Deadly Lies
DEADLY DIES
CYNTHIA EDEN
NEW YORK
BOSTON
This one is for you, Joan.
Thanks for loving suspense stories and for being a great friend!
I want to thank my wonderful editor, Alex Logan, for her insight and support. Thanks for believing in my SSD characters and
giving me the opportunity to write my Deadly books.
For my friends—oh, so many friends who have helped me! Thanks to Manda for talking shop with me. Thanks to Joan for pushing
me. Thanks to Ashley for always “getting” me. Thanks to Saundra for inspiring me. Thanks to Dr. Laura P. for advising me (and
for being one of my best supporters!). Ladies, I couldn’t have done it without you.
For my husband Nick—thanks for understanding that when I disappear into my own mind, well, I’m not ignoring you. Really. And
when you have to say the same thing over and over again to me, it’s not because I’m not listening to you. The characters that
are talking to me are just louder right then, so I hear them better.
For my son Jack, my future writer, keep dreaming, love, and keep coming up with your stories. Dream on!
I
thought you’d be worth more.” The voice came to him, low and taunting. “After all of your blustering and bullshit, I really
thought you’d be worth
more
.”
Jeremy Briar jerked in the chair, but there was nowhere for him to go. His hands were bound to the armrests, the duct tape
far too tight, cutting into his wrists, and his legs were taped to the legs of the chair. A blindfold covered his eyes, casting
him in darkness, and the scent of cigarettes burned his nose.
“L-let me go…” His voice rasped out. They hadn’t given him anything to drink or to eat in, Christ, how many hours? “M-my family…
th-they’ll pay any-anything….”
Just to get me back.
Laughter. Dark and mean. “No, they won’t pay a fucking dime.”
The ice in his chest froze his heart. “No!” The tape bit into him. “M-my father, I told you, he is—”
“An idiot.” The voice was still low, drifting through the
darkness. “I gave him instructions, but the thing is, Jeremy boy, the asshole just couldn’t follow them.”
Bile rose in his throat. “N-no…”
“Not like I asked for that much. Just four million for you. Four damn million.” The shuffle of footsteps. More than one set.
Someone else was here.
“The bastard has that much in change.” Anger simmered in that tense whisper.
Jeremy licked his lips and knew that the voice was right. His father owned half the city. He had that much money in the bank,
easy.
What the fuck?
Jeremy’s mouth was so dry. He’d screamed and he’d screamed before, but no one had come for him.
No one had helped him.
“Your father thinks it’s a joke.” Jeremy flinched when he felt a touch on his shoulder. Sharp. Light.
Fingernail?
The point pressed into his flesh.
Jesus.
A knife.
A whimper broke from his lips. “L-let me talk to him…. I’ll make him see—”
No fucking joke. That blade was too
real.
“
I
told him what to do,” the whisper blew against his ear, and Jeremy shuddered. “Told him when to make the drop. Told him where
to put the money. Told him
everything
, and if he’d just followed my instructions, you would’ve been home by now.”
The blade sliced into his shoulder.
Jeremy pissed his pants. “
Pl-please…”
“Rich boy, is this the first time you’ve begged?”
His head jerked in a nod. He knew tears streamed from beneath the blindfold. He couldn’t stop them. Fear ate at his gut, and
he knew, he
knew
that his father had left him to die.
Always disappointing me, boy. Not going to dig your ass out of another mess. You’re on your own.
Those had been the last words that his father spoke to him. So he’d screwed up and gotten busted with pot. Did he deserve
this?
Don’t let me die.
“Beg some more.” The blade sank into his shoulder.
And Jeremy begged. Begged and pleaded and promised
anything
because he wanted the fire in his shoulder to ease. He wanted the pain to stop. He wanted to go home.
Bad dream. Just a bad dream. I’ll wake up, I’ll—
The knife pulled from his flesh with a thick
slush
of sound. Jeremy cried out, sagging back, but the blade followed him. The tip grazed over his jaw, traveled up his cheek,
and then slipped right under the edge of the blindfold.
“You’re going to send your old man a message for me.”
Hope shot through him.
Yes, yes!
If he could just talk to his dad, he could make him understand. Not a joke. Hell, no. His dad would
understand.
The bastards would get their money, and Jeremy would be free. “I’ll tell him
anything;
I’ll say—”
The blade sliced the blindfold away.
He blinked against the flood of light. So bright.
“You don’t have to say a damn thing.”
The voice, not a whisper anymore, stopped his heart.
The man crouched over him with the weapon. Jeremy could see the others, too, as they came forward into the light.
Jeremy shook his head. “Don’t—”
The knife sank into his upper arm. It sliced down, and the bastard wrenched the blade, cutting through flesh
and muscle in one long stroke as he opened the arm from shoulder to wrist.
Jeremy screamed.
