Sudden Death Read online

  In Duane Johnson’s garage, the smell of gasoline in her nostrils, her partner put his gloved hand on her shoulder. He breathed into her ear. “You’re excited.”

  He bit her lobe, a hot thrill shivered through her nerves. He grinned against her neck, probably thinking the kill made her horny. He had no idea.

  “It’s almost time,” she whispered. “Get in place.”

  He crossed the concrete like a cat, tall and too skinny, blending into the blackness, an enigma. She knew him … but didn’t really know him. Tonight he was fully engaged, but how long would it last? She couldn’t hear him move or breathe over her own pounding heart. 11:10. Almost time for Duane Johnson to come home. Almost time for Duane Johnson to die.

  Also by Allison Brennan

  THE PREY

  THE HUNT

  THE KILL

  SPEAK NO EVIL

  SEE NO EVIL

  FEAR NO EVIL

  KILLING FEAR

  TEMPTING EVIL

  PLAYING DEAD

  For advice, guidance, and faith:

  This book is for Kim Whalen.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  When I started researching this book, I knew only the basics about our armed forces. I read several books to put myself in the mind-set of the men and women who serve and defend America and our freedom. One book in particular helped me better understand the history and challenges facing U.S. special operations forces: Leave No Man Behind by David C. Isby. His dedication included the following quote:

  “Let me not mourn for the men who have died fighting,

  but rather let me be glad that such heroes have lived.”

  —GEN GEORGE S. PATTON, June 7, 1945

  A special thanks to several authors who were willing to share their knowledge, even when facing their own deadlines: Cindy Gerard, C. J. Lyons, and Karin Tabke. As always, the experts at Crime Scene Writers shared their time and extensive experience in all matters related to forensics. My friends and former colleagues, Trisha Richins and Ken Blodgett (who also designed my website), went out of their way to help with on-site research. And finally, Special Agent Steven Dupre, SSA Mike Ray-field (the real-life leader of Squad 8), SA Brian Jones (who let me set off an explosion even though my characters shoot better than I do), and all the Sacramento FBI Agents who have all been so generous with their limited free time to help me get it right. I may have taken a few liberties with rules and regulations, forgive me. And if I got anything wrong … I’m pleading no contest.

  Behind the scenes, thanks to “special” agent Kim Whalen, my sounding board; my editor Charlotte Herscher who keeps my muse in line; senior editor Dana Isaacson who wields his pencil like a scalpel; Scott Shannon, the keeper of information and good will; and the rest of the incredible Ballantine team. I’d also like to thank the publishing team at Piatkus, who publish my books in the United Kingdom, for their enthusiasm and support.

  Finally, my family deserves extra special thanks for not having me committed when I talk about my characters as if they’re real people.

  “Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice.

  Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.”

  —SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784)

  “If an injury has to be done to a man

  it should be so severe

  that his vengeance need not be feared.”

  —NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI (1469-1527)

  PROLOGUE

  They had debated killing Duane Johnson when he closed his restaurant, or outside the VFW Hall where he drank and played cards every week, but ultimately they decided that his house was the ideal place.

  This late at night they would be guaranteed privacy. Neighbors were too far to hear Johnson’s screams. She’d planned it down to the last detail. That was her strength. Planning the kill, executing the betrayer.

  Karin’s ultimate plan was brilliant. Not that she had shared the end game with her partner. Ethan was a linear thinker, focused only on revenge. He wouldn’t understand that his pathetic vendetta was simply a means to end the life of her nemesis.

  Her blood surged, the excitement rose, as she thought about destroying the one person who’d stolen everything from her. Giddy with anticipation, her face flushed. Murder was easy; vengeance was far more complicated and certainly more satisfying.

  In Duane Johnson’s garage, the smell of gasoline in her nostrils, her partner put his gloved hand on her shoulder. He breathed into her ear. “You’re excited.”

  He bit her lobe, a hot thrill shivered through her nerves. He grinned against her neck, probably thinking the kill made her horny. He had no idea.

  “It’s almost time,” she whispered. “Get in place.”

  He crossed the concrete like a cat, tall and too skinny, blending into the blackness, an enigma. She knew him … but didn’t really know him. Tonight he was fully engaged, but how long would it last? She couldn’t hear him move or breathe over her own pounding heart. 11:10. Almost time for Duane Johnson to come home. Almost time for Duane Johnson to die.

  Almost time to start the ball rolling after thousands of days of planning and waiting and reflecting on the rightness of her kills …

  If someone had told Karin that she was a serial killer, she would have laughed until tears ran down her face. She didn’t even think of herself as a “killer,” though she would acknowledge that she’d ended the life of those who deserved it. Those who had slipped through wide crevices of a pathetic, hypocritical justice system that cared more for the criminals than the victims. In fact, she’d often wondered if she was the reincarnation of the San Francisco vigilantes—the city would never have survived without that group of men dispensing law and order in their own way. Or better—Judge Roy Bean. Bean did it right, and when the law didn’t fit, he forced it.

