Cora was already running toward the car. She yanked the driver’s-side door open with a choked gasp, stumbling back as Magnus Blackwell’s body slumped halfway out of the car. His glassy eyes stared unseeing at the sky.
Her face blanched. “Not again.”
Liam crouched beside the open door, noting the dark bloodstain on Magnus’s shirt. “He’s been stabbed.” He searched inside the car for clues, but everything appeared neat and orderly. Not even the water bottle in the holder had been overturned. “Looks like he was taken by surprise. There’s no sign of a struggle.”
“Whoever did this was someone he knew,” Cora said in a methodical voice. Liam could tell she’d managed to wrestle her initial shock under control and gone into detective mode. “We have to call this in.”
Liam pulled his phone from his pocket and made the necessary call. After hanging up, he joined Cora, sitting next to her on the curb to wait for the ambulance and police. “When Boyd asks later, I’ll tell him we got an anonymous tip and came out here to investigate.”
Cora nodded and dropped her head in her hands. “Why would anyone kill Magnus?”
“I imagine the man has many enemies.”
“Everything just keeps getting worse,” she said wearily. “This makes three murders in as many months, and now our biggest lead shows up dead. What the hell is happening to my city?”
Liam shook his head. “We need to talk to Finn.”
Cora reached for her phone and dialed Finn’s number. There was no use texting since stealth was no longer necessary. After a minute, she tried again, then shut her phone. “He’s not answering. What if he saw what happened, and he’s somehow in trouble?”
A cold finger of dread brushed down Liam’s spine. He jumped up and began to pace. “I’m sure he’s fine. We’ll try again in a few minutes.” Finn had to be fine. Liam couldn’t allow himself to imagine otherwise.
“But he always answers when I call,” Cora said. “This isn’t like him.”
They sat in the blazing sun until the paramedics, several officers, the coroner, and Captain Thompson arrived. Soon the area around Magnus’s car was taped off and the entire parking lot was blocked from pedestrians. A small crowd of people had gathered behind the police lines to gawk at the scene.
“Did you see anything? Anyone?” Boyd asked when he stormed out of his car. His face was mottled with splotches of red in what Liam could only assume was anger. Though he’d only been standing outside for a couple of minutes, he was already covered in a sheen of sweat.
“Nothing, Captain,” Cora said. “We got an anonymous tip and came out to investigate. We found Magnus Blackwell in his car like this.”
“Anonymous tip.” Boyd narrowed his eyes with suspicion. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“A note on my windshield,” Liam said quickly. “It said to check the parking lot at Providence Falls State Park, so here we are.” The lie rolled off his tongue, smooth as silk. It was a skill he’d honed from his past life of thieving, and while he wasn’t proud of it, in this case it served him well.
“Show me the note,” Boyd demanded.
“I tossed it away before we came out here.” Liam did his best to look sheepish. “It was a mistake; I realize that now. But I thought it was just kids playing a prank. We almost didn’t come here at all. I had no idea we’d find something of this magnitude.”
“That’s sloppy-ass police work, O’Connor,” Boyd said with disgust. “Sometimes I wonder how you got into this profession at all.” With a glare, he walked off to talk to the coroner.
It was several hours before Liam and Cora were finally dismissed to go home. Everyone had been shocked by Magnus’s murder, and tension at the station was higher than ever.
Back at home, Liam slumped wearily onto the living room sofa, staring at the blank television. This time, he didn’t bother trying to summon Agon and Samael. If they were trying to teach him a lesson by making him deal with the chaos on his own, then so be it. He could do this without them...but he couldn’t do it without Finn.
“Any luck?” Cora asked as Liam set his cell phone on the coffee table that evening.
“None.” They’d been calling Finn for hours, to no avail. They’d even driven by his penthouse on the way home, but he didn’t answer the door and his car wasn’t in the parking garage.
“What if something’s happened to him?” Cora asked worriedly. “Finn would never leave us hanging for this long without at least checking in.”
Liam feared she was right. There was only one other thing he could think to do, but Cora wouldn’t like it. “If we still haven’t heard back from him by noon tomorrow, we’ll go to his place and have a look around. Maybe there will be clues inside as to where he’s gone.”
“You’re talking about breaking and entering again,” she pointed out.
“If he’s in trouble, we can’t waste any time on protocol. Besides, if one of us were missing and Finn suspected foul play, he wouldn’t let anything stop him from helping us. He’d do whatever it took. You know that.”
“Fine,” she said with a groan. “But let’s hope it won’t come to that.”
The next morning at the station, the hours dragged by with still no word from Finn. Liam tried to lose himself in browsing the internet, but his mind kept circling back to all the terrible things that might’ve befallen Finn. That only led to internet searches for various reasons a person might disappear, which only made Liam feel worse. Shark attacks, kidnappings, alien abductions, serial killers, falling into wet concrete—all of it was disturbing, and Liam soon learned the downside to having information always at one’s fingertips.