Flawless(95)
She smoothed back his hair, watching him anxiously. “Do you mind?”
He shook his head. “I’ll take a Guinness,” he told her.
She smiled and took his hand.
They would head to the pub, he thought, and then home.
Where she would make very careful love to him.
Life was good, he thought, and he pulled her closer still, then kissed her thoroughly.
He wondered what else the future might hold.
*
Keep reading for a sneak peek at HAUNTED DESTINY, the eighteenth book in the KREWE OF HUNTERS series by New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham, from MIRA Books.
Looking for more heart-pounding suspense from New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham? Then you won’t want to miss a single story in the spine-tingling Krewe of Hunters series, featuring the FBI’s elite team of paranormal investigators:
Phantom Evil Heart of Evil Sacred Evil The Evil Inside The Unseen The Unholy The Unspoken The Uninvited The Night Is Watching The Night Is Alive The Night Is Forever The Cursed The Hexed The Betrayed The Silenced The Forgotten The Hidden Haunted Destiny (June 2016)
And discover the electrifying Cafferty & Quinn series, where an antiques collector and a private investigator are drawn together in New Orleans as they investigate the city’s most unusual crimes:
Let the Dead Sleep Waking the Dead The Dead Play On
“Dark, dangerous and deadly! Graham has the uncanny ability to bring her books to life.” —RT Book Reviews on Waking the Dead
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Haunted Destiny
by Heather Graham
They’d started out on foot that morning—not long after the murder was reported.
The murder that would soon bring the Big Easy to its knees, the eleventh attributed to the man the media had dubbed the “Archangel.”
And who had now, apparently, moved into New Orleans.
The perpetrator had already left his mark on other cities. The first two killings had taken place in Charleston, South Carolina. Two women were murdered there, their bodies found in churches; the actual crime scenes had never been discovered. That was six months ago.
After that, there’d been a lull. At that time, the Archangel hadn’t been given his moniker yet and he hadn’t been on the nation’s radar as a serial killer.
Some wanted to believe that the killer himself was dead, or that he’d been incarcerated on other charges, the true extent of his crimes never known.
But those first two murders had held a strange signature—both victims displayed in churches with a saint’s medallion around their necks. And most investigators expected the killer to strike again.
Which he did, four months later.
The killer had come further south, taking two lives in Miami, Florida, and quickly followed by two more. just up the coast in Ft. Lauderdale.
Then, for another four months, nothing.
Law enforcement worked day and night, certain that he’d strike again—but not knowing where.
He did.
He’d travelled on to Mobile, Alabama. There, he’d killed three young women and a young man—the boyfriend, by all accounts, arriving too late to save the last Mobile victim—and not at all prepared for the homicidal knife-wielder he’d come to meet. An actor returning home after his show, he’d obviously put up a fight. The young woman had been left on church steps, the boyfriend dumped in an alley. They knew this time, however—from various cell phone calls and messages—that the couple had been attacked at the young woman’s home, a small bungalow in a wooded area of the city.
But despite the disarray and the traces of blood in the bathtub, the killer had left behind no fingerprints, no fibers—no hint of his identity.
The last four had died in a period of three days, all while local law and the FBI scrambled after the Archangel like ants, certain they were getting close. They’d called out the National Guard in Mobile—only for the killer to refuse to strike again.
The one male victim had been dumped in an alley with no ceremony, while the young women’s bodies had been discovered at a church, sometimes on the outside steps, sometimes by the altar. The Archangel had left each female victim laid out as if prepared for burial, arms folded over her chest—a silver saint’s medal around her neck, almost covering the ribbon of red where he’d slit her throat.
Jude McCoy had seen the pictures; practically every agent in every city in the country had seen the crime scene photos of the victims.
And they’d all looked just like this young woman he gazed down at now. She lay before the altar of a church on the outskirts of the French Quarter, arms folded over her chest, a medallion of St. Luke around her throat.
Her name was Jean Wilson. She lay there, in front of the altar, a choir robe draped over her naked body, the tell-tale blood-line around her neck—as if it were a chain for the medallion on her chest. She’d been young and beautiful with long, luxurious dark hair and coffee-colored skin.
Seeing her, Jude McCoy felt a mixture of horror, pity, rage—and helplessness.