“Milo Ortiz and Sabrina McPhee. They’re the people who found two of the murder victims.”
“Oh. Okay.” The other poor souls who’d unsuspectingly come across eyeless corpses. “Do you think . . . we’re connected somehow?”
“I don’t know,” he said, sliding two photos across the table. “It’s just a hunch. It might not pan out.”
She nodded, placing the two photos side by side and looking at the late twenties or early thirties man, handsome with light brown skin and hazel eyes, and a woman who looked to be about the same age with shoulder-length brown curls and deep brown eyes. She tilted her head, taking a few moments to look at them. “They look . . . vaguely familiar. Maybe?” She brought her hands up and massaged her temples. “Were they patients at Lakeside at some point?”
“I don’t think so, though that’s unconfirmed right now.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Yes, there’s definitely something familiar about them. But, no, I’m sorry. I’m not sure I’ve ever met them. Maybe they’ve used mental health services in general?”
“That could be,” he said. “There’s confirmation that at least one of them had a . . . difficult past.”
Her gaze lingered on him for a moment. By the look in his eyes, she got the feeling the word difficult, deeply understated whatever Reed was referring to. Liza slid the photos back across the table. “It can be a small community, those who use mental health services. You tend to encounter the same people, hear the same names, even pass by the same faces, whether you run into them directly or not. That could be it.”
He picked up the photos and put them back in his folder. “Yeah, okay, maybe. I’ll have to see what else we can find out about them.”
They cleared the dishes and Liza picked up the bottle of wine, holding it up in question. “No, thanks,” he said. “Actually, I’ll clean this up, and then I’m going to make a trip downstairs to the gym. I need a workout.” He gave her the ghost of a smile and rubbed at his eye. He looked tired. He had to be. He’d been working around the clock on this current Hollow-Eyed Killer case. She’d barely seen him in the last few days. He was probably frustrated too, had energy he needed to burn. She felt guilty, suddenly. Awkward. She grabbed their plates from the table, wondering if she wasn’t there, if he’d choose a different way to burn off some energy. Maybe he’d go to a nearby bar, pick up a woman . . . but . . . no. That wasn’t him. That wasn’t Reed Davies. That had been her MO. For different reasons than to burn off energy, but still.
“Let me clean this up,” she said. “You go.”
“No, this’ll only take a few—”
“Seriously, I’ve got it,” she said, laying her hand on his exposed forearm.
He glanced at it as if he too could feel the frisson of heat that passed back and forth between their skin. His eyes met hers and held for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”
Liza turned back to the kitchen, happy to busy her hands with something. She loaded the dishwasher as Reed went and changed, and a few minutes later, he leaned into the kitchen wearing a hoodie and gym shorts, a duffel bag in his hand. “I’m going to set the alarm. See you in a bit.”
She turned, smiled. “Okay. Have a good workout.”
Liza listened as he keyed in the alarm code and then turned back to the sink, resting her hands on the edge. She felt wired too. Pent-up. Frustrated. The solution, for her, had always been to immerse herself in work, first at school, and then once she’d begun her career. And now, she’d been temporarily stripped of her safety net. She hadn’t been allowed to take any of her case files home with her, and without them, about the only thing she could do was go online and brush up on clinical methods of treating psychopathology . . . perhaps read some new psych journals . . .
But she’d meant what she’d told Reed—she needed to practice sitting with her own thoughts. That was a form of therapy too and an important one. She needed to feel safe in her own head. And frankly, she didn’t really feel like looking up the latest published psychology papers. She didn’t know what she felt like. “Because,” she murmured, “you don’t know your own mind.” Which