Serial Killer License Bureau (Dripping Red Tape)

Her exposure score was three. Very low. After she died, it became twenty-two. Insurance adjuster Teodora “Teo” Vance knows what that difference costs. A changed number can shrink a payout, shift responsibility, and turn a murdered woman into someone who should have known better. But Dana Whitlock’s sister has a screenshot. Dana checked. Dana followed the rules. Someone changed the record anyway. Tracing the discrepancy takes Teo inside the Serial Killer Licensing Bureau, where the government’s most dangerous employees wear collars, attend training, and argue about recognition. There are performance metrics. Family visits. An art show. There is an Employee of the Month. The Bureau has made predators useful and violence more predictable. Its people can show Teo the numbers that prove it. They are considerably less eager to explain the paperwork surrounding Dana’s death. Teo expects monsters. She finds them. She also finds a jovial historian nobody can stop talking, an inventor who makes her laugh before she learns what he has done, and an analyst whose precise, uncomfortable honesty begins to feel like friendship. That is the part she wasn’t prepared for. As one disputed claim opens onto older secrets, Teo discovers how easily temporary explanations become permanent records—and how expensive the truth can be to an institution that genuinely works. Then a killer and his handler disappear, exposing a weakness no collar can measure. Outside, a grieving sister wants her sister’s name back. Inside, Teo is beginning to feel at home. SERIAL KILLER LICENSING BUREAU blends psychological suspense, bureaucratic horror, and dark workplace humor in a world where murder has become an administrative problem—and liking someone may be the most dangerous mistake you make. The opening novel in the DRIPPING RED TAPE series. Your score is information, not immunity.