Blake Pierce
Blake Pierce is author of the bestselling RILEY PAGE mystery series, which includes thirteen books (and counting). Blake Pierce is also the author of the MACKENZIE WHITE mystery series, comprising nine books (and counting); of the AVERY BLACK mystery series, comprising six books; of the KERI LOCKE mystery series, comprising five books; of the MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE mystery series, comprising two books (and counting); of the KATE WISE mystery series, comprising two books (and counting); of the CHLOE FINE psychological suspense mystery, comprising two books (and counting); and of the JESSE HUNT psychological suspense thriller series, comprising two books (and counting).
An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Blake loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.blakepierceauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.
Copyright © 2018 by Blake Pierce. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Elena Belskaya, used under license from Shutterstock.com.
BOOKS BY BLAKE PIERCE
A JESSIE HUNT PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES
THE PERFECT WIFE (Book #1)
THE PERFECT BLOCK (Book #2)
THE PERFECT HOUSE (Book #3)
CHLOE FINE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES
NEXT DOOR (Book #1)
A NEIGHBOR’S LIE (Book #2)
KATE WISE MYSTERY SERIES
IF SHE KNEW (Book #1)
IF SHE SAW (Book #2)
IF SHE RAN (Book #3)
THE MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE SERIES
WATCHING (Book #1)
WAITING (Book #2)
LURING (Book #3)
RILEY PAIGE MYSTERY SERIES
ONCE GONE (Book #1)
ONCE TAKEN (Book #2)
ONCE CRAVED (Book #3)
ONCE LURED (Book #4)
ONCE HUNTED (Book #5)
ONCE PINED (Book #6)
ONCE FORSAKEN (Book #7)
ONCE COLD (Book #8)
ONCE STALKED (Book #9)
ONCE LOST (Book #10)
ONCE BURIED (Book #11)
ONCE BOUND (Book #12)
ONCE TRAPPED (Book #13)
ONCE DORMANT (book #14)
MACKENZIE WHITE MYSTERY SERIES
BEFORE HE KILLS (Book #1)
BEFORE HE SEES (Book #2)
BEFORE HE COVETS (Book #3)
BEFORE HE TAKES (Book #4)
BEFORE HE NEEDS (Book #5)
BEFORE HE FEELS (Book #6)
BEFORE HE SINS (Book #7)
BEFORE HE HUNTS (Book #8)
BEFORE HE PREYS (Book #9)
BEFORE HE LONGS (Book #10)
AVERY BLACK MYSTERY SERIES
CAUSE TO KILL (Book #1)
CAUSE TO RUN (Book #2)
CAUSE TO HIDE (Book #3)
CAUSE TO FEAR (Book #4)
CAUSE TO SAVE (Book #5)
CAUSE TO DREAD (Book #6)
KERI LOCKE MYSTERY SERIES
A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)
A TRACE OF MUDER (Book #2)
A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)
A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)
A TRACE OF HOPE (Book #5)
PROLOGUE
He saw no one watching him as he crept down the quiet suburban street at night. It was one in the morning and it was the kind of neighborhood where people went to bed at respectable times, a rowdy weeknight consisting of one too many glasses of wine while watching The Bachelor.
It was the kind of place he despised.
They paid property association dues, they scooped up their dogs’ shit into little plastic bags as to not offend their neighbors, and their kids surely played sports not just in high school leagues but in private county leagues. The world was their oyster. They felt safe. Sure, they locked their doors and set their alarms, but ultimately, they felt safe.
That was about to change.
He walked up a particular lawn. Surely she would be home now. Her husband was away on business in Dallas. He knew which window was her bedroom window. And he also knew that the security alarm at the back of the house was faulty when it rained.
He shifted and felt the reassurance of the knife, tucked away in the small of his back, between the elastic of his boxer shorts and his jeans. He stuck to the side of the house, opening the bottle of water he carried, and when he came to the back of the house, he stopped. There was the glowing green light of the small security box. He knew that if he tried to damage it, the alarm would go off. He knew if he tried to open a door or pry it open, the alarm would go off.
