Marked for Revenge
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Delores Fossen
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Chapter One
Deputy Ava Lawson looked down at the dead woman and saw her own face. Not merely a resemblance.
But literally the image of Ava’s own face.
Using a photograph of her printed on thin cloth, the killer had molded it to the dead woman.
Ava couldn’t stop the slam of emotion and she had to fight just to be able to breathe. Had to fight to stay steady, too, because this kind of stress wouldn’t be good for the baby she was carrying. She was in her fifth month, which meant she wasn’t at high risk for a miscarriage but she couldn’t take the chance of doing harm to this child.
Even though someone else might want exactly that.
Because if she was the target, then so was her precious baby.
“You okay, Ava?” she heard her boss, Sheriff Theo Sheldon, ask in a murmur. He was standing next to her, taking in the crime scene as she was.
“I’m fine,” Ava managed to rasp, both of them knowing it was a lie.
She ran her hand over her stomach and shoved aside the buzzing in her ears. Ava tried to focus on doing her job. Right now, that job included looking for whatever she could find to get some justice for the dead woman.
And the two other dead women who’d come before this one.
Women who’d all been strangled and left posed in the woods around Silver Creek, Texas, Ava’s adopted hometown. A town that relied on its sheriff and deputies to protect it from a killer. Right now, law enforcement was failing at that big-time because women were dying.
Ava swept her gaze around the thick cluster of underbrush and trees. It was spring and everything was in bloom. Wildflowers, trees and the shrubs. It was also still cool enough that she wasn’t sweating. Not yet anyway.
Thanks to the spotlights the county CSIs had already set up, she didn’t have any trouble taking in the scene despite it being night. Since the site was a good two miles from town, this wasn’t exactly on the beaten path, but she could see the drag marks that led from the old ranch trail about ten yards away. If the Silver Creek Sheriff’s Office hadn’t gotten an anonymous 9-1-1 call to tell them the location of the body, the dead woman might never have been found. But, of course, the killer had wanted them to know.
Had wanted Ava to know.
He’d wanted her to see that image of herself and get the slam of sick dread that came with the realization she was the reason this was happening. And, worse, that she was no closer to stopping this from happening all over again.
Since the first body had turned up three months earlier, Ava, Theo and the other deputies had put in plenty of extra hours at the office. Plenty. They had pored through every crime scene report of the dead women and followed every lead. Ava had also studied all the files of anyone she’d ever arrested, investigated or confronted. Anyone who had popped up on her radar as conceivably connected to a crime.
Because Silver Creek wasn’t that big of a town, the number of files and possible persons of interest wasn’t exactly staggering, but she had been a deputy for six years now and, before that, a San Antonio cop for eight. Fourteen years in law enforcement meant she’d had ample opportunity to make enemies and rile people, but so far Ava hadn’t been able to connect anyone to what was happening now.
The two other victims had been left with the masks of Ava’s face, but there were no other reports of similar crimes in the state. That didn’t mean there weren’t other murders, though, since the killer could have only started using the masks with these particular victims.
Theo’s phone dinged with a text and he muttered some profanity when he read it. “The mayor’s heard about the latest murder and he’s called in the Texas Rangers.”
Ava’s head whipped up, her gaze zooming straight to Theo’s because she had a bad feeling about this.
“He’s called Harley,” Theo clarified, showing her the text from the Ranger himself.
Sorry but I’ve been assigned to your investigation. Will be there soon.
“Good grief,” Ava murmured. She didn’t need this on top of everything else.
Texas Ranger Harley Ryland. A blast from the past. Both a good and bad one. When she’d been at San Antonio PD, she’d worked with Harley. And had later had a relationship with him, one that had continued as an on-again, off-again kind of deal until five months ago when the off had become permanent.
Things hadn’t exactly ended well between them either. Not with Harley being the main reason her scumbag father wasn’t in jail. Then, the very day Harley had cleared her dad’s name, she’d learned she was pregnant with Harley’s child. A child she loved and would raise despite the Texas Ranger being the father. Despite, too, Harley insisting that he would take an active part in parenting the child.
Figuring out how to co-parent with him wouldn’t be easy. Ditto for having to work with him again. Along with the tension of being her ex, Harley knew all her past sins and secrets. All of them. It was hard to be around someone who had that kind of intimate knowledge about her.
“This is number three,” Theo said, drawing her attention back to him—and to the body. “If it’s the same guy and not a copycat, we’ve got a serial killer.”
