It took everything Liam had not to react when he smelled Stephanie enter the station and then depart just as quickly. When the chief of the Gavinmire police department retuned without her, he was at his wit’s end. This Detective Simmons refused to tell him anything about Stephanie beyond the professional.

“Chief,” Hale greeted the older man.

“Detective Hughes got the security footage,” the older man tossed a flash drive at the detective who caught it easily.

“Did she question the victim's classmates and professors?” the detective asked.

“Dead end,” the man shook his head, “It seems she kept to herself. I might talk to the boyfriend again, but I don’t think he is involved considering the presence of these agents.”

“Right, I was worried about that. Where is Detective Hughes?” the other detective asked with a frown.

“Her shoulder’s giving her some trouble again. I ordered her to go to the doctor for a checkup,” the chief said stiffly.

Worry cut through Liam. Stephanie never had any health problems when he knew her. Did this have something to do with her disappearance? He needed to know. “What’s wrong with her shoulder?” The question earned a glare from both the chief and the detective. God, these two were protective of his soul mate. He was relieved that she was being protected but didn’t know how he felt about the source of that protection just yet.

“That’s none of your business,” Detective Simmons snapped. It seemed he hit a nerve this time. He wasn’t going to get anything from him anymore.

“Let’s look at the footage,” Aiden interrupted. Liam was frustrated. Aiden seemed to be running interference, keeping him from asking further questions when he felt like he would burst if he didn’t find out why his own soul mate didn’t seem to recognize him. Did he know something about this situation? Had Aiden asked when he called the agency? If he had, why had he not pulled him aside to tell him?

“Right,” Detective Simmons seemed to calm down. Liam watched as the detective put the flash drive in the computer on his desk. The footage was of surprisingly good quality. Most places were lax when it came to security. Despite all of the murders the monster had been responsible for, they had never had footage of the hours prior to the murder. They might have to use some fancy footwork if the monster was on film but knowing what they were dealing with would go a long way in eliminating the threat.

The victim, he saw, was a petite blonde woman. She seemed focused on the art, and not her surroundings. According to the time stamp, she left the gallery at twenty minutes past ten on the evening of the murder. Nobody seemed to follow immediately after, but the killer might have left through a blind spot in the footage. They watched the other patrons leave for the next ten minutes and the owner shortly after. No movement until the next morning during opening hours. Then the detective brought the time back to the woman’s departure, and put the footage on rewind, making notes of her movements as they continued. He also noted when other patrons came close to the victim. The man seemed very detail oriented. Stephanie probably liked that. The thought twisted something in his stomach.

Liam forced the feeling down as he watched the security tapes carefully. It wasn’t until the woman’s first appearance in the gallery that something caught his eye. It seemed the detective noticed it too. He paused the tapes and watched frame by frame. The figure was standing outside the gallery upon the woman’s entrance and didn’t appear to follow her inside.

“How tall would you say that person is, six four?” the detective asked with a frown.

Liam nodded, that man was good at estimating heights, at least this time. Liam squinted. Something about this man… His breath caught in his lungs as he saw the man’s hand. It took all his willpower not to curse aloud as he caught sight of the elongated fingers tipped with sharp claws. There was a raven with red eyes perched on the man’s shoulder. How had one of those monsters tamed one of the old beasts? It would be a slaughter if the monster decided to settle in this town. Stephanie, her name cut through his soul. She would be in danger if she stayed involved in this case. He couldn’t just throw her off the case, and he doubted that she would believe any lie he said to keep her distracted.

“Let’s see if we can get a better look at the man,” the detective muttered, moving the video forward frame by frame, but one moment the monster was there, the next they were gone. “A couple of minutes is missing from the footage,” the detective said with a frown.

“Do you think it was the owner’s doing?” Aiden asked. His face was white as a sheet as well. He obviously hadn’t missed what Liam had caught. The monster they were after was a shard. They were the worst of the worst. Shards were pure evil, but the raven on his shoulder was another complication. If he was right, then this situation could get a lot worse before they could even hope to take down the monster. He doubted any amount of time would change Stephanie’s tendency of finding herself in danger. He had to end this before she got hurt or worse.

“Or interference. It only lasts for a few minutes, so it’s likely it is connected to the man. It won’t hurt to talk to the owner again, and to check the original footage. But that still gives us at least a forty-minute window between her leaving the gallery and her death. Her financials don’t indicate if she paid for food anywhere in the vicinity.

“I’ll go check,” Aiden offered, “Liam,” he added. It was almost a command. Liam couldn’t help but listen.

“Tell us if you find the missing time,” the detective replied.

Liam nodded. When they made it outside Aiden stopped him outside the door? “What in the hell are you thinking?” he growled.

“It’s her,” Liam managed.

“I know. I recognized her from your photos the moment she walked towards us. She doesn’t recognize you,” this his best friend said with a worried look.

“I know,” the realization made him sick. There was no recognition in her eyes, nothing. “It’s not like I can ask her directly, not when she’s been running off ever since I saw her.”

“Well, stop trying to ask her partner. He’s getting suspicious of you,” Aiden grumbled.

“Would you stop trying to figure out what happened if someone who meant everything to you just vanished one day?”

“No, but,” Aiden sighed and ran a hand through his hair, “Obviously something happened, and it has these people on edge. This is a small town. I’m sure you can figure something out without alerting everybody in a ten-mile radius that you are interested in one of their detectives.”

Right, something had happened to Stephanie. It was that fact that terrified him. Just what had happened to make her incapable of recognizing him? What had made her leave so suddenly and without warning? He had to know. “Where should I even start? It’s been so long. I can’t even imagine what must have happened to make her leave without saying anything.” He shook his head, “Let’s just get this case taken care of and then I can focus on Stephanie.”

