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PROLOGUE
4 Years Ago
Outside New York City …
He smelled blood.
Strong. Metallic. As if he had a handful of pennies shoved in his mouth.
She can’t be dead.
FBI Special Agent Mitch Keaton pressed his back against the brick wall, the chilly wind of a New York winter shooting through his windbreaker like bullets of ice. His right hand tightened around the grip of his Glock-19.
“NYPD is fifteen minutes out.”
Mitch turned his head just enough to see SA Lynda Prince, his partner of six years, move in behind him. “Cassia doesn’t have fifteen minutes.”
She has to be alive.
Lynda pulled out her weapon. “We go in then. Keep your head straight in there.” She released the safety. “We don’t want internal affairs crawling up our asses because you surrendered your Boy Scout card.”
Too late. Boy Scouts didn’t turn off cameras in interrogation rooms or make Faustian deals with serial killers.
Mitch took a deep breath and instantly regretted it. Beneath the stink of blood lay the tangy decay of death. Panic and desperation pulled at him, but surrendering to either would get Cassia killed.
If she wasn’t dead already.
Mitch turned and kicked in the graffiti-tagged sheet of plywood covering the entrance. It landed with a dull thud, a sound covered by that ear-piercing music. “Remember to be prepared for anything.”
“You’re the one who needs the reminder, not me.” Lynda peered past him for a view of the warehouse’s dimly lit interior. The stench burned his eyes and scorched a permanent imprint inside his lungs.
“I’ve got point.” Mitch headed down a hallway strewn with debris and trash, passing empty offices, only to stop short at a dead end. “Damn it!”
“This way.” Lynda was already headed down a branch in the hallway he’d passed.
His feet followed in her wake. Where she stepped, he stepped. They had a pattern, a routine. Safety a priority.
Mitch fought down the urge to rush in. It had been more than ten hours since Cassia’s abduction. Ten hours she’d spent in here, in this … place.
Bile rose in his throat. His stomach churned. He swallowed the anger and tightened his grip on his weapon.
Is she alive?
His shoulder brushed against the wall. His jacket caught. Tugged.
Mitch spun, trigger finger twitching. The hallway behind them was empty.
“You okay?” Lynda’s voice barely carried over the din.
“Yeah.” He stared into the darkness, fighting his imagination. “Yeah, I’m good.”
One more turn. One more hallway.
The music grew louder. And there was light. Strobing light.
At the end of the corridor, Lynda stepped to one side, Mitch the other. They glanced in.
The main part of the warehouse had been transformed. The cavernous space echoed with the repetitive, screeching music. Cold air blew in through the broken windows near the ceiling. But it couldn’t blow away the stench of blood and death.
A bank of enormous televisions propped up on concrete blocks formed a circle about forty feet around in the middle of the space, screens facing inward. Through the gaps in the televisions, Mitch saw flashes of black-and-white movement onscreen, like old film caught in a stuttering loop. But inside the circle …
Inside the circle he could see shapes. Large boxes. Tables. The silhouette of a man moving.
Whittaker.
Mitch could practically feel Lynda tense, like a cat prepared to pounce on its prey. He wasn’t as coiled.
Where is Cassia?
He became aware of shouted words—pleas for mercy—rising from those screens. Those cries pierced the shrieking guitar notes. And there were screams …
Agonizing, staccato screams punctuated the music like a drumbeat.
“Alive,” Lynda said as if to remind Mitch of their objective.
Taking Whittaker alive meant answers. Answers for the victims’ families. Answers for the judicial system.
Mitch had taken an oath to uphold the law. To stand for justice.
But that was before Cassia …
Mitch strove for calm, for control, as Lynda slowly made her way around the screens and out of sight.
As she circled around, Mitch moved forward, firearm at the ready, and slipped through the gap between two screens. He entered the arena of death like a gladiator ready for battle.
