Don’t let the little heart in that graphic fool you into thinking this is going to be a romance book discussion today.
I just decided to publish another of my VELLA stories and put it into print. VINDICATION was the first serial murder/suspense book I ever penned back in the day when I wasn’t writing romantic fiction.
This one involves the abductions and mutilation murders of 13-year-old girls in the DC area. The SPCD – Sexual Predators of Children division – of the FBI is a group of profilers who study this type of killer and they’ve been given the case. When the team is stymied, they are forced to call in a retired member of the group to help out. What happens then is creepy, gruesome, and – I think – riveting.
Here’s a little taste, which is the opening scene….
Virginia; Ten years ago.
“How does it feel to know you’re dying, Agent O’Brien?”
The soft, dulcet sound of his oddly feminine voice sent a river of ice-cold sweat down her spine. The knife slash he’d slit across her neck pumped blood, like a fountain bubbling over, drenching her. Her father’s dead body was sprawled across the room, the officer assigned to protect them, slouched against the wall where he’d been struck down after answering the demanding knock at the door.
The only movement in the room was the killer’s as he wiped her blood from his hands with a single paper towel.
“Do you feel a calm, almost spiritual joy welling up inside you?” He squatted in front of her, shaved head cocked to one side as he regarded her through eyes devoid of compassion and filled with psychotic glee. “Can you feel death approaching? See any white lights? Is your mind even working with any rational thought right now?”
He rolled the gore-filled towel into a tight ball and stuffed it into his mouth, then swallowed it in one quaff, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the effort.
“Mustn’t leave any evidence behind, must we.” The maniacal grin she’d grown to despise skittered across his face.
Her gun lay, inert, just beyond reach where it dropped when he surprised them with the attack. She tried to crawl her fingers to it, but the sheer force of movement was exhausting. Sweat pumped from her forehead, drowning her eyes, clouding her vision.
Watching her efforts, a bemused expression furrowed his brow and twitched at his lips.
“Don’t bother,” he told her. “Even if you had the strength to pull the trigger, you’d miss. About now your reflexes have all frozen from shock. Your breathing is shallow and quick, your pulse rate thready, barely palpable. All your blood is pumping out of your neck, none of it getting to your organs. You’ll die in another minute or so. I know how this works, Agent O’Brien.”
His mouth broke into a full-toothed smile. “I’ve made death my life’s study. What a rush it is to see the actual life leave a body and know I’m responsible for it happening. It’s a feeling that has no equal. Not even the best sex of your life feels so good.”
The feral grin broadened. “Power. Ultimate and absolute power over life and death. And I have it.”
Her weakened palm pushed against the butt of the gun while he spoke, then across it to slide a finger along the trigger.
“Are you for real?” he asked, derision lacing the question.
She tried to blink the moisture from her vision so she could focus on the gun.
“You really think you’re going to die a hero, don’t you? That I’d let you? Go ahead, then.” He rose and stared down at her, hands on his skeletal hips, sophomoric defiance in his stance.
“Go ahead,” he repeated with a careless shrug. “Try to shoot me. You won’t be able to. You’re too weak to lift your gun, much less fire it. You’ll wind up shooting the ceiling if anything. Guaranteed you won’t hit me.” He folded his arms across his chest and smirked. “I’ve got nothing else to do but watch you and wait for you to die, so just try and shoot me.”
She flicked her parched tongue over lips that tasted of metal and was fueled by the flavor.
“Okay.”
The word was almost inaudible as it croaked from her. With every ounce of life left, she leaned forward and, in one fluid motion, managed to grab the gun, raise it, point, and pull the trigger.
A shocked expression exploded on his face. Eyes bulging from their sockets, mouth paralyzed into a silent moue of amazement, the bullet shattered into his brow, dead center, freezing his astonishment in place, leaving a burning hole smoking with the heat of the bullet. A millisecond later his body fell straight backward, his head banging on the concrete floor, dead.
The gun bounced from her grasp as her hand banged back to the floor.
“I never miss,” she whispered. A volcanic coughing spasm spewed blood from her nose and mouth. Glancing over at her father, a solitary tear escaped from her eye and drizzled down her temple, while a screech of sirens blared in the distance.
Unable to keep her eyes open any longer, the world in front of her went black.
I don’t have a publication date yet, but it’s gonna be soon. I’ll keep you posted.
Peggy Jaeger, Author 