by Rita Herron
Ian swung his SUV in beside the deputy’s, dragged his jacket up to ward off the chill, and hiked down the hill. Wet dirt, gravel, and rocks created a slippery path. Ian latched on to trees and broken limbs to keep from falling and careening down the embankment.
His deputy waved him toward where he stood by a patch of mangled trees that created a V shape.
A hissing sound filled the air. Ian drew his gun and searched for rattlesnakes. But the tangled weeds and brush were so thick, he couldn’t see.
Deputy Markum tilted his hat to acknowledge Ian, but the man’s face looked colorless, almost sickly.
Ian rubbed his hand over his bleary eyes. He was going on forty-eight hours with no sleep himself. “What is it?”
“The storm was nothing. Just look.” The deputy shined his flashlight across the ground.
Ian followed the path of the light, cold engulfing him like nothing he’d ever felt before. A sea of white that resembled ghosts bobbed up and down on the surface of the flooded valley. He narrowed his eyes, trying to discern what he was seeing. The prison ghosts the locals gossiped about?
No. The white—Jesus, it was a river of thin, white, gauzy fabric. Well, at least it used to be white.
On further scrutiny, he realized the fabric was nightgowns. Gowns mired in mud, dirt, and leaves.
“What the hell?” He moved his flashlight across the murky water with a grimace. More sticks and twigs, broken branches?
No.
The truth hit him like a fist in the gut.
Bones.
The ground was covered in bones. Human bones. They floated in the water, protruded from the earth, clung to the white fabric, and lay scattered over the ground where the water had receded.
He swallowed back bile. Good God.
His deputy coughed. “Someone was buried here.”
Ian ground his teeth. “Not someone. There are hundreds and hundreds of bones.” He removed his hat and scrubbed a clammy hand through his hair. “This is a damn graveyard.”
Knoxville, Tennessee
Terror seized Beth Fields.
He hadn’t died in the prison flood after all. He’d escaped. He was hiding out in the mountains.
She’d moved to Knoxville in a secure building to be safe, but he’d found her.
He was watching her through her bedroom window. The man who’d destroyed her life fifteen years ago. The man who’d killed her best friend.
The man who’d held her for three days and then dumped her like she was nothing but roadkill.
His face was pressed against the glass, shadowed by the darkness. She strained to see his eyes. His mouth. Something to help her identify him.
Only she couldn’t distinguish his features.
A noise sounded. Loud. A car horn. Then a fire truck.
Beth jerked awake and clenched the bed covers, barely stifling a scream. God help her. She’d done everything possible to escape him and the nightmares. But nothing worked.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw that blank face again. Felt his breath on her cheek as he pressed a knife to her throat.
His eyes pierced her through the darkness. The evil eyes of a predator. Wild and sinister—they were hollow black holes, ghostly looking.
Chest heaving for a breath, she slipped from bed and crept to the window to look out. But the face was gone.
Trembling, she ran to the living room and peeked out the windows overlooking downtown Knoxville. Nothing but the first hints of sunlight streaking the dark.
A self-deprecating chuckle rumbled in her throat. How could he be outside her window? She’d intentionally chosen an apartment on a higher floor and a building with top-notch security so no one could get in.
Especially him.
Shortly after the trial where her high school soccer coach who also served as the school counselor, Coach Gleason, was convicted of kidnapping her, she’d been placed in a group home. There she’d received counseling. To overcome the stigma and rumors dogging her, her therapist had encouraged her to change her name. Jane Jones had died, and she’d been reborn as Beth Fields.
Five years ago, when she’d heard Coach Gleason had escaped prison, she’d been grateful for the name change.
Hiram Vance, the executive assistant director of the criminal investigations division of the FBI, had assured her that he’d erased any paper trail to JJ, but she wore her nerves on her sleeves and saw Gleason everywhere she went. Although she’d questioned his guilt over the years, she still panicked at the thought of him hunting her down.
She blinked to clear away the nightmarish images that bombarded her. She was safe. Dammit.
She’d taken self-defense classes, learned to shoot, and joined the bureau in order to protect other girls from suffering as she had. Her specialty had become abductions, especially nonfamilial ones, and she’d honed profiling skills on the job. Immersing herself into the mindset of a killer helped her understand his motivation, his criteria for choosing his victims, and aided her in pinpointing his hunting ground.
But nothing could change the fact that she’d been a victim. That her foster sister, Sunny, had never been found.
And that the man accused of kidnapping her might want revenge for his imprisonment. That he could be searching for her.
Snippets of the past taunted her—whether they were real or figments of her imagination triggered by fear, she couldn’t be certain.
She and Sunny were trapped, locked in some dark place, their hands and feet bound. They huddled together, cold and crying . . . Sunny was afraid of the dark . . . Another girl screamed from somewhere deep in the cave . . . yes, it was a cave. Water dripped, a monotonous sound that made her want to pull out her hair. Another scream. Footsteps. A knife glinted against the dark.
She called out for help but no sound came out. Then everything went blank.
When she woke up, a deadly quiet surrounded her. No water dripping. No footsteps. No crying Sunny.
