by Jon Mills
LOST GIRLS
AN FBI THRILLER NOVEL
JON MILLS
Direct Response Publishing
Contents
ALSO BY JON
Synopsis
Prologue
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
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Epilogue
A Plea
Newsletter
Jon Mills
Copyright © 2018 by JON MILLS
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.
LOST GIRLS is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ALSO BY JON
Click here to receive special offers, bonus content, and news about Jon’s new books, sign up for the newsletter.
Undisclosed
Retribution
Clandestine
The Debt Collector
Debt Collector 2: Vengeance
Debt Collector 3: Reborn
Debt Collector 4: Hard to Kill
Debt Collector 5: Angel of Death
Debt Collector 6: Prey
Debt Collector 7: Narc
Debt Collector 8: Hard Time
Debt Collector 9: Her Last Breath
Debt Collector 10: Trail of the Zodiac
The Promise
True Connection
Synopsis
A serial killer is terrorizing a coastal town…
When renowned FBI agent Benjamin Forrester suffers a devastating loss while trying to catch an elusive serial killer, he quits the bureau.
Years later, after a similar series of gruesome murders trigger an investigation in the coastal town of Eden Falls, Maine, Ben is called upon to assist the rookie police detective, Dakota Woods.
He soon learns he's being lured into a deadly game of cat and mouse where the only way to stop the murders is to confront his past and face his worst fear.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Prologue
Henri Bruns’s house was a secluded property nestled in Big Cypress National Preserve. The sadistic killer who had been terrorizing hikers in the Everglades had eluded the FBI for four years. Thirty-three people had been found dead.
In 2010, a joint task force had been formed to review missing-person cases after a connection had been made to sixteen of the thirty-three who had gone missing in national forests all over the United States. Unlike other serial killers who broke into homes, picked up prostitutes, or snatched their victims off the streets, the animal who the media nicknamed Skinner was methodical and clever. For years he had continued to go about his murders unnoticed.
Phones rang, officers punched keys, and a large wall was lined with photos of badly decomposed, mutilated bodies.
Ben’s hand trembled.
“Are you still with me, Dr. Forrester?” Bruns asked.
At first he didn’t believe it. He was sure it was just another one of his games. When he placed Ben’s wife, Elizabeth, on the phone, her cries confirmed his worst fear.
“Come alone.”
The line went dead.
His supervisor, Nate Mueller, had been the only one who had seen Ben’s face turn white after he hung up. Nate tried to get to him before he shot out the door but it was too late. By the time he reached the corridor Ben was already inside the elevator.
“Ben?” Nate called out.
“He has my family.”
The doors sealed shut. A few minutes later, sirens blared and lights flashed as Ben fishtailed around a corner, almost losing control of the car. Tires squealed as he gunned the engine. It was foolish, he knew he shouldn’t go in alone but this lunatic didn’t mess around. Nothing could have prepared him for this. All his years of training and teaching in Quantico was about to be put to the test.
Beside him the phone buzzed. He knew it was Nate. He tapped the button to accept the call. “Where are you?” Nate demanded to know.
“I’ve got to go in alone.”
“Are you out of your mind, Forrester?”
“What other choice do I have?”
Under any normal conditions the FBI would have had a helicopter in the air, a SWAT team ready to move in, and police blocking off every road in a two-mile radius. In the old days Ben would be wired up, but with the latest technology available, “wired” was just an allegorical term. Now they could monitor and record everything through small devices inside the tips of pens, tie clips, or a cuff link. However, today Ben had none of that. All he was packing was his Glock 22.
“Ben, give me an address.”
“You already know.”
Ben hung up.
Police had raided the home of Henri Bruns two weeks ago after an anonymous tip. Of course he wasn’t there but one of his soon-to-be victims was. As much as the local police wanted to take credit for this, it was pure luck, but then catching these kinds of sickos relied on that. The best you could do was hope they screwed up. The joint task force was operating out of Everglades City. From the department it took around twenty minutes to reach his dilapidated excuse of a home.
On US-41 the car reached speeds of over ninety miles an hour, and by the time he pulled on to Burns Road his knuckles were white. All he could feel was rage and fear. How had he managed to get past the patrol car out front of Ben’s home? Bruns had broken his method of operation. This had become personal to him.