Yes, three was the magic number when it came to earning that particular label. And Ava knew this wasn’t a copycat. So did Theo. They hadn’t released the specific details of the killer covering the women chin-to-feet with black garbage bags or the cloth photo death masks, and this one appeared to be identical to the other two.
Being careful where she stepped, Ava went closer to watch as the CSI lifted the photo mask from the dead woman’s face. Theo cursed again, and Ava knew why. It was because they recognized her.
Monica Howell.
She was a hairdresser at the Sassy Curls Salon just off Main Street. Midthirties, divorced, no kids. But Monica did have parents who lived on a nearby ranch. They were good people and what could be called pillars of the community.
“She wasn’t reported missing?” the CSI, Veronica Reyes, asked, looking up at Ava and Theo.
Ava shook her head. If a woman had gone missing anywhere in the tricounty area, the Silver Creek Sheriff’s Office would have gotten an alert the moment the report had been filed. That meant Monica’s folks, friends and employer hadn’t known she’d been taken. That fit, too, with the killer’s MO.
The killer didn’t keep his victims long. Definitely not long enough to raise any serious red flags about them being missing. From what Theo and she had been able to piece together in the investigation, the other two victims had died less than an hour after they’d last been seen.
“Monica’s wearing her work clothes,” Theo pointed out when Veronica eased back the black plastic bags from the torso of the body. She was, indeed, since all the salon workers wore powder-blue tops with their names stitched on a breast pocket. “Maybe that means she was grabbed when she was leaving the salon.”
“Maybe,” Ava agreed, and she mentally went through the handful of businesses in town that had security cameras. None were anywhere near the salon, but that didn’t mean the killer’s image hadn’t been captured.
Obviously, Theo was on the same page as she was. “I’ll have the security camera checked from the traffic light on Main Street,” Theo said, stepping away no doubt to call whichever deputy was in the office at this hour. “We might get lucky.”
Monica certainly hadn’t gotten lucky. She’d been brutalized, murdered and then posed here like garbage. Swallowing hard, fighting back the bile rising in her throat, Ava forced herself to steady when she saw the truck pull to a stop behind the CSIs.
Oh, mercy.
What the heck was he doing here? It was Waylon McClintock, the mayor of Silver Creek, and often a thorn in the side of the sheriff’s office. Since Waylon was at the crime scene, Ava figured some thorniness was about to start.
Waylon wasn’t alone. Ava silently cursed when she spotted the lanky dark-haired man get out of the passenger’s side of Waylon’s truck.
Harley.
The CSI lights glinted off the Texas Ranger badge pinned to his shirt as he walked toward her. He was all cowboy cop down to the jeans, cream-colored Stetson and cowboy boots. He was even wearing the traditional crisscross double belt holster that some Rangers favored. It made him look like an Old West gunslinger ready to draw down on the bad guys.
“Deputy,” Waylon greeted in his usual gruff tone that always seemed to be a mix of rust and gravel. He glanced over at Theo, who was pacing while he talked on the phone.
“Mayor,” Ava greeted back, keeping her own tone hard. She shifted her attention to Harley.
Harley’s dark brown eyes met hers, and maybe there was an apology in them. Maybe. But, if so, it was brief because he skimmed his gaze over her baby bump. Just a glance before he turned his attention to the body.
“I heard about the murder from the dispatcher,” Waylon snarled. “Woulda been nice to have heard it from Theo or you.”
“We’ve been busy,” Ava informed him right back. “We came out as soon as we got the call and have been examining the scene. It’s Monica Howell,” she added. No way to keep the emotion out of her voice, not with this ripping away at her.
Waylon’s sigh was long and he squeezed his eyes shut a moment. “Hell, this is gonna bring her mama and daddy to their knees.”
It would, indeed, and Theo and she would be making the notification as soon as they finished up here.
“I know I don’t need to introduce you to Harley,” Waylon added with more than a touch of sarcasm as he tipped his head to Harley. “You can’t go wrong with the Texas Rangers, especially since you’ve found squat so far that’ll put a stop to these killings. I want these murders to stop. I want the people of my town to feel safe again.”
Waylon seemed to be geared up to add more but he hit the pause button when Theo walked back over to them. Theo nodded a greeting to Harley, who was family to him. Not by blood but in every other way. Theo had been raised by former sheriff Grayson Ryland after Theo’s parents had been murdered. Grayson’s father, Boone, had adopted Harley and his brothers after marrying their mother.
“You could refuse to work with Harley,” Waylon went on, talking to both Theo and Ava now, “but why the hell would you? Let him help you fix this problem before you have to tell somebody else’s family that their girl’s been murdered by a killer you haven’t been able to catch.”
