A Killer's Prey
Table of Contents
Excerpt
Praise for MJ Eason
A Killer’s Prey
Copyright
Dedication
The Beginning
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
A word about the author…
Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
The smell of crushed lilacs
mingled with the acrid scent of smoke. He was here with her. In the one place he could still reach her. Her dreams.
Kara fought to wake herself, but he was not ready to let her go just yet. She could hear his voice as if it were only yesterday.
You think you can get rid of me so easily, Kara. You can’t. Don’t you know you’ve become part of me? You became entwined the moment I chose you. You can’t leave me until I say it’s over. And it’s not over. There are more games to play. More victims.
Smoke quickly overpowered the fragrant lilacs, making it impossible for Kara to breathe. He’d bound her hands together. Her fingers fumbled with the knot. She could feel his breath on her cheek.
But she couldn’t see. The silky blindfold felt soft and familiar touching her skin. A contradiction to the horror she knew lay just beyond its comfort.
Kara heard her scream. Kim Billings. The woman who took her place. She could still hear her pleading for help after all these years.
“Hold on. I’m coming!” Kara forced the words out.
This is just a dream. It’s just a dream!
Praise for MJ Eason
“A top notch suspense. It’s gritty, emotional, and a wild ride. Get on board and get a copy of this book fast!”
~Sunflower at Long and Short (4 Stars)
A Killer’s Prey
by
MJ Eason
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
A Killer’s Prey
COPYRIGHT © 2017 by MJ Eason
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com
Cover Art by Diana Carlile
The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
PO Box 708
Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708
Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com
Publishing History
First Crimson Rose Edition, 2017
Print ISBN 978-1-5092-1334-4
Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-1335-1
Published in the United States of America
Dedication
To all the men and women in the armed services
who serve and protect our country
both here and around the world.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
This one’s for you.
The Beginning
The smell of crushed lilacs mingled with the acrid scent of smoke. He was here with her. In the one place he could still reach her. Her dreams.
Kara fought to wake herself but he was not ready to let her go just yet. She could hear his voice as if it were only yesterday.
You think you can get rid of me so easily, Kara. You can’t. Don’t you know you’ve become part of me? You became entwined the moment I chose you. You can’t leave me until I say it’s over. And it’s not over. There are more games to play. More victims.
Smoke quickly overpowered the fragrant lilacs, making it impossible for Kara to breathe. He’d bound her hands together. Her fingers fumbled with the knot. She could feel his breath on her cheek.
But she couldn’t see. The silky blindfold felt soft and familiar touching her skin. A contradiction to the horror she knew lay just beyond its comfort.
Kara heard her scream. Kim Billings. The woman who took her place. She could still hear her pleading for help after all these years.
“Hold on. I’m coming!” Kara forced the words out.
This is just a dream. It’s just a dream!
“Mommie…”
He touched her shoulder and whispered her name but something wasn’t right. His touch felt soft and gentle. All wrong.
“Mommie!”
Mommie? Kara forced her eyes open with a tiny gasp, her fearful glance searching the familiar bedroom of her home outside El Paso, Texas. He wasn’t here. Thank God, he wasn’t here. Just her daughter, who stood next to Kara’s bed trying to wake her mother. Ava’s frightened little face screwed up.
“Oh baby, did I wake you?” Ava’s expression relaxed a little. She climbed into bed with Kara, her tiny arms wrapping tightly around her mother’s waist for comfort.
“Baby, it’s okay. It was only a bad dream.” Kara wished she could believe what she’d said. But in her heart, she feared the worst. It had started.
“It’s the same dream, isn’t it, Mommie?” Ava asked in a sleepy little voice. It sickened Kara that her innocent daughter knew this dream so well.
“Yes.”
“Mommie, will it ever end?” She would give anything to be able to answer yes and mean it.
As Kara tried to find something believable to tell her daughter, Ava’s quiet breathing made lies unnecessary.
Slowly Kara untangled Ava’s clinging arms and climbed out of bed, holding her breath for a moment. Ava didn’t wake. She quietly pulled the bedroom door closed, leaving it open just a sliver in case her daughter should wake up.
Outside, the Texas night still held the heat of the day. From her front porch, Kara could see for miles.
This stretch of desert outside El Paso, where it met the foothills of the Davis Mountains made for a great lookout point except for one problem. There wasn’t anywhere to hide and there was no chance of running away from trouble. Nothing could last a day in the blazing desert heat except for the vultures.
But then, wasn’t that the very reason why she’d moved here in the first place? To escape the past and become normal.
So far, Kara hadn’t accomplished either.
Tonight, nothing moved on the desert’s surface. Up above were thousands of stars as far as the eye could see, and a full moon befitting the Texas night blazed across the surface of the sky.
