In Self Defense

by Debra Webb

  The life she had built in Nashville had been comfortable, with enough intellectual challenge in her career to make it uniquely interesting. Though she had not possessed a gold shield, the detectives in the special crimes unit had valued her opinion and treated her as if she was as much a member of the team as any of them. But that was before...before the man she admired and trusted proved to be a serial killer—a killer who had murdered her father and an MNPD officer as well as more than a hundred other victims over the past several decades.

  A mere one month, twenty-two days and about fourteen hours ago, esteemed psychiatrist Dr. Julian Addington had emerged from his cloak of secrecy and changed the way the world viewed serial killers. He was the first of his kind: incredibly prolific, cognitively brilliant and innately chameleonlike—able to change his MO at will. Far too clever to hunt among his own patients or social set, he had chosen his victims carefully; always ensuring he or she could never be traced back to him or his life.

  Julian had fooled Rowan for the past two decades, and then he’d taken her father, her only remaining family, from her. He’d devastated and humiliated her both personally and professionally.

  Anger and loathing churned inside her. He wanted her to suffer. He wanted her to be defeated...to give up. But she would not. Determination solidified inside her. She would not allow him that victory or that level of control over her.

  Her gaze drifted out over the water once more. Since her father’s death and moving back to Winchester, people had asked her dozens of times why she’d returned to take over the funeral home after all these years. She always gave the same answer: I’m a DuPont. It’s what we do.

  Her father, of course, had always hoped Rowan would do so. It was the DuPont way. The funeral home had been in the family for a hundred and fifty years; the legacy had been passed from one generation to the next time and time again. When she’d graduated from college and chosen to go to medical school and become a psychiatrist rather than return home and take over the family business, Edward DuPont had been devastated. For more than a year after that decision she and her father had been estranged. Now she mourned that lost year with an ache that was soul-deep.

  They had reconciled, she reminded herself, and other than the perpetual guilt she felt over not visiting or calling often enough, things had been good between her and her father. Like all else in her life until recently, their relationship had been comfortable. They’d spoken by phone regularly. She missed those chats. He kept her up to speed on who married or moved or passed and she would tell him as much as she could about her latest case. He had loved hearing about her work with Metro. As much as he’d wanted her to take over the family legacy, he had wanted her to be happy more than anything else.

  “I miss you, Daddy,” she murmured.

  Looking back, Rowan deeply regretted having allowed Julian Addington to become a part of her life all those years ago. She had shared her deepest, darkest secrets with him, including her previously strained relationship with her father. She had purged years of pent-up frustrations and anxieties to the bastard, first as his patient and then, later, as a colleague and friend.

  Though logic told her otherwise, a part of her would always feel the weight of responsibility for her father’s murder.

  Due to her inability to see what Julian was, she could not possibly return to Metro, though they had assured her that there would always be a place for her in the department. How could she dare to pretend some knowledge or insight the detectives themselves did not possess when she had unknowingly been a close friend to one of the most prolific serial killers the world had ever known?

  She could not. This was her life now.

  Would taking over the family business completely assuage the guilt she felt for letting her father down all those years ago? Certainly not. Never. But it was what she had to do. It was her destiny. In truth, she had started to regret her career decision well before her father’s murder. Perhaps it was the approaching age milestone of forty or simply a midlife crisis. She had found herself pondering what might have been different if she’d made that choice and regretting, frankly, that she hadn’t.

  Since she and Raven were old enough to follow the simplest directions, they had been trained to prepare a body for its final journey. By the time they were twelve, they could carry out the necessary steps nearly as well as their father with little or no direction.

  Growing up surrounded by death had, of course, left its mark. Her hyperawareness of death and all its ripples and aftershocks made putting so much stock into a relationship with another human being a less than attractive proposal. Why go out of her way to risk that level of pain in the event that person was lost? And with life came loss. To that end, she would likely never marry or have children. But she had her work and, like her father, she intended to do her very best. Both of them had always been workaholics. Taking care of the dead was a somber albeit important task, particularly for those left behind. The families of the loved ones who passed through the DuPont doors looked to her for support and guidance during their time of sorrow and emotional turmoil.

  Speaking of which, she pulled her cell from her pocket and checked the time. She should get back to the funeral home. Mrs. Phillips was waiting. Rowan turned away from the part of her past that still felt fresh despite the passage of time.

  Along this part of the shore the landscape was thickly wooded and dense with undergrowth, which was the reason she’d worn her rubber boots and was slowly picking her way back to the road. As she attempted to slide her phone back into her hip pocket a limb snagged her hair. Instinctively she reached up to pull it loose, dropping her cell phone in the process.

  “Damn it.” Rowan reached down and felt through the thatch beneath the underbrush. More of her long blond strands caught in the brush. She should have taken the time to pull her hair back in a ponytail as she usually did. She tugged the hair loose, bundled the thick mass into her left hand and then crouched down to dig around with her right in search of her phone. Like most people, she felt utterly lost without the damn thing.

