by Mary Stone
Cold Death
Ellie Kline Series: Book Nine
Mary Stone
Donna Berdel
Copyright © 2021 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
Mary Stone
To my husband.
Thank you for taking care of our home and its many inhabitants while I follow this dream of mine.
Donna Berdel
First, a big thank you to Mary Stone for taking a chance on me by collaborating on this story. I’m honored and indebted!And, of course, to my husband. Thank you for being you. You’re my rock.
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
Chapter 37
Ellie Kline Series
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Description
Kill or be killed...
Despite her blossoming relationship with Clay Lockwood, Charleston police detective Ellie Kline will never find her happily ever after until Dr. Lawrence Kingsley is locked away for good...or dead. Not only did the sociopathic psychiatrist kidnap Ellie when she was fifteen, the serial killer has murdered or traumatized everyone Ellie has sworn to protect. She’s no longer looking for justice...she’s looking for vengeance.
Now, with Kingsley’s protégé in a psych ward, it’s up to Ellie to find Katarina’s young daughter, Bethany, the latest victim of Kingsley’s monstrous machinations, before he kills again.
But there’s nothing Kingsley loves more than a game of cat and mouse, with Ellie as his unwilling opponent. Before long, Ellie is drawn into the doctor’s twisted game as he leaves her clues that lead her on a dangerous hunt—one that could finally put an end to Kingsley...or to Ellie and everyone she loves.
Lock your doors, steel yourself, and hold on tight for Cold Death, the bone-chillingly nerve-racking and thrilling conclusion to the Ellie Kline Series.
1
Bethany flopped onto her side and wiggled deeper under the covers, pulling the blanket up to her chin. When rough fabric scratched her cheek, and a chemical odor tickled her nose, she frowned and tried to sink back into sleep, but the wrongness of the blanket poke-poke-poked at her brain.
What a weird dream.
The laundry detergent her mama used reminded Bethany of sunshine and flowers and made the covers soft. This dream blanket had been washed in something that smelled like chemicals and was itchy on her skin.
Eyes pressed shut, Bethany rolled onto her back and sniffed again. The blanket still smelled wrong. Plus, too much cold air was sneaking through and making her shiver. At home, the comforter was so nice and thick that she sometimes woke up sweaty, even when there was ice on her windows.
At home.
The thought squeezed Bethany’s ribs like a giant’s hands, the pain jolting her awake. She blinked her eyes open to darkness. No glow from the happy face nightlight her mama had plugged in by the door, no soft green numbers from her clock.
Bethany remembered now. This wasn’t a dream. Or even a nightmare.
She wasn’t with her real forever mama. The bad man had kidnapped her and trapped her in some icky old house.
Her tummy rumbled, reminding her that she’d gone to sleep hungry. Since the bad man always slept until after the sun came up, now might be the only chance she had to fix that.
The little room she slept in had two windows with wood nailed across them, so even in the middle of the day, it stayed gloomy and sad. Right now, there was no light at all peeking between the cracks in the boards. Bethany guessed it was still early morning.
Careful not to make the bed creak, she eased into a sitting position. She strained her ears, waiting for any noise from the hallway, and when none came, she relaxed a little and scratched her cheek.
Ouch!
The instant sting made her jerk her hand away and stuff her fingers into her mouth. Stupid windows. She’d forgotten that she’d cracked and torn her nails on those boards when she’d tried to claw them off yesterday. The wood hadn’t moved at all, but now her fingers hurt any time she pushed too hard.
Bethany shivered, and her eyes burned. She wanted to go home.
When her fingers stopped hurting so much, she pulled the scratchy blankets up higher and hugged her knees to her chest. She hated the blankets and the cheap, uncomfortable bed with the mattress that somehow felt harder than the floor. She hated the ouchie boards on the windows and the bad man who’d put them there.
The entire room smelled funny and old, like this ugly brown rocking chair one of her adoptive parents had kept in the living room. It had supposedly belonged to the woman’s grandfather, and her face had turned red when Bethany asked if he’d smelled bad too.
When Bethany complained to the bad man about those things, he just smiled his creepy smile and said the itchy blankets and hard bed were good for her. “Being too comfortable makes people complacent.”
She scowled into the darkness. She didn’t even know what complacent meant. Not that she was about to ask. Not him. Even when he smiled, he scared her because she didn’t think he was happy for the same reasons that most people were.
The first man who’d taken her had been scary, but she could tell he’d liked her sometimes too. But this man…
She didn’t think the bad man liked her at all, and when he talked about her mama, his face changed and his fingers stroked the knife in his pocket.
Bethany trembled and buried her face against her knees. “Where are you, Mama?” Her whisper was soft in the empty room, barely louder than a breath.
