So Hollow (A Faith Bold FBI Suspense Thriller—Book Seventeen) by Blake Pierce

Author:Blake Pierce [Pierce, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2024-09-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Faith leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. Her second cup of coffee sat empty on the desk next to her. Michael’s fourth had been finished hours ago, but he’d refused to drink more lest his heart give out. At his age, heart problems from excess caffeine and lack of sleep were a legitimate concern.

Yes, because he’s so much older than you.

Michael was forty-one, and Faith was thirty-four. Younger, but hardly young.

Her thoughts were wandering. She stood and poured herself a third cup of coffee from the fresh pot on the counter. “You want some more?” she asked Michael.

He shook his head. "No, thank you." Then, a second later, "What the hell. Sure, I'll take another. Wouldn't be the worst way to go."

Faith poured him a cup too and returned to the table. Turk slept peacefully in between their mattresses.

“Must be nice,” she grumbled.

“What?” Michael asked.

“To be a dog.”

“Ah. Yeah, it looks pretty damned sweet, I won’t lie.”

They had spent the night going over the new evidence they’d found and comparing it with what they knew already. The police were still analyzing the footprints, but the agents had ballparked that the killer would be between five-five and five-seven and between one hundred twenty and one hundred fifty pounds. The shoe prints weren’t clear enough to tell them if it was a woman or a man, so they still didn’t know that, but they had at least the beginning of a picture of the killer’s physical appearance.

Michael had gone a step further, theorizing that the killer had to be athletic because he had gone from a standstill to a sprint within a few strides, something that was difficult if you weren’t in peak physical condition.

But those height and weight ranges put the killer dead average for a woman and only slightly below average for men. The athleticism was above average, but not so much that they could limit their pool of suspects to, say, professional athletes.

Looking at the crime scene hadn’t yielded anything more useful than the footprints either. They seemed to disappear when they were off the path. Maybe because of the layer of leaf litter, or maybe because the shoes had no tread to make marks in the dirt. Whatever the reason, the footprints seemed to materialize on the path, then disappear when they left the path.

“We know the killer didn’t drive there,” Michael said out of nowhere.

Faith looked at him. “What’s that?”

“He didn’t drive there.” He straightened, excited to have finally found another thread to pull. “The footprints go in the same direction from arrival to departure. He comes out of the trees ten yards behind her, catches her, kills her, stages her, then continues the same direction before crossing back into the trees nine yards from the body.”

“He could have doubled back once he reached the trees,” Faith pointed out.

“Yes, but the library security cameras show that there were no cars in the lot when Lorraine Hayes left, and still no cars when she was killed.

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