Sable Quinn Trilogy Boxed Set

by K. J. Dahlen

  Sable nodded. “They think he might have gone home. Emma was telling me about a room in the basement he might go there to hide from the world for awhile. He often used it as a child. She also said that over the years he might have revisited his sanctuary.

  He never let them know he was there but she would find little things out of place and that made her wonder. She never told anyone until today about his room.”

  “Are you okay with this?” Brandi asked. Her voice was filled with concern for her friend.

  “I don’t have the fond memories of Micah that they do. All the man has done for me is brought me misery and pain. He’s tried to kill me twice and damn near succeeded both times. If he gets away from us this time, I’ll have to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life and I don’t want to do that. He’s taken enough from me, from all of us. He needs to be stopped.”

  “Right now we have the element of surprise on our side. If he is at the Reardon home, he thinks he’s safe,” Nick told the group. He looked over at Max and patted the bed. “You rest and get better. We’ll take care of this.”

  Max looked at Nick and nodded. “Just make sure all of you come back. He’s the only one that needs to die today.”

  Sable gave Nick a look of impatience. She wanted to get this over with before Micah disappeared altogether. She smiled at Max and turned to leave. The others were right behind her.

  A few minutes later the group stepped outside and Sable was amazed the sun was already up. She cupped her hand to shade her eyes and she saw the same look of surprise on everyone’s face. “At least we won’t be stumbling around in the dark for this,” Brandi commented.

  “But then neither will Micah,” Sable reminded them. “And he likes the darkness. The shadows give him a shield to hide behind. Maybe without it he won’t be indefensible.”

  “Did Mrs. Reardon tell you where this room was?” Nick asked as he drove out to the Reardon house.

  Sable nodded. “It’s in the basement hidden behind a dresser and a book shelf.”

  “Can you see out of it to the outside of the house?”

  Sable shrugged. “She didn’t say.”

  Nick glanced into the rear view mirror. “Well, people, here we are. I guess I don’t have to tell you to be careful and step quietly. We’ll look around the perimeter first, and then we’ll go inside and make our way to the basement.”

  “He may be wounded so look for blood,” Brandi reminded them. “And he may not have a gun but he does have a knife and he knows how to use it.”

  Nick parked the car just outside the driveway. They climbed from the car and spread out. Each of them came at the house from a different direction. Each held their gun in firing position.

  Sable reached the house first from the north. She began looking around the structure. Peeking in the windows she saw the Judge’s study. She saw the signs of the fight Gabriel had with Micah but nothing moved inside the room. She moved toward the front door trying to stay out of the path of the downstairs windows.

  She was just about to step up the front steps when she saw it. She stopped and knelt on the cement to examine it closer. She looked up and around her and caught Nick’s eye. She nodded and pointed to the area in front of her.

  Nick cautiously made his way to her and looked down. There on the step was a trail of blood drops leading into the house. Sable looked up at the door and found a handprint in blood near the door knob.

  Nick looked up and motioned for Brandi and Quentin to join them. When they all were there, Nick whispered, “He’s here and he’s bleeding. Chances are that he’s in the basement. Step quietly so we don’t alert him to the fact that we’re here. Brandi, you and Quentin go around to the back. Sable and I will go in the front. You have two minutes to get into position.”

  Brandi and Quentin nodded and each took off around the side of the house. Nick looked down at Sable and asked, “Are you ready for this?”

  Sable nodded and raised her weapon. “Let’s go,” she whispered. Pushing the door open she stepped inside. Nick followed and they began a room to room search. They found more blood spots leading to the kitchen area of the house.

  When they were standing in the kitchen Sable looked for more blood. She found it smeared along the wall and all over a door knob. The door was partially open and she widened the gap to slip through. Nick followed her down the stairs.

  Rounding the corner they found themselves in a game room. Several open doors led to other rooms but that wasn’t what they were looking for. Step by step they entered the main room. As Sable passed the pool table, she noticed a blood stain on the wooden casing. She looked at Nick and nodded at the stain. Nick nodded back.

