Silent Night Shadows. Sarah Varland

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СКАЧАТЬ looked out the shattered back window again. Still nothing from there. It didn’t appear that the shooter was coming back, which was logical. He’d finished the job.

      Nate shook his head, moved his eyes quickly over Jenni’s body as he looked back toward the front of the apartment. The police should be here any moment.

      “Police!” an authoritative voice announced, followed by the sound of people coming inside. Nate couldn’t see them yet, but he judged by the footsteps that there were several of them.

      He recognized the police chief—his presence at a crime scene might have been unusual in a city, but it wasn’t as surprising in a small town that probably didn’t even see a murder every year.

      “Agent Torres.” The chief nodded like he wasn’t surprised Nate had been the one to make the call. Nate liked the chief well enough, had had coffee with him when he first got to town to read him in on the GBI’s case. When he’d worked deep cover in the past, that kind of cooperation with law enforcement hadn’t been possible, but since this cover was less about embedding with drug runners and more about blending in to the background in Treasure Point long enough to get the evidence his team needed, Nate and his boss back in Atlanta had decided that working with the police department was better than not.

      “Chief.”

      “I’m sorry it took us a couple of extra minutes to get here. I needed to listen to what happened to our town’s coffee shop owner earlier this evening.” He surveyed Nate, then caught his gaze and wouldn’t let it go. “Would you know anything about that?”

      “I might, sir.”

      “We’ll talk more about that later.” The chief moved toward Jenni’s body, which one of the officers with him was photographing. “How did you know Jenni?”

      Nate might have read the police department in on why he was in town, but he hadn’t told them about Jenni. It was too risky to discuss it, since confidential informants all too often ended up dead. “She was my CI.”

      “Makes sense.”

      “She was helping me get more intel on my case. She knew some people with loose ties to the organization,” Nate finished.

      The chief nodded. “I’m sorry this happened.”

      “Me, too.”

      Nate turned to the door when he heard more footsteps.

      It was a woman dressed in dark coveralls. “No one better have touched my crime scene.”

      “About time,” the chief said to the woman. She raised her eyebrows, didn’t back down in the face of the chief’s bravado at all.

      “I got caught behind the train.” She seemed to take in the room, all the people working. Then her eyes landed on Nate. “I’m Shiloh Cole, crime scene investigator. Did you find the body?”

      “Yes, I did. Nate Torres.” He lowered his voice. “GBI, but I’m keeping that quiet.”

      “Good to meet you.” She looked over at Jenni. “And this is?”

      “Jenni was my CI. I’m afraid she got too close to some answers I needed about how the drug smuggling ring I’m tracking is transporting their merchandise, and who their supplier is. Either that or they found out she was feeding me information about them in general.

      “Could be either.”

      Shiloh had a notepad out and was sketching the layout of the crime scene, including approximate distances. Then, starting at one side of the room, she started giving orders, having men bag up things she thought might be evidence, and getting out a crime scene kit herself. She dusted for fingerprints—high-traffic areas especially, but also a few places she could get good prints in general.

      As she worked the rest of the crime scene in silence, Nate’s respect for her grew. He hadn’t been sure what to expect from a small-town crime scene investigator, but she was good at this.

      He appreciated being allowed to stay, even if they were keeping what they found quiet, not showing him much. Ideally he’d find out more tomorrow. For now he kept his hands in his pockets and tried not to get in the way at all while he thought about the horrible turn this day had taken. Jenni’s death was tragic, but the fact that she was killed on the same night Claire Phillips was attacked couldn’t possibly be a coincidence—and it might mean he was closer to a breakthrough on this case than he had realized. Interested parties had most likely noticed his presence in Treasure Point, and it was making someone very nervous. Maybe this meant he was close to seeing the fruits of almost eighteen months focusing on the same case with hardly any break.

      Tomorrow he’d go to Claire Phillips’s coffee shop. First he’d make sure she was okay after the attack. She’d seemed like it, but his mind kept replaying how pale her face was, how wide her eyes were.

      And then he’d try to figure out what the connection was between the attack against Claire and Jenni’s death. Because he wasn’t letting another woman die on his watch.

       THREE

      It wasn’t too late when Matt dropped her off, so Claire locked the door behind herself as she’d promised to and fixed herself some dinner. If someone had asked, she wouldn’t have said she was hungry, but apparently the experience earlier that evening hadn’t robbed her of her appetite. It had done the opposite—she ate like she hadn’t eaten all day.

      After eating dinner, Claire cleaned up. Not just her kitchen, but the entire apartment. She fielded two more calls from Gemma since their phone conversation in the car, but Claire kept those talks pretty short. She just told her sister to listen to Matt, who had agreed with the chief that the attack was likely random.

      At ten o’clock, Claire still believed that the police officers were right, that she was safe now. But she wasn’t having any success convincing herself to become tired. Every time she so much as looked toward the bedroom, she knew there was no way sleep was coming, not anytime soon. So Claire did what she always did when some aspect of her life overwhelmed her and needed sorting out somehow.

      She pulled out her box of painting supplies, dug through until she came up with the watercolors. This was her preferred medium, especially when reality felt a little too harsh and needed the edges blurred slightly, the best light put on it. Tonight was a watercolor night if she’d ever seen one.

      On a sheet of watercolor paper, she started to paint from a photo she’d taken of the marsh earlier in the week. As she did, she thought about what had happened tonight.

      She’d been attacked. She let her mind wrap itself around that as she worked on blending just the right shade for the salt water in the marsh creek she was painting in the corner of the paper. She’d been attacked, but she didn’t know why. Someone had rescued her, but while he looked familiar, she didn’t know who he was. Not long after her attack, another woman in Treasure Point had been killed.

      Claire was starting to question her decision to spend the night alone in her apartment. She knew Gemma or Matt would come get her if she asked, but was it really necessary? Murder in town or not, her random attacker wouldn’t follow up, wouldn’t track her down to her home.

      Right?

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