The house on Apache Ridge Place was ablaze with lights, making it appear there was a festive party taking place within the swanky neighborhood as opposed to the dramatic tale Detective Alyssa Wyatt knew was unfolding inside. Just as she hunched down to duck under the crime scene tape, headlights illuminated the area in front of her as her partner Cord Roberts parked behind her government-issued Chevy Tahoe. As he unfurled his tall frame from his car and headed her way, she noted his rumpled shirt, his uncombed hair, and the new lines decorating his face.

‘You look like demons dragged you through hell and brought you back. Is everything okay?’

There was a slight tremble to Cord’s hand as he tunneled his fingers through his hair, tugging at the ends. ‘Sara was having a bit of a rough night. Just as I was heading out, she got sick again, so I stuck around to make sure she was okay.’ He drew in a ragged breath and released it. ‘She is.’ In May, in the midst of a particularly heinous case, they’d learned his wife was pregnant with twins, and last month they’d had quite the scare when the doctor couldn’t detect one’s heartbeat only to have it reappear, weak, but present.

Cord eradicated further discussion by shifting his attention past the mobile crime scene van and along the long walkway before landing it on the house. ‘Why don’t you give me the condensed version of what happened here?’

Trying not to be too alarmed, Alyssa studied her partner’s profile before she finally accepted the dismissal for what it was. If Cord suspected Sara wouldn’t be okay, he wouldn’t be here. ‘All I know for sure is that Grace Burgess is the one who called Dispatch after she discovered her brother and sister-in-law, Gabriel and Lydia Kensington, dead, and their daughter, Addis, and Addis’s best friend, Emerson Childress, missing.’ Her footsteps quickened as they hurried up the walkway, her mind automatically conjuring up the young female victims – one of them being her daughter’s friend – of the sex-trafficking ring she and her team had broken up less than five months ago.

Before stepping through the doorway, in an effort to brace herself for what she knew she was about to encounter, Alyssa inhaled deeply through her nose, knowing it could be hours before she’d be able to breathe the fresh outside air again. Beside her, Cord’s frame stiffened as he, too, sucked in a breath.