Samantha Mitchell, psychic private investigator, is haunted by visions of a sociopath long thought dead. A man responsible both for the death of her father as well as the visions of death that haunt her daily. Now he’s back and looking to even the score. Samantha, using all her resources, must find this killer before all she loves is lost to a madman’s Deadly Vision……
Chapter One:
The phone rang, and Samantha’s first thought was that it was still dark. She
fumbled for the lamp on the nightstand with one hand, the phone with the other.
“ ’Lo?” she mumbled, finding the lamp switch and then squinting at the light.
“Sam? I need you to come look at something.”
She sighed, glanced at the clock. Three in the morning. Damn it.
“What happened?” Even as she spoke, she was out of bed and getting into jeans.
“Brief me a little here Mack, would you?”
“Sure, sure… well, we got a mess. One hell of a mess, that’s one thing to know.
Be ready for it okay?”
Sam pulled on her sneakers and listened. “Go on.”
“It looks like a stabbing.
everywhere. It looks like the bastard painted with it. And he scalped her some.”
“Jesus,” Sam muttered. “The victim?”
“The house belongs to a Kathleen Knowles, age 25 and single, no kids. Looks like
she’s our vic. Pretty little thing.” She heard the pity in Mack’s voice. “Or was, anyhow.”
“Address?”
Mack gave her the location and she was on her way. She grabbed her bag, her keys
and stopped on her way out the door to give herself a quick once over in the full length
mirror in the bathroom.
Her blond hair was sleep tousled, her jeans wrinkled. She didn’t notice the way
they hugged her petite frame in all the right places, or the way the pale blue shirt set off
her tan. She hurriedly brushed her hair, grabbing a band to pull it back with. Making sure
to lock the door behind her, she ran to the car.
It was warm even for August, so she drove with the windows down, not even
noticing the streets or familiar houses she passed.
buildings dark, windows shuttered for the night. Upstairs blinds were drawn in the loft
like apartments that served as home to many of the people who ran the shops there.
Sam’s mind registered this without even realizing it. Her mind was on once pretty
Kathleen Knowles.
It wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to being shaken from sleep at this hour, or used to
being called to a homicide. She’d done it at least a dozen times, maybe more. She had
trained for this, to see the worst… yet it still unnerved her, still touched her. In her own
way, she was still green. Maybe she always would be; who knew? As long as it never
showed outwardly, she could deal with it. As an on again-off again consultant for the
local police force, it came with the job. Unfortunately.
She reached
front, ignored the sighs and eye rolls, made her way past the crime scene tape and into the
house. She knew it was bad when she noticed the ME’s assistant losing his dinner in the
bushes.
The coppery smell hit her instantly, making her stomach roll and a thin line of
perspiration break out on her upper lip. She sucked in her breath, closing her eyes briefly
It always threw her that blood and pennies smelled so alike. Then she saw. The entire
room was almost completely covered in blood. The walls were slowly drying to brownish
rust, same as the floor. The floor was a river of red, drying but tacky enough to look like
wet paint. Brick colored wet paint.
She simply stood there a moment looking around, eyes wide, breath hitching
slightly. She barely noticed Mack approaching her, hair disheveled from sleep, his dress
shirt wrinkled, a pair of booties in his huge hand.
It just proved how bad the scene really was. Mack wasn’t the sort of guy you
overlooked. At six- one in his bare feet, he was built like a wrestler, with a slight beer
belly protruding over pants that always looked like they needed ironing. His disheveled
appearance had nothing to do with the early hour; it was simply part of his charm. Next to
Sam, he looked like a giant.
“Here, slip these on. Too much blood to be traipsing around,” he said quietly.
She nodded, and stepped out the door to put the booties on. “Good God, Mack,
what the happened here?”
“Hell happened here,” he told her. “Or one variation.”
“That’s a lot of blood in there. There’s no way it could all be hers.”
“Won’t know for awhile, but I’d wager you’re right there. She doesn’t look to
have bled that much. A good bit, but not that much.”
Samantha exhaled slowly. “The killer’s blood? Another victim? Some ritual or
something?”
“We can assume anything right now, Sam. It’s too soon to do anything but
guess.” A pause. “Didn’t kill the cat, though. Maybe the bastard has a soft spot for them.”
“There’s a cat?”
He jerked his head toward the bag of cat food sitting in the hall. “Huge ass cat,”
he observed. “White male.”
Sam managed a wry smile. “You make him sound like a perp. Wonder why he got
to survive.”