  Sable stopped and cocked her head. She thought she heard something to her left. She heard it again. It was a slight moan. She caught Nick’s attention and jerked her head toward the sound. Nick came around the pool table and listened.

  To Sable’s left was a bookshelf, one of three book shelves in the room. Without saying a word Sable pointed out the smear of blood high on the wall next to the shelves. Nick nodded and went to stand against the wall.

  Sable positioned herself on the other side. Looking behind the bookshelf she could see into the room behind. The bookshelf completely hid the door behind it. She looked at Nick and nodded. They had found him.

  “Bloody hell,” she heard Micah mutter to himself. He was holding a small towel to an area near his waist. She could see the blood soaked towels next to him. Brandi’s bullet must have done some damage.

  Sable raised her weapon and loosened her fingers. Taking a deep breath she gripped the handle of her weapon and nodded to Nick. Nick raised his own weapon and called out, “Micah, you have no way out. Surrender yourself and you might live.”

  Sable saw Micah jump and back away from sight. She peeked around the room from her point of view but couldn’t see him anymore. She shook her head and looked at Nick. He looked from his viewpoint but he couldn’t see him either.

  “Micah, it’s over. You can’t get out, surrender yourself,” Nick called out again.

  “Go to hell,” Micah shouted from inside. “How did you find this place?”

  “Your Grandmother gave you up. She told us where to find you,” Sable shouted back.

  “You are a liar,” Micah yelled. “She never would have given me up. Hell, she was the only one in my family that ever understood me.”

  “Well, she did.” Sable told him. She could tell from his voice he was close to losing it. He was wounded and afraid of getting caught. That made him dangerous right now.

  “She told us you would come here and hide when the world got to be to rough. She did understand you,” Sable pointed out.

  “Yeah but she still told you where to find me, the bitch,” Micah screamed as he lifted something in his hands.

  Sable knew what he had and screamed. “Get down.” Sable and Nick had to duck and run for cover as Micah sprayed the book case with bullets. “Damn.” Nick swore. “He's got to a gun.”

  Sable ducked behind the pool table and waited until the shooting stopped. Peeking over the rim she saw the damage.

  Books and tiny pieces of paper lay all over the floor. Bullet holes marred the walls. She found Nick crouching further down the wall, almost to the stairway.

  “Is this really how you want to go out, Micah?” Sable called out. “Do you really want to die trapped in a room with no way out?”

  “I’m dead already, you bitch,” Micah called back. “I may as well take one or more of you with me to hell.”

  “What does that mean?” Sable asked.

  "Haven’t you figured it out yet, Sabella?” Micah asked.

  “Haven’t I figured out what?” Sable asked.

  “The reason I came back was so that I could die at home, surrounded by my loving family.” Micah told her. “Only I was going to take them with me. All of them, even you.”

  “What makes you think you’re dying?” Sable had to ask.

  “You don’t l
ive very long when you have AIDS and you don’t take the drugs to prolong your life,” Micah told her.

  Sable was stunned. “Where the hell did you get AIDS?” she shouted back.

  “Do you really want to know or are you just putting off the inevitable?” Micah asked.

  “I think I really want to know,” Sable admitted.

  “I killed a woman in Kansas City. She was a piece of white trash but before she died she told me she had AIDS and just before I took her life, she told me she would return the favor, only my death would be slow and painful,” Micah admitted. “I didn’t know if I should believe her. Then about a year ago I went to the clinic and found out the bitch had been right. It turns out she was HIV positive. She gave me a death sentence so I decided to come back here and make my family pay for their sins.”

  “Damn, that’s too bad, Micah. Now you have to atone for all the misery you caused.” Sable commented.

  “Go to hell,” Micah swore.

  “So what are you going to do now?” Sable asked.

