Books by Lisa Black
Every Kind of Wicked
Let Justice Descend
Suffer the Children
Perish
Unpunished
That Darkness
Close to the Bone
The Price of Innocence
Blunt Impact
Defensive Wounds
Trail of Blood
Evidence of Murder
Takeover
Every Kind of Wicked
LISA BLACK
KENSINGTON BOOKS
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Also by Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Epigraph 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 Acknowledgments About the Author
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2020 by Lisa Black
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.
Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2020935637
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2238-6
First Kensington Hardcover Edition: September 2020
ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2240-9 (ebook)
ISBN-10: 1-4967-2240-X (ebook)
For my brothers, John and Michael
Everything big brothers should be.
“They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.”
—Romans 1:29
Chapter 1
Friday, 8 a. m.
“Well, that’s less than helpful,” Maggie said of the snow.
The white flakes drifted lazily downward, landing on the frozen grass, the bare limbs of the large trees, the bloodstains sprinkled across the worn stones and the very stiff body of a young man who had not dressed well for the weather. Yet exposure hadn’t killed him—he had been dead long before his body froze.
From the deep red stain blossoming from the center of his chest, Maggie Gardiner assumed a gunshot—or shots—had been the likely cause of death. Something had penetrated his internal systems to leak his lifeblood out across his white shirt and over the stones beneath him, which marked, coincidentally, a grave. But Maggie didn’t say so; declaring cause of death was a pathologist’s job and she worked as a forensic specialist. Her job would be to find the evidence around said death in order to help her colleagues at the police department determine who had walked away from this boy’s last encounter.
Which would be more difficult to do with each passing moment as the snow slowly covered up the body, the blood, and all her evidence.
She had arrived at the scene immediately before the assigned detectives, and now felt them standing on either side of her, Jack Renner to her right and Thomas Riley to her left. Renner, tall, only a bit dark and not so handsome, and his partner, distinctly shorter but lighter in both coloring and personality.