Winter's Curse

by Mary Stone

  Winter’s Curse

  Winter Black Series: Book Two

  Mary Stone

  Copyright © 2019 by Mary Stone

  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.

  Created with Vellum

  To my husband.

  Thank you for taking care of our home and its many inhabitants while I follow this silly dream of mine.

  Contents

  Description

  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

  Winter Black Series by Mary Stone

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Description

  A blessing? A curse? It’s not easy to possess the gift of knowing too much.

  What at first seems like a standalone bank robbery becomes something much darker as a pair of masterminds hack their bloody way onto the list of the most notorious US heists. It’s not a job exclusive to the FBI, but Winter’s office nemesis, Sun Ming, is convinced that she holds the key to taking down the murderous criminals hungry for fame.

  Forced into the spotlight, Winter wants only one thing...to solve this case so she can focus on tracking down The Preacher. But the "gift" he left her with might destroy her first.

  Welcome to book two of Mary Stone’s debut crime fiction series. If you love a page-turning, cat and mouse thriller, Winter’s Curse will keep you guessing until the end.

  Download your copy of Winter’s Curse to discover if Winter’s team will outsmart a killer’s intricately designed plot for infamy. And if Winter will survive the curse that is growing more and more out of her control.

  1

  Ashlyn Freitas was running late for work, but she stopped and bought her usual Starbucks nonfat decaf latte anyway. What was the good of working your way up to branch manager if you couldn’t come in a few minutes late once in a while?

  Vanilla-scented steam wafted up from her cup, and she sipped at the hot coffee on her way out the door. Her blue, sensible-height heels clacked out a staccato tattoo on the concrete sidewalk as she made her way next door to the American Bank and Trust.

  Lenny, the aging security guard, beat her there as usual. His buttons strained against his dark blue shirt as he sat up in his chair in a rush, brushing Pop-Tarts crumbs from his belly with a sheepish smile. He got up from his usual post, where he lounged in a chair beside the door. He was nothing if not consistent.

  Ashlyn gave him a cheerful hello as he unlocked the front door and waved her through. He grinned wide enough to show a missing back molar. “Good morning, boss lady.”

  “Good morning, security man.”

  More consistency. The greeting had been their routine for the last twelve years.

  The “boss lady” part, though, had only been added eight months ago, when the promotion she had worked her ass off for finally came through.

  She passed the empty teller cubbies and hurried through a hallway on the other side that led to the business offices. Her own was the largest. She still got a little thrill walking into the nice-sized, windowed room, with its big cherry desk and sleek computer. She’d worked hard for this office and adored every part of it, from the potted majesty palm to the printer/scanner combo she didn’t have to share with any of her co-workers.

  Ashlyn set her coffee next to her keyboard and shrugged off her navy linen blazer, hanging it on the back of her office chair. Then, she booted up her computer for what would be the last time.

  In two hours and twelve minutes, she’d be dead.

  At 9:56, the first gunshot echoed through the building. At first, Ashlyn thought a car had backfired. She shot an automatic glance out her window, toward El Camino Real, where traffic sat motionless at a red light. Before she could even scan the street, she heard Louise, their newest teller, scream. The high, shrill noise was cut off almost as soon as it had begun.

  Ashlyn stood up swiftly, her chair rolling backward to thump against a filing cabinet. Her heart fluttered in her chest, and her palms went damp in an instant. Another shot rang out, and there was a grunt and a heavy thud just outside her office door. She tried to push it open with one shaking hand, but the door bumped against something heavy. She shoved harder, but the door wouldn’t open more than about a foot.

  In the open space, a spreading pool of red marred the once freshly vacuumed carpet.

  Ashlyn backed up, bile rising in the back of her throat. Black dots swirled in her vision, and for one horrible moment, she thought she might pass out.

  “Come on, Ashlyn.” Her words sounded pathetic and weak to her own ears, especially in the confines of her office. She’d trained for this, she reminded herself. She swallowed hard. Security seminars. Online training classes provided by corporate, where she’d had to watch low budget, poorly acted videos about what to do in case of a robbery.

  Needless to say, the tacky training videos hadn’t prepared her for the sight of Lenny on the hallway floor, staring up at the ceiling with a surprised expression in his lifeless eyes.

  She looked out of the window for a half-second, longing to break out and lose herself in the blessed normalcy of the downtown Monday morning bustle. The urge to climb out and run as fast as she could, leave this situation behind, almost overwhelmed her.

  But, she couldn’t. In a burst of movement that left her short, frosted blonde bob swinging, Ashlyn grabbed the phone on her desk and dialed 911 as a precaution. The three tellers had call buttons below their countertops. But as the emergency response operator buzzed in her ear, she heard one of them call her name. It was Greg, she realized, his voice high and frightened.

