Amara was halfway through her second cup of burnt precinct coffee when the database pinged. Not loud just a dull little ding but it cut through the silence like a gunshot.

She leaned forward.

“Got something?” Darryl asked from his desk, not bothering to look up from the mess of open folders spread out like a crime scene of their own.

“Maybe,” Amara said, scrolling. “I ran that bird pendant through artisan crime reports every case in the past two years where handmade items were recovered at a scene. Didn’t expect much.”

“And?”

She turned the monitor toward him. There it was. An old cold case: female victim, similar age, similar wounds, found in a drainage tunnel. Body posed. No ID at the time, but what caught her attention was the pendant. Wooden. Carved. A small owl this time. Same style, same carved initials on the back: R.L.

“That’s two,” she said. “That’s not a fluke.”

Darryl grabbed the photo from the file, holding it next to a shot of the pendant they’d found yesterday. Same wood grain. Same craftsmanship. Someone had a signature. And maybe not just the killer.

“What if the pendants aren’t his?” he said. “What if they’re hers? The victims. Keepsakes. Things they carried.”

Amara frowned. “Then how did both end up back at the scenes? Returned?”

Darryl stood up, the realization settling in. “No. They weren’t returned. They were planted. The killer’s not just leaving messages for us he’s collecting. Studying his targets. He knows what’s sentimental.”

Amara spun toward her board, flipping through photos, notes, half-sketched theories. “He’s not just killing people who dig too deep. He’s learning them. Watching them first. Knowing what they carry, what matters.”

Darryl exhaled slowly. “He’s been doing recon. Probably for months before he ever makes a move.”

“And if we’re lucky,” Amara said, pulling open a fresh screen and typing rapidly, “someone noticed him while he was watching.”

She called up CCTV feeds near Sarah Miller’s last known location. Pulled footage from days leading up to her disappearance. There two blocks over. Grainy, but clear enough. A man, tall, hooded, standing just outside her apartment building.

Not doing anything. Not moving.

Just watching.

Darryl leaned in. “We get facial rec on that?”

Amara was already ahead of him. “Running now.”

Darryl grabbed his jacket. “Get what you can. I’m gonna call Ramirez and check if that other victim ever got ID’d. If we can name her hell, if we can figure out what she was writing about we might be able to connect this whole thing.”

As he walked off, Amara stared at the screen. The man still stood in frame, unmoving. Unrushed.

He knew the camera was there.

And he didn’t care.