by Katie Reus
Dark Memento
Verona Bay
Katie Reus
Dark Memento
Copyright © 2019 Katie Reus
Cover art by Sweet ‘N Spicy Designs
Editor: Julia Ganis
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.
Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book. This purchase allows you one legal copy for your own personal reading enjoyment on your personal computer or device. You do not have the right to resell, distribute, print or transfer this book, in whole or in part, to anyone, in any format, via methods either currently known or yet to be invented, or upload this book to a file sharing program. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
ISBN: 9781635560503
Table of Contents
DARK MEMENTO
Copyright
About the Book
Dedication
Prologue
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
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Thank You for Reading!
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Complete Booklist
Welcome to Verona Bay, a small coastal town where the secrets just won’t stay buried—and people aren’t always who they seem.
She was the one that got away…
Eight years ago Serenity Washington watched as her twin sister was murdered. She was lucky to escape the same grisly fate. With her sister’s killer in jail, she relocated and tried to move on with her life. She married a man in the Air Force and started a family, but when her husband dies unexpectedly she moves back to the last place she remembers being happy—Verona Bay, FL.
Now that she’s come home, it’s all starting again…
Within months of Serenity’s homecoming, she receives a ‘gift’—a bracelet from her sister that was never recovered after her death—and a taunting note. Terrified for herself and her young daughter, she turns to the local sheriff for help. But there’s only so much they can do without proof that the gifts aren’t more than sick pranks. There’s been no DNA, no fingerprints left behind—nothing to indicate who’s leaving them. As the horrifying gifts arrive with increasing frequency, Serenity has no doubt that she’s the ultimate target. But with her sister’s murderer—a confessed serial killer—still behind bars, she has no idea who’s stalking her.
She turns to the one man she’s been trying to keep her distance from…
Former Marine Lucas Jordan has been hung up on single mom Serenity since she moved back to Verona Bay, but she’s made it clear she’s not looking for a relationship. When she’s targeted, however, all bets are off. He won’t sit by while she’s terrorized, and with her and her daughter’s lives in danger he’s prepared to stand his ground and protect them both. Together they face the impossible task of trying to figure out who to trust before they all wind up six feet under.
Dedication
For all my wonderful readers.
Prologue
Shards of agony ripped through her as she yanked against her bonds. The rope had rubbed her wrists and ankles raw enough that she’d lost a lot of blood and skin. But the pain reminded Serenity that she was still alive—and it kept her awake. She couldn’t fall asleep, couldn’t lose any time no matter how much it hurt or how exhausted she was. Not when her sister needed her. Not when she needed to stay alive.
“Savannah,” she rasped out, turning her head to where her twin was strapped down on a makeshift wooden table less than ten feet from her in the semi-darkened room of the one-bedroom cabin. Flashes from the lightning outside illuminated her sister nearly every half minute, but she could still see her because of the lone oil lamp on the floor flickering between them.
Even though she could see Savannah, she might as well have been on another planet for how far away it seemed. They were both trapped in a horror movie come to life. The horror was almost too much to bear, too much to accept. But she wasn’t going to let them get killed by a psychopath.
“Too cold,” Savannah murmured, her body trembling slightly against her own restraints as thunder rumbled in the distance. Her voice was too weak, too thready. “Just want to…sleep.”
Ice slid through Serenity at her sister’s words. Serenity was naked, in pain and freezing from the lack of warmth in the run-down cabin, but that tone terrified her. Because it was filled with defeat. She knew her twin better than anyone, and Savannah was giving up.
“No.” Her own voice was ragged, filled with a sort of manic desperation she recognized as the worst kind of fear. Worse than the thought of dying or being tortured, or even being raped—the thought of a world without her sister in it. She could not accept that reality.
She would not. “Keep your eyes open, look at me. Look at me!” she screamed as lightning flashed again.
Savannah’s head rolled to the side, her eyes already glassy. “Get free…” Her voice trailed off into a whisper, lost as the rain picked up outside, beating against the roof even harder.
“You won’t give up, I won’t let you! We don’t give up on anything, we fight!” she shouted, then jumped at a scraping sound.
She whipped her head around and immediately regretted it. A dull throb ricocheted through her skull and her heart careened until she discerned the source of the sound. Just a tree branch clawing at a window. The rain was torrential, the downpour thundering against the tin roof.
