“Of course,” I nod my thanks and walk past, not looking back.
I know this building like the back of my hand. Knew it even before they let me ghost in and out for crime scene consults. The labs are toward the back—sterile, humming with cold white light and the sound of machines too old to trust but too expensive to replace. Regardless, that doesn’t hinder me from my job.
I don the gloves waiting at the prep station and approach the workstation marked “ACTIVE — CASE 4087.” Serial killer. North Dallas.
She slips in and out of crime scenes without leaving a trace. No fingerprints. No DNA. No hair, skin cells, sweat—nothing. They call her Lace, named after the only clue that ever suggested she might be a woman: a single leather lace shooting glove found discarded miles from the nearest victim.
She must have been meticulous—wiping down everything, maybe even wearing a full barrier suit under street clothes. Not one usable print. Not even a partial. You’d think she was a ghost. If it weren’t for the fact that she gunned down most of the Cartel like it was nothing.
I’m almost impressed.
I slide open the lead tech’s notes and sigh at the fucking mess of scribbles.Sloppy.Barely legible. Basically unusable. What a waste.
What I need ispattern.
Something in Lace’s movements, her method, her rhythm. Anything that tells me where she’ll go next—and more importantly, how I canaimher. Because that’s the plan: get Lace to kill Marcus.
It was a no brainer after I cleared my head on mile two of my morning jog. She’s already carving her way through the Cartel. Wouldn’t take much to pivot her toward the Raiders. Different syndicate, same rot. Same brutality. Same killer. No one would bat an eye.
I spend the next forty-five minutes combing through kill patterns. Locations. Time stamps. Ballistics. Calling cards. Eyewitness statements that don’t line up. Detective suspicions that go ignored.
She’s methodical, sure—but there’s emotion here. Rage. Each hit is deliberate, but the spacing between them? That’s not tactical. That’spersonal, and when things are personal, they get messy.
I scan over a single entry buried in a chain of supplemental DNA reports. A degraded sample pulled from under the fingernail of a cartel enforcer who bled out behind a club off Harry Hines.
It wasn’t enough to build a full profile. But that’s not the part that makes me lean in.
The real prize is buried deeper in the genome breakdown.
A corrupted blood trace, tagged and half-ignored—lifted from none other than Xavier King’s Raider vest.
I double-check the chain of custody. Same crime scene. Same night.
My mouth tightens.
I grab the vial from the evidence filing tray and slide it into my inside jacket pocket like it’s nothing.
Because Xavier King doesn’t just knowofLace.
He knowswhoshe is.
And now, all I have to do is make that connection worth my while.
16
BROOKE
I haven’t been scaredfor a date in years.
Well—technically not since junior prom, when rumors started floating around that Ryan Doogley was going to ditch me for Tinsey Williams. That disaster only got avoided because I showed up with Timothy Keiths instead.TheTimothy Keiths—hottest guy in all of fucking Austin, my go-to revenge ammunition back then and my very cooperative beard now.
He’s been helping me hide my sexuality from my God-fearing parents since senior year of high school, and he’s always down to play the part—charming smile, hand on the small of my back, the whole Southern gentleman act.
Which only made it worse for Ryan when Timothy went pro our freshman year of college and Ryan… yeah, he’s still riding the bench, pretending JV glory means something past seventeen.
But that—that was the last time I felt nervous about a date.
Because with guys? I’ve always known I could do better.