Near the opposite side of the circle, Whittaker towered over a gurney, looking like he’d fully embraced his inner psycho. Shaved head, smiley face boxer shorts, his chest and legs coated in flesh, gore, and ropes of blood as if he’d chosen to wear nothing but the evidence of his victims’ suffering.
Mitch blinked, trying to reset his brain when he saw the gurney rocking and squeaking against Whittaker’s whirring bone saw. As he saw Death carve up his latest prize.
God, please, no. Don’t let it be …
Whittaker drew back the saw, took a step away, far enough for Mitch to catch sight of long, blood-streaked blond hair draped over the edge of the gurney.
Finger on the trigger, Mitch’s gaze instantly shifted to the woman’s bare thigh.
No double helix tattoo.
Not Cassia.
His knees nearly buckled. His finger moved away from the trigger.
If she wasn’t there … where was she?
The back of his neck prickled. Lynda shifted into sight as she continued around the perimeter of the television screens.
There was only one other item in the circle—a red rectangle the size of a coffin sat atop a fabric-draped platform in the middle of the televisions.
A coffin covered almost completely in blood.
The stench of blood and death nearly overwhelmed Mitch once more.
Whose blood?
He clung to his training, to his oath. To his sanity. If Cassia was here, she was in that centerpiece. He was certain of it. As a forensic scientist, part of the team tasked with capturing the monster responsible for these deaths, she’d be the star of his Gothic horror show.
Whittaker bent over the body on the gurney once more, the electric saw adding its whine to the chaotic symphony of sound.
Lynda was nowhere to be seen.
Pulse pounding, Mitch crept forward, keeping one eye on Whittaker and one on the coffin.
He swiped his free hand across the glass lid, smearing an arc of blood, beneath which he saw legs.
Legs that moved!
Adrenaline surged. Mitch used his jacket sleeve this time and smeared away as much of the gore as he could up to where her head lay.
His breath lodged in his chest. He stared down into Cassia’s pale, dazed, disconnected face.
“Mitch.” Her voice was muffled, slurred. She pressed her palms against the glass, as if uncertain if what she was seeing was real.
Quiet. Please be quiet, baby.
Gripping onto calm, Mitch felt for hinges. Realizing they were on the other side of the glass coffin, he crept around to set the woman he’d fallen in love with free.
Cassia’s eyes went wide as she focused behind him.
Mitch’s gaze shifted down, to the shimmer of movement reflected in the dripping blood. The movement of a madman coming up behind him, revving the saw the way a motorcyclist revved his engine before taking off.
“Freeze! FBI!” Lynda’s voice cut through the chaos, reverberated up and into the pitched high-beamed ceiling. “Gavin Whittaker, you’re under arrest!”
Mitch turned, an odd calm washing over him as he raised his weapon.
“Put the saw down!” Lynda yelled as she ran forward and yanked the power cord out of the generator. The saw went dead. “Your brother gave you up, Gavin. He’s the reason we found you. You’re both done.”
Whittaker came to a halt in the center of the theater, as if confused about what was happening. He opened his mouth in a silent scream, looking like an overworked Grim Reaper, divested of his robes.
He stared with blank, stark hatred, aimed not at Mitch but at the coffin.
And the woman inside.
“Mitch!” Cassia’s muted voice broke through the glass.
The fog.
The rage.
“This is your last warning, Whittaker!” Lynda stepped into the spotlight of overhead lamps. “Put down the saw and raise your hands.”
Whittaker laughed, a villainous chuckle that sent shivers down Mitch’s spine.
“Mitch,” Cassia said again, drawing his gaze. She pressed her palm flat against the coffin’s lid.
Mitch laid his hand on the glass over hers. He stared into the desperate eyes of the woman he loved.
Time slowed into one perfect moment of clarity.
Whittaker won’t stop. He’ll never stop.
Whittaker let out an unholy sound drawn from the deepest level of hell.
Mitch turned. Gaze colliding with livid, pale eyes.
He widened his stance. Raised his weapon.
And fired.
End of Excerpt
