Page 83 of Whispers in the Night

Harper remembered meeting him yesterday at the farmers market. Mid-thirties, brown hair, average build. Nothing remarkable. She’d catalogued his features automatically and dismissed them just as quickly.

“What about Sutton?” she asked Silas. “You know him at all?”

“Dale? Not really. He’s patrol, keeps to himself mostly. Why?”

“Just being thorough.” Harper made a note to dig deeper into Sutton’s background, but she didn’t want to voice her suspicion without more to go on. Hunches could be dangerous in investigations like this.

Her phone rang. Captain Holloway.

“We’ve got another body,” he said without preamble. “Industrial park on the east side. Same MO.”

The bottom dropped out of Harper’s stomach. Another victim. While they’d been sleeping peacefully, wrapped in eachother’s arms and feeling hope for the first time in weeks, a woman had been dying.

“We’re on our way,” Harper said, already grabbing her jacket. Silas didn’t even ask. Just followed her lead with the same grim expression.

The drive to the industrial park took twenty minutes. Harper stared out the window, guilt churning in her gut. She’d let herself be happy. She’d allowed herself a moment of peace, of connection, of normalcy. And while she was doing that, a killer had been at work.

“Don’t,” Silas said quietly.

“Don’t what?”

“Blame yourself for taking a few hours to be human. We needed that rest. Needed that connection.” His hand found hers briefly. “You being miserable and exhausted wouldn’t have prevented this.”

Harper knew he was right, logically. But emotionally, the guilt was already wrapping around her chest, squeezing tight.

The industrial park was exactly what it sounded like—a sprawl of warehouses and manufacturing facilities, mostly abandoned now as businesses had moved or gone under. The crime scene was in an empty warehouse, surrounded by crime scene tape and emergency vehicles.

Dr. Reynolds looked up as Harper and Silas approached and said with her usual familiarity, “Agent Sinclair. Detective Kane.”

“What can you tell us?” Harper asked, forcing herself to look at the victim professionally, cataloguing details instead of seeing a person.

Female, mid-twenties, brunette, petite—as expected. Positioned against a support beam, arms crossed over her chest like Rachel Kim had been. Symbols carved into her skin with precision—the same interlocking circles and geometric patterns.Time of death appeared to be recent, maybe eight to ten hours ago.

While they’d been sleeping. While Harper had been feeling happy.

“Cause of death appears to be the same—single deep incision to the carotid artery, exsanguination,” Reynolds said. “Post-mortem carving, same symbols we’ve seen before. Positioning is consistent with the last victim—hands crossed, ritualistic arrangement.”

“Do we have an ID?” Silas asked.

“Purse was left at the scene. Driver’s license says Amanda Crawford, 27, lives in the Westside Apartments. Works as a marketing coordinator for a tech startup downtown.”

Amanda Crawford. Another name. Another life cut short.

Harper moved closer to study the symbols. They were identical to the previous victims, carved with the same precision and care. But there was something else—on the left shoulder, that same triangular symbol they’d seen on Sarah Williams and Rachel Kim.

“The triangle mark again,” Harper said. “That’s three victims now with this additional symbol. What does it mean?”

“Maybe it marks something significant to him,” Silas suggested. “Special victims somehow.”

Harper pulled up photos of the three victims with the triangle mark on her phone: Sarah Williams from Portland, Rachel Kim from Blackridge, and now Amanda Crawford. She studied their faces, looking for some connection beyond physical appearance.

All brunette, all petite, all in their twenties. But what made them special? Why mark these three differently?

“We need to find the connection,” Harper said. “What links these three women specifically.”

They spent two hours processing the scene, photographing evidence, searching for anything the killer might have left behind. As with the previous scenes, he’d been meticulous. No obvious physical evidence except the fibers they now knew came from law enforcement uniforms.

By the time they returned to the station, it was after two p.m. Harper felt hollowed out, the peace of the morning completely evaporated. Six victims now. Six women dead in two weeks. And they were no closer to stopping him.