Page 26 of Killer Knows Best

This is it. We could kill or be killed.

Who knows what we’ll find behind that door. It could be our perp. And I can guarantee you it could very well be Erin. My sister. My totally insanegeniusof a sister who I have half a mind to run her head through a wall.

How I would give anything to see her again.

And now in just moments, I could do just that.

The impossible finally possible.

Jack turns, and in one swift motion, bursts the door open with his foot before jumping inside.

“FBI, everybody freeze,” he thunders.

Nikki and I jump in, flanking him on either side. But we don’t see our suspect. Instead, we see an older woman with a shag of white hair, pale, and thin as a skeleton with about seven teeth in total staring back at us with her mouth agape.

The thin tan girl next to her looks equally surprised—dark hair, black eyes, pocked skin, about mid-thirties in age. Her arms rise to the air, but the skeleton with hair continues to gasp in our direction.

The room is small, the kitchenette is loaded with old fast-food bags, and the smell of something sour and cigarettes lingers in the air.

I move past the peanut gallery and make a beeline for the door to the right and find an empty bathroom the size of a thimble, and the sink is molded with orange slime.

“All clear,” I say with my weapon still poised as I move to the opened window to the left of the sofa. “That’s where he went.”

“Everybody out,” Jack growls, and the woman with pocked skin runs past us and out the door as if she were an apparition. “I said everybody out,” he growls once again and Nikki and I exchange puzzled looks.

“Is he talking to us?” Nikki asks, sounding about as confused as I’m feeling.

“Get out.” He cuts the air with his angst as he continues to glare at the skeletal woman, the barrel of his gun starting to lose its trajectory in her direction.

“I think he is talking to us,” I say, stymied. “Bad news, Stone. I’m not going anywhere.”

His eyes cut to mine, and there’s a glint of something in them—fear, frenzy, fury, all of the above, and I don’t get it.

“Out,” he roars right at me. “Out,” Jack says again, but this time his voice cracks with something else. Something raw. His eyes lock onto mine, and I see it. Fear. And it’s not for him. It’s for me.

“Like I said, Stone,” I say with my voice unwavering. “I’m staying.”

But he doesn’t back down, and that fear in his eyes flares like a warning.

This isn’t about Gunther. This is about something else entirely.

And whatever it is, we’re about to face it head-on right this minute.

The woman sighs hard and I squint her way. Something about her feels familiar. Those eyes, those crystal blue eyes.

A breath hitches in my throat as I connect the dots.

“No,” I whisper mostly to myself as I cast a quick glance at Jack.

But he’s too focused and fuming to notice.

This night officially just went sideways.

19

SPECIAL AGENT JACK STONE

Fallon stares at me for a moment too long, waiting for me to say something that’ll make this moment make sense. But I’ve got nothing.

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