Blake Pierce

Blake Pierce is author of the bestselling RILEY PAGE mystery series, which includes thirteen books (and counting). Blake Pierce is also the author of the MACKENZIE WHITE mystery series, comprising nine books (and counting); of the AVERY BLACK mystery series, comprising six books; of the KERI LOCKE mystery series, comprising five books; of the MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE mystery series, comprising three books (and counting); of the KATE WISE mystery series, comprising two books (and counting); and of the CHLOE FINE psychological suspense mystery, comprising two books (and counting).

An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Blake loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.blakepierceauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.

Copyright © 2018 by Blake Pierce. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Artem Oleshko, used under license from Shutterstock.com.

BOOKS BY BLAKE PIERCE

CHLOE FINE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE MYSTERY

NEXT DOOR (Book #1)

A NEIGHBOR’S LIE (Book #2)

KATE WISE MYSTERY SERIES

IF SHE KNEW (Book #1)

THE MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE SERIES

WATCHING (Book #1)

WAITING (Book #2)

LURING (Book #3)

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)

ONCE TRAPPED (Book #13)

ONCE DORMANT (book #14)

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)

BEFORE HE PREYS (Book #9)

BEFORE HE LONGS (Book #10)

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 MURDER (Book #2)

A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)

A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)

A TRACE OF HOPE (Book #5)

PROLOGUE

At first, Janet Davis was aware of nothing except the terrible pain that rattled through her skull like a thousand castanets playing out of time.

Her eyes were closed. When she tried to open them, she was blinded by glaring white light, and she had to shut them again.

The light felt hot on her face.

Where am I? she wondered.

Where was I before … before this happened?

Then it began to come back to her …

She’d been out taking pictures in the marshes near Lady Bird Johnson Park. It was too late in the summer for the millions of daffodils there to be blooming, but the dogwood leaves were a beautiful deep green, especially around sunset.

She’d been standing in the marina photographing the shadowy boats and the beautiful play of the sunset on the water when she’d heard footsteps swiftly approaching her from behind. Before she could even turn to look, she’d felt a sharp crack on the back of her head, and the camera had flown out of her hands, and …

I lost consciousness, I guess.

But where was she now?

She was too dazed to feel really afraid yet. But she knew that fear would kick in soon.

Slowly she became aware that she was lying flat on her back on some hard surface.

She couldn’t move her arms or legs. Her hands and feet felt numb from tight restraints around her wrists and ankles.

But the weirdest sensation was of fingers all over her face, smearing something soft and moist on her hot skin.

She managed to croak out a few words.

“Where am I? What are you doing?”

When no reply came, she twisted her head, trying to escape the annoying movement of the gooey fingertips.

She heard a male voice whisper …

“Hold still.”

She had no intention of holding still. She kept twisting until the fingers moved away.

She heard a noisy, disapproving sigh. Then the light shifted so it wasn’t shining directly on her face anymore.

“Open your eyes,” the voice said.

She did so.

Gleaming in front of her was the sharp blade of a butcher knife. The tip of the knife came nearer and nearer to her face, making her eyes cross so that she saw the blade double.

Janet gasped, and the voice whispered again …

“Hold still.”

She froze, facing directly upward, but a spasm of terror surged through her body.

The voice hissed a command again.

“Still, I said.”

She willed her body to be still. Her eyes were open, but the light was painfully bright and hot, and she couldn’t see anything clearly.

The knife went away, and the fingers resumed smearing, this time around her lips. She gritted her teeth, and she could actually hear them grinding together with terrible pressure.

“Almost through,” the voice said.

Despite the heat, Janet was starting to shiver all over from fear.

The fingers began pressing around her eyes now, and she had to shut them again to keep whatever the man was smearing from getting into them.

Then the fingers moved away from her face, and she could open her eyes again. Now she could make out the silhouette of a grotesquely shaped head moving around in the blazing light.

She felt a terrified sob burst out of her throat.

“Let me go,” she said. “Please let me go.”

The man said nothing. She felt him fumbling around her left arm right now, strapping something elastic around her bicep, then tightening it painfully.

Janet’s panic rose, and she tried not to imagine what was about to happen.

“No,” she said. “Don’t.”

She felt a finger probing around the crook of her arm, then the piercing pain of a needle entering an artery.

Janet let out a shriek of horror and despair.

Then, as she felt the needle leave, a strange transformation came over her.

Her scream suddenly turned into …

Laughter!

She was laughing riotously, uncontrollably, filled with a crazed euphoria she’d never experienced before.

She felt positively invincible now, and infinitely strong and powerful.