  For a moment, she froze. An image of her husband, Robert, popped into her mind. The way he’d smiled at her over his granola and yogurt that morning, still as handsome and charming at fifty-eight as he had been at twenty-four. He’d sold his business for enough to keep them comfortable the rest of their lives and retired. He’d been bothering her to do the same—he could afford to take care of them both—and had started making noises about buying an RV and doing some traveling.

  She set the phone gently on her desk as the tinny-sounding voice of the 911 operator repeated a question. She wished she’d done as Robert had asked, but she’d been so proud of her new job.

  She struggled to hold back tears and squared her shoulders.

  There were others in the office. Someone else would have called 911 by now. The police were already on their way. She had to believe that.

  But she was the Branch Manager. She couldn’t wait for them.

  “I’m coming out,” she yelled, trying to sound calm. “Greg, my door is stuck, if you could help me, please.”

  “Go ahead,” she heard a woman�
��s muffled voice order. “And hurry up.”

  Too soon, the door swung open a bit wider as Lenny’s body was rolled away from the other side. When she heard the sound of miserable retching, her own stomach tightened in a sympathy cramp. She stepped out through the widened gap, trying not to think about the way her shoes squelched in the wet carpeting.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Freitas,” Greg moaned, looking younger than his twenty-six years. His dark brown eyes were huge in his pale face. His thin arms trembled as he pulled Lenny’s limp body farther away from the door. “They told me to get the manager on duty.”

  “It’s okay.” She gave him a weak smile, and jerked her head to the right, motioning for Greg to go farther in the back of the bank. He did, scuttling low and hunched over, like he was afraid he’d get a bullet between his shoulder blades.

  She hoped he’d warn the other employees. Find some place to hide.

  Stiffening her spine, Ashlyn stepped through the doorway, pasting on her most professional smile without consciously meaning to. “I’m Ashlyn Freitas. Can I help you?”

  Before her, on the other side of the counter in the empty lobby, stood two Nixons.

  A male and a female, both intruders were tall, around six feet. They were dressed in business casual clothes that wouldn’t seem out of place if she passed them on the street outside. But their faces were covered by leering Richard Nixon rubber masks. Her older brother had worn a similar one for trick or treating one year when they were kids, just to annoy their dad, a die-hard Republican.

  Through the eyeholes in the masks, two pairs of eyes glittered at her. The man’s were bright blue, the expression in them unreadable. The woman’s were brown, lit with glee.

  “I need you to help these young ladies fill a bag for us. Fast.” The man gestured with a large pistol toward a big, black canvas tote.

  “No dye packs or I hunt down your fucking family,” the woman added with a snarl. “And don’t tell me you don’t have the cash available, because I checked your system before I got here. I know how much you’ve got, down to the penny.”

  “Of course.”

  Who was this woman that she could have gotten into their system? Or was she bluffing? Ashlyn’s mind whirled with the questions.

  Ashlyn’s hands shook as she punched in the code to unlock the cash-dispensing machines at each teller station. Her hands moved in awkward, jerky motions. The whole situation felt surreal.

  “Empty these,” she told Louise and Chantel. Both women looked near collapse. Chantel was wracked with silent sobs, tears rolling down her rounded cheeks. She was six months pregnant.

  Ashlyn hushed her, keeping her voice gentle with effort, worried that the girl’s crying would irritate the thieves enough to shoot her. Chantel stifled a shudder.

  Ashlyn looked up at the female Nixon. “The rest is in another room.”

  Female Nixon nodded toward her partner. “Take him with you. And don’t try anything or I’ll have to kill a couple more of your employees, Ms. Branch Manager.”

  “I’ll accompany you.” The man’s voice was smooth and polite, almost kind, with a hint of an Irish accent.

  His eyes, though, were so icy, a bright, cold blue that held no emotion. She didn’t for a moment doubt he was any less dangerous than his cohort. He, too, carried a gun, and he grabbed the canvas tote. He gestured in a parody of politeness for her to lead the way.

  She opened the locked room where their cash was kept and fumbled to drop handfuls of paper-banded twenties, fifties, and hundreds into the tote he held out.

  “Hurry up, sweetheart,” the man murmured. “I’m afraid my associate is running out of patience.”

  Task finished, they headed back to the lobby. Male Nixon loaded the money from the cash machines into the bag and then swung the heavy tote over his shoulder. “Ready to go, love?” he asked the Female Nixon.

  Thank you, God. They’ll leave now.

  Ashlyn Freitas almost sagged in relief. She didn’t care if they got away. She wanted them to get away. When the police showed up, who knew what would happen. They’d be taken hostage. Maybe killed.

  Like poor Lenny.