  Justice in the purest sense of the word.

  She was a woman out of her time. The Wild West was much more her element than twenty-first-century America, the land of the weak and pathetic.

  Frontier justice pumped her heart. Vigilante. Had she not made one stupid mistake, she would have been praised from the top of the Sears Tower, proclaimed a goddess from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Brooklyn Bridge. A national holiday would have been named in her honor, and students of American history would study her life and philosophies and how she changed the system single-handedly for generations to come. Their teachers could only wish they had the guts to stand up against the failed system, to fight the predators.

  They wanted to be her. Everyone wanted to be her, they just didn’t have the stomach for it. She did. She’d always been able to punish the wicked. Especially those who wanted to hurt her.

  When Ethan practically landed on her doorstep two years ago, Karin recognized she’d been handed the tools to finally destroy those who had deemed her a nonentity. A nothing. A mental case. In her forty-four years, she’d avenged every wrong committed against her … except one.

  Her hands and jaw were clenched so tight that she almost didn’t hear the truck. She froze. Johnson had arrived.

  Heart racing, she willed herself to control her excitement. She wasn’t supposed to have fun, this was business. An eye for an eye. But her mouth went dry and her vision sharpened. The trap had been laid, the hunt was nearly over.

  You love to kill. Watching their eyes as they die.

  The power, her power, flowed as the garage door noisily lumbered up on its tracks. She was in charge. She was in control. Duane Johnson had been sentenced to death and she was his executioner.

  Earlier, they’d disabled the lights in the garage, but the streetlamps still faintly illuminated its depths, casting dark shadows and narrow beams of gray light.

  Karin didn’t personally know their victim. She knew his name, she knew why he deserved to die,
she’d planned his death, but she didn’t know him.

  Somehow that made the entire affair all the more exciting.

  The truck turned into the driveway, the headlights turning everything an odd, sterile white. Country music twanged from the radio. She stood flat against the wall, in a blind spot they’d scouted earlier. Ethan was on the opposite side of the garage, waiting.

  Dressed in black, her hair colored to match, with her gun in hand, Karin was ready to fire if the plan didn’t work.

  The ignition cut out, and with it the music, but there wasn’t silence. The tick-tick-tick of the engine cooling. The click of the headlights turning off. The door opening, the dome light on, and Duane Johnson singing in a surprisingly strong baritone the end of the song:

  Oh, but love

  Love is thicker than blood

  Her eyes burned, her throat constricted, but her hands were steady as Johnson slammed the door shut. The car’s interior light stayed on for a beat as he walked to the door that led directly into the kitchen. They had already been inside; he didn’t keep that door locked.

  Five years out of the military and he didn’t have decent security.

  He pressed the garage door closed, put his hand on the doorknob, then paused. Instant tension, as if his sixth sense clicked in.

  Too late. The truck’s cab light turned off and Johnson pivoted. She didn’t see the glint of Ethan’s blade, but Johnson’s primal scream vibrated between her ears as her partner sliced the back of his knees, severing the hamstrings. The large black man immediately collapsed to the concrete floor as she maneuvered between the front of the Ford F-150 and Johnson’s tidy workbench.

  She had to give Johnson credit. Through excruciating pain and the inability to stand, he reached for his attacker’s legs, trying to bring Ethan down to the ground. She holstered her gun and pulled out the syringe, plunging it into Johnson’s upper arm. He stopped violently resisting, but the tranquilizer was mild. They didn’t want him to be unconscious during his stint in purgatory— before they sent him to Hell.

  “Wh—?” Johnson asked, his tongue thick, as she and Ethan grabbed him under the arms and carried him through his house to the family room. They’d already prepared the large room while waiting for Johnson to come home. The blinds were closed, their equipment ready—and the room itself backed to a wooded area. Private.

  She prided herself on her physical strength, but Johnson weighed at least 240, and with the tranq, he sagged heavily. Blood from being hamstrung dripped on the kitchen linoleum and smeared as they dragged him. If they let him live—which they wouldn’t—he’d be crippled for the rest of his life.

  They sat Johnson on a kitchen chair they’d earlier brought to the family room, and he immediately rolled off, trying to escape. His pathetic crawl toward freedom was futile, his attempts to scream hampered by the sedative. It took only a few minutes before they had him restrained—ankles duct-taped to the chair legs, wrists secured to the armrests.

  Ethan spoke, his voice calm, reasoned. He didn’t sound crazy; today was one of his good days. The lights were on and they made no attempt to hide their identity.

  “Do you remember me?” Ethan asked Johnson.

  Karin’s stomach fluttered at what was to come. The seductive nature of death was a natural high superior to anything drug addicts injected into their veins.

