Kindle Edition
Amazon
Amazon
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Boson
Pages: 219
Copyright: August 1, 2014
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Cassie Reynold goes full bore chasing a serial killer set loose in New Orleans.
Cassie Reynold is psychic and struggling to build some kind of life. When she begins training as a government assassin, the assignment puts her in the middle of a series of murders in New Orleans. It also puts her in contact with Kurt Dupond, a seasoned Homicide Investigator with more to offer than advice. Now Cassie must decide how to live and perhaps just as important, how to kill.
A series of brutal murders in New Orleans sets Cassie on a collision course with a serial killer. It's her first assignment on a murder case, part of the initial training that sets her on a path toward becoming a government assassin. Along the way she meets Kurt Dupond, the Homicide Investigator tasked with finding the "Artist". When sparks start to fly between Cassie and Dupond, she must cast off the pain of the past while dealing with the pain, and promise, of the present.
Book Three of the Remote Series see Cassie Reynold begin a new life with remnants of the past still clinging to her psyche. Moving forward won't be easy. Living in the past isn't possible.
Excerpt
Dull light seeped through the window, casting a four paned imprint on the floor. A coffee table, magazines lined neatly along the edge, centered a small living room. A woman’s coat lay limp on an easy chair. The single shelf in the room contained an Archie Manning bobble head, a stack of ticket stubs, three small crystal figurines of ballerinas perched on their toes, frozen in time and movement. An outdated poster on the wall behind the sofa advertised a Boston concert in Los Angeles three years back.
The front door was solid oak, painted and repainted repeatedly, layers of time readable in the cracks and thickened over the hinges. It was a solid door, comfortable and reassuring, and the lock was a piece of crap. A credit card, slipped between the knob and the frame, gave the Artist entrance in less time than a key would have taken. He slipped in, shutting the door behind him. He was wearing tennis shoes and worn jeans, the left front pocket stuffed with a short piece of rope, the back with a flattened roll of duct tape. He moved immediately into the kitchen, made his selection from a rack of knives set in a wooden block, pulled a length of duct tape off the roll, then another, sticking them on the wall behind the door. The rope went on the floor beneath. Moving back into the small living room, he checked his watch. Time was short. He took his place next to the door, removing a pair of leather gloves from the right front pocket of his jeans, slipping them over sweaty hands. Waiting.
This was his second attempt at creation, as he thought of it. The first had not gone well. He was a victim of his own impulsiveness. The girl was quick, faster than he imagined. When she entered the room, he was waiting in the middle, too far from the door. She caught the movement as he came toward her and turned back, yelling as she went. He followed. When his hand went around her mouth, she bit down hard, drawing blood. He still carried a ring of scars, curved lines on his upper palm just below his forefinger. The yelling never stopped. She managed to slip his grasp, starting a mad scramble back out the front. He panicked, went out the rear, and disappeared into the neighborhood.
Later, in his own apartment, he bathed his hand in hydrogen peroxide, wrapping it in gauze. He could never wear the gauze in public of course. The hand stayed in his pocket for most of the next week as he slipped from class to class in a throng of students. Brooding over his failure he considered stopping right there. He couldn’t though, and eventually he resolved to do more planning, leave nothing to chance. Next time would be different. He wrote down a list of his mistakes, studied them, found solutions and burned the list in his bathroom, flushing the ashes down the toilet after committing them to memory. He was an academic after all. He could organize and plan. While he was planning, the need burned inside.
This time it would be better. He would be quick, his target less challenging. He chose his victim physically, selecting a small girl. Personality played into it. She was a shy thing he had seen in the halls between classes. Overpowering her would be easy. He followed her home on multiple afternoons, keeping his distance, watching as she made her way through the neighborhood of wood framed houses. Most of them had been two story family homes, built in the late 40’s as returning soldiers lobbied for housing to start their families. As the nearby college grew, the homes split into apartments, upper and lower. The population now was mostly students with a spattering of older remaining residents. Old growth trees, planted when the place was young and thriving with families, spread their branches over doors and driveways and offered concealment if he needed it.
The location was good. He parked a block away, next to a bar on Elysian Fields. He could walk there in two minutes, be completely out of the area in five. The rope came from the storage room in his dormitory and did not belong to him. The duct tape came from a construction project he passed on his way to school. He picked it up and walked away. Even the clothes he wore made him blend in. Every college student in the world wore sneakers, jeans and t-shirts. On his walk over to the apartment, he passed several people on the street, a man working on a sewer duct, a young mother with a stroller. None gave him a second glance. He was just another young man with casual clothes and slightly long hair.
He stood behind the door and burned, listening to the old house creak around him. The people in the apartment above, a young couple, left early in the morning, returning after dark. The girl had her last class at four in the afternoon and walked home immediately afterward. Her routine never varied in the week he watched. The hand on his watch crept along. Somewhere on the street, a child yelled. Steps on the wooden stair came to his ears. He took a step back, closer to the swinging hinges of the door.
Jill Chaisson, a third year Fine Arts major, daughter of an insurance salesman, opened the door to her apartment for the last time in her life, her head down as she removed the key from the lock that wouldn’t have slowed down a determined child. The Artist stepped forward, already swinging. His open hand crashed down on the back of her head as she swung the door shut. Her forehead hit the painted oak, the impact dropping her to the floor. She groaned, rolling on her side. The Artist kicked her in the stomach once, then again. Rope already in his hands he pulled her arms behind her back in one quick motion, made two wraps, knotting them securely. The tape went over her mouth. The Artist closed the still open door.
Chaisson, stunned, managed to reach her knees. The Artist shoved her with his foot and she face planted on the hardwood floor. The point of the knife placed at her throat subdued her. He dragged her into a back bedroom by one leg, picked her up and threw her on the bed. She was light, unresisting, whimpering. Eyes wide, she watched the Artist tape her legs to the bedposts. Spread and helpless, he cut her clothes off with the knife from her own kitchen.
An hour later The Artist left through the front door, hands in his pockets. He took his time, ambling down the driveway to the sidewalk, just another student headed off to home or leaving after a visit to his girlfriend. He whistled as he walked, a nice touch. Why not? The game was beginning. He had just pulled off the first act of the play. Traffic was getting heavier, rush hour in full swing. The light was fading when he reached his car. He got in, checked his side mirror, and pulled out into traffic carefully. There was sense risking anything now, no sense risking such a great mood on the best day of his life. The last day for Jill Chaisson.
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