Broken Path by Laura Rise

Author:Laura Rise [Rise, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Laura Rise
Published: 2024-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The moment Ivy stepped through the door of Brookside's law enforcement headquarters, the air buzzed with a tense energy that mirrored her own determination. Sheriff Bennett was hunched over a table laden with evidence, his brow creased in concentration. Beside him, forensics experts pored over a cryptic note, its letters jagged like the shards of Ivy's fractured past. A bird whistle lay innocently beside it, but Ivy knew better than to trust its benign appearance.

"Pane, O'Rourke," Bennett beckoned. "Take a look at this."

Ivy leaned in, the muscles in her neck taut as bowstrings. The note read like a taunt from a ghost. It gnawed at her insides, that familiar feeling of loss and desperation clawing its way up her throat.

Can you hear her cries, muffled by the ignorance of your kind? Those who wander without reverence will find themselves lost in ways they cannot fathom.

"Another bird whistle," Ivy muttered, picking up the object with latex-covered fingers. Her eyes traced the meticulous carvings on its surface, identical to those found with the previous victims. Animals – predators and prey alike. It was as though the killer wanted them to see the world through their twisted lens, where humans were merely another animal caught in the traps of a more cunning creature.

"Seems our killer is fond of leaving us breadcrumbs," Sean observed, his tone steady despite the undercurrent of urgency that tingled in the air.

"Or mocking us," Ivy countered, her gaze not leaving the whistle. She pictured the victims, how they must have felt in their final moments – the terror, the pain, the desperate struggle against the inevitable. She wouldn't let their cries go unanswered. Each carving was a piece of the puzzle, a clue left by a murderer who thrived in nature's unforgiving embrace.

"Any ideas?" Bennett asked, looking to Ivy for the kind of insight that had become her trademark.

"Still working on it," she replied, her voice low, barely above a whisper.

Amidst the theories and speculations flying around the room, Ivy's mind raced. Each whisper of conversation, every brush of paper, seemed inconsequential compared to the silent dialogue she held with the carved artifact in her hand. She didn't just study the bird whistle; she sought to understand it, to crawl into the mind of the one who had crafted it with such care yet used it to herald death.

The carvings were intricate – a hawk in flight here, a steadfast bear there, each of them bordered by the thin lines of squares with rounded edges. Nature immortalized in wood, symbols of a predator's skill and a reminder of the primal forces at play in the old forests surrounding Brookside. What twisted respect for life and death drove the killer to choose these specific animals? Was it admiration, or something darker – a mimicry of their lethal grace?

"Sean," Ivy murmured, her eyes not leaving the bird whistle as she turned it over in her hands. "These animals...they're all native to Shenandoah. This isn't just some random artifact; it's a statement.

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