by Mary Burton
PRAISE FOR MARY BURTON
THE SHARK
“This romantic thriller is tense, sexy, and pleasingly complex.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Precise storytelling complete with strong conflict and heightened tension are the highlights of Burton’s latest. With a tough, vulnerable heroine in Riley at the story’s center, Burton’s novel is a well-crafted, suspenseful mystery with a ruthless villain who would put any reader on edge. A thrilling read.”
—RT Book Reviews, four stars
BEFORE SHE DIES
“Will keep readers sleeping with the lights on.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
MERCILESS
“Burton keeps getting better!”
—RT Book Reviews
YOU’RE NOT SAFE
“Burton once again demonstrates her romantic suspense chops with this taut novel. Burton plays cat and mouse with the reader through a tight plot, credible suspects, and romantic spice keeping it real.”
—Publishers Weekly
BE AFRAID
“Mary Burton [is] the modern-day queen of romantic suspense.”
—Bookreporter
ALSO BY MARY BURTON
Never Look Back
I See You
Hide and Seek
Cut and Run
Her Last Word
The Last Move
Burn You Twice
The Forgotten Files
The Shark
The Dollmaker
The Hangman
Morgans of Nashville
Cover Your Eyes
Be Afraid
I’ll Never Let You Go
Vulnerable
Texas Rangers
The Seventh Victim
No Escape
You’re Not Safe
Alexandria Series
Senseless
Merciless
Before She Dies
Richmond Series
I’m Watching You
Dead Ringer
Dying Scream
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2021 by Mary Burton
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542021371
ISBN-10: 1542021375
Cover design by Amanda Kain
CONTENTS
PAUL THOMPSON’S CRIME FILES
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
PAUL THOMPSON’S CRIME FILES
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
PAUL THOMPSON’S CRIME FILES
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
PAUL THOMPSON’S CRIME FILES
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAUL THOMPSON’S CRIME FILES
Eleven years ago, Elijah James Weston was convicted of arson two days after his nineteenth birthday. He had not only finished his freshman year at the University of Montana on full academic scholarship but had proven to be a brilliant student. After the house fire nearly claimed the lives of two senior coeds, Ann Bailey and Joan Mason, rumors quickly circulated that Elijah had been acquainted with both women. Stories of his troubled childhood, a juvenile history of arson, and an obsession with Ann dominated all conversations in Missoula that summer. After his DNA was found on one of the surviving incendiary devices, he was arrested.
The media quickly swirled around him, like moths to a flame. A physically beautiful man, his blond hair and gray eyes summoned comparisons to Paul Walker, Brad Pitt, or a young Robert Redford. Anyone who attended high school or college with Elijah was interviewed. Local vigilantes threatened trouble if he were released. Women from all over the country, soon to be known as the Fireflies, began to write him.
During his weeklong trial, he showed no emotion. Reporters hired body language experts to decode his every move, whether he turned his head, rested his fingers on the defense table, or shifted in his seat. Each expert had an opinion, but no one really knew what he was thinking.
The prosecution made its case, and the public defender made hers. The jury deliberated for five hours and sentenced Elijah Weston to ten years in the Montana State Prison.
For many, this verdict was an ending, but for Elijah and the Fireflies, it was just the beginning.
PROLOGUE
Anaconda, Montana
Tuesday, August 17
8:40 p.m.
Present Day
Point and shoot.
A cool, moist breeze ruffles my jacket as I raise the Polaroid camera and center the lens on the woman standing at the mountain’s edge. The sun hovers above the horizon, backlighting the range in a soft, buttery auburn light.
The woman’s smile is bright. Blond bangs brush over lively eyes sparkling with excitement as she holds her arms up and juts out her chest like a world champion who has crossed the finish line. Behind her, the city’s boxy low-rise structures, twinkling like gems, are cushioned in the rolling mossy-green foothills of the Anaconda Range.
She is addicted to the attention. But all women like her love it. And in this moment, she has mine.
I should be restless and worried about a random passerby on the trail below. Sunset is a popular time for hikers and mountain bikers. They are attracted to the view as much as the exercise. But I am not worried. In fact, I am oddly calm. This is not my first time, after all, and I have learned from my mistakes. I would not say I am cocky, but I know what I am doing.
“Why don’t you use a cell phone?” She nervously shoves the fringe of hair from her eyes. Her cheeks are an attractive rosy red, though too round for my tastes, and her teeth could use whitening. But she has sex appeal that is hard to ignore.
“I’m old school,” I say. “You know that. I’ve never been a fan of cells.” If anyone is going to be tracked by GPS in these mountains, it will be her, not me.
