Agent With a Shotgun

Seven

Amelia had been looking over these files for the past two hours nonstop that her eyes were beginning to hurt. She could see why Colton hadn't gotten any sleep in two days, there was so much here. He had only shown her pictures of two families that had been killed, there was at least half a dozen families in these folders. Each picture she flipped through was like a stab to her own heart. He hadn't spared anyone living in the homes. Any person living in the houses, didn't matter the age or gender, had all been killed. Even the pets or other animals that were living with the families.

Amelia placed the paper she was currently looking at back on the coffee table and rubbed her eyes. It was now close to seven in the morning. The sun had begun to peek through the blinds in the living room and she could hear the birds beginning to chirp outside.

She was seated on the floor beside the coffee table diagonal from the couch. Her hands made their way to be back of her neck and she leaned her head back against them, eyes closed. She'd abandoned her jacket shortly after beginning to go through the files, her hair being tied into a low and loose bun an hour ago to keep it out of her face.

When her eyes opened, they drifted to Coltons' sleeping figure on the couch. She had only planned to let him sleep an hour and a half at the most before waking him up to help him, but she couldn't bring herself to do it when she saw how peaceful he looked.

The blanket he was using had slid down his upper body and was now pulled up only to his waist. He shifted onto his back with one of his hands folded under his head with his other one sat on his stomach. His head was turned towards Amelia as he slept, his face calm. It'd been so long since she had seen him so calm. When they worked together, there was barely any time to sleep while on cases so they never saw each other sleep. There were the rare occasions where the cases moved slow while they were working them and took more than maybe the usual few days to weeks, where they would take turns letting the other sleep. It felt almost, like normal to Amelia as she looked at him. Like the past five years never happened.

"You're staring." Coltons' voice snapped Amelia out of her reverie. His eyes were still closed.

"I got distracted, didn't mean to," She mumbled as she looked away from him and back to the papers in front of her, "sorry." To make it more believable that she had just gotten distracted and zoned out, she picked a file back up and scanned over it. Even though she had already memorized what was in this file.

"It's fine," Colton grumbled out, sleep still evident in his voice, "what time is it?"

"Almost 7."

Colton groaned lowly in his throat and rubbed one of his hands over his face, "You could've woken me up earlier. I don't need that much sleep to function. An hour would've done."

"I was fine, no need to wake you up when I had this under control." Amelia shrugged, replying nonchalantly. Not wanting to tell him that was her original plan but she couldn't bring herself to do it when she saw how peaceful he looked.

"Did you find anything?" Colton asked, his eyes still closed with his brows furrowed. He turned his head towards the back of the couch. Amelia hummed, "It's not much but if you look at the geographical area and the direction he went in order of the murders, it shows a pattern. He's moving North but from the looks of it, he's going to be sticking around in one area for awhile. The distance between the most recent killings are smaller than the earlier killings. He went from traveling 100 miles to travel less than 25 between each family. So something or someone is drawing him further north."

"What do you think that is?" Colton asked, his expression not changing.

"That's the part I can't tell right now," Amelia sighed, setting the file back down on the table, "it'll hard to tell where exactly he's going or staying until, and I hate to say this, there's another murder. But my guess is, it won't be far from the last one."