Nate made a frustrated sound at the back of his throat. Emma had told him Ben was involved, but he couldn’t tell Kia that without telling her everything else.

“He’s gonna flee as soon as he can.”

“We can’t arrest him when there’s no evidence he committed a crime. And you heard Dr. Morris; this girl has only been dead a few hours. Ben’s been in the hospital all that time. He didn’t do this.”

Nate pressed his fingers into his thighs. Hard.

She was right. So why had Emma implicated Ben?

More important, why had Nate believed her?

“We still have to question him,” Nate said, thinking fast. “He has a track record of making and dealing drugs. At the very least, maybe he knows who’s behind all of this: the murders, the drugs, the prescription fraud. It’s all tied together, I can feel it. Head back to the hospital and question him. See what he knows.”

Kia studied him, her face disapproving. She knew he was hiding something. He waited for her to challenge him, to ask what was going on, but she just shook her head and slipped her plastic gloves off with a snap. She tucked them in the trash bag at the edge of the crime scene and disappeared up the path without another word.

The CSIs had already roped off the area, little yellow evidence flags waving in the breeze. Nate stepped carefully from one to the next, trying to piece together the scene. The person who’d dropped Beatrice’s body had clearly tromped through the woods with her, rather than bringing her down the path.

Nate followed the broken branches through the woods for a good half mile. Whomever it was had been strong. Strong enough to carry a body this far through dense brush and trees. Although it didn’t look like the body had been dragged. Maybe two people had been carryng it? Eventually Nate emerged from the forest onto the road. Wheel marks were traced into the gravel. Nothing that could identify the vehicle, but definitely enough to indicate a car had been parked here.

Nate turned his flashlight on and took his time sweeping the area in a neat, precise grid. He didn’t stop until he reached the makeshift blanket beside the road, where all the evidence had been collected, tagged, and laid out. There, already bagged and tagged, was a black-and-white poker chip. Nate picked up the baggie, turning it over in his hand. The initials engraved on the back were JH.

“Shit. I think I know who this belongs to,” he called to a CSI. He held up the bagged poker chip. “Mind if I take it to question the owner?”

She nodded. “Sure, let me check it out.” She jotted something in the evidence log.