Mind Games (Kaely Quinn Profiler Book #1) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Nancy Mehl

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172 pages

English

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Kaely Quinn's talents as an FBI behavior analyst are impossible to ignore, no matter how unorthodox her methods. But when a reporter outs her as the daughter of an infamous serial killer, she's demoted to field agent and transferred to St. Louis.When the same reporter who ruined her career claims to have received an anonymous poem predicting a string of murders, ending with Kaely's, the reporter's ulterior motives bring his claim into question. But when a body is found that fits the poem's predictions, the threat is undeniable, and the FBI sends Special Agent Noah Hunter to St. Louis. Initially resentful of the assignment, Noah is surprised at how quickly his respect for Kaely grows, despite her oddities. But with a brazen serial killer who breaks all the normal patterns on the loose, Noah and Kaely are tested to their limits to catch the murderer before anyone else--including Kaely herself--is killed.

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	04 décembre 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781493416066
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0461€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Cover
Books by Nancy Mehl
F INDING S ANCTUARY
Gathering Shadows
Deadly Echoes
Rising Darkness
R OAD TO K INGDOM
Inescapable
Unbreakable
Unforeseeable
D EFENDERS OF J USTICE
Fatal Frost
Dark Deception
Blind Betrayal
K AELY Q UINN P ROFILER
Mind Games
Contents
Cover
Books by Nancy Mehl
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
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46
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Ads
Back Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2018 by Nancy Mehl
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-1606-6
Scripture quotations are from the Amplified® Bible, copyright © 2015 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Faceout Studio
Cover photo by Greg M. Herringer/Getty Images
Author is represented by The Steve Laube Agency.
Dedication
To God
Thank you for being with me every step of the way. You are my heart, my soul, my life.
PROLOGUE
H e stood in the middle of his secret room, staring at walls covered with old newspaper clippings. The aroma of aging paper was like a powerful drug, sparking his hate. His fingers clenched and unclenched. Stories full of fear and death. Pictures of people before they became victims of a vile murderer who had ravaged the people of Des Moines twenty years earlier. Women smiling in driver’s license photos or family pictures, unaware that they were living on borrowed time. No hint of the horror awaiting them. And no clue that someday soon their pictures would be snapped again by police photographers pretending the carnage was routine. It never was.
He walked up to a picture of the monster who had finally been caged. Ed Oliphant. A husband, a father, a churchgoer. He had a lot in common with Dennis Rader, the infamous BTK Killer who had terrorized Wichita, Kansas, for so many years. But unlike Dennis, Ed never showed remorse for what he’d done. Of course, many experts dismissed Rader’s so-called repentance. They didn’t believe he was really sorry for his horrendous acts. He was only sorry he got caught. Unlike Rader, Ed hadn’t even bothered to acknowledge the families of his victims.
He pulled the picture of Ed off the wall and stared into his eyes. Eyes full of darkness and evil. He had fourteen official kills to his name. Many experts believed there were more than that. Of course, not all his victims were dead. Quite a few people still lived under the shadow of Ed Oliphant. He spit on Ed’s picture and stuck it back on the wall, wiping the extra spittle from his mouth on his pant leg.
The Raggedy Man. Serial killers shouldn’t be given nicknames. It only fueled their egos. It wasn’t until his seventh murder that investigators began to hear the same thing from friends and family of victims. That the victims had come in contact with a homeless man before they were killed. A young girl who saw Ed approach a woman whose body was found twenty-four hours later called him a “raggedy man.” Thus the moniker. He’d originally picked the guise of a homeless person because they were the invisible people. Most citizens liked to pretend they didn’t exist, so Ed was able to hide in plain sight. It was a cruel irony that those who actually noticed Ed—those who were kind—became his targets.
Once law enforcement started looking for someone under the guise of a homeless person, Ed changed his MO and began to dress as a police officer. He realized that the frightened citizens of Des Moines were now overly cautious of strangers but gravitated toward the police since they represented safety. Which, of course, Ed Oliphant did not. His plan worked beautifully and made his hunting easier. Even so, The Raggedy Man nickname stuck all the way through his reign of terror and his subsequent trial. Ed was finally stopped by an FBI profiler who narrowed down the search, even guessing that Ed was hiding as a LEO, giving authorities what they needed to finally catch him.
