“No. Two bodies that were dug out of the bayou a day ago just proved to be them. It looks like their throats were slashed. They weren’t dismembered. But they’ve been in the bayou, and the medical examiner is having a hell of a time. They’re...decomposed.”

“Then, how—”

“Dental records. It’s them. The two we knew as Neil and Jennie murdered the real Brian and Aubrey for their identities,” Axel stated.

Katie was standing at the top of the stairway, wrapped in a sheet, looking down at him.

“They found bodies to go with those identities Carly gave us,” he told her.

“So,” she said. “We still have no idea who Neil and Jennie really are...just that they murdered more people than we can begin to know.”

“What about the address on their driver’s licenses?” Dan asked Axel, remembering he was still on the phone.

Axel let out an aggravated sound and told him, “Empty fields. And there’s the irony. The address they gave for Aubrey is right by the Medford Mansion—not a stone’s throw from where she died.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Katie gave Sarah a good brushing, enjoying the busy work that allowed her mind to wander. The dogs played near her, loyal guardians to the end, until they tired of their rollicking and lay down at the entry to the large barnlike stable structure that housed the mules and harnesses and other equipment.

Dan was just outside on the phone, catching up with Ryder and Axel. She’d heard they were planning another press conference. Dan wasn’t happy about being the spokesperson, but he’d done it once, and it seemed only logical that he would be the one to do it again.

He didn’t like being recognized in the city as being on the team. It made any kind of surveillance harder; then again, he’d told her that morning, it could draw a suspect out, if they were to approach him.

She knew Dan was frustrated. She had seen Jennie, and then they had discovered her body. They’d discovered clues to their work for the movie-production company, only to discover the names they had used belonged to people they had killed.

But, she’d reminded Dan, they hadn’t been killed with axes. They’d had their throats slit.

It seemed the Axeman’s Protégé cases were specific and specifically planned, but the man—or woman—driving the onslaught of blood and death didn’t care if their adherents killed others, just so long as they didn’t use axes.

Maybe.

Jennie was dead.

They believed that Neil—or Brian—had likely killed her. And he—whatever his real name might be—was still out there. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to kill her, but he’d been ordered to do so.