TWIN KILLER MYSTERY THRILLER BOX SET (Two full-length novels)

by Osborne, Jon

  Holding my underwear in one tiny hand, I look up at my mother again.

  “Now place them over your head,” she orders. “Wear them like a mask. Put the crotch over your mouth and nose. Breathe in your own waste. Taste your own sin.”

  Again, I do as I’m told. The sharp smell of my own urine fills my nostrils. The acidic taste of my own piss burns my tongue.

  And then something very strange happens – something I won’t understand for many years to come.

  For the first time in my life, I feel my tiny member begin to grow slowly between my legs. Only a little at first, and then a bit more insistently, until it has become completely erect.

  I can almost hear the smile in my mother’s voice as she steps inside the freezer after me. “Well done, son,” she says approvingly. “Very well done, indeed.”

  Her throaty voice drips like warm honey all over my naked body, making it feel progressively stickier with each one of her seductive words. “That’s exactly what I wanted to see from you, Nicholas,” she breathes. “You’ve been a very good boy here today, and now you deserve your reward for it.”

  She pauses and my heartbeat notches up in my chest.

  “Tell me, son,” she asks teasingly. “Are you ready for me? Are you ready to receive your mother’s love?”

  Anticipation rips like a bullet wound through my gut, taking away my breath and setting every last one of my senses on fire with excitement. This is it. Now the fun and games can really begin. I only wish that Timmy could have been around to see this. He’d always loved these moments almost as much as I do.

  “Yes, Mother,” I whisper in a trembling voice. “I’ve always been ready for you.”

  The pressure between my legs is almost unbearable now, and it’s only growing stronger with each passing second. So much blood pumping down there I’m afraid the skin might split along the seam.

  The sounds of my mother’s high heels echo against the freezer floor; joined a moment later by the harsh scratch of a wooden match striking to life against the rough strip on the side of the box. Even with the soiled underwear covering my eyes, I can see exactly what she’s doing right now. What she always does when the two of us are alone together inside the butcher’s shop.

  When the smoke from the match reaches its intended destination three seconds later, the fire sprinklers overhead turn on in an icy shower that drenches my entire body from head to toe.

  Moaning softly, I lift up my face to the ceiling and stretch out my arms like Jesus Christ hanging on the cross, luxuriating in the exquisite pain.

  Then my mother simply exits the freezer, closing the heavy steel door behind her and sliding the metal locking pin into place.

  From outside the freezer door, she calls out to me. “What do you say, son?” she asks.

  Shivering uncontrollably, I feel my testicles shrivel up and crawl deep inside my stomach for warmth – the kind of warmth I can never seem to find on the outside of my body, no matter how hard I look.

  “Thank you, Mother,” I say.

  And the really sick part about the whole thing – the part that not even I will ever be able to fully understand – is that I actually mean it.

  CHAPTER 6

  Los Angeles International Airport – Present day

  The muscles lining Special Agent Dana Whitestone’s ribcage stretched nearly to the point of snapping as she extended her body a full four inches past her natural height of five-foot-three in a clumsy effort to stow her carry-on bag in the overhead compartment located above her seat on Continental Flight 942, nonstop LA to Cleveland.

  Balancing on her tiptoes, she nearly had the bag tucked away when she suddenly felt a sharp elbow smack directly into the back of her skull.

  “Ouch!” Dana hissed, losing her balance and almost collapsing beneath the weight of the bag. The muscles in her overworked arms trembled like high-tension wires strung between skyscrapers, letting her know they’d given it their best shot but also that they were done working for the day.

  She whirled around and narrowed her pale blue eyes at the forty-something businessman wearing a rumpled gray suit who was stowing his own bag across the aisle, paisley-patterned tie hanging loosely around his unbuttoned collar. He looked down and sideways at her over his right shoulder and mumbled an insincere, “Sorry ‘bout that.”

