One sharp knock and the office door opened. Two building security guards stepped inside. The same men who smiled at her and wished her a good morning every day.

“I need you to stand up and hand me your key card. These gentlemen will look in your bag to make sure you don’t have any firm property. After that, they will escort you out of the building.”

Her muscles refused to move. She tried to concentrate over loud buzzing in her head. “Don’t do this. I’m begging you.”

“Your access to the computer, including the sign-in feature from home, will be terminated, pending the investigation,” he continued as if he was reading from a list.

One of the security guards stepped around Covington and headed for Jessa. Not wanting to be dragged and not knowing how to stop the inevitable, she put her hands up in surrender. “I’ll go willingly. This . . . this isn’t necessary.”

Covington nodded for the guards to continue. “It’s firm policy.”

This would destroy her. Stomp down and shatter her world into a million pieces.

She switched to begging, pleading, trying to appeal to a tiny spot of affection he might have for her. “My reputation won’t recover from this.”

“I did everything I could, Jessa. You should have withdrawn from the case when I told you to.”

Chapter Thirty-One
Gabby

The lines on the papers blurred together. Gabby stared at her empty coffee mug as she stretched. The pinch in her lower back made her groan. “It sucks getting older.”

She blamed Rob Greene. His files littered her dining room table. She’d read and reread and assessed since their meeting. At one point she had to rush and retrieve the computer charger because she’d burned through the battery doing her own research on the various jackasses who abused, battered, and killed the women unlucky enough to veer into their paths.

Alex Carlisle was the most recent peculiar death, and his seemed fitting because of what he did to the women around him—treating women as disposable, only existing for his pleasure—but he certainly was not the only aggressor. Not even the worst, though she wasn’t sure how to weigh one horror inflicted on a woman against another. Every act demanded that a woman left behind somehow overcome and take on the role of survivor . . . but only if the man didn’t kill her first.

Carlisle’s wife went from shuffling on the sidelines to a starring role when she claimed the accusations weren’t true. Fingers pointed at her. Police sources—anonymous, of course—talked about her killing her husband out of revenge. But over the last two days the conversation had shifted again. Unnamed third parties stepped up and offered new stories that cast her as damaged by a decades-long marriage filled with terror due to abuse.