The Secret Weapon by Rachel Bowdler

Author:Rachel Bowdler [Rachel Bowdler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rachel Bowdler
Published: 2022-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

Ten

“I need you to email through pictures of the Lipstick Killer’s previous victims after they were murdered,” Jade ordered through the phone the moment they stepped into the hotel room. She hadn’t acknowledged Anderson since the party, though he seemed to at least be capable of walking in a straight line now as he followed her in.

“Why?” Ford questioned, and she could practically hear his lips purse with skepticism.

“I think I found something tonight.” She unearthed her laptop from her luggage and punched in the password, collapsing onto the velvet couch. In her periphery, she noticed Anderson slipping his shoes off with deliberate slowness. “Thierry Devereux, one of the festival’s directors, was thrown overboard from the top deck. He must have already been dead or at least unconscious, because he didn’t resurface. I think it was the Lipstick Killer.”

“It’s not their style,” Patrick argued, and Jade gritted her teeth. His contradiction was becoming an instant reflex, and she was growing tired of it. “The other victims were stabbed or shot.”

“Well, the other victims weren’t murdered on a yacht.” She opened the inbox of her emails. Nothing waited but a few general updates in the case. “They left behind a polaroid of Devereux engaging with a minor, marked with their signature.”

Jade pulled the evidence from her purse and placed it on the coffee table, using her phone to take a picture to send to Patrick. The couch cushions dipped beside her as Anderson sat, frowning down at the defaced photograph as he loosened his tie.

“You should have it in a minute. Are you sending the pictures?”

“Give me a sec.” Across the line, she heard the clicking of the keyboard and then a pause. “It does look like the Lipstick Killer’s work. Could be a copycat, though. What does it have to do with the other victims?”

The email pinged through a moment later. Jade wasted no time in opening the attachments, her focus falling straight to Hugo Dean’s left hand. There, on his middle finger, a silver signet ring rested. She didn’t have to zoom in to know what would be etched onto it. She went to the next, releasing a breath that had been stuck in her chest all night when she examined Edward Phillip’s hand. The same ring on the same finger. Christopher Quentin’s, too. And with that signet glaring through the screen at her, she remembered where else she had seen it: at the poker game, on the hand of the anonymous player who had colluded with Jackson Wilder.

“It’s the ring,” she said aloud. “All of the Lipstick Killer’s victims wore the same ring. Devereux had it, too. It has the Dawn’s emblem on it, the same one on the card.”

Patrick swore as though cursing himself for not being the first to realise it. A whisper of self-satisfaction passed over her. “How did we miss that?”

“We weren’t looking for the Dawn then. We were looking for a serial killer.”

“So the Lipstick Killer is murdering members of Dawn.”

“Not just members,” Jade said.

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