The Fifth Victim

“Tell me what?”

She cleared her throat. “Someone has been murdered. A young woman. I’m sure you’ll find her body in Cedar Tree Forest, not far from here. I saw … through the killer’s eyes … I saw—” She sucked in a deep breath. “He watched the sunrise over Scotsman’s Bluff.”

“Are you sure, Genny? Are you positive it wasn’t just a nightmare?”

“I’m positive. It’s too late to save her, but you can find her body and perhaps find some evidence of who killed her—if you can get there soon. I think I can guide you to the exact spot.”

“Ah, shit …” Jacob murmured under his breath.

“Jacob?”

“Hmm?”

“He tied her to an altar of some sort and sacrificed her. I—I think he drank her blood.”

“God damn son of a bitch!”

Chapter 1

FBI Special Agent Teri Nash glanced at the fax in her hand. A letter and a photograph. While waiting for Dallas to shower and shave, she’d sat down at his cluttered desk in the corner of the living room. The fax had come in while she’d been relaxing with a gin-and-tonic. Dallas and she hadn’t dated in several years, and she was actually involved with a profiler at the Bureau, but she still considered Dallas a good friend. Since his niece’s death eight months ago, she’d tried to keep tabs on her old lover. Although he’d handled Brooke’s brutal murder as he did everything else—with little emotion and iron control—she’d seen past his steely facade to the pain beneath. Once he’d returned to FBI headquarters in D.C. after Brooke’s funeral, he’d begun a personal search for any information that might lead him to his niece’s killer. Using the Bureau’s vast resources for unofficial use had become a bone of contention between Dallas and the assistant director of the Criminal Investigation Division. Although Dallas and Tom Rutherford disliked each other personally, Tom had allowed Dallas a lot of slack. Teri wondered for how much longer?

She read the fax for the third time. The message was in response to a letter Dallas had sent out to local law enforcement officials nationwide. This was the seventh such response in the past few months, but she had a sinking feeling that this was the one he’d been waiting for ever since Brooke’s murder. Teri didn’t want to look at the faxed photo again. Once had been more than enough. It wouldn’t be easy forgetting the sight of the young blond girl with her body sliced wide open. Teri shivered.

The sheriff of Cherokee County, Tennessee, had reported what appeared to be a sacrificial killing in his county early this morning. The details of her death were practically identical to those of Brooke’s horrific murder in Mobile, Alabama, in May of last year.

As Teri finished scanning the information again, she shook her head and sighed. The minute Dallas saw this fax, he’d be off and running. On some sentimental, protective level, she wished she could just dump the fax in the garbage and pretend it didn’t exist. Even though her love affair with her fellow agent had been short-lived and had ended three years ago, she still had strong feelings for him. The poor guy had been through enough, had followed too many dead-end leads these past few months. She hated to see him go off on another wild-goose chase, searching for an elusive serial killer. That is, if there was a serial killer. Dallas had come up with his own theory that there was a barbaric serial killer on the loose. Besides, she wasn’t sure how many more vacation days he could take before he used them all up. Or how much longer Rutherford would put up with Dallas’s absenteeism.

Dallas Sloan, his dark blond hair damp from his shower, emerged from the bathroom adjacent to the small bedroom in his three-room efficiency apartment. Teri sucked in a deep breath. Damn, the guy still took her breath away. Wearing nothing but his white briefs, he exposed his tall, lean body for her perusal. A dusting of brown hair covered his legs and arms and created a V over the center of his muscular chest. Teri forced her gaze from his body to his face. He grinned at her. Wickedly.

“Just enjoying the scenery,” she told him. “Not buying the property.”

“What have you got in your hand?” he asked as he stared point-blank at the fax.

“This?” She held up the two sheets of paper as if they were a trophy. “It’s a fax.”

“Lusting after my body is one thing, honey, but reading my mail is something else altogether.” Dallas rummaged around in his closet, pulled out a pair of well-worn jeans, put them on, then removed a cream knit sweater from the chest of drawers and yanked it down over his head. “Who’s the fax from?”

Teri walked over to where he’d sat on the bed and was putting on his socks. “It’s from Sheriff Jacob Butler in Cherokee County, Tennessee.”

