He nodded. “It’s not our doing. We’re just the delivery boys.”
“We’re not even that,” she argued, with a tired smile. “We’re just the ones who come in afterward to sort it all out.”
“Come on. Let’s get you home.” Rodney and Kate trooped downstairs and outside.
“The problem is,” she added, as she stood here, staring out at the evening darkness, “Simon says it’s not his victim.”
“Seriously?” Rodney stopped and looked at her in shock.
She nodded. “He can still feel her connection and knows she’s still alive.”
He turned and twisted to look back up at the building behind him. “God, that’s not good news.”
“I know,” she agreed in a silent whisper. “It’s one of the reasons I was pushing so hard to find this exact church window image because I knew that she was alive. But this isn’t her. And if this isn’t her…”
“It means there’s another one. Another one with the same church window?”
“You know something,” she replied, turning to look at him. “We need to check out the location of the other bodies, those in Alberta and Saskatchewan. To see if they were found in similar locations.”
“Well, we know the kid’s sister wasn’t.”
“No, but maybe she was body number one,” she stated.
He nodded. “And what? After that he decided there would be a religious reason for this?”
“I don’t know if it’s something that they take inwardly and actually believe or if, in this case, it’s just something to throw us off.”
“The trouble is, the bad guys are getting smarter all the time.”
“Yeah, they are,” she muttered.
“And, as we find the tools to nail their asses to the wall, they find more tools to evade us. The criminal element always moves technology advancements forward.” He sighed. “It’s been proven through the ages. We always have to come up with something to combat their methodology.”
“I get it,” she agreed.
“It still sucks though.” Rodney led the way to his car. “So, you sent Simon home finally, huh?”
“He just waited until everybody else arrived,” she replied. “He didn’t want to leave me alone.”
“Nice to see he’s protective.”
“I charged in, without thinking too much. Once I saw the body, I should have done a full sweep, but I didn’t want to leave her.”
“Yet you should have,” he noted.
“Yes, and we did it as soon as I had backup,” she added. “I was standing here, protecting the crime scene, waiting for everybody to show, and Simon stood there to ensure that I wasn’t alone,” she noted, with half a smile.
“You know he cares.”
“I know he cares,” she agreed. But she tossed it off almost, with a negligent shrug.
“Don’t do that,” Rodney said.
She looked at him in surprise. “Don’t do what?”
“Dismiss him so easily.”
“I wasn’t,” she protested.