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Damien sped toward the location before dispatch gave him the address, the boxes of Sanders’ files bouncing in his back seat and trunk. Sanders struggled to follow behind him as they raced through the streets.

Damien knew where the mayor’s daughter had gone missing. He’d spent two and a half years there.

They were heading toward Hayeston High School. He felt nauseous. He was living a hellish deja vu.

Damien had spent many Fridays watching the Hayeston High Tigers play football at the small stadium behind the red brick school. Football used to be his favorite sport. He’d watch every version of it he could find. College. Pro. Semi-pro. Pick-up games.

That all changed in what would have been his senior year at Hayeston High when Cathy Richie went missing. She was a Tigerette, the name of the bubbly cheerleading squad that, on game nights, yelled to a crowd more interested in down and distance than joining the Tigerette’s calls for spirit.

Damien didn’t have a lot of interactions with Cathy before he dropped out of high school, but what little time he’d spent with her, she seemed kind and warm. Once they were assigned a project together.

Other times, they’d bump into each other in the cafeteria line. Cathy, beautiful and popular, had every reason to dismiss a nobody like Damien, but she was nice to everyone, no matter who they were.

One evening, after cheerleading practice, she went to her car to get her cellphone and never returned. She was Mark’s first victim. He lured her to the back of his car, struck her with a tire iron, stuffed her into his trunk, took her to an abandoned warehouse, then raped and choked her to death, before setting Cathy’s corpse on fire.

Her remains were found only after Mark admitted to killing her. During his confession, he said he never thought of using fire in his work. It was too unpredictable for his tastes, but, after that day, it became a weapon in his arsenal and he had planned on using it in the future, if the situation required it.

Damien never liked football after hearing that.

Cathy wasn’t a stranger he’d heard about on the news. He’d seen her at the games, spoken to her in the halls, over- heard her talk about wanting to be a veterinarian. She wasn’t a statistic. She was a young woman whose future was snuffed out because she aroused a psychopath a few lockers down from her own.

Damien had never met Darlene, the mayor’s daughter, but he wouldn’t be surprised if she resembled Cathy.

As they neared the high school, the dispatcher answered a series of Damien’s questions. The answers were everything he feared.

Darlene was a junior at Hayeston High. She was a cheerleader.

She was blonde. She disappeared from practice at the football field. No one had seen her since.

Mark never told Sanders how long he kept Cathy alive before setting her ablaze, so Damien wasn’t sure how much time they had before the copy cat serial killer would light the match.