Approaching the final turn, the car slid as it burst over a rise in the road. Ben barely managed to keep the tires on the ground. His pulse raced and bald cypress trees blurred in his peripheral vision as he stared ahead. Big Cypress was the west part of the Everglades with over a million acres
of wetlands. It was grassy, full of slow-moving rivers, marshes, and pine.
Henri Bruns would become the stuff of legends. Only once in a while a serial killer came along that made the others pale in comparison. He had been careful. For the longest time, the bodies discovered were ruled accidents. Hikers who had got lost, wandered into alligator-infested waters, or been attacked by a panther. They still hadn’t figured out how he selected his victims or why he wanted them. They just vanished.
For two years Ben had been waiting to catch him.
For two years, he had gone without sleep, fallen into heavy drinking while becoming obsessed with the case.
The car skidded onto the property; Ben’s eyes swept the tree line. Every fiber of his being was on alert. It wouldn’t be long before this place would be overrun with cops and feds. He forced his way out of the car and pulled his Glock. He could feel tension in his shoulders as he moved towards the cabin surrounded by red mangroves. Besides the sounds of birds chirping in the trees it was quiet.
He ascended three wooden steps in desperate need of repair. They creaked beneath his shoes. Ben peered through a window. There was no movement inside. Not even a sound. He didn’t kick the door open. That kind of action would get you killed. The police tape that had covered the door was on the floor. Someone had been in. He stood to one side, kept his gun lowered, and turned the handle. Over the years he’d seen all manner of lunatics rig up guns that would go off when you walked in. If Bruns’s goal was to kill him, it wasn’t going to be because of stupidity. Ben swallowed hard as he gave the door a push and it swung open. He cut the side of the door with his head just enough to see if anyone was inside. It was empty.
The smell of smoke from a wildfire started somewhere in Big Cypress Preserve still lingered in the air. Ben eased into the cabin with his back against the wall. He swept the room with his eyes. The place was a dive. Dirt everywhere. They said this was his main residence but Ben didn’t believe that. This was where he played. He didn’t care how the place looked, only that it was in an isolated part of the preserve. Somewhere they could scream and not be heard.
A white flickering glow came from a room further down the hallway. The bedroom. The victim had been found tied to the bed. Still alive. Unharmed. That’s what burned Bruns. That he didn’t get to have his sick way with her.
Inside on the bedside table was a tablet. On the screen was the madman himself wearing a Halloween mask of Ronald Reagan. Behind him a blank brick wall. Where was he?
“Ah, glad you finally made it, Dr. Forrester. Or should I call you Ben?”
“Where are they, Bruns?”
He let out a maniacal laugh. “All in good time.”
“I want to see them now.”
“You will but first, tell me, how did you know where to look?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Oh it matters to me, Ben.”
There was a beat.
“You got sloppy.”
Bruns let out a snort. “How so?”
“Enough of your games. Where are they?”
The sound of sirens could be heard in the distance. He paused for a moment staring blankly at the camera.
“Okay, Ben. In front of you inside that box is one key and the coordinates to the location of your family and the lovely Marie Porter.”
Marie Porter had been one of two girls missing. She was seventeen, only two years older than Ben’s daughter at the time.
Ben cautiously flipped the lid on the old shoebox. Inside was the key, and a scrap of paper with two GPS coordinates. His chest rose and fell fast as he flipped the paper over, hoping to find more than this.
“Which one is for my family?”
“That’s for you to figure out, but I would hurry if I was you, Ben, they don’t have a lot of time or air for that matter.”
“And the key?”
He took a hold of it between his finger and thumb.
“It only releases one of them.”
“What?”
He let out a final laugh.
“Bye, Ben.”
“No, no, no. Wait.”
The screen went black. Ben raced outside with the coordinates in hand, he was immediately met by Nate and a squad of cars. “What’s going on?” Nate asked.
Ben was beside himself. He willed himself into thinking clearly. He held out the paper and key, his hand shaking.
“He has them and the girl at these coordinates but we only have one key and no idea which one leads to my family.”
Nate immediately took control. He had an officer bring up the locations on a GPS.
“I need a chopper to head to the farthest one and we’ll take the swamp buggy to the other,” Ben said.
“And the key?” Nate asked.
Ben felt as if he was having an out-of-body experience.
“Ben!”
“Either way someone is going to die,” Ben replied.
Both sites were located in remote areas of the Everglades. He was going to kill them the same way. He’d bury them alive. Nate jumped on the radio and gave the coordinates to the eyes in the air.