  Dana glared at him. For one long, satisfying moment, she fantasized about sliding the Glock out of the shoulder holster inside her blazer and giving him a brisk pistol-whipping right then and there on the plane. Teach him some good old-fashioned manners he obviously hadn’t learned through proper home training. Maybe if he knew that she was legally entitled to carry a firearm on this flight – not to mention every other domestic flight in the United States – he’d try a little harder to sound a bit more sincere with his apologies the next time.

  Then again, probably not.

  “Here, let me get that for you,” the man said, wrestling the bag out of her arms before she had a chance to protest or stop him. Leaning over the top of her head, he stowed her bag in the overhead bin with ease and snapped shut the compartment before cleaning his hands of imaginary dust. “There,” he said. “That ought to do it, wouldn’t you say?”

  Dana smiled up at him through clenched teeth, caught in a strange no-man’s land somewhere between rage and relief. Rage that the presumptuous bastard would dare touch her bag without her permission and relief that she wouldn’t need to stow the stupid thing herself. In any event, the task was accomplished now – which meant there was one fewer thing she needed to worry about. And the simple truth of the matter was that she could use all the help she could get these days, even from a skull-elbowing oaf like this.

  Life was that bad for her right now.

  “Thanks,” she said, still putting her veneers in mortal danger of chipping. “’Preciate it.”

  The businessman paused and gave her the once-over, lingering at her breasts, of course. Smooth operator all the way, she’d give him that much. “No problem, sweetheart. Let me know if I can buy you a screwdriver when the drinks cart comes around, ‘K? I plan on throwing a few back myself on this flight. Five hours is a bitch of a trip.”

  Dana kept fake-smiling at the man until her cheeks began to ache, at the same time resisting the urge to rub the back of her head, where she could already feel a golf ball-sized knot welling up. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

  Unbelievably, she also resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the casually dropped “sweetheart.” Instead, she simply responded in kind. When in doubt, go passive-aggressive. Irritated Woman 101. Worked every time.

  “Will do, cowboy,” she said, putting enough sugar in her voice to ensure herself a mouthful of cavities that would no doubt keep her pricey dentist busy for at least a year and enable each of his six children’s eventual attendance at private universities of their choosing.

  That particularly witty comeback tucked safely away under her belt, she then turned and scooched past the matronly woman in seat 32a who was knitting a scarf apparently meant for a giraffe.

  Settling down into her own seat next to a scuffed-up window near the wing, she closed her eyes and imagined downing an entire cartful of drinks – not that she had any intention of letting the clumsy fool across the aisle buy any of them for her. Still, she deserved that much, didn’t she?

  Damn right, she did. A little something to take the edge off. A little something to dull the pain. And not just the pain of the fresh knot that was throbbing at the back of her skull, either.

  Dana pulled on her seatbelt and turned to stare out the scratched-up window, letting out a soft sigh as she did so. Sadly, drinking was entirely out of the question for her. Had been for quite some time now.

  Still, that didn’t mean the temptation had gone away. Far from it, actually.

  She closed her eyes again and fought back the sudden urge to cry. Luckily, it worked. Because not only did she not want anyone on the plane to see her crying, she highly doubted sh
e had enough moisture left in her overworked tear ducts to support another extended crying jag, anyway. She’d already had enough extended crying jags in the past few hours alone to last her a lifetime. Several lifetimes, even.

  So instead of letting the waterworks flow once again, she simply opened her eyes again and watched through the small window as the ear-muffed ground crew loaded bags onto the plane. Not surprisingly, however, this excruciatingly mind-numbing activity grew hopelessly boring after about three seconds or so and she finally stopped fighting the urge to let her gaze drift down to the soiled knees of her jeans.

  Like it or not, it was time to confront the evidence of her failures.

