Touch of Red (Volume 12) (Tracers, Band 12) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Laura Griffin is the New York Times bestselling author of the Tracers series, the Wolfe Sec series, the Alpha Crew series, the Texas Murder Files series, and several other novels, including Last Seen Alone. A two-time RITA Award winner and the recipient of the Daphne du Maurier Award, Laura lives in Austin. Visit her at LauraGriffin.com, and on Facebook at Facebook.com/LauraGriffinAuthor.

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Touch of Red

CHAPTER 1

It was like any other Wednesday night. Until it wasn’t.

Samantha Bonner had just finished sweeping up. She’d emptied the dustpan and sanitized the sink and wiped down the pastry case. The burned smell of coffee beans hung thick in the air, overpowering the vinegar solution she’d run through the machines. But it was quiet. She stood for a moment and let the silence surround her, glad to be free of the acoustic-guitar music that had been looping through her head all day.

Sam grabbed her purse and locked up. Crossing the rain-slicked parking lot to her car, she darted a look into all the dark corners. It was a safe neighborhood, but you never knew.

She pulled out of the lot, relieved to be on her way home after pulling a double shift. Raindrops pitter-pattered on her windshield as she made her way through downtown. She switched the wipers to low, and her phone lit up with an incoming call. Amy.

Sam stared down at the phone a moment. Then she put the call on speaker.

“Sam? Can you talk?” Amy sounded undone. More than usual.

“What’s up?”

“It’s Jared. He wants to move back in.”

“He called you?”

“He came by to drop off Aiden. I didn’t let him in or anything.”

Sam didn’t respond as she pulled up to a stoplight. In most areas, Amy wasn’t a pushover. But her two-year-old boy missed his daddy, and his daddy knew it. He used the kid as leverage.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Amy said now. “And I just want to talk through it, figure out what I’m going to tell him. Can you come over for a bit? I can make us some coffee.”

The mere thought of coffee made Sam want to retch. “Sure,” she said anyway. Amy was sniffling now, and Sam didn’t have the heart to say no.

“Or we could talk on the phone,” Amy said. “You’re probably busy. Tonight’s your night off, isn’t it?”

“No, I closed up.”

Sam slowed for a bend in the road. Stately oak trees and manicured lawns soon gave way to weeds and chain-link fences. Then came the railroad tracks. White-collar to blue in less than a mile. The people in Sam’s neighborhood commuted to work at all hours and didn’t stop for lattes on the way.

“I’ll be over in a little.” Sam turned onto her street. “Give me twenty minutes.”

“Are you sure?” Another sniffle.

“I’m sure.” Sam pulled into her driveway and rolled to a stop in the glow of her back-porch light.

“Thanks, Sam. I mean it. I just need to hash this out. I mean, what if he’s legit this time? I owe it to Aiden to at least think about it.”

Sam kept her skepticism to herself. For now. She slid from her car and noticed the white bike propped against her back deck as she walked up the driveway.

“Sam? You there?”

“I’m here.”

She mounted the steps and spotted a blur of movement. Pain exploded at the base of her skull.

Sam dropped to her knees and pitched forward. A big arm wrapped around her neck, hauling her back. The smell of tobacco registered in her brain, filling her with bone-deep fear as the arm clamped around her windpipe.

“Sam?” Amy’s voice was far away.

Pain roared through Sam’s skull. She struggled to move, to breathe. A glove-covered hand tipped her head back, exposing her neck.

No.

Sam clawed at the arm, trying desperately to buck, to kick, to scream for help. No, no, no! From the corner of her eye, she spied her phone on the ground. She tried to call out but the cries died in her throat.

“Sam, are you there?”

Fear became panic as she saw the glint of a blade.

“Samantha?”

• • •

Brooke Porter beat the detectives, which surprised her. But then again, she’d made good time. When the message had come in coded 911, she’d dropped what she was doing and rushed straight over.

She parked beside a police unit and grabbed her evidence kit from the trunk as she surveyed the location. It was a small bungalow, like every other house on the block. In contrast to its neighbors, this home had a fresh coat of paint and looked to be in decent repair. Potted chrysanthemums lined the front stoop, where a uniformed officer stood taking shelter from the cold drizzle.

Brooke darted up the sidewalk and ducked under the overhang. The officer was big. Huge. Brooke had met him before, but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember his name.

“Jasper Miller,” he provided, handing her a clipboard. “Your photographer just got here.”

So, he knew she was with the Delphi Center. The San Marcos Police Department typically called Brooke’s lab in to help with their big cases.

Brooke scribbled her name into the scene log. “You the first responder?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded at the driveway. “Victim’s around back. Looks like she was coming home from someplace, and he surprised her at the door.”

Brooke eyed the little white Kia parked in the driveway. She wanted to see things for herself and draw her own conclusions.

“Medical examiner’s people got here about five minutes ago,” Jasper added.

“And the detectives?”

“On their way.”

She handed back the clipboard. “Thanks.”

Brooke picked her way across the stepping-stones in the grass, trying not to mar anything useful—although the rain had already done a pretty good job of that. At the top of the driveway several uniforms stood under a blue Delphi Center tent that had been erected beside the back porch.

Brooke’s stomach tightened with nerves as she lifted the crime-scene tape and walked up the drive. She noted the chain-link fence, the thick shrubbery, the trash cans tucked against the one-car garage. Plenty of places for someone to hide.

A camera flashed as she reached the tent. The Delphi Center photographer had already set up lights and started documenting the scene. Brooke unloaded some supplies from her kit. She zipped into coveralls and pulled booties over her shoes, then tugged on thick purple gloves as the uniforms looked on silently.

Beat cops thought she was an oddity. She showed up at death scenes with her tweezers and her flashlights and her big orange goggles. She plucked bits of evidence from obscure places and then scuttled back to the lab to do her thing . . . whatever that was.

The detectives got her. Well, maybe not totally. But they’d at least learned to appreciate what she could do for them. Which ones had been assigned to this case? And where the hell were they?

Brooke pulled her long dark hair into a ponytail. She picked up her evidence kit and sucked in a deep breath to brace herself before ducking under the tent to take her first look.

Blood was everywhere.

“Holy God,” she murmured.

A woman lay crumpled at the back door, her neck slashed open to the bone. Her hair, her clothes, even the wooden decking beneath her, were saturated. Dark rivulets had dripped down the stairs and were now coagulating in little pools on the lower slats.

“Watch...