted George. But it had been him. It had been him. He imagined his father’s pride.
Because if the cops are wrong, then right now this guy is out looking for his next victim.”
It was like nearing the bottom of a dark staircase and not knowing if there was one more step.
SAR was the best thing that had ever happened to the girl.
Behind Ruby, the alarm began to beep faster and faster. But she didn’t hear it. Because suddenly the pieces of the puzzle came together.
“You kids need to stay away from my case.” It was Detective Harriman. And she was pretty sure he sounded angry.
“Everything okay?” She turned. It was Becker, his face creased with concern.
I had a feeling it was him
“You’re fine, Ruby.” He smiled down at her. “You’re just perfect.”
Why was it so familiar? And then it came to her. She had seen that same pattern in the shoe print left next to the body of Miranda Wyatt.
I had a feeling !!!!
Just as he had done with the other girls. Ruby would see, all right.