“Roger that!” a voice said over the radio.
Squad cars raced onto the road heading in the direction of the second set of coordinates. Ben radioed ahead to have two swamp buggies and shovels ready. His mind was going crazy. The thought of never seeing Adam, Chloe, or his wife again was too much to comprehend. No matter how fast they moved, it wasn’t fast enough. Every second was a chance they wouldn’t make it in time.
It took the better part of an hour to make their way to the spot. The buggy was caked with mud, and their clothes were covered as they arrived at a deserted location near a riverbed with gators.
“Over there,” an officer pointed towards a fresh pile of soil. Footprints from vehicle tracks led up to it. Ben pushed off the buggy and raced over. He slammed the shovel into the earth and frantically began heaping piles of soil to one side. Every time he pushed into the thick, moist soil he was waiting to hear the sound of a box. Wooden, metal, plastic, Bruns had used anything he could get his hands on. Over the radio they could hear that the pilot of the chopper was having difficulty locating a place to land.
Ben took another scoop and this time hit metal. It was a steel box.
“Quick.”
He and the others got on their hands and knees and started scooping away handfuls of dirt and wiping the surface to try and find the lock. A moment later, he felt it. He took the key and jammed it in, twisting it. He yanked it off. Once it was unlocked, Nate and another officer helped him pull back the steel lid.
“Careful.”
The moment they opened it, Ben knew he wouldn’t see his family alive.
Inside the steel death trap was Marie covered in venomous snakes. She was dead. Ben fell on his knees and gripped the soil.
“Tell me you’ve landed?” Nate said over the radio.
“Boots are on the ground.”
The waiting was torturous. They had to shoot the lock on the second box. When they eventually opened it, Elizabeth and Adam were already dead.
Nate looked at Ben and shook his head slowly.
There were no snakes inside but it didn’t matter. He would later find out that they had been dead for hours. Coroner said it was a lack of oxygen. Right there and then Ben’s world ended. As he wept uncontrollably, Nate was still speaking with the officer on the radio.
“Repeat that?” Nate asked.
“Only two bodies, an adult female and a young male.”
Ben looked at him. “What? Chloe is not there?”
It didn’t take long to establish where she was. The evening Henri Bruns had taken Elizabeth and Adam, Chloe had been invited to stay over at her friend’s house. The only reason she was alive was because of that.
Chapter One
Eden Falls, Maine, late June 2016
For the past two years, Ben Forrester had lived in a small beach house on Mount Desert Island. At 5 a.m., he breathed in the salty Nor
th Atlantic air from his front porch and drank in the sights and sounds that he’d become accustomed to at that hour. Working lobster boats, private sailboats, and motorboats bobbed gently in the harbor. Situated seventy-five feet from rosy granite cliffs were steps that that led down to a private cobblestone beach that offered exactly what they needed — peace and seclusion. He could have bought a home overlooking the Gulf of Maine but the view of Frenchman’s Bay was spectacular. Besides, Elizabeth’s mother lived just a few houses down and what a lifesaver she had been after the funeral.
Dreams had once again been filled with nightmares. It was difficult to shake the past, even harder to step into the future. Settling into the new town of Eden Falls had become almost a full-time job. Nate Mueller had been on at him to return to the bureau over the past year. Nate was sure that he’d eventually wear him down, but Ben didn’t have any intention of returning.
That afternoon he had his usual 1 p.m. therapy session with Dr. Emily Rose, a local therapist. He saw her twice a week, sometimes three if the dreams got really bad. She ran her private practice out of a four-bedroom Victorian house. It was the same every time. He would arrive, soft music would be playing. Emily wouldn’t enter until the moment the clock ticked over to one.
Ben sat on the sofa across from her.
“So how are you doing today, Ben?”
Ben swept the room, looking at all the certificates she had. It was very minimalistic. Everything had its place. There was no table in the room. Just two soft leather couches. In the first few months he nearly gave up. He’d felt uneasy pouring out his life story to a stranger. He didn’t like the feeling that he got or the same questions being asked. How did that make you feel? she would ask and he would just shake his head. She said time was a healer but that hadn’t worked for him. It all seemed so pretentious. He wasn’t sure what bothered him about the place — whether it was her questions or his attraction to Emily. She was single and had never been married.
Ben cleared his throat, and tried to put into words how he was feeling.
-->
