Page 1

Chapter

One

The dumpster smelled awful.

It wasn't that she was surprised, it was just that she had a bit of a weak stomach and a strong gag reflex, and the smell of garbage was one thing that always set her off.

Thankfully, the sight of dead bodies and the smell of blood and decaying flesh wasn't something that made her want to throw up. If it did, she would be pretty ineffectual as a homicide cop.

Detective Florence Harris opened her mouth and tried to breathe through it to eliminate some of the stench as she put her hands on the rim of the dumpster and boosted herself up.

It must have been fairly recently emptied because there were about a dozen bags of trash scattered across the bottom, maybe enough to fill it a quarter full.

But enough bags to cover a body if one was in there.

This particular killer she was hunting liked to leave his victims in dumpsters after he’d strangled them and left his particular calling card behind.

Over the course of the last eighteen months, he’d killed over a dozen young women between the ages of twenty and thirty.

All were beautiful, all had long hair—although he didn't appear to have a preference in color, he’d killed blondes, brunettes, and redheads—all were Caucasian, and all had longer than usual eyelashes.

It was an odd detail, but one she had found to be true with every single one of the fourteen victims.

Each woman had been missing for forty-eight hours, and while Florence wasn't sure exactly what that meant, it was obviously important to the killer that he keep them alive for two days before killing them.

All the women lived alone, although some were involved with someone and others were single, all were killed in their own homes, their bodies dumped in random dumpsters around Manhattan.

Only Florence was positive that the dumps weren't actually random.

There had to be a pattern, she just hadn't managed to figure out what it was yet.

She would though.

She’d find the pattern and then she’d find this killer. Just like she found every other killer in every other case she worked.

Her job was the most important thing she had in her life.

Well, besides her older brother, but since she left the small town where they had grown up to move to New York City, she didn't see him much anymore.

They talked probably once a week and texted daily unless she was consumed by a case she was working, which happened more often than it should.

Florence had friends, she was close with her partner and his wife, and there were several women from her gym that she would catch up with for the occasional coffee at a café or night out at a club, but she took her job seriously, and she gave it every ounce of herself that she could.

While she had never once regretted her decision to get out of River’s End—too much had happened there and the place was full of bad memories everywhere she turned—sometimes life in the city got to her.

She felt like a mouse stuck in a wheel, constantly running in circles.

Hunting one killer after another after another, letting the darkness that had infected her when she was a little girl seep further and further into her soul until she wasn't sure anymore whether she could ever extricate it.

With a sigh, she pushed away thoughts of her depressing childhood before they could consume her.

That was a rabbit hole well worth avoiding going down.

Unlike Alice, she wouldn’t end up in a Wonderland full of singing flowers, grinning cats, talking rabbits, and crazy queens, she’d end up in a place full of pain and fear and heartbreak.

A place that she couldn’t just wake up and walk out of because for her, it wasn't a dream, it was the reality of a messed up childhood worthy of a book or a movie.

Swinging a leg up and over the side of the dumpster, Florence gingerly lowered herself down. If there was a body in here, she didn't want to stand on it and compromise any evidence the killer had left behind.

Not that he ever left any forensic evidence behind.

After killing his victims and leaving his calling card on their body, he very carefully washed them down in their own bathrooms. Washing away any fingerprints or DNA he might have accidentally left on their bodies, he then wrapped them in a tarp, drove them to a dumpster somewhere in the city, and tossed them away like garbage.

But they weren't garbage.

They were human beings who had parents, siblings, friends, people who loved them, and who were grieving them. They had jobs, pets, and hobbies. They had lives. Lives that had been cut short by someone with a complex about himself that he felt the need to take out on others.

The Dumpster Killer—as he’d been dubbed by the press—was escalating. There had been just under four months between his first and second kill, but now that time had diminished to only eight days between the last two victims.

Four days had passed now since victim number fourteen had been discovered in a dumpster on the Upper East Side, and Florence knew that any day now, victim number fifteen would be discovered.