No answer from her mama, but her stomach growled, reminding her of why she’d woken up in the first place. The man never fed her enough, and she’d never been so hungry in her entire life.
A little bit at a time, Bethany scooted across the mattress. She eventually reached the edge and eased her bare feet to the wooden floor. When she went to stand, the blanket tangled around her legs, tripping her weight onto the wrong board. The wood creaked, and the sound was as loud as a scream to Bethany’s ears in the silent house. Fear turned her legs to ice, and she sucked down a breath, waiting.
When the man didn’t burst into her room by the time she counted to thirty, Bethany padded over to her discarded socks and slipped them on. Not so much because the wood floor was cold—even though it was—but because her mama had once told her that socks made footsteps quiet, and that was what Bethany needed to be right now. Quiet as a mouse. Or a burglar.
Socks on, she crept across the tiny room, choosing each step with care. She’d spent hours pushing her feet against
each board to see which ones creaked, then she’d practiced walking while only touching the quiet spots enough times to memorize the path. It was kinda like the dance moves they’d had to practice over and over for a school musical last year.
Back then, though, she hadn’t thought to practice in the dark. Or when her heartbeat filled her ears, and her hands shook with fear. Her mama had taught her that.
“Practice when you’re happy and when you’re sad. Practice when you’re afraid and even when you’re mad.” Mama had taught her so many useful things in the short time they’d been together. “Be prepared for any situation at any given time, sweet girl. That’s what will help you be a superhero.”
Bethany touched her foot to the next board, relieved when nothing squeaked. The bad man had really good ears. Like superhero hearing.
She scrunched up her nose. No, not superhero hearing. Supervillain. Because Bethany was one-thousand-percent sure that anyone who kept her away from her mama was a bad guy. She just wished this particular bad guy wasn’t as sneaky as a cat. Sometimes, she’d turn around and scream because he’d be right there standing behind her, smiling his creepy smile while she almost peed her pants.
Bethany focused on her feet. Forward, forward, to the left, forward, to the right, to the right, forward, forward. When she reached the end, her hands shook so much that she almost turned around and crept back to the bed. This was too scary. What if the bad man caught her sneaking around?
The cramp in her stomach helped her swallow her fear. Once her hands stopped shaking, she reached for the doorknob and circled her fingers around the cold metal. Careful. She rotated to the left. A little more…a little more…there! The knob caught, but Bethany was ready, pushing the metal toward the door before it could make that loud screech.
After pressing her ear to the wood and waiting for a count of fifteen, Bethany eased the door open, just wide enough to squeeze her body through the crack. Any wider and the door would creak, and then the bad man with his supervillain hearing would appear like magic.
Bethany shivered as she slipped through the narrow sliver of space and chanted a reminder in her head. Be sneaky, like Catwoman.
Maybe the chant worked because Bethany didn’t make any noise when she entered the hallway. Wonder Woman was still her favorite hero, but she had super strength and a magic lasso, and Bethany didn’t have either of those things.
Neither did Catwoman, though. She mostly ran around wearing a tight black suit and broke into people’s houses to steal stuff, and for now, Bethany needed to be more like her. Not with the black outfit, but with the sneaking and stealing stuff part, because all the bad man had given her to wear were three sets of the same pink pajamas.
That sounded bad, but her mama told her that sometimes people had good reasons to steal. Bethany figured that her empty belly counted.
Plus, secretly, she was pretty sure that Katarina—oops, she meant Katrina—was more like Catwoman than Wonder Woman, and her mama was tough.
If Bethany wanted to eat, she needed to be tough too. A Catgirl.
She pressed her body close to the wall as she crept down the hallway, testing each board with her toes before placing her full weight on it. In the darkness, she could barely make out the painted pictures that lined the walls. Most were of a little boy and a lady with big, poofy hair, like in one of those old TV shows. There were Polaroids too, but they were stuck in the middle of fancy gold frames with swirly designs, which Bethany thought was weird.
Then again, everything about this house was weird. And creepy. Like the layer of dust that covered the glass and metal picture frames and the furniture, and the cobwebs that hung from every corner. Almost as if the house had been empty for a long time before the bad man dragged her here.
Just thinking of the dust tickled her nose, and a sneeze built in Bethany’s throat. Her eyes widened, and her lungs stopped working. Oh, no, not now! If she sneezed, the bad man would wake up.
Desperate, she shoved her fingers against her top lip and pressed hard. Another tip from her mama. The trick seemed too silly to work, so she was surprised when the need to sneeze disappeared after a few seconds.