  “I’m going to finish what I started,” Micah said. “I’m going to take the members of my family to hell with me. Gabriel probably won’t survive the beating I gave him. Even if he does I made sure that my blood mixed with his at some point. If he survives, he’ll die in agony knowing he caught something that isn’t curable.” Micah chuckled. “You see Gabriel drummed it into my head when I was young, that anyone who caught AIDS deserved what they got. He thought it was a homosexual disease, and he never bothered to get the facts that it could be spread by contact.

  “I’ll live long enough to take you out and Greg will have to live with the fact that his own son murdered most of the people he cared about.” Micah seemed almost proud of his deductive reasoning.

  Sable laughed out loud. “You won’t take me to hell with you. I have all day to wait you out. Can you say the same? You’re losing a lot of blood. You’ll more than likely bleed to death while we wait.”

  “And you’d like that wouldn’t you?” Micah taunted.

  “Yeah I would. It would be the perfect ending to the last few days. You would be dead and I’m still alive. Yeah that would suit me just fine,” Sable told him.

  “You never should have been born,” Micah shouted at her. “You were a mistake I thought I took care of years ago.”

  Sable felt the blow and closed her eyes. Pain of rejection hit her hard but before she could let herself feel the numbing hurt she called out, “Then you should have kept your dick in your pants where it belonged, you asshole. You helped create me, numb nuts.”

  “And I’ll take you straight to hell with me this time,” Micah vowed and another round of bullets sprayed the wall.

  Sable ducked down and prayed that the bullets wouldn’t hit their mark. When the shooting was over, she opened her eyes. She was still alive. She glanced over at Nick. He nodded he was okay.

  “You missed, you moron,” Sable called out. She peeked over the top of the table and gasped. Micah stood in the doorway holding something in his hand. It was a bottle of brandy.

  In the top of the bottle he had stuffed a bloody rag and in his other hand he held a lighter. He turned to look at the lighter for a brief second before he flicked it. Flames shot up and he turned to look at Sable.

  “Now we’ll both go to hell together,” He told her as he lit the rag on fire and dropped the bottle. It smashed on the floor and the flames enveloped him. Micah screamed as the room caught fire. Sable knew that if she didn’t move quickly, she would be trapped.

  She crouched and tried to head for the door but Micah raised a gun and took a shot at her. Sable ducked and waited, and then she took off again. The flames had cut her escape route off and she saw Nick on the other side.

  “You have to jump through the flames. Come on hurry,” Nick shouted. The heat was intense and the flames were spreading. Micah was silent and she glanced over his way. He was lying on the floor, beyond hope. His body was engulfed in flames but he didn’t feel them anymore.

  Sable took a deep breath and jumped through the flames. She felt the searing heat of the fire but Nick was there to help her through. He patted her clothes and hair and led her away from the burning room. The smoke was thick in the stairway leading upstairs and Nick was behind her all the way pushing her upward.

  She was almost to the top when hands reached for her pulling her the rest of the way. She was hustled out of the house and into the fresh air. Smoke billowed from the house and within minutes the fire department sirens could be heard racing toward them.

  Sable lay on the ground coughing. She had inhaled smoke and she had a bad burn on her arm. She looked back at the house. Flames were coming out the windows and smoke rolled high in the sky.

  “Are you alright?” she heard Nick ask.

  Sable looked around at the group. They all looked like hell. Nick had smoke rings around his face and she could only imagine what she looked like. Her hair was singed and her clothes were black with smoke residue. She nodded. “I’m alive and that’s all that matters.”

  Fire trucks and an ambulance rolled in the driveway and chaos ruled as the firefighters battled the flames. Emergency personnel were checking them out when another car pulled up. It was Greg Reardon. He got out of his car and gazed at the house as the firemen tried to save it.

  Finally, he looked over at Sable. He walked slowly over to where she sat and looked her over. “Are you alright?” he asked finally.

