“Okay. But the question stands. Why decide to go after others and kill at least one of them horribly months later? He must have known for certain back in January that he’d gotten away with killing Megan. Cops and agents combed the slopes after Duncan went down, searched for evidence against him and his followers. They didn’t find Megan. Didn’t find any sign of her grave. So . . . she was gone; everybody thought she’d run off after being jilted. Paul had come back here married to his cousin and had taken a lot of flak about all that. Nobody suspected murder. The unsub was safe.”

DeMarco considered for a few moments. “Then it wasn’t enough for him to be safe. Killing Megan wasn’t enough.”

Hollis grimaced. “He visited her grave. Had sex with the body, for weeks if not months. That sounds very like an obsession with her.”

“I would say so.”

“A sick and twisted obsession.”

“Hardly the poster child for a good boyfriend,” DeMarco agreed dryly.

“If he was a boyfriend and not just a little solace or revenge.” Hollis gave him a look. “Yeah. And we’re still left with the same questions. If killing Megan was personal, and since he’d clearly gotten away with it, why grab and kill Cole Ainsworth?”

“Paul’s cousin. Something there?”

“Cousins all over the place,” Hollis muttered, then said, “Finn said Paul and Cole weren’t close. As in friends, I mean. Cole was married himself, and in a relationship that appeared pretty demanding. Not to say volatile.”

“So not much interested in Paul and Megan’s relationship.”

“I’d think not. Of course, the unsub is right here and has been all along. We don’t know what he’s seen, overheard, suspected, much less what his feelings have been. About Megan, about his relationship with her. Cole could have been personal too, in an entirely different way.”

She looked at her partner steadily. “I think we need to call Bishop while he and Miranda are talking to Megan’s family. They may already have found out Megan had been involved with someone else, but if not, there’s maybe a different set of questions they need to be asking.”

—

AYLIA BLACKWOOD HAD done what she could to calm her family members, but ever since two victims of the killer had been discovered up in the mountains and brought down late the previous day, it was all anyone could talk about. Worry about.

Including Aylia.

Because the more she thought about them, about Megan especially, the more troubled she became. Like everyone else, she had believed that Megan had packed her things and left Salem to start a new life elsewhere.

Unlike everyone else, Aylia had known the real reason why Megan wanted to leave. Not because of all the pitying looks and overt sympathy after she was jilted. Not because she would have had to see Paul and his new wife virtually every day.

Because she’d been afraid.

Aylia had not dismissed those fears. She had believed Megan had been unwise in her own actions, careless and even reckless, that Megan had acted out of hurt and only further complicated her life, but she had certainly not deserved scorn for her very understandable actions. She had, after all, done no more than many a young woman—and quite a few not-so-young women—had done before her, turning to another man in hurt and bitterness after being dumped.