  Where the hell had it fallen?

  She would have left it in the car except that she never wanted a family member to call the funeral home and reach a machine. With that in mind, she forwarded calls to her cell when she was away. Eventually she hoped to trust her father’s new assistant director enough to allow him to handle all incoming calls. Wouldn’t have helped this morning, though, since he was on vacation.

  New assistant director? She almost laughed at the idea. Woody Holder had been with her father for two years, but Herman Carter had been with him a lifetime before that. She supposed in comparison new was a reasonable way of looking at Woody’s tenure thus far. Her father had still referred to him as the new guy. Maybe it was his lackadaisical attitude. At forty-five Woody appeared to possess absolutely no ambition and very little motivation. She really should consider finding a new, more dependable assistant director and letting Woody go.

  Her fingers raked through the leaves and decaying ground cover until she encountered something cool and hard but not metal or plastic. Definitely not her phone. She stilled, frowned in concentration as her sense of touch attempted to identify the object she couldn’t see without sticking her head into the bushes. Not happening. She might have chalked the object up to being a limb or a rock if not for the familiar tingling sensation rushing along every single nerve ending in her body. Her instincts were humming fiercely.

  Assuredly not a rock.

  Holding her breath, she reached back to the same spot and touched the object again. Her fingers dug into the soft earth around the object and curled instinctively.

  Long. Narrow. Cylindrical.

  She pulled it from the rich, soft dirt, the thriving moss and the tangle of rotting leaves.

  Bone.

  She frowned, studied it closely. Human bone.

  Her pulse tripped into a faster r
hythm. She placed the bone aside and reached back in with both hands and carefully scratched away more of the leaves.

  Another bone...and then another. Bones that, judging by their condition, had been here for a very long time.

  Meticulously sifting through the layers of leaves and plant life, she discovered that her cell phone had fallen into the rib cage. The human rib cage. Her mind racing with questions and conclusions, she cautiously fished out the phone. She took a breath, hit her contacts list and tapped the name of Winchester’s chief of police.

  When he picked up, rather than hello, she said, “I’m at the lake. There’s something here you need to see and it can’t wait. Better call Burt and send him in this direction, as well.” Burt Johnston was a local veterinarian who had served as the county coroner for as long as Rowan could remember.

  Chief of Police William “Billy” Brannigan’s first response was “Are you okay?”

  Billy and Rowan had been friends since grade school. He had made her transition back to life in Winchester so much more bearable. And there was Herman. He was more like an uncle than a mere friend. Eventually she hoped the two of them would stop worrying so much about her. She wasn’t that fragile young girl who had left Winchester twenty-odd years ago. Recent events had rocked her, that was true, but she was completely capable of taking care of herself. She had made sure she would never again be vulnerable to anyone.

  “I’m fine but someone’s not. You should stop worrying about me and get over here, Billy.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  She ended the call. There had been no need for her to tell him precisely where she was at the lake. He would know. Rowan DuPont didn’t swim, and she never came near the lake unless it was to visit her sister.

  Strange, all those times Rowan had come to visit Raven she’d never realized there was someone else here, too.

  Copyright © 2019 by Debra Webb

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Desperate Intentions by Carla Cassidy.

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  Desperate Intentions

  by Carla Cassidy

  Prologue

  He dug the grave deep...and deeper still, not wanting anyone to ever find it. The moonlight overhead was bright, but at one o’clock in the morning in his own backyard he wasn’t too worried about anyone seeing him.

  Troy Anderson leaned against the shovel handle and swiped the sweat that threatened to drip into his eyes. Even though it was the middle of the night, the heat was relentless. August in Kansas City always brought high temperatures and thick humidity.

  He stared down into the deep hole he had dug, his emotions curiously numb. The man was dead, setting into motion a plot to murder another man...a man whose death Troy had dreamed about and had yearned for, for a thousand nights.

  This was what he’d wanted for three long years. So why didn’t a delirious happiness fill him? Why didn’t a wild anticipation thrum inside him? The man who had destroyed his life and stolen his happiness now had an expiration date, and all that Troy felt was numb.

  He swiped his forehead once again and got back to shoveling the hard dirt. His T-shirt clung to his chest and the latex gloves he wore smothered the skin of his hands. He couldn’t wait to get them off.

  When he had the hole dug deep enough for his satisfaction, he turned and grabbed the white plastic grocer’s bag on the ground next to him. He pulled out the gun inside and held it for several long minutes in his hand.

  It was the weapon he was supposed to use on this night to kill a man named Steven Winthrop. Troy had never met Winthrop, but he knew the man was responsible for the rape and murder of a woman who had just been doing her job in showing a home to a prospective buyer. Winthrop had beat the system and walked away a free man, even though everyone had known he was guilty.

  Troy had tossed and turned the night before with the knowledge that he intended to take a man’s life. He intended to commit cold-blooded murder. But it was the only path to the vigilante justice he needed...that he wanted so badly.

