Colton Copycat Killer (The Coltons of Texas, 1, Band 1879) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 12: The Coltons of Texas

Ferrarella, Marie

 
9780373279708: Colton Copycat Killer (The Coltons of Texas, 1, Band 1879)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0373279701 ISBN 13: 9780373279708
Verlag: Harlequin Romantic Suspense, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

USA TODAY bestselling author Marie Ferrarella starts off the new Coltons of Texas series with a bang—and a serial killer at large. 

Just moments away from marrying a woman he doesn't love, police detective Sam Colton discovers his bride brutally murdered. The only shocking clue: the MO matches another notorious killer—Sam's long-imprisoned father. A copycat? The victim's sister was the last to see her alive—and heard arguing with her. Sam would bet his life that shy, impossibly sexy librarian Zoe Robison had nothing to do with the murder. But when he learns what the argument was about, the former foster kid's heart hardens. Yet as Zoe is targeted by a madman, Sam discovers just how far he'll go to save her.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA ® Award-winning author has written more than two hundred books for Harlequin Books and Silhouette Books, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

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Zoe didn't remember screaming.

Didn't remember pursing her lips or emitting the loud, piercing sound less than a heartbeat after she'd opened the door.

Didn't remember crossing over the threshold into the room, or bending over Celia, who was lying faceup on the floor.

The exquisite wedding dress her sister had taken such all-consuming delight in finding was now ruined. There were two glaring gunshot holes in her chest and her blood had soaked into the delicate white appliqué, all but drenching it. The pattern beneath it was completely obliterated.

The whole scene, which was whizzing by and moving in painfully slow motion at the same time, seemed totally surreal to Zoe, like some sort of an ill-conceived, macabre scene being played out from an old-fashioned B-grade horror movie about a rampaging slasher.

And if the dreadfulness of all this wasn't enough, someone—the killer?—had gone on to draw a bizarre red bull's-eye on Celia's forehead. There was a single dot inside the circle, just off center, and whoever had drawn it had used some sort of a laundry marker, so the bull's-eye stood out even more than it normally might have.

This can't be real, it just can't be real.

The desperate thought throbbed over and over again in Zoe's head. She'd just left Celia, what, a couple of minutes ago? Five minutes, tops?

How could all this have happened in such a short period of time?

Who could have done this to her sister?

Why hadn't she heard the gunshots when they were fired?

And for God's sake, what was that awful noise she was hearing now?

Zoe tried to see where it was coming from, but for some reason, she just couldn't seem to turn her head.

She couldn't even move.

The noise was surrounding her. It sounded like wailing, or, more specifically, like keening. It approximated the sound that was heard when someone's heart was breaking.

Zoe had no idea the noise she was attempting to place was coming from her.

* * *

"You realize this is probably going to be the happiest day of your life, you lucky son of a gun." The declaration, uttered by one of the men waiting to be ushered down an aisle and into a pew, was directed at the bridegroom. "It's all downhill from here," the older man chuckled.

Detective Sam Colton kept the half smile he had been sporting for the past half hour pasted on his handsome, tanned face and merely nodded.

Words were not his strong suit and he couldn't think of anything to say in response to that, other than the fact that if this was to be the happiest day of his life, it certainly didn't put the bar up very high.

And as for it being "downhill from here," well, he already knew that.

He was marrying Celia Robison, who some of the other detectives on the force had made very clear they regarded as being quite an eyeful, as well as a number of other cliched descriptions.

None of that had entered into the reason why he was standing here, waiting for everyone to take their seats so the ceremony could begin. Waiting for all this to be over with.

He was marrying the woman for one reason and one reason only.

She was having his kid and he'd vowed a long time ago that if he ever did happen to have any kids—most likely by accident, which this was—he was sure as hell going to be there for him or her. He wanted this kid's upbringing to be completely unlike his own. His childhood had involved his father killing his mother and then his siblings and him being scattered to the winds.

More specifically, they had all been sent off to different foster homes, but they might as well have been scattered to the winds for all the time they'd managed to spend together during all those awful, soul-scarring years.

No matter what it took, his kid wasn't going to go through that, wasn't going to feel abandoned, alone and ashamed because no one wanted him or her. If he had to marry Celia for that to happen, well, so be it. He'd managed to survive all this time—and had gotten as far as he had—by learning to roll with the punches. He'd roll with this one, too.

And in the end—

Sam's head jerked up as everything within him went on high alert the second he heard it.

Part of his response was due to his police training, the rest had evolved based on pure survival instincts. The latter had been necessary in order to live through some of the foster home stays he'd been forced to endure.

"Did you hear something?" Ethan, one of his brothers—they had pretty much managed to find one another and reunite in these past few years—asked him.

By now, Sam had broken into a run and ran past him without responding.

"I'll take that as a yes," Ethan said, answering his own question and hurrying after Sam.

Once they reached the hall, it was obvious the sound was coming from the bridal room. It grew louder and more jarring the closer they got.

"It's bad luck to see the bride before the wedding," Ethan called after Sam. It wasn't meant to stop his brother. Ethan was just stating a point of fact.

The next moment, as he came to a skidding halt behind Sam and took in the scene Sam was viewing, he muttered under his breath, "And this has got to qualify as the worst possible kind of luck a groom ever encountered."

For an excruciating, shattering moment, Sam froze several steps away from Zoe. At first, he wasn't even aware she was the one screaming.

He couldn't take his eyes off Celia.

It wasn't a sense of loss that was echoing through every fiber of his being. It was shock. Complete, total and utter shock, swaddled in disbelief. The shock was not tied to the fact that Celia was dead, but to the symbol he was looking at on her forehead.

He knew that symbol.

He recognized it from both photographs he'd seen originating from crime scenes, and from the nightmares that had haunted his earlier dreams.

That was the symbol his father, the infamous serial killer, Matthew Colton, used to draw on the foreheads of his victims.

But those victims were all men of a certain size and age who reminded Matthew of his older, far more successful brother, Big J. It had been Matthew's way of doing away, by proxy, with a man whom he hated with every fiber of his being and whom he blamed for everything that had gone wrong in his life.

Matthew killed men, not women. The thought echoed over and over in Sam's head. And while Matthew had killed his wife when she stumbled across his heinous secret, he hadn't made a practice of killing young women in their twenties. If nothing else, it would have come to light by now if he had.

Besides, Matthew Colton had been behind bars for twenty years. He couldn't have killed Celia.

Then who had?

This didn't make any sense.

The detective in Sam wanted to focus exclusively on the murder—Celia was clearly already dead—of the woman whom he would have married in ten minutes. The human side of him that was struggling to resurface after being buried for more than twenty years felt obligated to offer some sort of comfort to Celia's sister.

Zoe looked as if she was bordering on going into shock—if she wasn't already there.

"Zoe—" Sam began, then fell silent, at a loss as to what to say next.

But he didn't have to talk. The moment he said her name, she turned toward him. He saw the tears flowing from her eyes and the stricken look on her face just before she collapsed into his arms.

He barely caught her in time.

Sam held on to her...

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Verlag
Harlequin Romantic Suspense
Erscheinungsdatum
2016
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0373279701
ISBN 13 
9780373279708
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
288
Kontakt zum Hersteller
HarperCollins
https://harpercollins.co.uk

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Verlag: HarperCollins Publishers, 2015
Softcover