But when she tried again to free herself from the bonds around her wrists and ankles, they wouldn’t budge.

Her laughter turned into a surge of wild fury.

“Let me go,” she hissed. “Let me go, or I swear to God, I’ll kill you!”

The man let out a whispering chuckle.

Then he tilted the metal shade of the lamp so that its light blazed on his face.

It was the face of a clown, painted white with huge, bizarre eyes and lips drawn with black and red.

Janet’s breath froze in her lungs.

The man smiled, his teeth a dull yellow in contrast to the rest of his brightly colored face.

He said to her …

“They’re going to leave you behind.”

Janet wanted to ask …

Who?

Who are you talking about?

And who are you?

Why are you doing this to me?

But she couldn’t even breathe now.

The knife flashed in front of her face again. Then the man teased its sharp tip lightly across her cheek, down the side of her face, and then across her throat. Just the slightest bit of pressure, and Janet knew that the knife would draw blood.

Her breath started to come again, first in shallow gasps, then in huge gulps of air.

She knew she was starting to hyperventilate, but she couldn’t bring her breathing under control. She could feel her heart pounding inside her chest, could feel and hear its violent pulse between her ears growing faster and louder.

She wondered …

What was in that needle?

Whatever it was, its effects were coming on stronger by the second. She couldn’t escape what was going on in her own body.

As he kept stroking her face with the knife tip, he murmured …

“They’re going to leave you behind.”

She managed to gasp out …

“Who? Who’s going to leave me behind?”

“You know who,” he said.

Janet realized she was losing control of her thoughts. She was flooded with mindless anxiety and panic, mad feelings of persecution and victimhood.

Who does he mean?

Images of friends and family members and coworkers passed through her head.

But their familiar, friendly smiles turned to sneers of contempt and hatred.

Everybody, she thought.

Everybody is doing this to me.

Every person I’ve ever known.

Again, she felt a burst of anger.

I should have known better than to ever trust a single soul.

Worse, she felt as if her skin was literally starting to move.

No, something was crawling all over her skin.

Insects! she thought.

Thousands of them!

She struggled against her restraints.

“Swat them off me!” she begged the man. “Kill them!”

The man chuckled as he kept staring down at her through his grotesque makeup.

He made no offer to help.

He knows something, Janet thought.

He knows something I don’t know.

Then as the crawling continued, it dawned on her …

The insects …

They’re not crawling on my skin.

They’re crawling under it!

Her breathing came harder and faster, and her lungs burned as if she’d been running for a long distance. Her heart pounded even more painfully.

Her head was exploding with a host of violent emotions—fury, fear, disgust, panic, and sheer bafflement.

Had the man injected thousands, perhaps millions, of insects into her bloodstream?

How was that even possible?

In a voice that shook with both anger and self-pity, she asked …

“Why do you hate me?”

The man chuckled louder this time.

He said, “Everybody hates you.”

Janet was having trouble seeing now. Her vision wasn’t getting blurry. Instead, the scene in front of her seemed to be twitching and bouncing and jumping. She imagined she could hear her eyeballs rattling around in their sockets.

So when she saw another clown’s face, she thought she was seeing double.

But she quickly realized …

This face is different.

It was painted with the same colors, but with somewhat different shapes.

It isn’t him.

Under the paint lay familiar features.

Then it dawned her …

Me. That’s me.

The man was holding a mirror up to her face. The hideously garish face she saw was her own.

The sight of that twisted, tearful, yet mocking countenance filled her with a loathing she’d never known before.

He’s right, she thought.

Everybody hates me.

And I’m my own worst enemy.

As if sharing her disgust, the creatures under her skin scurried all about like cockroaches suddenly exposed to sunlight but with nowhere to run and hide.

The man set the mirror aside and began to stroke her face with the knife point again.

He said yet again …

“They’re going to leave you behind.”

As the knife passed over her throat, it occurred to her …

If he cuts me the insects can escape.

Of course the blade would also kill her. But that seemed a small price to pay to be free of the insects and this terror.

She hissed …

“Do it. Do it now.”

Suddenly, the air was filled with ugly and distorted laughter, as if a thousand clowns were noisily gloating in her plight.

The laughter propelled her heart to pound still harder and faster. Janet knew her heart couldn’t possibly take much more of this.

And she didn’t want it to.

She wanted it to stop as soon as possible.

She found herself trying to count the beats …

One, two … three, four, five … six …

But the beats were coming both faster and less regularly.

She wondered—which was going to explode first, her heart or her brain?

Then finally she heard her very last heartbeat, and the world dissolved.