by Mary Stone
Winter’s Rise
Winter Black Series: Book Four
Mary Stone
Copyright © 2019 by Mary Stone
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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To my husband.
Thank you for taking care of our home and its many inhabitants while I follow this silly dream of mine.
Contents
Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Winter Black Series by Mary Stone
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Description
One dead. One risen. One caught in between.
For more than thirteen years, Winter Black has believed her little brother is dead—kidnapped and murdered by the same lunatic who killed her parents. The news of a lead into Justin’s whereabouts brings her out of her hiatus and back to work at the Richmond FBI office. And face to face with the co-workers she’s been avoiding.
Winter can’t avoid them for long because a body is discovered in a fifty-five-gallon drum, and the team soon realizes that they aren’t hunting your typical serial killer. Whoever killed this man isn’t just a murderer—they are a skilled surgeon, and John Doe is just one of many. And now, the killer is after her friend, Autumn.
Welcome to book four of Mary Stone’s debut crime fiction series. If you love a throat-clutching thriller with unexpected villains and riveting mystery, Winter’s Rise will keep you turning pages until the end.
Grab your copy of Winter’s Rise and discover that evil doesn’t just hide in the dark.
1
As the haze thinned from Jensen’s thoughts, he opened his eyes a slit. Though he could see a tinge of white light at the edge of his vision, the remainder of the room was cloaked in shadow. At the other end of the space was a door, and from the light of the narrow window, he could see a dim hallway. None of it was familiar.
Where was he?
How had he gotten here?
The recollection trickled back to him as his eyelids drooped closed. He could picture the parking lot of the bar, neon lights from the signs in the windows glinting off the damp asphalt.
Though he might have had a touch too much to drink last night—was it last night?—he had pushed aside the concern and reminded himself of his plan. A couple blocks away was a restaurant that served breakfast twenty-four hours a day, and that had been where he was headed. After a meal and a couple cups of coffee, he’d planned to return to his car to drive home.
Was he home?
No. This sterile room wasn’t part of the house he and his wife had owned for the past ten years.
Grating his teeth, he forced himself to focus on the fuzzy memory of his trip to the diner. He vaguely remembered walking down the sidewalk, his attention focused on the screen of his smartphone instead of his surroundings.
In the midst of typing an “I love you” text message to his wife, Faith Leary, the world had gone black.
That wasn’t where the memory ended, though. At least he didn’t think so. He was sure he had stepped into the restaurant, could swear he had taken a moment to bask in the aroma of roasting coffee and frying bacon as he walked through the familiar double doors.
He had walked through those doors, hadn’t he?
No, he hadn’t. As soon as the realization crossed his mind, his eyes snapped open. The world had gone black before he hit the sidewalk, but he knew he hadn’t been drunk enough to blackout.
He had been drugged. Not in the bar, but right there at the edge of the damn parking lot. A light sting in the back of his neck had given way to utter nothingness.
When he awoke the first time, his aching head had rested on a pillow, and he almost tricked himself into believing he had made it home. As he’d shifted on the hard surface beneath the light blanket, however, he wondered if he had fallen asleep on the floor beside the bed he shared with his wife.
Then, he’d opened his eyes.
He remembered how golden sunlight highlighted a square hatch in the ceiling at the other end of the narrow room. Room? He’d known right away that he’d been in an unfamiliar room.
Flinging off the sheets, a surge of adrenaline had pushed away the ache in his head as he’d leapt to his feet. In the meager illumination, he’d felt along the walls and hoped, even prayed, that he would find a door handle. Instead, he’d been greeted with nothing more than cool, smooth metal.
His movements had been fervent and soon bordered on panicked. One question had screamed over and over in his mind—where the hell was he? Even now, as he thought back, he wasn’t sure.
Once his sight had adjusted to the low light, he saw it, snapping his mind back to another memory. The dark shape of a bubble in the far corner of the ceiling. A camera. Wherever in the hell he was, someone knew he was there. Someone was watching him.
When the hatch opened, the daylight that spilled through had seemed as bright as a supernova, and he’d been forced to raise a hand to block out the hellish illumination.
“Who are you?” His voice had been hoarse as he addressed the figure descending into the space. As best as he could, he squared his shoulders.
Jensen had intended to fight.
He had grown up in a working-class neighborhood in Philadelphia. He knew how to defend himself, and this wasn’t the first time he had been in peril during his thirty-one years of life. But as the figure had approached him, the two tours in Afghanistan felt like they might as well have occurred in an alternate dimension.