  He’d awakened that morning with murder in mind only to open the daily newspaper and discover that Steven Winthrop had been murdered the night before. According to the report, the man’s throat had been sliced open in his bedroom.

  So Troy would not be required to commit murder for the plan to continue. He had no idea who had owned or used this particular gun before it had appeared in his mailbox with instructions as to the date and time to kill Winthrop. He had no idea how many other murders the gun might be tied to. The serial numbers had been scratched off, but he knew there were now ways and technologies to retrieve the number. He had to get rid of it, and this was the only way he knew how. He dropped the gun into the hole and then shoveled dirt over the top.

  He buried the weapon and when he was finished, once again he leaned on the shovel and fought against a bone-deep weariness. He needed to take a long shower and then go to bed. He needed the sweet oblivion of sleep to quiet the demons in his head.

  He straightened up and his gaze swept to his neighbor’s big three-story house. He froze. Silhouetted in a second-floor window was somebody. Somebody watching him...somebody who had seen him bury the gun.

  Chapter One

  “Mommy, I want to wear my pink shoes but I can’t find them,” Katie called from her upstairs bedroom.

  “The school bus is going to be here in five minutes. I don’t care what color shoes you wear, but you must have shoes on both feet.” Eliza Burke drew in a deep breath to find patience.

  Every morning for the past week since school had started, it was the same chaotic scramble to get both her children on separate school buses. Her daughter, Katie, went to second grade at one school, and her son, Sammy, went on a little yellow bus to the Kansas City school for the blind.

  “Katie,” she called up the stairs. “We have to go.” She turned to Sammy, who sat at the kitchen table. “I swear, your sister is going to make me old before my time.”

  Sammy giggled. “But we still love her.”

  “Yes, we still love her,” Eliza agreed.

  “I’m coming,” Katie called. Her footsteps rang out as she came down the stairs. She appeared in the kitchen, a blue shoe on one foot and a pink one on the other. “Shoes on both feet,” she proclaimed proudly. Eliza sighed.

  “Grab your lunch bags and let’s head to the bus stop,” she said. “We don’t want to miss the buses.”

  Together the three of them left the house. Sammy held her arm more for comfort than for guidance. He had astounded her with his quick acclimation to the new house and neighborhood.

  An edge of grief swept through her as his hand warmed her forearm. Sammy had the most beautiful blue eyes with stunning dark lashes, but something had gone wrong and he’d been born without sight. Still, he was smart as a whip and a very happy child.

  Katie was her seven-year-old drama queen. She loved fashion and all things with bling. She also loved her younger brother with a fierce intensity. There was only one year between the two and they were very close.

  They had just reached the bus stop a block away from the house when Katie’s bus rumbled to a halt before them. With kisses given, she disappeared up the stairs and onto the bus.

  Minutes later Sammy was gone as well and Eliza started the walk back home. Home. The unexpected gift of the huge three-story house had been a happy, shocking surprise that had gotten them out of the crummy apartment building where they had been living.

  It had been left to her by her ex-husband’s grandfather, a man Eliza had barely known. But it was paid off, and a month ago she and the children had moved in.

  She entered the house and went directly to the kitchen to check on the slow cooker meal she�
��d started an hour earlier. She could already smell the chicken and tomatoes cooking.

  She then went into the room that was now her office. It was an odd-shaped room, as many of them were in the big home. This one was a disproportional octagon.

  She grabbed a hair tie and pulled her hair up into a messy ponytail atop her head, and then sat at the desk. When Sammy was two years old her husband, Blake, had left her...had left them.

  She’d desperately needed a job and yet also needed to be home to take care of a blind child. That was when she’d begun her web design business, and thankfully it had flourished and grown to the point she was able to keep up with the bills and see that her children were well-fed and clothed.

  Of course moving into this house where there was no rent or mortgage was going to help out tremendously. Not only did she need to start saving for college for the kids, she also wanted to get Sammy a guide dog when he turned sixteen. For the first time since Blake had walked out on them she had the real hope that those things would happen.

  However, nothing was going to happen if she didn’t get down to work right now. Mentally shoving her thoughts of her children away, she opened up her email. Reading her email had become an unpleasant task since Leon Whitaker had entered her life. Today was no different. There were three emails and two texts from the man threatening to destroy her life.

  She sighed, wondering when Leon would finally move on and leave her alone. She deleted them, and at the same time her doorbell rang. She jumped up and hurried to answer.

  She opened the door to find her smoking-hot next-door neighbor standing on the porch. She hadn’t officially met him yet, but had watched him mowing his lawn on more than one occasion, his broad bare back gleaming in the sunshine.

  “Hi.” He smiled, showing teeth that were straight and white. He set down the large flowering plant he held in one arm. “I thought it was about time I came over to officially introduce myself and welcome you to the neighborhood. I’m Troy Anderson.”