He moved a few steps to his right until he stood in front of a picture of the Oliphant family. Marcie, Ed’s wife. Submissive, quiet, kind. She’d insisted she had no idea her husband was a monster. He didn’t believe her. Their daughter, Jessica, also claimed to be unaware. He cursed at the thought. People who knew her portrayed her as a bright, inquisitive girl who excelled in school and made friends easily. How could she have been so clueless? She knew. She just didn’t say anything. She let people die.
He stared at her picture. An angelic face framed by curly auburn hair and wide guileless eyes. An incredible smile. But in later pictures, after the truth came out, the look in her dark eyes changed. Innocence had been replaced by shadows. Her smile was gone. The public assumed her childish bliss had been overcome by a determined wariness. He knew better. She was dealing with the weight of what she’d done. She could have stopped him. Lives could have been saved.
After the trial, Marcie took Jessica and her younger brother, Jason, to Nebraska. Eventually, Marcie remarried. He wondered how she could ever trust another man. Did she believe men like Ed were rare? He snorted. Most men had secrets, their families living on borrowed time until the truth came out. Human beings were full of deceit, their hearts scarred by selfishness and hatred. Pretending otherwise was naïve.
Much to her mother’s chagrin, after college, Jessica joined the FBI. Then she went to Quantico in Virginia and trained as a behavioral analyst—just like the man who’d been instrumental in capturing her father. Now Jessica was in St. Louis, driven away by the notoriety of her connection with an infamous serial killer. But the FBI didn’t dare dismiss her. They needed her. She had a rare talent. She chased after evil. Sought justice—as if such a thing actually existed. She seemed to believe her efforts could undo some of the damage her father had done, but Ed Oliphant and his daughter wouldn’t get away that easily.
No one could lessen the carnage he’d visited on the world, and Jessica could never erase the malevolent seeds that had been planted deep inside her heart. No one could live that close to wickedness without being affected. Without being aware of its existence. He was convinced Ed Oliphant’s iniquity was alive and flourishing in Jessica. He was certain her quest to dispel darkness was born from her desire to rid herself of guilt. But he had no intention of allowing her that kind of grace. Evil had to be eradicated.
He laughed quietly in the stillness. Jessica wasn’t quite as clever as she believed herself to be. He planned to challenge her. Destroy her self-righteous crusade to make things right. The sins of the father were going to be visited on his child. And he was the person delivering that judgment. He couldn’t trust God to do it. He and God had parted ways years ago. That door was closed forever.
He sat down at the rickety desk in the middle of the room and opened his notebook. It was all there. The plan, the way to implement it, and the keys to the destruction of Ed Oliphant’s daughter. The woman who now called herself Kaely Quinn.
He smiled to himself, a feeling of euphoria overtaking him. It was time. Let the mind games begin.
ONE
A s she poured the sparkling red claret into the serial killer’s glass, she wondered if it reminded him of blood. She pushed it toward him, but he ignored it. Kaely smiled. Just as she thought.
“You strangle your victims because you don’t like blood,” she said. “You took food from their refrigerators. You’re on a limited budget and saw a way to profit. But you only took cheese, fruit, vegetables, desserts, yogurt . . .” She tapped on the base of the wineglass. “You’re a vegetarian, but not vegan.”
She pulled the wineglass away and pushed another toward him. This time she filled it with white wine. He reached through the shadows and picked it up.
Kaely riffled through the pages of the file she’d brought with her. Then she leaned back and stared at the chair across from her. He was a white male. Between twenty-five and thirty-five. He worked a menial job. Was shy around people. Probably awkward. Yet he seemed to have a purpose. But what was it? All of his victims were different. A successful black male attorney, a poor Hispanic female artist, and a white male college student. It wasn’t something inherent about them, so whatever it was that drove him to punish them was something they did. He was angry with the people he killed, but he didn’t enjoy the act of killing. Didn’t feel good about it. Strangling them from behind meant he didn’t have to look them in the eyes. Afterward, he posed them, their arms folded across their chests. It was a sign of remorse.
“I’m confused,” she said. “There’s no connection between your victims. Different sexes. Different races. They don’t live near each other. You don’t seem to have a kill zone.”
“You’re confused?” he whispered. “That’s new for you.”
“Hush,”