The resurgence of the headache and weariness had closed in on him at the same pace as the dark figure, and the determination had drained from his disciplined fighting stance. Whatever he had been dosed with the night before had only been temporarily defeated by the flood of adrenaline, and he could have sworn the other man knew how rapidly the energy would melt from Jensen’s tired muscles.
After another sting, the world had gone black again.
And now, he was here, in a room that felt like a forgotten throwback to a 1960s asylum.
“You’re awake,” a voice called out from behind him.
He tried to turn to face the source, but his head was fixed in place by a contraption he couldn’t see.
“Who…” It was the only word he could manage. His throat felt raw, and his mouth was as dry as the distant Afghani desert. “Who are you?” The short question felt like a monumental task.
“Oh, you know me,” the woman chuckled. Even her mirth felt like ice.
He blinked, tried to focus. Tried to remember. “N-no, I d-don�
��t.” He hated how nervous he sounded.
Try as he might, he couldn’t place her voice. In the ensuing silence, he raked through memories of any woman with whom he had crossed paths in recent memory. None of them sounded like her. He didn’t know why she thought she knew him.
“You’ve got the wrong person,” he managed. The words were small and weak, but even the minimal effort to speak was exhausting.
“No, Jensen. I’ve got exactly who I want.” There was no doubt in her tone, no room for debate.
A metallic whir followed her statement. What the hell was that? Was that a drill? A saw?
The marked increase in his pulse made the pounding in his head more pronounced. Eyes squeezed shut like he was a grade school kid trying to hide from imaginary monsters in the dark corners of his bedroom, Jensen swallowed against the rise of bile in the back of his throat.
“I’m not going to kill you, Jensen.”
Her calm words cut through his haphazard thoughts, but he wished they hadn’t.
“In fact, you might be the lucky one. When we’re done here, you might come out of this even better than you were before. Just relax. I’ve done this plenty of times, and I know what I’m doing. You’re in good hands.”
He didn’t believe her attempt to placate his mounting anxiety.
As the metallic sound grew louder, he pictured his wife. For thirteen years, Faith had been at his side. For every celebration, every bump in the road, every new journey, he had always been able to count on her bright smile and that sparkle in her gold-flecked eyes.
This was it.
For some reason he couldn’t fathom, he was about to die, and he hadn’t even been able to send the text message to tell his beautiful wife how much he loved her.
2
With a smile and a five-dollar bill, Bree Stafford bade farewell to the driver of the sleek, black sedan. As she stepped onto the sidewalk, she couldn’t help the reflexive glance to the edge of the building.
Three months earlier, around that same corner, Douglas Kilroy—The Preacher, as the press loved to call him—had knocked her unconscious with a fast-acting sedative. The bastard had then loaded her into the back of a white panel van to drive to the outskirts of a little Virginia town called McCook.
Maybe the brush with such a notorious killer should have left a definitive mark on her psyche, but when she looked to the dim corner, she could find no semblance of trepidation. After all, Douglas Kilroy was dead, and the man joining her at the bar tonight was responsible for the fatal shot.
As grateful as she was to have been saved so quickly, Bree knew with a certainty she didn’t fully understand that she would have made it out of Kilroy’s grasp unscathed, one way or another. That night at the dilapidated church wasn’t the first time she had been taken captive, but she hoped it would be the last.
She turned her attention to a flicker of movement amidst a series of benches and tables to the side of the entryway. The glow of Noah Dalton’s smartphone glinted off the whites of his eyes as he locked the screen to pocket the device.
When he was outside the office, Bree thought there were few who would have guessed he was an FBI agent. Between the plaid flannel over his gray t-shirt, his worn jeans and dusty work boots, he looked more like he’d just finished up his workday as a contractor.
As she glanced down to her white button-down shirt and slim-fitting black pants, Bree felt overdressed. “What are you doing in the smoking section?” Raising her brows to offer him a questioning glance, she pulled open one of the double doors and waved him forward.
“You’re such a gentleman, Bree.” Noah Dalton flashed her one of his patented, disarming grins as he made his way into the bar. “I was playing Mahjong, not smoking, by the way. My sister always told me that the coolest people at the bar were in the smokers’ section. So far, I think I agree. It might smell worse than shit, but I’ve met some pretty cool cats in smoking sections.”
Bree couldn’t hide her surprise. “Your sister?”
The black-clad bouncer beside the doorway didn’t rise from his stool to ask for their IDs. Glancing up from his smartphone, he smiled and nodded. He knew them well.
“Yeah, my sister,” Noah replied.
