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“Cutting right to it,” I murmured, impressed at her not shrinking back in my presence. She was dubious of me. Not scared. “I’m not. Into brunch. I figured you might be.” I shrugged off how wrong I was at reading people. I was usually much better than this, but my instincts were contaminated by our history—however ugly my side of it was. Maybe because of how atrocious my own actions toward Shay had been in the past. Guilt and shame were clouding my mind. Too many emotional landmines lurked around Dreadwood Falls, they were knocking me off my game.

“My bad,” I told her. “I was also just looking for a place where it was socially acceptable to get loaded at ten in the morning. Silly me, thinking the Stepford set was too classy for all that.” I looked around at people in varying degrees of inebriation. These same people would frown upon me walking into a biker bar at ten in the morning and having a tequila shot.

“You just add organic quinoa breakfast bowls, and it’s totally fine,” Shay remarked, mirroring my inner thoughts.

I laughed. Surprisingly, it wasn’t fake. “Happy to see this place isn’t totally intolerable.” I referred to the overpriced, socially acceptable form of day drinking I could get behind, especially with my newly padded bank account.

Shay quirked her head, no longer smiling. She was assessing. Something about her gaze was spiderlike, making my fingertips chill. “Did you recover from seeing the bodies the other day?”

Again, straight to the point. There was concern in her tone but also a sharpness that told me she didn’t entirely buy my act from the morgue. The one where I was a damaged, fragile, borderline-alcoholic still rattled by my parents’ deaths over a decade ago.

Wise woman.

I’d have to be smarter, smarter than her. I’d gotten sloppy, it seemed, though I enjoyed the challenge. And I didn’t entirely hate Shay’s company.

It was getting too easy to lie my way into crime scenes, federal investigations— whatever the situation called for. Yet getting Shay to give me what I needed would be more complicated than I had first anticipated.

“It only piqued my curiosity, if I’m honest.” I picked up my glass, taking another long sip. “I assume you’re not allowed to speak about this, but I’m going to ask anyway because I’m a nosy bitch… Wasn’t it unusual, an animal attack—to look like that?” I didn’t bother sounding shaken as I’d first intended. Shay would see right through that.

Shay eyed me soberly. I wondered whether she was enough of a stickler for the rules to tell me to go and shove it. Or if she was smart enough to know I wasn’t just morbidly curious.

Then she sighed, tapping the edge of her glass with bitten-down fingernails. “Yes, it’s plenty unusual for an animal attack to look like that. The wounds, the claw patterns, the single slice to the Achilles heel of the male victim. It spoke to a kind of … intelligence that does not exist in any animal I’m aware of.”

I kept my face devoid of emotion, though it was incredibly difficult not to wear a shit-eating grin. Shay was not an idiot, and it sounded to me like her mind was a little more suspicious than the typical coroner. Something that could bite me in the ass.

“So you think it was a person, making it look like an animal?” I asked carefully.

She adjusted her glasses. “That’s the sensible explanation.”

“Is there another, less sensible explanation?” I pressed.

She was silent for a few beats. Chewing her lip. “Not really.”

“So there’s a serial killer hunting in the woods?” I asked bluntly.

She blinked in surprise. “Excuse me?”

I leaned back in my chair. “Well, you’ve had plenty of animal attacks over the past decade or so, and though the records are mostly sealed, I have a hunch that the other attacks have some similar … unusual wound patterns.”

Shay’s posture stiffened, her eyes fixed on me. “This town is situated at the edge of dense woods that our council members have worked hard to protect. There is a lot of wildlife in those woods. A lot of stupid people who don’t respect it.” Anger threaded through her soft tone.

I nodded; she wasn’t wrong. “But even Colorado doesn’t have this many animal attacks in a town of comparable size, especially with the inconsistencies on the victims.”

Her eyes narrowed as she digested what I said. “Why are you really here, Hadley?” Her question contained far too much suspicion than was safe for me.

“Tying up loose ends.” I repeated what I told Colton last night.

“And tying up loose ends looks like investigating ten years’ worth of animal attacks, insinuating that neither Colton nor Gerald have been doing their jobs. Or me, for that matter.” She sipped her drink. Her tone wasn’t exactly sharp, but it was not meek. Not even a little.

Her body language was still hunched, shy, but there was a fire in Shay Finkley I respected and liked.

“I definitely don’t think you haven’t done your job,” I told her honestly. “You write down what you’ve found then give the information to the men who are supposed to come to conclusions.” My grip tightened around my glass.

Her lips flattened into a stern line, communicating she might have similar frustrations. “If Colton or Gerald had any suspicion of a human doing this, they would investigate every possible avenue.”

I drained my drink, not missing the slight fierceness in her tone when she spoke of Gerald and Colton.

“You like them, then, the Hugheses?” I tried to keep my tone impassive, noncommittal. I wasn’t very good at that.