“But you can’t post those pictures.” She shifts her feet. She is already restless. “Where do you keep all the printed pictures?”
“I have a box.”
“Do you have a lot of pictures?” Hints of jealousy pepper the words.
“Not enough of you.” I snap the first picture as her grin returns, and the machine grinds out an image.
“Can you take an extra one for me, too?” she asks. “Might be fun to tape it to the dashboard of my car. Retro, you know?”
I snap the button again, and the small machine gushes another blank picture. I set it beside the first on rain-soaked soil, watching until I am satisfied my images will work before I reach for her phone.
“Say cheese,” I say, raising it to my face.
“Cheese!” Her grin broadens.
I snap ten digital pictures in one hundredth of the time it will take the two Polaroid images to develop.
“Can I see?” she asks.
“Of course.”
The woman climbs off the rock and nervously burrows her fingers into her pockets. She leans close, and the breeze catches her lavender scent. She reaches for the first Polaroid.
I push her hand away. “All good things come to those who wait.”
Her pout is neither cute nor attractive. “I hate to wait.”
“It won’t be much longer.”
Humoring her vanity suddenly irritates me, but this is going to be her last glimpse of her face, so it seems fair to give her a peek. She leans close but is quickly disappointed the picture has not materialized. She retrieves her phone and scrutinizes the crisp images. The Polaroid slowly reveals a more subdued image of her and the sweeping vista.
She selects her picture and tries to post it. “There’s no service up here.”
“Wait until we get down the mountain.”
She holds up her cell phone and nestles close to me. “Let’s do a selfie.”
“I don’t do selfies.”
Narrow shoulders shrug as she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Why not?”
“I just don’t.”
“Weird.”
Her face finally appears on the thick ZINK paper, and I trace the outline of her brow.
She shoves her phone in her back pocket and studies the picture. “Very old school.”
“That’s what I like about it.”
“I think you were born in the wrong time,” she says.
“Why do you say that?”
“You don’t have a cell, and you don’t let me post anything about you.”
“You’re far more interesting than me.”
Air sweeps up the mountainside, ruffling the fluted edges of her shirt. It catches one of the print pictures and carries it over the side of the mountain. I am tempted to chase after it, but I do not have time, and in the growing darkness, I know I will never find it. Frustrated, I quickly pocket the first.
“Let’s get out of here,” she says. “I want to go back to that hamburger joint in town.”
“You just ate there.”
“I’m hungry again.”
My fingers graze the edge of the switchblade tucked in my coat pocket. I palm it, keeping it close to my thigh as she steps toward the rocks and the setting sun’s opulent red-gold light. “Let’s do a selfie with my camera.”
“I don’t like them.”
“Please.”
“Just the one.” She slides close to me, glancing over her shoulder at the rugged landscape and then back at the lens. Sometimes, it feels like I am leading lambs to the slaughter.
As she stares upward, angling her chin into the most flattering angle, my blade flicks open with a well-oiled whoosh as I click the camera button. The distraction holds her attention for a split second before her gaze drops to the glittering blade. Confusion creates a quick disconnect, and then the first flickers of alarm or panic on her face.
“What’s with the knife?” she asks, nervously pushing hair away from her face.
My reassuring smile buys me a few more seconds before I thrust the knife, and the blade catches her directly in her midsection. We stare at each other, inches separating our faces, and time, which is always rushing, decelerates to a stop. Her smile falters. Her breath turns hot and labored. Adrenaline animates her gaze as it dips to the first sticky, warm droplets of blood dampening her shirt. Shock blossoms into panic.
Time starts moving again. I let her phone fall to the ground, pull the knife out, and jab it upward several times. More blood warms my hand and makes the knife handle slick. Readjusting my grip, I shove the blade in to the hilt.
The woman grips my shoulder and tries to push away, but the tip is buried so deep it scrapes the underside of her sternum. “Why?”
“You’re on the list,” I say in a voice husky with emotion.
It is not my intention to be cruel, so I twist the blade swiftly, carving through all the critical vessels and arteries in her gut. I help her step backward toward a sun-bleached orange rock. Her knees bow, and I keep twisting as I support her weight with my other hand. Deadweight or dying weight is heavy, and by the time her bottom grazes the rock on its way toward the dirt, I am breathless.
The rosy glow drains from her face, and blood soaks her Big Sky Country sweatshirt. The internal bleeding is weakening her fast, and soon her eyes will roll back in her head.
“Shh,” I whisper. “It’s almost over.”
When bubbles of blood gurgle from her lips, I know she has crossed over the line, and there is no turning back. Even a medical team could not save her now.
I try to pull the knife from her body but find it is stuck. Removal requires several back-and-forth wiggles and then a hard yank. Finally, the blade slides free.
