BOOKS BY BLAKE PIERCE

RILEY PAIGE MYSTERY SERIES

ONCE GONE (Book #1)

ONCE TAKEN (Book #2)

ONCE CRAVED (Book #3)

ONCE LURED (Book #4)

ONCE HUNTED (Book #5)

ONCE PINED (Book #6)

ONCE FORSAKEN (Book #7)

ONCE COLD (Book #8)

ONCE STALKED (Book #9)

ONCE LOST (Book #10)

ONCE BURIED (Book #11)

ONCE BOUND (Book #12)

MACKENZIE WHITE MYSTERY SERIES

BEFORE HE KILLS (Book #1)

BEFORE HE SEES (Book #2)

BEFORE HE COVETS (Book #3)

BEFORE HE TAKES (Book #4)

BEFORE HE NEEDS (Book #5)

BEFORE HE FEELS (Book #6)

BEFORE HE SINS (Book #7)

BEFORE HE HUNTS (Book #8)

AVERY BLACK MYSTERY SERIES

CAUSE TO KILL (Book #1)

CAUSE TO RUN (Book #2)

CAUSE TO HIDE (Book #3)

CAUSE TO FEAR (Book #4)

CAUSE TO SAVE (Book #5)

CAUSE TO DREAD (Book #6)

KERI LOCKE MYSTERY SERIES

A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)

A TRACE OF MUDER (Book #2)

A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)

A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)

A TRACE OF HOPE (Book #5)

PROLOGUE

For a man named Rosie, there was nothing delicate or pretty about him. Roosevelt “Rosie” Dobbs marched up to the front porch of Apartment 2B with his usual awkward gait – and had anyone been nearby, they might have heard him cursing under his breath, a string of obscenities that followed him like a shadow.

With a ham-sized fist, Rosie hammered on the door. With each strike, he saw the face of the man who lived in 2B. A pretentious prick named Alfred Lawnbrook – the type who always thought he was better than anyone even though he lived in a second-rate apartment in one of the worst parts of the city. He’d never paid his rent on time, always at least a week late for the two years he’d been living in the apartment. This time, three weeks had gone by. And Rosie was tired of it. If Lawnbrook didn’t have his rent by the end of the day, Rosie was going to kick him out.

It was Saturday, just after nine in the morning. Lawnbrook’s car was parked in its usual spot, so Rosie knew he was home. Still, despite the hammering, Al Lawnbrook did not answer the door.

Rosie gave one last violent slam against the door with his fist and then used his voice as well. “Lawnbrook, get your ass out here! And you best have your rent in your hand when you open the door.”

Rosie tried to be patient. He waited a full ten seconds before he called out again. “Lawnbrook!”

When there was still no answer, Rosie unhooked the huge ring of keys he carried on a carabiner on his hip. He thumbed expertly through them to the one labeled 2B. Without another warning, Rosie drove the key into the lock, turned the knob, and entered the apartment.

“Alfred Lawnbrook! It’s Rosie Dobbs, your landlord. You’re three weeks late and – ”

But Rosie knew right away that he was not going to get an answer. There was a stillness and quiet about the place that let him know that Lawnbrook wasn’t home.

No, that’s not quite it, Rosie thought. It’s something else…something feels off. Sort of stale and…well, wrong.

Rosie took a few steps further into the apartment, stopping when he came to the center of the living room.

That’s when he noticed the smell.

At first, it reminded him of potatoes that had gone bad. But there was something different about it, something more subtle.

“Lawnbrook?” he called out again, but this time there was a wave of fear in his voice.

Again, there was no answer…not that Rosie had been expecting one. He walked through the living room and peered into the kitchen, thinking maybe some food had been left out and started to spoil. But the kitchen was fairly clean and, because if its small size, it was evident that there was nothing amiss.

Call the cops, some wiser part of Rosie said. You know something is wrong here so call the cops and wash your hands of it.

But curiosity is a hell of a drug and Rosie was not able to turn away. He started down the hallway and some sick intuition cast his eyes directly toward the bedroom door. Several steps down the hallway, the smell evolved into something nastier and he knew right away what he was walking toward. But still, he could not stop now. He had to know…had to see.

Al Lawnbrook’s bedroom was in a mild state of disarray. A few items had been knocked from his nightstand: wallet, book, framed picture. The plastic blinds in the window sat slightly askew, the bottom folds bent.

And here, the smell was worse. It wasn’t overpowering, but it was certainly not something Rosie wanted to breathe in much longer.

The bed was empty and there was nothing to be seen in the space between the dresser and the wall. With a lump in his throat, Rosie turned to the closet. The door was closed and that was somehow worse than the smell. Still, his morbid curiosity pushed him and Rosie found himself heading to the closet. He reached out and touched the knob and for a moment he thought he could actually feel the terrible smell, sticky and warm.

Before he turned the knob, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He looked down to his feet, thinking his nerves were just wrecked and playing tricks on him. But no…he had seen something.

Two spiders came rushing out from under the door. They were both rather large, one the size of a quarter and the other so large it barely fit through the crack. Rosie jumped back in surprise with a little scream escaping his throat. The spiders scurried under the bed and when he turned to look at them, he saw a few spiders clinging to the bed as well. Most of them were small, but there was one the size of a postage stamp scurrying along the pillow.

Adrenaline pushed him on. Rosie grabbed the knob, turned it, and pulled it open.

He tried to scream but his lungs seemed paralyzed. Nothing more than a dry noise came from his throat as he slowly backed away from what he saw in the closet.

Alfred Lawnbrook was splayed out in the back corner of the closet. His body was pale and motionless.

It was also almost entirely covered in spiders.

