Targeted (Callahan & McLane Book 4) by Kendra Elliot Page B

anyone else was in the house.”
    “You didn’t worry for your own safety?” Nora asked.
    Brian stared at her. “That wasn’t very smart of me, was it? I didn’t even consider that the person who’d done it could still be inside until right this minute .” He ran his hands over his face and bent over. “Holy shit. What the hell? I guess I’d assumed he’d done it himself.” He looked up at the investigators. “But no one could drive those posts into their own wrists.” He froze, leaped up, and then took large lunging steps toward a corner of the yard.
    The investigators looked away at the sound of his retching. Ava picked up the bottle of water he’d dropped.
    “Poor bastard,” Mason said in sympathy.
    Brian returned after a few moments and sheepishly took the bottle Ava handed him. “It happens to all of us,” she told him as he rinsed his mouth and spit.
    “Someone murdered him,” Brian said with a shudder. “Deep down I knew someone murdered him, but it didn’t hit home until just a minute ago.”
    “It was your brain trying to cope and protect you from what you’d seen,” Zander pointed out. “You don’t expect to see something like that every day. Or any day.”
    “Hell no,” said Brian. “Do you know who did it?”
    “Not yet,” said Ava. “We’ll find him. Someone doesn’t create a scene like that without leaving a lot of evidence behind. Did you touch anything when you went in the house?”
    He started to vehemently shake his head, but froze. “I was going to say no, but I did lift the mask because I was going to check for a pulse at his neck. Once I saw his neck had been slashed, I stopped. So my fingerprints are on the mask right at the bottom. Is that okay? Shit. I shouldn’t have touched that.”
    “It’s expected that you would try to check for signs of life,” Nora said. “I’ll have one of the techs take your prints for comparables. Did you touch anything else?”
    “Just the doorbell and the door handle. I backed out of the room once I saw he was dead.” He shook his head with a confused look on his face. “That mask is fucking creepy,” stated Brian. “Who does shit like that? It’s like a scene out of one of the Scream movies.”
    Ava exchanged a look with the other investigators. “About the mask, we’re going to ask that you not share that detail with anyone . . . not your girlfriend or your mother or any reporter that contacts you. We’d like to keep that sort of unusual detail quiet to help weed out the liars who will call in trying to claim they did the murder.” It wasn’t the entire reason to keep it quiet, but it should be enough.
    “You think reporters will contact me?” Brian asked, looking slightly stunned.
    Ava was starting to think he wasn’t the sharpest tool on the Home Depot sales floor. But it was the middle of the night and the discovery of a violent death had probably muddled his brain a bit. Hers felt muddled. “I’d say yes. You don’t have to talk to them. It’s up to you, but I think it rarely does any good. They can come to us for an official statement.”
    “I don’t want to talk to them,” said Brian. “I don’t need to talk about this ever again. I want this shit out of my brain as quickly as possible.”
    “We’ll have you come in and deliver an official statement tomorrow—today, I mean,” said Nora. The sound of a car door slamming had them all turning to see who’d arrived.
    “Seth Rutledge,” murmured Mason next to her.
    Ava nodded, pleased to see the chief medical examiner of the state had personally responded to their case.

9
    “We’ve been busy tonight,” Seth Rutledge said to the group of investigators. “Two drunk driving accidents and now this. As soon as I heard there was a trooper involved, I wanted to be here.”
    Mason had worked with the medical examiner more times than he cared to remember. The man was good at his job.
    Seth frowned as he realized Ava and Zander were present as