“W-why are you doing this to me?” he blubbered through tears.

I removed my knee from his back but kept steady pressure on his wrists as I leaned in to whisper in his ear. “Because you took a young girl, a beautiful girl with everything ahead of her, and then you murdered her.”

“I didn’t do it!” Halsey said. “I’d s-swear on anything I didn’t do it!”

“You murdered her and then you and your captain buddy over there buried her body in the cold, wet sand with nothing but an empty beer bottle for a headstone.”

“W-what?”

“You put her family through more than a week of living hell, all because, what…she wouldn’t sleep with you?”

“Jamie, for God’s sake, don’t listen to her!” Kurtz cried out. “She’s trying to psych you out!”

“Please, please, I’m telling you the truth, I didn’t even know she was dead! The last time I saw her she was drunk, sure, but she was alive!”

I pulled Halsey up to his knees. His face was a wasteland from all the crying and bleeding.

“Well,” I told him, “we’re going to give you one last chance to see her again.”

Chapter 27

KATE (continued)

The building looked official enough. Gotta hand it to you, Quinn—procuring a CDEMA facility? That was an effective touch. Even stoic Captain Kurtz swallowed hard when he saw the official government seal.

By this time, I’d given Halsey a towel to mop off his face, allowing him to regain some semblance of dignity. But he was still petrified. I almost felt bad for the punk.

“Come on,” I told him. “She’s in here.”

The moment I pulled back the tarp, Halsey’s face turned white and then a strange shade of purple as he tried to hold back the tidal wave of bile rocketing up his throat. Otto, fortunately, got him over to a metal slop sink in the corner of the room before he could vomit all over the body.

By the time we stepped inside the facility, I had already received your text, Quinn, telling me that the corpse under the tarp wasn’t Paige Ryerson. No matter who she was, the girl could still be used as an effective prop to shock our two suspects into admitting the truth.

Jamie Halsey was clearly rattled. But Kurtz was another story. Ever since we’d set foot on the Hostile Wake-Over, the captain had been the coolest of customers. And you know the old riddle, Quinn. Who sleeps the most soundly during his first night in prison? The guilty.

Otto helped Halsey clean himself up more thoroughly—which was no easy task, considering the kid’s hands were still cuffed behind his back. Then he brought him back over to the table. Halsey’s face looked like he had traveled to the far side and back. What do the kids say? Worst. Night. Ever.

“Is that her?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah,” Otto replied.

“I swear to God, on my parents, on my life, on everything…I did not kill her. Someone else did this.”