The sun’s waning glow glistens off the knife’s edge. After swiping the blade on her shoulder until it is clean, I close it up and tuck it in my pocket. I wipe my hands on a clean portion of her shirt and make sure I have not accidentally cut myself and left droplets of my own blood behind.
Flexing my fingers and working the cramping from the muscles, I imagine the next steps as I hurry to the car, open the trunk, and reach for the gas can and green trash bags.
We are alone on the trail, but this area is chock-full of hikers and cyclists, and it is still possible for us to be interrupted. I rush back to her, gasoline sloshing in the can and releasing an invigorating scent.
Kneeling beside her, I check her pulse. Her heartbeat still taps faintly, as if vainly pumping like the Little Engine That Could.
In the distance I hear the crunch of a mountain biker’s wheels against the dirt path fifty feet below. As a precaution, I place my hand over her mouth and still my body, hoping the vanishing light hides all traces of us.
“Shh,” I whisper. “It’s okay.”
Finally, the mountain bike wheels roll away down the mountainside. As if she understands all hope is truly lost, her heart stops, and the faint puffs from her nostrils cease.
I pull her away from the rock, lay her flat, and quickly strip the blood-soaked Big Sky Country sweatshirt from her and then unsnap her jeans and pull them off. Next, off comes her underwear. Mind you, all this is done in a professional manner and not in a sexual-deviant kind of way. There are killers who enjoy humiliating their victims pre- and postmortem, but I am not like that. I am not sick. I have a purpose.
Pocketing her cell, I shove the clothes into a garbage bag. They will go in the trunk of her car to be used at a later date.
The heady scent of copper wafts as crimson silhouettes the body in ever-widening shadows. In the distance, an animal howls as if the blood scent stimulates its hunger. Soon it will be circling. My unfamiliarity with this wild country and the creatures stalking the night prompt me to hurry.
Grabbing a fresh, finer-point knife from another pocket, I flick it open and carefully trace the outline of her face, which she uses to manipulate men.
I nose the blade tip under the skin along her hairline. It takes several minutes of angling and gently probing until I can grab a flap of skin. Once I have a fingerhold, the process quickens. With a tugging, blade-swiping motion, I work around the outline of the face, ripping away subcutaneous fat and fascia. Several times the skin catches, threatens to tear, and forces me to stop pulling and let the knife do its work.
The process takes ten minutes, longer than I had anticipated, but experience has taught me if I rush, my trophy will be ruined, because facial skin is thin and prone to ripping. Around the eyes is the tricky spot, because
that area tends to snag and tear.
Skinning, like any task, improves with repetition.
Practice makes perfect.
Finally, I lift the skin mask from her skull and pull a bag from my pocket, snapping it open so it catches the air and inflates. Carefully, I tuck my trophy inside and lay it flat on the ground. Though satisfaction lurks close, I do not dare acknowledge it.
At her side, I kneel and carefully angle her body toward the sunset, because she had loved it, and then I douse the body with gasoline. When the can is completely empty, I jog back to her car. I strip my own clothes off, and the cool evening air sends gooseflesh rippling. From the trunk I grab fresh clothes, and I dress as efficiently as I kill. Thirty seconds later my bloodied clothes are in another garbage bag. I place the can, the bag of clothes, and my trophy in the trunk before fishing a box of matches out of my pocket.
It is growing dark as I dig a flashlight from the trunk and shine it on the path to make the final trip up the hill under the half-moon sky. The ground is wet from last night’s rain, and several times I slip and stumble in the mud or on a rock.
Her body is saturated in shadows as I strike the match. A familiar sulfur scent, which I have loved since I was a child, rises up seconds before the flame appears and grows tall and bright. I toss the match onto the body.
The gas fumes light with a sudden hiss, illuminating the dark sky. A fire out here will be a beacon for the curious as well as the do-gooders. It will not be long before people come. But that is the point. I do not want the animals to consume her. I want her found.
The clock ticks in earnest.
The gravel shifts under my feet as I race down the hill and slide behind the wheel of the car. I start the engine, using the keys I told her not to bother carrying to the overlook. Smoke and flames, fouled with the scent of burning flesh, climb in the night sky. Forgoing headlights, I nose the car toward the old road marked with potholes and switchback curves.
In the rearview mirror the fire burns. Steady Montana winds whisk its embers toward the dry scrub brush hugging the hills. The damp ground will corral the flames, keeping the mountainside safe. No sense damaging the earth.
I settle back into the driver’s seat, and my thoughts turn to the next town. And the next name on my list.
Flipping on the headlights, I press the accelerator, switch on the radio, and drive faster. This is more fun than I ever anticipated.
