Joe held up his flashlight and aimed the beam toward Martin Carstairs’s house and straight into his living room window. The footprints then backtracked to the road.

It could have been an onlooker from this morning. Proving it was related to last night’s murder was going to be tricky, but Eban wanted this information collected and documented regardless.

“I need you to go back to the house, Joe. Police will be sending an evidence response team out here to process these footprints shortly.” Eban took a series of photographs on his cell using a quarter for scale. “It might take them a few hours. They’ll need to take a look at the winter boots you and your wife wear, if that’s okay? To eliminate them?”

Joe nodded, his eyes shifting from Eban to the tracks and back again. “I thought the police caught the killer?”

Eban buried his hands under his arms for warmth. “I don’t believe so. Not yet. Lock your doors.”

* * *

Signy dumped her bag and keys on the kitchen table, secured her weapon and went looking for her fifteen-year-old son.

She found Aiden playing video games in the front room. He moved the headphones off of one ear and shot her a questioning look.

“Sorry, I couldn’t get home earlier. I tried to pop back but…” The FBI agent had been shadowing her and for some reason she hadn’t wanted him to see her take a few minutes away from a murder inquiry to check on her son. She was irritated with herself all over again because it wasn’t an unreasonable thing for her to do, but she always felt she was being held to a higher standard than her male colleagues.

“Have you done your homework?” She asked the same thing she asked him every single day. As if nagging would make her a better parent.

“Didn’t have any. Saw you on the news. You arrested a killer today. That’s pretty cool, Mom.”

It wasn’t often Signy impressed her son. She pulled a face. “We have to let her go.”

“What? How come?”

The idea of freeing Darby O’Roarke left a bitter taste in her mouth, and she’d headed home before they’d released the woman. “Didn’t have enough evidence to make it stick.”

Aiden gave a mock shudder. “Better lock the doors tonight.”

She slanted him a look. “You’d better lock the doors every night.”

“Yeah, sure, Mom.” He grinned at her, and her throat closed with emotion.

He was her pride and joy. The reason to smile every morning and the reason to come home at night. He knew it too, leveraged it ruthlessly with his easy charm and occasional, much-coveted hugs.

She didn’t get to spend as much time as she wanted with her son and tried not to bring her job home with her when she was here. She did her best not to be an overprotective helicopter parent, but she saw what happened to kids his age every day and didn’t want him to go off the rails.