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Xlibris US - Matthew McCain

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126 pages

English

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Description

“When a freak accident results in the escape of the serial killer known as ‘The Brainiac’, Detective Gail Beamer quickly realizes the only way to prevent a cascade of violence is to emerge from retirement and confront the only enemy she’s ever feared.

Sujets

Fiction

Informations

Publié par	Xlibris US
Date de parution	14 juin 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9798369400807
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

DEVILS PREY

Matthew McCain

Copyright © 2023 by Matthew McCain.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023911188
ISBN:
Hardcover
979-8-3694-0082-1
Softcover
979-8-3694-0081-4
eBook
979-8-3694-0080-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/12/2023

Edited by: Stephanie Brown
Author Photo by: Michael Triminio

Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com

853295

Contents
Chapter 1: Splintered Shadows
Chapter 2: The More Things Changed
Chapter 3: The More It Stays the Same
Chapter 4: A New Mourning
Chapter 5: Pure
Chapter 6: Arriving
Chapter 7: Past Memories
Chapter 8: Homecoming
Chapter 9: TimeCop1983
Chapter 10: First Night Out
Chapter 11: Dead Sun Rising
Chapter 12: If We Had Known
Chapter 13: Little Invitro
Chapter 14: Intruder
Chapter 15: Here in the Black
Chapter 16: Mercy
Chapter 17: My Last Day
Chapter 18: The Pain You Serve
Chapter 19: The End of Dragons
Chapter 20: Today

