Bracing himself, Jake read the messages one by one.

What happened tonight?

Where are you?

I’m getting worried.

This isn’t like you.

Please call.

Seriously, this isn’t funny.

I’ve started ringing hospitals.

Call me!

He had to respond, at least once. He owed Nic that much.

I’m okay. I need time to sort some stuff out.

Five heartbeats later his phone vibrated in the palm of his hand.

Thank Christ you’re okay. You’ve had us so worried. Where are you? Boss won’t tell me anything.

Jake placed the phone face down on his bedside table. He couldn’t talk to her, not yet.

With regret and uncertainty churning in his mind, and a howling wind whistling through the gaps in the cottage walls, sleep was a long way off. He may as well be productive. Dressing quickly, he grabbed his keys and jacket and headed back over to the red-brick station.

*

Murphy had left a note on Jake’s desk bringing him up to date. He’d arranged an interview tomorrow with his cousin, Charlotte Murphy, and another former resident of the home, Amelia MacDonald. And Kelly had secured both Ava O’Brien’s home and the former girls’ home—the keys were in the safe.

The constable had also printed out his write-up of today’s observations and interviews. Jake glanced through it, dazed. Murphy’s report was so poorly written Jake could only hope it was some kind of joke.

The eerily silent office offered not a single other distraction, except the keys to Ava O’Brien’s home, which sat only three metres away in the station’s safe.

Retrieving the red-taped keys, Jake closed the station building and hustled to his car through the biting cold, huffing warm air into the palms of his hands.

Approaching Dunton’s mostly deserted main street, Jake couldn’t push away the image of Ava’s mutilated fingertips. What could have motivated that kind of attack? The amount of blood on her hands and forearms indicated they had been removed peri-mortem. But before or after she lost consciousness?

If she had been conscious during their extraction, surely she would have screamed for a significant period of time? Which meant a remote location, unless she was gagged … there were simply too many unknowns at this point.

Jake’s analysis was interrupted as he cruised toward the only building showing signs of life. Raucously inebriated people spilled out of the pub, clouds of cigarette smoke and frosted breath hanging above them.

Was that Murphy with his arm around one of the shrieking women? Jake swivelled his head as he coasted, craning his neck, but couldn’t catch a clear view. The crowd disappeared as he veered right at the next corner.

Was the removal of Ava’s fingernails definitely torture? Or an attempt to remove incriminating DNA she had scratched from the skin of her attacker? Or was it some­how self-inflicted? Highly unlikely, but then Jake had seen people cause themselves the most horrific injuries in the grip of psychosis.

And what to make of her genital surgery? It wasn’t necessarily relevant to the case, but it was exceptionally unusual.