The Seventh Victim Read online

  THE SEVENTH VICTIM

  “Do you think someone from my past is the killer?” Lara asked.

  “I don’t know. I do know someone knew about that key and drugged your dog.”

  “Maybe some nut who read the morning paper broke into the house.”

  “Maybe the article did unsettle someone. Maybe the article and Lincoln are unrelated. But I’d bet my last dollar that the two are connected.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “I don’t, and until we know, be careful, Ms. Church. I’m going to have DPS swing by every half hour. Someone out there is fixated on you.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s the Strangler.” Lara spoke the words hoping he’d agree. “It could just be about the article.”

  He touched the brim of his hat. “Don’t you bet on it for a minute. Not for a minute . . .”

  Books by Mary Burton

  I’M WATCHING YOU

  DEAD RINGER

  DYING SCREAM

  SENSELESS

  MERCILESS

  BEFORE SHE DIES

  THE SEVENTH VICTIM

  NO ESCAPE

  YOU’RE NOT SAFE

  COVER YOUR EYES

  BE AFRAID

  I’LL NEVER LET YOU GO

  VULNERABLE

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  Table of Contents

  THE SEVENTH VICTIM

  Books by Mary Burton

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  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

  Epilogue

  Teaser chapter

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2013 Mary Burton

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, educational, or institutional use. Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington sales manager: Kensington Publishing Corp., 119 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018, attn: Sales Department; phone 1-800-221-2647.

  This book 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 fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  PINNACLE BOOKS and the Pinnacle logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  First Zebra mass market printing: February 2013

  First Pinnacle premium mass market printing: February 2018

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4225-8

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4225-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Pinnacle electronic edition: February 2018

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4227-2

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4227-3

  Prologue

  Seattle

  Seven years ago

  The man crouched by the unconscious woman lying on the dewy grass by the highway and tilted her pale, still face toward the moon. He laid calloused fingertips over the pulse point on her throat. The thump, thump of her steady heartbeat drummed against his skin.

  Relief collided with excitement.

  Thank God. She wasn’t dead. He’d hit her so hard hours ago that he’d feared there’d be no coaxing her awake. And he needed her to open her eyes. To see his face.

  Gently, the man stroked her blond hair as a chilling, wet breeze blew over the lush landscape. Stars twinkled between thickening pockets of rain-soaked clouds, which hid a waning moon. Twenty yards behind him, cars buzzed past on U.S. Route 10.

  “Wake up!”

  Several minutes passed as he patted her face, each touch growing increasingly harder. “Open your eyes. Look at me. You need to know what is about to happen.”

  He needed fear. Her terror.

  The woman’s eyes moved under her lids, but they did not open. Damn. He’d hit her too hard.

  In the distance, cars rushed by. He should carry her deeper into the woods to avoid detection, but he was more worried about waking her up than discovery. He’d not anticipated heavy traffic. A horn honked. Shit.

  Frustrated, angry, and worried, he slapped the woman’s face hard. This time her eyes fluttered open as she raised a trembling hand to the red-purple bruising on her pale cheek. The bluest of blue gazes stared up at him with sightless confusion.

  She did not see him.

  He struck her with his backhand.

  Her gaze cleared, and the fear he’d so craved blossomed and radiated.

  “Where am I?” The woman’s dry throat and mouth had roughened her voice.

  “With me,” he whispered. “Look at me.”

  “I hurt.” Her flickering panic, like flint to tinder, ignited a fire in him that quickly raged bright and strong. Yes, this is what he needed. Her pain. Her fear. Saliva pooled at the corners of his mouth. His heart raced.

  In one swift move, he straddled her and grabbed her slender neck in his strong hands. His erection throbbed painfully in jeans that scraped against the gauzy white dress straining over her belly. He had already taken her twice and still he craved more sex.

  He tightened his hold around her slender neck. “Do you know who is going to kill you?”

  The woman could barely keep her vacant eyes open, but the pressures against her neck fueled a primal need to survive. Blindly, she dug her fingernails into his hands. She screamed, but the wind paired with the rush of traffic drowned out her cries.

  Yes. This is what he wanted. Fear. “Open your eyes. Look! See me!”

  The first time he’d seen her years ago, the beast in him had wanted him to drag her into the woods. However, logic demanded caution. And so he’d tracked her every move. Photographed her. Kept a detailed accounting. Nothing violent. Nothing alarming. Simple. Easy. Thrilling.

  It had gone on this way for years, until two nights ago when he’d scraped together his courage to implement what he’d planned for so long. She’d had too many drinks. Celebrating. Relaxed. Unaware. And he had taken her easily.

