Page 2 of Ice Covered Heart

The mud tried to drag his feet down and…

He almost tripped on the body. Jonah whipped back just in time. He grabbed for his flashlight with his left hand—he should have gotten the flashlight out sooner, rookie mistake—and his right hand remained tight on his gun. He shone the flashlight down on the body. Thinking maybe it was another victim, another woman who’d been slashed and left to die. But a woman wasn’t on the rain-soaked ground.

A man. All in black. On his back. With a knife in his chest.

Jonah’s breath shuddered out.

“Jonah!” Harvey’s roar. Close by. “Wait for me, wait for—” Harvey staggered to a stop beside him. Looked down at the man.

Jonah’s light was on the guy’s face. The man appeared to be around his own age, twenty-two. Wet hair. Closed eyes. Tan skin. And⁠—

The guy’s eyes flew open. “Help me!” Blood slid from his mouth.

Harvey immediately dropped to his knees beside the man. Harvey grabbed his radio and called for more backup. He tried to stop the blood flow near that knife.

But Jonah just stared down at the man. The guy’s wild eyes tried to find him, but Jonah knew his flashlight would blind him. He wouldn’t be able to see past the light.

Jonah kept that light shining even as unease filled him.

This man…

Jonah’s light swept down the guy’s body and to the right. He realized that there was something in the man’s hand. Looked like…part of a nightgown. A white nightgown. A white nightgown gripped in fingers covered by a black glove.

Black clothes. Black glove.

“Got another victim!” Harvey was saying into his radio. Then, to the injured man, “Son, you’re gonna be all right. Stay with me, understand? Stay. With. Me.”

Jonah shook his head. He wasn’t so sure they were staring at a victim. “Uh, sir⁠—”

The man yanked the knife from his own chest. He drove it at Harvey. A fast, brutal move. Harvey didn’t even have a chance to cry out. The knife sank into his stomach, and then the cop was on the ground, and Jonah was stumbling back as fear burst inside of his heart.

“Stop!” Jonah yelled. “Drop the weapon! Stop!” He didn’t want to shoot. He’d never fired his gun at a perp before.

Harvey was groaning, gurgling, and⁠—

Jonah slipped in the mud. In the stupid, freaking mud. He went down hard and landed on his back, and the gun flew from his fingers. The man with the knife lunged over him, preparing to plunge it into Jonah’s chest.

He’s not a victim. Not a victim at all. This is the perp. He did it. He killed those women.

My first big case, and he’s going to kill me. He’s going to⁠—

Gunfire blasted. It caught the man in the shoulder. Another hit slammed into his side, and the perp fell back, body twitching and blood spattering.

Jonah shoved up and automatically glanced back to see who’d just fired and saved his life. He still gripped the flashlight—he’d kept the damn flashlight but not his gun—and the light landed on the person who’d just saved him. Only it wasn’t a cop. A cop hadn’t just saved his ass. The woman in the bloody gown had saved him. She’d fired. An EMT stood steps behind her, seemingly frozen. The woman in the gown gripped a gun and didn’t even blink. Shit, it was his gun. The damn gun he’d just lost.

Jonah’s breath shuddered in and out.

In and out.

Harvey gurgled.

Dammit. Jonah lurched for Harvey. Slapped his hands on the man’s stomach and had blood pouring through his fingers. “Give me some help!”

The EMT dropped beside him.

“He killed my friends.” Her voice held no emotion. Seemed soft. Broken. She shuffled closer to the man she’d just shot. “So now I have to kill him.”

Uh, oh. Jonah’s head snapped toward her.