As she scooped up paper, she froze as she stared at the box’s contents. “Is this a joke? Did Rick put you up to this?”

“Who’s Rick?”

“My former boss at the news station.”

“I don’t know Rick,” the manager said. “It looks like a Halloween decoration.”

It was a complete skeleton that was discolored and darkened. She reached into the box and wrapped her hands around the skull, expecting it to feel slick like plastic. However, the moment she touched the skull, she knew it was not made of a smooth synthetic. It was porous like a pumice stone.

She raised the skull, and the jaw immediately dropped. Darkness radiated from empty sockets as the lower jaw dangled in silent laughter before the delicate hinge joints failed and sent the mandible to the cement floor. It broke into several pieces.

The manager stepped closer. “Is that real?”

Her heart raced in her chest as she thought back to the person who had sent her the message. The tip had been anonymous, and she had not bothered to trace the sender. Why her? She was a pariah in television news now. All the visitors to her website were really drawn by morbid curiosity over the epic implosion of her career. She had yet to receive a legitimate tip.

Until now.

Maybe Nikki still had a few fans out there.

She dropped to her knees and carefully collected the broken bits of bone. Normal people did not get juiced over what looked like a torched skull. But she did. Especially if it got her out of purgatory.

For the first time in months, she felt like things were looking up.

Her brain shifted into tactical mode. She had been around long enough to know this skull could belong to your garden-variety murdered guy. He would get his five minutes of fame, and that would be it.

But she had always been a glass-half-full kind of gal. The story could be bigger. And if it was, her former backstabbing boss would be forgotten, and she would be back in the game.

Nikki reached for her phone as she unhooked the camera and aimed it at her face. “It’s real.”

“Who are you calling?” the manager asked.

She looked into the camera. “The cops.”

CHAPTER ONE

Sunday, August 11, 11:00 p.m.

Alexandria, Virginia

Two Days Before

Fresh from the shower, he dried his dark hair and walked across the drab, worn carpet of the motel room toward the television tuned to the local news station. Beside it sat a pizza box. He flipped open the top and grabbed the last slice, plucked off the onions and pepperoni, and discarded them into a pile with the others.

“It was a waste to order the extra toppings.” He liked his pizza plain and simple. “But I was trying to be a nice guy.”

The woman behind him said nothing.

After tossing a sliver of onion into the box, he grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. The mattress sagged as he sat on the edge of the bed. The news anchor was blathering on about local traffic congestion caused by a car accident during evening rush hour. “Same old, same old.”

He took a large bite. The pizza was cold and the cheese hard, but he had worked up an appetite and was willing to settle.

The television newscaster continued on about politics, weather, and a soft piece on the elderly, but again did not mention the story he had been expecting for weeks. “Such bullshit. You and I both know she has the story, but there’s been nothing on her site or in the news. She’s got to have figured it out by now.”

Silence.

“It’s a good story, one people will want to know about. The public might not care about the bones of a dead whore, but they’ll care about a missing rich girl.”

He ate the rest of the slice, watching until the thirty-minute news show ended. Pizza grease, smelling faintly of onions, glistened on his fingertips. “Paid two extra bucks for nothing.”

He wiped his fingers on the comforter before he walked to the window. An overhead vent blasted cold air as he pushed back a small portion of the thick oily curtain. Through a window streaked with condensation, he looked up toward the stars, drowned in a sea of lights flooding from streetlights and neon signs.

“I miss Nevada. The stars. Big sky. A man can hardly breathe in the city.”

He let the curtain slide from his fingers as he moved toward the dresser. He opened the top drawer, where he had placed his neatly folded clothes. He pulled on his underwear and then his faded jeans before turning toward the woman.

She was on her back, mouth gagged and sightless blue eyes still brittle with fear as she stared at the popcorn ceiling. Her hands were tied to the bedpost; laid bare were her breasts and the five oozing stab wounds. Blood painted her pale skin red, soaked the bedding, and arched over the headboard and across the framed print of the US Capitol hanging on the wall.

She was petite and so lean her stomach was nearly concave. Unnaturally blond hair framed a pale, hollow face that was unremarkable. Large silver hoops dropped from her earlobes.

The sight of her naked frame awash in her own blood was a shot to his loins, and he was tempted to have another go at her. There was nothing better than fucking a woman in her own blood.

He drew his fingertips over her pale leg, still warm to the touch. The darkness inside him, starved for too long, had finally turned ravenous. Insatiable. “I went for a long time without doing this, and then two of you in as many months.”

The first one had been easy enough to charm. He was a good-looking guy, and when he tried, he could charm the pants off almost any woman. She had cost him the price of five cocktails in a trendy bar.

This one was a pro and had willingly climbed into his car as she’d smiled and asked him how he liked to party.

He traced a finger through the blood, creating a pale path that unveiled a rose tattoo. “After a man gets a taste for death, even the best fuck just doesn’t cut it.”

Reluctantly, he moved from the bed and washed his hands in the bathroom sink. The hot water stung his palm, and when he looked down, he noted the small nick above his lifeline. He remembered how the handle had grown slick as he had plunged it into his date and, on the last strike, how it had slipped. But he had been so possessed that a small cut had barely registered on his radar.

Now, he could see he had been lucky. The wound was superficial and would not need stitches.

He dried his hands on a fresh towel and wiped off the sink, the toilet handle, and the hot and cold shower knobs. Next, he cleaned the remote control and the doorknob before dropping the towel into his backpack.

The cops were going to collect DNA and prints, but this room was loaded with both from all previous guests. Assuming this case even made the priority list, it would be at least a year before the samples got sorted and tested. By then he would be on a beach in Mexico.

“You aren’t that important, girl,” he whispered. “Hookers are a dime a dozen, and cops got better things to do than find me.”

He pulled his still-clean shirt over his head, tucked it in the waistband of his jeans, and shoved his feet into a pair of sneakers. He double knotted the laces for good measure.

A last glance in the mirror confirmed there was no blood on his face. He combed his fingers through his hair and then rubbed the stubble darkening his chin. He could use a shave.

The mirror’s reflection caught the woman’s body lying in the pool of blood now fully bloomed on the white sheets. Soon it would be brown and lose its luster.