by Elle Gray
Copyright © 2021 by Elle Gray
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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Contents
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
Epilogue
Note From Elle Gray
Also by Elle Gray
Prologue
Stacy’s breathing was ragged. The muscles in her legs burned as if they were actually on fire. She doubled over and clutched her midsection, the pain so intense she felt as though she was being split in two. Stacy’s breath came out in thick plumes of steam as her heart thundered in her ears. Tears spilled from her eyes, and an icy fist of terror squeezed her so tightly, it drove the air from her lungs.
Stacy was exhausted. Spent. She just wanted to find some place to lie down and rest for awhile. But when the sound of a branch snapping echoed through the woods around her, Stacy knew she had to keep moving. They were coming. And if they caught her, they would kill her. Nobody left the compound. Nobody escaped. Once you’d pledged your life and your body to them, you belonged to them. They owned every square inch of you. They took what they wanted from you when they wanted it. They even took…
Stacy pushed those thoughts away. They wouldn’t do her any good right now. Not when they were coming. Coming for her. She had to stay ahead of them. She had to keep running. She couldn’t let them catch her. If they did, there would be no forgiveness. There would be no mercy.
In the distance, Stacy saw the beams of light from their flashlights cutting through the darkness. They bounced crazily as the men holding them ran, sweeping the lights from side to side in search of their prey. Stacy had no idea where she was or how to find her way out of the woods, but she lowered her head and ran anyway. Legs pumping, arms churning, pain radiating through every square inch of her body, and her breath a series of ragged gasps, Stacy ran.
She heard them crashing through the brush behind her, the clamor of their voices driving her onward. Stacy was running as fast as she dared in a blind panic, tearing through the bushes, pushing branches out of her way, trying to keep from tripping over rocks or exposed roots. The last thing she needed was to trip over something and break her ankle.
“Over here. She’s this way!” his voice echoed through the night.
A soft squeal of fear passed her lips as she powered on. They were closing the gap, and Stacy was starting to panic. She grit her teeth and pushed through a screen of bushes—and was suddenly weightless. Stacy found herself falling, having just run off the edge of a bluff. She hit the ground with an impact that jarred the bones in her body and drove the breath from her lungs. Almost from a distance, as if it was happening to someone else, she heard a loud cracking sound as she hit the pavement, then felt a lance of white-hot pain shoot straight up her leg.
Stacy gasped in agony. It took all her strength to barely struggle back to her feet. Her muscles were trembling and tears spilled down her face. She used a rock to prop herself up and finally stood to her full height, just as the splash of headlights rounding the bend blinded her.
She felt her eyes widen and a choked scream burst from her throat. It was drowned out by the sound of tires screeching. She dove toward the side of the road, but she wasn’t quick enough. Something hard clipped her in the side, sending another sharp spike of pain through her body. The impact sent her spinning like a top, finally dropping her into the ditch that ran beside the road.
As Stacy lay there, a collection of bumps, bruises, broken bones, and sheer agony racking her entire body, she stared up at the darkened sky overhead. She marveled at the sight of the stars above. There were so many of them in the vast blackness above her that she suddenly felt absolutely insignificant. A small speck of nothing among the endless field of stars above. She enjoyed the way they twinkled. Stacy relished the soft caress of the cool breeze on her skin. Everything felt heightened, her senses sharper. The world around her suddenly seemed so vivid, and she didn’t understand why.
Stacy heard the voices of the people in the car that had clipped her, but they sounded far away. Stacy thought they might as well be on another planet. Darkness crept in at the edges of her vision and kept eating away at her sight until there was nothing left but a pinhole of light in the dark.
But then that too was gone, and her entire world went black.
One
Criminal Data Analysis Unit; Seattle Field Office
“What I’m saying is that we don’t have enough information to move yet,” Mo says, looking exasperated. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“I think we’ve got enough to bring her in and rattle her cage,” Astra counters.
“You do that, you’ll tip her off that we’re looking at her,” Mo fires back.
“Perhaps. And perhaps it also forces her to pull back. Saves some lives while we’re building our case,” Astra argues.
With my arms folded over my chest, I pace the front of the room, listening to the two of them go back and forth, absorbing their arguments as I try to come up with the best decision I can. But in a case like this, there is simply no good decision to make.
“What do you think, Blake?” Astra finally asks.
“Honestly, I think you both have compelling points,” I tell her. “However we choose to proceed, we’re going to need to be very careful.”
“Way to straddle the fence, boss,” Astra cracks.
I give her a small smile and shrug. “It’s just the truth. Mo is right that we don’t have enough to get a warrant yet, let alone make an arrest,” I state. “But on the other side of that coin, if we put her on notice, as you said, maybe she’s forced to pull back and stop killing.”
