Page 49 of In Her Path

Jenna held her breath waiting for whatever was about to happen.

Piper was quiet for a long moment. The office hummed faintly with the sound of the building’s ventilation. Outside the window, the street noise of a Wednesday morning in Trentville went on without them.

Then Piper said, softly and clearly: “You’ll find it filed under T.”

The words were delivered with the same flat certainty that Jenna had come to recognize—not a guess, not a suggestion, but a transmission. She turned immediately.

The filing cabinet stood against the near wall, a four-drawer metal unit in institutional gray. The drawers were labeled in the neat hand of whoever had organized this office—A-F, G-L, M-R, S-T.

Jenna moved to it and pulled the bottom drawer open. S-T.

Hanging files lined the drawer in orderly rows, each one tabbed and labeled. Town Budget Amendments. Sewer Infrastructure. Tourism Initiatives. And near the back, set apart from the folders, was a wooden box. Roughly the size of a shoebox but shallower, its lid fitted snugly over the sides. It had no label.

Jenna put on protective gloves and lifted the box out. It was heavier than it looked. She set it on top of a lower cabinet and looked at Frank, who had moved to stand beside her. Jake and Piper had both drifted closer.

Jenna lifted the lid.

A scalpel lay on one side of the box, clean—or cleaned—and surgical in its sharpness. On the other side, wrapped in a clear zip-lock bag, were two pieces of human tissue. It took Jenna’s brain one full second to resolve what she was seeing. Soft, pale, irregular. Two of them. Excised at the root with the kind of cleanness that spoke of knowledge, not improvisation.

She felt the air leave her lungs in a slow, controlled release. Beside her, she heard Frank make a low sound—not a word, just the involuntary response of a man who had seen a great deal and was still capable of being shaken.

Jake said nothing at all. Piper had stopped moving. Her face was still.

Jenna stared at the contents of the box. Curtis Paige, found dead without his tongue. Diane Holt, murdered in the same manner. And here, in a filing cabinet in the Mayor’s office, behind the orderly architecture of municipal paperwork …

“T is for tongues,” Jenna said, her voice hoarse with shock.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Jenna stared at the things in the box, her mind refusing to process what her eyes were telling her. The two pale, soft shapes lay in the clear bag like grotesque treasures—evidence of a depravity that turned her stomach. These weren’t just pieces of tissue; they were someone’s voice, someone’s capacity for speech, torn from them by hands that had known exactly what they were doing.

“My God,” Jake whispered behind her. He’d already pulled out his phone and was photographing the box from different angles, documenting everything.

Frank stepped closer, his face drawn tight with concern. “Jenna, this changes things. We need to bring in the Highway Patrol right away. We need their forensics team for both this scene and the Holts’ place.” He paused, his voice dropping. “And we need an APB for the Mayor. Statewide.”

Jenna forced herself to look away from the box. Her gaze landed on Piper, who’d gone completely still. Her sister’s face had drained of color, eyes fixed on the box with an expression that was neither shock nor disgust, but something more complex—a recognition, as if she’d seen this coming but hadn’t fully believed it until now.

“I need to sit down,” Piper said softly.

She turned and walked out of the office on unsteady legs. Jenna watched her sit down at Meredith Soll’s desk.

Then Jenna remembered. “Frank, Meredith Soll was here when I arrived. She had to let us into the Mayor’s office because the door was locked. Meredith left a few minutes ago. She was upset—said she thought she was going to be sick.” She glanced at the empty doorway. “She was shocked when she saw the ice pick. And when I told her about Diane...”

“We need to talk to her again,” Frank said. “I’ll go find her. You handle things here.” He gave Piper a comforting pat on the shoulder on his way out.

Jenna turned to Jake, who was still documenting the evidence, and took out her cellphone. “Frank’s right. We need to talk to Colonel Spelling. Right now. I’ll put it on speaker.”

The call connected quickly. “Colonel Spelling.”

“Colonel, it’s Sheriff Graves and Deputy Hawkins.” Jenna kept her voice level. “We’re at City Hall in Trentville.”

“Sheriff.” Spelling’s tone was clipped, efficient. “I’ve been briefed on that situation. Curtis Paige, murdered the night before last. And I just got word about Diane Holt.”

“Yes, sir. But there are new developments. We’ve confirmed the method of death is identical for both victims. But we’ve found something else.”

She laid it out for him—the ice pick on the Mayor’s desk, the grainy security footage of a woman in the Mayor’s clothes at both crime scenes, and finally, the box in the filing cabinet with its grotesque contents.

“The tongues?” Spelling’s voice had changed, a note of disbelief edging in. “You’re certain they’re human?”