Color Blind (A Dr. Jenna Ramey Novel, Band 1) - Softcover

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Colby Marshall is a member of International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime. She is especially qualified to write about synesthesia, as she has this rare condition.

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For David,
a deep, rich navy blue

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Prologue

Isaac Keaton shifted the scope of his M16 from the five-year-old tripping on his own shoelaces to a forty-year-old guy ten paces to the side of the boy outside the Futureland Chow Station. Kid might grow up to be stupid and pathetic like the man Isaac was about to gun down, but hell, he might’ve spared the next great. Kid might grow up to be just like Isaac, hoping and praying someone would take out his parents with two quick shots. Isaac laughed.

Idiots, all of them. Treat kids like they need to be protected from these kinds of valuable experiences. Teach ’em tolerance, make sure they know it’s okay to cry. Media screamed for a national campaign to stop school bullying after those two kids lit up that high school in Colorado. Parents freaked out about what kind of music their teens listened to, whether or not a trench coat hung in someone’s closet. Morons didn’t realize that if those two kids hadn’t shot up the school and then themselves, they’d have had a lot worse on their hands a couple decades later.

They’d have had someone like him.

The guy in Isaac’s crosshairs licked at his ice cream cone, which dripped over his grubby fingers. Maybe coincidence. Could be fate. Either way, this dude happened to be sitting right in Isaac’s line of vision under the cable that carried the little fairy from the top castle turret over the park of wide-eyed, middle-class imbeciles every night. He glanced at his stopwatch. Thirty seconds. Twenty. Ten.

Time to fly.

He squeezed off round one, and a hundred faces pinched and looked in his direction. He watched the ice cream guy slam away from him into the bench he was sitting on.

No time to think. Anyone obviously over thirty equals goner. The grayer the head, the easier the mark. He took down three more: a tall, slim black woman in faded jeans, dude with a lip ring, fat Indian chick. The crowd ran in different directions, some into each other, others ducking. Then they all scattered, screamed. Isaac’s head was quiet. His scope slipped over two kids, up to the dad holding one’s hand, urging the kid to run. Bang.

The dad dropped. Isaac coursed over the crowd. Old Asian man, brunette with a fanny pack. A ginger-haired theme park worker yelling into his walkie-talkie. One by fucking one.

When he had fewer fresh targets than people he’d already hit, he finally heard them coming. He laid the M16 on the ground, turned around to face them, hands in the air. They wouldn’t understand, of course. Give them time.

“Freeze!” the lead cop yelled, gun trained on Isaac’s chest. Guy had probably never shot a man in his life.

Isaac ducked his head. “Don’t shoot!”

His hands were twisted behind his back, his face pressed into the floor. He had the right to remain silent . . .

But he didn’t want to remain silent. These half-wits had no idea.

The fun was just beginning.

“Dad! Have you seen my keys?”

Jenna Ramey turned over couch cushions, squatted to look under the baby’s playpen. “Dad!”

Her father appeared in the hallway, holding Ayana on his hip. Jenna’s towheaded daughter held her pacifier in one hand and Jenna’s ring of keys in the other. In her thirty years of life before her daughter, Jenna had never once lost her keys. Now they found their way out of her purse daily.

“Whoever thought to make giant key rings into toys, I’d like to see,” Vern said.

Jenna smiled and pecked her father’s cheek. “Ayana, can Mommy have those?”

Her little girl plugged her paci in her mouth but stretched the keys toward Jenna.

“Thank you, miss,” Jenna said, and she kissed Ayana’s forehead. Then, to her father, “I’ll be back in a few hours, I hope. Don’t know the damage yet.”

“Must be bad if they’re calling in a bigwig like you.”

Jenna pressed her middle finger against her thumb and flicked her dad in the arm. “I was an FBI profiler, Dad. I can detect sarcasm.”

“Go get ’em, El Tigre.”

•   •   •

The sun shined in Jenna’s eyes the whole drive to the Orlando Police Department. Her duct tape job held the visor on but didn’t allow her to fold the thing down. So helpful.

While en route, she’d talked to Supervisory Special Agent Hank Ellis, the man she’d reported to and worked with every day back when she was with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.

“Let me get this straight, Hank. You guys caught a serial killer operating in mid-Florida this morning, and now you’re inviting me in? No offense, but what for?”

“Oh, boy,” Hank replied, his frustration seeping through. “Thought they’d told you more when they called you from the OPD. Shit.”

“Hank, I’d love to rant with you about the incompetent lackey who called me, but I’d rather know what I’m walking into.”

“Right. You’re right. I apologize. Yes, we caught a serial, but not one only operating in Florida. They’ve been up and down the East Coast. You already know about them.”

“Them?” Jenna couldn’t hold in her surprise. “You can’t mean what I think you mean.”

She pulled into the OPD parking lot.

“Yep,” Hank said. “The Gemini. But we only caught one of the pair, and he says he’ll only talk to you.”

Officer Mel Nelson met Jenna at the door and led her through the halls toward the interrogation room. “So cool to meet you in person, Dr. Ramey. Heard all about you, of course.”

If only her reputation wouldn’t precede her quite so fast. “Thanks. Catch me up, will you? I know next to nothing.”

Hank had told her enough, but getting it from different sides helped. Someone might throw in a crucial detail.

Nelson straightened, seemed to shake off the starstruck. His short steps quickened, stocky frame moving faster to impress. “Right. Suspect apprehended at the top of the castle. Had already put down his weapon, hands up. The gun was an M16, standard. Twenty dead, seven more wounded. Suspect is Isaac Keaton of Norton, Virginia. Still trying to run backgrounds, but not much on the guy. Asked for you almost right off, didn’t say why. They said you were coming with the BAU. I thought you weren’t with the BAU anymore. Thought you were in a private practice now.”

Typical. Someone reads about you in a textbook, they think you’re as good as best friends, or at least next-door neighbors.

“I’m not,” Jenna said. “And I am.”

They’d come to a closed door, which Nelson put his hand to. “You gonna do that color thing on him?”

Grapheme-color synesthesia—Jenna’s ticket to the spotlight for better or for worse. Since she could remember, she’d associated everything—letters, days, numbers, people—with colors.

“It doesn’t work like that,” she said and nodded toward the door.

Nelson twisted the handle. Inside, the man standing in front of the one-way window turned to them.

“Detective Arnold Richards, this is Dr. Jenna Ramey,” Nelson said.

The hulking bald figure stretched out his palm. “Dr. Ramey. Good of you to come. BAU team is in the air. They’ll be here within the hour, but we thought it best to bring you...