Colton Copycat Killer. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ kid’s upbringing to be completely unlike his own. His childhood had involved his father killing his mother and then his siblings and him being scattered to the winds.

      More specifically, they had all been sent off to different foster homes, but they might as well have been scattered to the winds for all the time they’d managed to spend together during all those awful, soul-scarring years.

      No matter what it took, his kid wasn’t going to go through that, wasn’t going to feel abandoned, alone and ashamed because no one wanted him or her. If he had to marry Celia for that to happen, well, so be it. He’d managed to survive all this time—and had gotten as far as he had—by learning to roll with the punches. He’d roll with this one, too.

      And in the end—

      Sam’s head jerked up as everything within him went on high alert the second he heard it.

      Part of his response was due to his police training, the rest had evolved based on pure survival instincts. The latter had been necessary in order to live through some of the foster home stays he’d been forced to endure.

      “Did you hear something?” Ethan, one of his brothers—they had pretty much managed to find one another and reunite in these past few years—asked him.

      By now, Sam had broken into a run and ran past him without responding.

      “I’ll take that as a yes,” Ethan said, answering his own question and hurrying after Sam.

      Once they reached the hall, it was obvious the sound was coming from the bridal room. It grew louder and more jarring the closer they got.

      “It’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding,” Ethan called after Sam. It wasn’t meant to stop his brother. Ethan was just stating a point of fact.

      The next moment, as he came to a skidding halt behind Sam and took in the scene Sam was viewing, he muttered under his breath, “And this has got to qualify as the worst possible kind of luck a groom ever encountered.”

      For an excruciating, shattering moment, Sam froze several steps away from Zoe. At first, he wasn’t even aware she was the one screaming.

      He couldn’t take his eyes off Celia.

      It wasn’t a sense of loss that was echoing through every fiber of his being. It was shock. Complete, total and utter shock, swaddled in disbelief. The shock was not tied to the fact that Celia was dead, but to the symbol he was looking at on her forehead.

      He knew that symbol.

      He recognized it from both photographs he’d seen originating from crime scenes, and from the nightmares that had haunted his earlier dreams.

      That was the symbol his father, the infamous serial killer, Matthew Colton, used to draw on the foreheads of his victims.

      But those victims were all men of a certain size and age who reminded Matthew of his older, far more successful brother, Big J. It had been Matthew’s way of doing away, by proxy, with a man whom he hated with every fiber of his being and whom he blamed for everything that had gone wrong in his life.

      Matthew killed men, not women. The thought echoed over and over in Sam’s head. And while Matthew had killed his wife when she stumbled across his heinous secret, he hadn’t made a practice of killing young women in their twenties. If nothing else, it would have come to light by now if he had.

      Besides, Matthew Colton had been behind bars for twenty years. He couldn’t have killed Celia.

      Then who had?

      This didn’t make any sense.

      The detective in Sam wanted to focus exclusively on the murder—Celia was clearly already dead—of the woman whom he would have married in ten minutes. The human side of him that was struggling to resurface after being buried for more than twenty years felt obligated to offer some sort of comfort to Celia’s sister.

      Zoe looked as if she was bordering on going into shock—if she wasn’t already there.

      “Zoe—” Sam began, then fell silent, at a loss as to what to say next.

      But he didn’t have to talk. The moment he said her name, she turned toward him. He saw the tears flowing from her eyes and the stricken look on her face just before she collapsed into his arms.

      He barely caught her in time.

      Sam held on to her awkwardly, as if he felt that making any sort of contact would wind up cracking his carefully built up, impenetrable walls.

      “She’s dead,” Zoe sobbed. “I was just in here and now Celia’s dead. Why did I leave her? She’d still be alive if I hadn’t left the room. Oh, God, why didn’t I stay?” she sobbed.

      Sam looked over her head helplessly toward Ethan. He knew what to do at a crime scene, knew how to defend himself against a killer and knew how to handle himself in all the steps between. But when it came to dealing with something like someone else’s grief, or a woman’s tears, he hadn’t a clue.

      Completely at a loss, he looked toward his older brother for help.

      Ethan picked up his cue effortlessly. “Why don’t you come outside, Zoe, get some air?” he suggested gently, trying to take hold of Zoe’s arm. He was ready to lead her out of the room.

      But Zoe surprised even herself and remained firm. She shook her head adamantly from side to side.

      “No, I can’t leave, I can’t leave Celia,” she insisted, looking down at her sister’s prone body.

      Sam had already felt for the pulse he knew was no longer there. Celia was gone. Whoever had fired the shots knew exactly where to aim.

      Rising to his feet, Sam took a firm hold of Zoe’s arm. “You can’t do her any good anymore, Zoe. Celia’s dead.”

      “But why? Who?” Zoe cried, looking at Sam through fresh tears.

      Her last thoughts of Celia had been angry ones. Her last words had been condemning ones.

      How was she supposed to live with that now?

      The guilt of that—and of leaving Celia alone to fall prey to her killer in the first place—had already begun to eat away at her.

      “Those are my questions exactly,” Sam replied evenly. There wasn’t a shred of emotion evident in his tone as he asked her pointedly, “What can you tell me?”

      “Sam, don’t you think now isn’t the time—” Ethan began, trying to get Sam to treat Zoe with a little more compassion. Ethan’s question indicated he thought the victim’s sister looked as if she was a hair’s breadth away from coming unglued. Asking her questions right now might just push the poor woman over the line.

      But Sam apparently didn’t see it that way.

      “Now is exactly the time,” Sam emphasized, looking at Ethan. “While it’s all still fresh in her mind.” And then he turned back to Zoe. “Zoe?” he asked, looking at her pointedly. “Did you see anyone walk into Celia’s room after you left her?”

      Zoe СКАЧАТЬ