But he also knew it messed up in the rain. It was something about the moisture, even though this type of system was supposed to be one hundred percent waterproof. With this in mind, he raised his bottle of water and doused it.
He watched as the little green light flickered, grew weak.
With a smile, he walked into the small strip of backyard. He made his way up the stairs of the screened in back porch. Using the knife to pry the screen door open was easy; it made very little noise in the quiet of the night.
He crossed to the wicker chair in the corner, lifted the cushion, and found the key underneath. He picked it up in his gloved hand, went to the back door, slid the key in, turned the lock, and stepped inside.
A small lamp was on in the thin hallway that ran out of the kitchen. He followed this hall to a stairway, and he began to climb.
Anxiety swirled in his guts. He was getting excited—not in a sexual way but in the way he used to get excited when he rode a roller coaster, the anticipation thrilling him as he ascended, clacking up the biggest hill on the tracks.
He gripped the knife, still in his hand from having pried open the screen door. At the top of the stairs he took a moment to appreciate the thrill of it. He breathed in the cleanliness of the upper-class suburban home and it made him a little sick. It was too familiar, too detached.
He hated it.
Gripping the knife, he walked to the bedroom at the end of the hall. There she was, lying in the bed.
She was sleeping on her side, her knees slightly bent. She was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of running shorts, nothing too impressive being that her husband was gone.
He walked to the bed and watched her sleep for a while. He wondered about the nature of life. How fragile it was.
He then raised the knife and brought it down almost casually, as if he were simply painting or swatting a fly.
She screamed, but only for a moment—before he brought the knife down again.
And again.
CHAPTER ONE
Of the many life lessons her first full year of retirement had taught Kate Wise, the most important was this: without a solid plan, retirement could get boring very fast.
She’d heard stories of women who had retired and picked up different interests. Some opened up little Etsy shops online. Some dabbled in painting and crochet. Others tried their hand at writing a novel. Kate thought these were all fine ways to pass the time, but none of them appealed to her.
For someone who had spent more than thirty years of her life with a gun strapped to her side, finding ways to be happily preoccupied was difficult. Knitting was not going to replace the thrill of an on-foot pursuit of a killer. Gardening was not going to recreate the adrenaline high of storming into a residence, never knowing what waited on the other side of the door.
Because nothing she tried seemed to even come close to touching the joy she had felt as an FBI agent, she had stopped searching after a couple of months. The only thing that even came close were her trips to the gun range, which she made twice a week. She would have made more if she didn’t fear that the younger members at the range might start to think of her as nothing more than a retired agent who was trying to recapture a moment in time when she had been great.
It was a reasonable fear. After all, she supposed that’s exactly what she was doing.
It was a Tuesday, just after two in the afternoon, when this fact struck her like a bullet between the eyes. She had just come back from the range and was setting her M1911 pistol back in her bedside drawer when her heart seemed to break out of nowhere.
Thirty-one years. She’d spent thirty-one years with the bureau. She’d been a part of more than one hundred raids and had worked as part of a special enforcement unit for high-profile cases on twenty-six occasions. She’d been known for her speed, her quick and often razor-sharp thinking, and her overall don’t-give-a-damn attitude.
She’d also been known for her looks, something that still bothered her a bit even at the age of fifty-five. When she’d become an agent at the age of twenty-three, it had not taken her long to get crude nicknames like Legs and Barbie—names that would likely get men fired these days but which, back when she had been younger, had sadly been commonplace for female agents.
Kate had broken noses at the bureau because male agents would grab her ass. She had thrown one across a moving elevator when he’d whispered something obscene in her ear while behind her.
While the nicknames had stayed with her until well into her forties, the advances and leering looks had not. After word had gotten around, her male peers had learned to respect her and to look beyond her body—a body which, she knew with some degree of muted pride, had always been well-maintained and what most men would consider a ten.