Their tormentor had left, but she knew he wouldn’t be gone long. He had hit her in the jaw earlier as he’d stomped out of the cabin muttering to himself. When he’d struck her, it had been almost like an afterthought. He’d told her to shut the hell up, that she was next, that he was going to cleanse her, prepare her for her ascension—whatever the hell that meant. Freak. He just liked to hurt women, no matter what he said. He’d cut her sister up, letting her bleed out onto the dirty floor beneath them.
God, she wished he’d just hurt her instead of going after her sister. Hearing and seeing her twin in pain was worse than anything. She’d screamed at him to stop hurting Savannah, to stop cutting her. She’d begged him to hurt her instead, but he’d just continued humming some creepy song under his breath that sounded a lot like a hymn. While Savannah screamed until her throat was raw, until she passed out briefly.
Serenity knew who
he was, or at least his moniker. Some asshole reporter had nicknamed him the Shepherd because of a message he’d left with one of his previous victims, taking credit for the killings.
Four women had been kidnapped from her college campus over the past year. Kidnapped, tortured, killed by strangulation and dumped on campus. It didn’t matter that security had been beefed up, that there was a curfew and that she and her sister had been so careful—somehow he’d gotten them and they’d ended up here.
Wherever here was. She wished she could remember how they’d arrived here. The last thing she remembered was falling asleep in her dorm room. Then waking up in hell.
“Savannah, please say something.” Tears rolled down her face as she looked at her sister again. Lightning flashed, brightening the room even as the rain abated. Shadows stretched over everything, but she had enough visibility to see Savannah’s face as everything else around them seemed to fade.
Drip, drip, drip.
Even with the pelting of rain, she could hear the drips of blood rolling from her sister’s bound wrists and hitting the floor, one after the other, a macabre rhythm.
There was so much blood pooling on the rough wooden floor beneath Savannah. Too much.
It didn’t matter that her brain was telling her one thing—Serenity’s mind refused to accept what she was seeing. Savannah’s jet-black hair fell limply off the makeshift table, her head lolled to the side. Her eyes, which had been a bright, electric blue, now stared sightlessly, their focus starting to cloud. And she wasn’t blinking, wasn’t breathing.
Drip, drip, drip.
Serenity held her breath and prayed as she stared at her sister. But there was no telltale rise and fall of Savannah’s chest. Just the dripping.
No.
The cry of a wounded animal tore through the cabin. Another bolt of terror forked through her until she realized it was coming from her.
Serenity clamped her jaw shut and forced herself to stop screaming, knowing it was useless. If there was anyone nearby to hear their screams, that monster would have gagged them. He hadn’t cared that they’d screamed, had seemed to get off on it. She needed a calm head, to think, but the searing agony of losing her twin was too much.
The rain picked up, harsh and pounding against the roof. Groaning, she struggled again, twisting back and forth like a woman possessed. Her wrists burned like her skin was on fire, but it was nothing compared to what he would do to her when he came back. He would cut her up and watch her bleed out too.
She had to get free. Get help. Get her sister out of here.
As she writhed back and forth, the board creaked and groaned under her weight. Savannah’s board was supported by a crude-looking worktable. Serenity couldn’t see hers, but the rough texture abraded her bare skin.
When the tabletop tilted a fraction under her weight, hope shot through her like a cannon blast. She didn’t know if doing this would make her situation better or worse, but she had to get free. She started rolling back and forth as best she could with her limited range of motion, using her body as a weight.
Adrenaline punched through her as she gained more momentum but she didn’t let up. Like a pendulum, she swung the board underneath her body until it started to fall, fall— She grunted as it crashed to the floor.
She heard more than felt the snap of bone. A split second later her brain received the message of pain. Another burst of agony ripped through her right hand. Her ring finger was bent at an odd angle.
A wave of nausea swept through her, but she didn’t care because her wrists were free. Tears tracked down her face as she rolled onto her stomach. The ropes that had been holding her ankles fell loose, having slackened when the board fell off its frame. Using her good hand, she shoved up until she was on her knees.
Untangling her legs, she pushed to her feet, swayed once, twice, as she stumbled toward Savannah. “We’re getting out of here,” she said, her heart a staccato beat in her chest as she bent over her sister.
With a trembling hand she checked Savannah’s pulse.
Nothing.