  Memories of what he’d done replayed in his mind. He squeezed his thighs against her midsection compressing her ribs and shoving the air from her lungs. She arched, kicked, and twisted her neck as more traffic roared past. A streak of lightning cut across the sky. Thunder rumbled. But he barely noticed, his focus fixed on the erotic play of energy between master and victim.

  “Look at me!”

  As the woman grasped his fingers encircling her neck, tears pooled in her unseeing eyes and trickled down the side of her cheeks. Her nails du
g into his flesh, as desperation oozed from her pores. He squeezed harder, his excitement growing as her fingernails clawed his hands.

  “Do you see me?” he said. All this planning would be fruitless if she didn’t know who had brought her to death.

  She wasn’t listening, but channeling her energy into the last moments of her struggle. She clung to life.

  She kicked and arched, pushing her belly into his erection. A strangled cry croaked from her lips, but she did not have the air in her lungs to scream or the strength to break his hold. Her eyes closed.

  In mere moments, it would all be over. She would die. But she would never know who had dominated her in the last moments of her life.

  A car horn honked. The frantic shouts of men grew louder as the glare of approaching flashlights glared brighter. His capture loomed; seconds separated him from ending her life. Seconds. Tick-tock.

  His grip slackened. What would be the point of her death if she didn’t see her killer’s face? Angry and frustrated, he released his grip and stumbled off her limp body, and ran into the night, knowing one day he’d see her again.

  Chapter 1

  Austin, Texas

  Monday, May 20, 6:45 AM

  Stop and smell the roses.

  Texas Ranger James Beck’s captain had spoken those last glib words seconds after he’d put Beck on paid administrative leave three weeks ago.

  The words rattled in Beck’s head as he parked his black Bronco at a murder scene located twenty miles south of Austin off Interstate 35’s access road. The day’s new sun glowed red over the haze of heat, rising over rolling, dusty Western lands blanketed with rocks, brush, and scrubby trees. On the road’s shoulder sat a sidelined truck hauling lumber, a half dozen county sheriff’s cars, and a forensics van. Already early-morning commuter rubberneckers had snarled morning traffic.

  Oddly, the controlled chaos eased the tightness bunching the muscles in Beck’s lower back. He was officially back in the saddle and free of the oppressive slower pace of a forced “vacation.”

  The seeds of Beck’s trouble began six months ago when Misty Gray, a ten-year-old girl, had vanished. The last person to see Misty had been her mother’s live-in boyfriend, Matt Dial, who reported to police that the girl had left to play with friends and then vanished.

  After three days and no sign of the child, local authorities had summoned the Texas Rangers and Beck had been assigned to the case. The Rangers, often relegated to tales of the old West, were in fact a modern, elite part of the Texas Department of Public Safety, known as DPS.

  Twenty minutes into Beck’s interview with Dial, he knew the construction worker was lying. But the more questions Beck fired, the faster Dial shot back denials.

  Finding Misty became Beck’s personal mission, and he stayed on Dial long after media stories shifted from rescue to recovery. When Dial, who turned out to be the black sheep of a well-connected family, complained about Beck’s dogged trailing, Beck’s boss ordered the Ranger to stand down until the political winds eased. Beck disobeyed, using personal time to trail Dial. Two weeks went by before the out-of-work construction worker made a midnight run to a deserted farm. Beck, trailing close, watched Dial unlock an old shed and drag out a large plastic bag that could easily hold a child’s body. Weapon drawn, Beck called out to Dial, who raised a .45 and fired. Dial’s shot trailed high, but Beck’s shots struck Dial in the chest, dropping him instantly. Misty’s decomposing body was in the bag.

  Forensic investigators found childlike messages scratched on the shed walls, scattered food wrappers and empty water jugs. They theorized the girl had lasted three weeks in the shed before she’d died of dehydration.

  When Dial family attorneys attacked the child’s character during the ensuing investigation, Beck’s temper had blown. He’d spoken words a politically aware man would have avoided and in the end, Beck’s commander had saddled him with paid leave.

  “Enjoy the next three weeks. Lay low. Stop and smell the roses.”

  Shit.

  Beck’s downtime had been spent at his grandfather’s garage getting his hands dirty under the hood of a ’67 Mustang. Never once had Beck been plagued by his own actions or his razor-sharp candor to the attorneys. When asked during mandatory counseling sessions if he had any misgivings about the shooting, he’d honestly said he had none. His regrets were for the little girl who’d suffered alone for three weeks. The little girl he didn’t save.

  Beck rubbed a calloused hand over tense neck muscles as police lights bounced off the freshly waxed hood of his car and yellow crime scene tape brushed brittle, brown grass skirting the access road. He grabbed his white Stetson, standard gear for a Texas Ranger, and got out of the car.

  His exile had officially ended.

  Gravel crunched under his polished cowboy boots and bone-dry dirt dusted the hem of his khakis as he moved down the side of the access road past the truck and the line of cop cars.

