My call went to the state police. I asked if I should report a problem to the local PD instead and they said yes. Did I want them to connect me? Just then my phone beeped with an incoming call from Gabriel. I asked the dispatcher for the number instead. Records would show that I’d placed this call. Better to speak to my lawyer now.

“I’m in town,” Gabriel said before I could speak. “I need the address. If you don’t know it—”

“Did you get my messages?” I said. “Any of them?”

“Messages?”

He waited patiently until I finished cursing him out and then said, “Is something wrong, Olivia?”

“My damned cat just found Ciara Conway’s head. In the house where he was trapped.”

“Do you have an address?” he said, less casually now.

I gave it to him. “It’s over—”

“I know where it is. I’m less than a mile away.”

“I’ll be waiting out—”

“Stay on the line, Olivia. Tell me what happened.”

I did. His car careered around the corner as I was getting to the part about calling 911. He’d climbed out and was closing the car door when TC zoomed past me.

“Watch out!” I said before he slammed the door on the cat.

TC jumped into the Jag and perched on the front seat.

“You might not want him in there,” I said. “He has claws.”

Gabriel closed the door. “At least we’ll know where he is.”

“Just don’t bill me for the damage.”

He took a flashlight from the trunk, then walked over. “As I was saying, yes, you were correct to call 911. It establishes a timeline, as does my call. I will handle contacting the local police, but I want to take a look inside first. Verify that the head is still there and keep it within sight. You can wait in the car with the cat if you like.”

“It’s not the head that sent me flying out of that house. It’s remembering what happened the last time. I got out before I was knocked out.”

“Good. Did you hear anyone inside?”

I said no, then explained about the attic door.

“That is odd,” he said as I led him into the yard. “But the basement door did something similar, and I don’t believe it ‘just stuck.’ Let’s see what we have.”

—

The head was still at the bottom of the attic steps. The head. That’s how I thought of it now. Disconnected from any formerly living human being, because otherwise my gut started shouting, “It’s her head. Ciara Conway’s head. Severed from her body. Carted around. Tossed into a bed. Dragged by a cat. Pushed down the stairs. The poor girl’s head.” The horror and the indignity of that was too much. So it became “the head.”

Gabriel seemed to have no such issues. He crouched and examined it from all angles.

“It appears to have been preserved,” he said. “Most likely embalmed. That would explain the lack of rot and of scent, though TC still picked it up. A substandard job, then. Is it in the same condition as the last time you found it?”

I nodded.

He straightened, frowning down at the head as if it perplexed him. “You said you presume TC came in through the open basement window?”

“Yes. He’d been down there a while. Fortunately, he had water and found food.”

“Meaning he could have been down there since he disappeared. Right before you found that head in your bed. Which he then found in the same house where he’d been trapped.”

“And that makes no sense, which means the head must have been planted while I was rescuing him. I was trapped in the basement just long enough for that to happen.”

“Possible, but that presumes the killer was either following you on your jog and took advantage—having the head conveniently nearby—or he was already in the house. I suspect TC didn’t jump through that window. He was brought and left here. That could mean there is no one in this house tonight. TC was being kept here, as was the head.”

“Which he smelled through two stories? Despite it being embalmed? And that doesn’t explain stuck and unlocking doors.”

“I know. It’s not a puzzle we’ll solve tonight. For now, we need to call the police. First, though, I want to take a look in the attic. Do you want to come or guard the evidence?”

“I’ll go. You can guard.”

“That wasn’t one of the options.”

“I know,” I said as I brushed past him.

—

Gabriel didn’t try to stop me, but he didn’t hang back at the foot of the stairs, either. He came up until he could see what I was doing, while keeping one eye on the “evidence” below.

“Don’t touch anything,” he said. “Try not to leave too many footprints.”

“I’ve been shedding hair lately. Is that a problem?”

“I will explain the footprints and any additional forensic evidence by saying you came up after the cat. I’m merely asking you to keep that evidence to a minimum.”

“I was joking about the hair.”

“I wasn’t. Quickly now. We’ve established a timeline, and the longer it takes to phone . . .”

Unlike the basement, this space wasn’t empty. It wasn’t exactly jam-packed, either, just dotted with covered furniture and storage chests. From the dust, none of it had belonged to the previous owners. Not unless they’d moved out fifty years ago. As I walked, I remembered what Gabriel had said about footprints, and I stopped dead, cursing under my breath.

“What’s wrong?” Gabriel’s head crested the steps.

“You mentioned footprints. If someone’s up here, that would be a sure sign of it.” I backed up a few steps and waved my light around.

Gabriel gave me 1.3 seconds before saying, “Anything?”

I took another five before answering. “Not even my own, because someone has swept a path. I can see a few of TC’s prints, but he seems to have stuck mostly to the cleared part. Meaning at the end of this path, presumably, is where the head was. Or where the killer is lying in wait.” I raised my voice. “Did you hear that? I know where you are!”

“And now he knows where you are,” Gabriel muttered.

“Like he wouldn’t have the moment we started talking. Also, it could be a she.”