But now at fifty-five she found herself missing even the nicknames. She had not thought retirement would be this hard. The gun range was fine, but it was just a whispering ghost of what her past had been. She had tried to shove the yearning for her past away by reading. She had decided she would read up on weapons in particular; she’d read countless books about the history of weapons use, how they were manufactured, the preference for certain weapons by military generals, and the like. It was why she now used an M1911, because of its rich history with being involved in a multitude of American wars, an early model of it being used as far back as World War I.
She’d tried her hand at reading fiction but could not get into it—though she did enjoy a lot of the cybercrime–related books. While she had revisited books she’d adored in her younger years, she could find nothing interesting in the lives of fake characters. And because she had not wanted to become the sad recently retired lady who spent all of her time at the local library, she’d ordered all of the books she’d read in the last year off of Amazon. She had more than one hundred of them stacked in boxes in her basement. She figured one day she’d build a few bookcases and turn the space into a proper study.
It wasn’t like she had much else to do.
Rocked by the idea that she had spent the last year of her life doing not much of anything, Kate Wise sat slowly down on her bed. She stayed there for several minutes without moving. She looked to the desk across the room and saw the photo albums there. There was only a single family picture there. In it, her late husband, Michael, had his arms around their daughter while Kate smiled at his side. A picture from the beach that was poorly taken but had always warmed her heart.
All of the other pictures in those albums, however, were from work: behind-the-scenes shots, pictures of inner-bureau birthday parties, her in her younger years swimming laps, at the gun range, running track, and so on.
She had lived the last year of her life the same way the small-town jock who never leaves his small town would. Always hanging around anyone who would pretend to listen about all of the touchdowns he’d scored thirty years ago playing high school football.
She was no better than that.
With a slight shudder, Kate got up and went to the photo albums on her desk. Slowly and almost methodically, she looked through all three of them. She saw pictures of her younger self, evolving through the years until every picture ever taken was on a phone. She saw herself and people she had known, people who had died right beside her on cases, and started to realize that while these moments had been instrumental in developing her, they had not defined her completely.
The articles she had clipped and saved in the back of the album further told the story. She was the featured story in all of them. SECOND-YEAR AGENT NABS KILLER ON THE LOOSE read one title; FEMALE AGENT LONE SURVIVOR IN SHOOTOUT THAT CLAIMED 11. And then the one that had really started spurring the legends on: AFTER 13 VICTIMS, MOONLIGHT KILLER FINALLY TAKEN DOWN BY AGENT KATE WISE.
By all reasonable health standards, she had at least twenty more years in her—forty if she could somehow manage to really buckle down and fight death away. Even if she averaged it out and said she had thirty years left, kicking the bucket at eighty-five…thirty years was a lot.
She could do a lot in thirty years, she supposed. For about ten of those years, she could maybe even have some very good years before old age really started to sneak in and start plucking away her good health.
The question, of course, was what she might find to do with those years.
And despite having a reputation as one of the sharpest agents to go through the bureau in the last decade, she had no idea where to start.
***
Aside from the gun range and her almost obsessive reading habits, Kate had also managed to make a weekly habit out of meeting with three other women for coffee. The four of them made fun of themselves, claiming they had formed the saddest club ever: four women early in retirement with no idea what to do with their newly freed up days.
The day following her revelation, Kate drove to their coffee house of choice. It was a little family-owned place where not only was the coffee better than the overpriced gruel at Starbucks, but the place wasn’t overrun with millennials and soccer moms. She walked inside and before she went to the counter to place her order, she saw their usual table in the back. Two of the three other women were already there, waving to her.
Kate grabbed her hazelnut brew and joined her friends at the table. She sat down beside Jane Patterson, a fifty-seven-year-old who was seven months retired from springing back and forth between companies as a proposal specialist for a government telecommunications firm. Across from her was Clarissa James, a little over a year into retirement ever since working part-time as a criminology instructor with the bureau. The fourth member of their sad little club, a fifty-five-year-old recently retired woman named Debbie Meade, had not yet shown up.