  At thirty-five he moved with the quick stride of a younger man. When teased about his fast pace he joked too many hits playing high school quarterback had left him edgy and ready to dodge.

  Beck nodded to the local deputies, paused to talk to some, shook hands with others. All offered best wishes and hearty welcomes.

  One hundred feet off the road he spotted fellow Texas Ranger Rick Santos. Tall, and lean as gristle, Santos pulled off his own Stetson and wiped a red bandanna over his damp brow. As the thirtysomething Santos glanced toward the morning sky, Beck could almost hear him curse the temperature, which was expected to kick up over one hundred degrees. Texans often said the state had two seasons: winter and summer.

  The sun had etched lines around Santos’s eyes, tanned his skin golden, and left blue-black highlights in already dark hair. Santos’s uniform was similar to Beck’s, though he favored string ties over Beck’s traditional.

  Beck glanced toward the forensics van, which blocked the view of the body. The 5 AM call from Beck’s captain in Austin hadn’t supplied Beck with many case details: female, young, and found midway between the seventy-mile stretch between Austin and San Antonio. This crime scene fell smack in the heart of the Texas Rangers’ largest division, Company F, which spanned counties south of San Antonio to several north of Austin.

  As Beck approached, the San Antonio-based Santos extended his hand. “Looks like we both were invited to the party.”

  Santos clasped his hand, squeezed hard. “I hear the captain’s call pulled you out from under a car engine early this morning. Still working on the piece of crap you call a car?”

  Too restless to sleep, too early for the first-day-back arrival, he’d gone to his grandfather’s garage at 3 AM and tinkered with the Mustang. “Keeps me out of trouble.”

  A muscle twitched once, twice in the side of Santos’s jaw. “No one liked seeing you off the streets.”

  Anger, he thought, conquered, clawed beneath the surface even as he reminded himself that dwelling wouldn’t help him catch the next monster. “Penance is good for the soul.”

  Santos looked as if he wanted to say more, but he let it pass. “You know Deputy Eli Stiles, right?”

  “Sure. We worked a couple of car theft cases.”

  “Good. I’ll let him fill you in on the details.”

  They found Eli standing just outside the crime scene tape watching his technicians work. He was a tall man with a neatly shaved head and a wide salt-and-pepper mustache. Though he’d been well muscled in his youth, thirty years in a patrol car had thickened his belly.

  Deputy Stiles gripped Beck’s hand in an iron hold. “Good to see you back in action, boy.”

  His intent was to avoid all inquiries, even the well-meaning ones, about the last three weeks. Time to move forward. “I know this isn’t a social call.”

  Deputy Stiles tugged his hat forward a fraction. “No, sir, it is not. I have a Jane Doe I want you to see.”

  Beck nodded. “What’s special about this one?”

  “This whole setup is off, which is why I
called in the Rangers.”

  Beck rested his hands on his hips. “Why off?”

  The deputy shook his head. “You tell me.”

  “Have a look at her, Beck,” Santos said. “You’ll see.”

  The trio ducked under the yellow crime scene tape and came up behind the forensic technician, who for a moment blocked the view of the body. When the tech shifted her stance Beck got his first real look at the victim.

  The woman lay on her back, her hands folded over her chest. Blond hair splayed out onto the ground mirroring a fully fanned skirt. She looked like some grim angel.

  “Minute I saw her, I thought about the dead woman they found in San Antonio three weeks ago,” Deputy Stiles said.

  Benched at the time, Beck’s information on the San Antonio murder had come from the newspaper. There’d been three articles about the San Antonio victim, and to his recollection, her picture had not been released. “Why do you say that?”

  “Not a whole lot left of her after weeks, maybe months outside. What the sun and rain didn’t get, the animals dragged off. No identification found on her, but local law determined that she’d been wearing a white dress.”

  “A white dress,” Santos said. “Common enough, isn’t it?”

  Deep worry lines were etched into Stiles’s forehead and at his temples. “On one victim it might be. On two, well, call me jaded, but I don’t think so,” he said.

  Seeing this victim struck a chord deep in Beck’s memory that went farther back than a month. But the harder he tried to wrangle the memory the faster it pranced out of reach.

  The three men stared at the body, the air around them pulsing.

  Finally, Santos broke the silence. “When Stiles mentioned the San Antonio murder, I pulled up my computer files on the case.” He shifted his stance. “According to the report the local sheriff used approximate characteristics from the medical examiner and matched their victim to a missing persons report. Long story short, her name was Lou Ellen Fisk, age twenty-two. She lived just north of San Antonio.”

  Deputy Stiles hooked his thumbs in his belt. “Local boys figured the boyfriend killed her. Fisk and her man had had their share of fights.”