“Let’s send him a message.” The figure moved around him and stared down with a smile that twisted his lips and never touched
his eyes. “Let’s see what the asshole has to say when he finds what’s left of you.”
One
F
BI Special Agent Samantha Kennedy had seen hell. She’d looked into the devil’s eyes and heard his laughter. She’d died, but
fate had brought her back.
Fate wouldn’t be letting Jeremy Briar come back.
Taking a deep breath, tasting decay and blood, Samantha stared at the body laying spread-eagle on the asphalt right in front
of the big, black wrought-iron gates.
Jeremy’s eyes were open. They had to be. Some asshole had cut off his eyelids. His body was sliced open, each arm cut from
shoulder to wrist. A red smile split his throat and his stomach—
She yanked her gaze away.
Don’t think. Don’t feel.
Sam spun away from poor dead Jeremy and nearly stumbled right into her boss, Keith Hyde.
His eyes weren’t on the body. They were on her. “You up for this?” he asked as his dark gaze searched her face. His deep voice
seemed to echo around her, and goose bumps rose on her arms.
Sam knew that he was waiting for her to fail. They
were
all
waiting. All the other agents in her unit. None of them thought that she could do the job anymore.
Maybe I can’t.
Sam swallowed. She belonged to the Serial Services Division, an elite unit in the FBI that most agents would gladly sell their
souls to join. A team specifically designed to track and apprehend serials. The SSD had nearly unlimited resources. And Hyde
answered to no one.
His team. His domain.
And she was the freaking weak link.
“I’m up for anything.” Her voice came out soft, and she’d meant to sound hard. Christ. The guy was looking at her like she’d
shatter any minute. Hadn’t she already proved to him over the last six months that she wasn’t going to fall apart? What did
he want from her?
The sunlight seemed to darken the rich coffee cream of his skin. His mouth tightened, and she knew that he didn’t believe
her.
What else was new?
“I’ve gotten the all-clear.” Okay, her voice came stronger now because she was pissed. A dead body waited behind her, and
Hyde was wasting time grilling her.
“I know the shrinks said you could work the cases.” His arms crossed over his chest. Beside them, a uniform bent over and
retched into the bushes. Great. So much for the preservation of the crime scene. Hyde’s gaze measured her as he continued,
“But working them and
surviving
them are two different things.”
He’s waiting for me to break.
“Don’t worry about me.” Sam jerked her thumb over her shoulder even as she felt a trickle of sweat slide between her shoulder
blades. “Worry about that poor man’s fam
ily.” The scent of death clogged her nostrils.
Move.
Oh, she wanted to get away. Wanted to run.
But she knew it wasn’t possible to run from death. Death could follow a person anywhere. He followed her even in her dreams.
“He fits the established pattern,” Sam said as she noticed that the crime scene guys were there, finally. Sam eased away,
with Hyde shadowing her steps, as the techs came through to start working on the body.
Hurry.
Because she knew the poor man’s parents were inside. She’d seen the shift of the curtains, and she knew they were peeking
out, staring at the remains of their son and blaming themselves.
“Jeremy Briar,” she murmured, “Twenty-two years old, the only son of Kathleen and Morgan Briar. Jeremy was last seen three
days ago, in a dive right outside of the university, a place called The Core.” And then he’d just vanished.
“His father got the ransom call,” Hyde said, voice cool. “Twenty-four hours after Jeremy went missing.”
Samantha didn’t look back at the body. Bodies had never been her strong suit. She preferred to stay in the office and track
her prey on the Net. But it wasn’t about staying safe anymore. Now, she had to prove she
could
handle the job. The shrink in charge of her case had understood when Sam explained that she didn’t want to hide behind a
desk. So thanks to him, she was out here, shaking apart on the inside and realizing that Jeremy wasn’t that much younger than
she was.
Your age doesn’t matter, not when death comes calling.
“Why didn’t the father pay?” Sam asked and shielded
her eyes as she turned to look back up at the house. Freaking huge. Four houses could fit inside that one. The guy would’ve
had the money to ransom his son.
“Seems Jeremy got in trouble with the law a few times, and he had a history of run-ins with bookies.” Hyde paused, then said,
“Mr. Briar thought his son was trying to scam him.”
Oh, damn. The father hadn’t believed the call, and Jeremy had paid. “Do you think the vic went fast?” The question came out
before she could bite it back. But she knew what it was like when a sadistic freak took his time with you and made you beg
for death. “W-were most of the injuries postmortem?”
“No.” His answer was immediate.
Her eyes fell closed, just for a moment.
“I don’t want you working this case, Kennedy,” Hyde’s words snapped out.
Her eyes flew back open. “Sir, I can—”
But his dark stare glinted. “I don’t want you in the field, and I don’t really give a shit what the prick in psych said.”
He closed in on her. “
You’re not ready.
You think I can’t see you shaking?”