Tara stared at Warren as her heart steadied itself. He was saving her.

There was silence on the other end for a moment.

“You know if I keep her on this case and you don’t have answers soon, this will reflect negatively on you too, right?” Reindhart asserted.

Warren held the phone in his hand for a moment before he spoke. “I’m certain, sir.”

Reindhart sighed again. “This is on you now, Warren. You have twenty-four hours,” he added before hanging up the phone.

“Thank you,” Tara said before Warren even had time to place the phone down. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“You don’t need to thank me.” He turned his eyes toward her, darting them between her and the road in front of him. “I see a lot of promise in you, Mills. This case has shaken me too, I’m not going to lie.” He gripped the steering wheel harder at his words. “But Reindhart is wrong,” he added. “It’s not you, it’s this case, and you don’t deserve to get pulled from it.”

Tara nodded. She didn’t even know what more to say. He had just saved her career and she couldn’t help but notice how much his thoughts on her had shifted—from him questioning her experience when she was first assigned the case, to now defending why she needed to stay on it. It all made her realize that even though she had been struggling through her own demons, she had still somehow proved herself to him.

Warren then spoke again. “But we do only have twenty-four hours, so we need to find some answers quick. Hopefully this crime scene will give us something to go off of.”

Tara hadn’t even noticed that they were nearing their destination when Warren turned onto a side street. The road was short, and Tara could see the full length of it the second they turned onto it, and the flurry of activity. Four ranch-style houses lined the left side of the street and a metal gate marked the end to prevent vehicles from entering the trail behind it. On a regular day, the street would most likely be extremely quiet, but today was not ordinary and she immediately spotted the news vans and the people from the nearby houses peeking out their windows—some already outside, trying to find some information on what was going on.

“I can’t believe the media knows about this already,” she said under her breath.

Warren nodded. As they reached the end of the road, Tara could see officers standing behind the metal gate that was covered by yellow tape. One of them she recognized clearly—Sheriff Brady. Warren parked behind a news van as a swarm of reporters followed behind the car.

They quickly stepped out, ignoring the reporters’ questions until they were able to walk behind the metal gate, creating a barrier between them. Tara’s eyes shot to Sheriff Brady, who stood with another officer, speaking to a man with a large pack on his back—he was clearly a hiker—the man who discovered the scene, based on the looks of him. His face was drained of color and he spoke with an air of disbelief as he continuously shook his head at his words and stared off into the distance.