  Matching dirt stains stared right back at her. Mocked her, actually. And why the hell not? The dirt stains were courtesy of her dead partner’s gravesite, at which she’d been kneeling just a few hours earlier. But that was par for the course for her lately, wasn’t it? Sure was. Because Jeremy Brown’s blood wasn’t the only blood she had on her hands these days, it was just the freshest. And now it was mixed in with the blood of her parents, James and Sara Whitestone, the blood of her mentor, Crawford Bell, and the blood of her best friend, Eric Carlton. Not to mention the blood of the countless other innocent people she’d let die over the course of her supposedly “sterling” fourteen-year career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Dana rubbed at the dirt stain on her right knee and cursed her wretched life for what seemed to be the billionth time already that day. Between Nathan Stiedowe – the sadistic serial killer who’d turned out to her very own half-brother – and a pair of mentally unhinged billionaires who’d transformed the streets of LA into a gigantic, bloody chessboard just for shits and giggles, over the past year and a half she’d lost just about everybody in her life who’d ever mattered to her. So no matter how hard she scrubbed or what new soap she tried, she knew her hands would never come clean. Not really. Not in any meaningful sense, anyway. Not in a million fucking years. And the real kicker about the whole thing was that her work was something for which the FBI routinely presented her awards.

  Life was funny like that sometimes, though, wasn’t it?

  Sure was.

  Damned shame there was no humor in it most of the time.

  Chapter 7

  “Are you crying?”

  Dana gave a sudden start and looked up at the sound of the small voice two feet in front of her. A tiny face peeked over the seatback, framed by brown hair rife with cowlicks. Big blue eyes glistened with doe-like innocence. Thin lips produce Rs that sounded like Ws – turning the little boy’s unexpected question into Aw you cwying?

  That was when she became painfully aware of the fact that a single tear had somehow escaped her left eye and was now slipping down her cheek.

  She straightened in her seat and wiped quickly at her face with the back of her right hand, feeling stupider than she had in years.

  “No, no,” she said. “I’ve just got allergies, that’s all.”

  Nothing quite like lying to a four-year-old to cap off yet another red-letter day, eh, Whitestone?

  Another face peeked over the seatback next to the little boy’s a moment later. Heavily made-up features couldn’t hide the lines of exhaustion carved deep around eyes that appeared practically identical to the bright blue eyes into which Dana had just been looking.

  “Bradley Thomas Taylor,” the woman scolded, “leave this poor lady alone. If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a million times before, you don’t have to talk to everybody you see.”

  The woman Dana assumed to be Bradley’s mother cut her gaze over to her and rolled her tired eyes. “Sorry about that. This kid, I swear. He’s got no off-switch. Not one I can find, at least.”

  Dana smiled at the woman and hoped against hope that the allergy lie had actually worked. Because getting caught crying by a child was one thing, but getting caught by a fellow adult was a completely different matter altogether. “Oh, it’s no bother at all,” she said, cringing mentally at what her mascara must look like right now. No doubt both Rocky Raccoon and Tammy Faye Baker would’ve been proud – and justifiably so. “He’s just being friendly, that’s all. I don’t mind one little bit. Honest.”

  The woman chortled. “Oh, is that what you call it? Being friendly? Because last week he asked some heavyset woman in the Wal-Mart parking lot why the heck she’d left her house wearing her butt on the front of her body.”

  Dana burst out laughing before she could stop herself – the first genuine laugh she’d enjoyed in weeks. Thankfully, some of the mental tension frying her brain escaped right along with it.

  The relief felt exquisite.

  “Well, you know what they say: Kids say the darndest things.”

  The other woman pursed her full lips, crinkling up the pale skin around her lip-sticked mouth. “Well, I suppose so. But his enunciation isn’t the best, either. After we got into the Wal-Mart he was playing with his Buzz Lightyear doll in the front of the shopping cart and hollering, ‘White Power! White Power!’ for all the world to hear.”

  Dana wrinkled her nose in distaste. To say the least, casual racism wasn’t exactly her first choice of conversation topic with a stranger on a plane. Or with anybody else, for that matter.

  The other woman read the unspoken disapproval in her eyes at once and shook her head, waving her left hand breezily in the air to showcase the four-karat boulder weighing down her ring finger.

