TO SAVE (Book #5)
CAUSE TO DREAD (Book #6)
KERI LOCKE MYSTERY SERIES
A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)
A TRACE OF MURDER (Book #2)
A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)
A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)
A TRACE OF HOPE (Book #5)
PROLOGUE
Viktor Bjurman had heard the myths and stories about runner’s high. He had never experienced it himself—at least not by running. Though Viktor worked out more than the average man, running had not been something he’d ever really bought into. He did jog from time to time, but the full-out runs just weren’t his thing. He did not envy those who had experienced runner’s high, though. No, he had felt it himself many times without running. He knew, as a personal trainer, that the so-called runner’s high was an experience available to anyone who worked out in any capacity and did not mind stretching themselves to the limit.
He’d experienced it a few times with a kettlebell circuit he religiously adhered to, as well as during an intense weightlifting session a few months ago where he had pushed his arms to failure. That so-called high was nothing more than his body finding another gear that most people kept hidden—a gear that could only be accessed by breaking through the physical barriers and limitations most people built up for themselves.
As he stepped out of the house on Primrose Street, Viktor was on a totally different kind of high. He felt adventurous and at least twenty years younger than his actual age of thirty-eight. He’d just wrapped his last session of the day—a very busy day that had seen him visit five different homes for personal training sessions, and two in a local gym. He was worn out and exhausted…but was also experiencing something very akin to runner’s high.
He’d saved the best client for last. Theresa Diaz was a forty-seven-year-old woman whom he’d been working with for over a year. His workouts had caused her to lose more than thirty pounds within that year, getting her closer to the body she had been wanting. The significant weight loss had also increased her confidence.
Viktor assumed that was why she had been so aggressive in starting the affair. She was married, and had been for twenty-three years. She’d openly confessed that her husband cared nothing for her, only paying attention to her when he wanted her for his own physical needs. That very conversation had opened the door for Viktor. And although he, too, was married, he had taken the opportunity.
It had not been the first client he had slept with, so he had learned to push away any thoughts of guilt. He and Theresa had been having sex for the better part of three months now, after living through the tension of working out together for nearly fifteen months. Viktor had known she’d be good. A similar experience from a year or so ago had made him think as much; apparently, women who had been overlooked by their husbands and then rediscovered their confidence were typically eager, willing, and aggressive in bed.
Or, as it had been just five minutes ago with him and Theresa, on the living room floor.
He knew didn’t need to hurry; Theresa’s husband was out of town. He’d mentioned as much when he had FaceTimed her when they had actually been working out. Still, he jogged a little faster than usual when he left her house. His own home wasn’t too far away, just six blocks to the east. It would be a nice, brisk jog. Night had just fallen and the temperature was a chilly sixty degrees.
He was replaying the workout session (the later extracurricular part, not the actual workout that he was paid for) in his mind. It had been the stuff of fantasies, like something right out of a porn script. He’d had several conquests during his career as a personal trainer, but he thought Theresa Diaz was going to prove to be the best. When they were together physically, it was almost like she was taking out her aggressions of a loveless marriage and wasted twenty-three years on him. And he was more than happy to let her do so. He supposed, in an odd way, he should be thanking her sorry excuse for a husb—
The thought was brought to a screeching halt as he saw something come flying toward him.
He had no idea what it was. A car? Something someone had thrown at him? He did not know. All he knew was that it slammed into his stomach with tremendous force.
Viktor doubled over, dropping to a knee. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of the object that had struck him. It was an aluminum baseball bat. And as he spied it, it was rising into the air. Viktor tried sucking air into his lungs, but he could not breathe. The blow had taken all of the wind out of him and caused a terrible pain along his right side. All of this came together in a sickening conclusion as he watched the bat fall again.
It struck his chest this time. The noise was strange—as if the person behind the bat had struck an empty cardboard box rather than his chest. There was an explosion of pain in his chest as something shattered inside of him. He tried to scream but could still not draw in a breath. He did, however, raise his arms up as he saw the bat already coming down for another blow.
He did stop the bat from striking his chest again, but his right wrist was shattered. A mewling sort of moan escaped his lips as he could finally draw in air.
He saw the shape behind the bat. It was masculine, but he could not see a face. Through the pain, he wondered if it was Theresa’s husband. It made sense, but—
Logic and reason went fleeing from him as the bat came down again. This time it struck his left side, breaking his ribs. He tried to scream again but it was too much—no wind, too much pain. He opened his mouth, hoping something would come out.
But there was nothing. Just the rise and fall of the bat. He was struck in the stomach again, then the chest, then another cataclysm of pain as he was caught in the right shoulder, pulverizing the bone.
Viktor lost count of how many times the bat rose and fell.
Somewhere around the ninth or tenth attack, something inside of him seemed to give way, snapping like an invisible thread. He watched the bat descend again but, mercifully, did not feel the pain of it as a sudden darkness came swooping in to steal him away.
CHAPTER ONE
Chloe Fine was listening to her deceased father’s voice as a late-summer thunderstorm rumbled outside. She sat on her couch in her quiet apartment, holding her sister’s voice recorder in her hand. She’d press play, listen for a bit, and then rewind it to hear it back again. She was dressed in an old T-shirt and a pair of comfortable pajama pants, her knees curled to her chest as if she were a little girl listening to some sort of morbid bedtime story.
She had listened to the single line where he admitted to the planned murder of her mother over and over again. It had become almost like a mantra, like the chorus to a song that got stuck in her head.
With the thunder softly booming outside, Chloe listened to it one last time. She held the recorder with both hands, almost as if she were expecting it to come to life and she’d be ready to strangle it when it did. She played the same sixteen seconds over again, trying to imagine what Danielle had been going through in that old abandoned warehouse.
She was oddly proud of her sister, but also a little frightened by the lengths she had gone to get this confession.
Chloe stopped the recorder and set it down on her coffee table. She sat in the silence for a moment, trying to grow acclimated to the current state of her life. It was not the first time she’d done this. It was a lot to take in, a lot to digest.
