Page 5 of Lake House Killer

Warmth pools around my midsection and my hands dip down and fill with liquid.

No.

The sound of voices emits from the hall, and I look that way, only to find the silhouette gone.

I have to get up. I have to call for help.

My phone. Where did I leave my phone?

My legs swing over the side of the bed and I crumple to the floor.

Adrenaline surges through me as I try to get on my feet, but I can’t move another muscle.

This isn’t just a nightmare unfolding. It’s a calculated attack.

Someone doesn’t just want to scare us—they’re here to silence us, forever.

The room begins to sway and I begin to lose consciousness.

It wasn’t the sandman who showed up.

It was the Grim Reaper.

3

Special Agent Fallon Baxter

It’s a little after three in the afternoon as Jack, Buddy, and I pull into the parking lot of the FBI field office in Denver.

Summer is giving way to fall and the Colorado air feels crisp, as if it, too, were bracing itself for the day’s events.

Nikki beat us to the lot by minutes. The three of us were enjoying a pizza on my back porch when Hale sent the text. Special Agent Jack Stone and Special Agent Nikki Knight are the shiny new coworkers I acquired when I moved back to Colorado from Nevada.

I was born and raised in Pine Ridge Falls, a cozy little town with a waterfall in the heart of it that’s about a twenty-minute drive from Denver. But when my family blew apart and my younger sister, Erin, decided to do a disappearing act in the aftermath, I thought I’d ditch my job as a criminal analyst for a security firm and head to Quantico. I did a two-year stint at the field office in Reno before asking to be transferred to Denver.

The urge to be closer to my mother and my older sister, Riley, was too strong to fight. And I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad I joined this very field office because earlier today Jack and Nikki gave me a new direction in which to look for my sister and the name of someone she was seen with as well.

“Come on, Buddy.” Jack whistles and the yellow lab trots out of his truck, joining us as we catch up with Nikki on the steps to the building. All in all, Buddy is pretty great and was worth the trip back to Colorado all on his own.

Buddy is my newly acquired dog. We’re still feeling out our boundaries, but for the most part, I give him the run of my cabin and bring him along with me wherever I can. We might be breeding a codependent relationship at this point, but neither of us is complaining.

And on the professional front—Jack, Nikki, and I aren’t complaining about our relationships either. We’re on the same team and we’ve already put two cases to bed.

Jack and Nikki are pretty great, too.

Jack Stone is somewhere in his late thirties, tall with dark hair, dark facial scruff, bright blue eyes, a muscular frame, and he seems considerate enough as well.

He checks off all the right boxes where the women are concerned, and as much as I don’t like to admit it, he’s had my ovaries sit up at attention one too many times.

I’m starting to feel things, things I don’t want to feel about anyone right now, and I don’t care much for that.

My sole focus is on hunting down my sister so I can slap her a good one, and then maybe hug her before I haul her back to Pine Ridge Falls. I realize she’s an adult, just a year younger than me, late twenties, and miles smarter according to her IQ, but I don’t care about any of that. I don’t care that it’s perfectly legal for her to be a nomad for the rest of her life, or to cut her family out of her everyday existence.

We’re worried sick. This isn’t like Erin. It was as if after my father died, she died along with him.

That violent night filled with bullets and bloodshed comes to mind and I quickly push it right back out.

“Give him to me,” Nikki says, taking the leash from Jack. “We all know Buddy should have been mine,” she teases as we head into the building and flash our badges before clearing security.

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