It was the same dream as always. It had haunted her for six years. It always got to her. But then, coming so close to death was bound to lead to a few unpleasant dreams.
If only it were that simple. Kara knew better. Just thinking about him made her want to check on Ava. She needed reassurance.
Kara quietly opened the bedroom door and tiptoed to the bed, looking down at her sleeping child. Ava—Ava Elizabeth Bryant, named after both Kara’s mother and grandmother, slept peacefully in her mother’s bed. She was so like Kara and yet so like her father that at times Kara could almost feel his touch.
She stroked a strand of silken brown hair, so much like her own, away from Ava’s damp forehead. Even in the air-conditioned house, the heat at three in the morning could be suffocating.
Recognizing her mother’s touch, Ava opened her eyes for a moment. Startling gray eyes so like her father’s. The resemblance never ceased to st
un Kara.
“Mommie, what’s wrong?”
“Shh… Nothing, baby. Everything is just fine. Go back to sleep now.” Already Ava’s eyes had closed. Soon her breathing grew deeper with sleep.
Kara kissed her daughter’s forehead softly then crept from the room.
Buster, their faithful golden retriever waited for her outside, standing guard against the coyotes howling in the distance. Beyond the cry of the coyotes came a much stronger one.
The sound of things to come.
They were coming. Dammit, they always came back, no matter how much she discouraged them.
Why couldn’t they leave her alone? Six years and every unsolved case brought a fresh group of them to Kara’s door, searching for an answer to the impossible. And just desperate enough to come to her for help. No matter how much she didn’t want to be found, they always managed to track her down.
Through all those years, her answer had always been the same. She couldn’t help them. She had nothing left inside her to help them. The gift was gone.
Grandmother Maggie called it a gift but nothing could be further from the truth as far as Kara was concerned. It wasn’t anything to be welcomed in the way a gift should be. This was a nightmare. Seeing into the minds of the most deviant people on the face of the Earth felt nothing short of terrifying.
But the gift of seeing ran in their family. Her great-grandmother had used it to make money. Kara’s own mother Emily had been twenty-eight years old when she’d committed suicide because she couldn’t handle the gift. Grandmother Maggie made her peace with it long ago.
Kara tried to do the same.
From the moment Ava was born, Kara watched her daughter carefully for any of the telltale signs of its existence. There were times when she’d almost been able to convince herself Ava was going to be lucky. But then the little girl would say something curious and all the old doubts would resurface.
For as long as Kara could remember, she’d possessed the gift. But as Grandmother Maggie loved to say, there was always a defining moment when it came to the sight. Either for good, or for bad.
For Kara’s mother it was visualizing the death of her husband. That was the bad. For Kara it came in the form of watching the death of a young child, a total stranger and later solving the case, much to the surprise of the local Austin police department. That was the good. Or so Kara believed until another case came her way, followed by another.
And then her real defining moment—when she came face-to-face with the Death Angel.
Frankie Stephens took away all the good from the gift. Until then, Kara never realized how truly twisted the human mind could become.
But Frankie taught her all the intricate workings of the mind of a serial killer and in the process became Kara’s biggest challenge and almost her greatest downfall.
Seeing into Frankie’s mind brought her to the attention of the FBI and Agent Davis Martin. Davis broke her heart, left her picking up the pieces of her life with a baby he didn’t know he’d fathered and never would, if she had anything to do with it.
As far as Kara was concerned, the only good to come from that part of her life was that little girl asleep in her mother’s bed.
Chapter One
Throughout the long, sleepless hours of the early morning, Davis Martin couldn’t escape the feeling something bad would happen today. It had to. It was the anniversary of the Death Angel.
Six years ago, that same day had started out just as innocently. The warmth of an Indian summer brought the tourists out in droves to visit the nation’s capital. It ended with the discovery of Amy Sinclair’s body. The first Angel victim.
As head of the FBI’s DC branch of VCIRCD, Violent Crimes Investigative Resources Center’s Division, Davis had seen his fair share of bad situations. But oddly enough the past few years at the center had been relatively tame. They’d been working cold cases just to stay funded.
Unfortunately, the last of his remaining doubts were about to be blown to smithereens as his gut instinct confirmed the minute he walked into his office that morning, guaranteeing he’d remember this day for the rest of his life.
When Davis’s assistant Jessica met him at the elevator door with coffee in one hand, he knew she carried bad news in the other. “Ryan wants to talk to you right away. There’s been a murder.”
“This is DC, Jessica. There’s always a murder somewhere.” He took the coffee she offered and headed for his office with Jessica in tow. “Why isn’t DC homicide dealing with it?” he questioned when Jessica didn’t volunteer anything further.
“Why do you think? Ryan asked me to let him know the minute you arrived.” Jessica ignored Davis’s bad mood. Picking up his office phone, she arched a well-groomed eyebrow at his glare. Jessica had grown accustomed to his moods and the reasons behind them by now.