  Sable nodded. “I will be now.”

  He looked back at the house. “What about Micah? Was he here?”

  “He was here,” Sable told him.

  “Did he at least tell you why he tried to kill us?” Greg asked.

  “He said he didn’t want to go to hell by himself.”

  “What does that mean?” Greg asked.

  Sable looked at him. “He was dying and he came back to take his family with him.”

  Greg turned anxious eyes to her. “I don’t understand.”

  Sable shrugged. “He wasn’t very clear about his motives,” she lied. She didn’t know if she should tell him the truth about his son’s motives or not. Maybe he deserved to know the truth, maybe he didn’t.

  Greg just turned and walked away.

  Sable didn’t say anything. She just let him walk away. So much had happened in so little time that she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know if she would ever be willing to accept them as her family, only time would tell.

  It was finally over for everyone and now that it was, she had a funeral to attend to. Grace and Gene deserved that much from her, anyway.

  Legacy of Murder

  Prologue

  F.B.I. agent Sable Quinn almost became the victim of serial killer Micah Reardon-twice. Twenty years ago as a four year old child Sable had been found wandering the Navy Pier. She had no memory of who she was or how she came to be there. Her child’s mind blocked the pain and horror of what she’d been through, until a few weeks ago, when Micah returned.

  Micah returned to Chicago with a purpose and a secret. His purpose was to murder his entire family. He draws Sable into a dangerous game and he forces her to remember her past while he set out to accomplish his goal. He had an unreasonable hatred of his parents, Greg and Jill Reardon and his grandparents, retired Judge Gabriel and Emma Reardon. He blamed his grandfather Gabriel for forcing him to run away and for forcing him into becoming a killer. His twisted mind justified over twenty years of murder and mayhem by placing the blame on Gabriel.

  Micah’s secret-Sable is his daughter and he thought he killed her twenty years ago when he left her with his brother’s body in a dry well just outside Olive Park. He hadn’t expected her to survive, but Sable had survived.

  Many family secrets come to life as Micah forces his family to face the truth. Micah’s mother Jill is murdered and Gabriel is beaten almost to death before Sable and Greg are kidnapped. Sable knows she has to outsmart Micah if she and Greg are going to survive. With the help of her team, Sable manag
es to get out of the building Micah trapped her in before he set it on fire.

  In a showdown Sable and Micah face each other one last time. Micah finally tells her the real reason he came back. He’s dying and he wanted to send his family to hell before he joined them. But before he died Micah failed to mention Sable wasn’t the only child Micah fathered…

  Chapter One

  Sable glanced at her calendar. She was amazed to find it had been a month since she buried her parents. So much had happened during the short time she wasn’t sure if she believed it or not. While one Chapter of her life had ended another had opened. She caught her reflection in the small glass frame on her desk and marveled at the fact her appearance hadn’t changed. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail, but it was the same color it always had been while her eyes were still the same cobalt blue. She might have an extra wrinkle or two, but otherwise she was the same person she was a month ago. At least she still felt she was the same person.

  Her nightmares were over but now she had a family she didn’t know if she wanted or not. Emma and Greg Reardon had tried to open a relationship with her, but she wanted to take things slowly. She wasn’t sure what she wanted yet. They said they understood her reasoning. Sable wasn’t sure they did.

  Gabriel had recovered from the beating his grandson Micah had given him. He had been taking the drug cocktail for HIV, but she hadn’t heard much from him. Emma said he seemed to be coping with what had happened. She also said the events leading to the beating had changed him. Emma hadn’t told her how deep the changes were, but she had hinted Gabriel was now accepting her as part of the family whether Sable wanted it or not.

  Sable glanced at her watch. It read eleven forty-five. She and Emma were having lunch today. Sable found herself looking forward to seeing the other woman again. Maybe she was getting soft in the head. She could still hear Grace telling her to be grateful for family. Even if she didn’t want them, the Reardons were part of her family.