“Are you guys not close? I don’t think I’ve ever even heard you say that you had a sister.”
He lifted one of his broad shoulders. “No, we are. We’re both just busy, I guess. Plus, she’s all the way out in Austin. She owns a tattoo shop out there, and word’s been getting out about how talented she is, so she’s been pretty swamped for the last year or two.” He lifted the shoulder again.
“So, she’s there and you’re here,” Bree prodded, hoping for more information on this interesting man. If she’d been straight, she thought he might be her type. If nothing else, she knew he was the type to be in her corner.
He winked. “Nice detective work, Bree. Yep. I’m here, and we’ve been, well…maybe not swamped, but you know what I mean.” As his smile faded, a flicker of despondency passed behind his green eyes.
That sadness was no small part of the reason for Bree’s proposed outing on a Thursday night. Aside from a call a few days earlier to tell Winter about the lead they’d found into her brother’s disappearance, no one in their office had heard a single word from the woman.
Though Noah made a valiant effort to conceal the dark cloud in his demeanor, Bree had worked alongside the tall man for long enough to know that Winter’s absence weighed on him, and she had seen enough of his and Winter’s interactions to know he blamed himself for their inability to locate Justin Black.
Bree’s reminders that he’d made the right decision to shoot Douglas Kilroy had been gentle at first, but in recent weeks, they had become more pointed.
If he hadn’t fired that shot at that precise moment, Winter would be dead. That was it. That was the end of the story.
Bree had been front and center for the entire series of events, and the only reason she hadn’t fired the killing shot was because she was worried the larger caliber round would have pierced through Kilroy and hit Winter.
Winter was smart, and Bree had assured Noah that even if she had harbored a sense of ill will for Kilroy’s untimely death, she would have let the misgivings go by now. Whether he didn’t believe her or he’d decided to shoulder the guilt for an unrelated reason, Bree wasn’t sure.
“Your sister sounds cool.” Bree offered him a smile, thinking of her fiancée and how talented she was. She leapt on the change of subject like a drowning woman to a raft. “Shelby’s a fantastic artist. You know that painting in our living room, right? The one above the couch?”
Bree watched Noah’s eyes move as he scanned his memory. “The water lilies and the gator? That one?”
“Yeah, that one. Shelby painted that. She grew up in Louisiana, so it’s like her little piece of home.”
“Really?” Noah scratched at the stubble darkening his chin. “Wow, that thing’s really good. It’s like a Bob Ross painting or something. Do you guys have any of her other paintings hanging up?”
“A couple.” Bree nodded, unable to keep the pride from shining through her words. “I use one of the bedrooms as an office, and she uses one of them as a studio. Her job has been busy lately, so she hasn’t had as much time for painting. But I’m sure as soon as it slows down, she’ll be back at it. You want me to give her a request for you?”
As they neared the bar, he thrust his hands into his pockets and nodded. “The décor in my place is still, I mean, it’s nonexistent. Might be nice to add a little bit of color somewhere. I can pay her for it.”
Waving a dismissive hand, Bree shook her head. “No need. You’re our friend. It’s a labor of love.”
“I’ll come up with something to repay you guys.” His grin widened as he glanced back to her. “I’ve been teaching myself to cook, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I can just come over and make you guys food for a week or something.”
“Hey, don’t say stuff like that unless you
mean it, okay?” Bree laughed. “You might not be able to guess, but Shelby’s appetite is a little insane. She’s a swimmer, and that seems to be the norm for them.”
“Lucky for her, my momma only ever taught me how to cook for an army. I don’t even know how to cook meals for one person, which is why I pretty much never used to cook for myself.”
“Shelby can eat like an army, so that’s good news.” As Bree chuckled, she turned to offer a quick wave to the woman behind the bar.
With an easy smile, Noah followed suit. “Do you know her?”
The redhead returned the gesture before she made her way to greet a couple who had arrived a few minutes after Bree and Noah.
“Sort of,” Bree answered with a shrug. “Shelby loves her. A few months ago, I had to leave early one night for work, and Shelby just sat up at the bar and talked to her for hours. Now, whenever Shelby sees her, she has to give her a hug. Honestly, it’s pretty adorable.”
As they took a seat at what had become their favored booth, Noah looked thoughtful. “Huh, I guess that makes sense then.”
“What?” Bree furrowed her eyebrows. “I think you left off the first part of that, friend.”
“Oh, right, yeah. She’s the one who pointed out your friends that night that…well…you know.” He left the sentiment unfinished and flashed her a hapless look.