  “Fuh. Bahs.” Johnson’s eyes moved lazily. Panicked, but unable to focus.

  “You’re the fucking bastard!” Ethan turned to his special black box, with his special tools. She watched with wide eyes as he removed a long, thin, shiny steel needle.

  “Darling,” he said to Karin, “please hold Corporal Johnson’s right hand.”

  She complied. Here, for the next hour or two, she was the subservient one. Within these walls, Ethan took charge. For this, she didn’t mind relinquishing control. The anticipation of Johnson’s reaction, his punishment, was exciting enough for her, and Ethan knew exactly how to elicit pain. She only knew how to kill.

  But she was learning from Ethan, and she enjoyed her lessons.

  Johnson strained against her grip, but Karin was strong. She bent back his pinky until he cried out.

  Ethan snapped at her. “No games.”

  She didn’t apologize, but released the finger. Watched the needle as her partner pushed it into just the right spot between the forefinger and the thumb. On just the right nerve to make Johnson …

  Scream.

  The scream was short-lived as another needle went in at the base of his skull. And another. And another.

  “You left me to die!” Ethan sneered.

  In went another needle.

  She listened to the story again, though it was different now. Ethan had become a bit of a whiner. She didn’t like that. She wanted to tell him to suck it up and be a man, no matter how much he had suffered. His plan—well, her plan that she gave to Ethan—was to make Johnson and the others suffer just as much.

  Of course a well-placed bullet would have been just as effective, but this exercise wasn’t solely about dying.

  Tears ran in salty streams down Johnson’s dark face, glistening in the harsh overhead light.

  “Why?” His plaintive plea came out a whisper.

  “Shoes,” her partner commanded.

  She removed Johnson’s shoes and socks. Their captive’s mild tranq would have worn off by now, but with his nerves in agony and his limbs restrained, Johnson couldn’t fight back. He could barely cry out, though a shrill, high-pitched hiss came from deep in his throat as soon as the needle hit the right nerve between his toes.

  She didn’t think a man could hit that note.

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  The homeless man’s murder had been ritualistic, brutal, and efficient.

  Megan Elliott swatted flies that swarmed near the body next to the Dumpster as she squatted beside the victim. It was midmorning and the temperature was already eighty degrees. The bullet had gone in clean, execution style, behind the ear. All signs suggested that he’d been killed right here, in a narrow alley separating a parking garage from the historic Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament.

  There didn’t appear to be signs of struggle, but here in the decrepit underside of Sacramento, that was difficult to determine. While the city did a fairly good job at keeping most of the streets clean, on the north side of downtown, away from the Capitol building and closer to the soup kitchen, the grime and unwanted bred. Here, homeless weeded through the garbage off K Street for something edible when the city rolled up the sidewalks; or they slept against brick walls, clutching their meager possessions in a desperate grip.

  No sign of struggle, and based on the lack of blood spatter, the victim had been prone when shot at close range. But he had the same outward injuries as the other two known victims. His hamstrings had been cut clean through, incapacitating him. His wrists had been duct-taped to something, as evidenced from the chafing and band of missing arm hair. And he was barefoot.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Megan stood and, though she was five foot eight, she had to look up at Detective John Black, who had to be close to six and a half feet tall.

  “All the appearances of an execution, but you’re absolutely right. The M.O. matches the murders on the recent FBI hot sheet.” And to maintain good relations with local law enforcement, she added, “You were right on the money there. Thanks.”

  “His hamstrings weren’t cut here. Not enough blood. No spray or cast-off.”

  Megan glanced around, but there was no blood on the brick wall or in the alleyway. Where had he been attacked?

  Without touching the filthily clad victim, she inspected the deep gash in the back of his legs. She mimicked a slicing motion with her hand and then said, “I’ll need the coroner’s report, but it appears that the killer sliced right to left, cutting both legs with an even, fluid motion.” She stood and said, “Turn around.”

  Black did, looking over his shoulder. She said, “You’re mu
ch taller than the victim. If the victim was walking, the killer would have had to have walked up behind him and—slice—cut the hamstrings.” She mimicked the motion against the back of Black’s knees. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. If the vic was lying down, why would the killer slice his legs across?”

  “It would help if we could locate where he was attacked.”

  Megan agreed. “If the vic went down on his knees, that should be obvious at the autopsy with bruising or evidence on his pants. But why shoot him here? Why did the killer move him at all after the inital attack?”

  Wearing latex gloves and plastic booties over her shoes, an attractive, well-dressed woman who may have been thirty on her last birthday approached. “Nice theory, but maybe you should wait for crime scene analysis.”

  Black’s lips twitched. “Simone, FBI Supervisory Agent Megan Elliott. Agent Elliott, Simone Charles, CSU Supervisor.”