The Architect's Mind: A Trilogy Book 2

The sterile glow of the forensic tent did little to penetrate the deepening gloom that had settled over Joanne. The tape, a garish yellow, fluttered in the chilly night air, a stark reminder of the boundaries between the living and the irrevocably lost. This was the fifth. The fifth life extinguished by the phantom, known only as the Architect. Each discovery had chipped away at her composure, leaving behind a raw, exposed nerve. But this time, the excavation was different. This time, the chilling familiarity was a physical weight, pressing down on her chest, making each breath a shallow, desperate effort. The victim, identified only as Sarah Jenkins by the preliminary forensics team, lay sprawled on the damp earth, her eyes wide open, fixed on an unseen point beyond the canvas shroud. Joanne had known Sarah. Not well, perhaps, not in the intimate way one knows a confidante, but well enough. Sarah had been a patient. A woman haunted by a past that Joanne, in her previous life as a therapist, had tried to help her navigate. She remembered Sarah's quiet desperation, the tentative hope that flickered in her eyes during their sessions, the fragile trust she had begun to place in Joanne's guidance. Now, that fragile hope had been brutally, irrevocably extinguished.