They were all not that much younger than her. Tara was twenty-five and the victims ranged from twenty-one to twenty-three. Tara had been twenty-one when she graduated from college at John Jay, when her career truly began. It was the year when she joined the NYPD, working diligently until she reached the age of twenty-three and went to start her FBI training in Quantico.

Tara was from upstate New York, where farms were everywhere she turned, and it was during those years in New York City when she met John and became accustomed to city life, which made the transition to D.C. that much easier.

Twenty-one felt like the year that laid the foundation for the four years that followed, and it pained her that these victims would never be able to see what their futures held.

“So…where do you think we should start?” she finally asked Warren.

“I spoke to the sheriff before takeoff. We’ll meet him at the second crime scene. He mentioned he has something urgent he wants to show us.”

Tara nodded, wondering what it could be.

Both of them turned their attention back to the papers in front of them. Tara continued to read, but it was all information that Reindhart had filled them in on. It was their job to find the rest.

Tara looked again out the window, watching the arm of the plane cut through the clouds, and she wondered who would do such a thing.

Were they random killings? She assumed so, given that they were hikers, not from the area. The case file stated that the third victim was from Maine, hiking southward, while the first two victims were from Pennsylvania, moving northward. They couldn’t have known each other. It was very unlikely. And where were the couple’s bodies? It was odd that a killer would take two of them and not the other. She assumed that the third victim was just the one that got away, but without other bodies, Tara knew this wasn’t going to be easy and at that thought, something else struck her mind. She turned to Warren.

“You said that you think this will be a tough case to crack…any reason in particular?”

He looked up.

“Well, the first two victims are missing, so no bodies. It’s a lot harder to find a connection when there aren’t bodies to compare. Less evidence.” He looked up toward the ceiling, pondering a thought. “This looks to me like random killings, which can also make a case more difficult.”

Tara turned back toward the window and looked down at the land below. Hearing Warren’s words made her feel a bit uneasy. A tough case to crack. She knew that some cases were more difficult, but hearing from an experienced agent that her first case might be challenging for him made her wonder if maybe she was in over her head.

What if they just couldn’t solve it? She pondered that thought as the plane flew closer to the crime scene.