Free For All to See (Bureau Series Book 1) by Megan Mitcham

second act, the most alluring creature he had ever seen would soon be ravaged and eradicated from the earth.
    Nathan had been on this icy case for nearly three years, but had managed to collect more bodies than clues. The psychopath left one pair of carved women each year hanging for the world to see, within two weeks of one another. No meaningful evidence was found at the scenes or on the bodies. No hair, fingerprints, DNA, or weapon.
    The only fibers left were microscopic bits of cotton and the lengths of rope he used to hang them. Neither had been any help to the investigation because it webbed into a universe of possibilities. Camouflage heavy-duty utility rope stocked the shelves of every other outdoor and home improvement store around the world. The manufacturer didn’t catalog dye lots. So, they couldn’t narrow the point of purchase. Unable to refine the search or come up with any information to cross check against it, the heap had become useless. The cotton fibers found on the bodies all matched from scene to scene. The clues were two freight trains on the same track barreling head first toward one another.
    A dead end.
    Though the victims were dead, their bodies told an epic story of suffering at the hands of their killer. They also told a little about the killer himself. The man was large enough to subdue his victims with a single blow. Brains more scientific than his own had run tests and taken measurements on all the victims, then thrown around words like density, thrust, angle of the wound and so on. They determined the killer was between six-feet-four inches and six-feet-six inches tall, and in the neighborhood of two hundred sixty pounds. From the size they could rather accurately guess the killer’s gender as male, unless there was an Amazonian woman walking around with a beef for her more petite kind.
    Most importantly, Nathan knew the man’s patterns. But would it be enough?
    In order to succeed, he needed to get a grip and focus. He’d nearly fallen off the wall when Adrian Tau removed his uniquely large frame from blocking Madelyn Garrett’s striking features. And damn him to a lifetime partnership with Dick, but the more time he spent in her presence, the deeper her troubled eyes tugged on him.
    She was a beautiful woman. He’d seen them before. Hell, he’d had them before. Which was why he couldn’t understand his reaction to her. Perhaps it was because her life was in his hands, though she didn’t know it.
    ****
    “Maybe we need to take another look at the husband.” Static crackled through the two-way radio and sputtered in the humidity. A bird screeched in the distance, as if echoing the Dick’s belligerent opinion.
    Thick greenery clouded his line of sight. Fallen branches and dead leaves grabbed at his boots. He was in shape, but the effort and heat caused his muscles to weep. Nathan shoved a thick vine out of his way and marshaled forward.
    The scratch of the communicator blared again. “He’s never hidden one before. They’re always out in the open. Easy to find. Nobody likes being wrong, but maybe were making something out of nothing.”
    He’d swear the guy had given voice to the ramblings of his conscious. Nathan had never known the man to be so insightful, but the more boxes they X-ed on the map the more obnoxious those thoughts became. Yesterday afternoon they’d split and covered three square miles before the slipping daylight had forced them to stop.
    Nathan plucked the walkie-talkie from his utility belt. He pressed the button, cutting of another of Dick’s pleas. “I finished section seven and I’m wrapping nine. Where are you?”
    “Finished eight and starting ten.”
    “You’re slackin’, Kepler,” Nathan smiled and waited for the ugly words.
    “You gave me the steep side of the mountain, jackass. If I plummet to my death out here, I’ll haunt you forever.”
    Curving lines of topography polluted Nathan’s map along with black Xs smeared from the raining