01 A Cold Dark Place Read Free

down the doors.
    Mallory and Lucas took the stairs to the basement. Sweat formed on her brow despite the cool air flowing up the stairwell. She caught the aroma of blood and that faint echo of death. Mentally she braced herself for whatever lay ahead. Even so it shocked her.
    Meacher lay crumpled in a small pool of his own blood. No weapon visible.
    “ Subject down, in the basement!” she yelled. Feet pounded the boards above them as the house was systematically searched.
    She and Lucas cautiously approached the prone figure who sported a dime-size bullet-hole between his eyes. Mallory peered closer. There were actually two bullet holes, so close together as to be almost indistinguishable. Whoever killed him had either gotten lucky or was a hell of a marksman.
    She held her gun on the suspect as Lucas reached down to check Meacher’s pulse. Her gaze flickered to the victim who lay perfectly still on the bed. It was Janelle Ebert, the woman who’d been reported missing.
    A live, or were they too late?
    “ He’s dead,” Lucas confirmed.
    Mallory walked swiftly over to the woman, touched two fingers to her neck, searching for a pulse. A huge swell of relief burst through her at the feel of warm flesh and a solid beat at the base of her throat. “She’s alive. I don’t see any obvious injuries.” Her voice caught and she stumbled through her own nightmares. Put it away, Mal . She scanned the restraints. “She’s also cuffed. Who the hell shot Meacher?”
    They went back on high alert, she and Lucas moving in tandem to clear the rest of the basement. It wasn’t big. There was a massive upright freezer—Mallory could wait a lifetime to go through that sucker. Steps to storm doors off to the right. There was also a small room built into the corner, with the door firmly closed. A furnace fired up, making them both jump. She and Lucas looked at each other, nodded in silent communication, and stood on either side of the doorway to the small room. Lucas turned the knob and pulled the door outward. Mallory went in low, but there was no one there.
    There were enough glossy photographs plastered to the wall that even if there hadn’t been a woman handcuffed to a bed, Mallory would have no doubt Meacher was their UNSUB. Sweet Jesus . A choking sensation rose up in her throat but she forced it away. She quickly scanned the photos, searching for a sister she hadn’t seen in eighteen years even as she told herself not to. Then she made herself stop. There were other things to deal with first.
    SSA Danbridge came down the stairs; the woman ’s boots were lethal weapons but at least Mal always knew where her boss was.
    “ It’s clear,” Lucas shouted.
    “ Get the EMTs down here,” Danbridge yelled behind her, stepping around Meacher’s corpse and walking to where Mallory and Lucas stood staring into what had to be Meacher’s trophy room. “I didn’t hear a shot.”
    “ He was already dead when we got here.” Lucas looked disappointed as he holstered his weapon. “Which is a damn shame because I’d have loved to haul his ass off to jail.”
    The woman on the bed groaned and Mallory strode across to her, holstering her own weapon even though the creepy cellar made her scalp prickle. “Where are those EMTs? Can I take these cuffs off?”
    Danbridge looked pissed but nodded, then, “Wait!” She pulled out her cell phone and took a series of photographs of the woman, the cuffs, the proximity of the bed in relation to the body. Meacher was a serial killer but he’d obviously been murdered. This was a crime scene on multiple levels but the safety and comfort of living victims always came first.
    “ Do you think he had a partner who tipped us off and then killed him?” asked Lucas.
    “ Meacher’s only been dead a few minutes. You can still smell the gun powder.” Mallory sniffed the air. “It would have been a hell of a risk to tip us off just before he killed him.”
    “ I’ll set up roadblocks and a search