Cold Sight
Sobrecubierta
Series: Extra Sensory Agents [1]
Cathegories: Romance / Suspense
After being made a scapegoat in a botched investigation that led to a child's death, Aidan McConnell became a recluse. Still, as a favor to an old friend, Aidan will help on the occasional XI case. But under his handsome, rugged facade, he keeps his emotions in checkùfor fear of being burned again.
Reporter Lexie Nolan has a nose for newsùand she believes a serial killer has been targeting teen girls around Savannah. But no one believes her. So she turns to the new paranormal detective agency and the sexy, mysterious Aidan for help.
But just as the two begin forging a relationship, the case turns eerily personal for Lexieùand Aidan discovers that maybe he hasn't lost the ability to feel after all...
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
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
Epilogue
Teaser chapter
Praise for the Novels of Leslie Parrish
Black at Heart
“Dark, edgy, fantastic romantic suspense that readers and reviewers all over the Web are buzzing about.”
—All About Romance
“The emotional layers in this book, the descriptions, the plotting, the characterizations are rich and satisfying.”
—Armchair Interviews
Pitch Black
“Parrish’s Black CATs novels are taut, exciting, sweet, dark, and hot all at the same time.”
—Errant Dreams Reviews
“Superbly written and thoroughly engrossing.”
—All About Romance
“The ultimate edge-of-your-seat thriller.”
—Romance Junkies
“Parrish creates a heart-stomping story that takes you to the edge of your seat.”
—The Romance Readers Connection
Fade to Black
“Compelling, hold-your-breath romantic suspense with one of the most chillingly evil villains I’ve ever read.”
—New York Times bestselling author JoAnn Ross
“All in all, Fade to Black is fabulous.”
—Mrs Giggles
“A trifecta of good romantic suspense: good characters, good romance, and good suspense.”
—All About Romance
“Dark suspense, sexy heroes, fiendish villains, and fantastic writing.”
—Award-winning author Roxanne St. Claire
ALSO BY LESLIE PARRISH
The Black CATs Novels
Fade to Black
Pitch Black
Black at Heart
SIGNET ECLIPSE
Published by New American Library, a division of
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80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by Signet Eclipse, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, July 2010
Copyright © Leslie Kelly, 2010
eISBN : 978-1-101-18841-5
All rights reserved
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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To my big, wild, crazy “Smith” family: Dad, Toni, Lynn, Chris, Donna, Paul, Karen, Cheri, Lee, Holly. Thanks so much for your constant support and enthusiasm.
No author ever had a greater cheering section.
I love you all. And your kids are pretty cool, too!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Bruce—thanks for being such a great sounding board . . . and husband! Up for another screenplay?
To my editor, Laura Cifelli—I really appreciate your encouraging me to test and stretch my writing boundaries on this one.
As always, thanks to the Plotmonkeys—Julie, Janelle, and Karen—for your invaluable assistance in plotting this story, and in helping me work out the kinks along the way.
Many thanks to Silver, Heather, Liza, Paula, Stacey, and other bloggers who were so supportive in helping to get word out about my books. Your efforts are sincerely appreciated.
Prologue
Thursday, 5:45 a.m.
Until last night, nobody had ever read Vonnie Jackson a bedtime story.
Though she’d lived for seventeen years, she couldn’t remember a single fairy tale, one whispered nightie-night, or a soft kiss on the cheek before being tucked in. Her mother had always been well into her first bottle, her second joint, or her third john of the evening long before Vonnie fell asleep. Bedtime usually meant hiding under the bed or burrowing beneath a pile of dirty clothes in the closet, praying Mama didn’t pass out, leaving one of her customers to go prowling around in their tiny apartment.
They definitely hadn’t wanted to read to her. Nobody had.
So to finally hear innocent childhood tales from a psychotic monster who intended to kill her was almost as unfair as her ending up in this nightmare to begin with.
“Are you listening to me?” His pitch rose, her captor’s voice growing almost mischievous as he added, “Did you fall asleep, little Yvonne?” But that mischief was laced with so much evil that it almost seemed to be a living, breathing thing, as real as the stained, scratchy mattress on which she lay or the metal chain
s holding her down upon it.
