There wasn’t much of the body that hadn’t been beaten or cut or burned, but it was Shawn. Juliet knew it was. Missing for two weeks, the gang had sent picture after picture of him and the damage they’d done to him. Picture after picture with dire warnings to stop the investigation or they would kill him.

The wounds on the body matched those that had been on Shawn in the pictures. It was him.

“It might not be him,” Carlton said. “We won’t know for sure until the DNA results come back.”

The results—which would take a week or so, depending on how backed up the lab was—that were made necessary because the gang had beheaded him. They had beheaded Shawn.

Award: SBPD Award Boo Boo Award