by Mary Eason
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 on 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 again. 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.
“You think you can get rid of me so easily, Kara. You can’t. Don’t you know you’ve become part of me? Part of this thing. You became part of it the moment I chose to make you part of it. 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 against her cheek.
But she couldn’t see. The silky blindfold felt soft and familiar against her skin. A contradiction to the horror she knew lay just beyond its comfort.
Kara heard her scream. Kim Billings. The woman who’d died in Kara’s place the last time they’d played this deadly game. She could still hear Kim 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 of El Paso, Texas.
He isn’t here. Thank God, he isn’t here.
Just her daughter, who stood next to Kara’s bed trying to wake her mother. Ava’s frightened little face was screwed up in fear.
“Oh baby, I’m sorry. Did I wake you?” Ava’s expression relaxed a little at those words. 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 those words. But in her heart she feared the worst. It had started again.
“It’s the same dream as before, 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 Cochinay Mountains, made for a great lookout point with the exception of one problem. There wasn’t anywhere to hide and no chance of surviving the desert for any length of time should it come calling. Nothing could last more than a day in the blazing heat except for the vultures.
But then, wasn’t that the very reason why she’d moved there in the first place? To escape the past and become normal again.
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 fitting the Texas night blazed across the surface of the sky.
She shivered in spite of the heat. It was the same dream as always. It grew stronger with each passing anniversary. 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 again. She needed that 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 like Kara in many ways, and yet so like her father that at times Kara could almost feel his touch again.
She stroked a strand of silken brown hair, one of the traits she shared with Kara, 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 in color they never ceased to stun Kara. Reminding her of Davis.
“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 off in the distance. Beyond the wail of the coyotes came a much stronger cry.
The sound of things to come.
They were coming again. 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. Dealing with the Death Angel case had destroyed the gift for her.
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 same 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 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. She saw the details of the boy’s death clearly. The police, of course, hadn’t believed her. They thought she was a kook, until the second boy went missing. By this time, the killer had grown confident. He took his time. He wasn’t in any hurry to kill him. She saw it all as clearly as if it were taking place right in front of her. She could even make out a sepia image of the man. She ended up with enough information about the killer to solve the case for 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 happened when she became the target of the Death Angel.
He took away all the good from the gift. Until then, Kara
never realized how truly twisted the human mind could become.
The Death Angel 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. Of all the cases she’d worked, she’d always been able to visualize some features of the killer, something to help bring justice for the victim’s family. The Death Angel was different. He was much stronger than any of the others.
Kara often wondered how he’d found her in the first place. She wasn’t the first person to solve a murder by using psychic visions. It was as if he were playing some deadly game with her, taunting her with clues, then slamming the door, reminding her of just how daunting an opponent he was. And how much he loved the game.
Seeing into the mind of such an evil sociopath brought her to the attention of the FBI right away and to 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
Every year was the same. Throughout the long, sleepless hours marking the anniversary of the Death Angel’s first kill, Davis Martin couldn’t escape the feeling that something as evil as the Angel couldn’t be confined to a watery Potomac grave.
Six years ago, that very 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.
After each dreaded anniversary came and went, even as he breathed a sigh of relief, Davis believed it was only a matter of time. Something bad was going to happen. It had been building for too long.
Three days after the passing of the sixth anniversary, it did.
When his 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.”
His gut instinct told him the last of his remaining doubts were about to be blown to smithereens.
As head of the FBI’s DC branch of VCIRD, Violent Crimes Investigative Resources Division, he 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.
“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 his bad mood. Picking up his office phone, she arched a well-manicured 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.”
He tried to remain in his bad mood, but Jessica knew how to bring him out of those black moments. Although, 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 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, his second-in-command, appeared in the doorway.
“Thanks, Jessica. Can you give us a minute?” Ryan announced without so much as a “good morning”.
She glanced at Davis, waiting for him to give the okay before budging.
“Go ahead. If we need anything, I’ll buzz you,” he told her with a smile.
“What’s up?” he asked once he got a good look at Ryan’s worried expression. This was going to be bad.
“Three days ago, 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.
Dear God. Three days ago had been the anniversary of the first death.
“Dammit.” Davis breathed the word out.
“Yeah, I know.”
“What happened?” Ryan didn’t answer right away, which only served to increase Davis’s apprehension. “What’s so special about this one to make DC homicide want us involved in it? A politician?” Wishful thinking. He knew the truth. This was only the beginning of the horror.
Ryan shook his head. “No such luck. I received a call from homicide this morning. The detective I spoke with who caught the case wanted to talk to you.”
“Okay.” He wondered why Ryan didn’t just get on with it. Speak the nightmare to life.
“His 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?” He forced the words out, forgetting all about his bad mood.
The sympathy in Ryan’s expression assured Davis he’d read his fears. “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. Davis, 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…” He 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 detective put a rush on the lab work. The initial 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 scene, 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, Davis—the scarves have all gone missing from the Death Angel case.”
“What did you say?” His thoughts went instinctively back to the last time he’d seen those scarves. They’d remained at VCIRD for three years following the official closing of the Angel case even though they’d never recovered Frankie Shepard’s body from the Potomac. Later, they’d gone into storage at the Bureau’s evidence storage facility.
“How is that possible, Ryan?”
“That’s a good question. 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.”
“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 go ballistic when he hears someone waltzed into our evidence facility and took evidence from one of the most notorious serial killer cases in centuries.”
“Hey, you aren’t telling me anything I don’t know, buddy. I’m meeting the two homicide de
tectives 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. 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, he 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.
Three days later…
“Mommie, do I have to go to school today?” Her daughter’s heavy footsteps trudged into the kitchen where Kara sat downing her fifth cup of coffee of the morning. She’d spent another restless night. The frequency of the dreams was a foreshadowing of things to come.
Ava hated school and looked for any excuse to get out of going. Another something she’d inherited from her mother. Kara knew every trick in the book because she’d used them all with her grandmother.
“I don’t feel good!”
When Kara spotted the emergence of her daughter’s pout, somehow she resisted the urge to smile.
So far this year, Ava had faked five tummy aches and three sore throats. It wasn’t as if Ava didn’t love her teacher, Miss Clopay, because she did. And Ava did well in school. So well that she’d been moved up to the first grade even though she was only five.
But Ava struggled to fit into the structured confines of school life, even a school as small as the one on the reservation in which Ava and she lived.
The simple, one-story house Kara purchased six years earlier sat at the very edge of the Apache reservation. Although she wasn’t a descendant of Apache blood, the desert and the reservation was the only place she felt safe anymore. And the Apache people didn’t ask questions.
