Page 37 of In Her Path

She stood up and moved away from them, down the hallway that led deeper into the house. The hallway opened into a kitchen that was neat but dated—appliances from the early 2000s, countertops worn at the edges. Jenna paused, listening. The house remained silent, but that sense of wrongness had intensified.

A light was on in the hallway beyond the kitchen—an overhead fixture casting a yellow glow over the hardwood floor. Jenna followed it, her footsteps seeming unnaturally loud in the quiet. The hall ended at a closed door. She put on protective gloves, then paused, suddenly reluctant to confirm what she already knew.

Jenna turned the knob and pushed the door open.

The room beyond was an office—a small, orderly space with a desk by the window and bookshelves lining one wall. And on the floor lay Diane Holt, her reading glasses a few feet away, where they had skittered across the hardwood. Her eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling with the particular blankness of the dead.

Jenna stepped forward carefully. She didn’t actually need to check for a pulse. Even if the dead woman hadn’t already visited her, the body’s position—unnaturally still, limbs at awkward angles, the copious amount of blood—told her everything. But procedure demanded confirmation. She crouched beside Diane, pressing two fingers to the woman’s throat where the carotid artery should pulse. The skin was cool beneath her touch, yielding no response.

She leaned close and peered beneath the neck at the base of Diane’s skull. Even without turning the body, she could tell there was a wound. She felt sure that it would be a small, neat puncture made by a thin point, like the one that had killed Curtis Paige. Diane’s mouth was open in what might have been surprise, and her tongue was gone, removed with the same precision that had been used on the councilman.

Of course, Jenna had already known. She had known when she’d woken in the early hours, heart hammering, the dream still vivid behind her eyes. She had known when she’d grabbed her phone and called Jake, when they’d driven through the empty streets of pre-dawn Trentville. She had known, and she had come anyway, hoping to find some clue to why this had happened.

Jenna sank back on her heels, her hand falling away from Diane’s throat. The woman had been dead for some time—the body cool, the blood long since dried to a dark rust on the hardwood. She reached for her radio to call it in. The investigation would begin now. They would determine time of death with greater precision. They would look for evidence, for motives, for connections to Curtis Paige’s killing.

But none of it would bring Diane Holt back. None of it would change the fact that Jenna’s dreams never came in time to make a difference. She sat for a moment in the quiet of the office, looking at what remained of Diane Holt. The woman had been difficult, ambitious, sometimes cruel in her pursuit of what she believed was right. But she hadn’t deserved this—to die alone in the dark, tongue cut from her mouth as a final silencing.

“Who did this to you?” Jenna asked the empty room. “And why?”

But the dead woman had no answers to give. Not yet, at least. Perhaps in Jenna’s next dream, Diane would come to her again, would show her what had happened in those final moments. But for now, there was only the body, the blood, and the certainty that the two identical deaths showed they were dealing with something far more calculated than a crime of passion.

Jenna rose to her feet, moving carefully to avoid disturbing anything that might later prove to be evidence. She needed to get back to Jake, to tell him what she’d found. They needed to secure the scene, to begin the process of understanding what had happened here and how it connected to the first murder.

Meanwhile, her gaze fell on a framed photograph on Diane’s desk—the councilwoman standing beside Curtis Paige at what appeared to be some official function, both of them smiling for the camera with the particular fixed quality of political allies. They had died the same way, surely killed by the same person. Some connection between them would be the key to understanding why.

“I will find out who did this,” she promised Diane Holt quietly.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Morning light streamed through the windows of the room where Diane Holt lay dead, illuminating the scene with a sunshiny cheerfulness that made Jenna’s stomach turn. It looked like this had once been a pleasant place to work, with a wide desk and nice leather chair. Other than the grotesque scene on the floor, the office appeared undisturbed, computer still on. When Jenna touched the space bar with her gloved hand, the screen came to life with a spreadsheet full of numbers on the screen.

Now there were phone calls to make, to get the right people here before evidence could be lost or contaminated. But first she had to tell Jake what she’d found. When she headed back through the hallway, Jenna heard the low murmur of his voice from the front hall.

She found Jake and Gerald where she’d left them. Gerald’s robe was pulled tight around his thin frame, his gaze fixed on the floor. Jake looked up at Jenna’s approach, a question in his eyes.

“It’s the same,” she said softly, and saw her distress reflected in his eyes. “I’ll make the phone calls now. ”

She looked at Gerald and asked Jake, “Anything new here?”

“He hasn’t said anything else,” Jake replied quietly. “Just keeps staring at the floor. I tried asking about when he last saw Diane, but he just sort of fades out.”

Jenna stepped away into the living room, took a deep breath, and pulled out her phone.

Her first call was to dispatch. The voice that answered sounded half-asleep, startled at being summoned by the sheriff herself.

“I need two officers at 127 Maple Street right away,” Jenna said, keeping her voice level. “We have a suspicious death. House needs to be secured and the scene preserved. No one in or out except authorized personnel.”

She waited for the dispatcher to repeat the address and assignment, then hung up and made her second call. Dr. Stark, the coroner, answered on the third ring.

“Melissa, it’s Jenna. I need you at 127 Maple Street with your team. We’ve got another one.”

There was a pause on the line. “Another what?” Dr. Stark asked, though Jenna could hear the moment when understanding dawned in her voice. “Not like—“

“Just like Curtis Paige,” Jenna confirmed. “Same signature. Same precision.”

“Damn it.” The coroner’s voice was flat. “Time of death?”

“I’ll leave that for you to figure out,” Jenna glanced back at Diane’s still form. “But my best guess is fairly recently. Looks like a puncture at the base of the skull.”