Odd, Kate thought. Deb is usually the first one here.
The moment she took her seat, Jane and Clarissa seemed to go tense. This was particularly weird because it was not like Clarissa to be anything other than bubbly. Unlike Kate, Clarissa had quickly grown to love retirement. Kate supposed it helped that Clarissa was married to a man nearly ten years younger than her who competed in swimming competitions in his free time.
“What’s with you guys?” Kate asked. “You know I come here to try to get motivated about retirement, right? You two look downright sad.”
Jane and Clarissa shared a look that Kate had seen countless times before. During her times as an agent, she’d seen it in living rooms, interrogation rooms, and hospital waiting rooms. It was a look that translated one simple question without a spoken word: Who’s going to tell her?
“What is it?” she asked.
She was suddenly very aware of Deb’s absence.
“It’s Deb,” Jane said, confirming her fear.
“Well, not Deb exactly,” Clarissa added. “It’s her daughter, Julie. Did you ever meet her?”
“Once, I think,” Kate said. “What happened?”
“She’s dead,” Clarissa said. “Murder. So far, they have no idea who did it.”
“Oh my God,” Kate said, genuinely saddened for her friend. She’d known Deb for about fifteen years, having met her at Quantico. Kate had been working as an assistant instructor for a new crop of field agents and Deb had been working with some of the tech rats on some sort of new security system. They’d struck it off right away and had become fast friends.
The fact that Deb had not called or texted her with the news before anyone else showed just how quickly friendships could shift over the years.
“When did it happen?” Kate asked.
“Sometime yesterday,” Jane said. “She just texted me this morning about it.”
“They have no suspects?” Kate asked.
Jane shrugged. “She just said they don’t know who it is. No clues, no leads, nothing.”
Kate instantly felt herself go into agent mode. She figured it was the same way a trained athlete must feel after being away from their arena of choice for too long. She may not have turf or an adoring crowd to remind her of what her glory days had been like, but she did have her finely tuned mind for solving crimes.
“Don’t go there,” Clarissa said, trying on her best smile.
“Go where?”
“Don’t be Agent Wise right now,” Clarissa said. “Right now, just be her friend. I can see those wheels turning in your head. Jeez, lady. Don’t you have a pregnant daughter? Aren’t you about to be a grandmother?”
“What a way to kick me when I’m down,” Kate said with a smile. She let the comment go and then asked: “Deb’s daughter…did she have a boyfriend?”
“No idea,” Jane said.
An awkward silence sat over the table. In the year or so their little group of recently retired friends had been meeting, the conversation had always been mostly light. This was the first heavy topic and it did not fit with their routine. Kate, of course, was accustomed to it. Her time in the academy had taught her how to handle these situations.
But Clarissa was right. In hearing the news, Kate had so easily slipped into agent mode. She knew she should have thought like a friend first—thinking of Deb’s loss and emotional state. But the agent in her was too strong, the instincts still there at the forefront after having been on the shelf for a year.
“So what can we do to make her comfortable?” Jane asked.
“I was thinking a meal train,” Clarissa said. “I know a few other ladies that might get on board. Just making sure she doesn’t have to cook for her family in the next few weeks as she deals with all of this.”
For the next ten minutes, the three women planned out the most effective way to get a meal train going for their grief-stricken friend.
But for Kate, the conversation remained on the surface. Her mind was headed elsewhere, trying to dig up hidden facts and tidbits on Deb and her family, trying to find a case where there might not even be one.
Or there might, Kate thought. And I guess there’s only one way to find out.
CHAPTER TWO
After retirement, Kate had moved back to Richmond, Virginia. She’d grown up in the little town of Amelia, about forty minutes away from Richmond, but had gone to college right near the cusp of downtown. She’d spent her undergrad years at VCU, originally wanting to be an art major of all things. Three years in, she’d discovered that she’d had a heart for criminal justice through one of her elective courses in psychology. It had been a winding, crooked trail that had led her to Quantico and the thirty-year stretch of her illustrious career.