  Her legs felt near collapse, too rubbery to hold her upright anymore. She blocked Lenny’s fate from her mind with deliberate effort.

  “We’ll leave,” the woman replied. “There’s just one more thing.”

  She leveled the pistol at Ashlyn, who stood only a few feet away.

  “Wait—” The man took a half-step forward, but he was too slow.

  Almost at the same moment, there was a deafening roar, a bright flash. Instant darkness followed. Blindly, Ashlyn felt herself being propelled backward, slamming against something hard. A woman’s shriek echoed through her head before it faded into silence. It was strange…she didn’t feel any pain. Didn’t feel anything at all.

  Ashlyn Freitas, Branch Manager of the American Bank and Trust in San Clemente, California, was dead before she hit the floor.

  2

  Winter ignored the argument between Special Agents Sun Ming and Miguel Vasquez that raged outside of her cubicle. She didn’t look up from her computer screen.

  As an FBI agent, she now had access to a boatload of resources for tracking down criminals. She planned to make use of every one of them to find one of the deadliest serial killers in modern history. Right now, she was knee-deep in murderers.

  “Black,” a gruff voice barked out.

  That voice, she registered. It reminded her of a muffler dragging on gravel.

  She rolled her chair back fast, shuffling the files on her desk, and stood. “Sir?”

  Special Agent in Charge of the Richmond Violent Crimes Task Force Max Osbourne stalked toward her cubicle, irritation vibrating in his stocky, muscular frame. Even Sun and Miguel backed apart a step and broke off, mid-argument.

  His stare nearly pinned Winter to the floor. “Your arm healed up all right?”

  Behind Max, Noah Dalton raised his head over his own wall and shook his head in the negative, giving her a warning look. She read the look clearly. It said she was in trouble.

  Winter and Noah had gone through Quantico together, and after the last case they’d worked, knew she could trust him with her life. She’d done it once. Noah disappeared again, and Winter opened her mouth to tell Max she had one more check-up before she was cleared for regular duty.

  Unfortunately, Max didn’t wait for Winter to answer.

  “Vasquez, back to your desk,” he ordered the man still inching away from Winter’s cubicle. “I don’t care if your doctor says you’re fighting fit. You still look like hell.”

  It was true. Miguel’s face was an uncommon shade of pale except for two bright red patches of angry color high on his cheekbones. He was fresh off the disabled list and still not one-hundred-percent. He shot one last killing look at Sun, who just smiled back in triumph, baring even white teeth. Shoulders stiff, Miguel muttered something uncomplimentary in Spanish and headed back to his seat, still moving slowly after his appendectomy.

  Sun’s grin widened at what she clearly saw as a win. She turned to walk back to her own desk, but Max stopped her.

  “Black, you’re working with Ming now.”

  The smug-to-horrified transformation of Sun’s face would have been comical if Winter hadn’t been just as appalled. Osbourne just chuckled, a raspy sound that sounded rusty from disuse.

  “Come on now, girls. Be team players. Ming, you’re the case agent on this one. Bring Black up to speed.”

  He headed back to his office, careless of the dynamic he’d just set into play.

  Sun hated Winter’s guts, and the feeling was reciprocated.

  When Winter had first been assigned to the Violent Crimes Unit, the other members of the team had taken good-natured advantage of her lack of experience. They had put her in charge of the virtual reams of paperwork their jobs generated.

  She’d graduated Quantico in the same class as Noah, and they’d been hired in at the same time, but he at least
had law enforcement experience. Between that and his easygoing attitude, he’d been an easy fit within the unit. Winter, not so much. He’d tried to let her work it out on her own. Eventually, though, he had let her in on the prank.

  Winter had used Sun as an example to let everyone know she was done being their administrative assistant. Sun had been the biggest dog in the yard, or at least the one with the loudest bark, and Winter had taken her down in front of the rest of the team.

  Judging by the expression in Sun’s dark eyes, Winter hadn’t been forgiven for that, and wouldn’t be any time soon.

  Sun broke the tense silence first. Her words sounded as enthusiastic as if they’d been dragged out of her at knifepoint. “It’s too late to brief you now. Be here at seven, and I’ll catch you up then. Have a go-bag packed. We’ll be traveling.”

  She didn’t wait for a reply.

  “Awesome,” Winter muttered to her retreating form, sinking back into her seat. “Can’t wait.”

  She pulled out the small sketchpad she’d tucked under a manila file folder when she’d heard Max Osbourne’s voice. The face of a killer stared up at her from the thick, white paper.

  Rounded face, soft and unassuming, the man drawn there looked like someone’s benevolent grandpa. Or, maybe a mall Santa, with his close-trimmed beard and rosy cheeks. But his eyes were an inky shade of black. The evil in them roiled. It was visible, almost tangible, even with her less-than-expert art skills.