Dallas slid his feet into his boots, tied the laces, and then glanced up at Teri. “Is it about—”

“He’s had what appears to be a sacrificial killing in his county.” Teri held out the fax. “This morning.”

Dallas grabbed the papers out of her hand, scanned them quickly, then cursed under his breath. “I need to call him—now.” Dallas stood. “Look, honey, why don’t you go on and meet the others. If this is what it appears to be, I’ll be taking a flight out tonight for Tennessee.”

Teri grabbed his arm. “Are you sure you want to do this again? So far, none of the reports you’ve received turned out to be—”

“This is different. I can tell the similarities to Brooke’s death are obvious just from the fax.”

“Even so, with all the old reports on sacrificial killings you’ve compiled, none of the victims had even one thing in common, nothing to link any of them to one specific killer, other than they were all sacrificed.”

“There’s a link,” Dallas said. “We just haven’t figured it out yet. Linc only started work on a profile for me last week, and since he’s doing it on his own time and trying to keep Rutherford off his back, it’ll take time.”

“Do you have any vacation or sick days left?” She knew better than to continue arguing with a man who couldn’t be persuaded.

“Three.”

“And what if this killing turns out to be the one you’ve been waiting for, a new piece of the puzzle?”

“I’ll take a leave of absence.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

“I can count on you and Linc, can’t I?”

“Unofficially.”

Dallas kissed her. No passion. Just a thank-you gesture. “You don’t have to wait around. Go ahead and leave now. I’ll call you on your cell phone if I take a flight out tonight.”

Teri caressed his cheek. “I hope this is the one.”

He didn’t bother walking her to the door, so she let herself out, then paused in the doorway. She sighed. He’d already forgotten all about her. He picked up the telephone and dialed the 865 area code and then the number for the sheriff’s office.

“Yes, this is Special Agent Dallas Sloan, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’d like to speak to Sheriff Butler.”

Teri eased the door closed, walked up the hall and down the flight of stairs to the first floor of the apartment building. There’s nothing for you here, she told herself. Hoping Dallas would change his mind and want something permanent with her was nothing but a pipe dream. She had to remove those last fragments of hope—otherwise her relationship with Linc would never work out the way she wanted it to.

“It’s gonna snow. I feel it in my bones,” Sally Talbot said as she tossed another log into the cast-iron potbellied stove.

“The weatherman on TV said sleet and rain,” Ludie Smith corrected. “Who should I listen to—your old bones or an educated man who knows all about cumulus clouds and dew points and heat indexes?”

“I swear, Ludie, ever since you took that adult education class at the junior college last fall, you done gone and got all uppity on me.”

“Me uppity?” With large, expressive black eyes, Ludie glared at Sally. “You’re the one who’s been acting like rich folks ever since Jazzy had that white siding put on the outside of this shack of yours.”

“Are you calling my house a shack? What do you call that place of yours—a palace?”

“I call it a cottage,” Ludie replied. “That’s what I call it. A cottage. Like one of them pretty little places you see on calendars and in the movies about the English countryside before World War Two.”

“Now what would an old Cherokee squaw from the hills of Tennessee know about the English countryside? Besides, your house ain’t no cottage. It’s a four-room, wooden sharecropper’s shack, the same as mine.”

“Well, Miss Know-It-All, I know as much about the English countryside as you do. And who are you? Just a crazy old white heifer from the Tennessee hills.”

Jazzy Talbot stood in the doorway that separated her aunt Sally’s kitchen from the living room where Sally and her best friend Ludie stood arguing together as they’d done as far back as Jazzy could remember. Any outsiders listening to the two old women would swear they hated each other, when in actuality the exact opposite was true. Ludie and Sally had been friends all their lives, but neither would ever admit how much they truly loved each other. Their favorite form of entertainment seemed to be debating a wide variety of subjects—everything from the weather to the proper way to cook collard greens.

Jazzy cleared her throat. Both women hushed immediately and turned to face her. Rawboned, with big hands and feet, Sally stood nearly six feet tall, possessed a shock of short white hair and ice blue eyes. With black eyes and steel gray hair, Ludie, on the other hand, was barely five feet tall and round as a butterball. Jazzy had no idea exactly how old either woman was, but her best guess would be that her aunt and Ludie had both passed their seventieth birthday.

“How long you been here?” Sally asked, a broad smile on her face.