She now drove through some of those familiar Richmond streets. She’d been to Debbie Meade’s house only once before but knew exactly where it was located. She knew where it was because she envied the location, one of those older-looking buildings on the streets off the center of downtown that were lined with trees rather than street lights and tall buildings.
Deb’s street was currently awash in fallen leaves from the elms that overhung the street. She had to park three houses away because family and friends had already started to fill in the spaces in front of Deb’s house.
She walked down the sidewalk, trying to convince herself that this was a bad idea. Yes, she planned to enter the house as only a friend—even though Jane and Clarissa had decided to hold off until later in the afternoon in order to give Deb some space. But there was something deeper there, too. She’d been looking for something to do these past few months, some better and more meaningful way to fill her time. She’d often dreamed about somehow picking up freelance work from the bureau, maybe even just basic research tasks.
Even the most minor of references to her work got her excited. For instance, she was due in court next week to testify at a parole hearing. She was not looking forward to facing the criminal again but just being able to delve back into her work for such a brief amount of time was welcome.
But that was next week—and right now that seemed like an eternity away.
She looked up at Debbie Meade’s front porch. She knew why she was really there. She wanted to find some answers to questions that were storming in her head. It made her feel selfish, like she was using her friend’s loss as an excuse to dip her toes back into waters that she had not felt in over a year. This situation involved a friend, which made it tricky. But the old agent in her was hoping it might evolve into something else. The friend in her, though, thought it might be risky. And all together, those parts of her wondered if maybe she should have stuck with simply fanaticizing about a return to work.
Maybe that’s exactly what I’m doing, Kate thought as she walked up the stairs to the Meade residence. And honestly, she wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that.
She knocked on the door softly and it was answered right away by an elderly lady Kate did not know.
“Are you with the family?” the woman asked.
“No,” Kate answered. “Just a very close friend.”
The woman scrutinized her for a moment before allowing her inside. Kate entered and walked down the hallway, passing by a living area that was filled with somber people sitting around one single person in a recliner. The person in the recliner was Debbie Meade. Kate recognized the man standing beside her and talking to another man as her husband, Jim.
She awkwardly entered the room and went directly to Deb. Without allowing Deb enough time to get out of the chair, Kate leaned down and hugged her.
“I’m so sorry, Deb,” she said.
Deb was clearly drained from crying, managing to only nod into Kate’s shoulder. “Thanks for coming,” Deb whispered into her ear. “Do you think you could meet me in the kitchen in a few minutes?”
“Of course.”
Kate broke the hug and gave little nods of acknowledgment to the few other faces in the room that she recognized. Feeling out of place, Kate made her way to the end of the hallway which emptied into the kitchen. There was no one there but there were empty plates and glasses from where people had been not too long ago. There were a few pies sitting on the counter along with ham rolls and other finger foods. Kate set to cleaning up, helping herself to the sink to start washing the dishes.
Several moments later, Jim Meade made his way into the kitchen. “You don’t have to do that,” he said.
Kate turned to him and saw that he looked tired and impossibly sad. “I know,” she said. “I came by to show my support. It seemed like things were pretty heavy in the living room when I came in, so I’m supporting you guys by washing dishes.”
He nodded, looking like he might nod off right then and there. “One of our friends said she saw a woman come in a few minutes ago. I’m rather glad it’s you, Kate.”
Kate saw another person coming toward the kitchen behind him, looking equally tired and heartbroken. Deb Meade’s eyes were puffy and red from crying. Her hair was in disarray and when she looked at Kate to try on a smile, it seemed to fall right off of her face.
Kate put down the dish she was washing, quickly dried her hands on a hand towel by the sink, and went to her friend. Kate had never been much for physical touch but knew when a hug was needed. She expected Deb to start weeping in the midst of the hug but there was nothing, just her sagging weight.
She’s probably all cried out for now, Kate thought.
“I only just heard this morning,” Kate said. “I’m so sorry, Deb. Both of you,” she said, casting her eyes to Jim.
