“But I don’t want to get you or anyone else reprimanded for my choices, Agent Hernandez. I also really don’t want to go through Agent Alister for approval.” I expel a lengthy breath. “However, I don’t have a choice in the matter. So, go ahead and make the call to him.”

Saying Alister’s name and the word choice in the same sentence raises my blood pressure. Once I speak with Charles Crosby, I’ll deal with what happens next.

As the agent halts at a stop sign, he turns darkened eyes on me. “You’ll have no issue remaining on the case,” Hernandez assures me. “Alister is no longer in charge of the task force.”

“Agent, tell me what’s going on,” I demand.

The SUV lurches forward, and Hernandez says, “There’s another crime scene.”

Gravity falls away, leaving me suspended in a violent heartbeat.

“Take me there.”

Yellow crime-scene tape marks the perimeter of the park in central downtown. The small wooden bridge where Kallum kissed me and swore to never let me go stretches across a winding stream that feeds into a marshland creek. A band of caution tape wraps a gothic-style post clock positioned at the front of the urban square, and a Do Not Enter sign hangs below the clock face, designating the site as a crime scene.

The bright-green terrain of the park clashes with the dark energy buzzing in the air. For the first time in days, the sun peeks past storm clouds only to illuminate the macabre underbelly of this quaint town.

Agent Hernandez allows me to borrow his FBI lanyard to grant me access to the scene. At this point, neither one of us are concerned with protocol or being reprimanded for subverting procedure.

As we near the main attraction in the center of the common, my breath hitches at the chilling sight of a decapitated male victim strung between the trunks of two ancient and gnarled black willow trees, the head resting at the feet.

The trees themselves sit off to the right of the bridge near the stream. The willowy limbs have been swept aside to display the victim. I recognize the woven, webbed technique where the wrists have been secured.

A moth caught in a web.

Where’s the spider?

I stop a short distance away to take in the full grisly exhibition. Every horrific detail captured in replica to the Harbinger crime scenes, except for one gruesome deviation.

The skin and muscle of the victim’s face has been flayed away from the bone to reveal the skull. What remains is a gross and extreme depiction of the death’s-head hawkmoth.

I stare into the empty eye sockets of the skull, my heart tearing a wild path through my rib cage as Agent Hernandez moves in beside me.

“Who identified the body?” I ask, my voice unrecognizable to my own ears.

“Special Agent Rana,” Hernandez answers. “DNA testing still needs to be conducted for conclusive identification, but I’d say it’s pretty damn conclusive as of right now.” The agent averts his gaze, unable to stare at the mutilation for long. “His FBI badge was on his person, and a tribal band tattoo on his bicep was identified.”

I nod slowly, absorbing his words along with the gory scene. The standard black suit could be any black suit, but the pale-blue tie hung loosely around the sliced neck is the same one Alister wore yesterday. Only now it’s stained in blood.

“Agent Rana has been temporarily placed in charge of the task force,” Hernandez continues, nodding toward a woman with dark hair and suit near the scene. “I figured… I thought this would be a bit too much after everything you’ve gone through.”

“Don’t think for me,” I snap.

He bows his head and runs a hand over his mouth, nodding. “Yeah, you’re right.”

I fold my arms over my chest. “I didn’t mean it to come out that harshly.”

“This is a harsh situation,” he reasons.

Forensic techs swarm around Alister’s body, documenting the mutilation, cataloguing details. Out of habit, I search the scene, expecting to find Devyn. An ill feeling coats my stomach, and I blink several times to clear the lingering haze in my vision.

From this vantage point, I can make out a fracture to the bridge of the nasal bone on the victim’s skull. Alister’s skull, I internally correct myself. Where are the eyes, the flesh?

A sickness grips my insides at the thought this was a countermeasure to dispose of the scratch marks made by my fingernails.

I take a step in the direction of the body, and the agent captures my arm. “Wait. Take these,” he says, then slips a pair of latex gloves in my hand.

“Thanks.” I slide the gloves into place as I walk deliberately toward the man who attacked me only the night before. Every cell in my body vibrates, my teeth ache at the chill infecting my bones.

A vise-like grip twists my viscera as I reach the edge of the scene. I’m not sure what I’m looking for until my gaze lands on it, forcing me closer despite the blaring warning that rushes blood to my ears in a deafening roar.

With an aching breath trapped in my lungs, I stare, unblinking, at the deeply scored mark in the forehead of the skull. I recognize the alchemic symbol of a triangle within a circle.

The philosopher’s stone.

A heavy drumbeat rises up from the abyss of my mind to mute the chaos around me, and I can’t look away from the symbol. I can feel him so close. Beneath my skin, inside my marrow. His heated words whisper in my ear:

I’ll always be that man, Halen. The one who will spill blood for you.

Last night, as I wiped blood from his face—blood I now realize wasn’t his—I told Kallum I wanted Alister to pay, to suffer. I said I wanted him dead.

Kallum threatened to carve his initials in Alister’s bones if he ever touched me again.

And he made good on his vow.

Despite the scene being deliberately devised to imitate a serial killer, the philosopher’s stone might as well be Kallum’s fucking initials.

“He’s insane,” I whisper to myself. “He’s really, actually certifiably insane.”

A shock of awareness hits hard, my head sways with the effect. I brace my palm on the tree, and Hernandez helps guide me aside when Agent Rana orders him to remove me from the scene.

“Come on,” Hernandez says, urging me farther away. “I’ll take you to the hotel.”

“I’m fine,” I say, steeling my tone with conviction as I steady myself. I hold up a hand, then glance at the bridge. “Has the medical examiner identified the time of death?”

“Halen, we can look into that information later.”

“I need this now,” I tell him, desperation leaking into my resolve.

Hernandez huffs an impatient breath. “No definitive TOD yet, no,” he confirms. “Here’s all we know. Surveillance at the police station was wiped. Assumption is that Childs, or an accomplice like another Landry, did so to cover their tracks after taking the incriminating evidence. The knife in the lab was taken. Possibly right before you were abducted by Childs.”

Me. I’m the accomplice.

“Theory is right now that Alister got in the way. He was the only one at the department…while all units were out…”

“Looking for me,” I say, filling in the pause.

“And Childs,” he says. “This is the job, Halen. We all know the risk. But working theory is that the Harbinger and Childs are in on this together, that either of them could’ve done this.” He nods toward the body, disgust evident in his hard features.

“That’s absurd,” I hear myself say.

He releases a sardonic laugh. “Absurd fits this town well. There’s no footage of Alister leaving the department,” Hernandez says, and a micro-flash of uncertainty registers on his face before he conceals his expression. “Right now, all the footage around town is being pulled to comb through, to look for this fucking Harbinger psycho.”