Mack grunted. “Wonder where the hell he was when it happened. Cat’s still snow
white, not a speck of blood on him.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Interesting.”
“Mmm,” he agreed, then sighed. “I’m tired of this shit.”
Sam nodded absently, noticing that her vision was starting to blur. “Yeah…” she
trailed off softly, and Mack was instantly aware.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“I think I’m having a vision,” she told him, her voice far off, her eyes glazed.
“OK,” he said, cursing under his breath and pushing the door closed a little.
“What do you need?”
“Nothing… the walls are such a pretty blue,” she informed him. “It’s quiet, just
the cat purring on the bed. The blanket is blue and white... a quilt. It looks handmade.
She isn’t afraid. Not even tense. She doesn’t know he’s there, watching her. She’s
humming; brushing her hair… he likes her hair.”
“Who likes it, Sam?” Mack asked sharply, and Sam frowned, confused.
“I… I don’t know for sure. But he likes it. He wants to touch it, taste it, keep it.
He’s going to… take some.”
She was starting to sweat and shake, and her eyes were darting around the room,
seeing what had been, instead of what was right this minute. She saw a pretty blue
bedroom while Mack saw the drying remains of a bloodbath. And she was not in the
victim’s thoughts at all… she was in his, and that was a dangerous place for her to be.
She needed a way out, and she needed it now. Mack reached out to grab her hands; she
was going in too deep. He knew the drill.
She pulled her hand away reflexively, and smiled almost sadly. “It used to be
more of a challenge, but now…now it’s just so easy.”
“Sam,” he said harshly. “Come on, Sam, snap out of it!”
"It’s so easy and no one will ever know. None of the dumb hick assholes here will
ever know…”
She was shaking violently now, anger and terror mixing, because she was still
Sam, mixed in with the thoughts of a monster, and she was terrified of the mind she was
inside. Mack grabbed her, gave her a quick shake.
She jerked, blinked slowly, and then started to breathe again. “Oh my God, Mack,
oh my God,” she whispered, and wanted so badly to sit down. “No... It can’t be….It isn’t
possible…”
He took her hand, hating to see what she was going through. He loved the kid like
his own… hell, she practically was his own. And right now, he wanted his hands on
whoever, or whatever had put that look in her eyes. “Sammie?”
"It was him,” she whispered, eyes wide with terror, and Mack stopped breathing
for a moment. “Oh, sweet Jesus, Mack, I don’t know how, but it was him.”
He stared at her, unable to think of the right words, any words, to say. Then he
moved, almost dragging her from the room, and out into the night air. As soon as they
were clear of the house and no one was watching, Sam sank to the ground and sat, putting
her head in her hands. He could hear her breathing, shallow and ragged, and he waited.
“I have my cooler in the car,” she said finally, and he knew what to do.
Within seconds it seemed, Sam had a bottle of ice cold water in her hand and a
cool cloth on the back of her neck. This type of thing didn’t happen too often, going in
that deep, but it had happened enough for her to know what to bring. Just in case.
“Sam?” He spoke quietly, easing himself down on the curb next to her. Her hands
were still shaking and she was taking measured sips of the water, closing her eyes each
time she swallowed. “Can you tell me what you meant back there?”
She looked at him with haunted eyes and he knew. He knew, had known the
second he saw the victim. But dammit, he had to hear her say it to make it real. And as
much as he hated himself for what it was costing her, he couldn’t change it.
“It was him. We thought he was dead, but…” She trailed off, smiled thinly,
humorlessly. “He wanted us to.”
“There’s no way, Sam. You and I both know that. That man is dead. I was there,
remember? I shot him, he drowned. End of story.” He sounded uncertain, though, and
Sam heard it.
“And you and I both know that they never found the body. The case was closed
then, wasn’t it? One serial killer dead, everything wrapped up nice and neat.”
He ran a hand through his short gray hair and sighed deeply, defeated. “Are you
sure?”
She nodded, tears glistening. “I’d know him anywhere Mack. Anytime, anywhere.
I know his mind. It still feels exactly the same. It still…”
She broke off and sighed. Mack turned his head for a moment, and when he
glanced back at her, he could see a single tear sliding down her cheek in the glow of the
streetlight. She’d lost a lot of dreams, he thought. A lot of who she had been, who she
was going to be. And in its place, she’d gained these… gifts… that seemed to cause more
hurt than healing.
1 comment:
I'm liking it so far.... a lot!
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