“Not to be the harbinger of doom or anything—”
“Hey, we’re all playing to our strengths right now, so you’re good,” Astra cuts Rick off, earning her a middle finger that makes us all laugh.
“Anyway, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, there’s another possibility I haven’t heard floated yet,” Rick goes on. “If you tip her off, she could also decide the walls are closing in and start killing everybody.”
The room falls silent as we all weigh Rick’s words. I mean, he’s not wrong. It’s something we hadn’t considered, and it’s a very strong possibility. We’ve seen people do that before. It’s rare when you’re talking about an Angel of Mercy, but it’s not unheard of, either.
Astra stumbled onto this case when she was reviewing data on nursing homes
and assisted living facilities. She found that a nursing home in Seattle called Tender Care had a higher-than-average number of patient deaths. While it was still within the tolerated range of deaths for a hospice care facility, it was much higher than the facility’s numbers, historically speaking, which is what pinged Astra’s radar.
The increased number of deaths was swept under the rug, of course—it’s a facility for the elderly and hospice care, so nobody ever takes too close a look. And because it’s a hospice care facility, it’s going to have a higher mortality rate than a standard nursing home. But what Astra dug up was downright chilling. We ran a quiet behind-the-scenes investigation of the facility and quickly keyed in on a nurse who was hired about a month before the deaths began. After she was hired, deaths in the facility spiked. Again, it was still within the expected norms, but it was scraping the ceiling and seemed out of balance with the facility’s historic trendline.
We did a deep dive on Nurse Misty Crane and found that she had left quite a trail of death behind her. Over the past ten years, she’d worked at three facilities before Tender Care—and those, too, had increased numbers of patient deaths exactly correlating with her employment history. Nothing so outrageous that it set off any official alarms, of course, but enough that internally, the facilities recognized they had a problem. In each case, it seemed that they’d narrowed their own suspect pool to a small handful of employees—Misty Crane among them in all cases.
From what we’d been able to dig up on our own, along with a few discreet conversations with former employees, we learned that rather than dig deeper, the administrators at the facilities had chosen to cover it all up. They’d apparently concluded it would be easier to hire new staff they could vet a little more thoroughly than have the public spectacle of an Angel of Mercy on their wards. Covering it up would avoid a PR nightmare in each case by keeping it all internal. So, the administrators of these care homes gave glowing letters of recommendation and tidy severance packages to that small group of people they’d identified as possible murderers and sent them all on their way.
“I’ll tell you who I want to arrest and prosecute,” I start, “It’s these administrators who let Crane keep on killing knowing full well what kind of monster she is.”
“I second that,” Astra says. Mo nods with us in agreement. “They knowingly turned a murderer loose, letting her kill again. All so they could keep their six-figure bonuses. It’s disgusting.”
“It’s beyond disgusting, and you can bet your butt that I’ll be talking to one of the Assistant US Attorneys about it,” I reply. “If there’s a case to be made against these administrators, we’ll make it.”
Through the glass doors of the shop, I see Rosie—SAC Rosalinda Espinoza—standing in the corridor talking with a woman who has her back to me. I catch Rosie’s eye and she gives me a look that tells me to wrap up what I’m doing because she needs to talk. I nod and turn back to my team.
“As for the here and now, I’m going to err on the side of caution and agree with Mo. Right now, all we have is circumstantial. It won’t get us a warrant, let alone hold up in court,” I say. “So, let’s do a deeper dive on Nurse Crane, guys. I want you to go full Pac-Man and gobble up every bit of information you can find. I want to cast as wide a net as possible on her. If we need to match a shoe size to her, I want that information in hand. Got it?”
“You got it, boss,” Mo says, clearly happy I’d come down on her side of the argument.
Astra looks at me, then cuts her eyes to the door to the shop and arches an eyebrow at me. She’d clearly seen the woman in the corridor with Rosie. Astra is subtle, slick, and doesn’t miss a trick. I didn’t even see her glance at the doors, so how she knew Rosie and a friend were out there, I have no clue. It’s a pretty neat parlor trick, though, I’ll give her that.
“Who’s the suit?” she asks.
As if Astra’s question summons her, the doors to the shop open with a pneumatic hiss. When I finally see who Rosie is walking in with, I groan. Astra cuts a glance at them, then back to me, and I see the question in her eyes. I give her a subtle shake and a look that says I’ll fill her in later. She can obviously see I’m not thrilled with our visitor, so she gives me a wink and a smile to boost my spirits. If it were any other person with Rosie, I might be able to crack a smile, but I can’t seem to muster one right now. Rosie points to my office and I give her a nod and hold up a finger to tell her I’ll be there in a minute—and then have to physically restrain myself from giving her visitor a different finger.
