Last to Die: A gripping psychological thriller not for the faint hearted by Arlene Hunt

no time at all to learn what he needed to know about her. She was twenty-five and the mother of three kids, all of whom had been removed from her care. She worked out of a motel beyond the river and would tell you up was down if she thought there was a buck to be made.
    No one would miss her, he thought, and if they did, they would assume her big mouth had run against the wrong John one time too many times.
    Caleb put her file back and smiled. If anyone had witnessed this particular smile, they would not have enjoyed it at all.

13
    M ike listened to Emma gabbing away on the office phone and wondered briefly who she was talking to. It was hard to tell with Emma – could be friend or foe, since she treated everyone with the same mild disdain. He knew he ought to speak to her about that, but Ace had not turned in that morning and Mike couldn’t raise him. Energy-wise, Mike figured he didn’t have the surplus needed to get involved in an argument. He’d already had one with Jessie and that was plenty.
    He pushed open the office door and stood outside, watching the street. The day was already hot as hell and getting hotter by the minute. Heat rose and shimmered from the asphalt in the distance. Mike lit a cigarette and smoked for a while, thinking how hard it was to know what to do or what to say anymore.
    Jessie had collapsed that morning. She had given no indication that she was unwell; she had simply fallen down. By the time he had carried her to the sofa she had come round again, but was white as a sheet and clammy to the touch. Mike had wanted to take her to the hospital, but she refused to go, telling him she was fine, that her blood sugar must have dropped.
    Mike didn’t buy it. Jessie was not herself. She jumped at shadows, cried in her sleep – if she slept at all. She hardly ate a thing and spent most mealtimes picking at her food with disinterest before pushing it away.
    It was the silence that bothered Mike the most. Since the funeral, he had watched her withdraw into herself. She hadn’t attended the remembrance ceremony for fear of another melee of journalists. She was listless and deeply unhappy.
    Mike felt as useless as tits on a bull. He spoke to Dr Fraas, who thought Jessie might benefit from talking to another doctor who specialised in trauma. But when Mike ran it past her, Jessie shot it down immediately, saying she didn’t need to speak to anyone. When Mike had pushed her with it she had grown furious and tearful, before retreating into silence. She was sinking and he had no idea how to save her.
    Mike noticed Emma watching him and moved to the side of the door. Sometimes it felt like the whole town had him under the microscope, waiting for him to do something. But what? Everywhere he went people approached him and gripped his hand. They asked how he was holding up. They asked after Jessie and passed on their best wishes and their prayers. Between the curious, the well-wishers and the media, he was beginning to feel like a treed bear. Night and day, there seemed to be no respite, it left him on edge and prickly. He couldn’t move on, not like this, not feeling that something terrible was waiting in the wings, a black presence preparing to make itself known.
    He was sick and tired of watching the news channels; sick of repeated shots of the school. Sick of seeing Jessie’s shocked and bloodied face appear on the screen. It felt like a violation of sorts.
    Worse still was the lack of real closure. Kyle Saunders had left behind videos where he ranted and raved about perceived injustices and how it was payback for all the wrongs perpetrated against him. Mike had watched them all, hoping to gain some insight into what had happened, but to no avail. In reality, Kyle Saunders was a spoiled white kid from a middle-class background whose issues were of his own making. The tapes had been unoriginal, filled with boastful anger and dumb cunning.
    Hector Diaz offered even less. The youngest son of Treo Diaz, the