Most times, such as now, the man who’d kidnapped her spoke in a thick, falsetto whisper, his tone happily wicked, like a jolly elf who’d taken up slaughter for the sheer pleasure of it. Every once in a while, though, he got angry and dropped the act. Once or twice, when he’d said a word or two in his normal thick, deep voice, she’d felt a hint of familiarity flit across her mind, as if she’d heard him before, recently. She could never focus on it, though; never place the memory.
Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she just recognized the twisted, full-of-rage quality that made men such as him tick. She’d seen that kind all her life. She’d just never landed in the hands of a homicidal one. Until now.
“Sweet little girl. So weary, aren’t you? I suppose you fell asleep, hmm?”
She shook her head. Even that slight movement sent knives of pain stabbing through her skull and into her brain. Whether that was from the drugs he’d been shoving down her throat or from the punches to the face, she couldn’t say. Probably both. The pills he’d given her hadn’t made the pain go away. Instead they’d intensified it, brought her senses higher until every word was a thundering cry, every hint of light in her eyes as blinding as the sun. And every cruel touch agonizing.
The first beating had hurt. The subsequent ones had nearly sent her out of her mind. Only the solid, steel core of determination deep inside her—which had kept her going despite so many obstacles throughout her life—had kept her from giving in to the urge to beg him to just kill her and put her out of her misery.
“You must want to go to sleep, though.”
“No,” she whispered. “Go on. Don’t stop. I like it.”
Oh, no, she didn’t want to fall asleep, as welcome as it might have been. Because it was while she slept, helpless against sheer exhaustion, lulled by his singsong bedtime stories or unable to fight the effects of the drugs, that he came in and did things to her. She’d awakened once to find him taking pictures of her, naked and posed on the cot. Though his face had been masked—one of those creepy, maniacally smiling “king” masks from the fast-food commercials—he’d rechained her and scurried out as soon as he realized she was fully conscious. As if he didn’t have the balls to risk letting her get a good look at him.
Maybe he’s afraid you’ll escape and be able to identify him.
Yeah. And maybe a pack of wolves would rip him to pieces in his own backyard tomorrow. But she doubted it.
One of these times, she suspected she would wake up and find herself in the middle of a rape. So, no, she did not want to fall asleep.
“I don’t know—we’ve read quite a lot. I’m worried you might have nightmares. Did you, last night, after hearing about the little piggies who got turned into bacon and sausage patties?”
She suspected the story didn’t end like that. If it did, parents who called it a bedtime story had a lot to answer for. As for her nightmares . . . Well, she was living one, wasn’t she?
Vonnie swallowed, her thick, dry tongue almost choking her. “I’ll be fine. Please read to me some more.”
The words echoed in the damp, musty basement room in which she’d been imprisoned for three days now. Or four? She had been unable to keep track, even though she had noted the sunshine coming and going again through the tiny window in her cell. She had been too out of it, couldn’t make herself focus.
How long had it been since the night he’d grabbed her? And when had that been? Think!
Monday. He’d attacked her while she walked the long way home from a nighttime event at her new high school, to which she’d just transferred because they offered more AP classes than her old one. Mistake number one. Her old school had been a block from her crappy home.
“Well, if you’re sure, I suppose we can read a little more about those naughty children.”
Knowing he expected it, she managed to murmur, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, dear. I’m glad you like this story. It’s no wonder their parents didn’t want Hansel and Gretel—awful, spoiled brats, weren’t they? Most parents hate their children anyway, but these two were especially bad.”
If it wouldn’t have caused her so much pain, she might have laughed at that. Because he was saying something he thought would hurt her, when, in truth, he’d just reinforced what she already knew. Her mama had made that clear every day of her life.
Most parents would be proud of their kid for doing well in school, but not hers. All she’d said was that Vonnie had been stupid to transfer. Stupid to go to the evening event. Stupid and uppity, thinking getting into the National Honor Society mattered a damn when she lived on the corner of Whoreville and Main.
Normally she’d have been at work serving chicken wings and fending off gropey drunk guys by that time of night on a Monday. But no, she’d had to go to the meeting, had to act as if she was no different from the smart, rich white kids with their trust funds and their sports cars. She’d been cocky, insisting it was no big deal to walk home alone after dark through an area of the Boro where no smart girl ever walked alone after dark. Not these days, not with the Ghoul on the loose and more girls missing from her neighborhood every month.
