Page 1 of Sinful Reality

MINKA

PROLOGUE

“Janiesa Sawyer.” Soph flicks through a stack of pages on her end of the line, shuffling the pile and tapping them against what I suppose is her desk. “She’s five years old and was taken from a park in New York.”

The blood drops out of my head, leaving behind nothing more than an echo chamber of thudding booms.

“My…” I lick my parched lips and shake my head. “What?”

“She went missing on January eleventh. It’s been on the news.”

“I rarely watch the news. It’s…” I rub a shaking hand over my forehead. “No. Soph. Don’t say it.”

“The cops haven’t gone public with the connection yet, since it’s still early days in the investigation. But the press is already making public comparisons.”

“No,” I grit out. “It’s impossible.”

“It’s not a copycat,” she murmurs, perhaps for the first time since we met, true sadness rolls through her words. “He’s back, and I needed you to know before the calls start coming in.”

“No!” Rage bursts from my chest, sizzling the ends of my nerves and consuming me like a wildfire during a dry, hot summer. “He’s dead, Sophia! Whoever the hell youthinkis back, you’re wrong.”

“I’m not wrong. I never am.” She works at her computer, the staccato of her breath changing as the phone moves, so I imagine her clutching the device between her shoulder and ear to free up her hands. “Janiesa Sawyer fits the MO, Mayet. She’s five years old, has brown skin, and is the child of a single mom. She was playing in a park in Bronxville?—”

“Bronxville doesn’t fit the MO!” Infuriatingly naïve, like I’ve busted her theory wide open, I speak far louder than I should and draw the attention of techs who move through the halls outside my glass-walled office. “Every single other Body-In-The-Bag case happened within ten miles of the original park in Manhattan. Bronxville is?—”

“About fifteen. I know.”

“So you’re wrong!”

“Everything else fits,” she sighs, “and fifteen miles is hardly an extensive commute. Janiesa was grabbed on January eleventh while playing in a park. Her mother had turned to order coffee from the cart. She lost sight of the girl for all of two minutes, and in that time, her baby was snatched. No one noticed, no one screamed out, the girl didn’t make a peep, and nothing has come of it since then.”

“It’s been…” I swallow the lump straddling my throat, the nausea and nerves attempting to choke me to death. “January eleventh was, like, two weeks ago.”

“Sixteen days. She hasn’t been seen since then. The cops have no leads, and the media are starting to piece together the similarities between this and the original seventeen.”

“So, why are you calling me?” I drop my elbows on my desk, then my head into my hand. Because I’m tired. So fucking tired. “I have nothing to do with those cases, Sophia.”

“You lie,” she murmurs, almost in a whisper. “The Body-In-The-Bag cases made you who you are today. They’re a thick layer in the very fabric of your soul because the first one was your age, and she was taken from your neighborhood. It could have been you, and every parent of every five-year-old girl in the city was hyper-alert after Diane Philips’ disappearance. Your parents spoke of her. The news blasted her face on your screen every single night for months, and just when she stopped being on everyone’s minds, she was dumped again, and a new girl was taken.”

“Soph—”

“Seventeen abductions,” she presses. “And even as you aged up and landed your own autopsy suite, the bodies kept coming. I know your history with this guy, and I know it hurts you. So I made the damn call to give you a heads up.”

“A heads up that…” Dark waves dance across my wavering vision. “That he’s back?”

“That the media are turning it into a shit storm. That the family is devastated. That the little girl is still missing?—”

“If it’s really him,” I massage my frown lines and crush my eyes closed, “if it’s not a copycat, then he’ll dump her next year. January eleventh. He’ll keep her until then before selecting the next one.”

“Yeah, well…” She clicks her tongue. It’s almost a dismissive sound. Uncaring. Though she’s anything but. “I guess we know how it’ll end for her. And when. The detective who was running the original cases?—”

“Detective Lowe.” I’d know his face anywhere, anytime, any moment from here until eternity. “Detective Bryan Lowe. He had a daughter, too. The same age.”

“Yeah. Him. He had to put the files away last year when he retired. He gave up, knowing he would never find his perp. But now another girl has been snatched, and though the current detective has called him in for a consult—since obviously, they’ve made the connection between files—the case belongs to this new guy now.”

“Who is the new guy?” I drag my fingers down, from my forehead to my eyelids, until I see stars. “I know you did your research before calling me. Is he good? Will he run the case well?”

“Detective Paxton Gilbert.”

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