Machines beeped instead . . . low voices, carts clanging . . . a sea of white coats . . . a hospital . . .
Shivering, she shut out the images. Determined to fight her demons, she yanked on running clothes, strapped her weapon in the holster, unlocked and opened the door, and stepped into the hallway.
Old fears and training kicked in as she entered the elevator, and she kept her gaze focused on the door as it opened to the lobby.
He saw the beautiful graves in his mind just as he’d dug them for the angels. He’d left each girl with a candle to chase away her fear of the dark and to light her way to heaven. He’d also given them a cross to cling to, a symbol that they’d been saved.
But the tornado and flood had destroyed the peaceful bed where they’d lain together, linking hands as they sang the praises.
A wave of sadness washed over him that their peace had been destroyed.
The sheriff had found the graveyard. He was here now.
He and his deputies would scour the floodwaters and excavate the bones. Then his people would pick them apart and analyze them with their tools and tests as if they were nothing but a science experiment.
No longer would the sweetlings lie saintly in their white gowns as he’d left them. So young and innocent. So in need of prayer and guidance.
He’d given them both.
Until the storm ravaged the area, they’d had each other.
Now a hand floated freely, a skull, a femur, the rib cage of another. They were scattered around randomly, disconnected, like a puzzle with missing pieces that needed to be put back together.
He clutched the edge of the tree where he stood, clawing at the bark so hard that blood dripped from his hand. Mesmerized as he had been when the blood had flowed from the girls, freeing them of their pain, he watched his own blood spatter the ground.
The droplets fell randomly like tears, creating a pattern on the soil. He always found a pattern in the blood spatters. This time the image looked like a face, features distorted . . .
Voices dragged him from the image,
and he glanced back at the graveyard. The sheriff snapped a picture, then another and another, then knelt to examine the skull of one of the angels.
He bit down hard on his tongue to stop from shouting for the sheriff not to desecrate the girls’ remains.
Tears for the lost souls slipped down his face and fell, mingling with the blood at his feet.
His work wasn’t done.
Only he’d have to find a new burial ground for the others.
CHAPTER TWO
Ian cursed. The wind kicked up, swirling leaves across the terrain, and bringing the scent of damp earth and death. Graveyard Falls had earned notoriety for its ghost legends and the bizarre number of serial killers drawn to the area.
Not the kind of publicity the town wanted or needed to bring in new businesses.
Parishioners from the Holy Waters Church, the fundamentalist church his own mother belonged to, touted that the tornado was God’s way of dealing with the evil as God had done with the floods in the Bible.
Gravel, sticks, and debris crunched beneath his boots as he slid down the hill. The cold floodwater seeped into his shoes, mud squishing. There were at least a dozen corpses here, maybe more.
When he’d first heard about the prison flooding five years ago, he’d been sick to his stomach. His stepfather, Coach Gleason, the man he’d known as Dad, had been locked in that prison. Most of the inmates had been trapped inside and had drowned in their cells.
The bodies of the ones with families had been sent home to be buried. The unclaimed ones were buried where the prison had stood, not far from the holler.
But two bodies hadn’t been recovered from the flood—the men had escaped. A month later, one of the inmates had been caught. He’d admitted that Ian’s father had made it out, but they’d parted ways quickly.
Five years had passed, and Ian had heard nothing. He had no idea if his father was dead or alive.
He hadn’t given up, though. Every year he’d conducted searches of different parts of the mountain looking for him.
Memories launched him back to the horror that had ripped his family apart.
His senior year of high school, he had a nice life with his mother and stepfather in Sweetwater, Tennessee, a couple of hours from Knoxville. He was popular, athletic, and the girls liked him.
But midyear a freshman female, Kelly Cousins, a student his father counseled, committed suicide.
Rumors spread that his dad had an inappropriate relationship with her.
The gossip and accusations had destroyed the family. His mother divorced his stepfather, left Sweetwater, and moved to a neighborhood close to Graveyard Falls to escape the stigma.
Ian had defended his father and insisted on staying with him so he could graduate with his class. But those months had been hell. His dad had become sullen and depressed. Kelly’s parents claimed they’d found notes Kelly had written about being in love with Ian’s father. She’d also implied he’d lead her on and broken her heart.
They accused the coach of seducing her.
The kids at school had turned on Ian. Their parents didn’t want their teens hanging out with him and refused to let them come to his house. His grades slipped. The girls stopped flirting with him. Instead, they acted as if they were afraid of him.
Three months later, just when he thought his dad was cleared, two girls from school disappeared. JJ Jones and Sunny Smith.
With his father already under police scrutiny over Kelly’s suicide, and the fact that he’d known all the girls, the sheriff automatically focused on Coach Gleason as the key person of interest. Because he was also the school counselor, the girls would have trusted his dad and gotten in the car with him.
Ian couldn’t believe the man who’d raised him like his own son would hurt anyone. His dad volunteered at school functions, donated to charities, took Ian fishing and camping, and taught him how to play soccer. He’d also instilled in Ian a respect for girls.