  “Instead of ‘Light Power!’, I mean. His Ls sound like Ws. Anyway, I just about died of embarrassment.”

  Dana lifted the corners of her mouth into a tentative smile, happy to find that the woman wasn’t stowing a KKK hood somewhere in her carry-on luggage but still not feeling entirely comfortable with the exchange. Then again, no big surprise there. She might have been a world-class investigator whenever she managed to bring her “A” game to the ball field – according to the media, at least – but she still didn’t seem to have the foggiest idea of how to read between the lines during innocent conversations.

  Thankfully, the other woman took off some of the pressure then by looking around uncertainly. When it became apparent there was no flight attendant nearby, she nodded down to her son.

  “Anyway, I’m really sorry to put you on the spot like this, but is there any way you could keep an eye on him for a quick minute while I go to the bathroom? I need to pee like you wouldn’t believe and there’s never enough room in those bathrooms for the both of us. I swear to God I’ll be right back.”

  Dana waved her own hand in the air, infinitely thankful to be taken off the hook and painfully aware of just how bare her own ring finger looked in comparison. Not so much as a faded tan line there testifying to a failed engagement. “Absolutely,” she said, trying not to think about the fact that Jeremy Brown had been carrying around an engagement ring with him in his pocket when he’d died, just waiting for the perfect moment to get down on one knee in front of her and pop the question.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Dana said, closing her eyes briefly against the painful memory. “Go. It’s no problem at all. Besides, Bradley and I are good friends now, anyway. We’ll be just fine.”

  The other woman let out a quick breath and reached across the seatback to touch her shoulder. “Thank you so, so much. You’re a real lifesaver, you know that? And I mean that from the very bottom of my cold and blackened heart.”

  Dana winced a little at that, but she was pretty sure she was able to stop the emotion before it reached her face. Still, lifesaver wasn’t a very accurate description of her lately.

  Quite the opposite, unfortunately.

  Just ask poor Jeremy about that much.

  “We’ll be fine,” Dana repeated. “Go. It’s no problem at all.”

  The woman leaned down and kissed her son on the top of his head before cupping his chin in her palm and lifting his tiny face to hers, holding his gaze.

  “You be a good boy for this nice lady while I’m gone, you hear me, Bradley? Mama will be
right back and you know what happens if you misbehave.”

  Bradley grinned mischievously. “You’ll throw me out the window over the Grand Canyon, right?”

  The woman nodded. “That’s absolutely right, buddy boy. And that’s a heck of a long drop, so be good.”

  Chapter 8

  Bradley giggled happily as his mother scooted out of their row and into the aisle before heading for the restrooms at the rear of the plane.

  When she was out of sight, he reestablished eye contact with Dana.

  His high-pitched voice – which was much louder than necessary – drew curious glances from the other passengers in the vicinity. “You’re really pretty, you know that?” he bellowed. “Almost as pretty as my mama. I like your yellow hair a lot. You sort of look like Goldilocks, only your hair is way shorter. And you’ve got eyes just like mine.”

  Dana suppressed a small smile at the same time that she fought back an unexpected pang of regret. From the look of things, though, she hadn’t done a very good job of locking away her desire to have children of her own one day. But at nearly forty-two years old now, that particular window seemed pretty much nailed shut for good.

  And without Jeremy around anymore – thanks almost entirely to her professional incompetence – she couldn’t for the life of her think of a single other man on the face of the earth who she’d want as the father of her baby.

  “And you’re a very handsome little guy,” Dana answered, clenching her stomach muscles tightly together against the overwhelming grief spinning in her belly. “Come to think of it, you’re just about the handsomest little guy I’ve ever seen in my whole life. A regular GQ model if I’ve ever seen one.”

  Bradley chewed playfully on his lower lip and cranked up the cuteness factor at that. Apparently, he wasn’t interested in playing fair here. “That’s what my mama always tells me.”