That iciness pulsed through her veins again, this time threatening to take Serenity under. The only thing pushing her forward was that she needed to get her sister out of here. To survive.
Moving quickly, she crossed one palm over the other and started chest compressions. Then she lifted Savannah’s chin up and breathed into her mouth twice. Then she started compressions again, over and over. It was difficult with her broken finger, but she forced her mind off the pain. Savannah’s heart had stopped. She needed to get blood flow and oxygen circulating in her body again.
That was the immediate goal.
“One, two, three, four, five…” she counted out loud. With each second that passed with no results, sharp talons dug into her own chest, reminding her that time was running out.
She needed to get Savannah out of here even if she was gone, but their tormentor could be back any second and she was weaponless.
After the second set of chest compressions she tried to tear the ropes around her twin free. Savannah still wasn’t breathing, wasn’t moving. In her head Serenity knew what that meant, but she refused to accept it. In the recesses of her mind she realized she was going into shock as she frantically scanned the cabin, looking for something to cut her sister free with. They were in a sort of living room, though it had no couches.
She raced across the room, her bare feet slapping against the floor as she stepped into the attached kitchen. She started yanking open drawers. He’d taken his torture tools with him when he’d left. She’d been glad not to have to look at them as a taunting reminder that he’d be back, but now she wished they were still there— Serenity nearly shouted in triumph when she opened a drawer of mismatched cutlery.
She grabbed the biggest knife by its peeling rubber handle. She barely remembered moving back across the room, cutting through her sister’s bindings, but when the second rope fell free of Savannah’s wrist, the two around her ankles loosened as well. Serenity wasn’t sure how he’d secured her twin, but the rope must be one long piece.
With shaky hands, she shoved the bindings off Savannah’s ankles. She moved to the head of Savannah’s table, looped her arms under her sister’s and pulled her free. She was close, so close to getting her sister free.
The flash of lights—headlights—swept over the dimly lit living room. Like a starter pistol at a race, the brief illumination sent a rush of adrenaline punching through her.
Still clutching the knife, she dragged Savannah away from the front door and toward another near the back of the cabin. She wasn’t sure how she was even carrying Savannah, given how weak she felt, but she pushed on. When Serenity shoved open the door the headlights from outside went off.
Ohgodohgodohgod.
She cast a frantic look around. The room had a small twin bed and two windows. No curtains. She dropped Savannah onto the bed and set the knife down to shove open one of the windows. Blood rushed so loudly in her ears it drowned out everything else.
Until the window creaked as she lifted it. The sound seemed like a gunshot going off. White paint flecks and dust covered her as she worked it upward. She peeked outside, only to be pelted in the face with a gust of rain and wind. The forest was thick behind the cabin, the trees beckoning to her.
She looked back at the bed. In her heart she knew her sister was… God, she wouldn’t think the word. She still wasn’t leaving Savannah behind. Hoisting her sister up, she choked back tears and shoved her out the window. When Savannah’s body hit the wraparound porch with a sickening thud, Serenity grabbed the knife and followed.
Something slammed loudly inside—the front door against the wall.
“No!” he shouted, his awful voice carrying even over the storm raging outside.
Heart slamming, Serenity rolled Savannah off the porch, jumping after her into the mud and water. She only had seconds now before he figured out which way she’d gone. She couldn’t escape carrying her sister.
So she did something she never could have imagined doing. “I love you,” she choked out in a whisper. “I’m going to make him pay.”
Then she ran, leaving Savannah’s body behind. It was the only way her sister would get justice; that all the murdered women would. She could stay and attempt to fight him, but the man was huge and muscular and she was weak from shock and blood loss. And her sister was dead.
Dead.
Tears clogged Serenity’s throat as she jumped over a jutting tree root. Her bare feet sank into mud and marsh as she raced through the dense forest. Chills racked her body, but nothing could stop her now.
She had no idea where she was, but she wasn’t going to let that monster hurt anyone else, ruin any more lives. She didn’t care what she had to do—she wasn’t going to be his next victim.
She was going to make him pay.
Serenity hitched in a sob and kept running. If she had to run a thousand miles, she wasn’t stopping until she found help. She didn’t know much about the law, but his DNA was at that cabin and she’d seen his face. It was etched into her memory. He was…normal looking. Might even be handsome under the right circumstances.