It had been three years since Asher Carnes’s death, and Ruby looked the part of a widow standing among her colleagues. In another life, she might have been a classic Midwestern farm girl, brown-eyed with hair long and wheat-colored. She had always been small, but that had only made her a better gymnast back in high school. All the soft edges Ruby could have had were betrayed by a stiff resolve she hadn’t shaken, even after Asher’s killer had been caught.

That should have brought her peace but an emptiness grew inside her instead.

“You got him.” Jocelyn Fontaine leaned over to whisper in Ruby’s ear. Joce had been an instant friend, back when they were both starting out. It felt so long ago now, but then, everything did in the division between before Asher’s death and after. Now, Ruby felt distant from her, like they were practically strangers.

But Joce wasn’t wrong. Ruby had caught Vincent Vallejo, psychology professor and the man responsible for 13 murders, including one FBI agent. He was behind bars, away from the general public where he couldn't personally get his hands on anyone else. But if Vincent Vallejo was truly harmless now, they wouldn’t even be standing in front of this new headstone, the polished rock easy to care for. Vallejo may have been behind bars, but his influence certainly couldn’t be contained, his fans carrying out his deeds for him.

Like vandalizing graves.

“He got us,” Ruby replied, turning away from the etched letters, the span of years between birth and death too short. Asher Carnes, beloved son.

Would she have taken that name? How long would it have taken to get used to the ring of it? Or a ring on her finger?

Stupid to think of the possibilities now that there was no possibility.

She’d been so consumed with tracking down Vallejo that Ruby struggled to grasp those old, warm memories of Asher, like it had happened in a different lifetime. Without him to temper her drive, she was like a train barreling down the track with no brakes. Catching Vallejo was her train crash, every messy, shrapnel-laden part of it.

Too shattered.

She came to see the new headstone because people expected her to be there. Ruby couldn’t come on her own, alone with a rock, just a reminder that Asher was underground and she was above it. They hadn’t caught Vallejo fast enough. They hadn’t prevented the crime. So now Asher got visitors a few times a year; meanwhile being in prison had made Vincent Vallejo somehow more accessible to his sick fans. They wrote him letters, requested visitation, and wrote articles about him and his Bundy-esque charisma.

“Everyone misses him,” Jocelyn said, “but we miss you, too.”