The guilt didn’t just wash over Ava. It slammed through her. Because Waylon was right about them not having caught the killer. And, worse, Ava was positive she was the link to the killer. Not to Waylon, Theo, or to anybody else involved in this investigation. It was her face on those bodies. She was the connection, and Ava had to believe that, sooner or later, the killer would want to end the game he was playing by coming directly after her.
Waylon’s phone rang and, when he stepped aside to take the call, Harley turned to Theo. “This is sort of the devil-you-know kind of a situation,” Harley explained. “Waylon has connections, and he arranged for a Ranger to be assigned to this. I figured you’d rather me over someone else.”
“I would,” Theo assured him, but he glanced at Ava, no doubt to see if she agreed.
Of course, Theo knew about her history with Harley. Plenty of gossip in small towns for folks to know she was carrying Harley’s baby. Theo also knew that “history” involved her much-despised father. But Ava wouldn’t let that history play into this. Wouldn’t let the baby or the old heat between Harley and her play into it either. That’s why she nodded to let Theo and Harley know she wasn’t going to stonewall when it came to getting any help from this particular Ranger.
Harley nodded as well, and turned his attention back to the dead woman. “Tell me about Monica Howell. I went to school with her, but she was a couple of grades behind me so I didn’t really know her. She matches the profiles of the other two victims?”
“Monica was divorced and thirty-four,” Theo confirmed, reading from the background info he’d pulled up on his phone. “So, yeah, she fits the profile. Female, single or divorced, no kids, in their thirties.”
That was also Ava’s profile. Well, almost.
“The first victim, Sandy Russo, had several miscarriages,” Ava explained, not looking away when Harley’s gaze locked with hers. “The second, Theresa Darnell, also had a miscarriage.” She had to pause and gather her breath. “When I talk to Monica’s parents, I’ll ask them if she’d ever been pregnant.”
Ava watched as Harley processed that. Others in town might not know about the piece of her life that didn’t fit the MO, but he did. During one of their insomnia-night discussions, she’d told him all about her past.
About the child she’d given up for adoption when she was sixteen.
Even now, twenty years later, Ava felt the pain of that. The shame. The anger that it’d been something her father had forced her to do. But that was an old unhealed wound she didn’t have time to soothe right now. One that she couldn’t use Harley to help her soothe either. They had to stop this killer because the safety of their child was at stake.
“I’m sorry,” she heard Harley say under his breath.
Ava wasn’t sure if that was a multipronged apology for the murders or for the baggage she’d always carry for giving up her child.
“Your father talked Waylon into calling the Rangers in on this,” Harley added a moment later. “I’m sure your dad would have preferred a Ranger other than me, but he definitely pushed Waylon on this.”
Everything inside her went still. Not for long though. The fresh wave of anger punched her as hard as the killer had hit Monica. Her father, State Senator Edgar Lawson, didn’t live in Silver Creek. Never had. No, his grand estate was over fifty miles away in an exclusive gated neighborhood in San Antonio. That didn’t mean, though, that he wouldn’t use his power and influence to try to mess around with her life and career.
“Waylon told you this?” she managed to ask.
Harley shook his head. “I have my own contacts, but I found out your father called Waylon and pushed him to bring in outside assistance.”
Some people might believe her father had done that to help the Silver Creek Sheriff’s Office, to make sure his pregnant daughter didn’t end up dead in the woods, but Ava knew that Edgar’s motives had nothing to do with love. No. He’d have his own reasons, and she would need to find out what those were.
“Your father might not want any bad publicity from having a string of unsolved murders under your jurisdiction,” Harley suggested, obviously reading her expression. “After all, he’s up for reelection and the press will definitely point out that you’re his daughter.”
Yes, it could be something as simple as that, and in Edgar’s mind, it was bad enough that his heiress daughter was a career cop. Bad enough that she was unmarried and pregnant and wouldn’t play the part of being devoted to him so as to help him keep his seat in the Texas senate. But bad would be multiplied many times over when the media continued to point out that the senator’s daughter hadn’t been able to stop a killer who was terrorizing the town where she was a deputy.
A killer who had to be connected to her since the snake was covering the dead women’s faces with her photo.
“We have a problem,” she heard Veronica call out. The CSI got up and practically ran away from the body.
“What’s wrong?” Theo and Harley asked in unison.
“We need to evacuate the scene and get a bomb squad out here right now,” Veronica blurted. “There’s a bomb beneath the body.”
