“I’m closer,” I answered. “I can turn around and be back in under an hour. Tell him to meet me there. You have my location tracked, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered hesitantly. “But you should wait for Grey before doing anything.”

“I can’t,” I answered. “Not when it comes to her.”

I hung up and quickly dialed Len’s number. Over and over, it went to voicemail.

“Come on, Len. Pick up the phone,” I prayed.

Still nothing. Her voicemail message played each time I called, and my stomach started to sink further every time I heard it.

The car wasn’t moving fast enough.

I needed to get back to Lenny. I tried not to let myself think about what her not answering meant. The killer had to have made a move the moment we left town, but that didn’t mean Len was harmed.

I played every piece of evidence in my head.

The killer was obsessed with Len. Everything they’d done was to hold her attention. Someone saw a piece of themselves in her and spared her.

A sinking feeling grew inside me, a new unsub coming to mind.

The very first day I’d met her, she was applying the same red lip gloss I was willing to guess was used on the note.

I called Mags back, knowing Len wouldn’t answer.

“I managed to get through to the team before they took off,” Mags said. “But it will be at least twenty minutes before they get a car and can meet you. I sent the closest deputy to get them.”

“What can you find about Len’s landlord, Mallory?” I asked.

I heard Mags typing at the computer, and her voice came through the speaker again in seconds.

“Mallory Vice changed her name from Miranda Smith about five years ago. She has owned the building Len lives in for four. There’s not much on her beyond that. She works in the shop under the building. She doesn’t have family in the area and doesn’t have much of a record.”

“Much of a record?” I asked.

“Her name shows in one small report.”

Miranda Smith. I knew that name sounded familiar.

“The couple fighting at the pub,” I said

“Exactly. How did you know?”

“Len made the sheriff give us other small reports for the months before the killings started. Miranda Smith was escorted out of the pub alongside her former fiancé after their break up grew volatile.”

“It’s sad, really,” Mags said. “It looks like he left her only weeks before their wedding.”

The hate toward women and happy relationships… It wasn’t a man who was left. No, she was targeting women like herself, women who had it all: the happy relationship, the bright future ahead of them. They were surrogates for her own self-hatred. She coveted what they had and couldn’t stand to see others like that.