“Okay guys, let’s get to work. We need hard evidence,” I say. “We want to take this woman out of play permanently, so you know what to do.”
“Good luck,” Astra mutters.
“Thanks,” I reply quietly. “I think I’m gonna need it.”
Two
Office of SSA Wilder, Criminal Data Analysis Unit; Seattle Field Office
Rosie and her guest stand as I step into the office and close the door behind me. She gives me a tight smile and a look that tells me to mind my P’s and Q’s. It’s as though she can read my mind or something.
“SSA Blake Wilder, I’d like to introduce—”
“Representative Kathryn Hedlund,” I say as I step behind my desk and drop down into my chair. “Yes, I know who you are. Please, have a seat.”
Rosie gives me a frown, but she should know better than this. I don’t play politics any more than she does, so for her to bring somebody like Hedlund, one of the slimiest operators around—not to mention somebody I absolutely despise—into my office, was her mistake. They both sit down and Hedlund looks at me with an amused smile playing across her lips.
“And I take it from the icy reception you are not a fan of my politics,” Hedlund comments, her voice rich with her perfectly prim, suburban attitude. If she wasn’t in Congress, you’d think she’d be on the board of some Home Owner’s Association snooping in people’s business.
I lean back in my chair and give Rosie a meaningful glance before turning my sights back onto Hedlund. She’s taller than I thought, standing five-nine without heels. She’s got a full head of silver hair and slight crinkles around the corners of her eyes. She’s thin, but athletic looking—a runner or a swimmer, I’d guess. Her skin is smooth and youthful, the gray hair the only thing that betrays her age. But if she colored it, her age would be absolutely ambiguous. She looks as though she could be anywhere between thirty and fifty.
“I’m an FBI Agent and do my best to avoid politics at all costs,” I say evenly. “Politics is a messy business, and I’d prefer to keep the knives out of my back, thanks very much.”
Rosie shoots me a dark look as Hedlund laughs softly, a light of genuine amusement in her cornflower blue eyes. The Congresswoman is impressive as a person. At least on paper. She came up from nothing and earned her BA from Cornell at twenty-one, a Master’s degree from Harvard at twenty-three, a law degree from Yale at twenty-five, and was arguing before the Supreme Court before the age of thirty. She’s a woman who’s driven and determined. But strangely enough, she’s also a woman who seeks to deny other women the same advantages and successes she enjoyed. She’s a classic example of one of those people who pulls the ladder up after her. How she manages to keep the cognitive dissonance from making her head explode is beyond me.
Hedlund advocates for a return to what she calls “simpler times” and “traditional values”. You know, when women wore strings of pearls to vacuum the house, had dinner for their husbands on the table by five, and stayed home to raise the two-point-five children the perfect nuclear family would have. She’s railed against basic equal rights policies like Title IX more times than I can count—and has even taken court cases designed to erode it, if not abolish it altogether. She’s argued against having women in the military, on the job as police officers, and within the halls of the FBI and other agencies under the auspices of Homeland Security—unless they were to work there as secretaries, of course.
She’s espoused t
hese positions and advocated essentially purging women from the workplace while standing in the halls of Congress itself. The irony seems to be completely lost on her. So, no. I’m not a fan of her politics. Nor am I a fan of her as a person. That she uses her position to try and cut the legs out from under other women looking to climb the ladders beneath her is abhorrent to me., I find her particularly reprehensible as a person. And I’m utterly perplexed as to why Rosie would bring her into my office.
“I trust we’re not pulling you away from anything too important,” Hedlund says.
I shrug. “If you don’t consider running down an Angel of Mercy important, then no, I suppose not.”
“Blake,” Rosie growls.
“What’s an Angel of Mercy?” Hedlund asks.
“This is a nurse who is murdering the residents of a hospice care facility,” I explain. “She believes she’s putting them out of their misery, thus displaying mercy.”
“Oh, dear,” Hedlund says.
“Yeah. ‘Oh, dear,’” I say. “But, as I can guess that you’re not here to tell me how much you approve of the work we’re doing in this unit, may I ask what it is you want?”
“Blake, let’s take it down a couple of notches,” Rosie warns.
Hedlund smiles. “No, it’s all right, Rosie. I much prefer somebody who is unambiguous in her beliefs and opinions. More than that, I prefer somebody who isn’t afraid to speak to her convictions,” Hedlund says. “Honesty in all things is something I can respect—even if it is delivered very bluntly. I find it refreshing, though. As you can imagine, I don’t get much of that on Capitol Hill.”