There were several thick strands of web on him. One along his right arm was so thick that Rosie could not see his skin. Most of the spiders were small and seemed almost harmless, but, like the ones he’d seen so far, there were large ones mixed in as well. As Rosie stared in horror, a spider the size of a golf ball went parading across Lawnbrook’s forehead. Another smaller one scrambled up over his bottom lip.

That’s what broke Rosie out of his frozen state. He nearly tripped over his own feet as he went blazing out of the room, shrieking, swatting at the back of his neck, feeling as if there were millions of spiders crawling all over him.

CHAPTER ONE

Two months earlier…

As Avery Black opened one of the many boxes still scattered around her new home, she wondered why she had waited so long to move away from the city. She did not miss it at all and was actually starting to resent the fact that she had wasted so much time there.

She peeked inside the box, hoping to find her iPod. She had not labeled anything when she had left her Boston apartment. She’d hastily thrown everything into a series of boxes and moved out in the course of a day. That was three weeks ago and she still had yet to finish unpacking. In fact, her sheets were jumbled up somewhere in these boxes but she had elected to sleep on the couch for the last three weeks.

The current box did not contain her iPod, but it did hold the few bottles of liquor she had nearly forgotten about. She pulled a tumbler out of the box, filled it with a healthy dose of bourbon, and walked out onto the front porch. She squinted at the bright morning light and took a pull from her bourbon. After enjoying the burn of it, she took another. She then checked her watch and saw that it was barely after ten in the morning.

She shrugged and plopped down in the old rocking chair that had been on the porch when she’d brought the place. She looked out at her new surroundings and was warmly reassured that she could live out the rest of her life here quite comfortably.

The house wasn’t quite a cabin but had that sort of rustic feel to it. It was a simple one-story place with a modern interior. In terms of a mailing address, she was close to Walden Pond but just far enough off the beaten track to also be considered “in the middle of nowhere.” Her nearest neighbor was half a mile away and all she could see beyond her front porch and the rear kitchen window were trees.

No horns blaring. No busy pedestrians in a hurry while glaring at their phones. No traffic. No constant smell of gasoline and exhaust or the droning of engines.

She downed another gulp of her morning bourbon and listened to her surroundings. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Well, that wasn’t necessarily true. She could hear two birds calling back and forth and the slight creaking of the trees as a chilly late-fall breeze passed through.

She’d tried her best to get Rose to come out here with her. Her daughter had been through a lot and God only knew that staying in the city was not going to help her heal. But Rose had refused. Rose had actually vehemently refused. After the smoke of the last case had cleared, Rose had needed somewhere to place the blame for the death of her father. And, as usual, that blame had fallen at Avery’s feet.

As much as it hurt, Avery understood it; she would have behaved the same way if the roles had been reversed. During the move out into the woods, Rose had accused her of running away from her problems. And Avery had no qualms about admitting that. She’d come here to escape the memories of the last case – of the last several months of her life, if she was being totally honest.

They had come so close to recovering the relationship they’d once had. But when Rose’s father had died – as well as Ramirez, a man she had started to tolerate as her mother’s love interest – that had all come to a screeching halt. Rose fully blamed Avery for her father’s death, and Avery was slowly starting to blame herself, too.

Avery closed her eyes and finished off the tumbler of bourbon. She listened to the quiet sounds of the forest and let the warmth of the bourbon comfort her. She’d let similar warmth comfort her over the course of the last three weeks, getting drunk a handful of times, so much so one time that she blacked out for several hours. She’d spent that night hunched over a toilet and moaning over Ramirez and the future they had come so close to having.

Looking back on that, Avery was embarrassed. It made her want to swear off drinking for good. She’d never been a huge drinker but the last three weeks, liquor and wine had helped float her through.

Through to what, though? she wondered as she got up out of the rocking chair and headed back inside.

She eyed the bourbon, tempted to go ahead and obliterate herself by noon just to get through another day. But she knew that was cowardice. She had to get through this on her own, with a clear head. So she put the bourbon and the other liquor bottles up in a cabinet in the kitchen. She then went to the next box in her piles, still looking for the iPod.

A stack of photo albums sat at the top of the box. Because her mind had been on Rose while on the porch, Avery fished them out quickly. There were three in all, one of which was filled with pictures from her college days. She ignored this one completely and flipped open the second one.

Rose stared up at her right away. She was twelve, on a sled with her hat covered in snow. Underneath this picture, Rose was still twelve. In this one, she was painting what looked like a field of sunflowers on an easel in her old bedroom. Avery flipped through them all until about halfway through the book, she came to a picture that had been taken only three Christmases ago. Rose and Jack, Rose’s father, were dancing comically in front of a Christmas tree. They were both smiling to the point of giddiness. Jack’s Santa hat was crooked on his head and the ornaments gleamed in the background.

It was like a knife to the heart, piercing and twisting and turning. The need to cry came on like a bomb. She’d not felt the urge a single time since moving here, as she had gotten quite good at stifling such things over the course of her career. But it hit her then, out of nowhere, and before she could fight it off, her mouth opened and an agonized moan came out. She grabbed at her heart as if that imagined knife really was there, and sank to the floor.

She tried to get up, but her body seemed to revolt. No, it seemed to say. You’re going to allow yourself this moment and you’re going to cry. You’re going to weep. You’re going to grieve. And who knows? You might actually be better for it.

She clung to the photo album, pressing it against her chest. She cried hard, letting herself be vulnerable for just a moment. She hated that it felt so good to get it out, to let herself break down. She moaned and cried, saying nothing – not calling out to anyone, not questioning God or offering prayer. She simply grieved.

And it felt good. It damn near felt like an exorcism of sorts.