Jim nodded his appreciation and then looked down the hall. When he saw that no one else was lurking there, the slight murmur of their company still in the living room, he stepped closer to Kate as Deb broke the hug.
“Kate, we need to ask you something,” Jim said in a near-whisper.
“And please,” Deb said, taking her hand. “Let us get it all out before you shoot us down.” Kate felt a little tremble in Deb’s grip and her heart broke a little.
“Sure,” Kate said. Their pleading eyes and the overall weight of their sorrow hung over her head like an anvil that was sure to drop at any moment.
“The police have absolutely no idea who did it,” Deb said. Suddenly, her exhaustion morphed into something that looked closer to anger. “Based on some things we said and some texts they found on Julie’s phone, the police arrested her ex-boyfriend right away. But they held him for less than three hours and then let him go. Just like that. But Kate…I know he did it. It has to be him.”
Kate had seen this approach multiple times before during her time as an agent. Grieving families wanted justice right away. They’d look past logic and a sound investigation to make sure some sort of vengeance was taken out as soon as possible. And if those results weren’t speedy, the grieving family assumed incompetence on the part of the police or FBI.
“Deb…if they released him so quickly, there must have been some very strong evidence. After all…how long has it been since they dated?”
“Thirteen years. But he kept trying to connect with her for years, even after she was married. She had to get a restraining order at one time.”
“Still…the police had to have a good alibi for him to have released him so quickly.”
“Well, if there was, they aren’t telling me about it,” Deb said.
“Deb…look,” Kate said, giving Deb’s hand a comforting squeeze. “The loss is too recent. Give it a few days and you’ll start to think rationally. I’ve seen it a hundred times.”
Deb shook her head. “I’m certain of it, Kate. They dated for three years and not once did I trust him. We’re pretty sure he hit her at least on two occasions but Julie never came out and said it. He had a temper. Even he’d tell you that.”
“I’m sure the police are—”
“That’s our favor,” Deb interrupted. “I want you to look into it. I want you to get involved in the case.”
“Deb, I’m retired. You know this.”
“I do. And I also know how much you miss it. Kate…the man that killed my daughter got nothing more than a little scare and some time in an interrogation room. And now he’s at home, sitting comfortably while I have to plan to put my daughter in the ground. It’s not right, Kate. Please…will you look into it? I know you can’t do it on an official basis but…anything you can do. I’d appreciate it.”
There was so much heartache in Deb’s eyes that Kate could feel it passing between them. Everything within her was telling her to stand firm—to not allow any false hope to enter into Deb’s grief. But at the same time, Deb was right. She had missed her work. And even if what was being proposed was just a few basic phone calls to the Richmond PD or even to her former co-workers at the bureau, it would be something.
It would certainly be better than obsessively reflecting back on her career with lonely trips out to the gun range.
“Here’s what I can do,” Kate said. “When I retired, I lost all of my pull. Sure, I get calls for my opinion here and there, but I have no authority. More than that, this case would be completely outside of my jurisdiction even if I were still active. But I will make a few calls to my old contacts and make sure the evidence they found to free him was strong. Honestly, Deb, that’s the best I can do.”
The gratitude was evident in both Deb and Jim right away. Deb hugged her again and this time, she did weep. “Thank you.”
“It’s not a problem,” Kate said. “But I really can’t promise anything.”
“We know,” Jim said. “But at least now we know that someone competent is watching out for us.”
Kate wasn’t comfortable with the idea that they were looking to her as an inside force to assist them, nor did she like that they assumed the police didn’t have their backs. Again, she knew it was all about their grief and how it was blinding them in their search for answers. So for now, she let it slide.
She thought about how tired she had been near the end of her career—not really physically tired but emotionally drained. She had always loved her job, but how often had she come to the end of a case and think to herself: Man, am I tired of this shit…
It had happened more and more often in the last few years.
But this moment was not about her.
She held her friend close, puzzling over how no matter how hard people tried to put their pasts behind them—whether it was relationships or careers—it somehow managed to always limp along not too far behind.