The Ghoul—the paper had at first said he was real, then that he wasn’t. Vonnie knew the truth. He was real, all right. She just wasn’t going to live long enough to tell anybody.
“Hansel and Gretel didn’t know that the starving birdies of the forest were eating up their bread-crumb trail, waiting for the children to die so they could poke out their eyes,” he read, not noticing her inattention. “It was dark and their time to find their way home was running out.”
Time. It had ceased to have any meaning at all. Minutes and hours had switched places: minutes lengthened by pain, hours shortened by the terror of what would happen every time he came back from wherever it was he went when he left her alone in the damp, cold dark.
And Vonnie knew, deep down, that her time was running out, too.
“Did you hear me?” he snapped.
She swallowed. “Yeah.”
“Good. Don’t you fall asleep. I’m reading this for you, not for myself, you know.”
She suspected he wasn’t reading at all, merely Wes Craven-ing up a real bedtime story.
“Now, wasn’t it lucky that they were able to find shelter?” he added. “Mm, a house made of gingerbread and gumdrops and licorice. Imagine that. Do you like sweets, pretty girl? Want me to bring you some candy? Sticky, gooey candy?”
She swallowed, the very thought of it making her sick. Not that she wasn’t hungry, starving even. But the foul-smelling air surrounding her, filling her lungs and her nose, made the thought of food nauseating. She didn’t like to think about the other smells down here—the reek of rotten meat, the stench of human waste. And something metallic and earthy, a scent that seemed to coat her tongue when she breathed through her mouth.
Blood. At least, that was what she suspected had created the rust-colored stains on the cement floor.
Those stains had been the first things she’d noticed when she regained consciousness after she’d been kidnapped. And ever since, they’d reiterated what she already knew: This guy had killed before, and he intended to kill her. It wasn’t a matter of if; only when.
There was no escape—she was chained, drugged, and had been terrified into utter submission. She had no idea where she was, or when it was, or if the door led to a way out or just another chamber of horrors.
Vonnie didn’t even try to comfort herself with thoughts of escape. It did no good to pump herself up with the memories of all the other times she’d gotten herself out of difficult situations—put there through either her own gullibility or by her mama’s greed.
Don’t go there, girl. Just as much darkness down that path.
No, she didn’t want to think those thoughts. Not if they were going to be among the last ones of her life. Because so far, at least, this nightmare hadn’t included sexual assault.
“Well, maybe the candy shouldn’t be to
o sticky,” he said, tutting a little, like a loving, concerned parent, not that she had firsthand experience with one. “I know your jaw must hurt from when you made me hit you the other day. Maybe I could chew it up, make it nice and soft for you, then spit it into your mouth just like a mama bird with her little chick.”
Though she hadn’t figured there was anything left in her stomach, she still heaved a mouthful of vomit. But she forced herself to swallow it down. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing that his mere words had made her sick. Nor could she let him know just how disgusting she found the thought. Giving the monster ideas to try on her when she finally did pass out was a stupid thing to do, and Vonnie Jackson might be beaten and chained, she might be poor and the daughter of a drug-addicted prostitute, but nobody had ever called her stupid.
“Why was she doing it, do you suppose? Why did she want them to eat all those sweets?” When she didn’t reply, his singsong voice rose to a screech. “Answer me!”
“Fattening them up,” she said, the words riding a puff of air across her swollen lips.
“Yes! You’re so clever; that’s what they say about you. Such a smart, clever girl who was going to escape her pathetic childhood.” He tsked, sounding almost sad. “And you nearly made it—didn’t you, Yvonne? Oh, you came so close! High school graduation next May, then off you’d go to college on one of your scholarships, never to see your slut mother or the hovel you call home again. All that work, all that effort. Wasted.”
She didn’t answer, didn’t even flinch, not wanting him to see that his words stabbed at her, hurting almost as much as his fists. Because getting out was all Vonnie had worked for, all she had dreamed of for as long as she could remember. And the fact that this filthy monster had taken that chance from her made her want to scream at the injustice.
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