Kara—always Kara. He was no closer to getting her out of his head than he was to forgetting the reasons that brought them together in the first place.
“He’s on his way,” she said replacing the receiver before spotting the evidence of another sleepless night. “You know, I could cure you of her in a second. It would only take one night and you wouldn’t even remember her name.”
Davis tried to remain in his bad mood but Jessica knew how to bring him out of those black moments. Most of the time, he wished she’d leave him there to suffer.
Of course, he’d have to be crazy to consider taking her up on her offer but still Jessica refused to give up hope. He considered her to be a kid sister. She considered him a challenge.
As a good friend of her parents, he’d practically watched her grow up.
“Thanks but I’ll keep my memories. And I don’t want to have to fight your father when he learns I’ve corrupted his little girl.”
Before Jessica could answer, Ryan Anderson, Davis’s second-in-command, appeared in the doorway.
“Thanks Jessica. Can you give us a minute?” She glanced at Davis waiting for him to give the okay before budging.
“Go ahead. If we need anything, I’ll buzz you.” Davis told her with a smile.
“What’s up?” Davis asked once he got a good look at Ryan’s worried expression. This was going to be bad.
“DC police found the body of a woman in an empty warehouse off Arlington Boulevard,” Ryan told him before taking his usual seat across from Davis.
“So?” Ryan didn’t answer right away, which only served to increase Davis’s apprehension. “So what’s so special about this one to make DC homicide want us involved in it? Don’t tell me it’s a politician?”
“No such luck. Davis, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know what to make of it. I received a call from homicide this morning. The detective who caught the case wanted to talk to you.”
“What?” he asked, wondering why Ryan didn’t just get on with it.
“The case has some similarities to another case. That’s what caught the detective’s interest in the first place. Then there’s the scarf, which is downright odd.”
“The scarf?” Davis forced the words out, forgetting all about his bad mood.
“Yeah. They found a white silk scarf tied around the victim’s eyes. A Hermès scarf. He’d bound her hands until after he killed her. She’s been mutilated and there’s evidence of rape, although there’s no DNA on the body. This perp knew what he was doing.”
“Was it…?” Davis never intentionally let himself think about the Death Angel case even though it was never far from him emotionally. The case had left its mark on him and everyone who worked it, including Ryan and certainly Kara. It cost him dearly in losing the woman he loved.
“Not only similar to the scarf used in the original Angel case, Davis, it’s the same scarf.”
“What are you talking about? That’s impossible—”
“He used the same scarf as in the original Sinclair murder. The initial lab report indicates there is more than one source of blood on the scarf and since the perp didn’t leave any DNA at the crime sc
ene we’re almost certain it isn’t his. I had the lab compare the blood to Amy’s blood type and it’s a match.”
“How is that possible?”
“That’s what I wanted to know, so I checked on the evidence file from those first cases and—the scarves have all gone missing from the Death Angel case.”
“What?” Davis’s thoughts went instinctively back to the last time he’d seen those scarves. They’d remained at VCIRCD for three years following the official closing of the Angel case even though they’d never recovered Frankie’s body from the Potomac. Later, they’d gone into storage at the Bureau’s evidence storage facility.
“How is that possible?”
“That’s a good question,” Ryan said. “And one we’d better figure out soon. Before the press gets wind of this.”
“Have you talked to the evidence clerk?”
“Yes, I called her as soon as I discovered the missing evidence. But nothing unusual happened to her knowledge and she’s squeaky clean. She’s a dead end, Davis.”
“Does Ed know about this yet?”
“Are you kidding? I wanted to give you the heads-up before I mentioned anything to him.”
“Good. Keep it that way for now. He’s going to blow when he hears someone waltzed into our evidence facility and took evidence from one of the most notorious serial killer cases in centuries. The one case none of us wants resurrected.” Davis didn’t really need to add that last part.
“Hey, you aren’t telling me anything I don’t know, buddy. I’m meeting the two homicide detectives working the case in a few minutes. I’ve asked them to turn over all the information they have so far to us. You want to sit in? I can have them meet us here.”
“Yes. But let’s try to keep a lid on this for now, Ryan. This could all just be some screw-up at the lab. No need getting anyone worked up unnecessarily. Did you find anything else missing from the evidence files?”
“Nothing and I drove out there this morning myself to check on it personally. Just the scarves.”
As he waited for Ryan to bring the two detectives round, Davis glanced at the calendar on his desk. Six years ago to the day. The anniversary of the discovery of the first victim in the Death Angel murders. The first of many to follow. He still remembered everything he’d felt about that day because he’d felt the same way today. God, he hoped this wasn’t going to prove to be another bad omen.