Sugar Skull

Death leaves patterns. FBI Special Agent Tabitha Hollis knows that better than most that when the third mutilated woman is found staged in a rain-slick alley, she sees what the city is desperate not to name: a killer is hunting women no one looks for quickly enough. The victims are posed. Their throats are cut. Their belongings are taken. And each face is partially cleaned, as if the killer wants something seen beneath the blood. As the bodies multiply, Tabitha and her partner Lucas Roth build a task force out of bad evidence, worse coffee, and the fragile testimony of women who have learned to survive by noticing what the rest of the city ignores. Then a mysterious woman named Mel appears with information she shouldn't have, a sugar skull tattoo on her throat, and secrets she refuses to give away for free. When the killer’s ritual evolves into something more symbolic, more intimate, and far more grotesque, Tabitha realizes the murders may be more than random acts of violence. They may be a message. And if she cannot understand what the killer is trying to say, another woman’s face will become the next chapter in his story. Updates on Mondays once I've written the chapter.