Already the killer might have chosen his next victim and have her holed up in her apartment, doing whatever he did to her in those missing forty-eight hours.

He didn't rape his victims, that much they knew, so what did he do with them for two days?

Her booty covered shoes stepped carefully on the bags of trash as her gloved hands lifted each bag, both hoping and dreading that she might find the body of a beautiful young woman whose life had been cut short.

One after the other, she moved each of the garbage bags to search underneath them, but her search turned up empty. There was no tarp-covered body lying in here. Frustrated, Florence groaned, this was the second dumpster she’d tried tonight, and the second time she’d come up empty.

Not that she was giving up.

It was only nine-thirty, she’d drive around the city, checking random dumpsters, trying out some of the patterns she’d come up with to see if any of them played out, until midnight, then head home for a long, hot shower and a few hours sleep.

Not wanting to waste any more time in the dumpster than she had to, and seriously worried that her traitorous stomach might turn on her and have her throwing up the pizza she’d eaten for dinner, she hefted herself up and out of the dumpster, wishing not for the first time that she was taller than her five feet two so it wasn't so difficult.

Once she was back on the ground, she hurried a few steps away, wanting to put a bit of distance between herself and the atrocious stench while she bent down to pull off the booties she’d put on over her boots.

Then she pulled off the gloves and the Tyvek suit.

She’d bought a stash of both to use for dumpster diving so that if the killer had messed up—which sooner or later he would, they all did—no defense attorney could claim she had contaminated the scene.

She wore the protective outfit every time she went to check dumpsters—something she’d done a lot since they realized they were dealing with a serial killer.

A couple of times she’d been spotted and had to pull out her badge to explain she wasn't a criminal disposing of evidence but a cop looking for evidence.

Today though, it was cold, and it had snowed earlier, and there weren't a lot of people about. The alley she was in was opposite a couple of large office buildings, the lights of which were all out as everyone had gone home hours ago.

Rolling up her used protective clothing, she tossed it into the very same dumpster she’d just checked then headed up the short alley to the street where she had parked her car.

An icy wind had picked up, and it seemed to slice right through her jeans, sweater, and coat, making her skin break out in a mass of goosebumps as though she wasn't wearing any clothes at all.

She was just at the end of the alley when she noticed something white on the ground. Wondering what it was, Florence bent to pick it up, only to find that it was one of the gloves she’d just removed. It must have stuck to her clothing and not gotten rolled up and tossed away with everything else.

Annoyed that she’d have to backtrack to the dumpster, her stomach was already churning in protest, she was just about to straighten when the headlights of a car suddenly illuminated her.

An engine revved.

Tires squealed.

And Florence realized a moment too late that the car was coming straight for her.

9:36 P.M.

He paced his office feeling a little like a caged lion.

Someone had once likened him to a lion, an ex-girlfriend who wasn't happy that he’d broken things off. She’d accused him of being ruthless, powerful, accustomed to being top of the food chain, and then alternately lazy, letting the woman he was involved with do all the work in the relationship.

Was he ruthless?

He could be when the occasion called for it.

Powerful?

Yes. When you ran one of the world’s wealthiest real estate companies, you were used to people asking how high when you told them to jump.

Accustomed to getting his own way?

As the younger son of a wealthy and older couple, he had been spoiled rotten. His brother was the one being groomed to take over the business, he hadn't had that pressure to live up to, and had relished the role of carefree kid who had the world at his fingertips.

Was he lazy when it came to relationships?

No.

Well, not really.

He wouldn’t call it lazy, he’d call it bored.

As a rich, powerful, sexy, charming—with a healthy ego—thirty-year-old man, he had women falling at his feet. He liked women—liked sex more—but he was growing tired of women who were only interested in him because of his wealth and what they could imagine themselves doing with it.

Eli Lennox had found himself wanting more out of life.