“Right,” Aiden rolled his eyes. “Somehow I don’t see you paying much attention to the case with Stephanie around.”

“I will too, I need to. You know what’s at stake,” Liam groaned. It would kill him to ignore his questions, but it was only for a few weeks, or days if he was lucky. He had managed all these years without knowing what had happened, what was a few more days. Torture, he decided. It was absolute torture.

“I do, and that’s why I think you should dig into what happened tonight while we’re off duty so you can get it out of your mind. Besides, how long do you think it will be before the API calls us back?” Aiden reminded him.

“With the way things have been going lately, not long at all,” Liam’s shoulders drooped. He couldn’t leave Stephanie, not until he had an explanation, not until they could go back to the way things used to be.

“Exactly. Figure the Stephanie thing out quickly so you can make plans. Are you going to quit the API?” Aiden asked as he finally let Liam into the car.

The idea was appealing, especially if it meant he could focus on Stephanie full time, but at the same time, “No, I can’t. You’ve seen what these monsters can do. What is a shard doing all the way out here? How did it tame a Nachtkrapp?” It obviously wasn’t one of the benevolent ones. Old beasts were difficult to deal with. Some were good and some were bad. Monsters almost never bothered with them. They were too temperamental, and some turned on their allies. This shard had managed it for several months if the feathers at all of the scenes were any indicator.

“Mutual destruction,” Aiden frowned. “I mean, both are interested in bloodshed, and both are sentient, so…”

“No, Nachtkrapp usually don’t care so much for bloodshed. They are usually more discerning. They usually go after children, not adults.”

“The victims are almost all young. And the raven isn’t responsible for all the kills, especially with a shard involved. The shard would have delivered the killing blow on all of the irregulars,” Aiden groaned. The shard would be difficult to eliminate if Aiden was right. Liam needed to hurry before it stuck again, before the monster grew stronger.

When they entered the art gallery, the owner didn’t seem to be lying when she stated that she had no idea about the missing time in the footage, and he confirmed that it was missing in the original footage as well. It was probably the Nachtkrapp’s doing. The old beasts usually didn’t take well to being on film. They put off a sort of feeling that messed with most forms of surveillance. Liam double checked, but there was no way to restore the footage.

They would have to return to the station empty-handed, which would obviously not put them in the detective’s good graces. That detective was like the gatekeeper for all the information that he needed about Stephanie, what she had been doing all these years. Now, he had nothing to offer in return. When the returned to the building, Stephanie was sitting next to Detective Hale, pouring over the files Aiden had provided. The only information removed were facts pertaining to irregulars. Maybe they could find something, not being so close to the cases. The two detectives might be able to produce a new insight to the case, a pattern to the shard’s movements. They would need all the help they could get to track the shard’s movements if they wanted to catch the monster before it killed anybody else. The question then became, why the regulars. Regulars were never targeted by shards. There was no point to it. They had no power to steal in death, nothing. Maybe those were the Nachtkrapp’s selections.

When he reached the desks, he noticed Stephanie had ten different files open and was stacking the ones she finished with in different piles. “Were all of the victims taking college courses?” she asked without looking up.

“Um,” Liam managed.

“I’m not sure. Do you want some help checking?” Aiden covered for his blunder.

Stephanie looked up and gave them a small smile. “Sure. I’ve been ordering the victims into age ranges. All of the oldest victims were attending night classes, and the youngest appeared to be taking dual credit courses at their local colleges. The killer could be someone who was a guest speaker at the schools or is connected to a specific student organization.”

“This one wasn’t in college at the time of death,” Detective Hale handed her a file.

“But he volunteered with an outreach program. Those type of programs usually work closely with college students. Sometimes they even have agreements for college work to study programs. Are these files digitized somewhere? It might be easier to search for commonalities that way,” Stephanie asked. They did, but those were unredacted. He couldn’t give the local cops access to those. “No, that wouldn’t work. A computer would have missed that type of connection.” She continued to grumble under her breath.

Several hours had passed before Stephanie had identified that all victims were either directly or indirectly connected to a local college campus before their death. “This still isn’t enough to go on,” Stephanie sounded upset. “I think, I’ll stay here another few hours.”

“No,” Detective Hale sounded upset.

“No?” Stephanie raised an eyebrow at her partner.

“No, the boss said you could take some of the files home, but you are not staying here. I know you. You would end up staying up all night and be next to useless in the morning.”

That was news to him. It wasn’t a problem for her to take these files, but the way she was organizing these files was starting to shape up into stacks of regulars and irregulars. He didn’t like that Stephanie seemed to overwork herself. The old Stephanie would do the same, at least until he came along.

“I’m this close, I can feel it. There’s just a piece of the puzzle I’m missing. Something that would explain everything,” Liam swallowed. He knew what that piece was, the piece that they held. The monster responsible for these killings wasn’t human, wasn’t an irregular or regular. He hated to keep the fact from her if it made her overwork herself, but it was for her own good. Until he knew why she didn’t remember him, he had to be cautious on how he approached her with information like that.

“Well, you can get closer at home, and after a good night’s rest. You think better when you get enough sleep,” the detective said sharply.

“Fine,” she huffed. Then she turned back to Liam and Aiden. “Have you checked into a hotel yet?”

“Yes, just outside of town,” Aiden answered for him once again.

“All right then, see you tomorrow,” Stephanie waved and then grabbed a large handful of files off of the desks before running towards the door.