Afterword

For Ryan Messier—a friend I’ll forever cherish in this life and the next…

Chapter 1: Splintered Shadows
The long, rural highway was all but vacant as the freshly cleansed police cruiser continued on its four-hour ride from the beautiful, rustic village of Stowe, Vermont, to the harsh reality of Boston, Massachusetts. It wasn’t the first time that particular cruiser had made such a trip and all signs pointed to it not being the last. When the patrol car had left the Stowe District Courthouse, the late spring daylight occupied the sky. A sonorous, ocean blue consumed the sky, free of any clouds. However, thanks to an unusual amount of traffic, that bastion of sunshine was long gone by the time the vehicle crossed the New Hampshire border.
Behind the wheel, twenty-four-year-old Andrew Boilard procrastinated until the very last second before turning on the brand-new cruiser’s headlights, an ill attempt to convince himself it wasn’t dark enough out. However, by the time he made it to the halfway mark of the inelegant ride—somewhere south of Lebanon—he couldn’t deny it any longer. The rest of the ride would be adorned in twilight.
But it wasn’t the darkness that unnerved him. In fact, the night didn’t faze him in the slightest. It was the occupant in the backseat who gave him pause.
Officer Boilard’s decision to turn the headlights on illuminated the extended stretch of unobstructed highway before him. It also lit up the interior of the cruiser from the radio and display panels just behind the steering wheel. The ambient lighting was already as dim as it could be; the bright display from the dash constantly strained Officer Boilard’s night vision. But, despite the lights being on the faintest setting, he could still see the neon orange jumpsuit and the pair of eyes grimacing at him in the rearview mirror.
Directly behind the young officer, Dennis Roth sat handcuffed and motionless behind the metal mesh separating the driver and passenger seats, acting as an inadequate barrier. Wrapped in prison tattoos ranging in nature from the bodies of naked women to silhouettes of hanging bodies, along with the deep scar running along the right side of his face, Roth fit the stereotypical physical profile of a psychotic madman perfectly.
Having admired some of the most notorious killers in history—he was particularly drawn to the B.T.K Killer—Roth had decided to join that elite club of horrific boogeymen. Aside from his obsession with serial killers, though, little else was known about him.
He also had a taste for theatrics that gave him a leg up on the rest of his grotesque peers. Dennis Roth didn’t want just name recognition. He wanted to be the face of evil—or come as close to it as he could, at least.
And, sure enough, he got exactly what he wanted.
Glancing away from his rearview, Boilard’s heart fluttered with a fear that he tried to hide by clearing his throat, concentrating instead on the road and the relaxing week of vacation that would begin once he finished tonight’s shift.
To say the menacing look in Roth’s eyes was frightening would be an insult to the very definition of the word. It only got worse when Roth suddenly began smiling at him through the rearview mirror, a mocking gesture he’d displayed since his first court appearance.
The urge to reprimand the killer and scold him for making such a face was strong. Hell, he even began slowing down a bit, but he never came to a complete stop. Instead, the two exchanged several seconds of eye contact through the mirror; just enough time for Boilard to be incapable of swerving the cruiser away from the large deer standing in the middle of the highway—
At the speed the cruiser was going—65 to 70 mph—the majestic-looking deer didn’t stand a chance. A haze of pink mist spattered across the windshield as its body split in half from the impact, rolled across the front of the cruiser and fumbled back onto the highway.
Officer Boilard jammed on the brakes, sending both him and Roth forward so violently that Roth’s head was slammed against the metal mesh in front of him, creating a large laceration across his tattooed forehead.
Boilard panicked as he spun the cruiser wheel back and forth, hoping to get it under control and keep all four tires right side down—he figured he could blame the deer for all the damage.
He did everything he could to safely stop the vehicle but was unsuccessful. The deer had shattered the left headlight on impact, leaving only the passenger side illuminated, but it was enough to see the large cement guardrail coming at them dead on.
Boilard closed his eyes, tightened his grip on the wheel, and held on—
The cruiser struck the guardrail on the right side, allowing the front tire to gain what little traction it could and rumble up the cement before the weight of the rest of the vehicle overpowered it and tipped upside down, landing with a colossal thump as the windshield, mirrors and windows instantly shattered across the two-lane highway.
Silence followed the crash, leaving behind a soothing, almost peaceful calmness that was typical of a spring evening in the great north woods of New England.
A couple yards behind the cruiser, the deer moaned and flapped about as blood gushed from where the lower half of its body used to be. That the animal was still alive was nothing short of a miracle—a short-lived one as, following a pitiful moan of pain, it lost its skirmish to stay alive.
Officer Boilard slowly lifted his head and wiped the blood sopping from his left cheek, then managed to turn on the hazard lights. Their steady click, click, click was the only noise inside the flipped-over police car. The large moon hanging overhead managed to light the rural highway and surrounding woods with a baby blue hue but did little to provide much else for the interior of the vehicle.
Despite the hazards blinking and the single remaining headlight flickering off and on, the dashboard inside the cruiser was dark. Through the haze that plagued his mind in those first few seconds, Boilard managed to spot the large cracks on both the touch screen and the mounted laptop in the epicenter of the dashboard.
The strap of leather that was the seatbelt prevented Boilard from falling head-first onto the roof. The gap between his head and the roof was extraordinarily narrow but enough for the officer to move his head and spot the latch to open the door. He reached for it with his left arm, only to feel a sharp pain, hinting at a possible fracture. It sure felt like it, anyway.
With the pain too much for his left hand, Officer Boilard ignored the noises coming from the backseat and gently pushed open the driver’s side door with his right. He was hell-bent on getting himself right side up any way he could. Once he managed to get the door open, he unbuckled himself, landing on his wounded left arm with a painful thump.
A deep grunt erupted from him, mimicking the sound he made the last time his Kevlar vest took a bullet. Still, through the hurt and blood dripping into his left eye, Officer Boilard kept his head on straight—so to speak. He took hold of the radio attached to his police uniform and used it moments before spotting a set of headlights coming toward them.
“This is Officer Andrew Boilard. I need paramedics out on Highway 89, about four miles south of exit 7.” The pain in his voice was obvious, but he powered through until he heard the acknowledgment on the other end of the radio. “Thank you.”
When he finished with the radio, Officer Boilard focused on the headlights coming from the opposite direction. The vehicle appeared to be slowing down.
A chill