As deputies and a SWAT team prepared to enter the motel, Rice exited the door to the duo’s room and surrendered. As police apprehended her, a single gunshot was heard from inside.

Police entered and found the body of Boyette.

“You breathe a little bit of a collective sigh of relief here in Escambia County, but we’ve got to remember there’s four grieving families,” Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan told the Pensacola News Journal.

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The duo’s alleged rampage began when the bodies of 30-year-old Alicia Ann Greer and 39-year-old Jacqueline Jeanette Moore were found Jan. 31 at the Emerald Sands Inn on Highway 90 in Milton, Fla. At the time, it seemed like a tragic but isolated mystery.

“It’s just unfortunate whatever was going on in their lives caused this to happen,” the inn’s owner Scott Kaufmann told the Pensacola News Journal. “We go out of our way to make this a safe place.”

Three days later, though, the body of 52-year-old Peggy Broz was found in her yard in Baldwin County, just across Perdido Bay, which separates the Florida panhandle from Alabama. The woman had been shot, and her white 2003 Chrysler Concorde was missing.

William “Billy” Eugene Boyette Jr., a 44-year-old man with a long rap sheet, quickly emerged as a suspect in both cases. He had been in a relationship with Greer and has a history of alleged domestic abuse.

Fear truly stalked the Gulf Coast on Monday, though, when police say Boyette struck again — and they say they learned he wasn’t alone.

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In Pensacola, back on the other side of Perdido Bay, 28-year-old Kayla Crocker’s mother worried when her daughter didn’t show up from work. She drove to her house to check on her daughter and 2-year-old grandson.

There, she found her daughter bleeding out from a gunshot wound at 6:30 a.m. Her son was also in the house, unharmed. Crocker’s 2006 white Chevrolet Cobalt, adorned with a skull and crossbones sticker, was missing.

The young woman was rushed to a hospital, where she died on Tuesday.

Authorities said Boyette, accompanied by Mary Craig Rice, broke into Crocker’s home, shot her and left her for dead. Video surveillance showed the pair driving Crocker’s Cobalt to a Shell gas station, then to a nearby Hardee’s fast-food restaurant, where they ate breakfast.

“What we are experiencing is a running nightmare, quite honestly,” Escambia County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Chip Simmons said during a Monday news conference. “In short, we have a killer. He is in our midst. … Everyone, and I mean everyone, should be aware of this, should be aware of what they look like.”

The nature of Rice and Boyette’s relationship remains unclear, but earlier this week police deemed her a suspect rather than a kidnapping victim because she has changed her hair color to orange and has been seen entering stores alone.

“There was sufficient time, if you will, for her to make an escape. To walk away, seek refuge, if you will, for safety, but she returned continually to” Boyette, Morgan said at a news conference.

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Although police didn’t give many details, they released a grainy image showing Boyette and Rice in the woods. In the photograph, Boyette holds a handgun. Police declined to say where they received the photograph, citing only a “surveillance system.”

Monday’s home invasion, and the linking of the three alleged crimes, immediately put on edge the small Gulf community of Escambia County, which includes the beach town Pensacola. The Sheriff’s Office doubled the number of deputies involved in its search for the pair, which included bloodhounds searching nearby woods.

“When you go to work, when you come home, make sure a friend or family member knows where you are, what is your expected time of arrival,” Morgan said, according to the Pensacola News Journal. “These may seem like measures in the extreme, but we’re dealing with an extreme situation here.”

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Schools in both Baldwin and Escambia counties were open Tuesday.

“Due to the incidents that news outlets have released in our area we have secured all students inside our school buildings and locked all doors leading in and out,” Rockwell Elementary Principal Robbie Owen told AL.com on Monday.

Authorities repeatedly warned that the pair were armed and dangerous, citing Boyette’s 15-year history with the law.

In 2014, for example, he was accused of beating a girlfriend when she came from work smelling of alcohol. The arrest report, obtained by the Pensacola News Journal, stated that he told her if she reported the abuse he would “drag [a trial out] and make her life miserable.” The victim first told police Boyette had not touched her, before telling them he had threatened to kill her several times. Charges were later dropped when she recanted her story.

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A year later, a Pensacola woman called police and, in a whisper, told dispatchers that her boyfriend had stabbed her several times in her limbs, strangled her and earlier had taken her phone. Escambia County Sheriff’s Office deputies found her crying and bleeding. In a bedroom, they discovered an unconscious Boyette, hand wrapped around a large kitchen knife. He spent a year in custody before charges were dropped when the alleged victim, who was wanted on separate criminal charges, disappeared.

Fourteen hours later, Boyette was arrested by U.S. Marshals for a parole violation, for which he spent three months in jail.

Boyette also “has been a member for a long time of the drug culture,” Morgan said in the news conference. “He’s known be a heavy user of spice,” another name for synthetic marijuana, the effects of which “mirrors a sweaty, angry amphetamine trip,” according to The Washington Post’s Ben Guarino.

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Added Morgan, “These people stay awake for four, five, six days at a time.”

“He has made this statement to many, many people that he will not be taken alive,” Morgan said, a promise Boyette apparently upheld.

Rice, meanwhile, faces several potential charges stemming from the killings. Florida State Attorney Bill Eddins told the Pensacola News Journal she faces charges of accessory after the fact to capital murder on the Milton killing, while charges are pending in the Crocker killing.

In Alabama, she faces charges of capital murder for the Broz killing, Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office public information officer Anthony Lowery told the paper.