Once her heart stopped drumming in her ears, Bethany began creeping down the hallway again. She passed an open doorway that led to the bathroom with its thin, ugly brown towels and even uglier brown-and-pink striped plastic shower curtain and didn’t stop until she stood just outside the hateful man’s bedroom.
In the dim light, her eyes took a couple seconds to find the lump in the bed and a few more to catch the rise and fall of the blanket with his breaths. She waited until she memorized the pattern before moving again, timing her footsteps the way Mama had taught her after that one time Bethany had tried to sneak up on her.
Her tummy turned warm when she remembered that day. She’d woken up early that morning and tiptoed into Katarina’s bedroom, holding the I like to poop sign she’d drawn in purple marker. She was only a step away from taping the sign to Mama’s t-shirt when Katarina had reached out and grabbed her before yanking her onto the bed.
At first, Bethany had shrieked, then giggled. Once she’d caught her breath, she’d asked her mama how she’d known.
Mama had tapped Bethany’s nose. “Always time your footsteps to your target’s exhalations. That helps hide any noises you might make.”
Bethany was smart enough to know that exhalations meant breathing out, and target meant the person you were sneaking up on.
But her mama was even smarter because she knew how to sneak up on people in the first place.
Count to five, step. Count to five, step.
Walking that way was slow, but finally, Bethany made it out of the hallway and into the living room. She didn’t even look at the front door as she snuck by. She’d tried all the doors lots of times, and they were always locked. Maybe sometime soon, she’d be brave enough to search the bad man’s room for the keys, but for now, she just wanted food.
The living room was colder than the rest of the house but less stinky. Bethany tried to rub away the goose bumps on her arms, wishing she’d wrapped the scratchy blanket around her like a cape. But no, the fabric would have dragged on the floor or even knocked a lamp over, and that would be bad.
As soon as she got back to her room with her prizes, Bethany promised herself she’d jump under the covers and pull them over her head and have a mini feast until she was warm again.
For now, she had to keep going. She was so close. Almost there now.
At the entrance to the kitchen, Bethany stepped on the metal strip that divided the carpet from the stained floor that was peeling in spots. When she shifted her weight to that foot, something sharp stabbed the bottom, stinging like a piece of glass. A tiny whimper escaped before she could stop herself, and she cringed and covered her mouth. Tears prickled behind her eyes, but it was fear that stopped her breathing and cocked her head toward the hallway.
Several seconds passed. Nothing.
To be safe, Bethany waited another ten seconds before leaning one hand on the wall. When she was sure she hadn’t made a peep, she balanced on one leg and lifted the other one to carefully pluck the small nail out of the meaty part of her foot. The sock felt wet now, and she wondered if she was bleeding. She shuddered. Hopefully, her sock was thick enough to keep the blood from messing up the floor.
Not that it mattered. Either way, she wasn’t about to turn back now. Her stomach hurt too much to leave without food.
Bethany limped halfway into the kitchen before hesitating. Her head shifted from side to side. Refrigerator or pantry? The man kept all the dry food up on the highest shelves over her head, but refrigerated food went bad. If she wanted to bring snacks back to her room to hide for later, she needed stuff from the cabinets.
With a nod to herself, Bethany veered toward the pantry. She pushed her hands down on the counter slowly, checking for any loud noises first before pulling her knees up one at a time. With one hand on the wood for balance, she pushed up to he
r feet.
Twisting, she eased open the cabinet doors and gave a soft gasp.
The inside was crammed full of food. Everything from cooking stuff like dry spaghetti noodles and jars of sauce and tuna to all sorts of snacks. Potato chips! Cookies! Crackers! Cereal! Peanut butter! Bread!
Bethany’s mouth watered, and her empty stomach growled. Suddenly ravenous, she stuck her hand in and latched on to the closest snack—peanut butter crackers.
Even though they sounded so delicious that she was almost drooling, Bethany forced herself to put them back. The plastic wrap they came in was too tight and noisy to risk opening. She grabbed an individual packet of cookies instead, using her teeth to carefully open the bag. The sweet chocolate scent hit her as she lifted a cookie to her mouth, making her dizzy with excitement.
The cookie was almost to her lips when hands grabbed her around the stomach and yanked her backward. Bethany jerked in surprise, and the cookie and bag slipped between her fingers.
No!
Bethany wanted to cry when the single cookie hit the old stained floor and cracked into little pieces. The bag landed near the man’s foot, and she wanted to scream when he kicked it under the counter.
“Let me go!”
Bethany squirmed and wiggled and kicked, trying every move she could think of to escape, but the bad man was too strong. His hands tightened and dug into her tummy. As much as she wanted to fight, her energy disappeared quickly, like living in this house had turned her muscles into noodles.