Marrow

One moment, hope is an unfurling blue poppy with the promise of her open eyes…the next it’s snuffed out.

The monitor blares a grating alarm.

“She’s crashing. PEA rhythm. Start CPR,” the senior paramedic says.

My entire world fractures.

I’m on my feet and standing over her motionless body, staring down at her pale face as the paramedics begin chest compressions and bag-mask ventilation as Kyrie’s lungs spasm with the reflex of her dying inhalations.

I stop breathing. I want to tear my lungs out to kill the ache.

Every moment of CPR burns like a year in hell. It’s endless. Torturous. And it feels like the ambulance is hardly moving.

“ETA,” one of the paramedics shouts to the driver over the sirens and monitors and the aggressive honking of our ambulance.

“Ten minutes,” the driver replies. I hear his fist slam down on the wheel, another blare of the horn. “Congestion on the bridge. There’s just been an accident ahead. We’re down to one lane.”

“Can we turn back? Take another route?”

“No,” the driver says, his voice low. “We’re trapped.”

I catch the strained, dismayed glance between the paramedics as they continue CPR, checking the monitor for any signs of change. I hear the driver talking to dispatch, asking for police to help clear our path. And as I watch, helpless, fucking useless, I can feel her slipping away.

The ECG alarm changes. A steady beep sounds from the machine.

The line flattens across the screen.

The paramedics exchange another glance. One looks to the bag of blood before he shifts his gaze to the monitor. I know he must be weighing Kyrie’s chances for survival.

“ETA,” he barks again to the driver. We’ve barely moved.

“Police are on the way to open us up, but no change.”

The flat line races on, the extended beep of Kyrie’s absent pulse growing louder in my ears.

The rhythmic pumping of the bagged ventilation slows and stops. The chest compressions halt as the senior paramedic blows out a breath and hangs his head—and fury churns in my viscera.

I will not lose her.

No one dares to approach me as I lean over Kyrie, lowering myself close as the paramedic pulls the mask away from her face. I place a kiss to her cold lips. “It’s time to wake and come back to me, sleeping beauty,” I whisper.

My breath stalls in my lungs. The ache builds until all I crave is the fire of her touch.

I fold my hands over her sternum and start chest compressions.

“Sir… You can’t do that. Sir—”

He must see something deadly in the steely resolve of my gaze, because he physically recoils.

I stare down at her, desperate to see the vibrant blue of her beautiful eyes, her chest bowing beneath the force of my desire to bring her back to me. I hardly notice the ambulance gather momentum and weave through the opening traffic, my sole focus on Kyrie’s pale face.

There’s a crack beneath my palm, a rib or her sternum fracturing under pressure. Some kind of anguished sound fills the ambulance and it takes me a moment to realize it just passed from my lips.

I do not stop. I can’t.

Another snap of bone carves an indelible memory into my hand.

She’s so delicate. I’m breaking her. But I will do whatever it takes.

“I will shatter you to pieces if that’s what brings you back to me,” I grit out past the raw ache in my throat. “So you’d better fight me, elskede.”

The blaring beep stretches on. A fucking lifetime of agonizing torture. Until hope slowly unfurls once again.

An alarm blares from the machine.

“We’ve got a V-tach rhythm,” the senior paramedic says, unable to subdue the surprise in his voice. He moves to the defibrillator mounted on the interior wall and preps the paddles, the other paramedic scrambling to fit the mask over Kyrie’s face to start forcing air into her lungs. “She’s shockable.”

He moves me away with an elbow and presses the paddles to her chest. And then: “Clear.”

Kyrie’s body jerks with the shock. All eyes turn to the monitor.

The steady beat of her heart appears on the screen.

And mine beats for the very first fucking time.

The two paramedics take over, and in moments that feel as long as eternity, we pull into the hospital and lurch to a halt. The ambulance doors swing open and Kyrie is wheeled toward the emergency entrance as doctors and nurses rush to take over.

As I follow her into the cacophony of the emergency ward, it wasn’t just Kyrie who came back to life only moments ago. Watching the steady pulse of her heart across the screen, I feel the echo of each beat in my cells.

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TWENTY-FOUR

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OATH

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JACK

“The remains of Eric Hayes were recovered from the house,” Officer Chandler says. He flips a page on his report. “At least, from what could be recovered after the fire, the medical examiner listed cause of death as suicide. I would’ve preferred to get your expert opinion on the cause of death—” he peeks up from his desk “—but considering the circumstance, that would be…”

“Unethical,” I supply.

He offers a commiserating smile. “I was going to say uncomfortable, considering your relationship with the victim.”

I nod slowly. “I appreciate that.”

“Of course.” He closes the report. “I’m sorry that I had to drag you down here at all, Jack.”

“It’s no problem,” I assure the officer. “The worst is behind us.”

The local police department has a close relationship with the body farm program. I’ve given tours, trained a number of law enforcement on recognizing signs of a crime amid decomp, gender and age identification, and many other necessary aspects for the department.

“Your cooperation to give your account of events will help put this case to bed. Oh, and this.” He nods to the laptop on the desk, the one I confiscated from Hayes’s motel room—and uploaded the digital contents of a USB drive. “I’m sure the feds are eager to do a deep dive.”

The device has been bagged as evidence, and holds a plethora of incriminating evidence within to tie Hayes to the murders of Ryan Young and Sebastian Modeo, along with Hayes’s plan to pin the murders on Dr. Brad Thompson. There’s speculation around the two missing students, Mason Dumont and Colby Cameron, as two more potential victims. No bodily evidence has been discovered on them yet, however.

Once I return to Kyrie’s cabin, I’ll dispose of their remains properly to make sure no evidence is ever found.

There’s also plenty of proof of Hayes’s obsession with Dr. Kyrie Roth, highlighting his fixation on the sole survivor of the Silent Slayer.

“I don’t ever want to think one of our own could be capable of something so heinous,” the officer says. “Dammit, he was FBI. Unbelievable.”

I nod again, schooling my features into a somber expression.

The provided evidence tells a story of an obsessed special agent who suddenly snapped when he was terminated from the agency and became unhinged enough to start emulating the very serial killer he had been obsessively hunting, one he himself dubbed the Tri-City Phantom.

My account of events is rather straightforward. Kyrie had expressed her growing concern for Agent Hayes and her safety to me days before her abduction. Which is why she was staying at my home, and why when no one within the university department could get ahold of her by phone—after Kyrie had rescheduled a work meeting due to feeling poorly—my extreme concern prompted me to check on her, where I found the laptop, leading me to believe Hayes had been at my house.

I called the police, where I was told Dr. Roth could only be reported as a missing person after twenty-four hours. I then took it upon myself to search the files in Hayes’s computer that led me to his purchase of Kyrie’s family home.