But Ian’s opinion of his father hadn’t mattered to the sheriff.
Sunny Smith had never been found. The other girl, JJ Jones, had turned up alive but traumatized and suffering from amnesia.
Judging from the bruises and cigarette burns on her arms, JJ had been abused. He’d felt sorry for her and had stepped in to defend her when some of the “it” girls had teased her about her raggedy clothes.
After that day, she’d looked at him like he was some kind of hero.
But he was nobody’s hero.
He’d let her down in the worst way.
On the morning before she disappeared, she’d told him she was going to her grandmother’s. Ian had agreed to give her and Sunny a lift to the bus station that night. But at the last minute his father had refused to let him have the car.
That fact had worked against his father at trial and intensified Ian’s guilt over the kidnapping.
If only his father had allowed him to visit while he was in prison. If he’d just talked to Ian, maybe Ian could have helped him.
But the moment the verdict had been read, he’d completely shut Ian from his life.
The wind screeched, the water churning and washing more bones onto the bank, drawing him back to the skeletal remains at his feet.
“What do we do now?” Deputy Markum asked.
Ian surveyed the sea of bones with a grimace. “This is too big for us,” he said through gritted teeth. “We need help.” A rescue team to excavate the bones, investigators, the medical examiner. They’d also need a forensic anthropologist.
Knowing how the Feds operated, they’d swoop in, take over, and treat him like he was a moron.
Only, he had worked with two agents who were decent, Special Agents Dane Hamrick and Cal Coulter. He’d call them for help. At least they knew he was competent and respected his position in the town.
A human skull drifted through the water and landed at his feet, the hollow eyes staring up at him in horror.
This one had begun to deteriorate but not as severely as the others, as if it was a recent kill.
Anger shot through him.
Was another serial killer hiding out in these mountains?
Five days later—Knoxville
More nightmares.
Another morning run.
Beth was always running. Always on guard.
She quickly surveyed the street as she left her apartment. A handsome gentleman in a three-piece suit smiled at her as he emerged from the building’s coffee shop.
She barely gave him a nod.
Flirting was not part of her life. Finding and tracking down criminals was what she lived for.
She specialized in abduction cases and had instigated plans to change the foster care programs to prevent other kids from getting lost or abused in the system. Better safeguards for following up on placements, more home visits, and hiring additional staff to handle the workload were part of her proposal.
Maybe one day she’d catch enough bad guys to make up for the one who’d stolen Sunny.
Through the front window of the shop, a face appeared. Dark brown hair. Scruffy beard. Wide jaw.
It was him.
Coach Gleason.
Fear momentarily paralyzed her as she recalled the trial. The rage in his eyes, anger aimed at her, when she’d sat silently and let the jury convict him. The bitterness in his son Ian’s expression.
Ian—the only boy she’d ever had a crush on. The high school soccer star. The boy everyone had liked.
Until his father had been accused of sleeping with one student, then kidnapping Sunny and herself.
The brisk wind assaulted her as she stepped onto the sidewalk. A few pedestrians crossed the walkway to the left. A car pulled from the parking space beside the building.
No, not him.
A woman was driving.
She scanned the area, checking across the street. A man in a gray coat walked up the steps to the church.
Coach Gleason?
She started to cross at the intersection, but tires screeched
, and she jolted to a stop just before a cabbie slammed into her. He rolled down the window and shook his finger at her. “Watch out, lady!”
She muttered that she was sorry and searched the street again, but the coach had disappeared, and she had no idea which direction he’d gone. Damn.
Had she imagined seeing him, or had he tracked her down?
Images of the photographs from her file taunted her. Some truck driver had found her lying in the bushes at a rest stop. Her clothes had been torn and muddy, her hair dirty, her face gaunt.
In the hospital photos, her eyes had been vacant, and she’d looked thin and lost.
Because she had been—lost in her own dark world where Sunny’s cries echoed constantly.
Why she continued to torture herself by studying the file she didn’t know.
Yes, you do. You want to find Sunny.
Only logic told her that her friend was dead.
She plugged her earbuds in, flipped her music to shuffle, then broke into a jog. Need to Breathe’s soulful mix of country/gospel/rock music filled her ears and rejuvenated her.
Her feet pounded the sidewalk as she headed toward the river. She passed the park where mothers pushed their babies in strollers and children played, and then she jogged by the river, her gaze taking in the dreary fog over the water.
God, she envied the mothers and kids. She wanted that family, that home.
But she’d given up on it a long time ago. Not only had her past created trust issues, but her job wasn’t conducive to a family life. Too many long hours. Traveling. And the danger.
She veered to the right and then ran up the hill toward Market Square. Joggers, commuters, and locals dotted the sidewalks, and the coffee shop was beginning to fill up.
Beth’s cell phone buzzed on her hip. She had an hour until it was time to report to the office, but crime knew no boundaries or clock.
She quickly connected the call. “Special Agent Fields.”
“Beth, it’s Vance.”
Beth tensed at his clipped tone. She could always tell when he was calling on a case. He didn’t waste time on small talk. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s about you.” He paused, making her stomach knot. “Your case.”