The Hunted Girls by Jenna Kernan (best book club books for discussion txt) 📕

West Point. So he was army. There was no ring on his left. This did not tell her if he was or was not married. Many men in his profession chose not to reveal personal details, including wives and children.

“Until we can get you secure access to our network.”

She accepted the folder.

“I’ll answer any questions you may have after you are up to speed.”

“Fine.” She shifted, keen to go.

“The ME tells me that the two victims died within a few days of each other, so I’m anxious to get you working on this. We’ll get you full access tomorrow. There is an ID badge for you to wear at the office and at any crime scene.”

“Thank you.”

He smiled and sat back, hands resting on his knees. His knuckles showed thin crisscrossing red lines. She assumed he’d been out in the field because those were the cuts left by sawgrass dragging across unprotected skin.

“Where are you from originally?” she asked.

“Oklahoma,” he said.

“Been to Florida before?” she asked.

“Just the coast.”

That was a different world than Central Florida. There, most people were transplants from up north, East Coast and Midwesterners. Here in interior Florida were the original crackers, named for the long whips used on their oxen. Here they had citrus groves, cattle ranches, phosphate mines and farming. What they didn’t have was outsiders.

He’d stick out like a Yankee in Alabama.

“How are you coming with collecting your team?” he asked.

Jeepers. He’d only offered the position today.

“I’m working on that.”

“I’d like their names. They’ll all need to be vetted.”

“Of course.” That would make for interesting reading. All the people she wanted around her had mothers convicted of murder. It was an odd club and one that no one wanted to join, but somehow they made her feel almost normal.

Another oddity was that none of them had fathers. Medical examiner, Dr. Juliette Hartfield had been born to a mother already convicted of shooting and killing her three young children to remove what she saw as impediments to a relationship with a man who did not want children. Ironically, she didn’t know she was already pregnant with Juliette. Unlike the rest of them, her mother’s crimes occurred before she was born, and she had been adopted by a nice couple. The strange part was that her adoptive dad was the DA who had convicted her mother.

Tina Ruz, her administrative assistant, had been born to a single mother convicted of first-degree homicide, when Tina was a teen, for her part in a gruesome kidnapping and murder of an elderly neighbor in a plot to empty her bank accounts. Tina’s mother was serving her sentence of forty-five years in prison.

Demko’s father had been murdered by a shotgun blast delivered by his stepson, a plot hatched by their mother, to collect the payout from her second husband’s life insurance policy. She had convinced her elder son, Demko’s half brother, Connor, to stage a robbery of her husband’s medical offices. But the podiatrist recognized his masked attacker before his death, as witnesses testified. Now both Demko’s mother and his brother were in federal prison.

And Nadine’s mother had butchered four couples for their infidelity after abandonment by Nadine’s father. But recently, after a conversation where Arleen had admitted to killing a man around the time her father had vanished, Nadine had doubts that their father had run out on them. She’d raised the possibility to Arlo that their mother had murdered their father after discovering his intent to leave her. Nadine wished he’d rejected the notion, but he had not. Instead he seemed to believe it a real possibility.

Had her father never returned because he was another of her mother’s victims?

She wondered about this often, and if he was like his sister, her aunt Donna—a successful, smart, normal woman who had adopted Nadine when she was a teenager after she’d testified against her mother—or if he was like Arleen. Nadine was near desperate to discover that at least one parent had been kind and nurturing and normal. It was the only antidote she knew to the horror of being the daughter of Arleen Howler.

While she was up here, back in Ocala, she might just see if she could dig up more about her father’s disappearance. She had to admit it was a reason she had jumped to obey Jack Skogen’s orders the very same day she received them.

“I wonder if you were able to obtain release time for Dr. Hartfield?”

“Yeah, that’s a go.”

Nadine stifled a yawn. Skogen met her gaze.

“Sorry,” she said. “Long day.”

“With plenty more to come,” he said.

“So tell me. How were these bodies discovered?”

“Forest service. On Sunday, one of their maintenance crews was doing trail work, clearing brush near the river, and came upon them. That was three days ago.”

“The two were in close proximity?”

“Yes. In the same area. Forty feet apart. Arnold spotted the first one, which he reported was uncovered. Forest service discovered the second body in the vicinity after that. That one had been there longer, maybe a week or more. Found covered with dirt, leaf debris and some branches.”

Nadine drew the folder onto her lap. “I see. You mentioned the initial victim appeared to be an animal attack?”

“Yes. Predation by something. Crushing injuries. Initially the sheriff believed the deaths were the result of an alligator attack.”

“What changed their minds?”

Skogen reached into his pocket and withdrew something in an evidence bag.

“Medical examiner. She agrees that there was predation while the victim was still alive. Severed the spinal cord and would have left the victim paralyzed but conscious. But alligators don’t leave their kills out of the water and they don’t use these,” he said.

“What is it?” She glanced down at the shiny bit of pointed metal.

“It’s a high-carbon steel arrowhead. One removed from each victim.”

Nadine took a moment to internalize the horror of an attack by alligators in which you were alert but unable to move. Then her mind went to work profiling. Male, comfortable in the woods, bowhunting experience, anatomical knowledge…

“Dr. Finch?”

She flicked her